A Controversial and/or Informative Site [Archive] - Page 10

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 12:48 PM

~*****~

MAKING NO'AWLIN'S CAUSE OUR OWN
.....Posted by Danny @11:59 pm:NEWS DISSECTORWHAT DOES IT MEAN TO MISS NEW ORLEANS?

Posted in the Midnight Hour--Thursday, February 9 2004I am a city boy. You can take me out of the city but you can’t take the city out of me. Perhaps that’s why the plight of New Orleans touched me so deeply. (I have been there a few times!)
I grew up in The Bronx so I know how an urban area can be wrecked.

In Louisiana, it was the big flood that wiped out the Big Easy, that fearsome category 5 hurricane Katrina that did it with not a little help from the incompetence of agencies like FEMA and the Bush Administration which ignored the warnings and had not prepared for the break in the levees or the disaster that followed. In the Bronx, it was landlord driven arson and urban renewal that tore stable neighborhoods apart back in the late 60’s and early 1970s.

As for the Gulf Coast. we have all heard the promises. And the pledges to rebuild. We saw the President’s photo ops and his recent visit to the Garden District which he was pleased to see had recovered without apparently knowing it had escaped most of the devastation that destroyed the lower 9th ward and other parts of the Crescent City.

LA TIMES 2-7: “MISERY ON EVERY CORNER”

”New Orleans - They might have been mourners in a hearse, so somber were the passengers in the small bus on Mirabeau Avenue.

Theresa Sandifer shook her head sadly as the bus crawled along. House after ruined house was spray-painted with an "X" and numbers denoting how many people had been found there, dead or alive, after Hurricane Katrina. Sue Stein stifled a gasp at floodwater marks that grazed the roofs of a block of one-story homes. William Thompson glued his gaze to a trim beige house impaled by an oak tree.

No one spoke until the bus rounded a corner onto St. Bernard Avenue, in the Gentilly area. The roof of a wood-frame house from the 1960s sat askew, as if it had been picked up and tossed down at all the wrong angles. The chimney was missing; the doors and windows were blown out. A plywood sign carried a message from a family who had left for good.

"Goodbye, N'awlins, We'll Miss You," read Brad Dupuy, the guide on this city's newest bus excursion.

The "devastation tour," as the three-hour outing is popularly known, brings visitors to some of this city's most heavily damaged areas, though it skips the almost obliterated Lower 9th Ward. Even in a city that loves to test the limits on tastefulness - a city, after all, that made an industry out of cemetery tours - the idea caused consternation when it was proposed in late December.”

I am thinking ‘bout New Orleans today because I think about New Orleans every day. Show me someone who wasn’t shocked by the suffering and and I will show you someone who is not all there or is callous and desensitized beyond redemption.

I have been writing about it and helped launch Mediachannel’s “Keep the Light on Injustice Campaign" as a way to encourage all of us to press the press and move the media to follow up on the story, the suffering, the corruption, the incompetence as well as the struggle of city to come back.

BBC: New Orleans 'risks extinction'

”In the chaos that followed the worst natural disaster in American history, a forensic investigation has been taking place to find out what went wrong and why.

The BBC's Horizon programme has spoken to the scientists who are now confronting the real possibility that New Orleans may be the first of many cities worldwide to face extinction.

Modern day New Orleans was a city that defied the odds. Built on a mosquito-infested swamp squashed between two vast bodies of water in what is essentially a bowl, its very existence seemed proof of the triumph of engineering over nature."

For the most part, the media focus has been on what wrong and what the government is and isn’t doing to fix it. We know there’s a major controversy about what to rebuild and how to rebuild. Can the poor neighborhoods and working class homes come back? Are there special interests trying to remake the city from one housing what is largely a black community to a retirement community and tourist mecca for the middle class? Who will benefit, and who will be left behind>

We know there is anger there and frustration and that many of the town’s known and unknown residents have fled for dryer ground and new lives. We have never seen an "urban" removal of an American city like this before in our lives.

Yet there are folks in the Big Easy who have vowed to stay and fight the new battle of New Orleans and stay and rebuild. And some of them were in New York last night at a function at the 21 club put on by the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation (NOMC) to bring visitors back for the 150th annual Mardi Gras on February 18-28 and to pump all the town has to offer. There were folks from hotels, casinos, museums, music festivals, theaters, the Tennessee Williams’ Literary Festival. They are trying to bring the minions and the money back to the pride of Louisiana.

There was a taste the city’s great food as prepared by one of its greatest chefs. Paul Prudhomme was on hand with some food to die for. Paul told me about his new love of poker. I am betting that his restaurant—one of the first to reopen of the 800 that have now done so will still pack them in. For more on all of this, visit:

www.neworleansonline.com

TRAILER TOWNS ON THE BAYOU

BBC: “Some 70,000 people in Louisiana and Mississippi are now living in trailer parks, three months after Hurricane Katrina forced them to abandon their homes.

The cheap, makeshift abodes are synonymous with poverty in the US.

Yet for many storm victims they are the only option for the next 18 months at least, while the slow process of rebuilding winds on. For some they are a new beginning, a step up from sharing a motel room.

But there are fears for the long-term social consequences of the wave of construction that has seen "trailer towns" springing up all along the Gulf Coast.”

But most moving as aways was the music, the city’s signature, America’s classical music, jazz which came up the river from New Orleans into a welcoming world. On hand to tell us about it and tell us about it was Irvin Mayfield who plays with the New Orleans Jazz All Stars. He spoke of New Orleans as the capital of our nation’s musical heritage. He explained how jazz funerals and processionals became an institution reflecting the community’s compassion and commitment to building community. They found a way to turn their sorrow into a celebration of the departed.

He then introduced some major players—also, he noted, playing for free-- launching into with a slow dirge version of the emancipation anthem, the Battle Hymn of a Republic then morphing into a march which got half the room waving white handkerchiefs and dancing around the room. It was far more moving than the upbeat we can do it, yes we can big star salute at the Grammy where nary a word was said about the context of all of this. Why were usually outspoken artists like Bonnie, James, Bruce, and U2 silent on the issues of the day? Was that a CBS dictate or is it now just considered unfashionable to use platforms like this to express deeper dissents?)

In fact, nary a word was said about anything of political importance except perhaps the brief tribute-award to the Weavers, sans Peter Seeger, who have been a voice for people's music for generations despite blacklisting and and a lack of support by the recording industry.

What a contrast they are to the overly commercialized star-studded spectacle of celebrity worship that defines music today. I am sick at heart about the "Did you see her beautiful dress culture" that is has more to sell than tell. Yes it was fitting if overdue to hear that appeal from Neil Portnow, the president of the Recording Academy, for continued contributions to Hurricane Katrina relief, but so much more could have been done and still should be done.

That’s the power to the New Orleans vibe, as well as its passion. Irvin should have been there to be as eloquent in challenging the country to support New Orleans as he was in that restaurant last night in New York and later on his horn.

He told us how he had searched for his own father who had been missing for three months until he finally discovered he had drowned. He couldn’t save him, he said, but he could with our help, save the spirit and soul of his city. Those divas and preeners at the Grammys should have seen and heard him. He moved me to tears.

LA Times. “As the tour got underway, Dupuy, 31, offered a dedication to the "1,000 men, women and children who lost their lives on account of Katrina." He asked everyone to turn off their cellphones, and said: "We are not here simply to point and gawk at people who lost their property." And, he said: "We will not be seeing dead bodies on this tour."

“On Canal Street, Dupuy gave a quick lesson in how to spot a floodwater line - "yellowish brown horizontal bands" on the buildings. He noted the many boarded-up buildings and businesses closed five months after the storm.

"Is this where they had all the looting?" asked Thompson, 59, of Mobile, Ala. In a sad voice, Dupuy said yes.

“Three days before Katrina hit, he said, "not too many people were concerned" about the hurricane. Many in his native city had been through so many storms that they were casual about it, the way Californians yawn about earthquakes, Dupuy said. He and his roommate rode out Katrina in their apartment on Esplanade, not far from downtown, where the flooding was less severe than in many other parts of the city.

“His narrative balanced the glories of New Orleans' past against the misery of its present. Consulting a spiral notebook filled with handwritten notes, Dupuy told passengers that the city has three times as many canals as Venice, Italy, and its leading industry before Katrina was not tourism, but shipping.”

Irvin Mayfield's rap and his music gave me an idea. I broached it to him. Why not have processionals and New Orleans musical marches/funerals in every city worldwide on the first day of Spring, the day that marks the season of renewal? I suggested we appeal to musicians, music schools, local bands and big stars aline to take an hour –perhaps noon to one—and play for New Orleans out in the streets like they do there.

.Journalist Tania Grossinger who was there suggested we call it “New Orleans Springs Back” or “Hope Springs Eternal.” I tried the idea out on Irvin, the tourist folks, a rep of Orient Express Hotels, Chef Paul and they all loved it. So who knows, it could happen?

What do you think? Can it happen? Can we make something more participatory as opposed to a superstar session happen? Why not? I have had a little experience with musical events like No Nukes l979, Sun City 1985, Give Peace a Chance 1991 and We Are Family 2001. I am willing to invest some time but I can’t do it myself.

Who is willing to stand up, put up some funds, do some organizing, make some noise as LL Cool Jay put it on the Grammys. Let's take it to the streets.

Lets all make some noise.

If you want to help or contribute to making this happen to celebrate and save the culture and the city that cannot be allowed to drown, let me know. I am sure that if this happens on a voluntary and decentralized basis, it can be done. Artists will get involved; people will respond. Its not enough for the "big names" to sing commercial songs even if written by the great Alan Toussaint.

We need the American people getting up and getting down, and getting involved.

In the spirit of Satchmo and Fats Domino and everyone who has ever been thrilled by the magic of No’awleans, make this a spring of hope. Thanks to the Grammys for featuring music from New Orleans and supporting the preservation of this tradition. They too appealed for people to go New Orleans. We can all do that and more.

See Grammy.yahoo.com for their site.

Jim Santella says what should have been said last night on TV:

“Ravaged by storms and sharing a tragic fate with neighboring communities last year, New Orleans doesn't have much to celebrate as Mardi Gras approaches. It hurts to think about the lives lost and the traditions that have been broken. Keepsake treasures have disappeared; a huge void has been left behind.

“However, we all know that the city will rebuild. This year’s Mardi Gras will usher in a long celebration in the streets, just as it has for many years. Hurricanes have ravaged the Gulf Coast before. New Orleans will come back, and we know that the changes will not diminish its music.

“Memories of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and Al Hirt do not fade. Their music lives on forever. Dr. John continues to remind us of today’s vibrant music that’s alive and well. Organizations such as Preservation Hall, the Neville Brothers, the Wild Magnolias and the Dukes of Dixieland offer us different variations on the same theme: New Orleans is a city that will rebuild and continue to give us great music."

www.allaboutjazz.com

To connect to the city’s musical life, tune in to WWOZ www.wwoz.org

The Neville Brothers website: 66.70.148.219/

KATRINA FELLOWSHIP ANYONE?

“The Open Society Institute ( www.soros.org ) has announced a fellowship competition in response to critical issues exposed by Hurricane Katrina. By supporting in-depth journalism and media projects, OSI aims to stimulate and sustain a national conversation on these issues.

The Katrina Media Fellowships will support dynamic print and radio journalists, photographers, and documentary filmmakers in the creation, and improvement, of media coverage of issues exposed by Katrina. Applicants should propose projects that will expand and deepen the public's understanding of race and class inequalities in the United States….”

http://www.newsdissector.org/blog/2006/02/08/#1733

Nice to see posts picked up from AAJ and put out in other newsletters don't you think? SRH__________________

the magnificent goldberg

February 9th, 2006, 01:18 PM

*****~*****

NET FREEDOM NOW!

What if....

AT&T and Verizon blocked you from viewing your favorite podcasts and blogs? BellSouth cut off your net phone because you weren't using their service?

Comcast forced you to download MP#s from their store while slowing other music sites?This threat is more real than you might think. Right now, the major communications companies are planning to discriminate against the online content and services that they don’t yet control.

Their executives are already on the record:
.
AT&T’s Ed Whitacre wants consumers and content providers to pay for use of his network. “The Internet can’t be free … for a Google or Yahoo or Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes free is nuts.”

BellSouth’s William Smith told reporters that he would like to turn the Internet into a “pay-for-performance marketplace” where his company could charge for the “right” to have certain services load faster than others.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg says that Web applications need to “share the cost” of the broadband services already paid for by consumers. “We need to pay for the pipe.”

They want to boost profits by playing gatekeeper to the applications we use and the content we create. They want to give preferential treatment to their own high-end services while blocking or slowing access to everyone else’s.

STOP THEM NOW. Send your letter to the CEOs and Congress. This broadband assault would reduce your choices and stifle the spread of innovative and independent ideas that we’ve come to expect online. It would shift the digital revolution into reverse.

Internet gatekeepers have already: Blocked services: In 2004, North Carolina ISP Madison River blocked their DSL customers from using any rival Web-based phone service.

Blocked content: In 2005, Canada’s telephone giant Telus blocked customers from visiting a Web site sympathetic to the Telecommunications Workers Union during a contentious labor dispute.

If these media giants get their way, they’ll shut down the free flow of information and dictate how you use the Internet forever.

Legislation to kill Net freedom is being drafted right now in Congress. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD.

The Internet is the future of all media. It must continue to be governed by the principle of “network neutrality.” The network’s only job should be to move data between users regardless of where it comes from or what it contains. This fundamental principle has allowed independent voices — like dot-com entrepreneurs, bloggers and open-source programmers — to try out new ideas without having to pay extra or ask for permission.

As tech guru David Eisenberg explains: “A hobbyist collecting Pez dispensers could develop the idea to become E-bay. A couple of Stanford students could start Google and build a better search engine. Two guys in Europe could assemble a handful of programmers to invent Skype and threaten the trillion-dollar annual global tel-economy.”

But now, the cable and telco giants want to eliminate this open road in favor of a tollway that protects their status quo while stifling innovation.

Learn more at www.freepress.net.
We'll deliver this letter...
Dear CEO (copy to Congress):

I strongly urge you to cease all plans to violate the principle of "network neutrality." Your control of the "pipes" on which information travels does not give you the right to dictate what I can do online.

As a defender of an open and independent Internet, I demand that you guarantee all users of your company's services are entitled to:

1. Access the Internet content of their choice;

2. Run online applications and services of their choice;

3. Connect their choice of devices; and

4. Have fair competition among network, application, service and content providers.

From its beginnings, the Internet was built on a cooperative, democratic ideal. Your only job as a network provider is to move data between users. You must not block or discriminate against any of the legal content and services available online.

A copy of this letter has been sent to my elected representatives in Washington to ensure that Congress and the FCC work to put enforceable network neutrality principles into our telecommunications laws and regulations.

Sincerely,
[your name]
[your address]

...to these CEOs:

Brian Roberts, Comcast
Edward Whitacre, AT&T
Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon
Duane Ackerman, BellSouth
Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable
James Robbins, Cox Communications
Neil Smit, Charter
James Dolan, Cablevision/Optimum Online
Richard Notebaert, Qwest

...plus your members of Congress! Net Freedom Now! is a Free Press campaign.

GO ON-SITE TO SIGN A PETITION TO PREVENT SUCH AN ACTION, AND TO READ THIS ARTICLE AND CHECK OUT OTHER LINKS. JUST CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS LINK:

http://www.netfreedomnow.org/

Could such legislation affect the way internet services are provided in other countries? If so, we "foreigners" need to alert our own Governments. If not, then aren't the US businesses proposing the legislation likely to be cutting their own throats, as foreign competitors find ways to take their business?

How can we tell which is the case?

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 01:47 PM

~~~
Bush details Qaeda plot to hit LA By Tabassum Zakaria
1 hour, 23 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday disclosed new details of a thwarted al Qaeda plot to use shoe bombs to hijack a plane and fly it into a Los Angeles building, as he sought to justify his tactics in Washington's war on terrorism.
With critics questioning the legality of his authorization of a domestic spying program, Bush used newly declassified details of a previously disclosed plot to show that the threat of terrorism has not abated.

Bush said that in early 2002 the United States and its allies thwarted a plot to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles.

But he named the wrong building. "We believe the intended target was Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, California," Bush said. White House aides later said he meant Library Tower.

Library Tower is now known as US Bank Tower, but locally it is still mostly called by the former name because of its proximity to the city's central library. At 1,017 feet (310 metres) tall, it is the tallest building in the United States west of the Mississippi River.

Last October, the Bush administration had disclosed the plot to attack targets on the West Coast using hijacked planes, saying this was among 10 disrupted al Qaeda plots.

Bush said on Thursday that in October 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational mastermind of the September 11 attacks that year, had set in motion a plot for another attack inside the United States using shoe bombs to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the U.S. West Coast.

"Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September 11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sought out young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion," Bush said.

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and has since been held at an undisclosed location. In his speech, Bush praised the efforts of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in fighting terrorism.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, believed by U.S. officials to be hiding in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, have so far eluded the U.S. manhunt.

Bush said Mohammed tapped a leader of an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Southeast Asia named Hambali, who recruited several operatives with training in Afghanistan. Hambali was later caught.

"Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the West Coast attack," Bush said.

"Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative," he said.

In another plot, "shoebomber" Richard Reid failed in an attempt to blow up an American Airlines plane from Paris to Miami in December 2001 after passengers and crew tackled him as he tried to ignite explosives in his shoe. Reid was sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. court in January 2003.

Bush has been fighting criticism of his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without court warrants inside the United States on international emails and phone calls placed to and from people with suspected ties to terrorism.

He has said that it was a necessary tool for fighting terrorism and preventing another attack on America.

"There's a law which says with respect to electronic surveillance within America, it has to be with warrants. It cannot be warrantless," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), the California Democrat, told reporters before entering a closed Senate intelligence committee hearing to discuss Bush's NSA program.

Asked if she was concerned about the selective release of classified information by the White House, Feinstein said:

"The president is entitled to release whatever he wants to release. He owns the intelligence. The president is the owner of intelligence and then he makes the decision of what to share."

(Additional reporting by Patricia Wilson and David Morgan)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/bush_plot_dc

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 02:00 PM

Could such legislation affect the way internet services are provided in other countries? If so, we "foreigners" need to alert our own Governments. If not, then aren't the US businesses proposing the legislation likely to be cutting their own throats, as foreign competitors find ways to take their business?

How can we tell which is the case?

MG

I really have no idea. I know that this is all pretty new, and the WWW took off, as did computers, like no one ever dreamed, or that's how it looks to me. Information is now so readily available to us that it's just boggling my mind. Such a great thing for all of us, that is if we don't get into so much that is detrimental.

I don't know how controls will be worked or abused, but they are bound to happen. Even now, China's trying to stop such free flowing information, and ideas from ever reaching peoples minds. They can't stand the thought that something they didn't plant could be entering into China's everyday diet, and they want it stopped. Much like France not wanting McDonalds having any influence on how food is prepared and eaten there, ha. (Good for them by the way!). China isn't the only country which can't bear the thought of free flowing information and freedom from constraints.

I wish I knew more about it, but I don't. I just hope it never has the chance to happen. I hope that those of us who are into all of this will raise one heck of a hullabalou.

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 07:07 PM

~~~~~~~IS ANYONE OUT THERE SURPRISED?
SRH
*****
LIBBY: WHITE HOUSE 'SUPERIOR's OK'd LEAKS -YAHOO! NEWSBy TONI LOCY,
Associated Press Writer
30 minutes agoWASHINGTON - A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in documents filed last month that he plans to introduce evidence that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, disclosed to reporters the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate in the summer of 2003.

The NIE is a report prepared by the head of the nation's intelligence operations for high-level government officials, up to and including the president. Portions of NIEs are sometimes declassified and made public. It is unclear whether that happened in this instance.

In a Jan. 23 letter to Libby's lawyers, Fitzgerald said Libby also testified before the grand jury that he caused at least one other government official to discuss an intelligence estimate with reporters in July 2003.

"We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors," Fitzgerald wrote.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan refused to comment. "Our policy is that we are not going to discuss this when it's an ongoing legal proceeding," he said.

William Jeffress, Libby's lawyer, said, "There is no truth at all" to suggestions that Libby would try to shift blame to his superiors as a defense against the charges.

Libby, 55, was indicted late last year on charges that he lied to FBI agents and the grand jury about how he learned CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity and when he subsequently told reporters. He is not charged with leaking classified information from an intelligence estimate report.

Plame's identity was published in July 2003 by columnist Robert Novak after her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accused the administration of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium in Niger. The year before, the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger to determine the accuracy of the uranium reports.

Wilson's revelations cast doubt on President Bush's claim in his 2003 State of the Union address that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq to develop a nuclear weapon as one of the administration's key justifications for going to war in Iraq.

On Thursday, Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said Cheney should take responsibility if he authorized Libby to share classified information with reporters.

"These charges, if true, represent a new low in the already sordid case of partisan interests being placed above national security," Kennedy said. "The vice president's vindictiveness in defending the misguided war in Iraq is obvious. If he used classified information to defend it, he should be prepared to take full responsibility."

In the summer of 2003, White House officials — including Libby — were frustrated that the media were incorrectly reporting that Cheney had sent Wilson to Niger and had received a report of his findings in Africa before the war in Iraq had begun.

In an effort to counter those reports, Libby and other White House officials sought information from the CIA regarding Wilson and how his trip to Niger came about, according to court records.

Fitzgerald, in his letter to Libby's lawyers, said he plans to use Libby's grand jury testimony to support evidence pertaining to the White House aide's meeting with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

During the meeting with Miller on July 8, Libby also discussed Plame, Fitzgerald said. "Our anticipated basis for offering such evidence is that such facts are inextricably intertwined with the narrative of the events of spring 2003, as Libby's testimony itself makes plain," the prosecutor wrote.

Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to discuss her source.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cia_leak;_ylt=Aq9emJ2p2hKj.nOtmEBhqP6s0NUE;_ylu=X3 oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

FINALLY! I thought Scooter Libby seemed too bright to be falling on swords, regardless of who handed them to him. Too bad he was so caught up in the moment, however, Scooter Libby, a seemingly good man and a seemingly decent man has sullied his own legacy. Then there's the Judith Miller thing. His letters to her are so intimate sounding, really quite nice sounding, beautiful ones, so much so that his relationship with her smacks of something we might associate with President Clinton. Another man, who in all other aspects, is so likeable. SRH

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 07:45 PM

Bucking Bush on Spying

By David S. Broder
Thursday, February 9, 2006; Page A23
No member of the Senate is more conservative than Sam Brownback of Kansas -- a loyal Republican, an ardent opponent of abortion and, not coincidentally, a presidential hopeful for 2008.
As a member of the Judiciary Committee, he has supported President Bush on every one of his court appointments. He is not one to find fault with the administration.

And that is why the misgivings he expressed Monday about the surveillance policies Bush has employed in the war on terrorism are so striking. Along with three other Republicans and all eight of the committee Democrats, Brownback emerged as part of a potential majority that could insist that Bush come back to Congress for authority to continue the wiretaps -- but under court supervision.

In questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Brownback said, "It strikes me that we're going to be in this war on terrorism possibly for decades . . . [and] to have another set of eyes also looking at this surveillance technique is an important thing in maintaining the public's support for this."

What Brownback put in gentle terms is exactly the issue that clearly troubled all but six of the 18 senators in the hearing -- the absence of any external checks on the secret wiretapping the president ordered after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Gonzales, in his testimony, made an effective rhetorical point by citing examples going back to Washington, Lincoln, Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt of presidents ordering interception of wartime communications -- on their own authority. But as several senators pointed out, those actions all came before the Supreme Court applied the Fourth Amendment ban on "unreasonable searches" to telephone calls and before Congress in 1978 responded to the scandals of secret FBI wiretapping by enacting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), declaring such intercepts illegal except as approved by a specially constituted court.

Gonzales argued that the FISA process is too slow and cumbersome to cope with al Qaeda, but he was noncommittal or chilly to the many suggestions that the administration ask Congress for changes that would facilitate its use. When Brownback pointed out that after Sept. 11, Congress had extended the "grace period" for the government coming back to the FISA court for retroactive authorization of a wiretap from 24 hours to 72 hours and asked Gonzales whether he would like an even longer time, he replied, "It's hard to say" whether that would help.

The obduracy of the administration in continuing to refuse such open invitations to seek a clear statutory authority for this electronic monitoring is almost impossible to understand -- unless Bush and Vice President Cheney are simply trying to establish the precedent that they can wage this war on terrorism without any recourse to Congress.

Every Democrat on the committee signaled in the hearing a readiness to make needed adjustments in the FISA statute, as Congress has done five times since 2001 to provide more flexibility. The Democrats clearly had heeded Karl Rove's recent speech to the Republican National Committee, signaling an intention to tag them -- once again -- in the 2006 campaign as being soft on terrorism.

They went out of their way to avoid that charge, with Ted Kennedy even applying some reverse English to the argument, by suggesting that al Qaeda suspects might beat the rap in court by their lawyers' successfully challenging evidence obtained through surveillance conducted under questionable legal authority.

And the authority Bush is using is, in the judgment of Republicans as well as Democrats, highly questionable. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a military lawyer before he came to Congress, said that when he voted to authorize the use of force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, "I never envisioned that I was giving to this president or any other president the ability to go around FISA carte blanche."

As for the administration's contention that Bush has "inherent power" as chief executive to order warrantless wiretaps, Graham said, "Its application, to me, seems to have no boundaries when it comes to executive decisions in a time of war. It deals the Congress out. It deals the courts out."

CONTINUED 1 2 Next >

Page 2 of 2 < Back

Bucking Bush on Spying
With two other Republicans, Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Mike DeWine of Ohio, and all the Democrats agreeing with Graham's view, the president has been given a clear signal to get off his high horse and come to Congress for statutory authority and court supervision of the surveillance program.

Yesterday, the White House offered further briefings but not legislation. If Bush won't do so, Congress needs to assert its responsibility by moving that legislation on its own.~~~~~~~~~The Politics of Science
» Editorial | Every administration tries to spin the news to make the president look good. This one is trying to spin scientific data and muzzle scientists to that end.
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Last week, in quoting my old friend Scott Lilly on congressional reform, I typed his name as Scott Libby. My apologies. I had Scooter on my brain.

davidbroder@washpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020801989_2.html

Go on-site to see everything, sometimes the comments and related articles are interesting as well.

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 08:05 PM

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"The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so." : Josh Billings - [Henry Wheeler Shaw] (1818-1885) American humorist and lecturer
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"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -* kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour *- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.": General Douglas MacArthur - (1880-1964) WWII Supreme Allied Commander of the Southwest Pacific, Supreme United Nations Commander 1957
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"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it: Milton Mayer - Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955
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"A radical is one who speaks the truth." : Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. - Congressman, father of famous aviator - June 15, 1957
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Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 08:12 PM

Life in the USA
By James Rothenberg

02/09/06 "ICH" -- -- The political system has not been corrupted. It is working effectively, like always. The backbone is the patronage system. Politicians have wonderful memories. They know who they owe. Prostitution is a profession, allegorically the oldest one. Politics is a business. At one time it was popular to think that if someone rich enough were to get elected, he (at that time it would surely be a he) would be immune, but who can owe as much as the rich?
We could try term limits, a single term. In and out. Make room for the next bright face. What do politicians do during the summer? They give college commencement speeches til hoarse, all the same speech… “You are our country’s future leaders”. Meanwhile 50 years pass, the college kid is gray and that politician still has his ass on his seat. A single term would not fundamentally change the patronage system, but it would devalue it. You’re not worth as much.

Also sensible would be a switch to runoff elections, or at least instant runoff elections. But as the snide commandant in Stalag 17 told the feisty boys in Barracks 4, “Curtains vud do vunders for this barracks. You veel not get them!” Democrats and Republicans staunchly unite in opposition to such extreme measures. Why take poison unless you are trying to commit suicide?

There were no intelligence failures concerning Iraq. The invasion was not a mistake. Neither was the torture. Instead, bright, rational people acted in the best tradition of U.S. foreign policy since the birth of our great nation, the redskins being the first foreigners. Try telling Americans that their country uses violent force without moral compunction in wresting from weaker countries just what it wants from them and the air will suddenly get chillier around you. However, there is a record. Like Casey Stengel used to say, “You could look it up.”

It would take more than a cell block of arrests from the president on down to make America the Beautiful’s dress pretty enough to party again, but who will arrest the arrestors? For the future we could require political office holders to speak their own words, that is, write their own speeches. That shouldn’t be too much to ask of a leader.

Americans are well trained in how to think. It occurs so naturally from birth that we are unaware of the training. The basic idea is that your country knows better than you do. The most thoroughly educated Americans treat it as undying dogma that our country is always and everywhere a force for good in the world. Those who have been deprived of formal education rely more on their nose, an organ of exceptional trustworthiness.

The primary writer of the Constitution, James Madison, stressed that the government must be set up in such a way so as “to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority”, such protection of the rich becoming axiomatic. Good Americans seem very comfortable with the great wealth and income divide in their country. Another founding father, first Chief Justice John Jay, felt that those who owned the country should run it. Good Americans are comfortable with that also.

In election year 2000, Al Gore claimed that the greatest beneficiaries of Bush’s proposed tax cuts would be the richest 1% of Americans, but sufficient voters, ever mindful of longstanding tradition, protected that minority.

We are not a nation of laws, despite the priestly incantations. There are plenty of people who are above and beyond the law. We say we are a nation of laws but for that statement to have the intended, hallowed effect it has to mean more than hauling some vagrant off the street. It has to mean that the punishments meted out to the weak and poor will in identical measure be meted out to the rich and powerful. We could try, Stengel-like, to look it up, but for that the record is meager.

Declaring war is a popular tactic. Thanks to modern technology we have a handy measure of its permeability throughout our culture. Googling the term “war on hunger” yields some 21,900 references. The “war on poverty” yields 646,000 references, and the “war on drugs” yields 4,310,000. Then there is the “war on terror” with 25,100,000.

We are supposed to accept the sincerity of these wars with all the seriousness that the naming is intended to imply. Looking to actual practice the war on hunger more closely resembles a war on the hungry, the war on poverty a war on poor people, and the war on drugs a war on the people who use them. Now comes the punch line, only it isn’t funny. The war on terror more closely resembles a war to terrorize (intimidate) we the people.

First, if we wanted to reduce terror, we could stop harboring terrorists, stop supporting them, stop paying them, and stop doing it ourselves. There are a couple of reasons why Americans are slow in coming to this conclusion. One is that we only acknowledge the terrorism of others, never our own. Ours is always precautionary action or legitimate self-defense. The second reason is ironclad; the State Department confines its definition of terrorism to that which is carried out by “subnational groups or clandestine agents”, so acts carried out by the United States of America are conveniently exempt.

Countries, even countries with armies so mighty they encircle the globe, cannot commit terrorism, by official decree. They do it unofficially. But they can do a lot more. They can plan and initiate a war of aggression, the “supreme international crime” as adjudged at Nuremberg, “differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”. One of those other war crimes is Art. 6 (c) Crimes against Humanity, meaning civilians, meaning terrorism.

Americans learn early on about the unmatched freedoms we enjoy. What is all the fanfare about if these freedoms are only granted on a tentative basis? What does it mean to be free from surveillance when the government finds no pressing reason to surveil, but subject to surveillance when the government claims the need? Or to have the right to dissent when it does not greatly worry the government, only to have dissent stifled when it poses serious problems? These freedoms that our leaders boast about to succeeding generations are surely more than fair-weather freedoms. That would be bad enough but it goes one step deeper. Freedom is expressly for the bad weather, or it never really was.

The “war on terror” is our national slogan. It went into the shop for a nomenclature change last year, but emerged intact. For awhile we didn’t want to seem too warlike. Better to stress promotion of freedom and democracy, freshen up the old image. But the war on terror says it all, and it is oh so useful. The other day the man with the worst job in America, Scott McClellan, landed a blow for freedom with his retort to a questioner, “Are we a nation at war?” Of course there is an answer besides the dutiful yes but to voice it may affect your ability to continue roaming without a straitjacket.

The President must have the war because the war makes it possible to do all the things he could never do if there wasn’t a war. Ask his cover, Attorney General Gonzales, who informs the Judiciary Committee that there is no such thing as a bad inherent power. One of the senators asked Gonzales a very improper question. “How will we know when the war is over?” Gonzales could only smile at the suggestion that between these two learned men there could be any general disagreement about the usefulness of war to a country intent on dominating the world with military force.

War is not inevitable but there is something innate in our species that prepares us to march to the beat of the drum. Our primitive herd instinct makes us vulnerable to exploitation. When everybody is taught precisely the same thing, it no longer matters what is taught. The result is always orthodoxy. The military teaches a valuable strategy. After being captured, the best time to escape is as soon as you can. Of course you have to realize you are a captive.

A million men frozen at attention waiting for the signal of another to act as one. Is this not true ugliness? Ugliness is not deformity but its opposite; it is any multitude of people in constant agreement.

War as a tool of control relies on the glorification of battle and death. Humans are the only of earth’s creatures that cherish life. This is because they know it will end. This is why they invented god. But what is the historical record of the god concept? Is it used more effectively to save or take life? We could look it up. ]James Rothenberg, dissident writer/activist - jrothenberg@taconic.net

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11846.htm [/INDENT][/SIZE]

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 08:29 PM

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Tomgram: Michael Klare, Just How Addicted to Oil Are We?
On a recent sunny San Francisco Bay Area Saturday, having walked the beach at Limantour Spit and seen nature red in tooth and claw -- actually, an Osprey flying overhead, a large fish in its talons -- I paid the price for visiting the wilds. It turned out to be $2.53 a gallon for unleaded regular on my trip back to reality -- and that was by no means the worst price I saw that day.
For anyone who slips into the driver's seat of a car -- and except for those who live in cities like New York with full-scale public transport systems, that's most of America most of the time -- life is already a permanent energy crisis. No wonder the President stumbled across reality this year and declared before the nation that we were all oil addicts in a hooked homeland and it was time to rid ourselves of our "dependence" on Middle Eastern oil (a region where, as it turns out, oil use is surging). You know -- that horribly "unstable" part of the world the President personally destabilized with his invasion of choice.

The Saudis were mildly insulted by the presidential speech (especially since they sell us their oil at relatively cut-rate prices while energy-hungry Asian powers pay top Euro for it); the big oil execs, knowing the truth of the situation, were unflustered ("No combination of conservation measures, alternative energy sources and technological advances could realistically and economically provide a way to completely replace those imports in the short or medium term," said Exxon Mobil senior vice president Stuart McGill); and the President, it turned out, had his facts upside down. It's true that we now import 60% of our oil from elsewhere, but because it's cheaper to transport energy from relatively close at hand, our one-two punch in imported oil turns out to be neighbors Canada and Mexico. (The Saudis only place, and right behind the top three comes not, say, Kuwait, but... gulp... Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.) To add insult to injury, just this week, the government's Energy Information Administration announced that "U.S. and world oil demand growth in the second quarter [of 2006] is expected to be stronger than previously forecast."

From the beginning, the Bush administration has been an all-oil-all-the-time regime. Chevron even dubbed one of its double-hulled tankers the Condoleezza Rice because she was on the company board. (The name was changed when she became Bush's national security adviser.) Our President and Vice President were, of course, in the business and the government has since been Halliburtonized; Zalmay Khalilzad, our ambassador first to Afghanistan and now to Iraq, was once an advisor to Unocal, the energy company that tried to negotiate the running of a natural-gas pipeline through the Taliban's Afghanistan... and so on.

Though various neocons and top administration officials dreamed of a Pax Americana in the Middle East, they certainly never meant to take those heartland energy reserves for the United States. Settling permanently into bases in Iraq was to be the royal way to global dominance over other energy-desperate powers. (Imagine the frustration, then, that Iraq can now hardly get its oil out of the ground!)

Still, the President had a point. We do have a problem. Of course, problem number one was how little lay behind Bush's words. As Valerie Marcel, energy expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London commented, "Bush was playing to a very, very domestic agenda. It's just rhetoric."

What's the point, after all, in announcing that we're a nation of addicts, if you're not only not planning to put money into treatment centers, but cutting funds for them? As Michael Klare so vividly points out below, we are entering what is, in essence, a permanent global state of energy crisis without significant thought or planning.

The Bush administration largely rejects the very idea of climate change -- only the Pentagon and NASA seem to take it seriously -- and the main form of alternative energy that really interests them right now, nuclear energy, is essentially another form of addiction. Elsewhere in the world, there are people putting some thought into the onrushing crisis we face, but not us. The Chinese, worried about their energy future, have not only been stomping the planet from Sudan and Iran to Venezuela looking to nail down their long-term fossil-fuel fixes, but have been putting some time, energy, and thought into renewables. Sweden has, remarkably enough, just launched a fifteen-year plan to make itself the first advanced industrial country to go permanently off oil. (Already, 26% of the energy consumed there comes from renewables.) But not us.

This is, of course, painfully shortsighted. After all, there's the Swedish government working closely with Saab and Volvo to produce cars and trucks that will work off biofuels -- and where is our government? (Note to GM: How long will you really sell those monsters of yours in a $4 or $5 a gallon world?) So, with Michael Klare, author of the (sadly) ever more indispensable book, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum, at your side, consider our predicament in the new world of eternally tight energy. Tom

The Permanent Energy Crisis
By Michael T. Klare
President Bush's State of the Union comment that the United States is "addicted to oil" can be read as pure political opportunism. With ever more Americans expressing anxiety about high oil prices, freakish weather patterns, and abiding American ties to unsavory foreign oil potentates, it is hardly surprising that Bush sought to portray himself as an advocate of the development of alternative energy systems. But there is another, more ominous way to read his comments: that top officials have come to realize that the United States and the rest of the world face a new and growing danger – a permanent energy crisis that imperils the health and well-being of every society on earth.

To be sure, the United States has experienced severe energy crises before: the 1973-74 "oil shock" with its mile-long gas lines; the 1979-80 crisis following the fall of the Shah of Iran; the 2000-01 electricity blackouts in California, among others. But the crisis taking shape in 2006 has a new look to it. First of all, it is likely to last for decades, not just months or a handful of years; second, it will engulf the entire planet, not just a few countries; and finally, it will do more than just cripple the global economy -- its political, military, and environmental effects will be equally severe.

If you had to date it, you could say that our permanent energy crisis began, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day, 2006, when Russia's state-owned natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, cut off gas deliveries to Ukraine in punishment for that country's pro-Western leanings. Although Gazprom has since resumed some deliveries, it is now evident that Moscow is fully prepared to employ its abundant energy reserves as a political weapon at a time of looming natural gas shortages worldwide. It won't be the last country to do so in the years to come. In just the few weeks since then, the world has experienced a series of similar energy-related disturbances:

* The sabotage of natural gas pipelines to the former Soviet republic of Georgia, producing widespread public discomfort at a time of unusually frigid temperatures;

* An eruption of oil-related ethnic violence in Nigeria, resulting in a sharp reduction in that country's petroleum output;

* Threats by Iran to cut off exports of oil and gas in retaliation for any sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council over its suspect nuclear enrichment activities;

* And as result of such developments, a series of mini-spikes in crude oil prices as well as reports in the business press that, if this pattern of instability continues, such prices could easily rise beyond $80 per barrel to hit the once unimaginable $100 per barrel range.

Vectors of Crisis

Events like these will certainly spread economic pain and hardship globally, especially to those who cannot afford higher transportation and heating-fuel costs. As it happens, though, these are not isolated, unrelated events. Think of them as expressions of a deeper crisis. Like the tremors before a major earthquake, they suggest the dangerous accumulation of powerful energy forces that will roil the planet for years to come.

Although we cannot hope to foresee all the ways such forces will affect the global human community, the primary vectors of the permanent energy crisis can be identified and charted. Three such vectors, in particular, demand attention: a slowing in the growth of energy supplies at a time of accelerating worldwide demand; rising political instability provoked by geopolitical competition for those supplies; and mounting environmental woes produced by our continuing addiction to oil, natural gas, and coal. Each of these would be cause enough for worry, but it is their intersection that we need to fear above all.

Energy experts have long warned that global oil and gas supplies are not likely to be sufficiently expandable to meet anticipated demand. As far back as the mid-1990s, peak-oil theorists like Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton University and Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) insisted that the world was heading for a peak-oil moment and would soon face declining petroleum output. At first, most mainstream experts dismissed these claims as simplistic and erroneous, while government officials and representatives of the big oil companies derided them. Recently, however, a sea-change in elite opinion has been evident. First Matthew Simmons, the chairman of Simmons and Company International of Houston, America's leading energy-industry investment bank, and then David O'Reilly, CEO of Chevron, the country's second largest oil firm, broke ranks with their fellow oil magnates and embraced the peak-oil thesis. O'Reilly has been particularly outspoken, taking full-page ads in the New York Times and other papers to declare, "One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over."

The exact moment of peak oil's arrival is not as important as the fact that world oil output will almost certainly fall short of global demand, given the fossil-fuel voraciousness of the older industrialized nations, especially the United States, and soaring demand from China, India, and other rapidly growing countries. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) projects global oil demand to grow by 35% between 2004 and 2025 -- from 82 million to 111 million barrels per day. The DoE predicts that daily oil output will rise by a conveniently similar amount -- from 83 million to 111 million barrels. Voilá! -- the problem of oil sufficiency disappears. But even a cursory glance at the calculations made by the DoE's experts is enough to raise suspicions: Behind such estimates lies the assumption that key oil producers like Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia can double or triple their oil production -- unlikely in the extreme, according to most sober analysts. On top of this, the DoE has been lowering its own oil-production estimates: In 2003, it predicted that global oil output would reach 123 million barrels per day by 2025; by the end of 2005, that number had already dropped by12 million barrels, reflecting a growing pessimism even among the globe's great oil optimists.

This is not to say that oil will disappear in the years ahead: There will still be adequate supplies for well-heeled consumers who can afford higher fuel bills. But much of the world's easy-to-acquire petroleum has already been extracted and significant portions of what remains can only be found in places that present significant drilling challenges like the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico or the iceberg-infested waters of the North Atlantic -- or in perennially conflict-ridden and sabotage-vulnerable areas of Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

No Escape from Scarcity

To make the energy picture grimmer, "spare" or "surge" capacity seems to be disappearing in the major oil-producing regions. At one time, key producers like Saudi Arabia retained an excess production capacity, allowing them to rapidly boost their output in times of potential energy crisis like the 1990-91 Gulf War. But Saudi Arabia, like the other big suppliers, is now producing at full tilt and so possesses zero capacity to increase output. In other words, any politically inspired (or sabotage related) cutoff in oil exports from countries like Russia or Iran will produce instant energy shock on a global scale and send oil prices soaring to, or through, that $100 a barrel barrier.

A chronic shortage of oil would be hard enough for the world community to cope with even if other sources of energy were in great supply. But this is not the case. Natural gas -- the world's second leading source of energy -- is also at risk of future shortages. While there are still major deposits of gas in Russia and Iran (potentially the world's number one and two suppliers) waiting to be tapped, obstacles to their exploitation loom large. The United States is doing everything it can to prevent Iran from exporting its gas (for example, by strong-arming India into abandoning a proposed gas pipeline from Iran), while Moscow has actively discouraged Europe from increasing its reliance on Russian gas through its recent cutoff of supplies to Ukraine and other worrisome actions.

In North America, the supply of natural gas is rapidly disappearing. In a reflection of our desperate (and demented) condition, Canada is now starting to divert some of its remaining natural gas to the manufacture of synthetic oil from tar sands, so as to ease the pressure on supplies of conventional petroleum. Given the prohibitive cost of building gas pipelines from Asia and Africa, the only practical way to get more gas supplies to North America would be to spend several hundred billion dollars (or more) on facilities for converting foreign sources of gas into liquified natural gas (LNG), shipping the LNG in giant doubled-hulled vessels across the Atlantic and Pacific, and then converting it back into a gas in "regasification" plants in American harbors. Although favored by the Bush administration, plans to construct such plants have provoked opposition in many coastal communities because of the risk of accidental explosion as well as the potential for inviting terrorist attacks.

As for renewables -- wind, solar, and biomass -- these are still at a relatively early stage of development. With a trillion dollars or so of added investment they could indeed ease some of the strain on fossil fuels in decades to come; however, at present rates of investment, this is not likely to occur. The same can be said of "safe" nuclear power and "clean" coal -- even if the severe problems associated with both of these energy options could be overcome, it would take several decades and a few trillion dollars before they could possibly replace existing energy systems. The only source of energy that can compensate for a shortage of oil and gas at this time is conventional (unclean) coal, and a rise in its consumption would increase the risk of catastrophic climate change.

The New "Great Game"

With looming energy shortages, the risk of conflict over energy access (and the wealth fossil fuels generate) is certain to grow. Throughout history, competition over the control of key supplies of vital raw materials has been a source of friction between major powers and there is every reason to assume that this will continue to be the case. "Just at it did when the Great Game was played out in the decades leading up to the First World War, ongoing industrialization is setting off a scramble for natural resources," John Gray of the London School of Economics observed in a recent article in the New York Review of Books. "The coming century could be marked by recurrent resource wars, as the great powers struggle for control of the world's hydrocarbons."

As in the Great Game, such conflicts most likely would not arise from head-on clashes between the great powers, but rather through the escalation of local conflicts sustained by great power involvement, as was the case in the Balkans prior to World War I. In their competitive pursuit of assured energy supplies, today's great powers -- led by the United States and China -- are developing or cementing close ties with favored suppliers in the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. In many cases, this entails the delivery of large quantities of advanced weaponry, advisors, and military technology -- as the United States has long been doing with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, and China is now doing with Iran and Sudan.

Nor should the possibility of a direct clash over oil and gas between great powers be ruled out. In the East China Sea, for example, China and Japan have both laid claim to an undersea natural gas field that lies in an offshore area also claimed by both of them. In recent months, Chinese and Japanese combat ships and planes deployed in the area have made threatening moves toward one another; so far no shots have been fired, but neither Beijing nor Tokyo have displayed any willingness to compromise on the matter and the risk of escalation is growing with each new encounter.

The likelihood of internal conflict in oil-producing countries is also destined to grow in tandem with the steady rise of energy prices. The higher the price of petroleum, the greater the potential to reap mammoth profits from control of a nation's oil exports -- and so the greater the incentive to seize power in such states or, for those already in power, to prevent the loss of control to a rival clique by any means necessary. Hence the rise of authoritarian petro-regimes in many of the oil-producing countries and the persistence of ethnic conflict between various groups seeking control over state-oil revenues -- a phenomenon notable today in Iraq (where Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds are battling over the allocation of future oil revenues) and in Nigeria (where competing tribes in the oil-rich Delta region are fighting over measly "development grants" handed out by the major foreign oil firms).

"Up to this point," Senator Richard G. Lugar told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 16, "the main issues surrounding oil have been how much we have to pay for it and whether we will experience supply disruptions. But in the decades to come, the issue may be whether the world's supply of oil is abundant and accessible enough to support continued economic growth…. When we reach the point where the world's oil-hungry economies are competing for insufficient supplies of energy, oil will become an even stronger magnet for conflict than it already is."

Averting Environmental Catastrophe

In addition to this danger, we face the entire range of environmental perils associated with our continuing reliance on fossil fuels. Consider this: The DoE predicted in July 2005 that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide (the principal source of the "greenhouse gases" responsible for global warming) will rise by nearly 60% between 2002 and 2025 -- with virtually all of this increase, about 15 billion metric tons of CO2, coming from the consumption of oil, gas, and coal. If this projection proves accurate, the world will probably pass the threshold at which it will be possible to avert significant global heating, a substantial rise in sea-levels, and all the resulting environmental damage.

The surest way to slow the increase in global carbon emissions is to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and accelerate the transition to alternative forms of energy. But because such alternatives are not currently capable of replacing oil, gas, and coal on a significant scale (and won't be, at present rates of investment, for another few decades), the temptation to increase reliance on fossil fuels is likely to remain strong. We are, in fact, caught in a conundrum: the world needs more energy to satisfy rising global demand, and the only way to accomplish this at present is to squeeze out more oil, gas, and coal from the Earth, thereby hastening the onset of catastrophic climate change. In turn, the only way to avert such change is to consume less oil, gas, and coal, which would involve severe economic costs of a sort that most national leaders would be reluctant to consider. Hence, we will be trapped in a permanent crisis brought on by our collective addiction to cheap energy.

The sole way out of this trap is to bite the bullet and adopt heroic measures to curb our fossil-fuel consumption while embarking upon a massive program to develop alternative energy systems – an effort comparable to, and in some sense a reversal of, the coal-and-oil-fueled industrial revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the United States, this would, at an utter minimum, entail the imposition of a hefty tax on gasoline consumption, with the resulting proceeds used to fund the rapid development of renewable energy systems. All funds now slated for highway construction should instead be devoted to public transit and high-speed inter-city rail lines and all new cars sold in America after 2010 should have minimum average fuel efficiencies of 50 MPG or higher. This will prove costly and disruptive -- but what other choice is there if we want to have some hope of exiting the permanent global energy crisis before the global economy collapses or the planet becomes uninhabitable by humans.

Michael T. Klare is the Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books) as well as Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict.

Copyright 2006 Michael T. Klare

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=58126

Saundra Hummer

February 9th, 2006, 10:44 PM

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PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT
ALERT
MANAGER CENSORS ANALYST AT CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
For Immediate Release
Contact: Beth Daley, beth@pogo.org, 202-347-1122

In a growing culture of caution and fear of dissent, a Congressional research agency has warned a senior analyst to avoid describing his research findings. The analyst specializes in separation of powers issues for the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and has frequently authored reports which encourage the Congress to assert its Constitutional oversight authority over the Executive Branch.

The analyst was criticized over a report and comments he made concerning the plight of national security whistleblowers. "It is undeniable that unprecedented numbers of government whistleblowers face retaliation with no adequate protections. We are stunned that the Congress is offended to hear the truth about its failure to help whistleblowers and are even punishing their own seasoned researchers for talking about it," said Danielle Brian, Executive Director, Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

Today's Washington Times attacks the author of another controversial report which found that the National Security Agency's domestic spying program was illegal. The article criticizes the CRS staff member for making political donations to Democrats. In recent months, POGO has heard that phone calls and letters from Republican Members of Congress to the CRS have created a chilling effect on the agency.

A January 18, 2006 memo from Louis Fisher, a Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers, describes a culture of fear and retaliation for CRS staff. Fisher states that "Congressional research arms cannot function if they fear criticism. Disagreement--strong disagreement--is a natural condition on Capitol Hill." Fisher has been with the CRS for three decades. According the memo, Fisher's supervisor wrote: "Care must be taken to avoid compromising the Service's mission by providing the impression that we as an agency, or the analyst as an individual, have taken a position on an issue before the Congress, or that we are not impartial and objective when researching those issues. Unfortunately, the comments attributed to you in this article clearly leave the impression with the reader that CRS has taken a position on this issue." The supervisor took issue with Fisher's comments in a Government Executive article.

In the memo, Fisher responds to the criticism: "What position? What issue? What are we talking about? In the article I was quoted as saying that agency managers can abuse their powers when punishing whistleblowers and are seldom held to account. That is the record. No one who follows this area would question that." Whistleblower and open government advocates across the political spectrum have expressed concern about this problem, particularly since the creation of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (http://www.nswbc.org). Recently, conservative organizations including Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union wrote to House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis expressing concern that whistleblower legislation did not go far enough in protecting national security employees (click here).

Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is an independent nonprofit that investigates and exposes corruption in order to achieve a more accountable federal government.

GO ON-SITE TO SEE THE SEVERAL LINKS TO SITES RELATIVE TO THIS POSTING

http://www.pogo.org/p/government/ga-060102-crs.html

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 01:24 PM

***
Hastert, Frist Said to Rig Bill for Drug Firms
By Bill Theobald
The Gannett News Service

Thursday 09 February 2006

Frist denies protection was added in secret.

Washington - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits, say witnesses to the pre-Christmas power play.
The language was tucked into a Defense Department appropriations bill at the last minute without the approval of members of a House-Senate conference committee, say several witnesses, including a top Republican staff member.

In an interview, Frist, a doctor and Tennessee Republican, denied that the wording was added that way.

Trial lawyers and other groups condemn the law, saying it could make it nearly impossible for people harmed by a vaccine to force the drug maker to pay for their injuries.

Many in health care counter that the protection is needed to help build up the vaccine industry in the United States, especially in light of a possible avian flu pandemic.

The legislation, called the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, allows the secretary of Health and Human Services to declare a public health emergency, which then provides immunity for companies that develop vaccines and other "countermeasures."

Beyond the issue of vaccine liability protection, some say going around the longstanding practice of bipartisan House-Senate conference committees' working out compromises on legislation is a dangerous power grab by Republican congressional leaders that subverts democracy.

"It is a travesty of the legislative process," said Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

"It vests enormous power in the hands of congressional leaders and private interests, minimizes transparency and denies legitimate opportunities for all interested parties, in Congress and outside, to weigh in on important policy questions."

At issue is what happened Dec. 18 as Congress scrambled to finish its business and head home for the Christmas holiday.

That day, a conference committee made up of 38 senators and House members met several times to work out differences on the 2006 Defense Department appropriations bill.

Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the ranking minority House member on the conference committee, said he asked Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, the conference chairman, whether the vaccine liability language was in the massive bill or would be placed in it.

Obey and four others at the meeting said Stevens told him no. Committee members signed off on the bill and the conference broke up.

A spokeswoman for Stevens, Courtney Boone, said last week that the vaccine liability language was in the bill when conferees approved it. Stevens was not made available for comment.

During a January interview, Frist agreed. Asked about the claim that the vaccine language was inserted after the conference members signed off on the bill, he replied: "To my knowledge, that is incorrect. It was my understanding, you'd have to sort of confirm, that the vaccine liability which had been signed off by leaders of the conference, signed off by the leadership in the United States Senate, signed off by the leadership of the House, it was my understanding throughout that that was part of that conference report."

But Keith Kennedy, who works for Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., as staff director for the Senate Appropriations Committee, said at a seminar for reporters last month that the language was inserted by Frist and Hastert, R-Ill., after the conference committee ended its work.

"There should be no dispute. That was an absolute travesty," Kennedy said at a videotaped Washington, D.C., forum sponsored by the Center on Congress at Indiana University.

"It was added after the conference had concluded. It was added at the specific direction of the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate. The conferees did not vote on it. It's a true travesty of the process."

After the conference committee broke up, a meeting was called in Hastert's office, Kennedy said. Also at the meeting, according to a congressional staffer, were Frist, Stevens and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

"They (committee staff members) were given the language and then it was put in the document," Kennedy said.

About 10 or 10:30 p.m., Democratic staff members were handed the language and told it was now in the bill, Obey said.

He took to the House floor in a rage. He called Frist and Hastert "a couple of musclemen in Congress who think they have a right to tell everybody else that they have to do their bidding."

Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., also was critical of inserting the vaccine language after the conference committee had adjourned.

"It sucks," he told Congress Daily that night.

Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., another member of the conference committee, was upset, too, a staff member said, because he didn't have enough time to read the language. The final bill was filed in the House at 11:54 p.m. and passed 308-102 at 5:02 the next morning.

The Senate unanimously approved the legislation Dec. 21, but not before Senate Democrats, including several members of the conference committee, bashed the way the vaccine language was inserted.

"What an insult to the legislative process," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., a member of the conference committee. Byrd is considered the authority on legislative rules and tradition.

President Bush signed the legislation into law Dec. 30.

When asked about Frist's earlier denial, spokeswoman Amy Call said: "Bill Frist has fought hard to protect the people of Tennessee and the people of the United States from a bioterror emergency and that's what he did throughout this process."

Hastert's office did not provide a response.

Not against the Rules

The practice of adding to a compromise bill worked out by bipartisan House-Senate conference committees, while highly unusual, is not thought to violate congressional rules.

Some Senate and House Democrats have proposed banning the practice as part of broader attempts at ethics reform in Congress.

They, consumer groups and others with concerns about possible harm caused by vaccines charge that the move was a gift by Frist to the pharmaceutical industry, which they point out has given a lot of campaign cash to the Nashville doctor through the years.

"The senator should be working to ensure there are safe vaccines to protect American families rather than protecting the drug industry's pocketbooks," Pamela Gilbert, president of Protect American Families, said in a statement. The group is an alliance of consumer, labor and advocacy organizations.

Frist has received $271,523 in campaign donations from the pharmaceutical and health products industry since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group.

He is also a possible candidate for president in 2008.

In the interview, Frist reiterated how important he thinks the vaccine protections are.

"The United States of America, if a pandemic occurs, is totally unprepared," he said. "And the only way we are going to be prepared is rebuilding our manufacturing base to build a vaccine infrastructure that can be timely and responsive. We don't have it today."

Frist has long advocated liability protection for vaccine makers, and it was widely reported that he would attempt to attach the legislation to the Defense Appropriations bill because it is considered must-pass legislation.

Ken Johnson, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said that, while the group favors liability protection, it did not take a position nor did it lobby on behalf of the law that passed.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020906R.shtml

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 01:48 PM

~~~~~
E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Washington Post Writers Group
Fri, 2.10.06

The winds are changing
Cheney to Congress: Buzz off. Congress to Cheney: Not so fast

WASHINGTON -- This week the Bush administration was finally forced out of its own pre-9/11 worldview -- and yes you read that right. It happened because some brave Republicans stared the president down and said: Stop.
Of course, it is the administration that is always accusing its opponents of pre-9/11 thinking. But for the last five years, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove have been willing to put the national unity required to fight terrorism in second place behind their goals of aggrandizing presidential power and winning elections. Can you get more pre-9/11 than that?
Instead of seeking broad agreement on the measures required for our nation's safety, they preferred to pick fights designed to make the Democrats look soft and to claim the president could do pretty much anything he wanted.

That's why the White House made sure that Rove trumpeted the surveillance issue before the Republican National Committee last month. A president who cared more about national security than politics wouldn't send out his top political lieutenant to make sure everyone knew that the GOP planned to use a matter of such grave importance to bash Democrats.

And it's why Vice President Cheney, when asked this week by Jim Lehrer if Bush were willing to work with Congress on the issue, barely entertained the question. "We believe, Jim, that we have all the legal authority we need," Cheney replied immediately. Congress could make any suggestions it wanted, but -- I add the italics to underscore the point -- the White House would ignore whatever it chose to ignore. "We'd have to make a decision as an administration whether or not we think it would help and would enhance our capabilities."

Translation -- Cheney to Congress: Buzz off.

But this time, some important members of the president's own party -- led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter -- decided that enough is enough. As stewards of Congress' constitutional authority, they could not stand by while the president claimed the power to decide for himself what the law said and whether he needed to follow it without any concern for what those meddlesome members of Congress or judges might say.

And it's wonderful to see what a few brave politicians can achieve. On Thursday, the administration agreed to brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on the program after having offered a similar briefing to the comparable House committee the day before.

It was a small crack in the wall, and Specter and his allies will have to remain vigilant. Still, until this week, the White House had flatly refused to offer such briefings. The winds are changing.

What's heartening is how broad the Republican dissent from the administration has been -- a sign that many Republicans have calculated that they'll be better off in this fall's elections if they do their jobs, even if this means challenging Bush and Cheney.

Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., who faces a tough re-election battle and has shown streaks of independence in the past, demanded the briefings for reasons straight out of a good civics textbook. "The checks and balances in our system of government are very important," she said, noting that our "constitutional structure has kept us safe and free and the strongest country in the world for a very long time." Yes, let's wave a flag for this Air Force veteran.

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, who also is up for re-election, said the "this country would be stronger and the president would be stronger" if Bush accepted the idea that Congress might actually have a role in lawmaking on the surveillance issue.

And Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the administration was making a "very dangerous" argument in claiming that it got the authority to wiretap without supervision when Congress passed its use-of-force resolution against terrorism. Graham said he never envisioned that he was giving Bush -- or "any other president" -- "carte blanche" on surveillance.

Focus for a moment on Graham's reference to "any other president." It's instructive to imagine what Republicans in Congress (let alone Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly) would say if a President Hillary Rodham Clinton were to claim the sweeping authority Bush and Cheney say they have. Is there any doubt that the entire Republican Party would -- to cite a recent comment by Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman -- "have a lot of anger" and denounce Clinton for arrogance, overreaching and power lust?

"The president should have all the tools he needs to fight terrorism," Specter said, "but we also want to maintain our civil liberties." Now there is a perfect expression of patriotic, post-9/11 thinking.

For more, please visit the E.J. Dionne, Jr. archives.

It was a small crack in the wall, and Specter and his allies will have to remain vigilant.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20349

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 02:05 PM

~*~
Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
Fri, 2.10.06

The destruction of the Constitution
Pathetic pipsqueak Al Gonzales snows Judiciary committee on domestic spying

AUSTIN, Texas -- Once upon a time, in the middle of a nasty constitutional crisis in Washington, a most unlikely hero emerged -- a Texas lawyer from one of our state's notoriously discriminated-against racial minorities. Think how lucky we were.

It is one of the most famous sentences in all of American rhetoric: "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total." But what catches the eye today is the sentence that followed that famous declaration, the sentence that makes one so ashamed for Al Gonzales. Barbara Jordan's great, deep voice brought the impeachment hearings against Richard Nixon to an awed silence when she vowed, "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."

Thirty years ago, this state could produce Barbara Jordan -- and now we send that pathetic pipsqueak Al Gonzales. Enough to provoke a wailing cry of "O tempera, O mores!" even from the depths of Lubbock.

As a New York Times editorial succinctly put it, Attorney General Gonzales' Judiciary Committee appearance was a "daylong display of cynical hair-splitting, obfuscation, disinformation and stonewalling."

How fortunate that Republicans running the committee did not insist the chief law enforcement officer of the United States take an oath before testifying. God forbid that he should actually be held to the truth.

I realize it's a cliché for those of us who remember the Beach Boys to mourn the days when giants roamed the Earth and all was on a grander and finer scale. But I knew Barbara Jordan, and I know Al Gonzales, and it is damned depressing -- he's too lightweight to even be a mediocrity.

It seems to me the trumpery excuse for a hearing raised graver issues than those of 30 years ago. Gonzales kept trying to frame the issue as a question of whether or not a domestic spying program without warrants is illegal -- in fact, it is against the law.

Gonzales maintained the law is superseded by some unwritten constitutional power due the president during time of war and further that Congress had authorized warrantless spying when giving the president the authority to invade Afghanistan. Strange, so few who voted for invading Afghanistan recall having warrantless spying in mind.

One problem of legal logic is to "define war." We have not been attacked by another nation -- in fact, we were clearly the aggressors against Iraq. We were attacked by a private group of ideological zealots led by a Saudi millionaire. This war -- against no nation, flag or territory -- can presumably last indefinitely, like our wars against drugs and crime.

Barbara Jordan observed: "(Impeachment) is designed to 'bridle' the executive if he engages in excesses. ... The Framers confined in the Congress the power, if need be, to remove the president in order to strike a delicate balance between a president swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive. ... 'A president is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution.'"

Nixon was accused, among other things, of misuse of the CIA. I highly recommend James Risen's new book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." Risen is the New York Times reporter who broke the story of the National Security Agency spying scandal.

Thomas Powers, an authority on American intelligence, reviewed the Risen book for The New York Review of Books and notes: "If the Constitution forbids a president anything, it forbids war on his say-so, and if it insists on anything, it insists that presidents are not above the law. In plain terms, this means that presidents cannot enact laws on their own, or ignore laws that have been enacted by Congress. ...

"In public life, as in kindergarten, the all-important word is no. We are living with the consequences of the inability to say no to the president's war of choice with Iraq, and we shall soon see how Congress and the courts will respond to the latest challenge from the White House -- the claim by President Bush that he has the right to ignore FISA's prohibition of government intrusion on the private communications of Americans without a court order and his repeated statements that he intends to go right on doing it."

The time is coming when someone will have to say no. Sadly, I have a vision of the impeachment panel, and I see Tom DeLay in the seat once occupied by the great Barbara Jordan. Read more in the Molly Ivins archive .

~~~***~~~
God forbid that Gonzales should actually be held to the truth

Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In? .

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20341

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 05:29 PM

~~~~~*~~~~~BUSH SNUBS HELEN THOMAS [AGAIN]
Thu Jan 26 2006 15:42:32 2006
President Bush today again avoided taking a question from White House doyenne Helen Thomas during his 45-minute press conference, even though he took questions from every reporter around her front-row, center seat.

"He's a coward," Thomas said afterward. "He's supposed to be this macho guy. He'll take on Osama bin Laden, but he won't take me on." Thomas, who worked as the UPI White House reporter for 57 years and is now a columnist, raised her hand every time the president was concluding an answer to a reporter's question, but he never called on her.

She had a few questions in mind, though. "I wanted to ask about Iraq: 'You said you didn't go in for oil or for Israel or for WMDs. so why did you go in?' "

She also had another question at the ready, just in case, this one about the president's contention that a 28-year-old wiretapping law known as FISA is out of date, which prompted him to order the National Security Agency to conduct a secret electronic surveillance program that Democrats contend is illegal.

"You keep saying it's a 1978 law, but the Constitution 200 years old. Is that out of date, too?"

Afterward, Thomas sat sullenly in her chair in the White House press work area, huddled in her leopard-print winter coat.

But as she left, she made a prediction: "He came on to my turf. I'll bet the next press conference will be in Room 450 of the EEOB," a theater-style room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where she would not be in the front row.

Developing...

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash.htm

The dogs have been let out and they're on the attack, and (I'm wondering when Drudge will let it be known he's in the pack?), they're going after her as if she will be their last meal. Like sharks after the trophy fish. Amazing, it really is. Every president I recall had the nerve to allow her questions, and as tough as they oftentimes were, and as much as they didn't want to have to answer her, they stood up, and did, and graceously for the most part, so I have to agree with Helen, GW Bush was cowardly and again he thought nothing of going against protacol, ignoring her once again. He's good at his little snide ways. Well, Helen will be the one who will be vindicated in the end, I would imagine, as she knows how to be honest and how to turn a clever straight-forward-phrase while being her stand up self in front of such an onslaught; all brought on by this quirky, less than stellar, corrupt administration. SRH

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 05:49 PM

~~~~***~~~~
The President, the Stripper and the Attorney General
By Sidney Blumenthal,
The Guardian.
Posted February 10, 2006.

The extraordinary legal defense of George Bush's domestic spying reads like a blend of Kafka, Le Carré and Mel Brooks. Tools

In 1996, Texas Gov. George W. Bush received a summons to serve on a jury, which would have required admission that 20 years earlier he had been arrested for drunken driving. Already planning his presidential campaign, he did not want this biographical information to be known to the public. His lawyer at the time made the novel argument to the judge that Bush should not have to serve because "he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future." (The defendant was a stripper accused of drunken driving.) The judge agreed, and it was not until the closing days of the 2000 campaign that Bush's record surfaced. On Monday, the same lawyer, Alberto Gonzales, now U.S. attorney general, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend "the client," as he called the president.
Gonzales was the sole witness called to explain Bush's warrantless domestic spying in obvious violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and circumvention of the special court created to administer it. The scene at the Senate was acted as though scripted partly by Kafka, partly by Mel Brooks and partly by John le Carre. After not being sworn in, the absence of oath taking having been insisted upon by the Republicans, Gonzales offered legal reasoning even more imaginative than he had used to get Bush out of jury duty, a melange of mendacity, absurdity and mystery.

The attorney general argued that the FISA law did and did not apply, that the administration was operating within it, while flouting it, and that it didn't matter. The president's "inherent" power, after all, allowed him to do whatever he wants. It was all, Gonzales said, "totally consistent." But his explanation, observed Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, "defies logic and plain English."

Congress, Gonzales elaborated, had no proper constitutional role, but in any case had already approved the president's secret program by voting for the authorization for the use of military force in Afghanistan, even if members didn't know it or, when informed years later that they had done so, objected that they hadn't. The law that was ignored, Gonzales declared, shouldn't be amended to bring this domestic spying under the law because the secret program is already legal, or might be legal, and anyway it doesn't matter whether Congress says it's legal. The all-powerful president should be trusted, but when Bush states wrongly that he goes to court for warrants, it's all right that he doesn't know what he is talking about. "As you know," Gonzales said, "the president is not a lawyer."

Who was or wasn't being spied on couldn't and wouldn't be explained. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked whether the program could be used to "influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media," Gonzales replied, "Those are very, very difficult questions, and for me to answer those questions sort of off the cuff, I think would not be responsible." When Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., asked for assurances that only al Qaida or suspected terrorists are subject to surveillance, Gonzales answered, "Sir, I can't give you absolute assurance."

Nor would he say what the program really is. "I am not comfortable going down the road of saying yes or no as to what the president has or has not authorized," Gonzales said. "I'm not going to respond to that," he said. "I'm not going to answer," he said.

Gonzales' ultimate argument was an appeal to history. George Washington, he pointed out in a display of erudition, "intercepted British mail," footnoting a 1997 CIA report on the subject. In the Civil War, the telegraph was wiretapped. And during World War I and II, communications were intercepted, too. Gonzales' ahistoricism about technology aside (Washington had no cell phones to tap, no computers to hack), Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt could not break a law that did not exist.

Through his convoluted testimony, Gonzales represented "the client" as a useful factotum again. But in his tour of history, he neglected the disclosure by the Associated Press on Feb. 3 of about 200 pages of documents from the White House of President Gerald Ford. These papers highlighted the objections of Ford's secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and chief of staff, Dick Cheney, to getting court warrants for domestic surveillance. It was partly to thwart such unaccountable executive power that Congress enacted the FISA in 1978. Once again the power behind the throne, Cheney has found a way to relieve the frustrations of the past. But he is fulfilling more than the curdled dreams of the Ford and Nixon era. The Bush presidency is straining to realize a pre-Washington ideal -- unconstitutional monarchy.

Sidney Blumenthal, author of "The Clinton Wars," writes a column for Salon and the London Guardian.

http://www.alternet.org/story/32030/

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 06:32 PM

http://www.alternet.org/story/32030/The President, the Stripper and the Attorney General

By Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian. Posted February 10, 2006.
Here's some reader comments from the earlier post concerning the Attorney General
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the Circus
Posted by: decembrist on Feb 10, 2006 2:27 AM [Report this comment]

"inherent"
"totally consistent."
"defies logic and plain English."

"Sir, I can't give you absolute assurance."
"As you know, the president is not a lawyer."

"I'm not going to respond to that"
"influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies or media"
"I am not comfortable going down the road of saying yes or no as to what the president has or has not authorized"

"Those are very, very difficult questions, and for me to answer those questions sort of off the cuff, I think would not be responsible."

"intercepted British mail"
"I'm not going to answer"

"he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future."

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »]

» RE: the Circus Posted by: adp3d

» And he wasn't under oath for what he "didn't say". Wow, what ..... Posted by: Prophit

Touché
Posted by: IanA on Feb 10, 2006 4:08 AM [Report this comment]

Those Americans who still think that they are carry the shining torches of freedom and democracy to the rest of the world better wake up and realise that they really are living in a presidential dictatorship, with the backing of the military and a rubber stamp legislature. Your elections are rigged and your papers are bought and your fellow citizens are either scared or stupid or will be taken care of in due course....

The U.S. of A is a slightly bigger and more imposing version of the type of dictatorships it used to promote for its own interests and easy manipulation and management in Central and South America.

The next phase I suspect will be a ramping up of the fear factor, another terrorist event for good measure, is the likely direction given the timely Ben Laden tape. I still cant«t figure what stretch of the imagination they will somehow use it to justify aggression on Iran this time. But they didn't need real facts the last time either.

The consequent security clampdown should also show the need for hire vigilance and detainment of suspected collaborator U.S. citizens who are in opposition to freedom and fair "government" and are aiding and abating the activities of enemy "terrorists" planning ever more threats to American security and jeopardizing American values.

Having some knowledge of Chile, it's kind of ironic that the USA has put itself into the same mould as the Pinochet type junta. It sort of proves that what goes around, comes around.

Viva el Presidente! Adios liberdad.

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» RE: Touché Posted by: mountainmama

BOOSH eats democracy for fun and profit
Posted by: Michiganman on Feb 10, 2006 4:55 AM [Report this comment]

I find myself constantly turning my head in disgust at the reports of the bushies newest adventures in subterfuge. The only thing that makes me feel a little better is booshies dismal performance appraisal in the polls. What a load of crap comes out of the mouths of these far right pretend fundamentalists!

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »]

"Report this comment"
Posted by: douglashoyt on Feb 10, 2006 5:51 AM [Report this comment]

The up side is that no one has to click the "report this comment" link. NSA has it already.

good luck and go night.

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» RE: "Report this comment" Posted by: JSquercia

Gonzales' clown-speak
Posted by: TheJamea on Feb 10, 2006 7:20 AM [Report this comment]

I ran past a text of Gonzales' incredible circumlocution earlier, and now have lost it. Would someone post a link to a location with that awesome paragraph of idiocy?
My problem with the possible impeachment of the Clown-in-Chief, is the fact that it would leave the rest of these criminals running the show without a puppet in front. Obviously, we don't want Cheney as President. Can't we indict the whole crew with a charge of running a continuing criminal enterprise? Criminal incompetence? I mean, really, what happened when the whole Congress got so busy impeaching Clinton, that literally nothing else was happening on The Hill. The country got on with its business and there was a period of enormous economic vigor. Wasn't that substantially when the surplus was run up? Really, empty the Executive branch and all its present crony/appointees, and get the legislative group busy trying to figure out how to deal with it so we can then get on with dealing directly with the corporate oligarchy. Everybody got your torches and pitchforks gathered up? By the way, if you need any help getting through the gates at their compound, ask your local pizza delivery guy or woman, they have the codes, if 911 doesn't work. False security, anyone?
TheJames

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» RE: Gonzales' clown-speak -No worries, Impeachment is always a two-fer Posted by: doinaheckuvajob

Bush's Personal Lawyer?
Posted by: asque on Feb 10, 2006 8:40 AM [Report this comment]

I was under the false empression that he was Attorney General of the United States, not Bush's personal lawyer. Since he can't do both, it would be proper for him to resign so he can represent his "client" without conflict.

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Astonishing
Posted by: Ming on Feb 10, 2006 9:10 AM [Report this comment]

The fact that the AG was evasive is not news. That is his job. To protect his client. What astonishes me is that we the people and our elected represenatives continue to allow this behavior from the Executive Branch. Shame on us. We are getting what we deserve and no amount of discourse will change that fact.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »]

Speedy Gonzales is just another bush lap dog
Posted by: katrin on Feb 10, 2006 10:18 AM [Report this comment]

in fact, in photos Gonzales looks at bush with an obvious adoring crush.

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Targeting political opponents using vacuum cleaner methods
Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Feb 10, 2006 11:45 AM [Report this comment]

It is painfully obvious what is going on to anyone who has even a glimmer of technical knowledge regarding the internet and cell phones. Every router in this country must have a back door that the NSA and other agencies use to copy every single piece of data that passes through it. This then is loaded into NSA computer banks, and subjected to searches using google-type software. Imagine if you did a google search, and every single email, every single phone call, was rummaged through - business transcations, medical records, you name it. Who exactly is doing this rummaging? Maybe they are looking for insider stock news as well - who would be surprised? Of course any terrorist would be well aware of this! The fact that the President had to reauthorize this program every thirty days? or so tells you something about the size of the NSA computer system - every time the president authorizes this, I imagine the data is dumped (except for the juicy tidbits) and the process starts over. This is all as obvious as shit on the windshield, especially to foreign government agencies. Needless to say, the legitimate functions of NSA are being damaged due to this political Nixon-style snooping.

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Well this is expected
Posted by: Freedom84 on Feb 10, 2006 12:35 PM [Report this comment]

Did anyone believe he would say anything meaningful?
There is no justification for what they are doing, they have been caught redhanded and are now trying to concoct some justification for blatantly violating Law. His testimony is proof that they are severely struggling, circumventing the questions, with laughbale anwser is always the clear cut sign of a liar. This matter is pure and simple the Administratrion has been spying on the American people without authority.
They have openly violated the Law.
Now there are consequences for violating the law and our civil liberties.

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Are Bush & Gonzales in a threesome with Gannon/Guckert?
Posted by: doinaheckuvajob on Feb 10, 2006 1:25 PM [Report this comment]

I've noticed Gonzales' creepy love looks at Bush. Also, his voice is rather effeminate to my hearing. I'd like to know what some gay folks think according to their gay-dar on this trivial point. Does he or doesn't he? Only his hairdresser knows for sure. But I know one thing for sure: listening to the hearings a bit, I became convinced that Gonzales will squeal big time like a pig telling all if/when he gets his trial and his long list of indictments. Gonzales better play the Bush love card as much as possible so they don't kill him, as Gonzales will be the one to tell all. You heard it hear first.

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********************ALL HAIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!******************
Posted by: krose on Feb 10, 2006 4:14 PM [Report this comment]

GREAT KING AND DICTATOR FOR LIFE, GEORGE W. BUSH!
*************************************************

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Incredible null-speak
Posted by: TheJamea on Feb 10, 2006 4:26 PM [Report this comment]

I ran past a text of Gonzales' incredible circumlocution earlier, and now have lost it. Would someone post a link to a location with that awesome paragraph of idiocy?
TheJames

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »]

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 07:03 PM

Key States Miss Reform DeadlineTwo years after the 2000 presidential election was determined by a mere 537 votes (and the Supreme Court), Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to solve many of the problems that arose that year. HAVA aimed to make state electoral practices more consistent by developing statewide voter databases and addressing each component of the voting process: registration, identification, ballots and machines. The deadline for these changes was supposed to be January 1, 2006, so as to allow enough time for these upgrades to be fully integrated by the midterms this year.

But according to a new report from electionline.org, approximately half of the states, including California, Florida, New York and Ohio have failed to meet that deadline. Doug Chapin, the president of electionline.org, acknowledges the concerted efforts made by many states, but is concerned about widespread distrust towards the system if these faulty electoral systems are not rectified. "The possibility for error, and the willingness of people to challenge those errors, are both growing every day. And that could have tremendous impact on elections in 2006 and beyond,” he said.

Among the report's findings:

In Ohio, the state legislature is still fighting over voter identification requirements

In California, concerns about voting machines have left some counties with warehouses full of new e-voting machines deemed unsuitable for elections.

In New York, continued inaction has left localities scrambling to replace lever machines on a short timetable. And the required statewide database has yet to be implemented – with no contract to a vendor even awarded yet.

Colorado cancelled its $10 million dollar contact in December 2005, leaving the state unable to meet the federal deadline.
If the November 2006 Congressional elections come down to the wire, we could be putting our faith in what Chapin refers to as "19th century election machines." And that could very well be how majorities in the House and Senate are won.

Posted by Juliana Bunim on 02/09/06 at 06:27 PM

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/02/key_states_miss.html

#more

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 09:04 PM

~~~***~~~
Intel pros say Bush is lying about foiling 2002 terror attack
By DOUG THOMPSON
Feb 10, 2006, 07:43

Outraged intelligence professionals say President George W. Bush is "cheapening" and "politicizing" their work with claims the United States foiled a planned terrorist attack against Los Angeles in 2002."The President has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world," says a longtime field operative of the Central Intelligence Agency. "He is basing this absurd claim on the same discredited informant who told us Al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington."

Within hours of the Presidentâ€™s speech Thursday claiming his administration had prevented a major attack, sources who said they were current and retired intelligence pros from the CIA, NSA, FBI and military contacted Capitol Hill Blue with angry comments disputing the Presidentâ€™s remarks.

â€œHeâ€™s full of shit,â€ said one sharply-worded email.

Although none were willing to allow use of their names, saying doing so would place them in legal jeopardy, we were able to confirm that at least four of the 23 who contacted us currently work, or had worked, within the U.S. intelligence community.

But Los Angeles Mayor Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is willing to go on the record, claiming Bush blind-sided his city with the claims.

"I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the mayor says. "I don't expect a call from the president â€” but somebody." Villaraigosa also said he has twice requested meetings with Bush to discuss security issues for Los Angeles and was turned down both times.

Intelligence pros say much of the information used by Bush in an attempt to justify his increased spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, trampling of civil rights under the USA Patriot Act, and massive buildup of the Department of Homeland Security, now the nationâ€™s largest federal bureaucracy, was â€œworthless intel that was discarded long ago.â€

â€œA lot of buzz circulated in the months following the September 11, 2001, attacks,â€ says an NSA operative. â€œSnippets here and there were true but most was just random information that could never be confirmed. One thing we do know about al Qaeda is that they seldom use the same technique twice. They tried a car bomb to bring down the World Trade Center and it failed. Then they went to planes. The next time will be something different because weâ€™ve geared up to prevent hijacking planes and using them as flying bombs.â€

In August 2004, just as the Presidential campaign was about to heat up, the Bush White House raised the terror alert, claiming attacks were imminent on major financial institutions. The alert, apparently timed to steal thunder from Democrat John Kerryâ€™s nomination for President, was withdrawn after administration officials admitted it was based on old information from a discredited informant.

The discredited information dated back to the same period when intelligence agencies began receiving reports of a planned attack against Los Angeles.

Former DHS secretary Tom Ridge admits the U.S. raised terror alerts for the wrong reasons and now says he often disagreed with the timing of such alerts but was overruled by the White House.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge says. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on alert, There were times when the White House was really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' We often lost the argument."

Ridge left DHS in February 2005 and replaced him with Michael Chertoff who agrees with the â€œcry wolfâ€ strategy of the White House.

â€œChertoff is a lackey,â€ says Kevin Riley, a retired New York City Detective who knew Chertoff during his days as a U.S. Attorney in New York. â€œHeâ€™ll do whatever Bush tells him to do.â€

Intelligence pros at established Washington agencies laugh at DHS operatives, calling them â€œKeystone Kopsâ€ and â€œoverpaid rent-a-cops,â€ saying they lack any real expertise in dealing with terrorism.

â€œDHS is a political police force,â€ says a retired CIA agent. â€œThey exist to enforce the political propaganda program of George W. Bush. Thatâ€™s all theyâ€™re good for and theyâ€™re not very good at that.â€

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

I guess there are swear words or names which are not being shown, and instead they've put in it's place, some gobbledy-goop.

Who the hell is this Thompson guy anyway?

Go on-site to see the article and to check everything out.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8124.shtml

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 09:12 PM

***
Mounting evidence proves White House lied about relationship with corrupt lobbyistBy DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher,
Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 19, 2006, 00:00
White House claims that President George W. Bush doesn’t know corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff may soon rank up there with “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky” as a blatant public lie destroyed by mounting evidence.
Abramoff, the GOP loyalist who White House spokesman Scott McClellan claims Bush doesn’t know, was a key player in Bush’s transition team after the disputed 2000 Presidential election. Abramoff, working on Interior Department transition issues, attended a number of meetings with Bush during the transition.

“Bush tapped Abramoff as member of his Presidential Transition Team, advising the administration on policy and hiring at the Interior Department, which oversees Native American issues,” writes Richard Wolfe and Holly Baily in Newsweek. “That level of close access to Bush, DeLay and other GOP leaders has been cited by many of the Indian tribes who hired Abramoff with hopes of gaining greater influence with the administration and Congress on gaming issues.”

Although McClellan claims Bush did not meet with Abramoff, another White House spokesman, Erin Healy, said last year that "they may have met on occasion. After the Abramoff scandal broke, Healy amended her statement to add that the President “did not consider him a close friend” and claimed the White House had limited contact with the lobbyist. McClellan Tuesday claimed he could find only two contacts between the White House and Abramoff.

Yet public lobbying records filed by Abramoff’s firm show the lobbyist made 195 lobbying contacts with the administration on issues for the Marianas islands alone during Bush’s first 10 months in office. Abramoff lobbied to preserve the American territorial islands -- notorious for their "Made in the USA" sweatshops -- as exempt from federal minimum wage standards.

Two key players on Abramoff's lobbying team wound up with Bush administration jobs: Patrick Pizzella, named an assistant secretary of labor by Bush; and David Safavian, chosen by Bush to oversee federal procurement policy in the Office of Management and Budget.

In fact, Abramoff’s close ties with Bush go back to 1997 when the then Governor of Texas wrote a letter on the lobbyist’s behalf supporting his Marianas island client’s school choice proposal.

“I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative,” Bush said in the July 18, 1997, letter, which included a CC to an Abramoff deputy.

Although they now try to distance themselves from the disgraced lobbyists, key Bush allies once openly embraced Abramoff as one of their own.

“What the Republicans need is 50 Jack Abramoffs," Grover Norquist, another Bush confidant, told The National Journal in 1995.

“I know Jack Abramoff,” admitted former National Republican Committee chairman Ed Gillespie, who adds that lobbyists like Abramoff “are Republicans; they were Republicans before they were lobbyists.”

In April 2002, The National Journal reported: "Last summer, in an effort to raise the visibility of his Indian clients, Abramoff helped arrange a White House get-together on tax issues with President Bush for top Indian leaders, including Lovelin Poncho, the chairman of the Coushattas." Poncho first denied the meeting took place, but later changed his story in an interview with the Texas Observer. He now confirms Abramoff attended the meeting with Bush and says Bush greeted the lobbyist warmly “like an old friend.”

Poncho says his tribe paid Abramoff $25,000 to arrange the May 2002 meeting with Bush.

Abramoff came up through GOP ranks with Norquist and conservative Christian leader Ralph Reed. All enjoyed unfettered access to Bush and worked closely with Bush’s Machiavellian political advisor Karl Rove.

In 2001, Abramoff recommended one of his key assistants, Susan Ralston, to Rove, who was looking for a new key advisor. She is still with Rove.

In 2003, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a Seattle radio host and activist, urged friends and colleagues to send campaign contributions to Bush via Abramoff, often praising the lobbyist on his show as “a good and personal friend of the President.”

“While White House aides now speak privately (and anonymously) about the need to clean up Congress in the wake of lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s guilty pleas in an influence-peddling scandal, there’s no sense of them taking the lead on what used to be a signature issue—before they came to Washington,” writes Wolfe and Bailey. “One reason may be their own reluctance to acknowledge their own ties to Abramoff, the one-time master of the lobbying universe.”

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8014.shtml

Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 09:24 PM

***
Powell, Tenet, others told Bush he was breaking the law by ordering NSA spying

By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 31, 2006, 09:06
Top-level administration officials four years ago told President George W. Bush he as “breaking the law” by ordering the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and warned the President that his actions could bring his administration down.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet and others begged Bush to reconsider his executive order giving the NSA authority to wiretap phone calls and monitor emails of American citizens but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

“Mr. President, I fear you are heading down a course that could doom your administration,” Powell told Bush in a meeting in early 2002. “I urge you to reconsider.” Powell also argued against Bush’s plans to turn Pentagon spies loose on American antiwar groups, saying “such actions don’t belong in America.”

Powell wasn’t the only one worried about the legality of wiretaps. Then deputy attorney general James D. Comey, acting as attorney general while John Ashcroft was hospitalized, refused to sign off on Bush’s executive order, prompting then White House Counsel, and now attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to visit Ashcroft at his hospital bed in a failed attempt to get the AG to overturn his deputy.

Ashcroft, however, stood by Comey and told Gonzales that he could not condone the spying, even though he had authored the controversial, and rights-robbing, USA Patriot Act.

“This is not legal and the President is exceeding his authority,” Ashcroft said. “Jim (Comey) is right to oppose it.”

Then CIA director George Tenet, in a stormy meeting with Bush, told the President that use of the NSA to spy on Americans was a direct violation of the agency’s charter.

“This is illegal and a flagrant misuse of the agency and its technology,” Tenet said.

Those who opposed Bush on his actions, which the President claimed were justified under his powers as a “wartime commander-in-chief,” are no longer part of the administration. Bush fired Tenet (publicly, the CIA direction was allowed to resign). Powell and Ashcroft resigned shortly after Bush began his second term. Comey quit in disgust.

Those privy to the contentious White House meetings where all tried in vain to talk Bush out of his reckless course of action say the President’s allies in using the NSA to spy on Americans were Vice President Dick Cheney and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the man Bush tapped to replace Ashcroft.

Powell, top aides say privately, considering resigning early in Bush’s first term because of what he considered the President’s “reckless and irresponsible actions,” but stayed on because he still felt he could play a moderating role with the extremists in the administration.

“As a career soldier, Gen. Powell felt a duty to serve is country even when that service meant answering to those he considered wrong,” says a longtime aide who served with the general at the State Department as well as when Powell chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He was a moral man trapped in an immoral nest of vipers.”

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Who the hell is this Thompson guy anyway?

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8087.shtml

See the following stories on-site on:

The Rant

Intel pros say Bush is lying about foiling 2002 terror attack
John Boehner is just another Tom DeLay
They came to praise King and bury Bush
Standing down
Bush approved multi-agency program to spy on Americans
One con too many
Powell, Tenet, others told Bush he was breaking the law by ordering NSA spying
Bush's lies can't hide the truth about relationship with Jack Abramoff
A clear and present danger to America
A watched America is not a free America
The criminal conspiracy that destroys America
Grounded along with other fellow terrorists
An American Hitler and his Gestapo
Mounting evidence proves White House lied about relationship with corrupt lobbyist
Bush often met with, and praised, corrupt lobbyist
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Saundra Hummer

February 10th, 2006, 10:33 PM

~*~
“Bush launched Iraq war by cherry-picking intelligence“
2/10/2006 2:00:00 PM GMT
Today's developments deal a major blow to the Bush Administration
A former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East accused the BUSH Administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence to launch war against IRAQ to justify a decision it had already made, The Washington Post reported.
The newspaper said that Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, also accused the BUSH Administration of ignoring several warnings that IRAQ could easily fall into violence and chaos after the overthrow of SADDAM HUSSEIN.

Pillar acknowledges that the U.S. intelligence agencies were wrong about SADDAM’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, but said that this wasn’t the reason behind the U.S.‘s decision to invade IRAQ. "Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the WAR," Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.

Instead, he asserted, the Administration "went to WAR without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of IRAQ."

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

He also said that the White House affected intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its case for WAR, including information on the "supposed connection" between SADDAM and AL-QAEDA network, which analysts had discounted. "Feeding the Administration's voracious appetite for material on the SADDAM-AL-QAEDA link consumed an enormous amount of time and attention,” Pillar wrote.

He also described for the first time that the intelligence community did assessments before the INVASION that indicated that postwar IRAQ "would not provide fertile ground for democracy" and would need "a Marshall Plan-type effort" to restore its economy despite its oil revenue. It also predicted that Sunnis and Shias would fight for power and that foreign occupation forces would bear the brunt of the violence “unless it established security and put IRAQ on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of SADDAM."

According to The Post, Pillar was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the CIA’s leading counterterrorism analyst. His accusations mark the first time that a top CIA official directly and publicly condemns the BUSH Administration’s handling of intelligence and its decision to invade IRAQ. REPUBLICANS and DEMOCRATS continue to argue over whether, or how, to probe accusations that the Administration manipulated prewar intelligence.

Libby: White House superiors authorized leaks

In a another development that deals a blow to the White House, VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, told a federal grand jury that he was “authorized by his superiors” to disclose classified information to the media as part of the BUSH Administration’s plan to justify the IRAQ WAR, CNN reported, quoting court papers.

The special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sent a letter to Libby’s lawyers saying that he testified he was “authorized to disclose information about the National Intelligence Estimate to the press by his superiors."

According to CNN, the letter doesn’t include the names of those superiors. but the National Journal, which first reported on the story, named CHENEY and other White House officials.

On the other hand, a legal source involved in the case told CNN that Libby didn’t testify to and has never suggested that anyone in the BUSH Administration -- including CHENEY -- approved disclosing the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Libby, 55, was indicted last year on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators looking into the July 2003 exposure of Plame. He has pleaded not guilty, and a judge has set a trial date for January 2007.
~~~
http://aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=10590

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 01:51 PM

***
Bill Berkowitz
WorkingForChange
02.09.06
The powerful Koch boys from Kansas

Patron saints of several right wing think tanks now control the country's largest privately held company

Last year, in a move that does not bode well for the nation's forests, the Koch brothers of Kansas engineered a $13.2 billion buyout of forest products producer Georgia Pacific Corporation, making their company, Koch Industries, the nation's largest privately held company.
According to the Toronto Globe and Mail, Koch's purchase of Georgia Pacific would vault Koch past food producer Cargill Inc. as the largest privately held company in the United States, with $80-billion in revenue and 85,000 employees in 50 countries.
The Koch Boys from Kansas are smart, focused, and incredibly wealthy. For years they've been pushing both a libertarian and free-market agenda through tens of millions of dollars in contributions to conservative causes, candidates and organizations.

In a way, the Georgia Pacific acquisition "completes the circle" for Koch, Scott Silver told me in an e-mail interview. "The ideologues running the land management agencies are the product of the think tanks created by, and funded by, the Koch family," Silver, the executive director of the environmental group Wild Wilderness, pointed out.

"Those ideologues are now in a position to permit Koch's newest acquisition, Georgia-Pacific, to further rape and pillage the public's lands. These think tanks promote the Free-Market ideal when it serves their interests to do so, but in reality, they are firmly committed to the ideal of enriching private interests at enormous direct cost to the American taxpayer."

The Koch (pronounced "coke") brothers, Charles, David, William and Frederick are sons of Kansas. Thirty-eight years ago, Charles took over the company from his father, company founder Fred Koch. According to a recent piece in Business Week, Charles, 70, and David, 65, now "own the bulk of the company after elbowing out their other brothers ... in 1983," buying out William and Frederick for $470 million and $320 million, respectively. In 1998, in a chilling display of family disunity, "the two sets of brothers walked silently past one another in court as William and Frederick lost a lawsuit to extract more money from Charles and David."

In 1940, Fred Koch founded the company as an oil refiner. A graduate of MIT, he was an original member of the anticommunist ultra-conservative John Birch Society, founded in 1958. The sons did not fall far from the tree: Both Charles and David graduated from MIT and have been deeply involved in conservative politics.

According to "Axis of Ideology," a 2004 report by the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, the two dominant Koch boys have "a combined net worth of approximately $4 billion, placing them among the top 50 wealthiest individuals in the country and among the top 100 wealthiest individuals in the world in 2003, according to Forbes."

Between 1999 and 2001, they gave more than $20 million to a host of conservative organizations; "most of their contributions go[ing] to support organizations and groups advancing libertarian theory, privatization, entrepreneurship and free enterprise," "Axis of Ideology" pointed out.

"David, who is executive vice-president and a board member, ran for Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980 and both Charles and David are directors of the free-market advocating Cato Institute and Reason Foundation," Business Week recently pointed out. In an interview with National Journal, David Koch described his philosophy this way: "My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy to maximize personal freedoms."

According to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, the brothers are "leading contributors to the Koch family foundations, which supports a network of Conservative organizations and think tanks, including Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Manhattan Institute the Heartland Institute, and the Democratic Leadership Council."

Charles Koch co-founded the Cato Institute in 1977, while David helped launch Citizens for a Sound Economy [now FreedomWorks] in 1986. Over the years, they have given more than $12 million to each, according to the NCRP report. George Mason University is also a well-funded recipient of Koch largesse; receiving more than $23 million from the family's foundations between 1985 and 2002, according to the NCRP.

Charles and David Koch control several family foundations including the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the David H. Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation. Koch money also flows through Triad Management Services, "an advisory service to conservative donors on groups and candidates to support." Put more precisely, SourceWatch notes that Triad "is a Tom Delay-affiliated organization that launders money from large corporations into congressional campaigns."

Originally, and perhaps not surprisingly given their libertarian bent, the brothers were not aficionados of former Republican Kansas Senator Bob Dole. Some reports have it that they considered him more or less as just another spineless politician. In 1986, however, "the Kochs' disdain for Dole began to dissipate when Koch Industries sought financial advantage under 'technical corrections' to a tax revision act," veteran reporter Robert Parry wrote in an extensive investigative report for The Nation magazine. "The Washington Post," Parry noted, "reported that Koch Industries approached Dole and secured the Senator's aid in inserting an exemption from a new real-estate depreciation schedule, a change that was worth several million dollars to the company."

"As a Senate leader ... [Dole] appeared willing to trade his influence for the keys to the Koch political money vault," Parry pointed out in "D(OIL)E: What Wouldn't Bob Do For Koch Oil?" David Koch became "a national vice chairman of the Dole presidential campaign's finance committee ... [and] lin[ed] up deep-pocket contributors for his candidate and the G.O.P." Koch "also helped Dole achieve majority leader status through his checkbook, contributed mightily to a Dole foundation and even turned his Gatsbyish estate in Southampton, New York, into the site for celebrating Dole's 72nd birthday in July 1995, raising $150,000 for his campaign."

One of the strangest aspects of the Koch story is how little the general public knows about the brothers or the company. "Koch is a huge company -- bigger than Microsoft, but few people have heard of it," said Bob Williams, a project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, and the co-author of the report "Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power: Private Oil Company Does Both Business and Politics With the Shades Drawn."

"Despite its size and political largesse, Koch is able to dodge the limelight because it is privately-held, meaning that nearly all of its business dealings are known primarily only by the company and the Internal Revenue Service," Williams and Kevin Bogardus, co-author of the report, wrote. The company "has spent nearly $4 million on direct lobbying on more than 50 pieces of legislation before Congress, helping shape the debate on everything from limiting class action lawsuits to repealing the estate tax," William and Bogardus pointed out.

In a November 15 News Release issued by the Institute for Public Accuracy, Williams pointed out that the company is "politically active, in campaign contributions, lobbying and, probably most importantly, founding and funding right-leaning libertarian think tanks." The acquisition could have profound effects since both the oil and lumber industries have significant environmental ramifications. "Koch is very solicitous of its many friends in Washington; and when it gets in an environmental bind, it is not shy about calling on those friends in Washington," Williams added.

Williams' 2004 "Koch's Low Profile Belies Political Power" noted that:

• "Despite its size and political largess, Koch is able to dodge the limelight because it is privately held, meaning that nearly all of its business dealings are known primarily only by the company and the Internal Revenue Service."
• "Although it is both a top campaign contributor and spends millions on direct lobbying, Koch's chief political influence tool is a web of interconnected, right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups funded by foundations controlled and supported by the two Koch brothers."

• "Koch has had plenty of run-ins with government regulators and other legal problems in recent years. Through it all, the company has shown a remarkable knack for getting criminal charges dropped and huge potential penalties knocked down."

• "Koch has also shown a remarkable ability to get rid of or modify environmental policies and other government rules it doesn't like."

"Amongst the most important, visible and powerful proponents of public lands privatization are the Cato Institute, the Property and Environment Research Center (formerly known as Political Economy Research Center) and the Reason Institute," said Scott Silver. "Koch funds have played a major role in the operation of each of these organizations."
The Koch family "is amongst the most powerful and influential movers and shakers promoting privatization in America," Silver added. Over the past several decades, "their money created an extensive infrastructure of Libertarian and Free-Market think tanks from which President Bush has drawn to staff the highest rungs of the land management agencies."

The acquisition of Georgia-Pacific, which "does extensive logging on public lands" and "is a heavily subsidized form of corporate welfare," could accelerate the trend toward the privatization of our national forests Silver argued. "Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public. They do not operate in the Free-Market when they log public forests."

Over the years, Koch has been "a major polluter," SourceWatch reported. "During the 1990s, its faulty pipelines were responsible for more than 300 oil spills in five states, prompting a landmark penalty of $35 million from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In Minnesota, it was fined an additional $8 million for discharging oil into streams. During the months leading up to the 2000 presidential elections, the company faced even more liability, in the form of a 97-count federal indictment charging it with concealing illegal releases of 91 metric tons of benzene, a known carcinogen, from its refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas."

After Bush took office in 2000, the 97-count indictment was reduced by 88. The balance was then settled when, "two days before the trial" then-Attorney General John Ashcroft "settled for a plea bargain in which Koch pled guilty to falsifying documents. All major charges were dropped, and Koch and Ashcroft settled the lawsuit for a fraction" of the possible $350 million in fines. (According to SourceWatch, Koch had contributed $800,000 to the Bush election campaign and other Republican candidates.)

That did not stop the company from polluting: In 2003, Koch bought Invista, the world's largest fibers company (which owns brands such as Lycra and Teflon) from DuPont for more than $4 billion in cash. According to a November 11 report in The News Virginian -- a newspaper serving Waynesboro, Staunton and Augusta County, Va. -- "the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality log[ed] 16 spills by the textiles plant this year [and] warned Invista in a Nov. 9 violation notice that 'civil charges' and 'corrective action' might be on the way."

A follow-up editorial two days later pointed out that Dupont, which previously owned the plant, used "the South River as a toilet for nearly 75 years," but when the operation "employed 4,000-plus locals in high-paying jobs, the powers-that-be here seemed to ignore the mercury the plant dumped into our river." Before the acquisition by Koch, the plant employed about 1,000 workers; now the workforce numbers about 700.

The Koch Boys from Kansas are major financial backers of Sam Brownback, the state's ultra-conservative Senator who has higher political aspirations. For more please see the Bill Berkowitz archive.

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. His WorkingForChange column Conservative Watch documents the strategies, players, institutions, victories and defeats of the American Right.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=20342

There was a timber/lumber company here in Central Oregon, which had, for a short period of time, all of their log decks filled with logs which were never branded, acres and acres of logs stacked high. The fellows who worked for the company said there were probably over $27 million dollars in unbranded trees. Branded, weighed and measured means taxes for the US Govenment. Not being branded meant no taxes would need to be paid to the government at all. This happening must have meant there were several US Government agencies whose men and women oversee these things. acting illegally - the Forest Service, and whichever agencey oversees these things, Weights and Measures, (?) who tag the logs which were being turned into lumber or plywood. The trees were from private land, but they were still supposed to be subject to branding, weights and measures and any number of laws regarding them. Many of the people who were working there when this was going on, had fears of reporting it, afraid that their safety would be jeopardized.

the magnificent goldberg

February 11th, 2006, 02:10 PM

David Koch described his philosophy this way: "My overall concept is to minimize the role of government and to maximize the role of the private economy to maximize personal freedoms."

A true anarchist!

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 02:41 PM

A true anarchist!

MG

It seems that anytime someone in government espouses smaller government, such as Reagan did and as the current administration has at times, all we get is more.

They say Clinton made government smaller, while at the same time he was putting the government in a good place.

The people in government who cry the blues over large government just give us bigger and bigger each and everytime they're put into office; putting more constraints on the American citizen all the while. Control freaks that they are - as well as being greed motivated - or so it seems - we are just having more and more controls on our lives put into place by those who promise smaller government, thrusting their control and greed oriented laws upon us. Imminant domain anyone?

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 03:35 PM

~~~~*~~~~Bottled water, a natural resource taxing the world's ecosystem
Fri Feb 10, 10:10 AM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Bottled water consumption, which has more than doubled globally in the last six years, is a natural resource that is heavily taxing the world's ecosystem, according to a new US study."Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing, producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy," according to Emily Arnold, author of the study published by the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental group.

Arnold said although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can end up costing 10,000 times more.

"At as much as 2.50 dollars per liter (10 dollars per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline," the study says.

It added that the United States was the largest consumer of bottled water, with Americans drinking 26 billion liters in 2004, or about one eight-ounce (25 cl) glass per person every day.

Mexico was the second largest consumer at 18 billion liters followed by China and Brazil at 12 billion liters each.

In terms of consumption per person, Italians came first at nearly 184 liters, or more than two glasses a day, followed by Mexico and the United Arab Emirates with 169 and 164 liters per person respectively.

Belgium and France follow close behind and Spain ranks sixth.

The study said that demand for bottled water soared in developing countries between 1999 and 2004 with consumption tripling in India and more than doubling in China during that period.

That has translated into massive costs in packaging the water, usually in plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which is derived from crude oil, and then transporting it by boat, train or on land.

"Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year," according to the study. "Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year."

Once the water is consumed, disposing the plastic bottles poses an environmental risk.

The study, citing the Container Recycling Institute, said that 86 percent of plastic water bottles in the United States end up as garbage and those buried can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

In addition, some 40 percent of the PET bottles deposited for recycling in the United States in 2004 ended up being shipped to China.

The study warned that the rapid growth in the industry has also ironically led to water shortages in some areas, including India where bottling of Dasani water and other drinks by the Coca-Cola company has caused shortages in more than 50 villages.

It said that while consumers tend to link bottled water with healthy living, tap water can be just as healthy and is subject to more stringent regulations than bottled water in many regions, including Europe and the United States.

"In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water," the study says. "Often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefits.

http://news.yahoo.com/

The water being delivered to you from municipal water systems is often times just fine, and in some cases better than water being sold in bottles, however, it is the pipes, the plumbing, it goes through that adds contaminants, often times in your own home. Too much lead, etc.

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 03:51 PM

Ind. House Wrongly Valued at $400 Million Fri Feb 10, 10:53 PM ET
VALPARAISO, Ind. - A house erroneously valued at $400 million is being blamed for budget shortfalls and possible layoffs in municipalities and school districts in northwest Indiana.
An outside user of Porter County's computer system may have triggered the mess by accidentally changing the value of the Valparaiso house, said Sharon Lippens, director of the county's information technologies and service department. The house had been valued at $121,900 before the glitch.

County Treasurer Jim Murphy said the home usually carried about $1,500 in property taxes; this year, it was billed $8 million.

The homeowner, Dennis Charnetzky, declined to comment about the situation to The Associated Press on Friday.

Lippens said her agency identified the mistake and told the county auditor's office how to correct it. But the $400 million value ended up on documents that were used to calculate tax rates.

Most local officials did not learn about the mistake until Tuesday, when 18 government taxing units were asked to return a total of $3.1 million of tax money. The city of Valparaiso and the Valparaiso Community School Corp. were asked to return $2.7 million. As a result, the school system has a $200,000 budget shortfall, and the city loses $900,000.

Officials struggled to figure out how the mistake got into the system and how it could have been prevented. City leaders said Thursday the error could cause layoffs and cost-cutting measures.

Lippens said the outside user changed the property value, most likely while trying to access another program while using the county's enhanced access system, which charges users a fee for access to public records that are not otherwise available on the Internet.

Lippens said the user probably tried to access a real estate record display by pressing R-E-D, but accidentally typed R-E-R, which brought up an assessment program written in 1995. The program is no longer in use, and technology officials did not know it could be accessed.

The county treasurer said his office spotted the $400 million error after it caused an improper billing, but apparently it wasn't corrected elsewhere.

"It didn't get fixed all the way," Murphy said.

http://news.yahoo.com/

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 04:01 PM

~*~
"Occupants of public offices love power and are prone to abuse it.": George Washington , Farewell Address

~
"Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.": Thomas Jefferson to I. Tiffany, 1819

~
"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air -- however slight -- lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." : William O Douglas

~
"Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." : Daniel Webster

~
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." : Winston Churchill
~

the magnificent goldberg

February 11th, 2006, 04:33 PM

~
"If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." : Winston Churchill[/INDENT][/I]
~

And Churchill was the last Home Secretary to turn the troops out to quell a riot in Britain, just up the road from me (course, I wasn't here in 1910). He's still not well thought of here.

http://webapps.rhondda-cynon-taf.gov.uk/libraries/heritagetrail/rhondda/tonypandy/Tonypandy_riots.htm

All depends on your perspective.

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 04:45 PM

~~~
Like in the Timber Industry, who Lets this happen in the world of oil profits? SRHPress Release
For Immediate ReleaseJanuary 23, 2006
Contact: Afshin Mohamadi (Maloney)
202-225-7944
Karen Lightfoot (Waxman)
202-225-5051
Andrea Purse (Miller)
202-225-2095
Tara McGuinness (Markey)
202-225-2836Oil and Gas Companies Shortchanging Taxpayers
by Hundreds of Millions of Dollars -
Where is Congress?
Members of Congress demand investigation and hearings

WASHINGTON, DC - The New York Times reported today that oil and gas companies shortchanged the government and American taxpayers last year by as much as $700 million in royalty payments due for extracting natural gas from public land. In response, high-ranking Members of Congress are demanding hearings on the matter.
Though market prices for natural gas have ballooned recently, royalty payments are essentially the same as they were five years ago. The Times reported that the oil and gas companies used a “byzantine set of federal regulations” to report to the government lower sales than they report to their shareholders. This allowed the companies pay less in royalties than market prices would suggest.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), a member of the House Government Reform Committee, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Government Reform Committee, Rep. George Miller (D-CA), a member of the Resources Committee, and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), a member of the Resources Committee, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) today urged the Chairmen of the Resources Committee and the Government Reform Committee to arrange the hearings to investigate the matter (http://www.house.gov/maloney/issues/oil/012306RoyaltiesHearings.pdf).

“As Americans pay huge gas bills this winter to heat their homes, they are going to be furious that the oil and gas companies are skipping out on paying the bill they owe the American taxpayer,” said Maloney. “These companies are making billions upon billions off of land that belongs to the American taxpayers, and it’s sickening that they would cheat the taxpayers. It’s time that Congress brings the oil companies in for real hearings - and this time, they need to be sworn in.”

“These giveaways to the oil and gas companies are stupefying in their magnitude and inexcusable in their impact on the budget,” said Waxman.

“This is exactly what we mean when we describe the Republican Culture of Corruption - it is about one party running Washington for the benefit of the wealthy few at the expense of the rest of America,” said Miller. “Because Congress has granted the President unchecked power, there is no oversight and no accountability. That’s why we are calling for hearings now and why we need to end the culture of corruption.”

“Thanks to the Republican leadership, the big oil companies are drowning in record profits and the American people are paying the price twice - consumers are socked with astronomical bills at the pump and are subsidizing big industry through the tax giveaways that the Republican leadership dished up for energy companies,” said Markey. “I have introduced a bill that would impose a 50 percent tax on oil companies for oil sold at prices above $40 a barrel and return half of the generated revenue to consumers who have been bearing the brunt of high gas prices by giving an income tax rebate.”

Rep. Markey is the author of the Windfall Profit and Consumer Assistance Act of 2005 which would also exempt profits that are reinvested by oil companies to increase refinery capacity or invest in new production.

According to the Times, prices for natural gas were almost twice as much in 2005 as they were in 2001, but the federal government collected only $5.15 billion in gas royalties in 2005, compared to $5.35 billion in 2001.

Last year, according to the New York Times, Burlington Resources admitted that it had underpaid approximately $76 million in royalties during the 1990s. In 2003, an Alabama jury determined that Exxon had failed to pay $63.6 million in royalties from gas wells. In the late 1990s, Congress led investigations into companies who were cheating the government out of oil royalties. Yet since 2000, Congress has failed to provide sufficient oversight of this program despite two General Accountability Office (GAO) studies.

According to Resources Committee staff, the committee has conducted no oversight on oil and gas auditing and compliance of royalty payments since 2001, when it did a hearing on the RIK (Royalty in Kind) program. In 2000, Chairman Don Young did hold a hearing on the subject, but the purpose was to investigate POGO (Project on Government Oversight) and attempt to hold them in contempt of Congress.]

###

http://www.house.gov/maloney/press/109th/20060123OilRoyalties.htm

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 05:15 PM

And Churchill was the last Home Secretary to turn the troops out to quell a riot in Britain, just up the road from me (course, I wasn't here in 1910). He's still not well thought of here.

http://webapps.rhondda-cynon-taf.gov.uk/libraries/heritagetrail/rhondda/tonypandy/Tonypandy_riots.htm

All depends on your perspective.

MG

From what we learned of Winston Churchill here in the states, we just loved him. When I heard how disliked he had become in Britain, I was amazed, it just stunned me, but then I only remember him from early news clips, and other media stories, and bio's on him, or about certain battles and doings, where he was rallying against the Nazi's and Facists. We saw him doing a bang up job of it; it were as if he were willing all of us to win the war. At least that is how it seemed to all of us, how he was believed to be by just about everyone here in the states. He, to us, was a hero of the highest rank, and we loved his stubborn and belligerent ways. We knew him we thought, we knew of his funny mannerisms, his love of painting, of his wife Clementine, and his family. We really did pretty much idolize him, or that is how it looked to me growing up.

It wasn't until much later on that I learned of his mother being American, and being part American Indian as well. I was stunned by that, especially knowing the little I've read and heard of the British class system. I was surprised that he was ever accepted at all. Other than the war, we really didn't know much about his poltical beliefs, or his actions in them.

He, I believe, was the man for his time, the man to help win WWII. Without him, many of us here in the states believe Hitler would have had a much greater chance of making us suffer more from that war; some believe he would have even won it.

Churchill after the war, if not before, made errors in governing that just didn't seem like what we thought he would do. We here in the U.S. were't capable of thinking he would do anything but great things, not the so unwise incident you talk about. He wasn't governing like we thought he would, or should have, in our own minds. We learned little of his politics post WWII, it wasn't a matter which was being taught in my school, not that we coudn't have kept up with him better, but we had our own interests going on. For the war, we felt he was perfect, that is how we perceived him. We really did think he was the greatest. Almost a minor god in the scheme of things. We've since heard he would have been wiser just to know when to stop, to quit, and just go into private life.

Have you read the books about his mother "Jennie"? They are interesting, and I have a couple of ones on Winstons life as well. Such an interesting man and his mother was as well.

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 05:39 PM

***
The Urgency of Now: Stopping the War on IranWe have…come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.” - Martin Luther King Jr., Aug. 28, 1963

By Mike Kress

02/10/06 "ICH" -- -- “Last winter, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter revealed that George Bush asked for an Iran war plan ready to use by June of 2005. Seymour Hersh, writing for the New Yorker, has reported for some time about US covert operations in Iran. Today we are told that war in Iran is inevitable by the same observers who warned us about the cooked-up war in Iraq. Evidently, the neo-conservatives who control the US government decided to wage war against Iran long ago.

Now that International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei says that Iran isn’t cooperating fully with IAEA inspectors, the neo-cons will use their tool at the UN, Ambassador John Bolton, to help create an international crisis and thereby justify attacks on Iran. Though there’s no evidence to prove that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, Iran’s refusal to halt its lawful nuclear programs will become the pretext for America’s next unnecessary war.

Again, the mainstream sources that most Americans use to get their information will not investigate the facts or give equal time to critics, and the smoke and mirrors of the Bush administration will dominate the debate. To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, in the absence of just cause the consent for war will be manufactured.

It now falls upon people of conscience to create and organize a mass movement of nationwide non-violent resistance – in the spirit of Dr. King and Mohandas K. Gandhi – that will stop the war before it starts. At the rate the White House rhetoric is beginning to boil, this movement must start now and swing into full action by the early days of March.

The only way to stop another senseless and unnecessary war is with a mass movement rooted in a moral strategy that brings people together. This movement must also earn the sympathy and trust of those who are undecided about the necessity of another Middle East war. Forget traditional protest rallies – 200,000 people crowding the Capitol Mall make no difference. Large marches that don’t influence the nation’s decision makers will only increase people’s cynicism, as well as the atmosphere of inevitability that the neo-cons wish to create.

Without a moral and unifying strategy that spells out specific non-violent tactics to achieve our goal, the power elite and the corporate media will ignore or marginalize our efforts. Remember the moral claims for justice and the appeals to America’s founding ideals during the civil rights movement, and you’ll understand the type of strategy we need today. Think of the Montgomery bus boycott, the Freedom Rides, and Gandhi’s march to the sea for salt, and you will have inspiration for the actions necessary to stop the march to war.

The leaders of every organization that opposed the Iraq war must reconnect today and formulate a sustained campaign of militant non-violent action that everyone can follow tomorrow. Peace, justice, religious, and human rights leaders must gather and articulate a path to preventing war that people believe is effective – not because that path is safe, but because that path is righteous and they are inspired to overcome their fears.

This path must be part of a moral vision that appeals to the emotions and values of every citizen. Using communication techniques put forth by thinkers such as George Lakoff, we must revive the “revolution of values” that Dr. King called for in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church. In the words of King: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Simply debating facts will not prevent war.

People for peace must speak with their mouths, pens, keyboards, and bodies against another war for empire. We must push our peace and justice leaders to act. We must work around the corporate media to spread our message. We must tell our elected officials that they will not receive money or votes if they sell their souls for the neo-conservative agenda. We must take risks, and we must welcome the metaphorical stones and arrows of the warmongers, knowing in our hearts that we were right about the last war and that we act today with our consciences clear.

Innocent Iranians, our children, our military, and all the world waits for us to wrest America’s destiny from the hands of the warlords. There is no time to waste. Gradualism is a luxury we cannot afford. The architects of the war against Iran have a head start – but we can prevail if we put our demands for peace into action.

Mike Kress is a Persian Gulf veteran who left the Air Force as a conscientious objector. He served as vice-chair of the Spokane Human Rights Commission and is a member of the Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane (www.pjals.org). He also produces and hosts “Take The Power Back” for KYRS FM www.kyrs.org Comments welcome at takethepowerback@kyrs.org

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11868.htm

If this is the case, then the Bush/Cheney men must be in 7th. heaven. Just listen to the president of Iran; just listen to this man's rhetoric. It's as if he's on the Bush/Cheney/Bolton payroll. He is saying and doing everything they could wish for, as he's turning the American public against him with every word he speaks. He's giving creedence to what the Bush/Cheney/Bolton group's been telling us. He couldn't be doing it much better. Maybe we'll be seeing him in a white lab coat wearing protective gear handing the uranium we are all not wanting him to have. No, even without his doing that, he has turned a whole country, ours, against him.

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 06:02 PM

* Gingrich Cheers Frustrated Conservatives By WILL LESTER, Associated Press Writer
1 minute ago WASHINGTON - Newt Gingrich, who led the Republican Party to power a dozen years ago, told cheering conservatives Saturday it is time to overhaul a balky, slow-moving government locked in the last century. Citing multiple government failures after Hurricane Katrina, the former House speaker said the government meltdown at all levels illustrated how badly government needs to be updated in all of its operations.

"The system failed, the city of New Orleans failed, the state of Louisiana failed and the government of the United States failed," Gingrich said. "When you see an American body on an American street sitting there for three days on television because the government can't collect the dead, something has failed.

"Where are the proposals for dramatic, bold, large change that everytime something fails in New Orleans during the reconstruction, we don't defend it ... we fix it?"

Gingrich's appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference was scripted like a presidential campaign stop, with young supporters in red T-shirts passing out buttons and pamphlets.

"We clearly need the Republican Party to reacquire a movement that designs a 21st century Contract with America," Gingrich said, recalling the set of proposals at the heart of his successful 1994 strategy to win congressional races.

Gingrich, who has been on a promotional book tour, said he isn't currently running for president, though he hasn't ruled it out.

"Ideas precede reform," Gingrich said. "If you can't think it, you can't say it and you can't do it."

The former lawmaker from Georgia was accorded "rock star" treatment by those in the crowded hotel ballroom. He was interrupted frequently by standing ovations, hailed with cries of "Newt, Newt, Newt and besieged by young fans eager for a photo with Gingrich.

Conservatives at this conference expressed mounting frustration with the expansion of government and increased spending in the last five years, even with Republicans in control of the White House and Congress.

While the conservatives credit President Bush's leadership in the war against terror and for naming conservatives to the Supreme Court, they're starting now to consider the next wave of conservative leaders, said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

In a straw vote for presidential favorites in 2008, Virginia Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record) received 22 percent of the vote of conference participants. Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) garnered 20 percent, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani 12 percent and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice 10 percent, according to results from Fabrizio, McLaughlin and Associates. Gingrich was at 5 percent.

Gingrich indirectly criticized McCain by attacking the campaign finance law McCain sponsored along with Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., calling it "an assault on the First Amendment."

The law places limits on how much money can be raised by candidates and campaigns, and limits on how that money can be used.

***
On the Net:
Conservative Political Action Conference:
http://www.cpac.org

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 07:23 PM

Reflections on Both Political Parties
Episcopal minister, former Senator, former UN Ambassador, and the man who came in second in the VP search in 2000 has written an op-ed piece in the NYTimes complaining about the current state of the GOP. Here is an excerpt:
But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.
The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.
Former Senator and presidential candidate Bill Bradley also wrote a NYTimes op-ed. This one lays out a long-term strategy for the Democrats and criticizes their reliance on charismatic leaders instead of having a long term strategy. Here's an excerpt:

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.
If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice.
Posted by Scott Jones on March 30, 2005 at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

http://escottjones.typepad.com/myquest/politics/

I caught part of former Senator and current Episcopal minister Danforth's interview on television tonight and he spoke what I considered to be truths about politics and the Christian right. It was his belief, that they're influencing too much in politics, which isn't always good for the country - that politicians are pandering to them - going against beliefs for power, and, that it's working. We here in the U.S. can see that it's getting them elected, and oftentimes keeping them there regardless of the harm they are bringing about, the corruption they have been and are involved in, allowing them to make and implement policies which are, as we've seen, harmful. Pity, but just look at who is doing what, and why, and it's not a pretty picture.

It seems that there are several influential men and women and those of us out here in everyday land; those in politics and those in religion who need to get real - exercise some logic - and quit being so self seeking in all that they do. Some may not even realize that is how it is with them, but they need to think about what it is they are wishing for and why, before it's too late and they get what they want, and are sorry for it. SRH

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 08:27 PM

http://jazzphotography.us/

IN LOVE WITH JAZZ

KARLHEINZ KLUTER
*
Go on site to see the photos.

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 08:40 PM

~*~
The Boncuk protects from Evil Eye
The Boncuk, and there is more
you should know about Turkey

Atatürk, a very short but important note:
The history of modern Turkey starts with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, President of the Turkish Republic from 1923 until his death in 1938.
Dramatic steps were taken by Atatürk, Father of the Turks, this title was officially given to him during his presidency.
In his program of modernization, secular government and education played a major role. Making religious faith a matter of individual conscience, he created a truly secular system in Turkey, where the vast Moslem majority and the small Christian and Jewish minorities are free to practice their faith. As a result of Atatürk's reforms, Turkey -unlike scores of other countries- has fully secular institutions.
These are his main reforms
*the Latin alphabet
*the introduction of the surname
*voting rights for women
and it was he, who made the 23. of April World *Children's Day
Atatürk still nowadays is highly admired. That's why you see his picture everywhere

Balik Express
Nazar Boncuk,
that is the Little Magic Stone that protects one from the *Evil Eye*
This is a typical item, a specialty of this region you should take home as a souvenir, it's called the Boncuk, the Little Magic Stone that protects one from the *Evil Eye* (pronounced 'bon-dschuk'), you will see this blue glass piece everywhere here on the Aegean Coast.
But what is behind this superstition? In a shortened version we will try to explain.

Once upon a time (yes, it starts like in a fairy tale) there was a rock by the sea which, even with the force of a hundred men and a lot of dynamite, couldn't be moved or cracked. And there was also a man in this town by the sea, who was known to carry the evil eye (Nazar). After much effort and endeavor, the town people brought the man to the rock, and the man, upon looking at the rock said, "My! What a big rock this is." The instant he said this, there was a rip and roar and crack and instantly the immense and impossible rock was found to be cracked in two.

The force of the evil eye (or Nazar) is a widely accepted and feared random element in Turkish daily life. The word *Nazar* denotes seeing or looking and is often used in literally translated phrases such as "Nazar touched her", in reference to a young woman, for example, who mysteriously goes blind.

Another typical scenario. A woman gives birth to a healthy child with pink cheeks, all the neighbors come and see the baby. They shower the baby with compliments, commentating especially on how healthy and chubby the baby is. After getting so much attention weeks later the baby is found dead in his crib. No explanation can be found for the death. It is ascribed to Nazar. Compliments made to a specific body part can result in Nazar.
That's why nearly every Turkish mother fixes with a safety pin a small Boncuk on the child's clothes. Once a Boncuk is found cracked, it means it has done his job and immediately a new one has to replace it
***
From a site dedicated to tourism, history, etc, the photographer's page is from this site as well, the one for jazz photographers.
.

http://www.bodrumpages.com/English/thisandthat.html

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2006, 09:59 PM

***
Why would Iran start an arms race in the Middle East?
2/11/2006 5:00:00 PM GMT
Iran has repeatedly explained that its nuclear program is solely intended at peaceful purposes

The Iranian government has repeatedly stated that its NUCLEAR PROGRAME is solely intended at peaceful purposes, simply generating electricity, not warheads. But the West, lead by Washington’s efforts, claim, although they fail to put too fine a point on it, that these are not the true intentions of Tehran, viewed as a security challenge for Western powers.

"Iran poses the single largest foreign policy challenge," said Ilan Berman, the vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council and an expert on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation, arguing "they pose a direct challenge to our goals in the WAR ON TERRORISM."

Also in a private meeting with European diplomats that was held last week, a former senior U.S. official suggested launching a dozen B2 bombers in an air raid aimed at a key Iranian nuclear facilities.

But the official’s suggestion comes in contradiction with what the U.S. and the European Union keep boasting about; using diplomacy to resolve the world’s standoff over Iran’s nukes.

"Iran's radical president has said he would spread this technology as far as he can,"

"It would be a tragedy if we prolonged the life of this regime unnecessarily. Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb would do that," Berman added.

But Phil Giraldi, a former CIA staff officer, disagrees with Berman’s shallow warning of Iran’s alleged threat to the world.

"I do not believe it constitutes a major threat to the U.S. specifically. Last year, undoubtedly, speakers here (at the Conservative Political Action Conference) promoted the war in Iraq," Giraldi said. "All were wrong. Iraq was no threat ... Now we're hearing the same things about Iran."

Giraldi, who served 16 years as staff officer before becoming the chief of base in Barcelona, Spain, was also involved in gathering intelligence across the Middle East and Europe.

"If Iran used the bomb, they would face hundreds of Israeli NUCLEAR WARHEADS, and thousands in the U.S.," Giraldi, who writes for The American Conservative, a print magazine that contends the conservative movement, further states.

"Iran would be annihilated and would cease to exist. They know this."

Prior to Iraq war, Giraldi said, he warned that attacking the country was “neither realistic nor practical”, and could eventually lead to major unintended consequences.

However, the former CIA officer warned that Iran could make the situation in Iraq "untenable" for the Americans and that by aiding the Shia fighters there. to Iran, Giraldi said

He also suggests that Tehran might consider transferring cruise missiles obtained from Ukraine and Shahab missiles with biological and chemical payloads, targeting the U.S. occupation bases in Iraq, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain and elsewhere.

At the same time Giraldi said that shutting down the Strait of Hormuz could send oil skyrocketing to as much as $300 a barrel.

Giraldi says: "is this all worth it? No".

"It's not good policy to go to war on a basis of a 'what if' situation," he said.

"The Soviet Union was contained for 40 years."

"Ronald Reagan was able to destroy it without firing a single shot."

In 2002, the U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH delivered his State of the Union address, announcing his intention to initiate unilateral preemptive wars against any nation he sees as a potential threat, defying almost universal world laws and opinions.

He started IRAQ WAR, and now considers a similar action again the Islamic Republic.

Iran, a signatory of the NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY, doesn’t wish for a direct military confrontation with the U.S., but it can aspire to deter what seems to be an imminent threat to its military and nuclear facilities, should the U.S. or any of its allies decide to attack it.

The options Iran would consider to fulfill its goals and protect itself is developing the capability to inflict unacceptable catastrophic damage on American interests or military forces, on the American fleet in the Persian Gulf, or even on the American homeland itself.

However, numerous analysts have stated that the possibility of an American strike on Iran have become weaker than it was in 2002 and 2003, knowing the suffering and continuous catastrophes inflicted upon the American troops in Iraq. But Tehran doesn’t believe that that shift in geostrategic dynamics will be permanent.

Iran doesn’t seek starting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East region, as it will pose a threat to its lands and facilities as well. The only country that stands as a threat to the Middle East security and stability is Israel, believed to possess about 300 NUCLEAR WARHEADS and refuses to sign the NPT.

The Islamic Republic seeks developing nuclear technology to meet the rising demand for energy on one hand and to protect any future military attack by the U.S. or Israel on the other.

http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/review/article_full_story.asp?service_ID=10549
The problem is, doesn't this man who is running Iran (can't seem to get his name straight) realize that this administration is for real with their plans for the oil lands, that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld team are right on track with what they have planned for his region? He's playing right into their hands. His rhetoric is all they need it seems. They, in all likelyhood are jumping up and down for joy at his shortsightedness. He's given, and is still giving them all they need to strike him down and be in the catbird seat. But here's the catch, will other countries stand by, just watching, while we take control of the middle east?

the magnificent goldberg

February 12th, 2006, 03:28 AM

From what we learned of Winston Churchill here in the states, we just loved him. When I heard how disliked he had become in Britain, I was amazed, it just stunned me, but then I only remember him from early news clips, and other media stories, and bio's on him, or about certain battles and doings, where he was rallying against the Nazi's and Facists. We saw him doing a bang up job of it; it were as if he were willing all of us to win the war. At least that is how it seemed to all of us, how he was believed to be by just about everyone here in the states. He, to us, was a hero of the highest rank, and we loved his stubborn and belligerent ways. We knew him we thought, we knew of his funny mannerisms, his love of painting, of his wife Clementine, and his family. We really did pretty much idolize him, or that is how it looked to me growing up.

It wasn't until much later on that I learned of his mother being American, and being part American Indian as well. I was stunned by that, especially knowing the little I've read and heard of the British class system. I was surprised that he was ever accepted at all. Other than the war, we really didn't know much about his poltical beliefs, or his actions in them.

He, I believe, was the man for his time, the man to help win WWII. Without him, many of us here in the states believe Hitler would have had a much greater chance of making us suffer more from that war; some believe he would have even won it.

Churchill after the war, if not before, made errors in governing that just didn't seem like what we thought he would do. We here in the U.S. were't capable of thinking he would do anything but great things, not the so unwise incident you talk about. He wasn't governing like we thought he would, or should have, in our own minds. We learned little of his politics post WWII, it wasn't a matter which was being taught in my school, not that we coudn't have kept up with him better, but we had our own interests going on. For the war, we felt he was perfect, that is how we perceived him. We really did think he was the greatest. Almost a minor god in the scheme of things. We've since heard he would have been wiser just to know when to stop, to quit, and just go into private life.

Have you read the books about his mother "Jennie"? They are interesting, and I have a couple of ones on Winstons life as well. Such an interesting man and his mother was as well.

He was certainly the right man for the job in WWII; absolutely. In 1910 however, he was a member of Asquith's Liberal Government; changed sides to the Conservatives in the 1920s sometime, I think. Whether as Liberal or Conservative, he was always very much against the working class. He was kicked out after the war; people - THE people, that is - wanted the benefits of defeating Hitler and knew that most of the reforms that had been put in place during the war (Education Act etc) had been inspired by the Labour members of Churchill's Coalition Government. So we had the first true Labour Government which created the National Health Service, a decent social security system and nationalised many industries (which they probably shouldn't have). Churchill only secured the popular vote in 1951 because, while doing all this, the Labour Government couldn't organise removing food rationing, which was vastly unpopular.

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2006, 02:07 PM

~
Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a hunting trip in Texas, The Associated Press reports.

the magnificent goldberg

February 12th, 2006, 02:13 PM

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Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a hunting trip in Texas, The Associated Press reports.

Is he President now?

MG

Coolguy

February 12th, 2006, 02:16 PM

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Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a hunting trip in Texas, The Associated Press reports.

There's no such thing as an accident.

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2006, 02:39 PM

This should all be posted in the "Good Jokes" thread.

Too funny.:)

the magnificent goldberg

February 12th, 2006, 02:49 PM

This should all be posted in the "Good Jokes" thread.

Too funny.:)

If he ain't Prez now, it's a BAD joke.

And if he is....

MG

truthseeker

February 12th, 2006, 05:08 PM

[QUOTE=Saundra Hummer]~*~

A bit more on Molly Ivins. Remember this about Molly, on newscasts, on talkshows, or in print, there are no disguises in her makeup. She makes no pretense, nor apologies, that is unless she mistates or makes a mistake in an article, and then it is she who jumps in first to set the record straight. How refreshing! It really is. Sure, she is biased and like me, I feel she has good reason to be.

I know there are those who are turned off by her homey, down Texas way of using the local colloquialisms - but remember - all countries, as well as regions have them and using them as she does, doesn't make her take on the business of state any less true. Just not so dull Her way of telling us what is happening gives us a break from the stuffiness of acadamia, she makes it all so much easier to learn. No dryness with her, except an acerbic and dry wit at times. There's no pretending by her that she's something she isn't. Straight forward humorous reporting, telling it like it is. Gotta Love Her.
SRH...***

By Truthseeker: Kool-Aid drinking moonbat......

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2006, 06:07 PM

~~***~~
Robert Scheer
Creators Syndicate
02.10.06
Terrorism: a president's best friend
Bush morphs 'War on Terror' into war on common sense.

Where would the Bush administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.

Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security -- 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively -- aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the president get away with blindly dumping another $120 billion into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?

In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36 billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president re-elected after promising to expand, rather than curtail health-care services to seniors.

Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.

These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the president insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his opprobrium, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that shill for him in the media, by doing just that.

To begin with, we must remember that this "war" was launched against an enemy, still mostly at large, who on Sept. 11 accomplished phenomenal destruction and suffering with armaments no fiercer or costly than some box-cutters. Their key weapon, in fact, was suicidal fanaticism.

Yet, rather than sensibly investing in aggressive global detective work, collaborating with our European allies, engaging meaningfully with an independent and skeptical Arab world, and working to protect vulnerable U.S. sites such as nuclear-power plants, our leaders decided to turn logic on its head and make ignorance about the enemy into a virtue, slash civil liberties and recklessly invade a major Muslim country that had no connection to the attacks.

In other words, our response to Sept. 11 has been almost completely military in nature, granting the Defense Department an excuse to increase spending by 48 percent in just four years. Yet, despite all this spending, and the loss of life that has accompanied it, our standing in the Muslim world has been in freefall since we invaded Iraq, we have never captured or killed Osama bin Laden or his top strongman, we don't know how to "fix" Iraq or Afghanistan and we have greatly strengthened the hand of our rivals in Iran.

We don't even know, as the Sept. 11 commission report revealed, much of anything about the 15 Saudi hijackers and their four leaders from other parts of the Arab world who committed the Sept. 11 attacks. We do know, however, that they weren't from Iraq, weren't funded by Iraq and weren't trained by or in Iraq. Nevertheless, the huge elephant in the Bush budget is the war and occupation of Iraq, now approaching its third anniversary, not the effort to dismantle al-Qaida.

"Since 2001, the administration ... liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan," boasts the Bush budget document. Ah, but if they have been liberated, then why the need for an additional $50 billion emergency "bridge funding" in 2007, itself coming on the heels of a supplementary $70 billion budget request last week? The answer provided by the report is that Iraq is far from being stabilized and that in Afghanistan "enemy activity has increased over the past year."

Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership in Congress is still unwilling to challenge the necessity of "winning" the war in Iraq, and as a result, its complaints about cutting needed domestic programs are framed exclusively as an argument against making Bush's tax cuts permanent. It is a losing argument, because it leaves Bush as both the big spender and the big tax-cutter once again, posturing as the savior of the taxpayer when he is in fact quite the opposite for all but the wealthiest Americans. For more, please see the Robert Scheer archive.

Our standing in the Muslim world has been in freefall since we invaded Iraq.
***
(c) 2006 Creators Syndicate

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=20346

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2006, 07:34 PM

~~~~~
The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history…. Our military men and women…were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters…?”: William Sloane Coffin Biography - Clergyman, Social Activist 1924-

~
“After the invasion of Iraq, I again heard from Vietnamese the excuse that Americans were good people who happened to have bad leaders. I wondered how long we can get away with that one. My fear is that we are no longer a nation at war but have become a nation of war. My hope is that we will pull back from empire and once again embrace our republic.”: Peter Davis Biography - Filmmaker, Journalist, Writer, 1937-

~
“Part of the main plan of imperialism… is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we will re-order the past…What’s more truly frightening is the defacement, the mutilation, and ultimately the eradication of history in order to create…an order that is favorable to the United States.” : Edward Said Biography - Palestinian Activist, Literary Critic, Writer, Musician, 1935-2003

~
“Kids don’t have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don’t have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. ”: Bruce “Utah” Phillips Biography - Songwriter, Storyteller, Humorist, Philosopher, 1935
~

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2006, 07:43 PM

*****
CIA chief sacked for opposing tortureBy Sarah Baxter and Michael Smith
02/12/06

"The Times" -- -- Washington -- The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as “water boarding”, intelligence sources have claimed.

Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was “not quite as aggressive as he might have been” in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: “It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.”

Grenier also opposed “excessive” interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.

Porter Goss, who was appointed head of the CIA in August 2004 with a mission to “clean house”, has been angered by a series of leaks from CIA insiders, including revelations about “black sites” in Europe where top Al-Qaeda detainees were said to have been held.

In last Friday’s New York Times, Goss wrote that leakers within the CIA were damaging the agency’s ability to fight terrorism and causing foreign intelligence organisations to lose confidence. “Too many of my counterparts from other countries have told me, ‘You Americans can’t keep a secret’.”

Goss is believed to have blamed Grenier for allowing leaks to occur on his watch.

Since the appointment of Goss, the CIA has lost almost all its high-level directors amid considerable turmoil.

AB “Buzzy” Krongard, a former executive director of the CIA who resigned shortly after Goss’s arrival, said the leaks were unlikely to stop soon, despite proposals to subject officers to more lie detector tests.

Krongard said it was up to President George Bush to stop the rot. “The agency has only one client: the president of the United States,” he said. “The reorganisation is the way this president wanted it. If he is unwilling to reform it, the agency will go on as it is.”

“History will judge how good an idea it was to destroy the teams and the programmes that were in place.”

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11886.htm

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2006, 10:51 PM

***
Cheney Accidentally Shoots Fellow Hunter
By LYNN BREZOSKY and NEDRA PICKLER,
Associated Press Writers
54 minutes ago

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.

Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday.

"He is stable and doing well. It was almost like he was spending time with me in my living room," said hospital administrator Peter Banko, who visited Whittington.

Banko said Whittington was in the intensive care unit because his condition warranted it, but he didn't elaborate. Whittington sent word through a hospital official that he would have no comment on the incident out of respect for Cheney.

The accident occurred Saturday at a ranch in south Texas where the vice president and several companions were hunting quail. It was not reported publicly by the vice president's office for nearly 24 hours, and then only after it was reported locally by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times on its Web site Sunday.

Katharine Armstrong, the ranch's owner, said Sunday that Cheney was using a 28-gauge shotgun and that Whittington was about 30 yards away when he was hit in the cheek, neck and chest.

Each of the hunters was wearing a bright orange vest at the time, Armstrong told reporters at the ranch about 60 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. She said Whittington was "alert and doing fine."

"He is very, very lucky that nothing seriously was injured," Sally Whittington said in a story in Sunday's online edition of The Dallas Morning News. She said her father was being observed because of swelling from some of the welts on his neck.

"It looks like chicken pox, kind of," she said of her father's face.

Armstrong told The Associated Press emergency personnel traveling with Cheney tended to Whittington before an ambulance — routinely on call because of the vice president's presence — took him to a hospital in Kingsville. From there, Whittington was flown by helicopter to Corpus Christi about 40 miles away.

Cheney's spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, said the vice president met with Whittington at the hospital on Sunday. Cheney "was pleased to see that he's doing fine and in good spirits," she said.

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

Whittington shot a bird and went to retrieve it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.

Whittington "came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself," Armstrong said.

"The vice president didn't see him," she continued. "The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good."

Whittington has been a private practice attorney in Austin since 1950 and has long been active in Texas Republican politics. He's been appointed to several state boards, including when then-Gov. George W. Bush named him to the Texas Funeral Service Commission.

McBride said the vice president's office did not tell reporters about the accident Saturday because they were deferring to Armstrong to handle the announcement of what happened on her property. Armstrong called the local paper about the incident on Sunday.

Armstrong, owner of the Armstrong Ranch where the accident occurred, said Whittington was bleeding after he was shot and Cheney was very apologetic.

"It broke the skin," she said of the shotgun pellets. "It knocked him silly. But he was fine. He was talking. His eyes were open. It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that.

"Fortunately, the vice president has got a lot of medical people around him and so they were right there and probably more cautious than we would have been," she said. "The vice president has got an ambulance on call, so the ambulance came."

Cheney is an avid hunter who makes annual trips to South Dakota to hunt pheasants. He also travels frequently to Arkansas to hunt ducks, among other places.

Armstrong said Cheney is a longtime friend who comes to the ranch to hunt about once a year and is "a very safe sportsman." She said Whittington is a regular, too, but she thought it was the first time the two men hunted together.

"This is something that happens from time to time. You know, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.

The 50,000-acre Armstrong ranch has been in the influential south Texas family since the turn of the last century. Katharine is the daughter of Tobin Armstrong, a politically connected rancher who has been a guest at the White House and spent 48 years as director of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. He died in October. Cheney was among the dignitaries who attended his funeral.

Cheney was legally hunting with a license he purchased in November, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Steve Lightfoot said. The vice president flew back to Washington on Sunday evening, according to his office.

Nedra Pickler reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber in Dallas contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/

the magnificent goldberg

February 13th, 2006, 03:31 AM

jazz_man

February 13th, 2006, 03:08 PM

John Nichols

Sure, it's been fun joking about the fact that Dick Cheney obtained five -- count them, five -- deferments to avoid serving in the military during the Vietnam War. Sure, its been amusing to recount his limp claim that the man who served as George Bush I's Secretary of Defense had "other priorities" than taking up arms in defense of his country. Sure, it was a laugh when the chief cheerleader for the war in Iraq mocked John Kerry for having actually carried a weapon in a time of war.

But it is time to stop laughing at Dick Cheney's expense.

Now that the vice president has accidentally shot and wounded a companion on a quail hunt at the elite Texas ranch where rich men play with guns -- spraying his 78-year-old victim, er, friend, in the face and chest with shotgun pellets and sending the man to the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital -- it has become clear that Cheney was doing the country a service when he avoided service.

Despite the best efforts of Cheney's apologists to have it otherwise, the man the vice president misstook for a quail, millionaire attorney Harry Whittington, was in plain sight, wearing a bright orange vest at the time the vice president blasted him.

U.S. troops had enough problems in Vietnam without letting a trigger-happy incompetent like Dick Cheney start shooting things up from behind the lines.

Those deferments were well and wisely issued.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=59468

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 03:15 PM

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=59468

Isn't it odd how things work? How things turn out?

The shot man is being reported as the one who hired on Dick Cheney with Halliburton in the first place. Some are saying it is ironic, and a just reward.

the magnificent goldberg

February 13th, 2006, 03:16 PM

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=59468

Pardon my ignorance but, if Cheney's military service was only deferred, does that mean he could be called to the colours now?

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 03:25 PM

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=59468

Here's the comments from the site which jazz_man posted:

Some are juvinile, just silly, while others are somewhat of a kick

Now the question is whether Cheney will start to act all macho, talking about "how he shot a man". Will he mention that it was during QUAIL hunting? Doubt it!

Posted by JKBRISCOE 02/12/2006 @ 10:28pm | ignore this person

quail are bright orange... right?

Posted by WILL C. 02/12/2006 @ 10:33pm | ignore this person
*

terribly sad event, i hope the poor man recovers with minimal visible scarring, and yes, this is the closest Mighty Dick will ever come in his life to first-hand comprehension of the experience he has inflicted many times worse on so many people in this stupid war

someone should say: "See, Diamond Dick? When one man shoots another it looks like this, only a lot worse when we aren't using toy bird guns but rather military hardware. This is what it looks like, what it feels like. Do you feel proud? Strong?"

Posted by ZERO 02/12/2006 @ 10:34pm | ignore this person
*
Harry Whittington...

obviously not for us

Posted by WILL C. 02/12/2006 @ 10:38pm | ignore this person
*

Cheney feels very badly, I'm sure. A 78 yo friend? In the ICU. I oppose all of what he is politically, I hate what he stands for and what he has done to our once great nation but he has likely shortened the life of someone that is counting their time in years not decades.

Too many metaphors for this failed misadministration. Add this one to the list. The VP should not be handling a shotgun let alone an army, literally.

Posted by CAPT 02/13/2006 @ 12:05am | ignore this person
*
I hope Cheney invites some wack job liberals on his next hunting expedition!

Posted by BUSH MAN 02/13/2006 @ 12:13am | ignore this person
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I hope Cheney invites some wack job liberals on his next hunting expedition!

Posted by BUSH MAN 02/13/2006 @ 12:14am | ignore this person
*
Yo' Capt, you don't like it, move to France, Canada or Germany! I'm sure you'll find it easy getting a job in the lands of double-digit unemployment!

Posted by BUSH MAN 02/13/2006 @ 12:16am | ignore this person
*

Bob Cesca: EXCLUSIVE: First Photo of Cheney Shooting Victim [news.yahoo.com]

The above photo shows Vice President Dick Cheney speaking to reporters at the bedside of the man who he "accidentally" shot this weekend while on a hunting trip in Texas (full story).

A spokesman for the vice president identified the shooting victim as Harry Whittington, but sources close to the incident suggest "Harry Whittington" is a Secret Service code name for Cheney's indicted former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

"Honestly, I didn't mean to shoot Scoot-- I mean, Harry Whittington," the vice president told reporters in "Mr. Whittington's" hospital recovery room.

The shooting occurred several days after it was revealed that Mr. Libby told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald he was ordered by Vice President Cheney to leak classified national security documents to the press. The revelation could cost Cheney his job and whatever remains of his reputation amongst both Democrats and Republicans.

An EMT who attended to "Mr. Whittington" told the Huffington Post that, during the ambulance ride, he overheard Cheney mumbling, "Who's leaking now, f***ker?" and, "F***ker survived. Gotta work on my aim."

The EMT later remarked to the vice president, "Harry Whittington? That sounds like a made-up name." When contacted for clarification on Cheney's reply, the Huffington Post has learned the emergency worker has disappeared.

*****end of clip*****
Talk about coincidence?

capt

Posted by CAPT 02/13/2006 @ 12:38am | ignore this person

jazz_man

February 13th, 2006, 03:27 PM

Pardon my ignorance but, if Cheney's military service was only deferred, does that mean he could be called to the colours now?

MG

You're kiddin' right? To answer your question seriously though, once the draft ended, deferments were no longer necessary. Should the draft ever be re-instituted, there are also age limits, medical limitations, and family/political connections (see dubya's Texas National Guard "service"), all of which would preclude him from being called to the colours.

Nice thought though...would probably result in the withdrawal from Iraq in a matter of a nanosecond or two.

the magnificent goldberg

February 13th, 2006, 03:29 PM

You're kiddin' right? To answer your question seriously though, once the draft ended, deferments were no longer necessary. Should the draft ever be re-instituted, there are also age limits, medical limitations, and family/political connections (see dubya's Texas National Guard "service"), all of which would preclude him from being called to the colours.

Nice thought though...would probably result in the withdrawal from Iraq in a matter of a nanosecond or two.

Yes, I was kidding, but I had no idea that the draft had ended. Yer learn summat every day.

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 05:25 PM

Now You Know: A THING CALLED LOVE
Fast Facts About Love
Scientists Say We Don't Control Love
Our Body Chemistry Does
By DAN KULPINSKI,
AOL RESEARCH & LEARN
The National Geographic Channel examines the science of love in 'What's Sexy?', Feb. 13 at 9PM ET/PT. The show repeats Feb. 19 at 7PM ET/PT. Watch Video:
Preview of 'What's Sexy?'Learn More:***
(Feb. 8) - The National Geographic Society has gone head over heels for love this year with a cover story in the February issue of 'National Geographic' and a TV special called 'What's Sexy?' airing Feb. 13 and 19 on the National Geographic Channel.
***
They've taken the scientific angle to reveal what turns men and women on, how people fall in love and why many couples stay together for decades. Here are some tidbits I gleaned from the magazine article and an advance copy of the TV show.
***

1. Follow your nose (sweat is important): A Swiss scientist did an experiment in which he asked 49 women to smell sweaty T-shirts previously worn by unidentified men. The women rated the shirts from best-smelling to worst-smelling. The result: Women preferred the scent of a T-shirt worn by a man whose genotype was most different from hers. The underlying reason could be that women who mate with men with different genes from hers will produce offspring with stronger immune systems.

2. Riding a roller coaster on a first date is more likely to lead to a second date: Scary or new situations can help attract people to each other, because those situations trigger a chemical in the brain -- dopamine -- that can stimulate feelings of attraction.

3. A candlelight dinner really works: In low light, your pupils dilate and can make you more attractive to your dinner date. Consciously or subconsciously, people find large pupils attractive -- the bigger the better.

4. Love and mental illness have some things in common: Well, love and obssessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) could have a similar chemical profile. One study showed that people in love and people with OCD both had low levels of serotonin, an important neurotransmitter.

5. Yes, you can go to kissing school: Writer Lauren Slater attended a seven-hour course at The Kissing School, where she learned the importance of foreplay -- foot rubs, eye contact and the like -- before kissing.
***
SOURCES:
Slater, Lauren. "So What, Really, Is This Thing Called Love." National Geographic Magazine. February 2006. National Geographic Society. http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0602/feature2/index.html
"What's Sexy?"National Geographic Channel. Airs Feb. 13 and 19, 2006. National Geographic Society.

http://reference.aol.com/fast-facts/science?id=20060208114009990001

http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&pmmsid=1463043

If someone is attracted to you without aftershaves, perfumes, or colognes, then they're attracted to you for you, not a made up person. Remember, they will get a whiff of the real you one day, and maybe they'll just take off. Funny.

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 06:32 PM

***
*
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole: Nuremburg War Tribunal regarding wars of aggression

*
"A Society that is in its higher circles and middle levels widely believed to be a network of smart rackets does not produce men with an inner moral sense; a society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience. A society that narrows the meaning of "success" to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal. Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed." --- The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills

*
"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of the colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, (s)he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." -- Robert F. Kennedy

*

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 06:46 PM

I hope the radio stations throughout the USA have been continually following the news by playing Tom Lehrer's "The hunting song":

People ask me how I do it
And I say there's nothing to it.
You just stand there looking cute
And, when something moves, you shoot.
And there's ten stuffed heads in my trophy room right now:
Two game wardens;
Seven hunters;
And a pure bred Guernsey cow.

MGSunday, February 12, 2006
You just stand there looking cute, And when something moves, you shoot

Lech Walesa suggests to Cuban exiles in Florida that they should prepare for what happens after Castro dies. Yeah, they should really do that instead of whatever it is they’ve been doing for the last 50 years.

Cheney exercised one of the little-known “inherent rights of the vice presidency,” and shot a 78-year old man.

Harry Whittington, who has just found his way into history trivia quizzes for decades to come, may have been a Republican, a lawyer and a hunter, but he also campaigned for better treatment of retarded prisoners, including not, you know, executing them.

They didn’t make an announcement until the local press got hold of the story over a day later. Say, do you think they reported the shooting to the police? Oh, and despite the fact that Cheney has his own personal ambulance, which did take Whittington to the hospital (insert your own ambulance-chaser joke here), it didn’t do so until nearly 3 hours after he was shot. What’s that about?

I’m gonna have that Tom Lehrer song – you know the one I mean – going through my head the rest of the day.

The United Arab Emirates sentences 26 men who attended a gay wedding (!) to 5 years each for being gay.
posted by WIIIAI at 2/12/2006 06:43:00 PM

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Victimless
But I sure as H.E. double hockey sticks believe in something for victims of rape
That’s what friends do -- they share information and share strategic thoughts
It’s like a padded cell – on wheels!
If we didn’t build on former cemeteries, we would never build
And the world ought to call them on it
Give the customers what they want
Actually, “bling handler” sounds kind of dirty
The short answer is, we didn’t think we needed to
Bringing more transparency to this relationship

http://whateveritisimagainstit.blogspot.com/2006/02/you-just-stand-there-looking-cute-and.html
*

Same words to the song you posted MG, must be it.

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 07:20 PM

~~~***~~~
The Pentagon’s War on the Internet
By Mike Whitney
02/13/06 "ICH' -- -- The Pentagon has developed a comprehensive strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the free flow of information. The plan appears in a recently declassified document, “The Information Operations Roadmap”, which was provided under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and revealed in an article by the BBC. The Pentagon sees the internet in terms of a military adversary that poses a vital threat to its stated mission of global domination. This explains the confrontational language in the document which speaks of “fighting the net”; implying that the internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system."

The Defense Dept. places a high-value on controlling information. The new program illustrates their determination to establish the parameters of free speech.

The Pentagon sees information as essential in manipulating public perceptions and, thus, a crucial tool in eliciting support for unpopular policies. The recent revelations of the military placing propaganda in the foreign press demonstrate the importance that is given to co-opting public opinion.

Information-warfare is used to create an impenetrable cloud around the activities of government so that decisions can be made without dissent. The smokescreen of deception that encompasses the Bush administration has less to do with prevaricating politicians than it does with a clearly articulated policy of obfuscation. “The Information Operations Roadmap” is solely intended to undermine the principle of an informed citizenry.

The Pentagon’s focus on the internet tells us a great deal about the mainstream media and its connection to the political establishment.

Why, for example, would the Pentagon see the internet as a greater threat than the mainstream media, where an estimated 75% of Americans get their news?

The reason is clear; because the MSM is already a fully-integrated part of the corporate-system providing a 24 hour per day streaming of business-friendly news. Today’s MSM operates as a de-facto franchise of the Pentagon, a reliable and sophisticated propagandist for Washington’s wars of aggression and political subterfuge.

The internet, on the other hand, is the last bastion of American democracy; a virtual world where reliable information moves instantly from person to person without passing through the corporate filter. Online visitors can get a clear picture of their governments’ depredations with a click of the mouse. This is the liberalization of the news, an open source of mind-expanding information that elevates citizen awareness of complex issues and threatens the status quo.

The Pentagon program is just one facet of a broader culture of deception; a pervasive ethos of dishonesty that envelopes all aspects of the Bush White House. The “Strategic Intelligence” Dept is a division of the Defense establishment that is entirely devoted to concealing, distorting, omitting and manipulating the truth.

In what way is “strategic intelligence” different from plain intelligence?

It is information that is shaped in a way that meets the needs of a particular group. In other words, it is not the truth at all, but a fabrication, a fiction, a lie.

Strategic intelligence is an oxymoron; a tidy bit of Orwellian doublespeak that reflects the deeply rooted cynicism of its authors.

The internet is a logical target for the Pentagon’s electronic warfare. Already the Downing Street memos, Bush’s bombing-threats against Al Jazeera, the fraudulent 2004 elections, and the leveling of Falluja, have disrupted the smooth execution of Bush’s wars. It is understandable that Rumsfeld and Co. would seek to transform this potential enemy into an ally, much as it has done with the MSM.

The Pentagon’s plans for engaging in “virtual warfare” are impressive. As BBC notes: “The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.” (BBC)

The enemy, of course, is you, dear reader, or anyone who refuses to accept their role as a witless-cog in new world order. Seizing the internet is a prudent way of controlling every piece of information that one experiences from cradle to grave; all necessary for an orderly police-state.

The Information Operations Roadmap (IOR) recommends that psychological operations (Psyops) “should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet.” No idea is too costly or too far-fetched that it escapes the serious consideration of the Pentagon chieftains.

The War Dept. is planning to insert itself into every area of the internet from blogs to chat rooms, from leftist web sites to editorial commentary. The objective is to challenge any tidbit of information that appears on the web that may counter the official narrative; the fairytale of benign American intervention to promote democracy and human rights across the planet.

The IOR aspires to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum" and develop the capability to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". (BBC)

Full spectrum dominance.

The ultimate goal of the Pentagon is to create an internet-paradigm that corresponds to the corporate mainstream model, devoid of imagination or divergent points of view. They envision an internet that is increasingly restricted by the gluttonous influence of industry and its vast “tapestry of lies”.

The internet is the modern-day marketplace of ideas, an invaluable resource for human curiosity and organized resistance. It provides a direct link between the explosive power of ideas and engaged citizen involvement. (aka; participatory democracy)

The Pentagon is laying the groundwork for privatizing the internet so the information-revolution can be transformed into an information-tyranny, extending to all areas of communications and serving the exclusive interests of a few well-heeled American plutocrats.

***

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11901.htm

.

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 10:41 PM

***
White House under gun for Cheney shooting mishap
By Patricia Wilson
Mon Feb 13, 8:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House was bombarded with questions on Monday about why it failed to go public with news that Vice President Dick Cheney shot a fellow quail hunter until the day after the accident.

The victim, Harry Whittington, 78, took pellets in his cheek, neck and chest when Cheney fired his shotgun while aiming for a bird during a hunt in southern Texas on Saturday, and was in stable condition at a Corpus Christi hospital.

Whittington was moved out of intensive care on Monday afternoon but Peter Banko, administrator of Christus Spohn Hospital, said he did not know when Whittington would be discharged.

"His condition continues to be stable ... it's not critical, it's not serious. He's in stable condition, doing extremely well," Banko said.

The accident happened about 5:30 p.m. on a private ranch about 200 miles south of San Antonio, where the vice president has hunted previously. Whittington was treated on the scene by Cheney's traveling medical detail before being taken by helicopter to the hospital.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said on Monday that Cheney would receive a warning citation for not having a special bird-hunting stamp on a Texas hunting license he bought earlier.

Cheney's office said in the only statement it has issued on the shooting that his staff had purchased the license thinking it covered quail hunting, but had not been told about the stamp.

"The Vice President has sent a $7 check to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, which is the cost of an upland game bird stamp," the statement said.

NOT REPORTED

The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office until Sunday afternoon and then only after an account provided by the ranch's owner appeared on the Web site of the local newspaper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

In a testy exchange with reporters on Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan faced dozens of questions about the propriety of a private citizen making public a shooting incident involving the vice president and whether Cheney had followed White House protocol.

McClellan said President George W. Bush and senior aides were first told by staff in the Situation Room that there had been an accident in Cheney's hunting party and that the president learned later on Saturday night that the vice president had been the shooter.

"I think he was informed in a relatively reasonable time," McClellan said at the news briefing.

McClellan said the vice president's staff did not tell reporters about the accident on Saturday because they were concerned about getting Whittington medical attention and were still gathering facts.

Cheney and the owner of the property, Katharine Armstrong, then agreed that she should provide the information to the public about an accident that happened on her ranch.

"The vice president spoke with Mrs. Katharine Armstrong, and they agreed that she should make that information public," McClellan said. "She was an eyewitness. She saw what occurred and she called her local paper to provide those facts."

NATIONAL MEDIA IN DARK

Armstrong said it wasn't until Sunday that she telephoned the Caller-Times. She did not notify the national media or the White House press corps.

McClellan declined to say if he was satisfied with the way it was handled.

"You can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job," he said.

McClellan said he found out that Cheney was involved at 6 a.m. on Sunday and urged that information be made available as quickly as possible.

According to Armstrong's account, she saw the incident from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter, identified by the Caller-Times on Monday as Pam Willeford, the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein, got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

As Whittington went to retrieve a bird he had shot, Cheney and Willeford spotted a second covey.

Whittington came up behind and failed to signal that he was there or announce himself, which is proper protocol for hunters. Cheney, an experienced hunter, fired his shotgun without realizing that Whittington had approached the group.

A statement from the Kennedy County Sheriff's department said an investigation, though somewhat delayed because of communication problems at the ranch, had found "there was no alcohol or misconduct involved in the incident."

http://news.yahoo.com/

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2006, 10:56 PM

***
CONSPIRACY THEORISTS WILL HAVE A FIELD-DAY WITH THIS ONE
Cheney Apparently Breaks Key Hunting Rule
By NEDRA PICKLER,
Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 33 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney apparently broke the No. 1 rule of hunting: Be sure of what you're shooting at. He also violated Texas game law by failing to buy a hunting stamp.

Cheney wounded fellow hunter Harry Whittington in the face, neck and chest Saturday, apparently because he didn't see Whittington approaching as he fired on a covey of quail in Texas.

Hunting safety experts interviewed Monday agreed it would have been a good idea for Whittington to announce himself — something he apparently didn't do, according to a witness. But they stressed that the shooter is responsible for avoiding other people.

"It's incumbent upon the shooter to assess the situation and make sure it's a safe shot," said Mark Birkhauser, president-elect of the International Hunter Education Association and hunter education coordinator in New Mexico. "Once you squeeze that trigger, you can't bring that shot back."

The Parks and Wildlife Department said Cheney and Whittington will be given warning citations for violating game law by not having an upland game bird stamp, a requirement that went into effect in September. Cheney had a $125 nonresident hunting license, the vice president's office said Monday night in a statement, and has sent a $7 check to cover the cost of the stamp.

Cheney, an experienced hunter, has not commented publicly about the accident. He avoided reporters by leaving an Oval Office meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan before the press was escorted in.

President Bush was told about Cheney's involvement in the accident shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday — about an hour after it occurred — but the White House did not disclose the accident until Sunday afternoon, and then only in response to press questions. Press secretary Scott McClellan said he did not know until Sunday morning that Cheney had shot someone.

Facing a press corps upset that news had been withheld, McClellan said, "I think you can always look back at these issues and look at how to do a better job."

Katharine Armstrong, the owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, said she told Cheney on Sunday morning that she was going to inform the local paper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. She said he agreed, and the newspaper reported it on its Web site Sunday afternoon.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said that about an hour after Cheney shot Whittington, the head of the Secret Service's local office called the Kenedy County sheriff to report the accident. "They made arrangements at the sheriff's request to have deputies come out and interview the vice president the following morning at 8 a.m. and that indeed did happen," Zahren said.

At least one deputy showed up at the ranch's front gate later in the evening and asked to speak to Cheney but was turned away by the Secret Service, Zahren said. There was some miscommunication that arrangements had already been made to interview the vice president, he said.

Gilbert San Miguel, chief deputy sheriff for Kenedy County, said the report had not been completed Monday and that it was being handled as a hunting accident, although he would not comment about what that meant they were investigating.

He said his department's investigation had found that alcohol was not a factor in the shooting, but he would not elaborate about how that had been determined. The Texas Parks and Wildlife hunting accident report also said neither Cheney nor Whittington appeared to be under the influence of intoxicants or drugs.

Whittington, a prominent Republican attorney in the Texas capital of Austin, was in stable condition at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial and was moved from intensive care to a "step-down unit" Monday. Doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.

Armstrong said the accident occurred toward the end of the hunt, as darkness was encroaching and they were preparing to go inside. Whittington was retrieving from tall grass a bird he had shot.

Cheney and another hunter, Pamela Willeford, the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, moved on to another covey of quail — Armstrong estimated it was roughly 100-150 yards away — and Cheney fired on a bird just as Whittington rejoined them. She said Whittington was in tall grass and thick brush about 30 yards away, which made it difficult for Cheney to see him, although both men were wearing bright-orange safety vests. She said Whittington made a mistake by not vocally announcing that he had walked up to rejoin the hunting line.

Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press.

She said Cheney stayed "close but cool" while the agents and medical personnel treated Whittington, then took him away via ambulance to the hospital. Later, the hunting group sat down for dinner while Whittington was being treated, receiving updates from a family member at the hospital. Armstrong described Cheney's demeanor during dinner as "very worried" about Whittington.

Willeford told The Dallas Morning News in a story for Tuesday editions that she had hunted with Cheney before and would do so again. "He's a great shot. He's very safety conscious. This is something that unfortunately was a bad accident and when you're with a group like that, he's safe or safer than all the rest of us," she said.

Duane Harvey, president of the Wisconsin Hunter Education Instructors Association, said if Whittington had made his presence known "that would have been a polite thing to do." But, he added, "it's still the fault upon the shooter to identify his target and what is beyond it."

Despite all the safety tips and training, hunting accidents are an unfortunate part of the sport. In Texas, there were 30 accidents and two hunting deaths last year, according to the state Parks and Wildlife Department. National figures kept by the International Hunter Education Association show 744 shooting accidents, with 74 deaths, in 2002, the last year for which figures were available. Twenty-six accidents involving quail hunting were reported.

The association estimates there are 15.7 million hunters who will spend about 250 million days hunting in the United States this year.

Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, said the accident wouldn't keep him from going on a bipartisan hunt with Cheney. "I would be proud to hunt with the vice president — cautious, but proud," he told reporters.

***

Associated Press writers Elizabeth White in Washington, T.A. Badger in Sarita, Texas, Jim Vertuno in Austin, Lynn Brezosky in Corpus Christi and Dan Lewerenz in Cheyenne, Wyo., contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:

The White House: [url]http://www.whitehouse.gov

http://news.yahoo.com

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 12:48 AM

Medicine Recall.....Please Read ___
All drugs containing PHENYLPROPANOLAMINE are being recalled.
You may want to try calling the 800 number listed on most
drug boxes and inquire about a REFUND. Please read this
CAREFULLY. Also, please pass this on to everyone you know.

STOP TAKING anything containing this ingredient. It has been
linked to increased hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in brain)
among women ages 18-49 in the three days after starting use
of medication. Problems were not found in men, but the FDA
recommended that everyone (even children) seek alternative
medicine.

The following medications contain Phenylpropanolamine:

Acutrim Diet Gum Appetite Suppressant
Acutrim Plus Dietary Supplements
Acutrim Maximum Strength Appetite Control
Alka-Seltzer Plus Children's Cold Medicine Effervescent
Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold medicine (cherry or orange)
Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine Original
Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold & Cough Medicine Effervescent
Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold & Flu Medicine
Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold & Sinus Effervescent
Alka Seltzer Plus Night-Time Cold Medicine
BC Allergy Sinus Cold Powder
BC Sinus Cold Powder
Comtrex Flu Therapy & Fever Relief
Day & Night Contac 12-Hour Cold Capsules
Contac 12 Hour Caplets
Coricidin D Cold, Flu & Sinus
Dexatrim Caffeine Free
Dexatrim Extended Duration
Dexatrim Gelcaps
Dexatrim Vitamin C/Caffeine Free
Dimetapp Cold & Allergy Chewable Tablets
Dimetapp Cold & Cough Liqui-Gels
Dimetapp DM Cold & Cough Elixir
Dimetapp Elixir
Dimetapp 4 Hour Liquid Gels
Dimetapp 4 Hour Tablets
Dimetapp 12 Hour Extentabs Tablets
Naldecon DX Pediatric Drops
Permathene Mega-16
Robitussin CF
Tavist-D 12 Hour Relief of Sinus & Nasal
Congestion
Triaminic DM Cough Rel! ief
Triaminic Expectorant Chest & Head
Triaminic Syrup Cold & ! Allergy Triaminic Triaminicol Cold & Cough .

I just found out and called the 800# on the container
for Triaminic and they informed me that they are voluntarily
recalling the following medicines because of a certain
ingredient that is causing strokes and seizures in children:

Orange 3D Cold & Allergy Cherry (Pink)
3D Cold & Cough Berry
3D Cough Relief Yellow 3D Expectorant

They are asking you to call them at 800-548-3708 with
the lot number on the box so they can send you postage for you
to send it back to them, and they will also issue you a
refund. If you know of anyone else with small children,
PLEASE PASS THIS ON. THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF!

DO PASS ALONG TO ALL ON YOUR MAILING LIST so people are
informed. They can then pass it along to their families.

To confirm these findings please take time to check the
following:

http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/ppa/

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO YOUR CHILDREN IN CASE THEY GIVE IT TO THEIR CHILDREN OR TO FRIENDS WHO HAVE CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN.

Sounds important if it isn't some sort of hoax, but it does sound real. I'll check it out tomorrow, or you can tonight with the link up above. SRH

the magnificent goldberg

February 14th, 2006, 03:30 AM

Sunday, February 12, 2006
You just stand there looking cute, And when something moves, you shoot

I’m gonna have that Tom Lehrer song – you know the one I mean – going through my head the rest of the day.

Same words to the song you posted MG, must be it.

Can it be, Sandi, that you're not familiar with the work of Tom Lehrer?

Try this -

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004SWBH.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/samples/B00004SWBH/ref=dp_tracks_all_1/103-3091769-8147851?%5Fencoding=UTF8#disc_1

It's a bit expensive, but contains everything or almost everything he recorded, from 1953 to 1999.

MG

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 10:18 AM

***
One of too many
Posted at February 13,
2006 07:54 PM in FUBAR .
By LEE DRUTMAN
In Washington these days there is great speculation about exactly how intimately President Bush and super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff were acquainted.

According to the Associated Press, Abramoff and his associates logged almost 200 White House contacts during Bush's first 10 months in office. Reportedly, Abramoff's personal assistant became a senior adviser to Bush adviser Karl Rove. And Time magazine claims to have seen five photos of Bush and Abramoff that "suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."

Not surprisingly, White House spokesman Scott McClellan has pooh-poohed the Bush-Abramoff relationship as nonexistent. "The president does not know him," says McClellan, "nor does the president recall ever meeting him. What we're not going to do is engage in a fishing expedition that has nothing to do with the investigation."

Many people in Washington _ Democrats and Republicans _ are dissatisfied with McClellan's evasions. Calls for fuller disclosure on White House contacts with Abramoff are now coming from both sides of the aisle. Many Democrats see this as a great opportunity for guilt by association, and many Republicans are sure that a little honesty would clear up the misunderstanding and speculation that always surround such scandals.

Yet while I want to know as much as anyone else exactly how involved Jack Abramoff was in formulating White House policy, I am also somewhat sympathetic to McClellan's warnings of a "fishing expedition" _ although for very different reasons. The danger in focusing too much on Abramoff's progress is that it turns this into a scandal about one very bad lobbyist, instead of a scandal about the thousands of lobbyists who spend their days prancing around the White House, sprinkling generous cash donations in choice places, and then making not-so-subtle hints about tax loopholes and energy policy _ mostly perfectly legally.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, over the last six years more than 1,300 registered lobbyists have given more than $1.8 million to Bush. Fifty-two of them were major fundraisers for the Bush campaign. When Bush was first elected, he placed 92 lobbyists on his transition advisory team.

Since 1998, 273 former White House staffers have registered as lobbyists, representing more than 3,000 companies and interest groups (and charging more than $1 billion for their collective time). Since 1998, more than 4,600 companies, trade associations, and interest groups have directly lobbied the White House.

And so on.

What these numbers should tell us is that even if Jack Abramoff is the frowning face of capital corruption, he is really only a bit player in a larger drama of moneyed special interests buying their way into policymaking pre-eminence.

It may be that we will soon see photos of Bush and Abramoff shaking hands, smiling, looking like the best of friends. But if so, the real scandal is that every time Bush and Abramoff posed for the camera, another hundred lobbyists were probably waiting in the wings for their turn at the very same photograph.

(Lee Drutman, a frequent contributor, is co-author of "The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.")

Comments:

The ONLY way to break up the Corruption and gridlock in congress is to elect about one third Independent Candidates in both houses of congress...making a Three Party System...then and only then can the lobbying mess be controled and require that all elected officils write their own bills and accept no money from outside their own district...and all donations liminted to $250.

Posted by chiefh at February 14, 2006 10:53 AM

« Is the President above the law? | Main | Just one screwup after another »
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/02/just_one_of_too_many.html

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 11:12 AM

***
U.S. Moves to Fight Internet Censorship
ASSOCIATED PRESS
40 minutes agoWASHINGTON - The State Department announced plans Tuesday to step up a campaign to combat efforts by foreign governments to restrict use of the Internet.
At a news conference, Josette Shiner, a top State Department trade expert, called the Internet "the greatest purveyor of news and information in history" but said too often the flow is blocked by government censors.

Shiner announced the formation of a task force that will consider, among other issues, the foreign policy aspects of Internet freedom, including the use of technology to restrict access to political content.

She said it is a top U.S. government priority "to do all we can to ensure maximum access to information over the Internet."

The United States, she said, has "very serious concerns" about the protection of privacy and data throughout the Internet globally, and in particular, some of the recent cases raised in China.

Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky said a U.S. team was en route to China on Monday to discuss the issue with Chinese authorities.

Separately, Graham characterized China's use of U.S. Internet companies to abuse its citizens' rights "chilling and outrageous." He mentioned Yahoo! Inc (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)., which has been accused of helping Chinese police identify and convict a journalist who criticized human rights abuses in China.

U.S. lawmakers have criticized China's use of U.S. Internet companies to abuse its citizens' rights. Yahoo! Inc. has been accused of helping Chinese police identify and convict a journalist who criticized human rights abuses in China.
http://news.yahoo.com/

All of this while our own Pentagon is said to be working to curtail information on the web as well as the Chinese and other goverments.

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 11:37 AM

***
Scalia Dismisses 'Living Constitution'
By JONATHAN EWING,
Associated Press Writer
Tue Feb 14, 10:25 AM ET

PONCE, Puerto Rico - People who believe the Constitution would break if it didn't change with society are "idiots," U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says.
In a speech Monday sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, Scalia defended his long-held belief in sticking to the plain text of the Constitution "as it was originally written and intended."

"Scalia does have a philosophy, it's called originalism," he said. "That's what prevents him from doing the things he would like to do," he told more than 100 politicians and lawyers from this U.S. island territory.

According to his judicial philosophy, he said, there can be no room for personal, political or religious beliefs.

Scalia criticized those who believe in what he called the "living Constitution."

"That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break."

"But you would have to be an idiot to believe that," Scalia said. "The Constitution is not a living organism, it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things."

Proponents of the living constitution want matters to be decided "not by the people, but by the justices of the Supreme Court."

"They are not looking for legal flexibility, they are looking for rigidity, whether it's the right to abortion or the right to homosexual activity, they want that right to be embedded from coast to coast and to be unchangeable," he said.

Scalia was invited to Puerto Rico by the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The organization was founded in 1982 as a debating society by students who believed professors at the top law schools were too liberal. Conservatives and libertarians mainly make up the 35,000 members.On the Net:
Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/

Federalist Society: http://www.fed-soc.org/

http://news.yahoo.com/

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 11:56 AM

~~*~~
Opinion
Devise system to return confiscated items Tue Feb 14, 7:09 AM ET
I couldn't help but be disgusted at the cover story that detailed how local governments, companies and individuals are profiting on the goods confiscated from the traveling public (Airports' bountiful booty, Money, Feb. 7).
But rather then criticize, here is a suggestion: Have all the confiscated goods available in a bin with a sign that reads, "Take only one."
As passengers deplane, they can get back their scissors, knives and nail clippers. This would apply only at their final destination. It would also work on the "honor system," so if your nail clippers were confiscated, then you should grab only one nail clipper from the bin.

Allowing individuals and companies to profit from our confiscated goods only enhances the public's distrust of government - and the people who decided to "sell" our stuff.

Brian Porter
Ypsilanti, Mich.

'How can this be allowed?'

I enjoyed reading the article about sales of confiscated items. I wonder how much the city of Detroit made from the items that were not allowed into the stadium for the Super Bowl.

I have a husband and son lucky enough to have attended. They were told they couldn't take in a backpack and a long camera lens, among other things. We didn't see anything on the Web or on the tickets explaining the limits. An Oakley-brand backpack was taken and was not found after the game.

The game cost many people camcorders, bags, cameras, clothes and other such items. A person is left to hand over whatever article the security deems "unacceptable," and a patron is left to make a tough decision. How can this be allowed?

Marjorie Peterson

Chattanooga, Tenn.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060214/cm_usatoday/devisesystemtoreturnconfiscateditems

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 12:09 PM

*
February 13 »
February 14, 2006
The Hunter Is Captured By the Game
Posted by Danny @ 6:51 am | DUKING ON FOX
I was back in the evil empire last night on the air on Fox News with Hannity and Colmes “discussing” Cheney the Quail hunter who missed the bird and hit a rich lawyer friend.

Before my short segment of on-air “fame," I was in the "green room" where I watched Bill O'Reilly trash women who trash men bemoaning female desires for sensitive companionship with a female psychiatrist pumping her book in a red leather outfit. Maybe she was trying to out Coulter Anne. O’Reilly also took a crack at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for calling for the president’s impeachment. As always, he was on the attack, on message exposing the world's hypocrisy until he promoted the new hats for spring that his website is selling.

H&C's big guest was to be my former Ramparts colleague David Horrorwitz who is out with a new book denouncing l00 professors whose politics he deplores. David has come full circle from being party of a family attacked by McCarthy to a McCarthy wannabe. I was out of there before he remoted in to play right-wing smarmy. I can't bear to be reminded of his decline into the gutter. Its amazing how with right-wing funding, he's gone from none entity to big macher. Shonda!

My segment was nominally a debate with conservative media watcher Brent Bozell who basically agreed that the Cheney people were remiss in waiting a full day before disclosing that a lawyer was shot by the Veep. Sean Hannity made fun of the reporters who grilled Scott McClellan at the White House but then I made fun of Cheney. It was a bizarre exchange on a bizarre incident featuring one of the last of the great white hunters.

I never had the time to talk about the crime scene—a FIFTY THOUSAND acre ranch owned by a member of the Halliburton board that turned Mr. Cheney from low paid Congressman to multi-millionaire virtually overnight.

TSK TSK

That may have been the greater crime. Various Hunter groups are challenging the Veep for not following protocol:

”We always stress to anybody that before you make any kind of a shot, it's incumbent upon the shooter to assess the situation and make sure it's a safe shot," said Mark Birkhauser, president-elect of the International Hunter Education Association and hunter education coordinator in New Mexico. "Once you squeeze that trigger, you can't bring that shot back."
From a newletter, here's a link to see their archives, and to subscribe if you would like.. There is just so much more in each mailing, it is a good one to be in on.

http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/archives.php

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 12:17 PM

* Hunter Shot by Cheney Has Heart Attack By LYNN BREZOSKY
5 minutes ago
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The 78-year-old lawyer who was shot by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident has some birdshot lodged in his heart and he had "a minor heart attack" Tuesday morning, hospital officials said. The victim, Harry Whittington, was immediately moved back to the intensive care unit for further treatment, said Peter Banko, the administrator at Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial in Texas.

Banko said there was an irregularity in the heartbeat caused by a pellet, and doctors performed a cardiac catheterization. Whittington expressed a desire to leave the hospital, but Banko said he would probably stay for another week to make sure more shot doesn't move to other organs or to other part of his body.

"Some of the birdshot appears to have moved and lodged into part of his heart in what we would say is a minor heart attack," Banko said in a news conference outside the hospital.

David Blanchard, chief of emergency care, called it "a silent heart attack, an asymptomatic heart attack. He's not had a heart attack in the traditional sense."

The doctors said Whittington did not experience symptoms of a heart attack or any other problems. They left the birdshot in place and said he could live a healthy life with it there.

White House physicians who attended to Whittington at the scene after Cheney accidentally shot him were involved in the treatment, the officials said.

Whittington had initially been placed in intensive care after the accident Saturday evening. He had been moved to a "step-down unit" Monday after doctors decided to leave several birdshot pellets lodged in his skin rather than try to remove them.

A Texas Parks and Wildlife Department report issued Monday said Whittington was retrieving a downed bird and stepped out of the hunting line he was sharing with Cheney. "Another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest at approximately 30 yards," the report said.

The department found the main factor contributing to the accident was a "hunter's judgment factor." No other secondary factors were found to have played a role.

The department gave Cheney and Whittington warning citations for breaking Texas hunting law by failing to buy a $7 stamp allowing them to shoot upland game birds. A department spokesman said warnings are being issued in most cases because the stamp requirement only went into effect five months ago and many hunters weren't aware of it.

Cheney's office said Monday night in a statement that Cheney had a $125 nonresident hunting license and has sent a $7 check to cover the cost of the stamp. "The staff asked for all permits needed, but was not informed of the $7 upland game bird stamp requirement," the statement said.

Cheney, an experienced hunter, has not said anything publicly about the accident. It was fodder for jokes on late night TV and early Tuesday at the White House, before news surfaced about problems with Whittington's heart.

Hospital officials said they notified the White House of the change in Whittington's condition late in the morning. McClellan's mood was much more serious in an afternoon press briefing shortly before the hospital publicly updated Whittington's condition.

Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting occurred, said Whittington made a mistake by not announcing that he had walked up to rejoin the hunting line after going to retrieve his bird, and Cheney didn't see him as he tried to down a bird.

The accident raised questions about Cheney's adherence to hunting safety practices and the White House's failure to disclose the accident in a timely way.

Several hunting safety experts agreed in interviews that it would have been a good idea for Whittington to announce himself. But every expert stressed that the shooter is responsible for avoiding other people.

Bush was told about Cheney's involvement in the accident shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday — about an hour after it occurred — but the White House did not disclose the accident until Sunday afternoon, and then only in response to press questions.

On the Net:

White House:

http://www.whitehouse.gov
http://news.yahoo.com/

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 12:44 PM

~~~*~~~
IMPORTANT
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When large media companies are left to their own devices, the result is always content and services that serve no one but themselves. An open and independent Internet is the antidote to these predatory practices.

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I strongly urge you to cease all plans to violate the principle of network neutrality. Your control of the "pipes" on which information travels does not give you the right to dictate what I can do online.
As a subscriber to your service, I demand that your company guarantee that all Internet users are entitled to:

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4. Have fair competition among network, application, service and content providers.

From its beginnings, the Internet was built on a cooperative, democratic ideal. Your only job as a network provider is to move data between users. You must not block or discriminate against any of the legal content and services available online.

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http://www.freepress.net/action/netneutrality

Go on-site to sign on to this iniative. There are other articles of interest here as well. Check this site out and see if there are other petitions to sign.

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 02:53 PM

~~*~~
Molly Ivins
02.14.06 Creators Syndicate
Dick Cheney goes hunting
Accident or not, Cheney's responsible
AUSTIN, Texas — Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas — what's the fine for shooting a lawyer? — and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got.Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal — only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants."

In the day, whenever there was an especially bad case of new-ignoramus-in-the-legislature — a "lock 'em all up and throw away the key" type — the senior members used to send the prison-happy, tuff-on-crime neophyte to see Harry Whittington, a Republican after all, for a little basic education on the cost of prisons.

When Whittington was the chairman of Texas Public Finance Authority, he had a devastating set of numbers on the demand for more, more, more prison beds. As Whittington was wont to point out, the only thing prisons are good for is segregating violent people from the rest of society, and most of them belong in psychiatric hospitals to begin with. The severity of sentences has no effect on crime.

Texas still keeps the nonviolent, the retarded, senior citizens, etc. locked up for ridiculous periods — all at taxpayer expense. If we could ever get to where we spend as much per pupil on education as we do per prisoner, this state would take off like a rocket. In 2003, we spend nearly $15,000 per prisoner, while average per-pupil spending was just over $8,000.

I am not trying to make a big deal out of a simple hunting accident for partisan purposes — just thought it was a good chance to pay tribute to old Harry, a thoroughly decent man. However, I was offended by the never-our-fault White House spin team. Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said of her boss, "He was not careless or incautious (and did not) violate any of the (rules). He didn't do anything he wasn't supposed to do." Of course he did, Ms. Matalin, he shot Harry Whittington.

Which brings us to one of the many paradoxes of the Bush administration, which claims to be creating "the responsibility society." It's hard to think of a crowd less likely to take responsibility for anything they have done or not done than this bunch. They're certainly good at preaching responsibility to others — and blaming other people for everything that goes wrong on their watch.

Of course the Cheney shooting was an accident.

But is it an accident if your home and your life are destroyed by the flood following a hurricane? Especially if the flood was caused by failed levees, a government responsibility?

Is it an accident if you are born with a clubfoot and your parents are too poor to pay for the operation to fix it? Is there any societal responsibility in such a case?

Is it an accident when your manufacturing job gets shipped overseas and all you can find to replace it is a low- wage job at the big-box store with no health insurance, and your kid breaks his leg, and you can't pay the bill, so you have to declare bankruptcy under a new law that leaves you broke for good, with no chance of ever getting out of debt? Or was all of that caused by deliberate government policy?

Cheney is much given to lecturing us about taking responsibility. When and where does societal responsibility come in?

Cheney has a curious, shifting history on issues of blame and responsibility. He was vice chair of the congressional committee that spent 11 months investigating the Iran-Contra affair and author of its minority report. As John W. Dean highlights in a recent essay, the 500-page majority report concluded the entire affair "was characterized by pervasive dishonesty and inordinate secrecy." But Cheney's report said the Reagan administration's repeated breaking of the law were "mistakes ... were just that — mistakes in judgment and nothing more."

Those of you who saw Cheney's interview with Jim Lehrer last week may recall the passage on Darfur that ended with this:

Lehrer: "It's still happening. There are now 2 million people homeless."

Cheney: "Still happening, correct."

Lehrer: "Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and — so you're satisfied the U.S. is doing everything it can do?"

Cheney: "I am satisfied we're doing everything we can do."

His head still tilts over more to the right when he lies. Read more in the Molly Ivins archive .

Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=20358

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 04:07 PM

Tomgram: A Permanent Basis for Withdrawal?

Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?
The American Press Can't
By Tom Engelhardt
We're in a new period in the war in Iraq -- one that brings to mind the Nixonian era of "Vietnamization": A President presiding over an increasingly unpopular war that won't end; an election bearing down; the need to placate a restive American public; and an army under so much strain that it seems to be running off the rails. So it's not surprising that the media is now reporting on administration plans for, or "speculation" about, or "signs of," or "hints" of "major draw-downs" or withdrawals of American troops. The figure regularly cited these days is less than 100,000 troops in Iraq by the end of 2006. With about 136,000 American troops there now, that figure would represent just over one-quarter of all in-country U.S. forces, which means, of course, that the term "major" certainly rests in the eye of the beholder.

In addition, these withdrawals are -- we know this thanks to a Seymour Hersh piece, Up in the Air, in the December 5th New Yorker -- to be accompanied, as in South Vietnam in the Nixon era, by an unleashing of the U.S. Air Force. The added air power is meant to compensate for any lost punch on the ground (and will undoubtedly lead to more "collateral damage" -- that is, Iraqi deaths).

It is important to note that all promises of drawdowns or withdrawals are invariably linked to the dubious proposition that the Bush administration can "stand up" an effective Iraqi army and police force (think "Vietnamization" again), capable of circumscribing the Sunni insurgency and so allowing American troops to pull back to bases outside major urban areas, as well as to Kuwait and points as far west as the United States. Further, all administration or military withdrawal promises prove to be well hedged with caveats and obvious loopholes, phrases like "if all goes according to plan and security improves..." or "it also depends on the ability of the Iraqis to..."

Since guerrilla attacks have actually been on the rise and the delivery of the basic amenities of modern civilization (electrical power, potable water, gas for cars, functional sewage systems, working traffic lights, and so on) on the decline, since the very establishment of a government inside the heavily fortified Green Zone has proved immensely difficult, and since U.S. reconstruction funds (those that haven't already disappeared down one clogged drain or another) are drying up, such partial withdrawals may prove more complicated to pull off than imagined. It's clear, nonetheless, that "withdrawal" is on the propaganda agenda of an administration heading into mid-term elections with an increasingly skittish Republican Party in tow and congressional candidates worried about defending the President's mission-unaccomplished war of choice. Under the circumstances, we can expect more hints of, followed by promises of, followed by announcements of "major" withdrawals, possibly including news in the fall election season of even more "massive" withdrawals slated for the end of 2006 or early 2007, all hedged with conditional clauses and "only ifs" -- withdrawal promises that, once the election is over, this administration would undoubtedly feel under no particular obligation to fulfill.

Assuming, then, a near year to come of withdrawal buzz, speculation, and even a media blitz of withdrawal announcements, the question is: How can anybody tell if the Bush administration is actually withdrawing from Iraq or not? Sometimes, when trying to cut through a veritable fog of misinformation and disinformation, it helps to focus on something concrete. In the case of Iraq, nothing could be more concrete -- though less generally discussed in our media -- than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has long been building in that country. Quite literally multi-billions of dollars have gone into them. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of several billion dollars being sunk into base construction ("the numbers are staggering"). Since then, the base-building has been massive and ongoing.

In a country in such startling disarray, these bases, with some of the most expensive and advanced communications systems on the planet, are like vast spaceships that have landed from another solar system. Representing a staggering investment of resources, effort, and geostrategic dreaming, they are the unlikeliest places for the Bush administration to hand over willingly to even the friendliest of Iraqi governments.

If, as just about every expert agrees, Bush-style reconstruction has failed dismally in Iraq, thanks to thievery, knavery, and sheer incompetence, and is now essentially ending, it has been a raging success in Iraq's "Little America." For the first time, we have actual descriptions of a couple of the "super-bases" built in Iraq in the last two and a half years and, despite being written by reporters under Pentagon information restrictions, they are sobering. Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post paid a visit to Balad Air Base, the largest American base in the country, 68 kilometers north of Baghdad and "smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq." In a piece entitled Biggest Base in Iraq Has Small-Town Feel, Ricks paints a striking portrait:

The base is sizeable enough to have its own "neighborhoods" including "KBR-land" (in honor of the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the base-construction work in Iraq); "CJSOTF" ("home to a special operations unit," the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, surrounded by "especially high walls," and so secretive that even the base Army public affairs chief has never been inside); and a junkyard for bombed out Army Humvees. There is as well a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a Popeye's, "an ersatz Starbucks," a 24-hour Burger King, two post exchanges where TVs, iPods, and the like can be purchased, four mess halls, a hospital, a strictly enforced on-base speed limit of 10 MPH, a huge airstrip, 250 aircraft (helicopters and predator drones included), air-traffic pile-ups of a sort you would see over Chicago's O'Hare airport, and "a miniature golf course, which mimics a battlefield with its baby sandbags, little Jersey barriers, strands of concertina wire and, down at the end of the course, what appears to be a tiny detainee cage."

Ricks reports that the 20,000 troops stationed at Balad live in "air-conditioned containers" which will, in the future -- and yes, for those building these bases, there still is a future -- be wired "to bring the troops Internet, cable television and overseas telephone access." He points out as well that, of the troops at Balad, "only several hundred have jobs that take them off base. Most Americans posted here never interact with an Iraqi."

Recently, Oliver Poole, a British reporter, visited another of the American "super-bases," the still-under-construction al-Asad Airbase (Football and pizza point to US staying for long haul). He observes, of "the biggest Marine camp in western Anbar province," that "this stretch of desert increasingly resembles a slice of US suburbia." In addition to the requisite Subway and pizza outlets, there is a football field, a Hertz rent-a-car office, a swimming pool, and a movie theater showing the latest flicks. Al-Asad is so large -- such bases may cover 15-20 square miles -- that it has two bus routes and, if not traffic lights, at least red stop signs at all intersections.

There are at least four such "super-bases" in Iraq, none of which have anything to do with "withdrawal" from that country. Quite the contrary, these bases are being constructed as little American islands of eternal order in an anarchic sea. Whatever top administration officials and military commanders say -- and they always deny that we seek "permanent" bases in Iraq -– facts-on-the-ground speak with another voice entirely. These bases practically scream "permanency."

Unfortunately, there's a problem here. American reporters adhere to a simple rule: The words "permanent," "bases," and "Iraq" should never be placed in the same sentence, not even in the same paragraph; in fact, not even in the same news report. While a LexisNexis search of the last 90 days of press coverage of Iraq produced a number of examples of the use of those three words in the British press, the only U.S. examples that could be found occurred when 80% of Iraqis (obviously somewhat unhinged by their difficult lives) insisted in a poll that the United States might indeed desire to establish bases and remain permanently in their country; or when "no" or "not" was added to the mix via any American official denial. (It's strange, isn't it, that such bases, imposing as they are, generally only exist in our papers in the negative.) Three examples will do:

The Secretary of Defense: ""During a visit with U.S. troops in Fallujah on Christmas Day, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said ‘at the moment there are no plans for permanent bases' in Iraq. ‘It is a subject that has not even been discussed with the Iraqi government.'"

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmett, the Central Command deputy commander for planning and strategy in Iraq: "We already have handed over significant chunks of territory to the Iraqis. Those are not simply plans to do so; they are being executed right now. It is not only our plan but our policy that we do not intend to have any permanent bases in Iraq."

Karen Hughes on the Charlie Rose Show: "CHARLIE ROSE: …they think we are still there for the oil, or they think the United States wants permanent bases. Does the United States want permanent bases in Iraq? KAREN HUGHES: We want nothing more than to bring our men and women in uniform home. As soon as possible, but not before they finish the job. CHARLIE ROSE: And do not want to keep bases there? KAREN HUGHES: No, we want to bring our people home as soon as possible."

Still, for a period, the Pentagon practiced something closer to truth in advertising than did our major papers. At least, they called the big bases in Iraq "enduring camps," a label which had a certain charm and reeked of permanency. (Later, they were later relabeled, far less romantically, "contingency operating bases.")

One of the enduring mysteries of this war is that reporting on our bases in Iraq has been almost nonexistent these last years, especially given an administration so weighted toward military solutions to global problems; especially given the heft of some of the bases; especially given the fact that the Pentagon was mothballing our bases in Saudi Arabia and saw these as long-term substitutes; especially given the fact that the neocons and other top administration officials were so focused on controlling the so-called arc of instability (basically, the energy heartlands of the planet) at whose center was Iraq; and especially given the fact that Pentagon pre-war planning for such "enduring camps" was, briefly, a front-page story in a major newspaper.

A little history may be in order here:

On April 19, 2003, soon after Baghdad fell to American troops, reporters Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt wrote a front-page piece for the New York Times indicating that the Pentagon was planning to "maintain" four bases in Iraq for the long haul, though "there will probably never be an announcement of permanent stationing of troops." Rather than speak of "permanent bases," the military preferred then to speak coyly of "permanent access" to Iraq. The bases, however, fit snugly with other Pentagon plans, already on the drawing boards. For instance, Saddam's 400,000 man military was to be replaced by only a 40,000 man, lightly armed military without significant armor or an air force. (In an otherwise heavily armed region, this insured that any Iraqi government would be almost totally reliant on the American military and that the U.S. Air Force would, by default, be the Iraqi Air Force for years to come.) While much space in our papers has, of late, been devoted to the administration's lack of postwar planning, next to no interest has been shown in the planning that did take place.

At a press conference a few days after the Shanker and Schmitt piece appeared, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld insisted that the U.S. was "unlikely to seek any permanent or ‘long-term' bases in Iraq" -- and that was that. The Times' piece was essentially sent down the memory hole. While scads of bases were being built -- including four huge ones whose geographic placement correlated fairly strikingly with the four mentioned in the Times article -- reports about U.S. bases in Iraq, or any Pentagon planning in relation to them, largely disappeared from the American media. (With rare exceptions, you could only find discussions of "permanent bases" in these last years at Internet sites like Tomdispatch or Global Security.org.)

In May 2005, however, Bradley Graham of the Washington Post reported that we had 106 bases, ranging from mega to micro in Iraq. Most of these were to be given back to the Iraqi military, now being "stood up" as a far larger force than originally imagined by Pentagon planners, leaving the U.S. with, Graham reported, just the number of bases -- 4 -- that the Times first mentioned over two years earlier, including Balad Air Base and the base Poole visited in western Anbar Province. This reduction was presented not as a fulfillment of original Pentagon thinking, but as a "withdrawal plan." (A modest number of these bases have since been turned over to the Iraqis, including one in Tikrit transferred to Iraqi military units which, according to Poole, promptly stripped it to the bone.)

The future of a fifth base -- the enormous Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport -- remains, as far as we know, "unresolved"; and there is a sixth possible "permanent super-base" being built in that country, though never presented as such. The Bush administration is sinking between $600 million and $1 billion in construction funds into a new U.S. embassy. It is to arise in Baghdad's Green Zone on a plot of land along the Tigris River that is reportedly two-thirds the area of the National Mall in Washington, DC. The plans for this "embassy" are almost mythic in nature. A high-tech complex, it is to have "15ft blast walls and ground-to-air missiles" for protection as well as bunkers to guard against air attacks. It will, according to Chris Hughes, security correspondent for the British Daily Mirror, include "as many as 300 houses for consular and military officials" and a "large-scale barracks" for Marines. The "compound" will be a cluster of at least 21 buildings, assumedly nearly self-sufficient, including "a gym, swimming pool, barber and beauty shops, a food court and a commissary. Water, electricity and sewage treatment plants will all be independent from Baghdad's city utilities." It is being billed as "more secure than the Pentagon" (not, perhaps, the most reassuring tagline in the post-9/11 world). If not quite a city-state, on completion it will resemble an embassy-state. In essence, inside Baghdad's Green Zone, we will be building another more heavily fortified little Green Zone.

Even Tony Blair's Brits, part of our unraveling, ever-shrinking "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, are reported by Brian Brady of the Scotsman (Revealed: secret plan to keep UK troops permanently in Iraq) to be bargaining for a tiny permanent base -- sorry a base "for years to come" -- near Basra in southern Iraq, thus mimicking American "withdrawal" strategy on the micro-scale that befits a junior partner.

As Juan Cole has pointed out at his Informed Comment blog, the Pentagon can plan for "endurance" in Iraq forever and a day, while top Bush officials and neocons, some now in exile, can continue to dream of a permanent set of bases in the deserts of Iraq that would control the energy heartlands of the planet. None of that will, however, make such bases any more "permanent" than their enormous Vietnam-era predecessors at places like Danang and Cam Rahn Bay proved to be -- not certainly if the Shiites decide they want us gone or Ayatollah Sistani (as Cole points out) were to issue a fatwa against such bases.

Nonetheless, the thought of permanency matters. Since the invasion of Saddam's Iraq, those bases -- call them what you will -- have been at the heart of the Bush administration's "reconstruction" of the country. To this day, those Little Americas, with their KBR-lands, their Pizza Huts, their stop signs, and their miniature golf courses remain at the secret heart of Bush administration "reconstruction" policy. As long as KBR keeps building them, making their facilities ever more enduring (and ever more valuable), there can be no genuine "withdrawal" from Iraq, nor even an intention of doing so. Right now, despite the recent visits of a couple of reporters, those super-bases remain enswathed in a kind of policy silence. The Bush administration does not discuss them (other than to deny their permanency from time to time). No presidential speeches deal with them. No plans for them are debated in Congress. The opposition Democrats generally ignore them and the press -- with the exception of the odd columnist -- won't even put the words "base," "permanent," and "Iraq" in the same paragraph.

It may be hard to do, given the skimpy coverage, but keep your eyes directed at our "super-bases." Until the administration blinks on them, there will be no withdrawal from Iraq.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently come out in paperback.

Copyright 2006 Tom Engelhardt

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=59774

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

This lets us know a lot, and it is how it is.

I remember last week hearing about how so many men and women in the service were being brought home, however, but, and you just have to know, that National Guard Units from here in the Pacific Northwest are being sent over, even public school principals are being sent. That used to be a deferral, wasn't it? No, there will be no abandoment of the PNAC, it's right on track all but for the insurgency, and with that, regardless of the job having been so bungled, GW is standing firm, Dick Cheney has his jaw set, and the trio of he, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are seeing that GW "Stays the Course." Such a deal!

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 04:50 PM

~~*~~
THIS POINTS TO MY BELIEF THAT ALL OF THIS SPYING WHICH IS BEING CONDUCTED UPON ALL OF US, THIS GATHERED INTELLIGENCE, IS ONLY AS GOOD AS THE HANDS IT FALLS INTO, REGARDLESS OF WHO AND WHEN, REGARDLESS IF THERE WERE OR WEREN'T 13 TIMES OF ATTA AND HIS CAUSE BEING IDENTIFIED. WE DO KNOW THERE WERE BRIEFINGS AND WARNINGS OF SPECIFIC TYPES OF ATTACKS, SPECIFIC WARNINGS OF THE WEAPON OF CHOICE, AVIATION FUEL, THE PASSANGER FILLED JET LINERS THEMSELVES WERE TO BE THE BOMBS, AND THAT WAS WHAT CAME DOWN. THERE WERE WARNINGS AND BRIEFINGS, BUT THEY CHOSE TO IGNORE. LIKE NOT BEING ABLE TO CHEW GUM AND THINK AT THE SAME TIME, AS IT WAS MISSLE DEFENSE WHICH WAS THEIR MAIN CONCERN, SATING THE DEFENSE CONTRACTORS WHO ARE SUCH LARGE CONTRIBUTORS, PAYING OUT ENORMOUS SUMS TO NUMEROUS POLITICIANS, DEMOCRATS AND ESPECIALLY TO THE GOP. AS STATED IN BROADCAST NEWS INTERVIEWS, MISSLE DEFENSE WAS TAKING UP THEIR TIME AND EFFORTS, THIS WAS ADMITTED TO AFTER THE CARNAGE.
Weldon: 'Able Danger' ID'd 9/ll Ringleader
By KIMBERLY HEFLING,
Associated Press Writer
58 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Pre-Sept. 11 intelligence conducted by a secret military unit identified terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta 13 different times, a congressman said Tuesday.
During a Capitol Hill news conference, Rep. Curt Weldon (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said the unit — code-named "Able Danger" — also identified "a problem" in Yemen two weeks before the attack on the USS Cole. It knew the problem was tied into the port of Aden and involved a U.S. platform, but the ship commander was not made aware of it, Weldon said.

The suicide bombing of the Cole killed 17 sailors on Oct. 12, 2000.

If anyone had told the Cole's commander that there was any indication of a problem in Aden, "he would not have gone there," Weldon told reporters. "He had no clue."

Weldon would not say who provided evidence of such intelligence to him.

Since August, Weldon, vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has pushed Congress and the Pentagon to investigate the workings of Able Danger, which used data mining to identify links that might indicate the workings of terrorists. If he is correct, it would change the timeline for when government officials first became aware of Atta's links to al-Qaida.

Former members of the Sept. 11 commission have dismissed Weldon's findings.

Cmdr. Greg Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, released a statement saying that Pentagon officials welcome the opportunity to address these issues during a hearing scheduled Wednesday before a subcommittee of the House
http://news.yahoo.com/

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 04:56 PM

~~~Irresponsible Rhetoric, Again
Sunday, February 12, 2006;
Page B06

AMERICANS, OFTEN cynical about their political institutions and often for good reason, had cause last week to feel pretty good about their national legislature. On some tough policy challenges, Congress debated with seriousness, patriotism and some measure of bipartisanship. Senators came up with a compromise on the USA Patriot Act that, while not entirely satisfying to most, preserved the police powers the government says it needs while extending a bit more protection to civil liberties. They turned back an early effort to quash an asbestos relief bill that would replace a dysfunctional court process with a system designed to give sufferers of asbestos-related disease a real chance at relief. And senators and House members alike began exploring ways to evaluate President Bush's extralegal program of domestic surveillance and preserve the useful parts of it in a defensible legal framework.

So you might think this was what Vice President Cheney had in mind when he told a Republican crowd on Thursday night, in reference to the surveillance program, that "a debate is now underway. At the very least, this debate has clarified where all of us stand on the issue."

Unfortunately, though, Mr. Cheney wasn't celebrating the reasoned process that Congress belatedly has embarked on. Instead he was engaging in the administration's tired practice of trying to choke off debate by suggesting that anyone who disagrees with President Bush basically doesn't want to fight the war on terrorism. Some Democrats have their own brand of irresponsible rhetoric when it comes to criticizing the president's policies. But the administration has patented the practice of taking a complicated policy issue and turning it into a club for the coming campaign: "And with an important election coming up, people need to know just how we view the most critical questions of national security, and how we propose to defend the nation that all of us, Republicans and Democrats, love and are privileged to serve," Mr. Cheney told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "As always, the president has made his thinking absolutely clear to the citizens of this land: If there are people inside our country talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."

This might be a fair gibe if Mr. Cheney's political opponents were against knowing who's talking with al Qaeda. But they're not. Both the Democrats whom the vice president caricatures, and the Republicans who he does not acknowledge also have doubts about the program, support responsible surveillance policies. They are looking for ways to allow surveillance to take place within the boundaries of the Constitution -- which ultimately would strengthen the defense and law enforcement value of any overheard conversations. They may not succeed, and the bipartisan good sense in evidence this week may not last. But we hope they won't be deterred by the vice president's mischaracterization of what's happening.
AN EDITORIAL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/10/AR2006021001716.html

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 06:23 PM

~~~" The purpose of commercial [media] is to induce mass sales. For mass sales there must be a mass norm ... By suppressing the individual, the unique, the industry ... assures itself a standard product for mass consumption.": John Whiting, writer, commenting on the homogenization of corporate media program content

~
"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change.": David Barsamian, journalist and publisher

~
" When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking.": John Wooden

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 06:52 PM

~~*~~
Americans think Iran may use nukesBy United Press International

02/14/06 (UPI) -- A USA Today-CNN-Gallup Poll says Americans not only think Iran will develop nuclear weapons but also use them against the United States.
The poll done over the last weekend also says Americans fear the Bush administration will be "too quick" to order military action against Iran, USA Today reported Tuesday.

The poll said eight out of 10 respondents predicted Iran would provide a nuclear weapon to terrorists to attack the United States or Israel. Six out of 10 respondents said Iran itself would deploy nuclear weapons against the United States.

On Prophet Mohammed cartoons, six out of 10 said the European newspapers that published them acted irresponsibly. But, by a 3-to-1 margin, they blamed the resulting furor on Muslims' intolerance of different points of views, the newspaper said.

The poll said 55 percent showed lack of confidence in the administration's ability to handle the situation in Iran.

President Bush's approval rating dipped to 39 percent, showing the State of the Union address and other subsequent speeches did not help lift the president's ratings.

The majority of the respondents (55 percent) also said the war in Iraq was a mistake. Only 31 percent, the lowest so far, believed the United States and its allies are winning in Iraq.]

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2006, 07:04 PM

~*~
THIS ONE SOUNDS PRETTY DRASTIC
SRH
~~~
The American Turkey Is Dead
By Mary Pitt
02/14/06 "ICH" -- -- That's right, Buster, I said dead. Our national symbol of peace, prosperity, and plentitude has been slaughtered, cooked and the multi-national ghouls are fighting for the rights to pick its bones! When the rank-and-file American voter rubs the propaganda-induced sleep from his eyes, he will realize that his freedoms are gone, his patriotism is misplaced, and the two buzzards, Democrat and Republican, are picking the lint from his empty pockets. After bellying up to the bar, buying rounds for our Fearless Leaders, and cheering as our children marched off to their death and dismemberment, we are awaking to find that we have been duped, raped, rolled, and left for dead by both political parties in an act of shameful betrayal that will equal the Fall of Rome in its historical aspect.

Think about it. If you aren't mad as hell, you have not yet opened your eyes. Not only has this administration sold you out to the multi-national corporations with their mantra of, "They hate us! They want to kill us!", but they have given lip service to the cause of "democracy" for the Middle East, whether they want it or not, while they cannot accept true democracy when it rears its head, but must pounce upon and destroy it in its nest. At long last, after too many years of the iron-fisted control of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian people have exercised their inherent rights to self-determination and held a truly democratic election under international supervision. However, their choice is not sitting well with the powers-that-be in Washington and Jerusalem. They have determined that the Palestinian people do not really deserve democracy and their choices must be negated by withholding of funds necessary to rule that beleaguered land.

On the same day we learn of this, news comes out of Ohio that the Dread "Democratic Leadership Council" has again denied the people the right to vote for the candidate of their choice. Many of us are still smarting over the debacle of 2004 when "the people" found several of the political candidates in the field who would satisfy our purpose of supporting someone who would be concerned for our welfare and for whom enough of us could in good conscience assist in their task of booting Bush & Co, out of our once-revered White House. This was not to be, as the DLC and other power groups designated the nomination of John Kerry as "their" candidate, causing many disillusioned Americans to stay away from the polls in droves.

The story of the day which may be enough to cause the long-awaited uprising of the American voters just may be the betrayal of a returned veteran of the War of Choice, Paul Hackett. In 2004, he scared hell out of the Republicans with his campaign of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. His exposure of the lies of the Bush cabal led the people of his district in Ohio, a traditionally strong Republican district, to vote "across party lines" in numbers that almost unseated the entrenched Republican. This year he was attempting to gain the Democratic mandate and to unseat "good Republican" Senator Mike DeWine, and his chances looked good. But no! As usual the Democratic Party could not stand even the faint scent of victory! They went to Ohio and asked Paul Hackett to abandon his cause and step out of the race so that their hand-picked candidate could have a clear field against the senator!

Thus end the political efforts of a true American who would represent The People and tell the voters the naked truth, that THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! We should be forewarned that this will be the fate of any honest person who tries to run for office within the two-party system in our nation, to be dumped by the very people who claim to represent us and to exemplify our needs and our desires. They are as power-hungry if not as dishonest as their counterparts in the other party and their watchword is to WIN, by whatever method they think may succeed and the people be damned.

What are we who really care about true democracy and have not given up the hope of reinstituting the system in our beloved nation to do? We must cast aside the worn-out mantle of political designation and vote together as Americans, voting in-party, out-of- party, and without regard to party, banding together in support of truth-seekers and truth-tellers, regardless of party, solidifying our support into the juggernaut that will be needed to remove the corruption at the heads of both parties before they totally destroy us. Stop the splintering of effort through numerous third parties with minor agenda and vote for those who seek a true mandate of the people and promise to truly represent the poor, the ill, the elderly. and the middle-class working people who carry the burden of supporting the rest. Failure to do so will bring down our own democracy and destroy any opportunity to construct another, following the Roman Empire into the dust of history.

If we do not have the intestinal fortitude to abandon our old habits and stand up for our rights as American citizens, the most important of which is the right to choose our own leaders, we may as well simply continue to blind ourselves with the idle chatter of the news headlines. "Did you hear that Dick Cheney shot a guy Saturday and nobody knew it until Monday?" "So what? That's what they do! They lie! They cheat! They cover up!" "So who ate the last of the turkey?"

Mary Pitt - - Email mpitt @ cox.net

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 11:56 AM

~INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE

Horrific New Torture Pictures ReleasedMORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Warning

The pictures below should only be viewed by a mature AUDIENCE
See Also

The photos America doesn't want seen: : MORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.
~
Go onsite to view, and to see other articles about this shameful torture situation. The British are also in a fix over a video which has be released of their troops beating teenage boys. I wonder if they are getting their troops from the ones who are into starting riots at soccer matches, it seems they relish in such behavior. What is our excuse for this sickness? SRH

There are two pages of photo's posted by Information Clearing House.info.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11930.htm

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 12:07 PM

~
Hurricane Katrina; “National Failure” or Criminal Negligence
By Mike Whitney
02/14/06 "ICH" -- -- “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach in the levees.” George Bush

The senate investigation of Hurricane Katrina is turning out to be another White House whitewash. The senate strategy has been to characterize the Bush administration’s response as “a national failure” or “bureaucratic bungling” when in fact the evidence proves that the top officials in the administration, including George Bush himself, are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of New Orleans residents.
Most of the relevant facts are not in dispute. Bush was advised by experts before the hurricane touched ground that even a Force-4 storm would breach the levees. He knew, as the New York Times says, “If the levies breached and flooded a large portion of the city, then the flooded city would have to be completely evacuated….Any delay in confirming the breaches would result in a delay in the post-landfall evacuation of the city”. Clearly, the evacuation should have been ordered, unless there was some hidden motive for leaving the city’s people in imminent danger.

We know now that Bush was told on Aug 29, the day the storm hit, that “a major section of the 17th Street Canal levee had collapsed” and was flooding the city, although, at the same time, he was still misleading reporters that the levees had held. (“We dodged a bullet”)

The media has papered-over Bush’s refusal to respond to the disaster by implying the administration was merely “slow to react” or “in a fog” or “not fully involved”. But how likely are these assertions?

Bush and his FEMA director, Michael Chertoff, completely grasped the urgency of the catastrophe, and yet, stubbornly refused to disperse funds, deploy troops, or call for an immediate evacuation.

Why?

That may be an impossible question to answer without engaging in unproductive conspiracy theories. But, we know that the administration was still pleading ignorance about the broken levees while an 8 ft river was coursing through New Orleans.

The senate investigation attempts to spread the blame equally to state and local officials and excuse the conduct of the Bush administration as a “litany of mistakes, misjudgments, lapses, and absurdities.” This theory, of course, conflicts with everything that people remember about the withholding of aid, the willful obstruction of the relief effort, and the racist imprisoning of poor black residents in the squalid-confines of the Superdome.

Once again, we see that the media narrative closely matches the political agenda of the Bush White House obfuscating the widely-acknowledged facts. Katrina was not “a failure of imagination” as the media would have us believe. Rather, it was a blatant act of criminal negligence.

How could it be otherwise?

“FEMA was warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the US (in a 2001 report But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control by 44%”. (Sidney Blumenthal: “No one Can Say they didn’t see it coming”)

Bush consistently chopped funding to the Army Corps of Engineers as well as Federal Flood Control even though he was warned repeatedly that the levees were sinking. As Paul Krugman notes, “In 2002 the Army Corps of Engineers chief resigned, reportedly under threat of being fired, after he criticized the administration’s proposed cuts in the corps’ budget, including flood-control spending”.

FEMA Blocks Relief Effort

The media’s “failure of imagination” theory is an interesting bit of revisionism which conflicts with eyewitness testimony. Consider the comments of Mitchel Cohen in “People of the Dome”:

“The government, which could have and should have provided water and food to residents of New Orleans, has not done so intentionally to force people to evacuate by staring them out. This is a crime of the gravest sort.

We need to understand that the capability has been there from the start to drive water and food right up to the convention center, as those roads have been clear. It’s how the National Guard drove into the city.

On Wednesday a number of Greens tried to bring a large amount of water to the Superdome. They were prevented from doing so, as have many others. Why have food and water been blocked from reaching tens of thousands of poor people?

They even refused to allow voluntary workers who had rescued over 1,000 people in boats over the previous days to continue on Thursday….and had to be “convinced” at gunpoint to “cease and desist”. There is something sinister going down….its not just incompetence or negligence.”

Cohen’s reflections are undoubtedly closer to what most people remember of those first few days following the hurricane than those of the senate. The fantastic claim that the Bush administration was simply “slow to respond” was effectively challenged by Aaron Broussard, President of Jefferson Parish LA in his Sept 4, testimony on Meet the Press:

“We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms to ever hit an American coast, but the aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in US history.

We had Wal-Mart deliver 3 trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. FEMA had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, “Come and get the fuel right away.” When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. “FEMA says don’t give you the fuel”. Yesterday…yesterday…FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, “No one is getting near those lines.”

Still think that Katrina was “a failure of imagination”?

Farhad Manjoo of Salon.com reported, “Citing security concerns, the Department of Homeland Security barred the American Red Cross from entering New Orleans with food. 500 Floridian air-boaters were ready to rescue people stranded in inundated homes, but FEMA turned them down”.

Still not convinced?

“The Homeland security Department has requested and continues to request that the Red Cross not come back to New Orleans,” said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross. “Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.” (Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver Food, Ann Rogers, Pittsburg Post-Gazette)

Bush was not “misinformed” nor was the “White House in a fog” as the media insists. The evidence clearly demonstrates that the warnings were deliberately delayed, aid was deliberately obstructed, rescue-efforts were deliberately sabotaged, and the entire action was part of a broader government operation to achieve an “unknown” objective.

Some have suggested that FEMA has been transformed under Homeland Security and operates as a secret government “spending 12 times more for ‘black operations’ than for disaster relief. It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval.” (FEMA-The Secret Government, by Harry V. Martin)

Under executive orders, in the event of a national emergency, FEMA now has the ability to suspend the constitution, detain American citizens, and declare martial law. It is therefore entirely possible that FEMA no longer functions as a disaster-relief agency at all, but, has been recalibrated to address the problems that may arise from massive civil unrest following a terrorist attack or (more likely) an economic meltdown. (Note: A contract was just issued by Homeland Security to Halliburton subsidiary, KBR, for $385 million to build detention Centers within the United States. Someone in the Bush administration is definitely expecting trouble.)

Whatever the reasons may have been for obstructing the relief-effort, the results are painfully obvious. The unprepared were left to die in the flood, the poor and black were shunted into filthy detention centers, and the city was transformed into a war-zone replete with armored vehicles and 70,000 military personnel roaming the streets.

The men and women who lost their lives in New Orleans were not the victims of a “dysfunctional reaction to the storm” (NY Times) or of a “sluggish response” (Wa Post) from the administration. Rather, they are the blameless victims of a government strategy that is as abstruse as it is lethal.

Many of the facts for this article were found at “BushCo. Nukes New Orleans” http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2005/09/bushco-nukes-new-orleans.html a great resource for details on Katrina

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11921.htm

~

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 12:18 PM

~
Who Will Blow the Whistle Before We Attack Iran?By Ray McGovern

02/14/06 "ICH" -- -- The question looms large against the backdrop of the hearing on whistle blowing scheduled for the afternoon of Feb. 14 by Christopher Shays, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations. Among those testifying are Russell Tice, one of the sources who exposed illegal eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, and Army Sgt. Sam Provance, who told his superiors of the torture he witnessed at Abu Graib, got no satisfaction, and felt it his duty to go public. It will not be your usual hearing.
I had the privilege of being present at the creation of the international Truth-Telling Coalition on Sept. 9, 2004 and of working with Daniel Ellsberg in drafting the coalition’s Appeal to Current Government Officials [ http://tompaine.com/Archive/others/appeal_for_truth_telling.php to put loyalty to the Constitution above career and to expose dishonesty leading to misadventures like the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Whether or not encouragement from the Coalition played any role in subsequent disclosures, we are grateful for those responsible for the recent hemorrhaging of important information—from the “Downing Street Minutes” showing that by summer 2002 the Bush administration had decided to “fix” intelligence to “justify” war on Iraq, to disclosures regarding CIA kidnappings, secret prisons, and state-sponsored torture.

As former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who leads the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, keeps reminding us, “Information is the oxygen of democracy.” And with this administration’s fetish for secrecy and our somnolent Fourth Estate, we would likely all suffocate without patriotic truth-tellers (aka whistleblowers).

Whistle Blowing and Vietnam
There are several times as many potential whistleblowers as there are actual ones. I regret that I never got out of the former category during the early stages of the Vietnam War, when I had a chance to try to stop it. I used to lunch periodically with my colleague Sam Adams, with whom I trained as a CIA analyst and who was given the task of assessing Vietnamese Communist strength early in the war. Sam proved himself the consummate analyst. Relying largely on captured documents, he concluded that there were twice as many Communists (about 600,000) under arms in the South as the US military there would admit to.

Adams learned from Army analysts that Gen. William Westmoreland had placed an artificial cap on the official Army count rather than risk questions regarding the prospects for “staying the course” (sound familiar?). It was a clash of cultures, with Army intelligence analysts following politically dictated orders, and Sam Adams aghast. In a cable dated Aug. 20, 1967 Westmoreland’s deputy, Gen. Creighton Abrams, set forth the rationale for the deception. The new, higher numbers, he said “were in sharp contrast to the current overall strength figure of about 299,000 given to the press.” Noting that, “We have been projecting an image of success over recent months,” Abrams cautioned that if the higher figures became public, “all available caveats and explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion.”

When Sam’s superiors decided to acquiesce in the Army’s figures, Sam was livid. He told me the whole story over lunch, and I remember a long silence as each of us ruminated on what might be done. I recall thinking to myself, someone should take the Abrams cable down to the New York Times (at the time an independent newspaper). The only reason for the cable’s “SECRET EYES ONLY” classification was to hide the deception.

I adduced a slew of reasons why I ought not to: a plum overseas assignment for which I was in the final stages of language training; a mortgage; the ethos of secrecy; and, not least, the analytic work (which was important, exciting work, and which Sam and I both thrived on). One can, I suppose, always find reasons for not sticking one’s neck out. For the neck, after all, is a convenient connection between head and torso. But if there is nothing for which you would risk your neck, it has become your idol, and necks are not worthy of that. I much regret giving such worship to my own neck.

As for Sam, he chose to go through grievance channels and got the royal run-around, even after the Communist countrywide offensive at Tet in Jan.-Feb. 1968 proved beyond any doubt that his count of Communist forces was correct. When the offensive began, as a way of keeping his sanity, Adams drafted a cable saying, “It is something of anomaly to be taking so much punishment from Communist soldiers whose existence is not officially acknowledged.” But he did not think the situation at all funny.

Dan Ellsberg Steps In

Sam kept playing by the rules, but it happened that—unbeknownst to Sam—Dan Ellsberg gave Sam’s figures on enemy strength to the (then independent) New York Times, which published them on March 19, 1968. Dan had learned that President Lyndon Johnson was about to bow to Pentagon pressure to widen the war into Cambodia, Laos, and up to the Chinese border—perhaps even beyond. Later, it became clear that his timely leak—together with another unauthorized disclosure to the Times that the Pentagon had requested 206,000 more troops—prevented a wider war. On March 25, Johnson complained to a small gathering, “The leaks to the New York Times hurt us...We have no support for the war...I would have given Westy the 206,000 men.”

Ironically, Sam himself played by the rules; that is, until he learned that Dan Ellsberg was on trial for releasing the Pentagon Papers and was being charged with endangering national security by revealing figures on enemy strength. Which figures? The same old faked numbers from 1967! “Imagine,” said Adams, “hanging a man for leaking faked numbers,” as he hustled off to testify on Dan’s behalf.

Ellsberg, who copied and gave the Pentagon Papers—the 7,000-page top secret history of US decision making on Vietnam—to the New York Times and Washington Post, has had difficulty shaking off the thought that, had he released them in 1964 or 1965, war might have been averted.

“Like so many others, I put personal loyalty to the president above all else—above loyalty to the Constitution and above obligation to the law, to truth, to Americans, and to humankind. I was wrong.

And so was I, it now seems, in not asking Sam for that cable from Gen. Abrams. Sam, too, eventually had strong regrets. When the war drew down, he was tormented by the thought that, had he not let himself be diddled by the system, the left half of the Vietnam Memorial wall would not be there, for there would be no names to chisel into such a wall. Sam Adams died prematurely at age 55 with nagging remorse that he had not done enough.

In a letter appearing in the (then independent) New York Times on Oct. 18, 1975, John T. Moore, a CIA analyst who worked in Saigon and the Pentagon from 1965 to 1970, confirmed Adam’s story after Sam told it in detail in the May 1975 issue of Harper’s magazine:

“My only regret is that I did not have Sam’s courage...The record is clear. It speaks of misfeasance, nonfeasance and malfeasance, of outright dishonesty and professional cowardice. It reflects an intelligence community captured by an aging bureaucracy, which too often placed institutional self-interest or personal advancement before the national interest. It is a page of shame in the history of American intelligence.”

Next Challenge: Iran

Anyone who has been near a TV in recent weeks has heard the drumbeat for war on Iran. The best guess for timing is next month.

Let’s see if we cannot do better this time than we did on Iraq. Patriotic truth tellers, we need you! In an interview last year with US News and World Report, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel said that on Iraq, “The White House is completely disconnected from reality...It’s like they’re just making it up as they go along.”

Ditto for an adventure against Iran. But the juggernaut has begun to roll; the White House/FOX News/Washington Times spin machine is at full tilt. This is where whistleblowers come in. Some of you will have the equivalent of the Gen. Abrams cable, shedding light on what the Bush administration is up to beneath the spin. Those of you clued into Israeli plans and US intelligence support for them, might clue us in too. Don’t bother this time with the once-independent congressional oversight committees; you will have no protection, in any case, if you choose that route—CIA Director Porter Goss’ recent claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Nor should you bother with the once-independent New York Times. Find some other way; just be sure you get the truth out—information that will provide the oxygen for democracy.

Better Late Than Never?

Don’t wait until it’s too late—as Dan Ellsberg and Sam Adams did on Vietnam. Any number of people would have had a good chance of stopping the Iraq war, had they the courage to disclose publicly what they knew BEFORE it was launched.

One of them, Paul Pillar, was National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East from 2000 to 2005, and has just published an article in Foreign Affairs titled “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq.” It is an insider’s account of his tenure and the “disturbing developments” he witnessed on the job. In substance it tells us little more than what we have long since pieced together ourselves, but it provides welcome confirmation.

Sadly, Pillar speaks of the politicization of intelligence as though it were a bothersome headache rather than the debilitating cancer it is. Interviewed on NPR, he conceded without any evident embarrassment that, with respect to Iraq, “intelligence was not playing into a decision to be made. It was part of the effort to build support for the operation.” So, in the vernacular of Watergate, Pillar’s article is a “modified limited hangout,” in which he pulls many punches. Nowhere in Pillar’s 4,450 words, for example, appears the name of former CIA director George Tenet, whom he now joins at Georgetown University.

It should qualify as another “disturbing development” that Pillar parrots the administration’s default explanation for what drove it’s decision to topple Saddam; “namely, the desire to shake up the sclerotic power structures in the Middle East and hasten the spread of more liberal politics and economics in the region.” The word “oil” appears only once in Pillar’s article: “military bases” and “Israel” not at all. He splits hairs to be overly kind to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. “To be fair,” writes Pillar, “Secretary Powell’s presentation at the UN never explicitly asserted that there was a cooperative relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda.” Pillar seem to have forgotten how Powell used that speech to play up “the potentially more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder,” and spoke of a “Saddam-bin Laden understanding going back to the early and mid-1990s.”

Truly Disturbing

Generally absent is any sense of the enormity of what the Bush administration has done and the urgent imperative to prevent a repeat performance. With no perceptible demurral from inside the government, George W. Bush launched a war of aggression, defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”—like torture, for example.

If this doesn’t qualify for whistle blowing, what does? Let us hope that administration officials, or analysts—or both—will find the courage to speak out loudly, and early enough to prevent the “disconnected-from-reality” cabal in the Bush administration from getting us into an unnecessary war with Iran.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. A veteran of 27 years in the analysis division of the CIA, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article appeared first on Truthout.com.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11909.htm

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 12:36 PM

Cheney's hunting host lobbied White House
Ranch owner who divulged accident earned $160,000 for work in 2004

By Aram Roston
NBC Investigative Unit02/14/06 "MSNBC" -- -- Katharine Armstrong, who's family owns the ranch where Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a hunting partner, is a registered lobbyist who has been paid to lobby the White House, according to records.
Armstrong told NBC News in a telephone interview that she has never directly lobbied Cheney as far as she remembers.

"Never!" she said. And she says she does not remember directly lobbying the president himself either.
Armstrong was playing host to Cheney and to attorney Harry Whittington at her 50,000-acre spread 60 miles south of Corpus Christi when Cheney accidentally shot Whittington on Saturday. The White House did not immediately release news of the incident, but Armstrong said she told Cheney on Sunday morning that she was going to inform the local paper, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. She said he agreed, and the newspaper reported it on its Web site Sunday afternoon.

Armstrong was paid $160,000 in 2004 by the powerful legal firm Baker Botts to lobby the White House, according to records she filed with the U.S. Senate as required by lobbying disclosure rules. The records indicate she was paid the money after she "communicated with the White House on behalf of Baker Botts clients."

Won't reveal client's name
In a phone interview, she told NBC News that in return for the money in one case, she set up a meeting at the White House for a Baker Botts client, although she said she felt she could not release the client’s name.

"A meeting for doing something with one of their clients," she said, describing the event. "I’m not at liberty to say which." She says she cannot remember which White House official the meeting was with. She also said that during the inauguration proceedings, she got Karl Rove to speak at a Baker Botts function. "I got them Karl Rove," she said.

Records indicate that early in 2005 she ended her dealings with Baker Botts.

In a subsequent interview, Armstrong told NBC News that Baker Botts asked her not to discuss what she did for the firm. Reached late Tuesday afternoon, Baker Botts had no comment on the story.

Records also indicate that early the same year she ended her lobbying relationship with another firm, Prionics, which had paid her to "work with the administration," on issues related to mad cow disease.

Bush shot at ranch while governor
Armstrong also told NBC News that while George W. Bush did shoot at her ranch while he was Texas governor, she has never hosted him while he was president.

Armstrong said the shooting accident happened toward the end of the hunt on Saturday, when it was still sunny but as darkness was encroaching and they were preparing to go inside. She said Whittington made a mistake by not announcing that he had walked up to rejoin the hunting line, and Cheney didn’t see him as he tried to down a bird.

Armstrong said she saw Cheney’s security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11920.htm

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 01:11 PM

~The Crucible of CensorshipFebruary 14, 2006
When Fulton, Missouri school superintendent Dr. Mark Enderle recently decided to ban Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” which had been scheduled as Fulton High School’s spring play, he reminded me of the scared and dishonest executives at most major American media outlets (including NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN, USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press) and their collective decision to censor the controversial cartoon depictions of Mohammed.

Superintendent Enderle told the New York Times that “The Crucible” is “a fine play,” but he was nonetheless dropping it to keep the school from being “mired in controversy” all spring. “That was me in my worst Joe McCarthy moment, to some,” Dr. Enderle said.

You got that much right, Doc!

Dr. Enderle’s excuse was the small town culture war that erupted over the high school’s previous staging of the musical “Grease.” Despite script changes that eliminated profanity and any reference to something called “weed,” three people (all members of the same Christian congregation) wrote letters complaining about scenes in the play of drinking, smoking and kissing. One critic who hadn’t seen the show still criticized its “immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play.”

Canceling “The Crucible” was “entirely a preventative maintenance issue,” Dr. Enderle explained. “I can’t do anything about what’s already happened, but do I want to spend the spring saying, ‘Yeah, we crossed the line again’?”

To his credit, the superintendent admitted he was “not 100 percent comfortable” with his decision to censor. That’s a lot more than any of our major media gatekeepers are willing to admit. Instead, they are trumpeting their decisions not to show the cartoon images as if they find censorship something to be proud of. Check out their rationales:

• CNN “is not showing the negative caricatures of the likeness of the Prophet Mohammed” because the network “believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.”

• USA Today editors “concluded that we could cover the issue comprehensively without republishing the cartoon, something clearly offensive to many Muslims.” Deputy world editor Jim Michaels declared, “It’s not censorship, self or otherwise.”

• New York Times editor Bill Keller said he and his staff concluded after “long and vigorous debate” that publishing the cartoons would be “perceived as a particularly deliberate insult” by Muslims. “Like any decision to withhold elements of a story, this was neither easy nor entirely satisfying, but it feels like the right thing to do,” Keller concluded.

• CBS Evening News producer Rome Hartman said refusing to run the cartoons “should not be seen as somehow sanctioning or kowtowing to a violent minority” since the vast majority of Muslims would find the depictions of Mohammed inherently offensive. (So CBS is kowtowing to all Muslims, not just the violent minority?)

• The Oregonian’s managing editor Therese Bottomly equated not running Muhammad cartoons with “avoiding the n-word… We have every right and an ability to publish the cartoons. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.”

• Boston Globe executives announced they had “exercised an uncomfortable but necessary restraint;” the Washington Post’s ombudsman declared valid the paper’s decision “that publishing these cartoons would violate our standards;” the Seattle Times cited its “responsibility to be sensitive to people;” the Orlando Sentinel determined that “newspapers serve their communities by exercising restraint;” and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s reader representative summed it all up by invoking the hoary “Running the cartoons now is like shouting ‘fire’ in a theater” argument.

And so on…literally ad nauseum, because as a practicing journalist those apologias make me sick. At least Boston Phoenix editors were honest enough to admit that they were terrorized and feared “retaliation from the international brotherhood of radical and bloodthirsty Islamists who seek to impose their will on those who do not believe as they do.” Noting that they “believe in the principles of free speech and a free press,” they declined to “place the men and women who work at the Phoenix and its related companies in physical jeopardy” – one of the few worthy explanations among those who refused to show the cartoons.

The cartoon flap is admittedly among the most controversial and divisive ‘culture war’ issues since…what? Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ"? The regular appearance in the Arab press of anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews with large hooked noses? Chris Ofili’s painting of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung? Kanye West in a crown of thorns on the cover of Rolling Stone? Dan Brown’s virulently anti-Catholic novel “The Da Vinci Code” – soon to be a major motion picture?

Clearly the Mohammed cartoons draw immediate and highly emotional responses across a wide political and cultural spectrum. One piece I recently posted elicited hundreds of comments, most of which alternated between excessive praise:

“I want to bow down to you. I want to fucking worship you. With all the whining and spinelessness over this Mohammed drawing issue, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see (you) come down on the side of free speech”

and equally excessive calumny:

“I found your liberal comments disgusting and outrageous…How dare you say that depicting a creed in such a racist manner is acceptable? You are a sick and twisted neo liberal who is heartless and has no decency… YOU PHONEY FAKEY, OFFENSIVE LIBER-SHITHEAD!”

Perhaps this sort of passion from the masses frightens our news gatekeepers so much they feel the need to shelter themselves from their audience by sheltering their audience from the news. But once you begin down censorship’s slippery slope – feeble protests aside, let’s call it what it is –it’s difficult to keep from sliding ever further into an abyss.

Just look at what has happened back at Fulton High.

Both “Grease” and “The Crucible,” the second-most-frequently-performed musical and drama on school stages, are now verboten. Why? Jarryd Lapp, a junior who was a light technician on Fulton High’s production of “Grease,” has a theory on the cancellation of “The Crucible.” “The show itself is graphic,” he said. “People get hung; there’s death in it. It’s not appropriate.” And drama teacher Wendy DeVore believes the play was canceled because it portrays “a time in history that makes Christians look bad. In a Bible Belt community,” she added, “it makes people nervous.”

Where will it end? As the Times reported, teachers and students at Fulton High have already begun self-censoring, ruling out future productions of other plays, like ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ the musical that features a cannibalistic plant. Other commonly performed high school plays are now equally deemed “potentially offensive:” “Bye Bye Birdie” shows smoking and drinking; “Oklahoma,” a scene of near-rape. “Diary of Anne Frank” has still more graphic scenes of death – even genocide – so let’s not go there… As for Shakespeare? Even “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” as Superintendent Enderle noted, is “not a totally vanilla play.”

Nor are all the Mohammed cartoons totally inoffensive – although many are just plain silly. But, as Tim Rutten asked in a recent Los Angeles Times media column, “If the images first published in Jyllands-Posten last September are so inherently offensive that they cannot be viewed in any context, why did Danish Muslims distribute them across an Islamic world that seldom looks at Copenhagen newspapers?” And why was there no reaction when one of Egypt’s largest newspapers published these cartoons on its front page in October? “Apparently its editor isn’t as sensitive as his American colleagues.”

Meanwhile, as Rutten notes, the New York Times saw fit to illustrate an essay by the paper’s art critic with a reproduction of Ofili’s painting of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung. And CNN illustrated a story on those anti-Semitic caricatures in the Arab press by showing… virulently anti-Semitic cartoons. Wolf Blitzer explained that while CNN had decided as a matter of policy not to broadcast any image of Muhammad, but telling the story of anti-Semitism in the Arab press required showing those caricatures!

“Those of us who inhabit this real world will continue to believe that the American news media’s current exercise in mass self-censorship has nothing to do with either sensitivity or restraint and everything to do with timidity and expediency,” Rutten concluded.

And executives at the American-Statesman newspaper (out of Austin, Texas) said all but one of the readers who respond on the paper’s website supported their decision to publish the cartoons. “It is one thing to respect other people’s faiths and religion, but it goes beyond where I would go to accept their taboos in the context of our freedoms and our society,” the paper’s editor, Rich Oppell, told Editor & Publisher.

The alternative is simply to surrender our ideals and our freedom. At Fulton High School, they apparently already have. According to the Times, students there have learned their lesson – there’s just no use fighting City Hall.

“It’s over,” said fifteen year old Emily Swenson. “We can’t do anything about it. We just have to obey.”
~
|"You are making a difference. Don't give up! Neoconservatives see kindness and forgiveness as weaknesses. 'We are different, the rules cannot apply to us.' George W. Bush. No, Mr. Bush. The rules do apply and even more so to those who champion democracy." -Bob Miller
Read More...

http://www.roryoconnor.org/blog/index.php?p=160

http://www.mediachannel.org/

jazz_man

February 15th, 2006, 02:12 PM

~*~
THIS ONE SOUNDS PRETTY DRASTIC
SRH
~~~
The American Turkey Is Dead
By Mary Pitt
02/14/06 "ICH" -- -- That's right, Buster, I said dead. Our national symbol of peace, prosperity, and plentitude has been slaughtered, cooked and the multi-national ghouls are fighting for the rights to pick its bones! When the rank-and-file American voter rubs the propaganda-induced sleep from his eyes, he will realize that his freedoms are gone, his patriotism is misplaced, and the two buzzards, Democrat and Republican, are picking the lint from his empty pockets. After bellying up to the bar, buying rounds for our Fearless Leaders, and cheering as our children marched off to their death and dismemberment, we are awaking to find that we have been duped, raped, rolled, and left for dead by both political parties in an act of shameful betrayal that will equal the Fall of Rome in its historical aspect.

Think about it. If you aren't mad as hell, you have not yet opened your eyes. Not only has this administration sold you out to the multi-national corporations with their mantra of, "They hate us! They want to kill us!", but they have given lip service to the cause of "democracy" for the Middle East, whether they want it or not, while they cannot accept true democracy when it rears its head, but must pounce upon and destroy it in its nest. At long last, after too many years of the iron-fisted control of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian people have exercised their inherent rights to self-determination and held a truly democratic election under international supervision. However, their choice is not sitting well with the powers-that-be in Washington and Jerusalem. They have determined that the Palestinian people do not really deserve democracy and their choices must be negated by withholding of funds necessary to rule that beleaguered land.

On the same day we learn of this, news comes out of Ohio that the Dread "Democratic Leadership Council" has again denied the people the right to vote for the candidate of their choice. Many of us are still smarting over the debacle of 2004 when "the people" found several of the political candidates in the field who would satisfy our purpose of supporting someone who would be concerned for our welfare and for whom enough of us could in good conscience assist in their task of booting Bush & Co, out of our once-revered White House. This was not to be, as the DLC and other power groups designated the nomination of John Kerry as "their" candidate, causing many disillusioned Americans to stay away from the polls in droves.

The story of the day which may be enough to cause the long-awaited uprising of the American voters just may be the betrayal of a returned veteran of the War of Choice, Paul Hackett. In 2004, he scared hell out of the Republicans with his campaign of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. His exposure of the lies of the Bush cabal led the people of his district in Ohio, a traditionally strong Republican district, to vote "across party lines" in numbers that almost unseated the entrenched Republican. This year he was attempting to gain the Democratic mandate and to unseat "good Republican" Senator Mike DeWine, and his chances looked good. But no! As usual the Democratic Party could not stand even the faint scent of victory! They went to Ohio and asked Paul Hackett to abandon his cause and step out of the race so that their hand-picked candidate could have a clear field against the senator!
Thus end the political efforts of a true American who would represent The People and tell the voters the naked truth, that THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES! We should be forewarned that this will be the fate of any honest person who tries to run for office within the two-party system in our nation, to be dumped by the very people who claim to represent us and to exemplify our needs and our desires. They are as power-hungry if not as dishonest as their counterparts in the other party and their watchword is to WIN, by whatever method they think may succeed and the people be damned.

What are we who really care about true democracy and have not given up the hope of reinstituting the system in our beloved nation to do? We must cast aside the worn-out mantle of political designation and vote together as Americans, voting in-party, out-of- party, and without regard to party, banding together in support of truth-seekers and truth-tellers, regardless of party, solidifying our support into the juggernaut that will be needed to remove the corruption at the heads of both parties before they totally destroy us. Stop the splintering of effort through numerous third parties with minor agenda and vote for those who seek a true mandate of the people and promise to truly represent the poor, the ill, the elderly. and the middle-class working people who carry the burden of supporting the rest. Failure to do so will bring down our own democracy and destroy any opportunity to construct another, following the Roman Empire into the dust of history.

If we do not have the intestinal fortitude to abandon our old habits and stand up for our rights as American citizens, the most important of which is the right to choose our own leaders, we may as well simply continue to blind ourselves with the idle chatter of the news headlines. "Did you hear that Dick Cheney shot a guy Saturday and nobody knew it until Monday?" "So what? That's what they do! They lie! They cheat! They cover up!" "So who ate the last of the turkey?"

Mary Pitt - - Email mpitt @ cox.net

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info

The Paul Hackett story is one of the most disturbing pieces of news coming out of the Democratic party in a long, long time. He is the sort of politician that the left needs desperately, but Hackett has decided to exit his political career. The spine-less DLC once again fails its constituents in its quest to gain control of the middle of the road. Must they again be reminded that the only thing in the middle of the road is a thin yellow line and some dead snakes.

This is a perfect example of why a viable third party - a party representing the people, not lobbyists and corporations - is necessary in today's world.

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 02:49 PM

The Paul Hackett story is one of the most disturbing pieces of news coming out of the Democratic party in a long, long time. He is the sort of politician that the left needs desperately, but Hackett has decided to exit his political career. The spine-less DLC once again fails its constituents in its quest to gain control of the middle of the road. Must they again be reminded that the only thing in the middle of the road is a thin yellow line and some dead snakes.

This is a perfect example of why a viable third party - a party representing the people, not lobbyists and corporations - is necessary in today's world.

There's still a lot of debate as to how the state of Ohio ran the elections and how the state abused the process. Perhaps Paul Hackett did win? So he shouldn't say he's cutting his losses and that he won't run again, that he's not interested in running. He should go for it, and in doing so, he'll be showing his critics, and opponents that he isn't the coward everyone is pointing him out to be. There are those who are ridiculing him and looking down on him saying he couldn't take the heat of politics, and therefore we are lucky to have found this out, that men of his demenor, and actions aren't suited for political office.

It seems the ones who they are saying can take it, aren't principled, and aren't what we as a nation are needing. They're just destroying us. With them, these men and women who're suited for the job, it is ("me, me, my, my"), themselves they're catering to first, corporations and lobbyists second, the party third, and if they aren't too beholden to all other entities, then they just might do something good for the country.

Do we ever need change.

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 03:59 PM

*
Cheney Breaks Silence on Shooting in Interview
Accepts Responsibility, Defends Delayed Release to News Media
By NEDRA PICKLER and LYNN BREZOSKY, AP
WASHINGTON (Feb. 15) - Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday accepted full blame for shooting a fellow hunter and defended his decision to not publicly disclose the accident until the following day. He called it "one of the worst days of my life."[
"I'm the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry," Cheney told Fox News Channel in his first public comments since the shooting Saturday in south Texas.

Cheney described seeing 78-year-old Harry Whittington fall to the ground after he pulled the trigger while aiming at a covey of quail.

"The image of him falling is something I'll never ever be able to get out of my mind," Cheney said. "I fired, and there's Harry falling. It was, I'd have to say, one of the worst days of my life at that moment."

Cheney has been under intense political pressure to speak out about the shooting incident, which has become a public relations embarrassment and potential political liability for the White House. Until Wednesday, Cheney had refused to comment on why he withheld information about the shooting, which prolonged the controversy and made him the butt of jokes.

"I said, `Harry, I had no idea you were there.' He didn't respond.'"
-Vice President Dick Cheney, in Fox News interview

Cheney was soft-spoken and somber during the interview with Fox's Brit Hume.

"You can talk about all of the other conditions that exist at the time but that's the bottom line and - it was not Harry's fault," he said. "You can't blame anybody else. I'm the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend."

Cheney said he had had a beer at lunch that day, but nobody was drinking when they went back out to hunt several hours later.

Texas officials said the shooting was an accident, and no charges have been brought against the vice president.

A report that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department issued Monday said Whittington was retrieving a downed bird and stepped out of the hunting line he was sharing with Cheney .

"Another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest at approximately 30 yards," the report said.

"I ran over to him," Cheney said. "He was laying there on his back, obviously, bleeding. You could see where the shot struck him."

He said he has no idea if he hit a bird because he was focused on Whittington.

"I said, `Harry, I had no idea you were there.' He didn't respond," Cheney said.

Whittington was reported doing well at a Texas hospital Wednesday, a day after doctors said that a pellet entered his heart and he had what they called "a mild heart attack."

Hospital officials said the Texan, though still listed in intensive care, had a normal heart rhythm again Wednesday afternoon and was sitting up in a chair, eating and planning to do some legal work in his room.

Cheney has been roundly criticized for failing to tell the public about the accident until the next day. He said he thought it made sense to let the owner of the ranch where it happened reveal the accident on the local newspaper's Web site Sunday morning.

"I thought that was the right call," Cheney said. "I still do."

Cheney said he agreed that ranch owner Katharine Armstrong should make the story public, because she was an eyewitness, because she grew up on the ranch and because she is "an acknowledged expert in all of this" as a past head of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He also agreed with her decision to choose the local newspaper as the way to get the news out.

"I thought that made good sense because you can get as accurate a story as possible from somebody who knew and understood hunting and then it would immediately go up to the wires and be posted on the Web site, which is the way it went out and I thought that was the right call," Cheney said.

"What do you think now?" he was asked.

"I still do," Cheney responded. "The accuracy was enormously important. I had no press person with me."

Armstrong told reporters that Whittington made a mistake by not announcing himself as he returned to the hunting line after breaking off to retrieve a downed bird. But Cheney , an avid and longtime hunter, said Whittington was not to blame.

Through hospital officials, Whittington has declined to comment.

"He still kind of wonders what all the hoopla is about," said Peter Banko, administrator of Christus Spohn Hospital Corpus Christi-Memorial.

Cheney was using No. 71/2 shot from a 28-gauge shotgun. Shotgun pellets typically are made of steel or lead; the pellets in No. 71/2 shot are just under one-tenth of an inch in diameter.

The pellet that traveled to Whittington's heart was either touching or embedded in the heart muscle near the top chambers, called the atria, officials said.
Lynn Brezosky contributed to this report from Corpus Christi, Texas.

AP-NY-02-15-06 1634EST
http://articles.news.aol.com/news

That would just take ten years off ones own life to do something like that. How awful to have had happen.

My step dad worked for a company which had several trips they took each year as a group - MagnaFlux Corp.- and one of these trips was deer hunting, and, as a rule, he always went. It was a small company, even though internationally known, and used, there were few employees, so everyone was close to everyone and knew each other really well. They were good friends, each and everyone of them. My dad just went for the trip and being with the guys, why I don't know as one would think they would be tired of one-another. Anyway, he didn't even have a gun.

One year, for whatever reason, he decided not to go, which was a surprise to everyone. That was the year Joe Riley walked down by the lake, all bundled up in his cold weather gear, sat down on a bolder waiting for the sun to come up. Everyone could see him way off in the distance. Then the shot rang out and then they heard the most god awful screaming and wailing. A young man thought he was seeing a bear and shot him. Upon realizing he had shot a man, he begain to scream, and so did his wife. Everyone went running as fast as they could down to where Joe lie on the ground, and a few words were coming from him, but mostly gurgling, and he died. The poor fellow who shot him had just been released from a mental facility and had major mental problems, and that just drove him over the top. I don't recall all of the outcome, but what a tragedy. All of this happened in Colorado in the 1960's, if I'm remembering correctly. There or Idaho, and I'm pretty sure it was Colorado.

Joe was from back in Boston, a young fellow who was the soul support for his ailing and elderly mother, so it was just the worst. I don't believe there were any more deer hunting trips for the fellows at MagnaFlux.

I'll tell you what, you wouldn't get me out in any of these woods or mountains when it's hunting season, there are just too many careless screwballs armed to the hilt who have no business ever handling a gun.

Every year here where we live there are deaths during hunting season for deer and for elk as well. Even here where we live which is a small farming community, we have bullets killing livestock, and bouncing off our house and rock house, this by people who have grown up around guns and are good shots, so you can imagine the danger with first time and other novice gun toting fools.

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 05:34 PM

~
Katrina: After the Storm
By Christopher Hayes
In These Times
Tuesday 14 February 2006

Historian Karen Sawislak talks about what's old in New Orleans.
When New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin assured the city's black residents that New Orleans would remain a "chocolate city," he was roundly ridiculed by everyone from late-night talk show hosts to local politicians. But clumsy as the rhetoric might have been, it's hard not to sympathize with the excruciatingly difficult balancing act he's now trying to pull off: The city can't rebuild without residents, but residents don't want to move back until it's at least partially rebuilt. With an amputated polity, New Orleanians now face a daunting project: figuring out an efficient, yet just, approach to rebuilding a city that was the site of terrible inefficiency and injustice before the flood.

But as catastrophic as Katrina was, it isn't the first time a major American city has faced these kinds of questions: The much mythologized Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed the entirety of the city's downtown and left about 100,000 homeless, also set off heated debate about how to rebuild. The social tensions and conflicts that came to a head in the fire's wake are particularly salient today. In order to get some historical perspective, In These Times spoke with author Karen Sawislak, whose 1995 book, Smoldering City: Chicagoans and the Great Fire 1871-1874, recounts how Chicagoans grappled with some of the same challenges now facing the residents of New Orleans.

One of the most interesting things in the book is the disproportionate effect of the fire along class lines.

Yes. It's a pretty exact parallel in terms of the poor, low-lying neighborhoods in New Orleans. In Chicago in the 1870s, slums and poor neighborhoods were poorly regulated in terms of construction and sanitation and didn't have the kind of infrastructure you'd expect in a modern city. Fire codes were very lax or non-existent. Fire protection services were privately financed through neighborhood taxation, which left poor neighborhoods unprotected. Workers and the poor weren't property owners, so there was no incentive to make improvements. So when the fire came to those neighborhoods, it happened very fast and there was nowhere to go. People in wealthier neighborhoods had access to better roads, or could hire people to help them or had their own means of transportation.

The most striking historical parallel for me was the way these lurid tales of looting and depravity by the city's hordes circulated through the press. But once the fire had died down, and the panic was gone, it became clear that almost all of it was false: People had actually behaved incredibly civilly to each other. How is it that 140 years later, with a press corps with helicopters and cameras, we're still making the same mistakes?

It gets to some of the essential issues about cities. One of the key characteristics of urban life is that you have a place with a mixing of people-different classes, different races. In a disaster you have a breakdown of the barriers that usually exist and a loss of control. I think these fears of the urban underclass are always present, but they're usually managed by the ordinary structures of residential segregation and policing and the like. In a disaster, these things go out the window and those fears surface immediately. The kinds of narratives that are told and are ultimately debunked-it happened in Chicago and again in New Orleans-reveal the constant deep bias that people of means feel toward the urban underclass.

It seems that the approach to relief grew out of the dominant ideology of the time of a kind of laissez-faire, up-by-your-bootstraps fetishization of the individual economic actor-which is, of course, pretty similar to what we have now.

Yeah, it's the root of everything. One of the key points in my book is that it's critical to understand how this ideology affected people's perception of class difference and what the role of government should be.

In terms of relief, there was great concern to make sure people got no more than they had before the fire. It was less about charity in the broad humanistic sense and more about controlled social reconstruction in the Republican, current-day, mean-spirited sense. There was a deep hostility towards any sort of "handout" or uncontrolled government largesse that would corrode an individual's ability to fend for himself.

When different groups made efforts to help with the relief by offering food, transport and the like, it proved very troubling for the business elite in Chicago. So the Chicago Relief and Aid Society essentially took over the relief process. Basically, the board of directors of the Society, which was a "Who's Who" of Chicago's major business leaders, told the city's politicians: "We need to take control to prevent the danger of dependency." They advocated a philosophy of "scientific charity," which was just then becoming popular.

They proceeded to do things like shutting down a soup kitchen established by the city of Cincinnati, because the idea that you could go to a facility if you were hungry and get a bowl of soup didn't square with "scientific charity." Instead, they set up a bureaucracy that differed depending on the targeted clientele. There was "basic relief" for workers and immigrants. It required filling out forms, providing a character witness, and going through an interview process before you could even get emergency cash assistance. Then there was something called "special relief," which was targeted toward middle class and business people. These folks could get straight-up cash grants to restart businesses. They were not required to have the same kind of character checks or witnesses, because the Society felt it would be too embarrassing for them.

There was this hilarious sort of inversion. By seeking relief, you demonstrated that you were unworthy of it. Whereas if you didn't seek relief, it showed you were so proud…

… that you were worthy. The fact that you were willing to stand in a long line showed that you were suspect on some level.

After the relief effort petered out, how did Chicago get rebuilt? Who paid for it?

It was pretty much a private deal at this point. Investors were able to see an opportunity there, particularly in a more defined downtown commercial district. This is probably the biggest difference between what Chicago faced in rebuilding and New Orleans is facing: Chicago was an incredible boom town at this point in time. It hadn't gotten to its fastest point of growth, which happened in the 1880s and '90s, but it was growing hugely fast and was becoming the key commercial nexus of the whole country. I think it was clear to investors in the East and in Europe that the city would rebuild. Although there was spectacular destruction and a lot of famous commercial buildings were destroyed, a lot of the most important places, from an economic standpoint, weren't touched: the stockyards, the lumberyards, the shipping facilities, the train depots, etc.

So the market forces, in terms of investment opportunity, were very positive. And whatever initial exodus there was was easily replaced with the labor influx coming in to rebuild. I tried very hard in this book to de-mythologize the fire and what it means in the city's history by looking at how it really showed the divisions and differences in the city, but I did come away impressed, I have to say, by how quickly things got going again.

Now contrast that to New Orleans. Even prior to Katrina, it was becoming depopulated. In recent years it was, as far as I understand, built on a tourist economy and there were lots and lots of poor people without opportunity. This makes it a completely different scenario in terms of the market incentive to fund rebuilding. It is not at all the same as Chicago in the 1870s.

What do you see as the chief lessons from the rebuilding after the Chicago fire?

For me, when looking at the great fire, the ultimate question is: What are communities' or governments' or even an entire nation's responsibilities to less-advantaged citizens when they are facing this kind of utter destruction of the world that they've known. I think you can see from the book, that some of the same kind of knee-jerk responses of "Well, we can't help too much," or that people are where they deserve to be, is a huge part of our political culture and our history.

In New Orleans right now, you have many experts who say the lower Ninth Ward and other low-lying areas shouldn't be rebuilt because they're just going to get flooded again. But these are the neighborhoods that poor people lived in and feel they have a right to return to. The issues here are strikingly similar to the controversy about whether Chicago was going to allow wood as a building material after the fire.

Yeah, there was a post-fire analysis to see what could be done to make sure this doesn't happen again-much as the people reconstructing New Orleans are thinking about how to prevent future flooding. The proposed solution was citywide fire limit. Fire limits were an early form of zoning. Cities would say that within certain boundaries you can only build with fireproof materials, brick or stone at the time, and they outlawed other materials, like tar for roofs that are flammable but were cheaper.

After the fire, a new mayor came in, Joseph Medill, who was a classic 19th century Republican reformer devoted to the notion of the broader public good. His platform was a citywide fire limit, which was very troubling for people of lesser means who had just been whacked by the fire itself. You had a lot of Germans and Scandinavians, in particular on the North side, whose neighborhoods were devastated. They were now being told they had to use fireproof materials, not wood, to rebuild, which made it prohibitively expensive for working-class homeowners. So it touched off a political battle.

One of the things that struck me in the book is the degree of social capital these immigrant communities had prior to the fire in terms of ethnic associations or newspapers and such, and it allowed them to do relatively well after the fire in these battles over policies.

At the time local communities, especially the German-American politicians, were able to mobilize quite effectively in their own neighborhoods to defeat the notion of fire limits. It was portrayed as elitist, which in many ways it was, and this was a huge defeat for Joseph Medill. And there is an argument that this was an example of democracy working. You have these ward-based politicians who were able to represent the interests of their particular neighborhood and defeat a citywide policy.

So if there's a hopeful lesson to draw, it's that there is an opportunity to organize locally and make a case for having your home back.]

Christopher Hayes is a Senior Editor of In These Times.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021506Q.shtml

I believe it is going to take those of us who have the time and where-with-all to help out with this this organization theory, as look at how many are scattered about, how many displaced are not anywhere near the 9th Ward. Not even close. Somehow this problem needs to be recognized and remedied.
It will probably take those out and about the country with more resources than the displaced have at the ready, to take up this fight for them, as I don't see how they will be able to manage with how things are at this time. SRH

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 05:56 PM

~~~
Bust Big Radio Payola

Greetings,

Ever wonder why commercial radio has become a mind-numbing repetition of the same songs by Jessica Simpson and Celine Dion? It's not just you. Corporate radio in every town has become a wasteland. And in many cases, it's a crime.

An investigation airing tonight on ABC News "Primetime" exposes illegal payola across the radio dial. Radio conglomerates that control hundreds of local stations are taking bribes to endlessly spin major label acts, keeping independent artists off the air.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adlestein calls big radio payola "potentially the most widespread and flagrant violation of FCC rules in the history of American broadcasting." But the FCC's Republican leadership remains reluctant to crack down against the corporate radio giants that have sold off our airwaves.

Tell the FCC to Bust Corporate Radio Payola

This new age of payola is the product of consolidated radio ownership. Several of the largest radio conglomerates in America -- including Clear Channel, Viacom/CBS radio and Cumulus -- are among those now under subpoena in a criminal investigation by the New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Spitzer has exposed a shadowy network of promoters hired by the recording industry to launder hundreds of millions in cash and prizes each year, lining the pockets of big radio broadcasters who agree to spin corporate acts nationwide.

"They thought the FCC was asleep, and they shot someone in front of the policeman," Adelstein tells ABC News. "The policeman is obligated to act when evidence is so clear."

Tell the FCC to Stop the Abuse of Our Airwaves

The airwaves belong to the public -- not the media companies with the fattest wallets. Any broadcaster in violation of payola statutes could face severe FCC sanctions and even the loss of their broadcast licenses.

But the FCC won't act unless they feel pressure from you. Please take action today.

Onward,

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director
Free Press
www.freepress.net

P.S. Activists, musicians, students and independent broadcasters are joining with Free Press to stop payola and reclaim the public airwaves. Learn more at www.freepress.net/payola.

P.P.S. Want to do more? Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold has introduced a bill to stop record labels from paying off radio stations in exchange for airplay. Urge your senators to co-sponsor the "Radio and Concert Disclosure and Competition Act" (S. 2058).

Send a letter to the following decision maker(s):
Deborah Tate
Jonathan Adelstein
Kevin Martin
Michael Copps

Below is the sample letter:

Subject: Bust Big Radio Payola

Dear [decision maker name automatically inserted here],

Recent investigations by the New York State Attorney General's office have revealed widespread violations of laws against radio payola.

Nearly 200 stations were implicated. Many are owned by the handful of radio conglomerates that have risen to prominence since the industry was deregulated in 1996.

The investigation alleges that the stations in question accepted cash and prizes to play artists that were hand-picked by major recording labels. The radio stations aired these without disclosing to listeners the shadowy record deals that pushed the performers to the top of playlists.

This practice is not only dishonest, it's against the law. The airwaves belong to the public, and since 1927, the federal government has required broadcasters who use them to serve the public interest. You owe it to the American public to put a stop to this deception.

Please launch a full and thorough investigation into all allegations of payola in the commercial radio industry and hold bad actors accountable.

Sincerely,[/SIZE]

[SIZE="4"][B][I]From a newsletter I receive. OK, here's a chance to voice your ire at the state of where music has ended up, and this letter sure isn't full of any big surprises is it?

Go on-site to sign the petition and to sign up for a subscription to this news letter:

http://action.freepress.net/freepress/smp.tcl?nkey=i73w3u720jnb5tm&

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 07:38 PM

~~~*~~~"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." Robert F. Kennedy
US Attorney General 1961-64, assassinated in Los Angeles while campaigning
~
"Individualism, as a definition of holding to personal ideals, is classed as obstinacy and anti-social. Inevitably we run point blank into the evils of compromise. When compromise enters our moral fibre, it spreads like a cancerous growth. We think we plan adequate safeguards around areas in which we contemplate yielding our standards, but once we lower the fence and break our strong will to do right, come what may, we expose ourselves to forces that spread beyond control. Compromise always starts on some rather insignificant principle. The dangers of yielding seem negligible and we usually risk those things first where observation and detection by others is difficult. We thus seek to avoid censure and discipline. In a short time we find ourselves trading our principles for false values and doing it in the black market of human relationships. . . ." Ralph W. Hardy
~
"If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "No" to war. For one does not create human society on mounds of corpses." Louis Lecoin - French pacifist leader ~

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 07:53 PM

*******
WOW
THIS IS CRAZY
Cheney's Chappaquiddick
The Real Story Emerges By RJ Eskow
02/15/06 "Yahoo" -- -- The real story is already emerging, if you're willing to do a little digging. Cheney and Whittington went hunting with two women (not their wives), there was some drinking, and Whittington wound up shot. Armstrong didn't see the incident but claimed she had, Cheney refused to be questioned by the Sheriff until the next morning, and a born-again evangelical physician has been downplaying Whittington's injuries since they occurred. Neither the press nor law enforcement seems inclined to investigate.

Before the right-wing commenters howl - there's documentation for all of these statements. Let's take them one by one: In addition to Cheney and Whittington, the hunting party included Katherine Armstrong (who was in the car at the time of the shooting: more on that later). After lots of evasive comments that only referred to a "third hunter," we now know her identity: Pamela Willeford, the US Ambassador to Switzerland.
Then there was this Armstrong quote on MSNBC and picked up by Firedoglake (later dutifully scrubbed, but preserved on Google cache): "There may be a beer or two in there," (Armstrong) said, 'but remember not everyone in the party was shooting.'"

Interestingly, Armstrong's playing with words here. She later said that she (Armstrong) hadn't had anything to drink, so at least one of the other three must have been drinking - and the other three were shooting. So while her statement was literally correct ("not everyone ... was shooting"), it gives the false impression that nobody drank and shot.

Then there was this item (courtesy kos):

Armstrong said she saw Cheney's security detail running toward the scene. "The first thing that crossed my mind was he had a heart problem," she told The Associated Press.
In other words, she didn't see the accident. All of her statements, replete with colorful sidebars about getting "peppered pretty good," gave the false impression she was an eyewitness. She wasn't.
And what about Dr. David Blanchard, who made such light of Whittington's injuries? Before the heart attack occurred, Blanchard gave no indication that pellets had entered Whittington's torso or major organs (we now know that at least one other pellet entered his liver). I found an interesting quote. After asserting that spiritual beliefs help people recover more quickly (which studies have suggested may be true), Blanchard said this of people with out of body and near death experiences:

"These people do quite well in their disease processes," he said. "The Lord wasn't quite ready for them yet . . . It makes believers out of them."
It's likely that Blanchard is also the same "Dr. David Blanchard" who is listed as Vice Chairperson of World Hope International, a Christian evangelical aid group.

Blanchard's certainly entitled to his own beliefs, and World Hope International (if he's the same Blanchard) has done some good work, albeit with a proselytizing bent. But most evangelicals in this country are ardent supporters of the Bush/Cheney Administration. This may explain the otherwize puzzling word choices Dr. Blanchard made to play down Whittington's injuries, especially before the heart attack made that more difficult to do.

So was Cheney drinking, and was there anything inappropriate about this hunting party? We don't know, and nobody's investigating. There's reason to be suspicious. We do have the suggestion that drinking was taking place, we have inconsistencies and a pattern of deception in Armstrong's statements, we have a shooting injury that's far more serious than originally claimed ... and a Sheriff's Department and national press that have already proclaimed the VP innocent of all wrongdoing.

I was right to call this Cheney's Chappaquiddick. The parallels get stronger every day. Of course, Chappaquiddick happened almost forty years ago, and Ted Kennedy's turned his personal life around. Cheney's actions happened this weekend. There's reason to be suspicious of the Vice President's behavior, starting with the cover-up itself.

They're trying to spin it as just a badly handled case of press relations, but it's could be a whole lot more than that.

Copyright © 2006 HuffingtonPost.com
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article11942.htm

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2006, 11:14 PM

~

ABOUT GW BUSH

It's the deed, not the creed, as "The President of Good and Evil" illustrates.

Never has there been a nation held so hostage to a fiction of character and policy that is so publicly contradicted by the harmful reality of the very same.

The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W.Bush

http://www.buzzflash.com/reviews/06/02/rev06025.html

GO ON-SITE TO READ ARTICLE, ETC.

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2006, 11:59 AM

News of the movement for February 16, 2006

Ever wonder why commercial radio always plays the same songs by Jessica Simpson and Celine Dion? Corporate radio in every town has become a wasteland. And in many cases, it's a crime.
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein calls big radio payola "potentially the most widespread and flagrant violation of FCC rules in the history of American broadcasting." But the FCC's Republican leadership remains reluctant to crack down against the corporate radio giants.

Take action: Tell the FCC to stop the abuse of our airwaves.

Telecoms, Cable Firms Take Franchise Fight to D.C.

Executives on both sides of the debate testified before the Senate Commerce Committee to explain their positions on changing the current rules, which require video service providers to negotiate franchise agreements with local communities.
Marguerite Reardon, CNet News.com
Seidenberg, Whitacre Pledge to Match Cable Fees

The CEOs of Verizon and AT&T pledged to the Senate Commerce Committee that their companies were prepared to pay "the same franchise fees cable pays" if the government streamlines the franchise process.
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable
Sen. Stevens Sees Tough Road for Deal on Video Law

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens on Wednesday acknowledged difficulties reaching agreement among lawmakers for legislation that would help telephone carriers more quickly enter the subscription television business.
Jeremy Pelofsky, Reuters
Cable Industry Ads Target Phone Firms' Push Into TV

A simmering battle between the cable TV industry and major phone companies is about to boil over as big cable rolls out ads accusing the phone companies of lying to seek changes in franchising rules to enter local markets more quickly.
James S. Granelli, Los Angeles Times
Microsoft Backs AT&T on Franchising

In comments filed at the FCC, Microsoft said Internet-protocol networks planned by AT&T should be regulated at the federal level, and that local franchising should be eliminated.
Ted Hearn, Multichannel News

Guild Signs Up First Investment Firm In KR Purchase Plan

The Newspaper Guild's effort to buy nine of Knight Ridder's newspapers moved a step closer to possible reality as the first major investment firm has signed on as a potential partner, the union announced.
Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher
Dick Cheney's Assault on the Public's Right to Know

The Bush administration's assault on the public's right to know reached the proportions of parody last weekend, when the White House chose to reveal nothing about Dick Cheney's hunting accident.
Jacob Weisberg, Slate
Court Upholds Ban on Talking to Reporters

A federal court ruled that the Maryland Governor did not violate the First Amendment rights of two Baltimore Sun reporters by prohibiting state employees from talking to them.
Adam Liptak, New York Times
Media Watchdog Urges U.S. to Free Two Journalists

An international media watchdog urged the United States on Tuesday to free two journalists held separately at a U.S. prison in Iraq and at a military base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, saying they had been detained unfairly.
Anna Willard, Reuters

Poll Ranks PBS Leader in Public Trust for 3rd Straight Year

For the third consecutive year, a Roper Public Affairs & Media poll shows Americans consider PBS the nation's most trusted institution among nationally known organizations.
PBS
CPB Staffing New Accountability Committees

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will hold a phone-in board meeting Feb. 21 to make assignments for new committees created in the wake of the inspector general's report which found "serious weaknesses in corporate governance."
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable
PBS Gets Complaints About Genocide Panel

PBS has received a number of complaints about their planned panel discussion following the airing of a documentary, "The Armenian Genocide"; the complaints are due to the presence of two "genocide deniers" among the panelists.
John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable
Registration is now open for ACME's third media education summit, "Facing the Media Crisis: Media Education for Reform, Justice and Democracy." Register and find out more.

FCC Payola Investigations Urged by Future of Music Coalition
FMQB Bush Plans Huge Propaganda Campaign in Iran
The Guardian Don't Let Phone Giants ‘Ctrl' What You Get on the 'Net
USA Today Stevens Questions Fairness of City Broadband Involvement
National Journal Web Firms Are Grilled on Dealings in China
New York Times FCC Rules on More Kids Ad Overages
Broadcasting & Cable A Far Wider Reach for Web Advertising
Media Life Mainstream Media an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy
Colombia Journal Online The Slippery Slope of Self-Censorship
AlterNet

Feb 22
Public Symposium on the Proposed “Webcasting Treaty”
Washington, DC
Feb 23
Unplug Clear Channel, Broadcast Justice: Town Hall and Artist Showcase
Oakland, CA

Complete Calendar »

You're receiving this email as an opt-in subscriber to the Free Press "Media Reform Daily" list. Click here to unsubscribe.

GO ON-SITE TO SIGN A PETITION TO STOP THIS PRACTICE. I'VE POSTED ANOTHER LINK ON NET FREEDOM HERE ON AAJ WHICH SAYS MORE ABOUT THIS ISSUE, IT IS ALSO IN CURRENT EVENTS, AND DON'T FORGET TO WRITE ASKING FOR JILL CARROLL'S SAFE RETURN, I'VE POSTED ADDRESSES TO WRITE TO IN IRAQ, AND FOR AL JAZEER. WRITING MIGHT BE OF SOME HELP TO HER.

About Net Freedom, that is for keeping the internet open to all postings, no control given to anyone, where our government wants to control things, much as China and other countries are doing, the one about music is Radio Payola, that thread, sign a petition to have it stopped, and read up on it. Greedy, money hungry control freaks, this is what drives the crummy sounding music business once again.

http://www.freepress.net

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2006, 02:09 PM

~
Just part of an email from MoveOn.org It is a letter backing those who don't fall into line with the Bush/Cheney administration, against those Democrats who are part and parcel of the GOP, and their "Corporate" backers. I've left out parts concerning their fund raising appeal, but this was the main gist of the letter:

Earlier this week 84% of us agreed we should challenge some right-wing incumbent Democrats in primary elections. Now, we're announcing our first MoveOn-member endorsement in a primary.

Ciro Rodriguez is running for Congress in the 28th District in Texas. Rodriguez opposed the war in Iraq and has championed health care, education and veteran benefits. In the words of Marta from San Antonio, "Rodriguez is a true Democrat and would stand up to the Bush administration in Washington."

Ciro Rodriguez' opponent, Rep. Henry Cuellar, is a symbol of the sort of Democrat we need to replace. He supports the war and the Bush Medicare drug debacle. He votes one out of three times with the Republicans. It isn't a surprise that Bush and Cuellar were excited to see each other last month (photo).

In the words of a MoveOn member in the district, "The Republicans don't need anybody running in District 28, they have Henry Cuellar."

Dear MoveOn member,

Earlier this week 84% of us agreed we should challenge some right-wing incumbent Democrats in primary elections. Now, we're announcing our first MoveOn-member endorsement in a primary.

Ciro Rodriguez is running for Congress in the 28th District in Texas. Rodriguez opposed the war in Iraq and has championed health care, education and veteran benefits. In the words of Marta from San Antonio, "Rodriguez is a true Democrat and would stand up to the Bush administration in Washington."

But Rodriguez is up against an incumbent—Henry Cuellar—who consistently voted against Democrats on important issues and literally campaigned for Bush in 2000. With a sprint to the March 7th finish we can put Rodriguez over the top with our support.

https://political.moveon.org/

The really good news about this primary is that there is no Republican in the race. If Rodriguez wins in three weeks it will be a big progressive win.

Electing Rodriguez is one part of our two-part candidate strategy—taking back the House and supporting the more progressive Democrat in primaries.

We also have another candidate you can support today—Francine Busby (D) who is the MoveOn-member endorsed candidate in California's 50th district. She is running in a special election to replace Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R) who left Congress after pleading guilty to accepting bribes.

And like Rodriguez, the special election is coming right up—on April 11th. Every minute is urgent for these candidates. Together we can put them over the top

http://www.moveon.org/subscrip/i.html?id=6885-4054703-qQwJc13AryvoOg2E1ihgMA

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2006, 04:23 PM

~
CARTOON CRISIS: FOCUS - WHO IS STOKING THE VIOLENCE IN PAKISTAN?

Karachi, 16 Feb. (AKI) - (Syed Saleem Shahzad) - While the Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and his team this week blamed 'hidden hands' for cartoon-related violence, the local media is asking just how the protests - which had been peaceful for the last two weeks - could have turned violent. Some suggest that the administration is providing the adequate security, while others point the finger at Pakistan's powerful intelligence agencies, blaming them for stoking the violence.

At least five people have been killed this week in protests against the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, in what many have called the country's worst incidents of violence in many years. On Thursday, protests continued for a fourth day, with several thousand people taking to the streets in the southern port city of Karachi. All schools had been closed and examinations cancelled in Karachi.

The Urdu daily newspaper Khabrain, published in Lahore where the first deaths occured on Tuesday, described the protests as the worst in the history of the city. Dozens of public sector buildings - including the provincial assembly - as well as many private properties, commercial banks and offices were set on fire.

However, the paper noted that, in many instances, security forces simply ignored what was happening. It cited the example of a group of 40 youths who rampaged through the Hotel Embassy in the city. A mobile police unit was reported to have passed the site of the hotel three times but took no action to stop the destruction.

Reknowned journalist and television anchor Talat Hussain also made a similar observation about the protests in the capital Islamabad, where college students managed to cross into high-security diplomatic area in the capital and went on a rampage.

Talat asked how this was possible when, on any ordinary day, it is hard to access the high security diplomatic enclave. Yet a rally of 6000 students (which was massive by Islamabad standards) was allowed to come near the diplomatic area.

Other Pakistani newspapers and TV channels also raised the same points.

A senior leader of six-party religious alliance MMA and a member of parliament, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, told the media that the intelligence agencies were behind the violence.

Professor Khurshid Ahmed, former federal minister, economist and senior leader of Pakistan's biggest Islamic party, Jamaat-i-Islami, also asked why the police were not at the scene in Islamabad for more than 30 minutes during the protests.

What marks these protests as different from other demonstrations - often organised as a show of strength and bargaining tool by the religious political parties is the motivation of the protestors, many of who seem to have taken to the streets spontaneously.

Tuesday's rally in Lahore was called by the Anjuman-i-Tahfuz-i-Namoos-i-Naboowat, and various religious and political parties were supposed to have led the rally. However, from the morning of the protests, the entire city of Lahore was closed and the protestors took to the streets without carrying any party flags.

According to an eye witness account, all of Lahore’s major streets were crowded and the demonstrations started before they were scheduled to start, even without the presence of the political leaders.

Even though the six-party religious alliance, MMA, has called for a nation-wide strike on 3 March and a 'million man march' two days later in Karachi, the situation appears to be heating up well before that date. Little-known organizations at the district level are already giving calls for rallies and strikes and the people seem to be responding to these calls.

The wave of mass protests has been so strong that even liberal, secular and pro-western parties like the Pakistan Peoples Party, led by by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, and Muttahida Quami Movement, led by Altaf Hussain, have announced big rallies to protest against the cartoons.
(Syed Saleem Shahzad/AkiFeb-16-06 10:09)

http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.265639889&par=0

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2006, 05:07 PM

~~~*~~~
Blackhawk Gone: Why wasn't Whittington airlifted?
Here's just one more unanswered question about Dick Cheney's shooting of his 78-year-old friend last Saturday.

Numerous news accounts in recent years suggest that the vice president, with his history of four heart attacks, is almost always accompanied by a medical team and by Blackhawk helicopters, even when he is hunting in remote rural locations, as he all too frequently does.

Cheney has apparently never needed that type of medical evacuation. But on Saturday, his hunting pal Harry Whittington did. Indeed, news accounts say that Cheney's full-time medical team was on the scene and aided the seriously wounded man.

But where were the Blackhawks? If they were on the Armstrong Ranch, why were they not used for this type of emergency operation that they had long rehearsed? If the Blackhawks were not there, why not, considering they've reportedly been there for his other trips?

Instead, the splayed and profusely bleeding Whittington was driven to a small rural hospital -- even though when he got there, doctors then realized his condition was critical enough to airlift him, by a private helicopter, to the bigger medical center in Corpus Christi.

The bottom line is that it took almost two-and-a-half hours and probably more to get this wounded man to the best trauma center in South Texas. Whittington, of course, is a private citizen. Do you think it would have taken that long if Cheney had been wounded or stricken. It seems like either a case of unequal treatment, or incompetency.

We've been meaning to look into this all week. In August of 2004, we took our annual family vacation in the Jackson Hole area, coincidentally while the vice president was also there. And during our stay, all the locals were buzzing about this incident, which actually involved buzzing...buzzing helicopters. Cheney's helicopters:

Still, nothing quite prepared people for the brazen invasion earlier this month atop the normally bucolic Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. In full view of rafters, tourists and residents, two Black Hawk helicopters skimmed the river.

Angry river users shook their fists. Wildlife tumbled over from the choppers' downdraft, witnesses said. Plants were rippling in the high winds, they said.

"They were at tree-top levels," said Martin Hagen, a captain who navigates the river for a rafting company. "Here you go out for a quiet day along the river and suddenly comes this great noise. It was a big, big disturbance."

Another boat captain, Reed Finley, had just dropped passengers ashore when the choppers buzzed three times.

"They sent an osprey into a tailspin, flipping it over," he said. "It was obnoxious."

The park rangers at Grand Teton National Park were flooded with complaints. The lead ranger called the Secret Service detail guarding Cheney to complain because he had no other number: The National Park Service has no way to communicate with military aircraft. The choppers were violating park service rules not to fly lower than 2,000 feet.

What were the helicopters doing? You guessed it.

Kim Tisor, a spokeswoman at Ft. Carson, Colo., where the helicopters are based, said the Black Hawks were practicing medical evacuation. As she put it, "a high-security mission" in the area (that is, Cheney) means that the helicopters need to practice nearby.

Helicopters are never far from Cheney when he hunts. Like in 2003 in Wyoming:

A trio of Blackhawk helicopters carrying Vice President Dick Cheney used protected land in Puzzleface Ranch as a landing and launching pad Sunday, witnesses reported.

The administration's mechanical birds buzzed Skyline Pond, which is osprey and trumpeter swan habitat, 18 times through three landings and takeoffs, neighbor J.C. Whitfield said Tuesday.

Or last year in Montana:

Whether because of security concerns or because Vice President Dick Cheney is trying to protect a favorite fishing hole, few details about his visit to the Bighorn River were being released publicly.

Cheney flew into Billings early Monday morning and headed down to Fort Smith to do some fishing. His plane, Air Force Two, was accompanied by a C-17 cargo jet, two Chinook helicopters and two Blackhawk helicopters. Beyond that, mum has been the word on the vice president's visit.

And remember his famous hunting trip with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia?

Two military Black Hawk helicopters were brought in and hovered nearby as Cheney and Scalia were whisked away in a heavily guarded motorcade to a secluded, private hunting camp owned by an oil industry businessman.

Now, after all that, here's what happened when there was an actual medical emergency. The Corpus Christi Caller-Times (has that paper put itself on the map, or what?) had an outstanding medical timeline yesterday. We'll summarize the highlights:

5:30 to 5:50 p.m. Saturday: Whittington is shot.
6 p.m. Cheney's medical team makes two decisions. They alert an outside helicopter service (where were those Blackhawks?), but they decided to drive Whittington to the small, closer (but not that close) hospital in Kingsville, Tex.
6:20 p.m. (20 minutes later!) Ambulance arrives.
6:45-6:50 p.m. Whittington arrives at the first hospital, after a 25-30 minute drive.
7:07 p.m. Doctors immediately realize that Whittington needs to go to the trauma center. The outside helicopter service is called a second time.
7:29 p.m. Air ambulance arrives at Kingsville.
8:19 p.m. Whittington finally arrives at the Corpus Christi hospital.

That's anywhere from two hours and 49 minutes to 2 hours and 29 minutes, for an elderly man who's been blasted in his face and torso with birdshot, with fragments in his heart and possibly other vital organs.

We'll ask again one more time. Would it have taken that long for Cheney, a vice president who's known to live in the style of a monarch? Something doesn't add up here.

Posted on February 16, 2006 01:02 PM
Comments
personally I don't see how someone, republican or democrat, can serve as "vice" president when he's in such dire health that he needs a personal medical team and blackhawk helicopters to follow him around the world.

Posted by: LP at February 16, 2006 02:24 PM
"Numerous news accounts in recent years suggest that the vice president, with his history of four heart attacks, is almost always accompanied by a medical team and by Blackhawk helicopters,"

Will, there is plenty to get after Cheney and the White House regarding this story without making this kind of a stretch.

First of all, I have seen nothing that there was any kind of government helicopter present. And even if a Black Hawk were present, they are typically not equipped for medical transport the way the average ambulance is.

And there was an ambulance and medical staff at the ranch because Cheney was there. Whittington got prompt medical attention, far more prompt than the average hunter in the field would have gotten.

Here is a medical timeline from the Corpus Christi Caller:http://www.caller.com/ccct/local_news/article/0,1641,CCCT_811_4471799,00.html
- snip -
Whittington, 78, was struck on the face, neck and chest between 5:30 and 5:50 p.m. Saturday while quail hunting at the 50,000-acre Armstrong Ranch in Kenedy County.
- snip -
The Secret Service notified HALO-Flight dispatch about 6 p.m., putting the air ambulance service on standby in case Whittington needed to be flown to Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial, the area's trauma center, said HALO-Flight executive director Randy Rowe. Minutes later, Christus Spohn Hospital Kleberg in Kingsville was notified that Whittington was en route.

Both Cheney's office and the Secret Service have said the decision to take Whittington to Kingsville first was made by medical personnel who travel with Cheney, who has a history of heart problems.

"I can't comment to why he wasn't flown," Zahren said. "The medical folks that were there would have weighed more into that than our people on the scene. Decisions were made on their advice at that point."

Whittington was taken by ambulance to the Kingsville hospital about 6:20 p.m., Zahren said.

"It was an ambulance on standby for the vice president's visit," Zahren said. "It had been dedicated and it was given up to treat the victim."

The ambulance arrived at the Kingsville hospital between 6:45 and 6:50 p.m., Christus Spohn spokeswoman Yvonne Wheeler said.

HALO-Flight was called again at 7:07 p.m. after Spohn Kleberg medical personnel decided Whittington needed more advanced treatment.

"Typically, why we get calls for transfers is for a higher level of care or a doctor preference," Rowe said.

The air ambulance arrived at the Kingsville hospital at 7:29 p.m. and landed at the Corpus Christi trauma center at 8:19 p.m., Rowe said. Whittington was awake and talking during the flight, he said.

--------------

I would imagine, Will, that since there was an ambulance on-site, the medical staffers figured that it was quicker to get him in the ambulance and en route to the closest hospital. Normally there is not an ambulance right there at the accident scene - so the normal aspect of getting an ambulance to the victim was not a factor here.

Note that 20 minutes elapsed between notifying the helicopter and the departure of the ambulance for Kleburg. Which means the Corpus Medivac helicoper would still have been a ways out from the ranch (it's about 90-100 crows flight miles from Corpus to the Armstrong Ranch). Taking Whittington by ambulance probably got him to a hospital quicker in this one particular, rare instance.

And there are other factors involved here. First of all, a medivac copter allows bypassing of traffic. There is no traffic in Kenedy County - it's all ranchland.

A helicopter's forward speed is typically about 120 mph or so. The road through Kenedy County (yes, there is just one main road)
is flat and straight (I've been on it), so the ambulance was probably able to go at least 90 mph once it got out to the main road. So an ambulance in this case wasn't much slower than a copter - and it was already there.

So your statement:

"It seems like either a case of unequal treatment, or incompetency."

Really doesn't fit the facts on the ground.

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 02:30 PM
Will, you screwed up your version of the timeline:

"6:20 p.m. (20 minutes later!) Ambulance arrives."

That should be ambulance departs. It was Cheney's ambulance that had been there all along.

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 02:35 PM
Oh, and one other normal advantage of a helicopter over an ambulance is that the helicopter can take a crow's flight path and the car has to follow roads. But south of Kingsville, there is very little difference - there is hardly a curve in that road.

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 02:41 PM
"First of all, I have seen nothing that there was any kind of government helicopter present. And even if a Black Hawk were present, they are typically not equipped for medical transport the way the average ambulance is"

db, this doesn't square with your arguments that the ranch is a desolate middle-of-nowhere place. Because it is, I'm sure they'd never let Cheney get that far away from medical treatment were he to need it.

I can, however, see them making the argument that private citizens would not be allowed aboard Cheney's government aircraft. Particularly if Cheney either wasn't the shooter, or if they were going to cover up that he was. (If they were going to be upfront about the whole situation I would see no problem with the Secret Service saying that the veep shot a man, let's get him in the most efficient manner possible.)

Posted by: Jess Wundrun at February 16, 2006 02:53 PM
yes, i think its pretty clear. DC just wanted this man to die. this way, they could have just buried the dude right there on the ranch and these meddlesome media-types would have never known about the whole deal.

/moonbat off

let it die already will. c'mon - lets talk about more important things. like Seidel's rug.

Posted by: SBVFT contributor - best $25 - well, u know the rest at February 16, 2006 02:56 PM
"db, this doesn't square with your arguments that the ranch is a desolate middle-of-nowhere place. Because it is, I'm sure they'd never let Cheney get that far away from medical treatment were he to need it."

I've been down there, Jess. It's so empty that a Cat 4 hurricane can blow through and cause hardly any damage (Bret in 1999).

" can, however, see them making the argument that private citizens would not be allowed aboard Cheney's government aircraft. "

As I have shown, an ambulance, already on site, was able to travel almost as fast as a helicopter on the road down there - I've been on that road, and it is one of the most straight-line, flat and boring roads in the country. Nothing but scrub, windmills, fences, cattle and an occasional outbuilding.

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 02:57 PM
I wonder if Cheney gets the helicopter pilot to play 'die valkyrie' for him?

(I love the smell of birdshot in the evening)

Posted by: Jess Wundrun at February 16, 2006 03:19 PM
You know, Swiftie, I think it might be coming down to this: our constitution does not allow the president or vice president to receive oral sex with a woman other than his wife while in office. (FDR may have had a mistress, but she did not fellate him, wheelchair issues). Constitutional scholar that he is, Dick Cheney knew he needed to cover for being out in the weeds with Pamela.

(Dear oc. I am making this up)

Posted by: Jess Wundrun at February 16, 2006 03:27 PM
Jess...I was told that Dick and Pamela were in the grass alone,and Dick saw movement in that gulley... and not knowing who it was.... he fired a shot in that direction, and.... it was Harry who had not told them he was in the area. There were no other birds involved.

Posted by: Bill at February 16, 2006 04:17 PM
No (snigger) game cocks?

Posted by: Jess Wundrun at February 16, 2006 04:25 PM
The reason the Blackhawks weren't used? Probably the same reason that prompted Cheney to leave out the most salient detail of the accidental shooting, that he was the shooter, when he contacted the WH. He was attempting to cover it up.

Anybody who believes he approved that call to the local paper next morning, please contact me. I have beachfront property in Kansas to sell you.

Posted by: Gloria at February 16, 2006 04:41 PM
Jess - you're wrong. FDR was getting some, he was just better at hiding it than Caligula. FDR had that the luxury of that long dark cape he could just drape over whoevever was doing the servicing.

Posted by: SBVFT contributor - best $25 - well, u know the rest at February 16, 2006 04:48 PM
Because I personally find the topic of this thread pretty boring and largely irrelevant given the relative significance of Cheney's mis-service as our vice-president....

I'd like to offer a challenge to any self-respecting Bush supporter:

Read Paul Pilar's article in Foreign Affairs, and/or, read what Larry Wilkerson has to say about the handling of intelligence in the run up to the Iraqi invasion, and/or, link to websites where you can hear interviews with either or both of them.

Then show that you have the wherewithall (balls) to come back to this site and offer a legitimate counter-argument (or even lame attempt to do such)to what they have to say about the role of our VICE (nice word play, Jess) president in the Bush misadministration's use of intelligence in development of Middle East foreign policy.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5217645

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4481092.stm

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/wilkerson.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4987598

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-wilkerson25oct25,0,7455395.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/Wilkerson%20Speech%20--%20WEB.htm

Posted by: Talking point detective at February 16, 2006 04:49 PM
Who cares how long it took to get Whittington some medical attention? Let the Neocons all kill each other...just one less we have to deal with. Cheney would have done us all a big favor if he would have next turned the gun on himself.

Posted by: Lou at February 16, 2006 04:53 PM
Dear TPD,

How quaint of you to suggest real discourse based on facts - from Bushcultists, yet!

None of that, they only call names and impugn characters, with a side dish of smear tactics.

Posted by: roooth at February 16, 2006 05:11 PM
Geeeeeee, I wonder if it was because the intention was to keep this a secret all along. Hmmm, I really wonder about that. People in power will never learn. They really never will. After Clinton, you'd think the lesson would have hit home, but no.

Posted by: park at February 16, 2006 05:14 PM
roooth,

I'm trying to find out if there is such thing as "self-respecting Bush supporters," or whether everyone who defends Bush's policies (specifically Middle East policies) is, in fact, a Bushcultist.

Gee, I wonder if anyone will respond to the challenge. While I appreciate the intent of your comment, I have to say it is the first time anyone on this site has called me "quaint" (well, maybe Arn kind of did one time when he called me a "baby.")

Posted by: Talking point detective at February 16, 2006 05:17 PM
"yes, i think its pretty clear. DC just wanted this man to die. this way, they could have just buried the dude right there on the ranch and these meddlesome media-types would have never known about the whole deal."

That's my boy! You tell em bout dat librul media!

Posted by: Slow Brain Veterans for Thugs at February 16, 2006 05:17 PM
Boy, you must've hit a real sore spot, Will Bunch. Just LOOKIE at all the trolls coming out of the woodwork trying to "yawn" in various different ways.

Nice try, tools.

Attytood has always been spot-on excellent commentary. Keep up the brilliant work. Top headline at Buzzflash and well-warranted.

Posted by: R at February 16, 2006 05:22 PM
"Boy, you must've hit a real sore spot, Will Bunch."

Nah, he fired blanks on this one.

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 05:24 PM
Da women, da beer, .... damn, Harry got shot!

Posted by: Old Boy at February 16, 2006 05:26 PM
Right you are,TPD.This is the media distracting from the real crimes and issues that NEED to be focused upon.It was pretty good for a few jokes,not at Mr.Whittington's expense(except for the lawyer ones)but there are more important issues more serious than a heart attack.Get back to leaks and spying and killing innocents and agitating Muslims and nookular options and torturing prisoners.Those are the crimes we must stay focused on.

Posted by: tired of this too at February 16, 2006 05:27 PM
PS - Bushie's little tramp daughter used the secret service to spring one of her underaged-drinking friend-with-benefits from jail, so Cheney could've spared a helicopter for the man he shot. Maybe part of the untold story includes Cheney's heart having a little scare of its own after what he did, so they had to reserve emergency treatment for HIM.

The fact that they lied about the time of the shooting, they lied about the distance, they lied about the severity of the shooting, they lied about the drinking and the reason for keeping Cheney under wraps for a day before allowing local authorities to interview Dick, not to mention many other unanswered questions, such as just why that lady ambassador was "hunting" with them, proves this is a story that bears ALL the scrutiny being paid to it.

Anyone who is NOT a troll and a tool who questions otherwise apparently never got the lessons learned about Clinton's blowjob. You need a story like this to reach the bonehead fundie Nascar masses.

Posted by: R at February 16, 2006 05:31 PM
And they stick to their posts, just like they're PAID to do. Opposite ends of the spectrum, I'm SO sure. How transparent can you get?

Say, tools, do they pay for your gym time, too, to counteract the ENDLESS HOURS you glue your widening butts to the chair breathing down Attytood's neck?

Posted by: R at February 16, 2006 05:34 PM
Actually, I'm sure it's the same troll with different nyms. Will, you should check it out.

Posted by: R at February 16, 2006 05:36 PM
How about just releasing the Secret Service voice chatter recordings during the incident?

I don't think it would be too hard to believe that Cheney actually accidentally shot the guy in the SUV.

Posted by: "un"common sense at February 16, 2006 05:37 PM
i don'tsee what all the fuss is about just one lying corrupt vile dickhead cheny shooting life long insider repug. bottom feeder for bushco last 18 years.maybe next time he can return the pleasure,just kidding.

Posted by: hobojo at February 16, 2006 05:38 PM
Interesting juxtapostion between the last two posts. One says we should stick to discussing the real issues. The next says we should play the Rove game and stick to sensationalism over relatively insignificant issues to reach the NASCAR masses.

I have to say, exposing the ineptitude, dissembling, corruption, manipulation, counter-productivity, etc., etc., seems to have less affect on the polls than when Cheney shoots someone - but maybe a two-pronged attack might be best?

Posted by: Talking point detective at February 16, 2006 05:38 PM
The Democrats and Independents can do much better for more people in this country because we now have a truly stark example by the G.O.P. of what NOT to do to a democracy: let it be hijacked by zealots.And incompetent zealots at that!

Posted by: Lyn at February 16, 2006 05:38 PM
The Democrats and Independents can do much better for more people in this country because we now have a truly stark example by the G.O.P. of what NOT to do to a democracy: let it be hijacked by zealots.And incompetent zealots at that!

Posted by: Lyn at February 16, 2006 05:40 PM
"And they stick to their posts, just like they're PAID to do. "

Gawd, you're dense.

Talking Point Detective has been here for some time. So have I. We're not paid to post here. He's pretty far left if you bothered to read any of his posts instead of just launching into moronic, fact-free tirades.

Hey, TPD, maybe this is POA's couzin. He used to think we were the same poster.

This earthshattering post about helicopters is nothing of the sort, for reasons I documented. If you disagree, why don't you pick apart my statements instead of just flinging baseless charges that you can't substantiate?

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 05:41 PM
No Blackhawks were around.. Just chickenhawks.

Posted by: Paul3 at February 16, 2006 05:45 PM
"The fact that they lied about the time of the shooting,"

No evidence of that.

"they lied about the distance,"

No evidence of that. The injuries are consistent with 8 shot at 30 yards.

"they lied about the severity of the shooting,"

Uh, no, they had no idea as to the severity until he got to a hospital.

"they lied about the drinking"

Haven't seen that.

"and the reason for keeping Cheney under wraps for a day before allowing local authorities to interview Dick,"

No evidence of that, either.

"not to mention many other unanswered questions, such as just why that lady ambassador was "hunting" with them"

Gee, do you suppose she was hunting with them because it was HER RANCH?

What a maroon. The truth does just fine, but you just can't resist making stuff up, can you?

Posted by: db_cooper at February 16, 2006 05:47 PM
Yeah, POA called me a "tool" also.

""and the reason for keeping Cheney under wraps for a day before allowing local authorities to interview Dick,""

As I heard it, the SS refused to let the local authorities to interview Cheney until the next morning. Why?

"Gee, do you suppose she was hunting with them because it was HER RANCH?"

Not that our friend needs to be defended, but there was a (Swedish?) ambassador in the group. I didn't realize that she also owned the ranch.

Posted by: Talking point detective at February 16, 2006 05:53 PM
thats some history,I dont think there are enough blackhawks to haul all that hubris.

Hopefully this will be the incident that brings the bush junta down,maybe the house and senate democrats are letting them getting away with their corrupt actions and their nauseating cronyism so they all will crash and burn together.wishful thinking

WHittington must have said something to offend dick.This just reeks of a premeditated accident gone awry.I never hunted,but you just dont turn around and shoot blindly like that,especially an experienced hunter.

where the hell is karma gonna show up?

Posted by: J at February 16, 2006 06:05 PM
thats some history,I dont think there are enough blackhawks to haul all that hubris.

Hopefully this will be the incident that brings the bush junta down,maybe the house and senate democrats are letting them getting away with their corrupt actions and their nauseating cronyism so they all will crash and burn together.wishful thinking

WHittington must have said something to offend dick.This just reeks of a premeditated accident gone awry.I never hunted,but you just dont turn around and shoot blindly like that,especially an experienced hunter.

where the hell is karma gonna show up?

Posted by: J at February 16, 2006 06:06 PM
thats some history,I dont think there are enough blackhawks to haul all that hubris.

Hopefully this will be the incident that brings the bush junta down,maybe the house and senate democrats are letting them getting away with their corrupt actions and their nauseating cronyism so they all will crash and burn together.wishful thinking

WHittington must have said something to offend dick.This just reeks of a premeditated accident gone awry.I never hunted,but you just dont turn around and shoot blindly like that,especially an experienced hunter.

where the hell is karma gonna show up?

Posted by: J at February 16, 2006 06:06 PM
Also, db.
"No evidence of that. The injuries are consistent with 8 shot at 30 yards."

Curious, then, to hear your response to this comment on another thread from Charlie L.

"It will take a CSI-like effort with models and dressed cadavers to determine if a 7.5 pellet can get through clothes, skin, and body to the heart if shot from 30 yards away. I'm not a hunter, but I'm going to guess the answer is: "not F&#$ing likely." More possible is that the vic was shot from 15 to 20 FEET away rather than the 90 feet claimed. This difference is too large to be a "mistake of memory" but would have to be a LIE."

Posted by: Talking point detective at February 16, 2006 06:06 PM
thats some history,I dont think there are enough blackhawks to haul all that hubris.

Hopefully this will be the incident that brings the bush junta down,maybe the house and senate democrats are letting them getting away with their corrupt actions and their nauseating cronyism so they all will crash and burn together.wishful thinking

WHittington must have said something to offend dick.This just reeks of a premeditated accident gone awry.I never hunted,but you just dont turn around and shoot blindly like that,especially an experienced hunter.

where the hell is karma gonna show up?

Posted by: J at February 16, 2006 06:08 PM
thats some history,I dont think there are enough blackhawks to haul all that hubris.

Hopefully this will be the incident that brings the bush junta down,maybe the house and senate democrats are letting them getting away with their corrupt actions and their nauseating cronyism so they all will crash and burn together.wishful thinking

WHittington must have said something to offend dick.This just reeks of a premeditated accident gone awry.I never hunted,but you just dont turn around and shoot blindly like that,especially an experienced hunter.

where the hell is karma gonna show up?

Posted by: J at February 16, 2006 06:08 PM
I'm getting the distinct impression that Will is behind all this multiple posting of the same comments: maybe he can justify asking for a raise based on the total number?

Posted by: Talking point detective at February 16, 2006 06:13 PM
Forget about the shooting incident for one moment please.

It occurs to me that it must be costing the tax-payers a veritable fortune every time Cheney takes a notion to blast a few birds: good god all mighty; ambulances, Black Hawks, C-130s and a medical team? Damn!

Of course, I remember the G-8 in S.E. Gerogia and Junior's portable police state that made life a living burning hell for everyone down here, especially the Vietnam Vets, like me, for three months before His Royal Hind-end even arrived.

Nothing like those war-choppers to take ya back, several decades, when they damn near land on your roof at midnight.

Lucky for me, I have a psychiatrist friend who was also in Nam. Handy when you find yourself not sleeping and, when you do sleep, having nightmares, again.

Thought I had finally beaten those demons after about 20 years of hard work. Well, I guess some demons never go away, especially when the same old crowd is always around to re-energize them.

Why can't Junior and the Dick just stay home, for chrissake? They keep telling us that we are at war; a criminal war, which they have screwed up 40 ways from Sunday. Seems to me they ought to be working 24/7 to make up for all they have screwed up.

I am however curious as to where Lynne was. If this had been Clinton, drinking and shooting (pun intended) with another woman, not Hill, the morality police would already be holding hearings.

Posted by: Tram at February 16, 2006 06:19 PM
Is it possible that Mr. Cheney had a few more than 1 (ONE) beer and the 24 hour period was used for sobering up ?? Just asking.

Posted by: EDJ at February 16, 2006 06:28 PM
I don't believe there was any conspiracy here. I think that Medivac could've gotten Whittington to the hospital sooner than the way they did it,no doubt; and I've seen medical personnel on scene numerous times who have made the call to go to a trauma unit at a hospital further than the closest hospital, & the severity of the injuries were much less than Whittington received. Whittington should have been Medivacked to Chorpus Christi trauma unit.
Q - Were all these people untrained & incompetent? or, just stupid?
Something smells here, I just can't place the odor.
"No Charges Against Cheney". "no alcohol involved". says who?

Q - Were all these people just stupid?

Posted by: MickeyG at February 16, 2006 06:47 PM
Check this out: (from Editor and Publisher)

The sheriff, in that article, had explained why he did not rush to the ranch that night. "We've known these people (witnesses) for years. They are honest and wouldn't call us, telling us a lie," Salinas said. "I talked to an eyewitness who said it was a definite accident. We knew Mr. Whittington was being cared for.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002034430

So, when they say alcohol was not a factor in the accident, the sheriff has essentially admitted that he was going only on the say-so of the perpetrator. Gotta love Texas justice.

Posted by: Jess Wundrun at February 16, 2006 06:50 PM
Bookmark Attytood
[SIZE="1"]http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002793.html

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2006, 05:36 PM

~~~

A great war leaves the country with three armies - an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. German Proverb

~

Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms: Congressman Ron Paul

~

"If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs -- the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it….they may substitute personal and arbitrary government -- the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged -- while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government." : Professor Charles Beard - President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941, 1948. ~~~~

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2006, 08:35 PM

Here's a list of stories on the torture this administration is advocating, there are links to video's, a new set of pictures and articles.VIDEO: ABU GHRAIB - THE SEQUEL
By Olivia Rousset
Broadcast By SBS - Australia - Dateline - 02/15/06These are the photos the American Government doesn't want you to see. While researching a story on guards at Abu Ghraib, I obtained a copy of the unreleased photographs and videos. Taken at the same time as the photos released in 2004 and often of the same abuses, this is the first time they have been shown to the public. Click here to watch the video: GO ON-SITE TO VIEW, ADDRESS TO LINK AT BOTTOM OF PAGE
~
IRAQ: HORRIFIC NEW TORTURE PICTURES RELEASEDMORE photographs have been leaked of Iraqi citizens tortured by US soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Warning

These pictures should only be viewed by a mature AUDIENCE

Click here to view GO ON-SITE TO VIEW IF IT ISN'T BEING BLOCKED AS IT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN EARLIER.
~
More Photos; More War Crimes
By Mike Whitney
The photographs illustrate in excruciating detail the commitment to physical coercion that the Bush administration has vigorously defended in its legal memoranda and justified in terms of its war on terrorism. The battered faces and hooded victims of American brutality attest to the shocking inhumanity of the present campaign. Continued
~
Eyes Wide Open
By Chris Floyd

What shall we say when history asks how such crimes came to be committed in the name of America? Will we say that we stood silently by, shrugging our shoulders, filling our bellies, closing our eyes? Or will we be able to say: We saw. We dissented. We resisted. We condemned.
Continued
~
http://informationclearinghouse.info/

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2006, 12:21 AM

*
White House Ordered to Release Spy Papers By KATHERINE SHRADER,
Associated Press Writer
46 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A federal judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to release documents about its warrantless surveillance program or spell out what it is withholding, a setback to efforts to keep the program under wraps.

At the same time, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said he had worked out an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program. The panel's top Democrat, who has requested a full-scale investigation, immediately objected to what he called an abdication of the committee's responsibilities.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that a private group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act. He gave the Justice Department 20 days to respond to the group's request.

" President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the wireless surveillance program," Kennedy said. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its FOIA requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought."

Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the department has been "extremely forthcoming" with information and "will continue to meet its obligations under FOIA."

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers also have been seeking more information about Bush's program that allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop — without court warrants — on Americans whose international calls and e-mails it believed might be linked to al-Qaida.

After a two-hour closed-door session, Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the committee adjourned without voting on whether to open an investigation. Instead, he and the White House confirmed that they had an agreement to give lawmakers more information on the nature of the program. The White House also has committed to make changes to the current law, according to Roberts and White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino.

"I believe that such an investigation at this point ... would be detrimental to this highly classified program and efforts to reach some accommodation with the administration," Roberts said.

Still, he promised to consider the Democratic request for a vote in a March 7 meeting.

Earlier, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated that Bush does not need Congress' approval to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping and that the president would resist any legislation that might compromise the program.

Later Thursday, Bush adviser Karl Rove told at the University of Central Arkansas: "The purpose of the terrorist-surveillance program is to protect lives. The president's actions were legal and fully consistent with the 4th Amendment and the protection of our civil liberties under the constitution."

West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said the White House had applied heavy pressure to Republicans to prevent them from conducting thorough oversight. He complained that Roberts didn't even allow a vote on a proposal for a 13-point investigation that would include the program's origin and operation, technical aspects and questions raised by federal judges.

Rockefeller said the Senate cannot consider legislation because lawmakers don't have enough information. "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing or conversely restricting the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting," he said.

It remains unclear what changes in law may look like. Roberts indicated it may be possible "to fix" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize the president's program. Perino said the White House considers suggestions put forward by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, the starting point, particularly his proposal to create a special subcommittee on Capitol Hill that would regularly review the program.

DeWine's proposal would exempt Bush's program from FISA. That law set up a special court to approve warrants for monitoring inside the United States for national security investigations.

Yet Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., left the closed hearing saying he has been working on a different legislative change to FISA. "It seems that's a logical place to start, to upgrade FISA given the extraordinary expanse of technology in the 30 years that have lapsed," he said.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told a forum at Georgetown University Law School Thursday night, "You cannot have domestic search and seizure without a warrant." He is drafting legislation to require the foreign surveillance court to review Bush's program and determine if it is constitutional.

California Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Georgetown audience the surveillance "can and must comply" with the law requiring warrants from the special court. However, she supported the need to conduct electronic eavesdropping to combat terrorism.

Specter's committee will continue to probe the program's legality at a Feb. 28 hearing. The Justice Department strongly discouraged him from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, to testify about the surveillance program.

Just as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could not talk about the administration's internal deliberations when he appeared before the committee earlier this month, neither can Ashcroft nor Comey, Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said in a letter to Specter.

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Mark Sherman and Larry Margasak contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2006, 12:28 AM

~~~
THE NATION

Gonzales Also Ends Up Defending His Credibility

Senate Democrats accuse the attorney general of previously misleading them on the domestic surveillance program.

By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — A year ago, even Democrats in Congress viewed newly minted Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales as a breath of fresh air. After years of battling his hard-edged predecessor, John Ashcroft, the quiet, self-effacing former judge was seen as marking a new era of open and harmonious relationsGonzales' appearance Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee showed what a difference a year can make..
Testifying about the domestic spying program that President Bush secretly approved after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Gonzales found himself defending not only the legal rationale of the program but also his own credibility.

Before Gonzales could utter a word of his opening statement, members of the panel wrangled over whether he should have to swear to tell the truth to the committee. Democrats were armed with a DVD that they said featured misleading statements by Gonzales and Bush about the program before its existence was disclosed in December by the New York Times.

"This is really not a very good way to begin this hearing," said the Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).

The panel voted along party lines to give Gonzales a pass on the oath, even though he said he would take one.

The Democrats were forced to show their video to reporters outside the hearing room after Specter ruled that reading a transcript of the tape was adequate.

Still, Gonzales found himself repeatedly on the defensive, having to justify what Democrats alleged were evasions.

Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) accused him of giving a misleading answer to a question about the scope of presidential power — the linchpin of the debate over the eavesdropping program — during his confirmation hearing last January.

At the time, Feingold asked Gonzales a question that seemed to touch on the then-secret program — whether he believed that Bush had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps of Americans "in violation of the criminal and foreign intelligence surveillance statutes of this country."

Gonzales responded that the question was hypothetical, but added that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes."

On Monday, Feingold said that answer was misleading. Gonzales said the earlier response was accurate because the administration had always believed that the eavesdropping program was legal and authorized by Congress.

"Senator, I've told the truth then; I'm telling the truth now," Gonzales said.

"Mr. Chairman, I think the witness has taken mincing words to a new high," Feingold said.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) cited another exchange during the confirmation hearing, when Gonzales declared that Bush had never exercised his authority to conclude that a law was unconstitutional and refused to comply with it.

Durbin said Monday that the administration was doing just that in the domestic spying program, and was skirting a 1978 law — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — that established procedures for a court to consider the sorts of domestic eavesdropping that the administration undertook.

"So how can your response be valid today in light of what we now know?" Durbin asked.

"Oh, it's absolutely valid, senator," Gonzales replied.

Gonzales said the administration believed a joint congressional resolution after the Sept. 11 attacks effectively supplemented the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by giving Bush the power to take all necessary action to protect the country — implicitly including electronic surveillance without warrants.

The credibility attacks left Gonzales acting as defender-in-chief for the president.

Page 2 of 2 << back 1 2

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Bush had misled the public during a 2004 speech in Buffalo, N.Y., in which he sought to ease fears about the Patriot Act by stressing the role that courts played in authorizing wiretaps.

" 'Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order,' " Feinstein quoted Bush as saying. " 'Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.' "

"Mr. Attorney General, in light of what you and the president have said in the past month, this statement appears to be false," Feinstein said. "Do you agree?"

Gonzales said the statement was taken out of context, and that Bush was addressing a particular kind of wiretap.

"I take great issue with your suggestion that somehow the president of the United States was not being totally forthcoming with the American people," he responded.

Feinstein asked Gonzales whether the administration believed that the post-Sept. 11 congressional resolution was so all-encompassing that it gave officials the authority to give "false or misleading answers" if the president thought the truth might hinder his ability to function as commander in chief.

"Absolutely not, senator," Gonzales replied. "Of course not."

The parrying goes to a major concern about Gonzales, who has been part of the Bush inner circle since Bush's days as governor of Texas.

His defenders say he is conscientiously doing all he can to protect the country from attack. Gonzales stressed during his confirmation hearing last year that he recognized he would have a broader constituency as attorney general, compared to his job as White House counsel, serving the nation rather than just Bush.

"Atty. Gen. Gonzales is candid and honest when giving legal advice — as every good and capable lawyer should be with their client," said Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos. "If anything, the level of trust and respect that comes from years of working together allows him to be exceptionally forthcoming when giving advice."

Critics still perceive him as insufficiently independent of his old boss.

"It is sort of startling. Here is a very mild-mannered guy, a very nice person, who has, on virtually every issue in the war on terror, told the president what he wants to hear," said David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "The constant theme is that the president, as commander in chief, is essentially above the law."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gonzales7feb07,0,6465421.story

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2006, 09:45 AM

~~~~~
Three Journalists Face Jail For Revealing Existence Of CIA Prisons In Europe
Submitted by editor4 on February 16, 2006 - 3:51pm.
Source: Reporters Without Borders (via Guerilla News Network)

Three journalists face prison for revealing existence of secret CIA prisons in EuropeReporters Without Borders has appealed to the Swiss justice and defence ministers to drop complaints against three journalists who revealed the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe.
In letters to the federal councillors, Justice Minister Christoph Blocher and Defence Minister Samuel Schmid, it has pointed out that the journalists only fulfilled their duty to report on a case of public interest.

Zurich-based weekly SonntagsBlick on 8 January this year reproduced a fax from the Egyptian foreign minister to his embassy in London, referring to the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Kosovo, Macedonia, Ukraine, Rumania and Bulgaria.

The case produced an outcry in Switzerland and worldwide and the country’s secret services were implicated in the leak of the confidential document. Romania and Bulgaria denied the allegations. The United States admitted the existence of flights chartered by the CIA over numerous European countries but not the existence of prisons.

A damning report from the Council of Europe condemned abuses committed by the US administration in its fight against terrorism and its recourse to torture, comparing the camps to one in Guantanamo Bay.

The Swiss authorities, fearing a deterioration in their diplomatic relations with the US, with whom they are in the process of negotiating a free-exchange agreement, have sought to defuse the crisis by opening two investigations, one criminal, one military, to track down who was behind the leak. The journalists on SonntagsBlick face prison sentences under the terms of both investigations

http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/3328

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2006, 10:42 AM

~
Fueled by arrogance, Bush White House ignores the rules
By David Ignatius
WASHINGTON POST

There is a temptation that seeps into the souls of even the most righteous politicians and leads them to bend the rules, and eventually the truth, to suit the political needs of the moment. That arrogance of power is now on display with the Bush administration.

The most vivid example is the long delay in informing the country that Vice President Cheney had accidentally shot a man last Saturday while hunting in Texas. For a White House that informs us about the smallest bumps and scrapes suffered by the president and vice president, the lag is inexplicable.
But let us assume the obvious: It was an attempt to delay and perhaps suppress embarrassing news. We will never know if the vice president's office would have announced the incident at all if the host of the hunting party, Katharine Armstrong, hadn't made her own decision Sunday morning to inform her local paper.

Nobody died at the Armstrong Ranch, but this incident reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969. That story, and dozens of others about the Kennedy family, illustrates how wealthy, powerful people can behave as if they are above the law. For my generation, the fall of Richard Nixon is the ultimate allegory about how power can corrupt and destroy. It begins, not with venality, but with a sense of God-given mission.

I would be inclined to leave Cheney to the mercy of Jon Stewart and Jay Leno, if it weren't for other signs that this administration has jumped the tracks. What worries me most is the administration's misuse of intelligence information to advance its political agenda. For a country at war, this is truly dangerous.

The most recent example of politicized intelligence was President Bush's statement on Feb. 9 that the United States had ''derailed'' a 2002 plot to fly a plane into the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. Bush spoke about four al-Qaida plotters who had planned to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door. But a foreign official with detailed knowledge of the intelligence scoffed at Bush's account, saying that the information obtained from Khalid Sheik Mohammed and an Indonesian operative known as Hambali was not an operational plan so much as an aspiration to destroy the tallest building on the West Coast. When I asked a former high-level U.S. intelligence official about Bush's comment, he agreed that Bush had overstated the intelligence.

Perhaps the most outrageous example of misusing intelligence has been the administration's attempt to undercut Paul Pillar and other former CIA officials who tried to warn about the dangers ahead in Iraq. I'm not talking about the agency's botch job on weapons of mass destruction, but about their warnings that post-war Iraq would be chaotic and dangerous. Pillar said so privately before the war, and he helped draft an August 2004 national intelligence estimate warning, correctly, that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating and heading for ''tenuous stability,'' at best.

Bush was unhappy at this naysaying, just as he has grumbled about pessimistic reports from the CIA station in Baghdad. When Pillar made similar warnings about Iraq at a private dinner in September 2004, the White House went ballistic - seeing Pillar as part of a CIA conspiracy to undermine the president's policies. Soon after, Bush installed a former Republican congressman, Porter Goss, who began a purge at the agency that has now driven out a generation of senior managers. Pillar and many, many others have retired - leaving the nation without some of its best intelligence officers when we need them most.

Bush and Cheney are in the bunker. That's the only way I can make sense of their actions. They are steaming in a broth of daily intelligence reports that highlight the grim terrorist threats facing America. They have sworn blood oaths that they will defend America from its adversaries - o matter what. They have blown past the usual rules and restraints into territory where few presidents have ventured - a region where the president conducts warrantless wiretaps against Americans in violation of a federal statute, where he authorizes harsh interrogation methods that amount to torture.

When critics question the legality of the administration's actions, Bush and Cheney assert the commander-in-chief power under Article II of the Constitution. When Congress passes a law forbidding torture, the White House appends a signing statement insisting that Article II - the power of commander in chief - trumps everything else. When the administration's Republican friends suggest amending the wiretapping law to make their program legal, they refuse. Let's say it plainly: This is the arrogance of power, and it has gone too far in the Bush White House.

Contact David Ignatius at davidignatius@washpost.com.

Originally published February 15, 2006

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060215/OPINION05/602150310/1006/OPINION
http://informationclearinghouse.info/

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2006, 11:30 AM

~~~~~
Iraq: How The Corporate Media Promotes War
From Green Left Weekly,
February 16, 2006
By Rohan Pearce

On January 24, Iraqi reporter Mahmoud Zaal was killed during a shoot-out between US occupation forces and Iraqi rebels in the city of Ramadi. He was the second Iraqi journalist to have been killed this year; 35 reporters and other media workers died in Iraq in 2005.
Given the grisly toll that post-9/11 reporting has taken on journalists like Zaal, it’s ironic that the greatest threat to providing accurate news coverage of the different fronts of Washington’s “war on terror” has not come from without, in the form of bullets and bombs, but from within the corporate media, in the form of the slavish accommodation to the disinformation programs of the White House and its allies.

When, for example, media magnate Rupert Murdoch came out in favour of “regime change” in Iraq, his vast empire of media outlets predictably parroted him. “You have got to admit that Rupert Murdoch is one canny press tycoon because he has an unerring ability to choose editors across the world who think just like him”, Roy Greenslade wryly noted in a February 17, 2003, op-ed for the British Guardian. “How else can we explain the extraordinary unity of thought in his newspaper empire about the need to make war on Iraq?”

However, this was not just true of the Murdoch media. Nearly all of the corporate media in the “coalition of the willing” countries — Australia, Britain and the US — acted as propaganda outlets for their governments, uncritically reporting these governmenta’ claims that Iraq had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that threatened “international peace and security”.

The gaping holes in these claims were papered over with shoddy journalism. When, for example, Hans Blix, head of UN weapons inspections in Iraq, gave a report to a January 27, 2003, meeting of the UN Security Council, Murdoch’s Australian editorialised that Blix had provided “ample evidence that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein remains committed to weapons of mass destruction”. Murdoch’s Australian “flagship” argued that the “case to disarm Iraq, by military force if necessary, is now made”.

Little attention was paid to central features of Blix’s report: That UN weapons inspectors had found no evidence that Iraq possessed WMD stockpiles or manufacturing facilities and that, despite hollow anti-Iraq rhetoric by Blix, an extraordinary degree of cooperation had been provided by Iraqi authorities.

Blix did claim that “Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance … of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and to live in peace.” But this nod to the frenzied anti-Iraqi tirade coming from the White House was contradicted later in his report: “The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt.”

The exception had been detailed by Blix the previous year — “Some sites were inspected last Friday — the Muslim day of rest. In one of them, the Iraqi staff were absent and a number of doors inside locked, with no keys available. The Iraqi side offered to break the doors open — while videotaping the event. However, they agreed with a suggestion that the doors in question could be [sealed] overnight and the offices inspected the next morning.”

Of course details like this, if reported at all, rarely made a dent in the overall impression given by pro-war reporting: That Iraq had massive (hidden) stockpiles of WMDs just waiting to be unleashed.

Embedded with the Pentagon
Imperial cheerleading-as-reporting continued once the “coalition of the willing” launched their invasion.

The Pentagon’s program of “embedding” journalists in military units took the quality of war reporting to a new low. “Embedding” gave the impression of a new level of immediacy in reporting on the war, while it really took the military’s manipulation of journalists to a new high, making the much-vaunted “free press” of the West look like a bad joke.

Editor and Publisher reported on January 27 that the Pentagon’s Institute for Defense Analyses had conducted an analysis of the program and found that it was “an almost unqualified success”. A workshop held by the US Army’s War College on September 3-5, 2003, involving military personnel, academics and journalists who had been “embedded” with military units during the invasion of Iraq, also hailed the “success” of the embed program.

A panel at the War College workshop was “almost in universal agreement that the embedded reporter model is the way to cover future conflicts”. Despite this, a paper produced by the Center for Strategic Leadership summarising the workshop’s conclusions noted that “the military and media participants failed to come to a consensus as to whether an embedded reporter can report about a unit with complete objectivity”.

The CSL summary of discussion reported that “Military leaders were very candid in detailing how they used the media present to help dominate the information battle. A number of media players accepted this as a reality in modern warfare.” Similarly, E&P reported: “One of the surprises in the report is that it reveals that commanders were ‘often asked’ by embeds to review a story or look at a video before it was transmitted, to guarantee ‘accuracy.’ But no claims of censorship were raised.” When journalists self-censor, overt censorship is rendered redundant.

A study by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, released on October 2, 2003, based on a series of US-wide polls, revealed just how “successful” reporting of the war had been. It concluded that “a majority of Americans have had significant misperceptions [about the Iraq war] and these are highly related to support for the war with Iraq”.

According to PIPA, 57% of poll participants believed that Iraq was either directly involved in the 9/11 attacks or “gave substantial support to al Qaeda”. Twenty-two per cent believed weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq and 25% thought that world public opinion had favoured the US going to war with Iraq. Sixty per cent had at least one of these three misconceptions.

The PIPA poll found a correlation between participants’ primary source of news and their ignorance about the war. Viewers of Murdoch’s high-rating and hysterically pro-invasion Fox News were the most likely to have been sucked in by the White House’s propaganda campaign.

Iran rerun

History is now in the process of being repeated, with Iran being successfully presented as an imminent “threat” to Western “democracies”. An Opinion Dynamics poll conducted in late October 2003 revealed that 57% of people in the US believed that Iran “currently [had] a nuclear weapons program”. By the time of a January 24-25 poll this year, the percentage had jumped to 68%.

Predictably the corporate media has barely bothered to question Washington’s claims about Iran’s nuclear programs and has been all too ready to overlook the hypocrisy of the US, the only nation to have used an atomic bomb in war, threatening war against Iran for allegedly developing nuclear weapons.

A woeful example of what passes for “analysis” was printed in the February 8 Australian (reprinted from the London Times; also a Murdoch-owned paper). Richard Beeston wrote that “with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear program is being actively considered by those grappling with one of the world’s most pressing security problems.

“For five years, the West has used every diplomatic device at its disposal to entice Iran into complying with strict conditions that would prevent its nuclear program being diverted to produce an atomic bomb. Those efforts, however, are now faltering.”

It’s clear what a reader is supposed to take away from Beeston’s article: Iran is unquestionably engaged in developing nuclear weapons, that this is “one of the world’s most pressing security problems”, and that “diplomacy” has been unable to stop diverting its “nuclear program to produce an atomic bomb”.

One would scarcely suspect from reading Beeston’s article that in a March 31, 2005, letter to US President George Bush, the White House-established “WMD commission” admitted that US intelligence knew “disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries”, a reference widely acknowledged to refer at least in part to Iran.

Nor would a reader suspect that a November 15, 2004, report by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that, “All the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities”.

Beeston also ignored a report in the August 2 Washington Post that revealed that the latest US National Intelligence Estimate “projected that Iran is at least a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon” — highly enriched uranium.

Of course this hasn’t stopped the Washington Post publishing belligerent and misleading anti-Iran articles. For example an article in the paper’s February 8 edition reported: “In the three years since Iran acknowledged having a secret uranium enrichment program, Western governments and the International Atomic Energy Agency, have gathered evidence to test the Tehran government’s assertion that it plans to build nothing more than peaceful nuclear power plants.”

In reality, three years ago, in accordance with its decision to voluntarily abide by an IAEA-recommended additional protocol to its nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA, Iran disclosed that it had conducted lab research into enriching uranium. It was not required to do so under its normal safeguards agreement, so claiming that not revealing this research was a violation of Iran’s legal obligations is completely disingenuous.

In repeatedly peddling this sort of disinformation, the corporate media is only taking its cue from US imperialism’s commander-in-chief. In a May 24, 2005, speech, George Bush explained: “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

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