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Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2008, 07:26 PM

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. . . . . . . . . The US-NATO Preemptive Nuclear Doctrine
Trigger a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust to Defend "The Western Way of Life"
By
Michel Chossudovsky
11/02/08
"Global Research"
What the Western allies face is a long, sustained and proactive defence of their societies and way of life. To that end, they must keep risks at a distance, while at the same time protecting their homelands.

International terrorism today aims to disrupt and destroy our societies, our economies and our way of life. ...

These different sources of propaganda and/or violence vary in their intellectual underpinnings, sectarian and political aims, ... . But what they have in common is an assault on the values of the West – on its democratic processes and its freedom of religion...

Notwithstanding the common perception in the West, the origin of Islamist terrorism is not victimhood, nor an inferiority complex, but a well-financed superiority complex grounded in a violent political ideology.

If the irrational and fanatical get out of hand, there is a risk that, ... the rise of fundamentalisms and despotisms will usher in a new, illiberal age, in which the liberties that Western societies enjoy are seriously jeopardized.

The threats that the West and its partners face today are a combination of violent terrorism against civilians and institutions, wars fought by proxy by states that sponsor terrorism, the behaviour of rogue states, the actions of organised international crime, and the coordination of hostile action through abuse of non-military means.

Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership".

Group report by former chiefs of staff General John Shalikashvili, (US), General Klaus Naumann (Germany), Field Marshal Lord Inge (UK), Admiral Jacques Lanxade (France) and Henk van den Breemen (The Netherlands), published by the Netherlands based Noaber Foundation, December 2007, (emphasis added)

The controversial NATO sponsored report entitled “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership". calls for a first strike use of nuclear weapons. The preemptive use of nukes would also be used to undermine an "[I]increasingly brutal World" as a means to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction:

"They [the authors of the report] consider that nuclear war might soon become possible in an increasingly brutal world. They propose the first use of nuclear weapons must remain "in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction". (Paul Dibb, Sidney Morning Herald, 11 February 2008)

The group, insists that the option of first strike of nuclear weapons is "indispensable, since there is simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world." (Report, p. 97, emphasis added):

Nuclear weapons are the ultimate instrument of an asymmetric response – and at the same time the ultimate tool of escalation. Yet they are also more than an instrument, since they transform the nature of any conflict and widen its scope from the regional to the global. ...

...Nuclear weapons remain indispensable, and nuclear escalation continues to remain an element of any modern strategy.

Nuclear escalation is the ultimate step in responding asymmetrically, and at the same time the most powerful way of inducing uncertainty in an opponent’s mind. (Ibid, emphasis added)

The Group's Report identifies six key "challenges", which may often result as potential threats to global security:

• Demography. Population growth and change across the globe will swiftly change the world we knew. The challenge this poses for welfare, good governance and energy security (among other things) is vast.

• Climate change. This greatly threatens physical certainty, and is leading to a whole new type of politics – one predicated, perhaps more than ever, on our collective future.

• Energy security continues to absorb us. The supply and demand of individual nations and the weakening of the international market infrastructure for energy distribution make the situation more precarious than ever.

• There is also the more philosophic problem of the rise of the irrational – the discounting of the rational. Though seemingly abstract, this problem is demonstrated in deeply practical ways. [These include] the decline of respect for logical argument and evidence, a drift away from science in a civilization that is deeply technological. The ultimate example is the rise of religious fundamentalismm which, as political fanaticism, presents itself as the only source of certainty.

• The weakening of the nation state. This coincides with the weakening of world institutions, including the United Nations and regional organizations such as the European Union, NATO and others.

• The dark side of globalization ... These include internationalized terrorism, organized crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but also asymmetric threats from proxy actors or the abuse of financial and energy leverage. (Ibid)

Deterrence and Pre-emption

According to the Report, a new concept of deterrence is required directed against both State and non-state actors, This "new deterrence" is based on pre-emption as well as on the ability to "restore deterrence through [military] escalation". In this context, the Report contemplates, what it describes as:

“escalation dominance, the use of a full bag of both carrots and sticks—and indeed all instruments of soft and hard power, ranging from the diplomatic protest to nuclear weapons.” (Report, op city, emphasis added).

Iran

In much the same terms as the Bush administration, the NATO sponsored report states, without evidence, that Iran constitutes "a major strategic threat":

"An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would pose a major strategic threat – not only to Israel, which it has threatened to destroy, but also to the region as a whole, to Europe and to the United States. Secondly, it could be the beginning of a new multi-polar nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world." (Report, op. cit., p. 45)

Careful timing? The controversial NATO sponsored report calling for a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran was released shortly after the publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report entitled Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. The latter denies Iran's nuclear capabilities. The NIE report, based on the assessments of sixteen US intelligence agencies, refutes the Bush administration's main justification for waging a preemptive nuclear war on Iran. The NIE report confirms that Iran “halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.”

"These findings constitute a damning indictment of the Bush administration’s relentless fear-mongering in relation to an alleged nuclear threat from Iran. They demonstrate that just as in the buildup to the war against Iraq five years ago, the White House has been engaged in a systematic campaign to drag the American people into another war based on lies." (See Bill van Auken, 24 January 2008)

It should be noted that this recently declassified intelligence ( pertaining to Iran contained in the 2007 NIE report) was known by the White House, the Pentagon and most probably NATO since September 2003. Ironically, US military documents confirm that the Bush Administration initiated its war preparations against Iran in July 2003, two months prior to the confirmation by US intelligence that Iran did not constitute a nuclear threat.

The July 2003 war scenarios were launched under TIRANNT: Theater Iran Near Term.

The justification for TIRANNT as well as for subsequent US war plans directed against Iran ( which as of 2004 included the active participation of NATO and Israel), has always been that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and plans to use them against us.

Following the publication of the 2007 NIE in early December, there has been an avalanche of media propaganda directed against Tehran, essentially with a view to invalidating the statements of the NIE concerning Tehran's nuclear program.

Moreover, a third sanctions resolution by the UN Security Council, was initiated with a view to forcing Iran to halt uranium enrichment. The proposed UNSC resolution, which is opposed by China and Russia includes a travel ban on Iranian officials involved in the country's nuclear programs, and inspections of shipments to and from Iran "if there are suspicions of prohibited goods" (AFP, 11 February 2008). Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy together with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, have been calling for a unified EU sanctions regime against Iran.

Contradicting the US national intelligence estimate (NIE), Bush's most recent speeches continue to portray Iran as a nuclear threat:

"I feel pretty good about making sure that we keep the pressure on Iran to pressure them so they understand they're isolated, to pressure them to affect their economy, to pressure them to the point that we hope somebody rational shows up and says, okay, it's not worth it anymore," Bush said.

Threat to "The Western Way of Life"

The Western media is involved in a diabolical disinformation campaign, the purpose of which is to persuade public opinion that the only way to "create a nuclear free World" is to use nuclear weapons on a preemptive basis, against countries which "threaten our Western Way of Life."

The Western world is threatened. The NATO sponsored report, according to Paul Dibb: "paint(s) an alarming picture of the threats confronting the West, arguing that its values and way of life are under threat and that we are struggling to summon the will to defend them."(Dibb, op cit)

A preemptive nuclear attack -- geographically confined to Middle East (minus Israel?)-- is the proposed end-game. The attack would use US tactical nuclear weapons, which, according to "scientific opinion" (on contract to the Pentagon) are "harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground". (See Michel Chossudovsky The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear Holocaust, Global Research, 17 February 2006)

B61-11 bunker buster bombs with nuclear warheads Made in America, with an explosive capacity between one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb, are presented as bona fide humanitarian bombs, which minimize the dangers of "collateral damage".

These in-house "scientific" Pentagon assessments regarding the mini-nukes are refuted by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS):

Any attempt to use a in an urban environment would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area " (Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons by Robert W. Nelson, Federation of American Scientists, 2001 ).

Professor Paul Dibb is a former Australian Deputy Secretary of Defense, who has over the years also occupied key positions in Australia's defense and intelligence establishment. Dibb carefully overlooks the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons in a conventional war theater. According to Dibb, NATO's preemptive nuclear doctrine, which replicates that of the Pentagon, constitutes a significant and positive initiative to "halt the imminent spread of nuclear weapons". .

"They [the group] believe that the West must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack [I]to try to halt the imminent spread of nuclear weapons."

Never mind the nuclear holocaust and resulting radioactive contamination, which would spread Worldwide and threaten, in a real sense, the "way of life".

There is no "way of life" in a World contaminated with deadly radioactive material. But this is something that is rarely discussed in the corridors of NATO or in strategic studies programs in Western universities.

What is frightening in Professor Dibb's article is that he is not expressing an opinion, nor is he analyzing the use of nuclear weapons from an academic research point of view.

In his article, there is neither research on nuclear weapons nor is there an understanding of the complex geopolitics of the Middle East war. Dibb is essentially repeating verbatim the statements contained in NATO/Pentagon military documents. His article is a "copy and paste" summary of Western nuclear doctrine, which in practice calls for the launching of a nuclear holocaust.

The stated objective of a Middle East nuclear holocaust is "to prevent the occurrence of a nuclear war". An insidious logic which certainly out- dwarfs the darkest period of the Spanish inquisition...

Neither NATO nor the Pentagon use the term nuclear holocaust. Moreover, they presume that the "collateral damage" of a nuclear war will in any event be confined geographically to the Middle East and that Westerners will be spared...

But since their in-house scientists have confirmed that tactical nuclear weapons are "safe for civilians", the labels on the bombs have been switched much in the same way as the label on a packet of cigarettes: "This nuclear bomb is safe for civilians"

Nukes: Just Another Tool in the Military Toolbox

The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons:

'It's a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox," (Japan Economic News Wire, op cit)

This re-categorization has been carried out. The " green light" for the use of tactical nuclear weapons has been granted by the US Congress. . " Let's use them, they are part of the military toolbox."

We are a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda. The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear weapons are "safe" for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having developed "a generation of more useable nuclear weapons."

Russia and China

Who else constitutes a threat to " the Western way of life"?

Nukes are also slated to be used against Russia and China, former enemies of the Cold War era.

This post Cold War logic was first revealed, when the Pentagon's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was leaked to The Los Angeles Times in January 2002. The NPR includes China and Russia alongside the rogue states as potential targets for a first strike nuclear attack. According to William Arkin, the NPR "offers a chilling glimpse into the world of nuclear-war planners: With a Strangelovian genius, they cover every conceivable circumstance in which the president might wish to use nuclear weapons-planning in great detail." (Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2002)

"Decapitate Their Leadership and Destroy their Countries as Functioning Societies"

The use of nukes against "rogue states", including Iran and North Korea (which lost more than a quarter of its population in US bombings during the Korean war) is justified because these countries could act in an "irrational" way. It therefore makes sense to "take em out" before they do something irrational. The objective is: "decapitate their leadership and destroy their countries as functioning societies":

"One line of reasoning is that so-called rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea, are sufficiently irrational to risk a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US or its allies, such as Israel and South Korea.

The supposition here is that deterrence - that is, threatening the other side with obliteration - no longer works. But even the nasty regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang must know that the US reserves the right to use its overwhelming nuclear force to decapitate the leadership and destroy their countries as modern functioning societies. (Dibb, op cit., emphasis added)

Use nuclear weapons to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.

But of course, lest we forget, America's nuclear arsenal as well as that of France, Britain and Israel are not categorized as "weapons of mass destruction", in comparison with Iran's deadly nonexistent nuclear weapons program.

Bin Laden's Nuclear Program

Now comes the authoritative part of the Pentagon-NATO preemptive doctrine: We need to use nukes against bin Laden, because Islamic "fanatics" can actually make a nuclear weapons or buy them from the Russians on the black market.

The Report calls for a first strike nuclear attack directed against Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which has the ability, according to expert opinion, of actually producing small nuclear bombs, which could be used in a Second 9/11 attack on America: .

The second line of reasoning [contained in the NATO sponsored report] is more difficult to refute. It argues that extreme fanatical terrorists, such as al-Qaeda, cannot be deterred because (a) they do not represent a country and therefore cannot be targeted and (b) they welcome death by suicide. So, we have to shift the concept of nuclear deterrence to the country or regime supplying the terrorists with fissile material.

Nuclear weapons require materials that can be made only with difficulty. Once these materials are obtained by terrorists, however, the barriers to fabricating a weapon are much lower. In that sense the nuclear threat today is greater than it was in the Cold War and it seems the terrorists cannot be deterred.( Dibb, op cit, emphasis added)

The alleged nuclear threat by Al Qaeda is taken very seriously. The Bush administration has responded with overall defense spending (budget plus war theater) in excess of one trillion dollars. This massive amount of public money has been allocated to financing the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT).

Confirmed by Pentagon documents, this military hardware including aircraft carriers, fighter jets, cruise missiles and nuclear bunker buster bombs, is slated to be used as part of the "Global War on Terrorism". In military jargon the US is involved in asymmetric warfare against non-State enemies. ( The concept of Asymmetric Warfare was defined in The National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (2005)

"The American Hiroshima"

The US media has the distinct ability to turn realities upside down. The lies are upheld as indelible truths. The "Islamic terrorists" have abandoned their AK 47 kalashnikov rifles and stinger missiles; they are not only developing deadly chemical and biological weapons, they also have nuclear capabilities.

The fact, amply documented, that Al Qaeda is supported by the CIA and Britain's MI6 is beside the point.

The nuclear threat is not directed against the Middle East but against the USA, the perpetrators and architects of nuclear war are bin Laden's Al Qaeda, which is planning to launch a nuclear attack on an American city:

"U.S. government officials are contemplating what they consider to be an inevitable and much bigger assault on America, one likely to kill millions, destroy the economy and fundamentally alter the course of history,...

According to captured al-Qaida leaders and documents, the plan is called the "American Hiroshima" and involves the multiple detonation of nuclear weapons already smuggled into the U.S. over the Mexican border with the help of the MS-13 street gang and other organized crime groups. (World Net Daily, 11 July 2005, emphasis added)

The New York Times confirms that an Al Qaeda sponsored "American Hiroshima" "could happen" .

"Experts believe that such an attack, somewhere, is likely." (NYT, 11 August 2004)

According to the Aspen Strategy Group which is integrated among others, by Madeleine Albright, Richard Armitage, Philip D. Zelikow, Robert B. Zoellick, "the danger of nuclear terrorism is much greater than the public believes, and our government hasn't done nearly enough to reduce it.":

If a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon, a midget even smaller than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, exploded in Times Square, the fireball would reach tens of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. It would vaporize or destroy the theater district, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal and Carnegie Hall (along with me and my building). The blast would partly destroy a much larger area, including the United Nations. On a weekday some 500,000 people would be killed. (NYT, 11 August 2004)

"Threaten them with a devastating [nuclear] attack"

According to professor Dibb, nuclear deterrence should also apply in relation to Al Qaeda, by holding responsible the governments which help the terrorists to develop their nuclear weapons capabilities:

"Ashton Carter, a former US assistant secretary for defense, has recently argued, the realistic response is to hold responsible, as appropriate, the government from which the terrorists obtained the weapon or fissile materials and threaten them with a devastating [nuclear] strike. In other words, deterrence would work again. (Dibb, op cit)

The real nuclear threat is coming from bin Laden. The objective is to "to do away with our way of life":

None of this is to underestimate the impact of a nuclear weapon being detonated in an American city. It could be catastrophic, but it is highly unlikely to threaten the very survival of the US. To believe otherwise risks surrendering to the fear and intimidation that is precisely the terrorists' stock in trade.

General Richard Myers, another former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has claimed that if [Islamic] terrorists were able to kill 10,000 Americans in a nuclear attack, they would "do away with our way of life". But Hiroshima and Nagasaki incurred well over 100,000 instant deaths and that did not mean the end of the Japanese way of life. (Ibid, emphasis added)

In an utterly twisted and convoluted argument, professor Dibb transforms the US-NATO threat to wage a nuclear war on Iran into an Al Qaeda operation to attack an American city with nuclear weapon.

Dibb presents the US-NATO menace to trigger what would result in a Middle East nuclear holocaust as a humanitarian operation to save American lives. By implication, the Al Qaeda sponsored "American Hiroshima" would be supported by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. and this in turn would immediately provide a juste cause (casus belli) for retaliation against Iran

"What a nuclear attack on a US city would mean, however, is an understandable American retaliation in kind. So, those countries that have slack control over their fissile nuclear materials and cozy relations with terrorists need to watch out. A wounded America would be under enormous pressure to respond in a wholly disproportionate manner.

And then we would be in a completely changed strategic situation in which the use of nuclear weapons might become commonplace. Ibid, emphasis added).

Dick Cheney's Second 9/11

The insinuation that Al Qaeda is preparing an attack on America has been on the lips of Vice President Dick Cheney for several years now. Cheney has stated on several occasions since 2004, that Al Qaeda is preparing a "Second 9/11": .

In August 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM, based at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, to draw up a "Contingency Plan", "to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States". (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War, The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)

Dick Cheney's "Contingency Plan" was predicated on the preemptive war doctrine. Implied in the "Contingency Plan" was the presumption that Iran would be behind the attacks.

The Pentagon in a parallel initiative has actually fine-tuned its military agenda to the point of actually envisaging a Second 9/11 scenario as a means to providing the US administration with a "credible" justification to attack Iran and Syria:

"Another [9/11 type terrorist] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets [Iran and Syria]" (Statement by Pentagon official, leaked to the Washington Post, 23 April 2006, emphasis added)

Meanwhile,. the US Congress is concerned that an "American Hiroshima" could potentially damage the US economy:

"What we do know is that our enemies want to inflict massive casualties and that terrorists have the expertise to invent a wide range of attacks, including those involving the use of chemical, biological, radiological and even nuclear weapons. ... [E]xploding a small nuclear weapon in a major city could do incalculable harm to hundreds of thousands of people, as well as to businesses and the economy,...(US Congress, House Financial Services Committee, June 21, 2007).

As far as sensitizing public opinion to the dangers of US sponsored nuclear war, there is, with a few exceptions, a scientific and intellectual vacuum: No research, no analysis, no comprehension of the meaning of a nuclear holocaust which in a real sense threatens the future of humanity. This detachment and lack of concern of prominent intellectuals characterizes an evolving trend in many universities and research institutes in the strategic studies, the sciences and social sciences.

Academics increasingly tow the line. They remain mum on the issue of a US sponsored nuclear war. There is a tacit acceptance of a diabolical and criminal military agenda, which in a very sense threatens life on this planet. The US-NATO doctrine to use nukes on a preemptive basis with a view to "saving the Western World's way of life" is not challenged in any meaningful way either by academics or media experts in strategic studies.

© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2008

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info[B] . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

February 11th, 2008, 07:55 PM

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I HOPE THIS IS NO MORE THAN A RADICAL THOUGHT PROCESS AT WORK
SRH
Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair

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The Los Angeles Times calls Coverup "chillingly lucid and consistent." The Chicago Tribune says It Is "calm, coherent and persuasive...." while the Denver Post calls It "a challenging piece, very much worth seeing, no matter what your politics."

Coverup: Behind the Iran Contra Affair is the third feature-length documentary produced by the Empowerment Project.
The shadow government of assassins, arms dealers, drug smugglers, former CIA operatives and top US military personnel who were running foreign policy unaccountable to the public, revealing the Reagan/Bush administration's plan to use FEMA to institute martial law and ultimately suspend the Constitution. Strikingly relevant to current events.

Full Video 72 Minutes
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments: Go onsite to gain access to these posts, as well as others.

The film has won numerous awards and critical acclaim:

The Los Angeles Times calls Coverup "chillingly lucid and consistent." The Chicago Tribune says It Is "calm.coherent and persuasive...." while the Denver Post calls It "a challenging piece, very much worth seeing, no matter what your politics."

Coverup exposes several of the most disturbing chapters in the history of U.S. covert foreign policy. It presents a tale of politics, drugs, hostages, weapons, assassinations, covert operations and the ultimate plan to suspend the U.S.Constitution. Coverup was the first film to reveal the 'October Surprise' hostage deal (the Reagan/Bush campaigndeal with Iran to delay the release of the 52 American hostages until after the 1980 election), and is the only film which presents a comprehensive overview of the most important stories suppressed during the Iran Contra hearings. It is the only film that puts the entire Iran Contra affair into a meaningful political and historical context. The 1988 film is updated with information from recent court cases and events, reconfirming much of the material presented.
Coverup won the American Film & Video Association, Blue Ribbon Award for Best Documentary. Social Issues;National Education Film & Video Festival, Crystal Apple for Best Documentary, Social & Political Issues; Golden HugoBest Independent Video, Chicago International Film Festival; the Prix Du Public for Best Documentary. Women's International Film Festival (Films DC Femmes, Paris, France); Gold Award for Best Video Documentary, Philadelphia International Film Festival Int'l Assn. of Motion Pictures & TV Producers).

Coverup was released in theaters in 80 cities across the United States in 1988-89. It was the subject of 200 local radio shows and 150 newspaper articles, including reviews, news stories, and editorials. In almost every city where the film showed, the audience participated in a question and answer/discussion period following each screening, and a direct action organizing campaign. During the height of its theatrical release,Coverup was screening in 35 towns simultaneously, creating a venue for over 150 organizing meetings per week.

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The states of Connecticut, Nebraska and Oregon; Denver, El Paso. Fort Wayne. Flint, Indianapolis, Kansas City.Memphis, Minneapolis/St. Paul. Plainview NY, Plattsburgh NY. San Bernardino CA, San Francisco, Topeka. and the U.S.Virgin Islands. KQED in San Francisco was the first U.S. station to broadcast Coverup in May 1990. As with eachbroadcast so far, viewer response to the KQED airing was overwhelmingly positive, called "phenomenal" by the series programmer.

Coverup has also enjoyed unusual international attention. Following festival screenings in seven countries. Coverup has been broadcast in part or whole in the U.K., the Netherlands. Ireland. Algeria andGermany. Theatrical and/or educational releases have been secured in the U.K., France, Canada, AustralNew Zealand, Argentina, Belgium, Germany, French-speaking Switzerland, Norway and Denmark.http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19325.htm
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Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2008, 04:45 PM

. I FEEL THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ARTICLE
PLEASE SEND IT TO FRIENDS.
SRH:: :: :: :: :: Rule by fear or rule by law?

By
Lewis Seiler
Dan Hamburg

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

Winston Churchill
Nov. 21, 1943

12/02/08 "San Francisco Chronicle" -- 04/02/08 -- - Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it.

A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law.

Lewis Seiler is the president of Voice of the Environment, Inc. Dan Hamburg, a former congressman, is executive director.

To gain access to this article and similar ones, click on the following URL:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
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RonF

February 12th, 2008, 06:21 PM

Tuesday February 12, 2008 07:01 EST
Amnesty Day for Bush and lawbreaking telecoms
(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V)

The Senate today -- led by Jay Rockefeller, enabled by Harry Reid, and with the active support of at least 12 (and probably more) Democrats, in conjunction with an as-always lockstep GOP caucus -- will vote to legalize warrantless spying on the telephone calls and emails of Americans, and will also provide full retroactive amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, thus forever putting an end to any efforts to investigate and obtain a judicial ruling regarding the Bush administration's years-long illegal spying programs aimed at Americans. The long, hard efforts by AT&T, Verizon and their all-star, bipartisan cast of lobbyists to grease the wheels of the Senate -- led by former Bush 41 Attorney General William Barr and former Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick -- are about to pay huge dividends, as such noble efforts invariably do with our political establishment.

It's worth taking a step back and recalling that all of this is the result of the December, 2005 story by the New York Times which first reported that the Bush administration was illegally spying on Americans for many years without warrants of any kind. All sorts of "controversy" erupted from that story. Democrats everywhere expressed dramatic, unbridled outrage, vowing that this would not stand. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for exposing this serious lawbreaking. All sorts of Committees were formed, papers written, speeches given, conferences convened, and editorials published to denounce this extreme abuse of presidential power. This was illegality and corruption at the highest level of government, on the grandest scale, and of the most transparent strain.

What was the outcome of all of that sturm und drang? What were the consequences for the President for having broken the law so deliberately and transparently? Absolutely nothing. To the contrary, the Senate is about to enact a bill which has two simple purposes: (1) to render retroactively legal the President's illegal spying program by legalizing its crux: warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and (2) to stifle forever the sole remaining avenue for finding out what the Government did and obtaining a judicial ruling as to its legality: namely, the lawsuits brought against the co-conspiring telecoms. In other words, the only steps taken by our political class upon exposure by the NYT of this profound lawbreaking is to endorse it all and then suppress any and all efforts to investigate it and subject it to the rule of law.

To be sure, achieving this took some time. When Bill Frist was running the Senate and Pat Roberts was in charge of the Intelligence Committee, Bush and Cheney couldn't get this done (the same FISA and amnesty bill that the Senate will pass today stalled in the 2006 Senate). They had to wait until the Senate belonged (nominally) to Harry Reid and, more importantly, Jay Rockefeller was installed as Committee Chairman, and then -- and only then -- were they able to push the Senate to bequeath to them and their lawbreaking allies full-scale protection from investigation and immunity from the consequences of their lawbreaking.

That's really the most extraordinary aspect of all of this, if one really thinks about it -- it isn't merely that the Democratic Senate failed to investigate or bring about accountability for the clearest and more brazen acts of lawbreaking in the Bush administration, although that is true. Far beyond that, once in power, they are eagerly and aggressively taking affirmative steps -- extraordinary steps -- to protect Bush officials. While still knowing virtually nothing about what they did, they are acting to legalize Bush's illegal spying programs and put an end to all pending investigations and efforts to uncover what happened.

How far we've come -- really: disgracefully tumbled -- from the days of the Church Committee, which aggressively uncovered surveillance abuses and then drafted legislation to outlaw them and prevent them from ever occurring again. It is, of course, precisely those post-Watergate laws which the Bush administration and their telecom conspirators purposely violated, and for which they are about to receive permanent, lawless protection.

What Harry Reid's Senate is about to do today would be tantamount to the Church Committee -- after discovering the decades of abuses of eavesdropping powers by various administrations -- proceeding in response to write legislation to legalize unchecked surveillance, bar any subjects of the illegal eavesdropping from obtaining remedies in court, and then pass a bill with no purpose other than to provide retroactive immunity for the surveillance lawbreakers. That would be an absurd and incomparably corrupt nonsequitur, but that is precisely what Harry Reid's Senate -- in response to the NYT's 2005 revelations of clear surveillance lawbreaking by the administration -- is going to do today.

Analogously, in 1973, The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for its work in uncovering the Watergate abuses, and that led to what would have been the imminent bipartisan impeachment of the President until he was forced to resign in disgrace. By stark and depressing contrast, in 2006, Jim Risen, Eric Lichtblau and the NYT won Pulitzer Prizes for their work in uncovering illegal spying on Americans at the highest levels of the Government, and that led to bipartisan legislation to legalize the illegal spying programs and provide full-scale retroactive amnesty for the lawbreakers. That's the difference between a country operating under the rule of law and one that is governed by lawlessness and lawbreaking license for the politically powerful and well-connected.

Chris Dodd went to the Senate floor last night and gave another eloquent and impassioned speech, warning of the consequences for our country from telecom amnesty. He specifically focused on the permanently and comprehensively suppressive effect it will have on efforts to investigate what the Bush administration did in illegally spying on Americans.

At around 2:25, Sen. Dodd quoted from this blog (from this post specifically regarding last week's testimony of Michael Mukasey) concerning the consequences for our country from ensuring, as the Senate is about to do, that such blatant and deliberate governmental lawbreaking is protected and goes forever unpunished (h/t selise):

From Frank Church and the bipartisan oversight protections of the post-Watergate abuses in the mid-1970s to Jay Rockefeller, Dick Cheney, legalized warrantless eavesdropping and retroactive telecom amnesty in 2008 -- that vivid collapse into the sewer illustrates as potently as anything could what has happened to this country over the last eight years.

UPDATE: The Dodd/Feingold amendment to remove telecom immunity from the bill just failed by a whopping vote of 31-67 -- 20 votes shy of the 50 needed for a passage. A total of 18 Democrats joined all Republicans in voting for immunity: Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln. Obama voted against immunity, and Hillary Clinton was the only Senator not voting. Thus, the breakdown on the vote was similar to what it always is:

Democrats -- 31-18

Republicans -- 0-49

As always, when it comes to the most radical Bush policies, the GOP lines up lock-step behind them, and the Democrats split, always with more than enough to join the Republicans to ensure passage. That's the process that is called "bipartisanship" in the Beltway.
Perhaps even more repugnantly, even Dianne Feinstein's amendment merely to provide that the FISA bill they are about to pass would be the "exclusive means" for presidential eavesdropping failed by a vote of 57-41 (it fell 3 votes shy of the 60 votes needed for passage, under the agreement which requires that every amendment attract the number of votes it cannot get). As Kagro at Kos says:

In rejecting the Feinstein "exclusivity" amendment to the FISA revision considered on the Senate floor today -- an amendment that failed by a vote of 57 Ayes to 41 Noes, thanks to another "painless filibuster" of precisely the type we were promised would not be tolerated on this bill -- the Senate has voted to say that although they were passing a law governing surveillance, it was OK if the President decided that he really didn't like the law very much and wished to make up his own instead.

Exclusivity -- the purpose of the amendment that "failed" -- meant simply this: that the law they were passing was the law, and it was the governing authority for how surveillance could be conducted in America.

The Senate just rejected it, so that means that they're passing a law, but if a president decides later on that he thinks there's really some other controlling authority besides the law, that's OK.

So not only is the Senate enacting a bill granting vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers to the President, they are unwilling even to declare that it is the law of the land and that he is required to abide by it (Matt Browner Hamlin has the equally reprehensible vote tallies on the other amendments here).

UPDATE II: FDL has a petition, jointly sponsored by me, directed at House members, demanding that they reject this lawless, authoritarian Senate bill and defend their own, previously passed bill (the RESTORE Act). I encourage everyone to sign it. You can do so here.

UPDATE III: Atrios makes a point always worth highlighting:
While one can't discount legalized bribery campaign dollars entirely, I do think too often we assume they're the reason lawmakers do the "wrong thing" when the simpler explanation that they believe the wrong thing is in fact the right thing is the answer.

Too many Democrats simply don't have the values we imagine they do, and it lets them off the hook too much to assume they're simply craven people who need to get re-elected instead of bad people who don't share our values.

There's a temptation, particularly on days like today, to talk about what motivates "Democrats" -- as though they're a monolith acting collectively with the same drives. They're not. Some do what they do because their only concern is a craven desire to be re-elected. Others believe in one thing but are afraid to vote that way (because they'll be called Soft on Terror, Liberal, etc.), while others still are influenced by Beltway money and other cultural pressures. Some are motivated by a combination of those motives.

But a large number of elected Democrats vote in favor of the radical Bush agenda for a very simple reason: they believe in it. Despite the glorious "D" after their name, their views are materially indistinguishable from the defining ones of the Bush faction on the key issues. A huge portion of Congressional Democrats are members of the corrupt, bipartisan Beltway political establishment first, and everything only follows that, and they thus embrace and support the values of that establishment.

That's why Bush has won and -- even with "Democrats in control of Congress" -- continues to win most key votes. The fault lines in the Beltway aren't primarily between Republican and Democrat but between those who support the core values of our political establishment (as reflected by the Bush administration) and those who don't. Through a bulging coalition of both Democrats and Republicans, the pro-establishment forces have a strong, clear and easy majority, and that's why the most radical Bush measures continue not only to prevail, but -- as today -- do so easily.

UPDATE IV: Here is the first paragraph from Eric Lichtblau's NYT article this afternoon:

After more than a year of heated political wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory Tuesday by voting to broaden the government's spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program.
To conserve resources, newspapers should just create a macro of that phrase -- "the Senate handed the White House a major victory today" -- and then just program it to be automatically inserted into every article reporting on anything done by the Senate. That system would be foolproof.

On a related note, The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin cites the primary justification for telecom amnesty -- that these companies were just doing what they were told by the Government -- and then asks rhetorically: "isn't that the very definition of a police state: that companies should do whatever the government asks, even if they know it's illegal?" I used to think that amnesty supporters held their position because they didn't understand this extremely simple point, but now I think that most of them have their position precisely because they do understand it. A lawless "police state" -- and that's the only term that can be used to describe what this bill creates -- is exactly what our political establishment desires.

UPDATE V: Final passage in the Senate of the Cheney/Rockefeller bill was 68-29. 19 Democrats joined all Republicans to vote in favor of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty: Conrad, Rockefeller, Baucus, Webb, Kohl, Whitehouse, Bayh, Johnson, Bill Nelson, Mikulski, McCaskill, Lincoln, Casey, Salazar, Inouye, Ben Nelson, Pryor, Carper, and Landrieu. Neither Obama nor Clinton voted on final passage.

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2008, 08:07 PM

Ron, your post just gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and I'm not being the least bit facetious, it truly does.

We are going against all that I thought was good about our country. The past few years have been so overtly shameful, that I'm totally aghast by what we've come to. Anyone with a lick of common sense has to fear where we will end up; what will be allowed to be done by us in the future?

It's still reversable before more harm is inflicted on us and the world, but will we and our courts have the wherewithall to do the right thing and stop these mad men and women? It doesn't seem as though it will be stopped, does it? These are the beginnings of some terrible times if this administrations plans and policies aren't handled swiftly and correctly. Remember empires end up on ash heaps, it's the way of the world.

RonF

February 12th, 2008, 09:21 PM

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2008, 09:41 PM

Makes me sick too, Sandi. What in hell are the democrats thinking? And what the hell are they doing? We gave them the majority to assist in Bush's demolition of the constitution? Must be some big money involved somewhere.

Ron, it's as if the new kids on the block have been called aside (much as it seems they did with McCain back when he was at the height of his popularity and therefore a threat, with them then saying he was nuts, his wife was a drug addict, and remember how the McCains were being come down on over their little adopted daughter? Etc., it seems this is how it came down, with him changing course, this after them having laid it all out for in black and white to him, or was it $reen?, it's for certain that he reversed his positions concerning much which had been so promising about him), and this is going on once again? This time it's the Democrats? Good golly! Just what is it they are being told, and how is it that they can they let themselves and their course be so intimidated and changed? It makes no sense, none whatsoever.

Saundra Hummer

February 12th, 2008, 09:58 PM

.. . . . . . . . . . .
Rape By Any Other Name
Guantanamo Comes to Main Street U.S.A.

By
Mark A. Goldman

Warning This Article Contains Very Disturbing Video

They say that the difference between how democracy in Europe has evolved compared to that of the United States is that in Europe the government is afraid of the People whereas in the United States the People are afraid of the government. That's a dangerous state of affairs and it looks like it's going to get worse.
An incorrect URL had been posted earlier, not sure I posted it, but just in case, here is the correct one:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19334.htm

I know this, I've never been afraid of the Federal government, that is until just lately, however, I now have a fear of our counties deputy sheriff's as well as the police in some towns, and for good reason, and I'm not even approaching being the criminal type. Not in any form or fashion, however, I have reservations about ones here where we are as we've been privy to actions they've been involved in, as well as how they don't protect and serve. Then there's the fact that we've witnessed first hand how manipulative and duplicitous they are. I just told one Deputy Sheriff today, when he denied telling me he didn't say what he said about our dogs, as he had even, at first, denied talking to me on his cell phone, but then realized his mistake, knowing that that is a traceable action, however, he still continued to deny that he had promised me no dogs would die. Then he backtracked yet again saying instead, he just didn't recall. I just told him, "How Convenient", as his remarks were such blatant falsehoods, so blatant that I actually laughed when saying that to him, which I'm sure he didn't appreciate. There were such falsehoods from him, falsehoods like you can't believe. Dogs are dead due to him, and he feels righteous? Sorry, that doesn't play with me. This is a long and messy story. It's not right that they've done what they've done. Even the head Sheriff's attorney, not the deputies, tells us that the Deputies and all those who were involved broke the law. He was emphatic about it. Today, the deputy even asked Rich what he does for money in the wintertime, as once before, due to a neighbor they thought we might have been the big drug dealers in the county. They must still believe that as they are dying to come in our house and search through it once again. This had best come to an end, as this is harrassment and it's getting old.
SRH
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19334.htm . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2008, 11:38 AM

.
+++++++++++
FRESH CONTROVERSY IN DENMARK
Newspapers Republish Muhammad Cartoons
After the arrest this week of three men who wanted to kill a Danish cartoonist, about a dozen papers in Denmark have republished the infamous Muhammad cartoons. Some observers notice a sea-change in Denmark's integration debate since the 2006 riots in the Muslim world.

It was hard to read a newspaper in Denmark on Wednesday without seeing the cartoons. (Go on-site to gain access to photo's and related articles, just click on the following links.)
Danish newspapers closed ranks on Wednesday to defend a cartoonist's right to free speech by reprinting 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked deadly riots in Muslim countries in early 2006. The papers were responding to the arrest in Denmark on Tuesday of three Muslim men who allegedly wanted to kill Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who drew the most inflammatory image, showing Muhammed with a bomb-shaped turban.

"We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case," the Copenhagen paper Berlingske Tidende wrote on Wednesday morning, "and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend."

Reaction from Muslim leaders was mixed. "There could have been other ways to do it without the drawing, which I personally do not like," said Abdul Wahid Petersen, a moderate imam, according to the Associated Press.

"We are so unhappy about the cartoon being reprinted," said Imam Mostafa Chendid, head of the Islamic Faith Community, which led Danish protests against the cartoons in 2006. "No blood was ever shed in Denmark because of this, and no blood will be shed. We are trying to calm down people, but let's see what happens. Let's open a dialogue."

But a Muslim politician in Denmark, 44-year-old Naser Khader, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that something palpable had changed in the Danish political climate over the past two years. "Of course there's a fear of a new crisis; Islamists are unpredictable," he said. "And in some Muslim countries the people have not forgotten the Muhammad cartoons."

Khader is the head of a new centrist party called "Ny Alliance." His background is Syrian. He said Muslim leaders as well as Danish society overall seemed more cohesive in their response to the threat of violence: "The Muslims who have made statements since the arrests yesterday have spoken very moderately." In fact, he said, "The great majority of Danish Muslims have shown that they reject violence and live in harmony with Danish law." And the results have been good, judging from a recent poll that shows overall public opinion of Muslims in Denmark has changed for the better in the last two years.

"The crisis didn't hurt integration," said Khader, "it opened doors for us -- and in Denmark things have improved quite a bit in the meantime."

This position chimes with a SPIEGEL ONLINE interview published Tuesday with the editor of Jyllands-Posten, the paper that first published the Muhammad cartoons in late 2005. Flemming Rose, who commissioned the cartoons, said the debate over integration in Denmark is "far more fact-based than it used to be."

With reporting by Anna Reimann

msm/ap/spiegel

SPIEGEL ONLINE - February 13, 2008, 05:37 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,535118,00.html
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008
All Rights Reserved

Related SPIEGEL ONLINE links:

Muhammad Caricature Fallout: Denmark Busts Alleged Plot to Kill Cartoonists (02/12/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,534704,00.html
SPIEGEL ONLINE Interview with Jyllands- Posten Editor: 'I Don't Fear for My Life' (02/12/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,534859,00.html
Muhammad Cartoon Redux: Danish Party Threatened by Palestinian Militants (11/06/2007)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,515668,00.html
From the Archive:'Satanic Verses Taught Us a Lesson' (02/07/2006)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,399459,00.html
Elections in Denmark: Muslim Politician Could Be Surprise Kingmaker (11/09/2007)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,516492,00.html
+++ .

Saundra Hummer

February 13th, 2008, 03:33 PM

.
~~~~~~~
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires"

Susan B Anthony.
~~~
"The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life."

Jane Addams
~~~
"The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?"

John Adams
~~~
"Even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands."

Douglas Adams
~~~
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
~~~
Have we become so accustomed to our freedoms here in the United States that we haven't any idea what it's like not to live as we have and as we do? Us having been so comfortable, as well as complacent, for so many years, that we are allowing ourselves to stand by as our way of life is taken from us?

Seemingly this is a truism, one which we will regret in the near future, even more than we do now, as this fact hasn't even begun to sink into our consciousness - that this is the way it is.

Saundra Winkler-Hummer
Presumptious
in
2008
~~~~~

.

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2008, 01:18 PM

.
:: :: :: :: ::
Leading The News
Republicans walk out on contempt vote
By
Klaus Marre
Posted: 02/14/08 01:49 PM [ET]

House Republicans Thursday left the chamber ahead of a vote seeking to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before a panel investigating the firing of several United States attorneys.

The move was intended to show that Republicans want to work on a permanent update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rather than be part of a “partisan fishing expedition,” as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) put it.

At a press conference following the walkout, Boehner said “Before Congress leaves town, we must give our intelligence officials the tools they need to keep America safe.

“The president will delay his trip to Africa to deal with this critical issue. And Republicans are prepared to stay here as long as it takes to complete our work,” Boehner added. “The terrorist threat to our country is not going away. We must do everything we can to protect the American people, and we should start by passing the bipartisan Senate bill.”

Go on-site to gain access to this article by clicking on the following URL:
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/republicans-walk-out-on-contempt-vote-2008-02-14.html

They have carte blanche? We don't? These men and women ignore and blatantly go against our Constitution, our laws, whereas we gladly live by them? Time for drastic change don't you think? We have an urgent need to get rid of these abusers and replace them with lovers of country and with those with respect for what has made our country great, our laws. We founded our nation on laws and freedoms, they're tearing it all apart. SRH
:: :: ::
.

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2008, 01:53 PM

.
*******
A
NEWSLETTER
Dear Saundra R.,

Today, in hearings on Capitol Hill, I confronted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her role in the lies, exaggerations, and misdirection that led us into the Iraq war.

During my questioning, Secretary Rice falsely stated that she never saw intelligence casting doubt on the Bush Administration claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This unbelievable statement is flatly contradicted by numerous government reports and CIA testimonials. (To watch the video of my exchange with Secretary Rice, click here.)

Secretary Rice's responses demonstrate once and for all that we need aggressive oversight over this out of control Administration. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has ignored the constitutional right of Congress to provide such oversight.

It is time Congress took aggressive action to assert our rights on behalf of the American people.

The House of Representatives must immediately hold former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress for their failure to respond to congressional subpoenas.

I have been aggressively lobbying Members of Congress to support a vote on contempt, and I am thrilled to report that Speaker Pelosi told me directly that she agrees it is well past time to vote on contempt. I am anticipating that the House will shortly vote on resolutions of both civil and criminal contempt for both Miers and Bolten.

No one should be immune from accountability and the rule of law.

Not Harriet Miers or Josh Bolten.

And especially not Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush or Dick Cheney.

It is time to defend the Constitution and our rights as a co-equal branch of government.

I will continue to take on the Bush Administration for their outrageous abuses just as I confronted Condoleezza Rice today and Attorney General Mukasey last week. (Click here to see my questioning of Mukasey.)

With your help we will hold these top Bush officials in contempt and continue our efforts to hold impeachment hearings for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Thank you, as always, for your great support.

Yours truly,

Congressman Robert Wexler

Paid for by
"Wexler for Congress"
PO Box 810669
Boca Raton, FL 33481

VIDEO..CONDI RICE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyKOkGjodhY

VIDEO..MUCASEY: http://www.wexlerforcongress.com/multimedia.asp?ItemID=234
************* .

RonF

February 14th, 2008, 04:03 PM

Bush, GOP Rebuke House Democrats on Surveillance Bill

House Democrats have decided to leave Washington today for a one-week recess without any further action on a terrorist surveillance bill set to expire Friday night, drawing protest tactics from Republicans and a sharp rebuke from President Bush.

At a hastily convened press briefing on the South Lawn, Bush said he would delay his planned trip to Africa this weekend if he is needed in the capital to work on or sign a surveillance bill.

"I urge congressional leaders to let the will of the House and the American people prevail and vote on the Senate bill before adjourning for their recess," Bush said. "Failure to act would harm our ability to monitor new terrorist activities and could re-open dangerous gaps in our intelligence."

Echoing Bush's criticisms, House Republicans walked out of the chamber today during a vote on contempt of Congress citations against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, complaining that Democrats were taking up partisan legislation rather than completing work vital to national security. (The House subsequently voted 222 to 30 to hold Bolten and Miers in contempt.)

But Democrats are refusing to budge, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that while key committee chairmen would stay in Washington to keep working on the issue, the rest of the House would be going home today.

And because Bush has the constitutional authority to call the House back into session "on extraordinary occasions," the chamber will go into symbolic "pro forma" sessions rather than adjourn for the week. Senate Democrats have used similar sessions to prevent Bush from making controversial executive branch nominations during that chamber's recesses.

Since the Senate passed its own version of the surveillance law Tuesday, House Democrats have engaged in a fierce internal debate over how to proceed. They have become stuck on the question of whether to provide immunity to telecommunications companies that provided help to the government in surveillance operations.

Hill Republicans and Bush want the House to simply pass the Senate bill, but House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday his chamber is "not a lap dog of the president or the United States Senate any more than they are of us."

And Pelosi reiterated that point today and accused Bush of "fearmongering" on the issue.

"President Bush tells the American people he has nothing to offer but fear," she said.
An effort to extend the existing Protect America Act for another 21 days failed decisively on the House floor Thursday, surprising Democratic leaders, who immediately made the case that they could go home for the break without getting a new law enacted.

Democrats have been laying the groundwork for this move all week, putting out documents like this one to bolster the argument that the GOP is playing politics with the issue and that national security will not be imperiled if the current surveillance law lapses.

House Democrats are getting support for their decision from across the Capitol. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) sent Bush a letter today saying that Democrats "stand ready to negotiate a final bill," and that "there is no crisis that should lead you to cancel your trip to Africa."

"I regret your reckless attempt to manufacture a crisis over the reauthorization of foreign surveillance laws," Reid wrote. "Instead of needlessly frightening the country, you should work with Congress in a calm, constructive way to provide our intelligence professionals with all needed tools while respecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans."

But Republicans continued to fire back. Referring to the issue of immunity, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said, "I hope the evidence does not develop that there are decisions being made in the House of Representatives on the basis of the interests of special interest groups like trial lawyers who stand to gain financially from continuing to block this litigation."

House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) suggested that the pending expiration of the surveillance bill was ultimately the fault of the Senate GOP for stalling the debate until the last minute in that chamber.

"It was the administration working with Senate Republicans to try to jam us, and it's not going to work," Reyes said.

Posted by Ben Pershing | Permalink | Comments: (64)
Other Blogs' Comments: Technorati

Posted at 12:35 PM ET, 02/14/2008
House Will Let Surveillance Bill Expire
UPDATE, 1:12 p.m. ET: President Bush just sought to increase pressure on Democrats to act on the surveillance law by saying he would delay his planned trip to Africa this weekend if he is needed in Washington to work on or sign a bill. "If we have to delay [the trip], we'll delay," he said.

"The House should not leave Washington without passing the Senate bill," Bush said, adding that not doing so would "put the American people at risk."

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2008, 04:12 PM

.
A
NEWSLETTER* * * * * * *
Dear Saundra R.,

Today, thanks in great part to your advocacy and persistence, the House of Representatives took a major, tangible step towards holding the Bush Administration accountable.

In a vote on the House floor, we acted to enforce the law and our Constitution, and hold former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in Contempt of Congress. (Please click here to watch my speech on the House Floor calling for contempt.)

Bolten and Miers have ignored congressional subpoenas for nine months and thumbed their noses at Congress and the American people.

Executive privilege has never permitted officials to avoid appearing altogether when subpoenaed. This behavior is unprecedented and outrageous.

Now, these two renegade officials must face up to their blatant disregard of the law and constitution.

Our message of accountability for Bush/Cheney is finally resonating on Capitol Hill.

Judiciary Chairman John Conyers fought hard to bring this to a vote, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself took the floor to support contempt.

While Democrats may not all agree on how to press this Administration, one thing is clear:

Today, Congress has asserted its rights under the Constitution.

We must not back down.

We must never cede the rights of the Congress to the Executive.

I am pleased to inform you that today's legislation allows Congress to bypass the Attorney General (who has stated to me this week that he would not enforce contempt) and immediately take action in the courts. (Click here to see me confront the Attorney General on contempt last week.)

Today, Congress finally defended the Constitution and our rights as an equal branch of government.

Yours truly,

Congressman Robert Wexler

URL TO VIDEO LINKS:

https://www.wexlerforcongress.com/multimedia.asp?ItemID=238

https://www.wexlerforcongress.com/multimedia.asp?ItemID=234
* * * * * * * * * * * * .

Jay Norem

February 14th, 2008, 04:18 PM

And the Rebublicans stormed out of the room. They say that Congress is wasting time on this issue, when it could be working to extend the practice of illegal wire-tapping of American citizens.

Saundra Hummer

February 14th, 2008, 04:25 PM

Hi Ron,

Bush serves up fear like our mothers served up Waffles or Pancakes on a Sunday morning, fried chicken to come at supper. We can hardly wait.

Everyone eats it up. I just saw a poll on AOL and they're saying that 65 percent of the American people polled thought inflicting pain is just fine if the ones being tortured are suspected terrorists.

Then there's those who say they have nothing to hide, so they don't mind being spyed on. This just floors me. Where did these complacent people go to school? This is frightening to learn of, as they are willingly handing over our rights due to their own fairy tale take on the world. Chicken Little and no Henny Penny around that's to be listened to. There's no one shouting long and loud enough taking up the fight against all of what is happening to our rights, not like should be done,

How about a band of brothers to fight for our rights? A powerful coalition needs to be formed with powerful, well spoken people at the fore in these matters.

Those of us who think differently, those of us who want to have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean something have our own fears, those being, fears of these people and their willingness to lose it all by just handing this administration and those of like minds everything we've taken for granted all these centuries, just handing it to them without even realizing the harm they're doing. All our heros have struggled, fought, and died for what it is these fearful people are giving to them.

We've not known fear, not the kind that will come if our rights are erroded. It will turn neighbor against neighbor.

This is not a comfortable, happy time, as we stand to lose too much. We've lost too much right now, just as we stand, and more loss is on the way unless we get a grip. We have an overwhelming need to change what has already taken place right now, not three years from now, with us not working for change until long after the fact.

RonF

February 14th, 2008, 10:03 PM

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2008, 12:00 AM

That the democrats are even thinking about standing up to the lock-step republicans is remarkable. They could still cave. It's been a pretty gutless bunch.

We are susposed to know the dynamics of it all. I don't, and I don't think too many of us do, as we don't crawl into pockets. There are many who do know, and they're saying the reasons why the Democrats are so hamstrung is due to how things are done, how they don't have a large enough majority, true I have to believe, however, I believe myself that most of the Democrats don't have the arm twisting capabilities or the knowledge of how to go about it. Not anywhere close to what Lyndon Johnson had, that, and the fact they don't have enough owed favors to call in. Probably all true, but the majority party, the Democrats, seem to accept what happens all too willingly with a smile and a shrug, and just go about business as usual, not showing what one would expect... OUTRAGE! The things we expect of them just die on the vine. It's as if they don't have the fortitude to let us know that they'll work and work until they get the thing done, the right things taken care of in a timely and proper manner, no, instead it looks as though what the Cheney/Bush administration has pushed for is just what they, the Democrats themselves, were wanting all along. It's shocking to see.

Saundra Hummer

February 15th, 2008, 02:22 PM

.* * * * * * * NATIONAL SECURITY
Playing The Fear Card Again

February 15, 2008 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster

In late 2005, President Bush acknowledged that his administration had authorized a secret warrantless domestic surveillance program. The administration's program operated in violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment restriction against "unreasonable searches" without a warrant. It also violated of federal law -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- which makes it a crime to conduct electronic surveillance, except as "authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order." For the past two years, Congress has sought to rein in Bush's reckless disregard of the Constitution and the law. In early Aug. 2007, Congress unwisely passed a temporary expansion of FISA, called the Protect America Act (PAA), which provided virtually unchecked power to the administration to spy on American communications without warrants. Tomorrow, the unnecessary and dangerous powers given to the administration by Congress six months ago are set to expire. Now, as Congress and the administration wrangle over how to resolve their differences on surveillance legislation, Bush is reacting by spouting fear. Yesterday, he warned Congress that if it does not greatly expand the president's powers to spy, then the country faces terror strikes that would make 9/11 "pale by comparison." Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) added that Congress's unwillingness to cater to Bush's demands means that "there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells throughout the world."

LET IT EXPIRE:Intelligence experts concede that very little will actually change Saturday if the PAA is allowed to expire. "Expiration of the current Protect America Act would not mean an immediate end to wiretapping." Every spying authorization already entered under the law "can remain in effect for 12 months from the date it was issued." As Richard Clarke, Bush's own former counterterrorism adviser, wrote recently in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Let me be clear: Our ability to track and monitor terrorists overseas would not cease should the Protect America Act expire. If this were true, the president would not threaten to terminate any temporary extension with his veto pen. All surveillance currently occurring would continue even after legislative provisions lapsed because authorizations issued under the act are in effect up to a full year." Moreover, new authorizations would be permitted through the underlying FISA law, which permits emergency surveillance of terrorists as long as a warrant is applied for within 72 hours. Kate Martin, Director of the Center for National Security Studies, added, "If the government learns of new individuals apparently plotting terrorist activities, it can immediately surveil such individuals -- whether they are here or calling here from abroad -- by obtaining a FISA court order." Lastly, the administration can continue to use its authority under Executive Order 12333 to conduct surveillance abroad of any known or suspected terrorist.

NO FEAR: President Franklin Roosevelt's cautionary admonition that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" remains particularly instructive in the current debate over surveillance. "For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise," wrote Clarke. "With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections." Earlier this week, Bush and his conservative allies in Congress thwarted the passage of a 21-day extension of the PAA. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) explained, "The President and House Republicans cannot have it both ways, simultaneously arguing that the PAA is essential to national security and also engineering the defeat of an extension of it. The consequences for inaction are their responsibility." In a terse and direct letter to Bush, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) said, "I, for one, do not intend to back down â€“ not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear. We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won."

PUTTING TELEPHONE COMPANIES FIRST: The biggest sticking point in negotiations between Congress and the President over surveillance is whether to grant retroactive amnesty to telecommunications companies that broke the law and cooperated with the administration's illegal requests. Caroline Frederickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's legislative office, urged Congress not to "give the phone companies a 'get out of jail free' card. If the companies really 'did the right thing' as the president said, then they have nothing to fear from going to court." Bush has declared he will veto any bill that does not include retroactive immunity. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) pointed out that "the president has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. ... So if we take the president at his word, he's willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies."

UNDER THE RADAR
IRAQ -- PENTAGON PUSHING FOR CONTINUED CONTRACTOR IMMUNITY IN IRAQ: With the Bush administration negotiating a long-term security agreement with the Iraqi government, many lawmakers have argued that the White House is "trying to lock in a lasting U.S. military presence in Iraq before the next president takes office." A potential "deal-breaker for the Iraqis is contractor immunity" of the type that allowed Blackwater guards to escape punishment after killing 17 Iraqis in a Baghdad shoot-out last September. But "in interagency discussions arranged in preparation for the start of negotiations, the Department of Defense has said it wants to ask the Iraqis to maintain status quo." The State Department "has argued strongly against that position." Human Rights First claims that contractor immunity expired when the Coalition Provisional Authority dissolved in June 2004. The United States could have initiated legal action against contractors in the United States, Iraq, or elsewhere but as Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution notes, "the political will to use them has been completely absent."

ECONOMY -- BERNANKE SAYS U.S. ECONOMIC OUTLOOK HAS 'DETERIORATED': In a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that "the country's economic outlook has deteriorated," predicting that the economy will continue to endure a "period of sluggish growth." "The outlook for the economy has worsened in recent months, and the downside risks to growth have increased," he added. "More expensive and less available credit seems likely to continue to be a source of restraint on economic growth." His forecast was also echoed by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who testified with him. A new poll released yesterday from the Pew Research Center finds that the American public's views of the economy have "plummeted since January." "Just 17% currently rate the nation's economy as excellent or good, down from 26% last month. ... A majority of Americans (53%) now say their financial situation is only fair or poor, up from 49% in January."

ENVIRONMENT -- COAL FRONT GROUP USES KIDS TO SPOUT PROPAGANDA: Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) -- a coal industry front group that has sponsored multiple presidential debates and whose members paid for an advertisement comparing the governor of Kansas to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- has sunk to new lows. On LearnAboutCoal.org, ABEC employs young children to make the case for coal. Upon loading the site, viewers may encounter "Adam," who carries a skateboard and says: "I'm pretty stoked about the future of energy in this country. One reason for that is that I've taken the time to learn more about American coal." "Sarah" says that she's "glad to know that we have a 250-year supply of American coal available right here in America," while "Luke" puts it bluntly: "Is coal a fuel for America's future? Actually, we can't afford for it not to be." Physicians for Social Responsibility blasted ABEC for its use of children to hawk a polluting and dangerous industry. They point out that coal plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the U.S. and that "Pregnant women and children are especially vulnerable to the toxic effects of mercury. ... No parent would allow their child to be exposed to such danger."

THINK FAST
In the Washington Post today, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell badgers the House to accept without reservation the Senate extension of the Protect America Act that includes retroactive immunity for telecoms, claiming there will be "gaps or lapses in gathering intelligence" if there is "failure to shield private parties from liability."

"There have been at least three accidental drug overdoses and four suicides" between June 2007 and Feb. 5 among soldiers "in so-called 'warrior transition units'" the Army set up to help soldiers make the move "toward either a return to uniform or back into civilian life." Three other deaths are still under investigation, Army officials said yesterday.

Yesterday, Office of Legal Counsel head Steve Bradbury said the Justice Department hasn't determined whether waterboarding would be unlawful. "The department, as I've tried to indicate, has not had occasion to address the question since the enactment of these new laws. "It is the first time the administration has gone that far," the AP noted.

"The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to review an appeals court decision that it said had created a 'serious threat to national security' by requiring the government to supply extensive evidence supporting the classification of more than 180 Guantanamo detainees as enemy combatants."

The federal government said it would "intensify its efforts to move Gulf Coast hurricane victims out of trailers and into apartments or hotels" after the CDC "confirmed that many trailers were contaminated with high levels of formaldehyde." "About 38,000 families are still living in the trailers and mobile homes."

"A federal judge ordered the Bush administration yesterday to tell him whether two CIA interrogation videos destroyed in 2005 were relevant to a case before him." The Justice Department "has urged judges not to seek information about the tapes."

Yesterday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates "privately rebuked a four-star general for suggesting the Air Force intended to buy twice as many sophisticated F-22 Raptor aircraft as the Bush administration had approved." One senior official called Gen. Bruce Carlson's remarks "borderline insubordination," because they contradicted a decision by the president.

Iran has postponed a fourth round of talks between the U.S. and Iran "on security issues facing Iraq that had been expected to take place in Baghdad this week," the U.S. embassy said on Thursday. "No reason was given for the delay."

Two suicide attackers "targeted worshippers leaving a Shiite mosque Friday" in the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar, "killing at least three people and wounding 17."

And finally: At yesterday's memorial service for Tom Lantos, U2's Bono sang the late congressman's wife a Valentine's Day song: The Beatles' "All You Need is Love." Watch it here.

"Some of the world's top companies vowed Friday to step up their efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, saying governments were failing to show sufficient leadership in the fight against global warming."

STATE WATCH
PENNSYLVANIA:Sign up here for a National Green Jobs Conference in Pittsburgh in March.

FLORIDA: Only 22 percent of Florida parents "want public schools to teach an evolution-only curriculum."

ENVIRONMENT: "Dead zones" of marine life off the coasts of Oregon and Washington are likely tied to global warming.

BLOG WATCH
THINK PROGRESS: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lies to Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) about making false statements before the Iraq war.

VOLUNTEER VOTERS: Tennessee state senator claims rape just isn't what it used to be.

BLOG FOR OUR FUTURE: Debunking 10 right-wing myths about Canadian health care.

RAW STORY: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) excuses waterboarding: "It's not like we're burning people with hot coals."
* * *
"[I have an] extensive background on the economy."
-- Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), 2/14/08

VERSUS

"The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should."
-- McCain, 12/18/07

DAILY GRILL
Go on-site to gain access to the numerous links, there are many:
http://www.americanprogressaction.org
* * * * * * * * * * * .

Saundra Hummer

February 16th, 2008, 01:50 PM

.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
CREDO blog
Californians Help End Abuse of Campaign Funds
Ever wonder if the calls and letters our members make through the Citizen Action program make a difference? Well they do. The Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) for the last few months had been considering a regulation to curb spending of campaign funds for personal expenditures. The problem is that state law does not require politicians to provide much detail in their expense reports. This, predictably, leads to abuse. For example, it was revealed that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez spent tens of thousands of dollars from the Friends of Fabian Nunez Fund on, among other things, a $1,795 meal in Paris, an $8,745 hotel stay in Barcelona and a $5,149 "meeting" at a wine store in Bordeaux.

I had been following this story and a public comment period opened up for CREDO Mobile customers to send in letters. FPPC received over 2,300 letters from Californian CREDO Mobile members -- the majority of comments sent on this issue -- and approved the regulation unanimously.

When reporter Nancy Vogel at the Los Angeles Times learned that we were taking action on the issue, she interviewed CREDO Mobile President Michael Kieschnick. Here is a link to the article that highlights the activism of CREDO customers.

Last week, California CREDO customers got another victory when the Coastal Commission stopped a destructive highway plan to put a 6-lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach. Since 2004, CREDO customers had sent in over 9,000 letters on this issue alone.

Our letters really do make a difference. Thanks to everyone who participates!
Posted by Leah Adler
Go to CREDO blog:http://action.credomobile.com/commentary/2008/02/whats_good_for_exxon.html

http://action.credomobile.com/
Then there's this, it should get a lot of comments and interest:
Click here to download the Bush Wiretap Ringtone:
http://credoaction.com/wiretap_ringtone/
Click here to hear the ringtone as an MP3

Having trouble downloading?
Text WIRE to 30644 to get the ringtone. And then follow the instructions in the reply text^ ^ ^ ^ ^ .

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2008, 06:35 PM

.
~~~~~~~

"You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth."

Richard Grossman
~~~
"We live in a country that is addicted to incarceration as a tool for social control. As it stands now justice systems are extremely expensive, do not rehabilitate but in fact make the people that experience them worse and have no evidence based correlatives to reducing crime. Yet with that track record they continue to thrive, prosper and are seen as an appropriate response to children in trouble with the law. Only an addict would see that as an okay result."

James Bell
~~~
"In Southern West Virginia we live in a war zone. Three and one-half million pounds of explosives are being used every day to blow up the mountains. Blasting our communities, blasting our homes, poisoning us, trying to intimidate us. I don't mind being poor. I mind being blasted and poisoned. - There ARE no jobs on a dead planet."

Judy Bonds
~~~
"Mr. Speaker, we make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death, and a fearful desire to embrace annihilation. Creating peace requires compassion, putting ourselves in the other person's place, and all of their suffering and all of their hopes and to act from our heart's capacity to love, not fear."

Dennis Kucinich
~~~
"Dr. King didn't get famous giving a speech that said,"I have a complaint." It's time for us to start dreaming again and invite the country to dream with us. We don't have any "throw away" species, nations, or children. We must birth a global green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

Van Jones

~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

February 17th, 2008, 06:44 PM

.:: :::: :: :::: :: If Only Saddam Had Injected HGH
By
Scott Ritter
17/02/08 "Antiwar" -- -- The recent spectacle of Congressional hearings on the alleged use of steroids and/or Human Growth Hormone (HGH) by Roger Clemons, a professional baseball player nicknamed "the Rocket," throws into question the viability and functionality of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party. The House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Representative Henry Waxman (D-California), carried out its own made-for-television version of Court TV, grilling the All Star pitcher and his former trainer over their contradictory statements as to whether or not Clemons actually was injected with a banned performance enhancing substance. While this hearing was underway, thousands of miles away, in Iraq , American service members continued the ugly business of occupying Iraq . That Waxman would abuse his position by pursuing such trivia while Americans continued to fight and die in a war built exclusively on a framework of lies is disturbing.

True, Henry Waxman has chaired numerous hearings, and issued even more statements, which have resulted in several embarrassing questions being asked by the Government Reform Committee of a recalcitrant White House. But none of Henry Waxman's efforts have produced the high drama of the Clemons hearings, where every word was wrestled with, every context explored. Forensic data was introduced. Reputations were (and are) on the line. The consequences are potentially grave: perjury charges could be brought forward against Clemons and others. What was the source of this commotion? Simply put, a few syringes and a game. Baseball might be the national pastime, perhaps, but it remains a game nonetheless. War is all-too real, and the war in Iraq has cost nearly 4,000 Americans their lives, while wounding tens of thousands more, while killing and wounding hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

At the same time Henry Waxman's committee was grilling the Cy Young award-winning pitcher, the House Foreign Affairs Committee was holding hearings of its own, on the issue of Iraq. Another Democrat, Representative Robert Wexler (D-Florida), raised the matter of findings from a report issued by the Center for Public Integrity, issued last month, that document some 935 allegations of false statements made by the Bush administration in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Of particular interest to Wexler were 56 of those allegedly false statements attributed to the witness seated before the committee, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who had served as the National Security Advisor in the period of time when the alleged false statements were made.

To his credit, Representative Wexler pressed home his point, namely that Condi Rice had lied when she helped make the case for war against Iraq by selectively citing certain intelligence information while suppressing others. Secretary Rice, of course, denied any wrongdoing, leaving America with a curt point-counterpoint exchange which served little purpose when it comes to the matter of the search for truth and accountability through oversight. When Roger Clemons denied the charges leveled at him, the robust overseers of Congressional Constitutional mandate who populate the Government Reform Committee subjected him to a withering round of cross-examination full of recrimination and doubt. Following Wexler's brief moment of inquiry, Condi Rice was let off without further reproach.

Clearly there are discrepancies between the charges leveled by Wexler and the responses offered by Rice. That the compendium of alleged false statements comes from an independent, non-governmental entity (the Center for Public Integrity) should not serve as a roadblock to further investigation and hearings into the matter: the Government Reform Committee was acting in response to an independent investigation, the Mitchell Report, authorized not by Congress, but rather the Commissioner of Baseball. Unlike the Mitchell Report, however, the matter of Bush administration prevarication concerning the false case made for war in Iraq delves not into the lives of private citizens, where the consequences get no bigger than inflated sports statistics, but rather the words and actions of elected officials which influenced public opinion and the will of Congress in a manner which has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and several thousand American lives.

Congress shouldn't have to wait for a private organization like the Center for Public Integrity to do its job for it. The misrepresentation of fact, fabrication of falsehoods, and outright lies the Center for Public Integrity documents are all a matter of public record, most of which were derived from statements made before Congress itself.

That Congress puts the so-called integrity of a game ahead of its own Constitutional mandate of oversight of legitimate governance is a travesty. That this travesty is carried out in the face of a pledge by a Democratic-controlled Congress to effectively and responsibly carry out its duty to investigate how and why our nation went to war with Iraq is not only incomprehensible, but reprehensible.

Perhaps if Saddam Hussein had been accused of injecting HGH instead of hiding WMD, Congress would have stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and dug deep into the truth of the matter. Henry Waxman, as well meaning as he is, sits at the head of a legislative process which has lost touch with reality and purpose. Pandering to the no-risk approach of non-governance by pursuing "The Rocket" and allegations of HGH abuse, while ignoring the high-risk demands of legitimate government by pursuing matters pertaining to how the Bush administration manufactured evidence of illusory Iraqi rockets tipped with imagined WMD, represents the ultimate indictment of a Congress, and legislative process, that long ago lost touch with its ultimate purpose of being: the pursuit of the best interests of the American people through the defense of the rule of law as set forth by the United States Constitution.

Scott Ritter is a former UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq and the author of Target Iran: The Truth Behind the White House's Plans for Regime Change (Nation Books, 2006). Go on-site to gain access to this article and several other topical issues of the day, as well as war stats, those in human tolls, and monetary costs. Just click on the following URL:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
:: ::: ::

Saundra Hummer

February 18th, 2008, 02:17 AM

.. . . . . . . . . Old JFK Documents May Stir Controversy
Reuters
Posted: 2008-02-17 19:38:31
Filed Under: Nation News
DALLAS (Feb. 17) -A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of
President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a
highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday.

The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney’s office, which uncovered the documents, would display its discovery at a news conference on Monday morning.

The Morning News said the items found in an old safe in a Dallas courthouse
included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the
prosecutor in the Ruby trial. Ruby shot Oswald two days after the president’s
death.

Also found were official records from Ruby’s trial, a gun holster and clothing
that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald, District Attorney Craig Watkins
told the newspaper.

But one potentially controversial item is a transcript of an exchange between
Oswald and Ruby in which they discuss killing Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

The Morning News said one theory about the transcript was that it was part of a movie script Wade was working on with producers, for a film that was never made.

The transcript resembles one published by the Warren Commission, which
investigated Kennedy’s assassination and concluded Oswald acted alone. The FBI had determined the conversation between Oswald and Ruby — this time about killing Texas Gov. John Connally — was definitely fake, the newspaper said.

Connally was riding in the car with Kennedy and was wounded in the attack.

The documents may be a Presidents’ Day gift to conspiracy theorists who have long questioned the official U.S. government version that Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy on November 22, 1963, as the president’s motorcade swept past the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas.
Nightclub owner Ruby subsequently shot Oswald dead at point-blank range as
police were escorting their prime suspect.Ruby died a few years later from cancer.
2008-02-17 16:54:52 . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

February 18th, 2008, 03:24 PM

.
X X X X X X X
Secret Iraq Dossier Published

The government has been forced to publish the secret first draft of the Iraq WMD dossier written by a Foreign Office spin doctor

By
Chris Ames

Read the draft here: http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/wmd_jul_2002.pdf

18/02/08 "New Statesman" -- - The secret first draft of the Iraq WMD dossier written by Foreign Office spin doctor John Williams has finally been published after a ruling back in January under the Freedom of Information Act.

The document contains an early version of the executive summary of the next draft, which was attributed to Intelligence chief John Scarlett. The document places a spin doctor at the heart of the process of drafting the dossier and blows a hole in the government’s evidence to the Hutton Inquiry.

Last month the Foreign Office was ordered by the Information Tribunal to hand over the Williams draft, which I first requested under the Freedom of Information Act in February 2005.

From the time that the row first erupted over Andrew Gilligan’s allegations that the dossier had been sexed-up, the government has claimed that Scarlett’s draft, produced on 10 September 2002, was the first full draft and produced without interference from spin doctors. But the Williams draft, dated a day earlier, shows that spin doctors were sexing up the dossier at the time the notorious 45 minutes claim was included.

Initially the government withheld the draft from the Hutton Inquiry. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s director of communications, denied its existence. But when Scarlett admitted that Williams had done some early drafting, the BBC asked to see it.

The government then supplied a copy of the draft to Lord Hutton but told him that it was “not taken forward” because a “fresh start” was made with Scarlett’s draft. Confirmation that Scarlett took up elements of Williams’s drafting shows that the government misled Hutton.

Williams did not include the 45 minutes claim in his draft but it is now clear that he did not have access to the intelligence on the claim at the time. However, it has recently been confirmed that Williams attended the meeting that produced Scarlett’s draft.

At this meeting, he and other spin doctors saw the intelligence assessment that contained the claim. Scarlett’s draft then included it for the first time. When he sent his draft to Campbell, Scarlett wrote of “considerable help from John Williams”.

The draft also shows that Williams was responsible for a number of key changes that strengthened the dossier’s claims. His executive summary claimed that Iraq had “acquired” uranium. Previous versions only alleged the material had been “sought”.

Scarlett’s draft also alleged that Iraq had got hold of uranium, stating that it had “purchased” it.

Williams appears largely to have been working on a version of the dossier that was produced during the summer of 2002, before Tony Blair announced in September of that year that a dossier would be published.

He appears not to have made substantial changes to the body text of the document’s section on Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) but it is clear that he was aware that this section was being rewritten. In fact, the WMD section contains a comment: “I don’t propose to rewrite this until I take delivery of the new version.” This shows that Williams intended to continue to rewrite the dossier.

Subsequent versions of the dossier show that the executive summary expressed its claims about Iraq’s WMD more strongly than the main text. In many cases, including the 45 minutes claim, the main text was then brought into line with the executive summary.

The involvement of spin doctors in drafting the summary process suggests that they led the sexing up of the dossier.

Read the draft here: http://www.fco.gov.uk/Files/kfile/wmd_jul_2002.pdf
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
X X X X X X X

Saundra Hummer

February 18th, 2008, 04:11 PM

.
. . . . . . . . . . .What Do We Stand For?

By
Paul Craig Roberts

18/02/08 "ICH" --- - Americans traditionally thought of their country as a "city upon a hill," a "light unto the world." Today only the deluded think that. Polls show that the rest of the world regards the U.S. and Israel as the two greatest threats to peace.

This is not surprising. In the words of Arthur Silber:

"The Bush administration has announced to the world, and to all Americans, that this is what the United States now stands for: a vicious determination to dominate the world, criminal, genocidal wars of aggression, torture, and an increasingly brutal and brutalizing authoritarian state at home. That is what we stand for."

Addressing his fellow Americans, Silber asks the paramount question: "why do you support" these horrors?

His question goes to the heart of the matter. Do we Americans have any honor, any humanity, any integrity, any awareness of the crimes our government is committing in our name? Do we have a moral conscience?

How can a moral conscience be reconciled with our continuing to tolerate our government which has invaded two countries on the basis of lies and deception, destroyed their civilian infrastructures and murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children?

The killing and occupation continue even though we now know that the invasions were based on lies and fabricated "evidence." The entire world knows this. Yet Americans continue to act as if the gratuitous invasions, the gratuitous killing, and the gratuitous destruction are justified. There is no end of it in sight.

If Americans have any honor, how can they betray their Founding Fathers, who gave them liberty, by tolerating a government that claims immunity to law and the Constitution and is erecting a police state in their midst?

Answers to these questions vary. Some reply that a fearful and deceived American public seeks safety from terrorists in government power.

Others answer that a majority of Americans finally understand the evil that Bush has set loose and tried to stop him by voting out the Republicans in November 2006 and putting the Democrats in control of Congress – all to no effect – and are now demoralized as neither party gives a hoot for public opinion or has a moral conscience.

The people ask over and over, "What can we do?"

Very little when the institutions put in place to protect the people from tyranny fail. In the U.S., the institutions have failed across the board.

The freedom and independence of the watchdog press was destroyed by the media concentration that was permitted by the Clinton administration and Congress. Americans who rely on traditional print and TV media simply have no idea what is afoot.

Political competition failed when the opposition party became a "me-too" party. The Democrats even confirmed as attorney general Michael Mukasey, an authoritarian who refuses to condemn torture and whose rulings as a federal judge undermined habeas corpus. Such a person is now the highest law enforcement officer in the United States.

The judicial system failed when federal judges ruled that "state secrets" and "national security" are more important than government accountability and the rule of law.

The separation of powers failed when Congress acquiesced to the executive branch's claims of primary power and independence from statutory law and the Constitution.

It failed again when the Democrats refused to impeach Bush and Cheney, the two greatest criminals in American political history.

Without the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, America can never recover. The precedents for unaccountable government established by the Bush administration are too great, their damage too lasting. Without impeachment, America will continue to sink into dictatorship in which criticism of the government and appeals to the Constitution are criminalized. We are closer to executive rule than many people know. Empathis is mine...SRH

Silber reminds us that America once had leaders, such as Speaker of the House Thomas B. Reed and Sen. Robert M. LaFollette Sr., who valued the principles upon which America was based more than they valued their political careers. Perhaps Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are of this ilk, but America has fallen so low that people who stand on principle today are marginalized. They cannot become speaker of the House or a leader in the Senate.

Today Congress is almost as superfluous as the Roman Senate under the caesars. On Feb. 13 the U.S. Senate barely passed a bill banning torture, and the White House promptly announced that President Bush would veto it. Torture is now the American way. The U.S. Senate was only able to muster 51 votes against torture, an indication that almost a majority of U.S. senators support torture.

Bush says that his administration does not torture. So why veto a bill prohibiting torture? Bush seems proud to present America to the world as a torturer.

After years of lying to Americans and the rest of the world that Guantanamo prison contained 774 of "the world's most dangerous terrorists," the Bush regime is bringing six of its victims to trial. The vast majority of the 774 detainees have been quietly released. The U.S. government stole years of life from hundreds of ordinary people who had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and were captured by warlords and sold to the stupid Americans as "terrorists." Needing terrorists to keep the farce going, the U.S. government dropped leaflets in Afghanistan offering $25,000 a head for "terrorists." Kidnappings ensued until the U.S. government had purchased enough "terrorists" to validate the "terrorist threat."

The six that the U.S. is bringing to "trial" include two child soldiers for the Taliban and a car-pool driver who allegedly drove bin Laden.

The Taliban did not attack the U.S. The child soldiers were fighting in an Afghan civil war. The U.S. attacked the Taliban. How does that make Taliban soldiers terrorists who should be locked up and abused in Gitmo and brought before a kangaroo military tribunal? If a terrorist hires a driver or a taxi, does that make the driver a terrorist? What about the pilots of the airliners who brought the alleged 9/11 terrorists to the U.S.? Are they guilty, too?

The Gitmo trials are show trials. Their only purpose is to create the precedent that the executive branch can ignore the U.S. court system and try people in the same manner that innocent people were tried in Stalinist Russia and Gestapo Germany. If the Bush regime had any real evidence against the Gitmo detainees, it would have no need for its kangaroo military tribunal.

If any more proof is needed that Bush has no case against any of the Gitmo detainees, the following AP report, Feb. 14, 2008, should suffice: "The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to limit judges' authority to scrutinize evidence against detainees at Guantanamo Bay."

The reason Bush doesn't want judges to see the evidence is that there is no evidence except a few confessions obtained by torture. In the American system of justice, confession obtained by torture is self-incrimination and is impermissible evidence under the U.S. Constitution.

Andy Worthington's book, The Guantanamo Files, and his online articles make it perfectly clear that the "dangerous terrorists" claim of the Bush administration is just another hoax perpetrated on the inattentive American public.

Recently the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity issued a report that documents the fact that Bush administration officials made 935 false statements about Iraq to the American people in order to deceive them into going along with Bush's invasion. In recent testimony before Congress, Bush's secretary of state and former national security adviser, Condi Rice, was asked by Rep. Robert Wexler about the 56 false statements she made.

Rice replied: " take my integrity very seriously, and I did not at any time make a statement that I knew to be false." Rice blamed "the intelligence assessments" which "were wrong."

Another Rice lie, like those mushroom clouds that were going to go up over American cities if we didn't invade Iraq. The weapon inspectors told the Bush administration that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as Scott Ritter has reminded us over and over. Every knowledgeable person in the country knew there were no weapons. As the leaked Downing Street memo confirms, the head of British intelligence told the UK cabinet that the Bush administration had already decided to invade Iraq and was making up the intelligence to justify the invasion.

But let's assume that Rice was fooled by faulty intelligence. If she had any integrity she would have resigned. In the days when American government officials had integrity, they would have resigned in shame from such a disastrous war and terrible destruction based on their mistake. But Condi Rice, like all the Bush (and Clinton) operatives, is too full of American self-righteousness and ambition to have any remorse about her mistake. Condi can still look herself in the mirror despite one million Iraqis dying from her mistake and several million more being homeless refugees, just as Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, can still look herself in the mirror despite sharing responsibility for 500,000 dead Iraqi children.

There is no one in the Bush administration with enough integrity to resign. It is a government devoid of truth, morality, decency, and honor. The Bush administration is a blight upon America and upon the world.

[I]Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

February 18th, 2008, 04:23 PM

.
~~~~~~~
"Protection against government is now not enough to guarantee that a man who has something to say shall have a chance to say it. The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public."

Commission On Freedom Of The Press
~~~
"If you think there is freedom of the press in the United States, I tell you there is no freedom of the press... They come out with the cheap shot. The press should be ashamed of itself. They should come to both sides of the issue and hear both sides and let the American people make up their minds."

Bill Moyers
~~~
"Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense -- the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen."

William E. Borah
~~~
"It's hard to imagine a con much more audacious than making Christ the front man for a program of tax cuts for the rich or war in Iraq. We have made golden calves of ourselves --- become a nation of terrified, self-obsessed idols."

Bill McKibben
~~~
"when an administration embarks on a war justified by little or no intelligence, speaking the truth can be regarded as treachery. The country could use more of that kind of "treachery."

Ray McGovern
~~~
"I have served my country for almost thirty years in some of the most isolated and dangerous parts of the world. I want to continue to serve America. However, I do not believe in the policies of this Administration and cannot --- morally and professionally --- defend or implement them. It is with heavy heart that I must end my service to America and therefore resign."

Ann Wright
~~~
"The role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order is going to be to export security. That means endless wars and weapons in space. The Pentagon will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America's addiction to war and violence as long as our communities are dependent on military spending for jobs?"

Bruce Gagnon

~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

February 18th, 2008, 04:49 PM

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:: :: :: :: ::

'Europeans Hide Behind the Unpopularity of President Bush'
An Interview with Henry Kissinger

18/02/08 "Spiegel" -- - Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 84, has thrown his support behind John McCain. SPIEGEL spoke with Kissinger about Germany's Afghanistan mission, tepid European commitment to combatting Islamist extremism and whether direct talks with Iran should go ahead.

SPIEGEL: Dr. Kissinger, you have endorsed Senator John McCain as your choice for the White House. McCain, though, has said he would be prepared to stay in Iraq for another 100 years. Are you sure he is the right man for the job?
Kissinger: John and I have been friends for 30 years. I have great confidence in him.
SPIEGEL: Most Americans would like to see a rapid withdrawal from Iraq and possibly Afghanistan. But McCain has made his motto "No Surrender." (more...)

Kissinger: He was trying to make a distinction between American military forces in a country where they were there as part of a civil war and military forces that are part of an alliance accepted by the population, such as in Germany after World War II. He did not say we should stay in Iraq in a combat mission. He was trying to make exactly the opposite point.

SPIEGEL: The Democrats have promised a rapid withdrawal. Is this a realistic option?

Kissinger: The issue is: Are American forces withdrawn as part of a political settlement? Or are they withdrawn because America is exhausted by the war? In the latter case, the consequences of an American withdrawal would be catastrophic.

SPIEGEL: Do you think there would be another eruption of violence?

Kissinger: There would be a high possibility of killing fields. Radical Islam won't stop because we withdraw. A rapid withdrawal would be a demonstration in the region of the impotence of Western power. Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaida would achieve a more dominant role, and the ability of Western nations to shape events would be sharply reduced. The virus would have huge consequences for all countries with large Muslim populations: India, Indonesia, and large parts of Europe.

SPIEGEL: That is not how many Europeans see it.
Kissinger: Some Europeans do not want to understand that this is not an American problem alone. The consequences of such an outcome would be at least as serious for Europe as for the Americans.

SPIEGEL: What does Europe not understand? Paris, London and Berlin do not see the "war on terror" as a common challenge for the West?

Kissinger: I don't like the term "war on terror" because terror is a method, not a political movement. We are in a war against radical Islam that is trying to overthrow the moderate elements in the Islamic world and which is fundamentally challenging the secular structures of Western societies. All this is happening at a difficult period in European history.

SPIEGEL: Difficult why?

Kissinger: The major events in European history were conducted by nation-states which developed over several hundred years. There was never a question in the mind of European populations that the state was authorized to ask for sacrifices and that the citizens had a duty to carry it out. Now the structure of the nation-state has been given up to some considerable extent in Europe. And the capacity of governments to ask for sacrifices has diminished correspondingly.

SPIEGEL: Thirty years ago, you asked for one phone number that could be used to call Europe.

Kissinger: ... and it happened. The problem now is: Nation-states have not just given up part of their sovereignty to the European Union but also part of their vision for their own future. Their future is now tied to the European Union, and the EU has not yet achieved a vision and loyalty comparable to the nation-state. So, there is a vacuum between Europe's past and Europe's future

SPIEGEL: What do you expect from European leaders? Should German Chancellor Angela Merkel step up and ask the Germans to make sacrifices in the fight against terrorism?

Kissinger: I think Angela Merkel, like any leader, has to think of her re-election. I have high regard for her. But I do not know many Europeans who would deny that the victory of radical Islam in Baghdad, Beirut or Saudi Arabia would have huge consequences for the West. However, they are not willing to fight to prevent it.

SPIEGEL: For example in Afghanistan. Does NATO need more German troops in the southern part of the country?

Kissinger: I think it is obvious that the United States cannot permanently do all the fighting for Western interests by itself. So, two conclusions are possible: Either there are no Western interests in the region and we don't fight. Or there are vital Western interests in the region and we have to fight. That means we need more German and NATO troops (more...) in Afghanistan. What I am not comfortable with is that some NATO members send troops primarily for non-combat missions. That cannot be a healthy situation in the long term.

SPIEGEL: Many Germans say we have to stand up to the terrorists, but that Germans can't do the actual fighting, partly because of our history. You are intimately familiar with German history -- your family left Germany when you were nearly 15 years old. Is it fair for today's Germany to refer to the constraints of history?

Kissinger: I understand it, but it is not a sustainable position. In the long run, we cannot have two categories of members in the NATO alliance: those that are willing to fight and others that are trying to be members à la carte. That cannot work for long.

SPIEGEL: Do you think the Germans can be persuaded to change their approach?

Kissinger: The Germans have to decide that for themselves. But if they stick to that attitude, Germany would be a different kind of nation than Britain or France or others.
SPIEGEL: Isn't German and European opposition to a greater military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq also a result of deep distrust of American power?

Kissinger: By this time next year, we will see the beginning of a new administration. We will then discover to what extent the Bush administration was the cause or the alibi for European-American disagreements. Right now, many Europeans hide behind the unpopularity of President Bush. And this administration made several mistakes in the beginning.

SPIEGEL: What do you see as the biggest mistakes?

Kissinger: To go into Iraq with insufficient troops, to disband the Iraqi army, the handling of the relations with allies at the beginning even though not every ally distinguished himself by loyalty. But I do believe that George W. Bush has correctly understood the global challenge we are facing, the threat of radical Islam, and that he has fought that battle with great fortitude. He will be appreciated for that later.

SPIEGEL: In 50 years, historians will treat his legacy more kindly?

Kissinger: That will happen much earlier.

SPIEGEL: Will the next president of the United States ask for a greater European commitment?

Kissinger: It is not impossible that a new administration will say that we can't go on without more European commitment. And that they would use this as an excuse for withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan. I don't think John McCain would do that, though.

SPIEGEL: Barack Obama also says the conflict in Pakistan is the war Americans really need to win. Is he right?

Kissinger: You can always say there is some other war I would rather want to fight than the one I am in. What does it mean to fight the war in Pakistan? Should we use military power to control the tribal regions in Pakistan and to conduct military operations in a region which Britain failed to pacify in over 100 years of colonization? Should we use military force to prevent a radical take-over of the Pakistani government? Should we prevent the Pakistani state from splitting up into three or four ethnically based groups? I don't think we have the capacity to do that.

SPIEGEL: What about pushing for more military action against al-Qaida terrorists in the border regions with Afghanistan?

Kissinger: The audience listening to such exhortations believes that there is a master plan to bring another government there and that this democratic government will fight the tribal regions. In the short-term, this is an illusion.

SPIEGEL: What would be your advice for dealing with radical Islam and the governments in the region?

Kissinger: You cannot simultaneously attempt to overthrow the government of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan in the name of democracy and fight radical Islam. The democratization processes and the war against radical Islam have a different time frame.

SPIEGEL: Is it time for a strategic reassessment? You have experience with that: In the 1970s, Richard Nixon and you stunned the world by flying to China and sitting down with the Communist dictator Mao.

Kissinger: We did not wake up one morning and say it would be beautiful to talk to Mao. Nixon and I both believed we needed to bring China into the international system. We tried to connect objective reality with moral considerations. And objective reality was changed by the Sino-Soviet tensions and the consequent commitment by Beijing to coexistence.

SPIEGEL: Times have changed, but such moral considerations still exist. Should the new US president fly to Tehran and sit down with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Kissinger: Some believe that the mere act of conversation will alter the tension. I believe that negotiations succeed only if they reflect an objective reality. The key issue with Iran is whether it sees itself as a cause or as a nation. If Iran wants to be a respected nation-state in the region without claiming religious or imperial domination, then we should be able to come to some form of understanding. But we will not reach that goal unless Iran realizes that this is not a historical opportunity to resurrect Persian dreams of glory.

SPIEGEL: And the Iranians need to feel Western pressure to come to that conclusion?

Kissinger: We need a mixture of pressure and incentives. We must realize that painless sanctions are a contradiction.

SPIEGEL: Sounds like the old game of carrots and sticks. You think the US president should meet with an Iranian leader only after painful sanctions?

Kissinger: You would never start with such a step. Nixon sat down with Mao three years after we had initial contact. I think a meeting with an Iranian president would be at the end of a process, not the very beginning.

SPIEGEL: But looking at legacy again, will historians look back one day and write: The Iraq adventure prevented the US from focusing on other strategic challenges -- such as the rapid rise of India and China? Is the Superpower distracted rather than over-stretched?

Kissinger: I think we face three challenges currently: The disappearance of the nation-state; the rise of India and China; and, thirdly, the emergence of problems and challenges that cannot be solved by a single power, such as energy and the environment. We do not have the luxury to focus on one problem; we have to deal with all three of them or we won't succeed with any of them. The rise of Asia will be an enormous event. But we cannot say that we should therefore keep other challenges, such as the fight against radical Islam, in abeyance.

SPIEGEL:Is China still a partner or primarily a rival?

Kissinger: China has to be treated as a potential partner. We must use all ingenuity to create a system in which the great states of Asia -- which really are not nation-states in the European sense but large conglomerates of cultures -- can participate. We have no choice.

SPIEGEL: Does the fact that "guided democracies" like Russia or China are currently more successful in economic terms undermine the attractiveness of Western-style democracy? Is that a new model that is becoming attractive for young people?

Kissinger: The problem of guided democracies is that they have great difficulties solving the problem of succession and of giving access to the widest possible pool of talent. China has come closer to solving that problem than any other undemocratic system. I believe that the democratic model is better and more durable for the future but not automatically. It depends on our vision and determination.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Kissinger, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us.

Interview conducted by Gregor Peter Schmitz and Gabor Steingart in New York http://www.informationclearinghouse.info :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

February 18th, 2008, 04:56 PM

.
A
VIDEO
The Trials of Henry Kissinger
The Making Of A War Criminal

Video:

"A fascinating, bombshell documentary that should shame Americans, regardless of whether or not ultimate blame finally lies with Kissinger. Should be required viewing for civics classes and would-be public servants alike." -- Brent Simon, Entertainment Today.

JUST CLICK BELOW TO GAIN ACCESS
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6623.htm :: .

Saundra Hummer

February 19th, 2008, 05:57 PM

.
~~~~~~~

"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it."

Thomas Jefferson
to
John Jay -1786
~~~
Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe."

Thomas Jefferson
to
Charles Yancey
1816.
ME 14:384
~~~
"To preserve the freedom of the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement."

Thomas Jefferson
to
William Green Munford
1799
~~~
"Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light."

Thomas Jefferson
to
Archibald Stuart
1799
~~~
"Cherish... the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them."

Thomas Jefferson
to
Edward Carrington
1787
ME 6:58
~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

February 21st, 2008, 12:57 PM

. A
NEWSLETTER
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: Project on Government Oversight
Dear Saundra,

POGO has just made publicly available for the first time an internal study--conducted by Marine Corps science adviser Franz Gayl--showing that the Marine Corps "grossly mismanaged" Marines' requests for armored vehicles, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of U.S. servicemen and women.

The study points to unacceptably long delays in the procurement of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAPs), which are much less susceptible to the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) being used against American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. POGO is calling for congressional hearings to investigate the rapid acquisition system at the Defense Department, which is clearly failing to respond to urgent requests from American soldiers in battle.

To learn more about the study, be sure to check out POGO's press alert and blog post.

POGO is also making publicly available for the first time a letter and supporting documentation showing that the Pentagon recently rebuked Air Force demands for more C-17 cargo planes. The Air Force is already projected to receive 198 C-17s, six more than it had originally requested. This latest request for more planes was not justified by any national security analysis, and it further suggests that the Air Force does not have a consistent, affordable, and coherent airlift procurement strategy.

Click here to read POGO's press alert on the Pentagon's rebuke of the Air Force. [Click below:]

Sincerely,

Danielle Brian
Executive Director
Project On Government Oversight

P.S. To our friends in the D.C. area: please save the date for the 2008 Ridenhour Prizes ceremony and luncheon, which will be taking place on April 3rd from 12-2:00 p.m. at the National Press Club (529 14th Street, NW, 13th Floor). The prizes are awarded annually to recognize those who "persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society." Hope to see you there!
Go on-site to gain access to all of Pogo's articles and opportunities to join in on making things right. SRH. Just click on the following URL:
Bhttp://www.pogo.org/index.shtml
:: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

February 21st, 2008, 02:37 PM

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* * * * * * * * *
Apostrophes in names stir lot o' trouble By
SEAN ODRISCOLL
Associated Press Writer
50 minutes ago

It can stop you from voting, destroy your dental appointments, make it difficult to rent a car or book a flight, even interfere with your college exams.

More than 50 years into the Information Age, computers are still getting confused by the apostrophe. It's a problem familiar to O'Connors, D'Angelos, N'Dours and D'Artagnans across America.

When Niall O'Dowd tried to book a flight to Atlanta earlier this year, the computer system refused to recognize his name. The editor of the Irish Voice newspaper could book the flight only by giving up his national identity.

"I dropped the apostrophe and ran my name as `ODowd,'" he said.

It's not just the bad luck o' the Irish. French, Italian and African names with apostrophes can befuddle computer systems, too. So can Arab names with hyphens, and Dutch surnames with "van" and a space in them.

Michael Rais, director of software development at Permission Data, an online marketing company in New York, said the problem is sloppy programming.

"It's standard shortsightedness," he said. "Most programs set a rule for first name and last name. They don't think of foreign-sounding names."

The trouble can happen in two ways, according to Rais.

One: Online forms typically have a filter that looks for unfamiliar terms that might be put in by mistake or as a joke. A bad computer system will not be able to handle an apostrophe, a hyphen or a gap in a last name and will block it immediately.

Two: Even if the computer system is sophisticated enough to welcome an O'Brien or Al-Kurd, the name must be stored in the database, where a hyphen or apostrophe is often mistaken for a piece of computer code, corrupting the system.

That's what happened during the Michigan caucus in 2004, when thousands of O'Connors, Al-Husseins, Van Kemps and others who went to the polls didn't have their votes counted.

"It was a real slapped-together computer system the party put together and a lot of people were left out who were registered
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080221/ap_on_re_us/apostrophes_in_names&printer=1;_ylt=AvE9k0KMQiktjS8h1DlpRTtH2ocA
* * * * * .

Saundra Hummer

February 21st, 2008, 04:05 PM

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~~~~~~~

Today the world faces a single man armed with weapons of mass destruction,manifesting an aggressive, bullying attitude, who may well plunge the world into chaos and bloodshed if he miscalculates. This person, belligerent, arrogant, and sure of himself, truly is the most dangerous person on Earth. The problem is that his name is George W. Bush, and he is our president.

Jack M. Balkin
Knight Professor of Constitutional Law
and the
First Ammendment Yale Law School
September 22, 2002
~~~
The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defence correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons.

E. P. Thompson
British historian
~~~
A nation which enslaves another forges its own chains.

Karl Marx
~~~
Oppose the oppressor and support the oppressed.

Imam Ali
~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

February 22nd, 2008, 10:57 AM

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^^^^^^^^^
Top Internet Threats
Posted Feb 14th 2008 9:02AM by Evan Shamoon
The threat: Phishing

Filed under: Computers, Advice, Editor's Picks, Windows Software, Webware, Mobile Software, Mac Software, Notebooks, desktops, Downloads

While it may not feel quite like the Wild West anymore, the Internet is still full of people looking to rip you off -- the anonymity and secretive nature of online dealings makes them much more prone to fraud than in the real world. We've compiled a list of the top threats to your security lurking around the Internet -- and what you can do to avoid them.

The threat: The upcoming presidential election

The problem: All of the presidential candidates accept donation contributions online -- but be careful. Extremist supporters have been using "typo-domains" that mimic the Web site of a political rival; when the contributions come in, they're either pocketed or contributed to someone else's campaign. GOP Presidential nominee Ron Paul's campaign received funds from five hundred stolen credit cards, which were stolen from Frost bank; investigators discovered overseas thieves used Paul's site to test the stolen cards with $5 contributions.

How to protect yourself: Don't reply to the email -- and don't click the links inside it, either. Want to make an online donation? Google the name of your candidate of choice, go to his or her official site, and donate away ...

The threat: Worms

The problem: It's not OK to eat fried worms, and it's even worse to get computer worms on your PC. A computer worm is basically a self-replicating program that uses a network to send copies of itself to other computers (and corrupt their files). The Storm Worm, for example, is a virus that began infecting thousands of computers in Europe and the United States on Friday, January 19, 2007. Using an e-mail message with the panic-suggesting subject line, "230 dead as storm batters Europe." Three days after the initial attack, the Storm Worm accounted for 8% of all computer infections globally. Some of the effects of worms include the deleting of computer files, program corruption, and reformatting your entire hard drive. Others just display messages or videos -- these are harmless but still use up some of your computer's memory, which slows it down.

How to protect yourself: Update your anti-virus and ant[B ]i-spam software -- and if you don't use any, start now! (Or, um, just get a Mac, which is a bit less virus-prone.) Be wary of opening unexpected e-mail, and never run attached files or programs from a sender you don't know -- or visit Web sites that are linked to these e-mails. Worms are often spread through e-mail programs such as Outlook, so make sure you download the latest security patches on any e-mail/contact management software you may be using.

The threat:Botnets

The problem: "Botnet" is a term used to describe a collection of software robots that run autonomously. They run on groups of remotely-controlled "zombie" computers all linked over the Internet -- nearly any machine can function as a zombie computer, including yours. The compromised computers house worms, Trojan horses (a virus disguised as a regular program), or backdoors (stealth viruses that sneak onto your computer undetected) -- all controlled by a "bot herder," an actual person who is generally using the power and anonymity of other people's computers for nefarious purposes. Dutch police found a 1.5 million computer botnet in 2005, and these networks have been proliferating and increasing in size over the years. You really, really don't want to be part of a botnet.

How to protect yourself: If you notice your PC doing weird things -- turning on and off at random times or generally acting inconsistently -- then you may be using a zombie computer. Several security companies such as Symantec, Trend Micro, and FireEye have announced products to stop botnets -- check out the companies' respective Web sites for more information. In addition, you can check out plenty of free anti-virus programs at the Switched/CNET download center.

The threat: Attacks on mobile devices

The problem: As mobile devices become more advanced, the threat of viruses and such grows greater. It has been true for smart phones using Windows Mobile (onto which independent software programs can be installed), and will also be the case for new mobile platforms like Apple's iPhone and Google's upcoming Android OS as soon as the development kits become available to software developers (in the next couple of months), and can therefore be exploited just like desktop computers and laptops.

How to protect yourself: Just like you do with your computer, you should be vigilant when downloading new software for your phone and PDA. That new photo-editing application might sound awesome, but do your research before actually downloading it. Companies like Symantec and Kaspersky make cell-phone-specific anti-virus and anti-spam programs for Windows and Symbian platforms, and we'd be surprised if something for iPhone wasn't right around the corner ...

The threat: Virtual world attacks

The problem: Think you're safe when wandering around Azeroth? Not necessarily. Second Life, Lineage and World of Warcraft have already become targets for cybercrime, There are already Trojan horses
-- pieces of software that appear to perform a certain task, but in fact perform another (like install a virus) -- that target Lineage players in particular. Thieves can essentially take over an account and steal everything a player has -- swords, armor, etc -- and then sell the virtual items online for real cash. Suddenly, the game gets more real ...

How to protect yourself: Our advice? Play these games for fun, not profit. Because laws surrounding virtual worlds are still so ambiguous, it's much easier to get ripped off here than it is in the real world -- and find yourself stuck not being able to do anything about it.

The threat: Malicious Web code (a.k.a. hacked, danger-prone Web sites)

The problem: Many of the Web sites you frequent are being compromised. Attackers load them up with malicious programming meant to attack visitors. Earlier this year, the Dolphin Stadium and Miami Dolphins Web sites were hacked right before the Super Bowl, causing them to drop attack code on unsuspecting visitors. The result? Computers stuck with debilitating worms or viruses, all from simply visiting a familiar Web site.

How to protect yourself: Don't assume that it's safe just because it has a brand name behind it. Scams like the Dolphins site hack are generally made public pretty quickly -- so keep your finger on the pulse by checking sites (like this one) on the regular. We'll keep you informed.

The threat: Compromised profiles on social networking sites

The problem: Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are growing incredibly fast, and it only makes sense that criminals are looking at them as targets. Take the infamous Alicia Keys hack of late last year: By clicking on many of the images on Keys' MySpace page, visitors were diverted to a fake Chinese Web site, which attempted to install a program to fool visitors into purchasing fake anti-virus software, record their credit card information, and secretly log names and passwords typed by the users.

How to protect yourself: While the social networking sites themselves are ultimately responsible for their own content, it's generally a good idea not to click on ads you see embedded inside people's homepages ... and for crying out loud, don't give out your credit card information!

The threat: Browser security holes

The problem: In a study done towards the end of last year, Symantec documented 39 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer, 34 in Mozilla browsers (read: Firefox), 25 in Apple Safari, and seven in the Opera browser. These are essentially holes in the software code that allow hackers to access your vital information

How to protect yourself: While there's not a lot you can do about this aside from Internet abstinence (though we do recommend using any browser other than Internet Explorer), just be aware that you are vulnerable, and avoid sites that do weird things to your computer (like spawn multiple pop-up windows, etc). Don't enter vital information on websites without secure servers (like Verisign). You can also run a browser security test to see how at risk you are. And always install the automatic updates from Microsoft or Mozilla when prompted.

The problem: If you use email, chances are you get quite a bit of spam. While most of it is simply annoying, some of it is in fact malicious. "Phishing" is essentially an attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information (usernames, passwords and credit card details), and it's perpetrated by criminals who create imposter Web sites that look like as a trustworthy entity. We've been getting e-mail from what purports itself to be Amazon.com for months now, but is actually just phishers looking to steal our stuff. PayPal, eBay, and banks are also common targets.

How to protect yourself: Specialized spam filters can reduce the number of phishing emails that reach your inbox, but you'll still have to be alert. Check the email addresses and look for typos, formatting errors, and other such inconsistencies. And if it's from Amazon, just go to Amazon.com -- don't click the link embedded in the email.

If you're looking for anti-virus and protection software to download, then be sure to check out the dedicated security software area on the Switched/CNET Downloads Center, as well as the AOL Internet Security Central site.

Related Links:
Top Five E-Mail Scams
Fake Web Sites Plague Candidates
Valentine's Day E-card Could Be Virus
Teen Hacker Pleads Guilty to Infecting Military Computers
Hackers Take Out Scientology Web Site
AOL Internet Security Central ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Go on-site to gain access to the photo of Ron Paul and comments by readers, many of whom are complaining about Ron Paul being written about to explain this scam, him being the object of this report on this scam when there are several others who have had the same scam being used to gain access to information and cash, it being a widely used con, Ron Paul's money raising not being the only target. Just click on the following URL:
http://www.switched.com/2008/02/14/top-internet-threats-1/
^^^^^^^^^ .

Saundra Hummer

February 22nd, 2008, 03:39 PM

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"The problem, of course, lies with the realities concealed from us. This has always been the case. While the American public has slowly grappled with ongoing injustices visible within our own borders, it has long failed to discover and correct our government's abuses abroad. In the end, however, this is our government, and torture is being utilized in our names and supported by our tax dollars. We are responsible.”

Jennifer Harbury
Writer
Lawyer,
Human Rights Activist
~~~
"It was a failure of citizenship of the American people that the Bush cabal was allowed to invade Iraq. Thus, every U.S. citizen who is not doing everything in their power to end this illegal and immoral occupation as quickly as possible is complicit with the war crimes being committed in Iraq on a daily basis.”

Dahr Jamail
Independent Journalist
War Reporter
~~~
“We’re losing ground. This planet is losing ground. So things need to happen and they need to happen quick. Our message should be—loud and clear—there comes a time when the home needs protecting and the line needs drawing and anybody that dares cross it acts at their own peril.”

Diane Wilson
Shrimp Fisher,
Environmentalist
Activist
~~~
“The role of the U.S. in the new world corporate order is going to be to export security. That means endless wars and weapons in space. The Pentagon will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. How will we ever end America’s addiction to war and violence as long as our communities are dependent on military spending for jobs? We must work to convert the military industrial complex to sustainable technologies like windpower, solar, and mass transit.”

Bruce Gagnon
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"The physical reality is that "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron. A soft energy landing from the last two hundred years of development will require massive conservation, especially by the overdeveloped countries, and that can only happen in a nongrowth ( and therefore noncapitalist ) society. The choice is now becoming either capitalism or humanity."

Stan Goff
Author
Veteran
Anti-war Activist
Feminist

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Saundra Hummer

February 22nd, 2008, 03:56 PM

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X X X X X X X X X
More Lies From The Bush Fascists
By
Paul Craig Roberts

22/02/08 "ICH" -- - President George W. Bush and his director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, are telling the American people that an unaccountable executive branch is necessary for their protection. Without the Protect America Act, Bush and McConnell claim, the executive branch will not be able to spy on terrorists, and we will all be blown up. Terrorists can only be stopped, Bush says, if Bush has the right to spy on everyone without any oversight by courts.

The fight over the Protect America Act has everything to do with our safety, only not in the way that Bush and McConnell assert.

Bush says the Democrats have put our country more in danger of an attack by letting the Protect America Act lapse. This claim is nonsense. The 30 year old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives the executive branch all the power it needs to spy on terrorists.

The choice between FISA and the Protect America Act has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, at least not from foreign terrorists. Bush and his brownshirts object to FISA, because the law requires Bush to obtain warrants from a FISA court. Warrants mean that Bush is accountable. Bush and his brownshirts argue that accountability is an infringement on the power of the president.

To escape accountability, the Brownshirt Party came up with the Protect America Act. This act eliminates Bush's accountability to judges and gives the telecom companies immunity from the felonies they committed by acquiescing in Bushs illegal spying.

Bush began violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in October 2001 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10488458/ when he spied on Americans without obtaining warrants from the FISA court.

Bush pressured telecom companies to break the law in order to enable his illegal spying. In court documents, Joseph P. Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest Communications International, states that his firm was approached more than six months before the September 11, 2001, attacks and asked to participate in a spying operation that Qwest believed to be illegal. When Qwest refused, the Bush administration withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Nacchio himself was subsequently indicted for insider trading, sending the message to all telecom companies to cooperate with the Bush regime or else.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/10/16/former-telcom-ceo-bushs-illegal-spying-began-months-before-911-attacks/

Bush has not been held accountable for the felonies he committed and for leading telecom companies into a life of crime.

As the lawmakers who gave us FISA understood, spying on people without warrants lets a political party collect dirt on its adversaries with which to blackmail them. As Bush illegally spied a long time before word of it got out, blackmail might be the reason the Democrats have ignored their congressional election mandate and have not put a stop to Bushs illegal wars and unconstitutional police state measures.

Perhaps the Democrats have finally caught on that they cannot function as a political party as long as they continue to permit Bush to spy on them. For one reason or another, they have let the Orwellian-named Protect America Act expire.

With the Protect America Act, Bush and his brownshirts are trying to establish the independence of the executive branch from statutory law and the Constitution. The FISA law means that the president is accountable to federal judges for warrants. Bush and the brownshirt Republicans are striving to make the president independent of all accountability. The brownshirts insist that the leader knows best and can tolerate no interference from the law, the judiciary, the Congress, or the Constitution, and certainly not from the American people who, the brownshirts tell us, wont be safe unless Bush is very powerful.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison saw it differently. The American people cannot be safe unless the president is accountable and under many restraints.

Pray that the Democrats have caught on that they cannot give the executive branch unaccountable powers to spy and still have grounds on which to refuse the executive branch unaccountable powers elsewhere.

Republicans have used the war on terror to create an unaccountable executive. To prevent the presidency from becoming a dictatorial office, it is crucial that Congress cease acquiescing in Bushs grab for powers. As the Founding Fathers warned us, the terrorists we have to fear are the ones in power in Washington.

The al Qaeda terrorists, with whom Bush has been frightening us, have no power to destroy our liberties. Compared to the loss of liberty, a terrorist attack is nothing.

Meanwhile, Bush, the beneficiary of two stolen elections, has urged Zimbabwe to hold a fair election. America gets away with its hypocrisy because no one in our government has enough shame to blush.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. Go on-site to gain access to this story and archives, viewer comments, daily statistic's on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and much, much more. Just click on the following URL:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info X X X X X.

Saundra Hummer

February 22nd, 2008, 04:29 PM

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If Kosovo, why not Palestine?

It is time for the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership to challenge the international community on Palestinian independence

By John Whitbeck
22/02/08 "Al-Ahram Weekly" -- - -As expected, Kosovo has issued its unilateral declaration of independence, the United States and most European Union countries, with whom this declaration was coordinated, rushing to extend diplomatic recognition to this "new country". This course of action should strike anyone with an attachment to either international law or common sense as breathtakingly reckless.

The potentially destabilising consequences of this precedent (which the US and the EU insist, bizarrely, should not be viewed as a precedent) have been much discussed with reference to other internationally recognised sovereign states with strong separatist movements practising precarious but effective self-rule, such as Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transniestria, Ngorno-Karabakh, Bosnia's Republika Srpska, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as to discontented minorities elsewhere. One potentially constructive consequence has not yet been discussed.

American and EU impatience to sever a portion of a UN member state (universally recognised, even by them, to constitute a portion of that state's sovereign territory), ostensibly because 90 per cent of those living in that portion support separation, contrasts starkly with the unlimited patience of the US and the EU when it comes to ending the 40-year-long belligerent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (no portion of which any country recognises as Israel's sovereign territory and as to which Israel has only asserted sovereignty over a tiny portion, occupied East Jerusalem). Virtually every legal resident of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip seeks freedom, and has for over 40 years. For doing so, they are punished, sanctioned, besieged, humiliated and, day after endless day, killed by those who claim to stand on the moral high ground.

In American and EU eyes, a Kosovar declaration of independence from Serbian sovereignty should be recognised, even if Serbia does not agree. However, their attitude was radically different when Palestine declared independence from Israeli occupation on 15 November 1988. Then the US and EU countries (which, in their own eyes, constitute the "international community", to the exclusion of most of mankind) were conspicuously absent as over 100 countries recognised the new State of Palestine, and their non-recognition made this declaration of independence "symbolic", unfortunately for most Palestinians as well.

For the US and the EU, Palestinian independence, to be recognised and effective, must be directly negotiated on a wildly unequal bilateral basis between the occupying power and the occupied people with emphasis laid on attaining the final agreement of the occupying power. For the US and the EU, the rights and desires of a long-suffering and brutalised occupied people, as well as international law, are irrelevant. For the same US and the EU, Kosovar Albanians, having enjoyed almost nine years of UN administration and NATO protection, cannot be expected to wait any longer for their freedom, while the Palestinians, having endured over 40 years of Israeli occupation, can wait forever.

With the "Annapolis process" going nowhere, as was clearly the Israeli and American intention from the start, the Kosovo precedent offers the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership -- accepted as such by the "international community" because it is perceived as serving Israeli and American interests -- a golden opportunity to seize the initiative, reset the agenda and restore its tarnished reputation in the eyes of its own people. If this leadership truly believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that a decent "two-state solution" is still possible, now is an ideal moment to reaffirm the legal existence (albeit under continuing belligerent occupation) of the State of Palestine, explicitly in the entire 22 per cent of Mandatory Palestine that was not conquered and occupied by the state of Israel until 1967, and to call on all those countries that did not extend diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine in 1988 -- and particularly the US and the EU states -- to do so now.

The Kosovar Albanian leadership has promised protection for Kosovo's Serb minority, which is now expected to flee in fear. The Palestinian leadership could promise to accord a generous period of time for Israeli colonists living illegally in the State of Palestine, and Israeli occupation forces, to withdraw, as well as to consider an economic union with Israel, open borders and permanent resident status for those illegal colonists willing to live in peace under Palestinian rule.

Of course, to prevent the US and the EU from treating such an initiative as a joke, there would have to be a significant and explicit consequence if they were to do so. The consequence would be the end of the "two-state" illusion. The Palestinian leadership would make clear that if the US and the EU, having just recognised a second Albanian state on the sovereign territory of a UN member state, will not now recognise a Palestinian state on a tiny portion of the occupied Palestinian homeland, it will dissolve the Palestinian Authority (which, legally, should have ceased to exist in 1999, at the end of the five-year "interim period" under the Oslo Accords) and the Palestinian people will thereafter seek justice and freedom through democracy, through the persistent, non-violent pursuit of full rights of citizenship in a single state in all of Israel/Palestine, free of any discrimination based on race and religion and with equal rights for all who reside there.

Palestinian leaderships have tolerated Western hypocrisy and racism and played the role of gullible fools for far too long. It is time to kick over the table, constructively, and to shock the international community into taking notice of the fact that the Palestinian people simply will not tolerate unbearable injustice and abuse any longer.

If not now, when?

The writer is an international lawyer and author of The World According to Whitbeck

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
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Saundra Hummer

February 24th, 2008, 03:58 PM

I received a new's brief saying Ralph Nader has thrown his hat in the ring - yet again - and for what purpose? Good grief, what is he wanting to do, put in a knife and twist it? He has caused irreparable damage in the past by doing just this, not that he hasn't accomplished much good once upon a time, but this running for president is doing what? Puts his name in the spotlight, that's a given, but what else does he believe he's doing for the country?

I have a few ideas as to his reasoning, and can see a bit of good coming from it, but he can also end up being the spoiler. Is this his plan? If so, who is he out to undo politically?

Saundra Hummer

February 25th, 2008, 11:41 AM

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The Huffington Post
Ralphing
The Huffington Post
February 25, 2008 23/6 23/6
Marty Kaplan Site
Posted February 24, 2008 | 01:08 PM (EST)
Read More: Nader, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nader 2008, Ralph Nader Presidential Candidacy, Breaking Politics News
[Go on-site]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/ralphing_b_88185.html

It's hard to believe, I know, but there is now an entire generation of 20- and 30-something Americans who don't know that Ralph Nader wasn't always a total a**hole. And yet, despite the stupefying narcissism and destructive potential of Nader's 2008 presidential bid, there's one important issue raised by his independent race that a legitimate fear of his candidacy's consequences, or a well-earned contempt for his arrogance, should not be allowed to obscure.

By now we are used to politicians and public figures who use the presidential campaign cycle to build equity and raise fees for their Brand That Is Me (Al Sharpton, Alan Keyes, Rudy Giuliani); to act out their messianic delusions on a national stage (Ross Perot, Mike Gravel, Fred Thompson); to audition for the demagogic hall of fame (Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, and an asterisk for Lou Dobbs, who still seems to be flirting with it).

Nader, of course, says he's different. (He also says that he didn't cost Al Gore the 2000 election -- "this bit about 'spoiler' is really very astonishing," he told Tim Russert -- which puts something of a ceiling on the credibility of anything else he says.) Nader contends that the good he did in that race was to pull Gore's positions to the left. It's a role that John Edwards (though not Dennis Kucinich -- go figure) is credited for playing in the 2008 primaries. And now Nader, who skipped the primaries, says that his third-party race will inject into the fall campaign issues like single-payer health insurance, labor law reform, Pentagon waste, corporate crime, "the illegal occupation of Palestine," and impeachment -- issues he says Clinton, Obama, and McCain have taken off the table.

I don't doubt that there's a portion of the American electorate that agrees more with Nader on some of those issues than they do with anyone the Republicans or Democrats will put on the ballot. Hell, I'm one of them. Just to pick one topic: I think the unwillingness of the Congress to hold Bush and Cheney accountable for carpet-bombing our system of checks and balances, and for replacing the rule of law with the tyranny of despots, has not only been a craven capitulation to White House fear-mongering; it has also staggeringly misread the political mood and core values of the American people. And I hold Clinton, Obama (and even McCain 1.0, the maverick), along with their colleagues, responsible for sweeping the ashes of our Constitution under the rug.

But despite Nader's wishful thinking, we don't have a parliamentary system. Any votes he attracts will be drained from the Democratic nominee and conceivably cost an Electoral College victory; they will not result in a new government being forced to enter into a coalition with his supporters. Nor, I think, will his presence in the race reframe the issues, refocus the choices, or push the envelope of the campaign. Even though I may agree with him on, say, single-payer, I could live with criteria for getting into a fall presidential debate that turned out to exclude him.

What troubles me, though, and what his bid throws a spotlight on, is how hard it is for anyone in America to shape the national conversation on anything. One way or another, it takes big money -- the fortune to run for office, the cash to buy full-page ads in newspapers, the bankroll to own a network, the marketing budget to create a celebrity's star power. Markets move mass media. In the internet age, almost any idea can find an audience somewhere, but to win MSM airplay and a seat at the table, that audience's numbers have to be big enough to constitute a politically potent special interest or infotainment freakshow fan club, not just a narrowcast alternative niche or a responsibly dissenting viewpoint.

It's a shame that to get five minutes of the nation's civic attention, a person has to either be a billionaire, or to raise and spend a billion of other people's dollars, or to do something as potentially lethal the country's ultimate well-being as to mount a quixotic run for president. Maybe we already possess the communications technology for a modern-day Tom Paine to reframe the national political debate without at the same time landing another George W. Bush in the White House. The irony is that the candidate most likely to focus on the barriers to success standing in the way of that technology -- the concentrated, corporate control of the media -- is the same Ralph Nader whose presence in the race may turn out to cast the darkest shadow on its outcome.

More in Politics... Go on-site

Read More: Nader, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nader 2008, Ralph Nader Presidential Candidacy, Breaking Politics News

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Saundra Hummer

February 25th, 2008, 02:24 PM

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"Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless... the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is [now] while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

Thomas Jefferson
Click following URL to gain access to information about Thomas Jefferson
URL: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch17.html
~~~
"Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage, torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, and bombing of civilians, which does not change its moral color when it is committed by our side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

George Orwell
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"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law."

Frederic Bastiat
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"Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

Winston Churchill

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Saundra Hummer

February 25th, 2008, 02:36 PM

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Will American Empire End Before It Ends the World?
By Paul Craig Roberts
25/02/08 "ICH" -- -- The hypocrisy of US government officials is boundless. On February 18, the US government inflamed Serbians by recognizing Muslim separatists in Kosovo, a historic province of Serbia, as an independent country. Two hundred thousand Serbs marched in protest and the US embassy in Belgrade was damaged. Is this surprising? No, not unless you are an official in the American Empire. The notorious Empire Neocon Counsel, Azlmay Khalilzad, Bush’s representative to the UN, declared: “I’m outraged by the mob attack.”

What’s an embassy building compared to a province of Serbia, a province that stirs nationalist sentiments associated with the Serbs long military struggles with the Turks? Had it not been for the Serbs, Europeans would probably be Turks.

To neocon Khalilzad a province of Serbia is nothing. It is merely real estate to be given away by US recognition bestowed on a break-away movement led by what some consider to be a gang of Muslim drug runners.

Secretary of State Condi Rice also found the Serbian response to the US giving away part of their country to be “intolerable.”

Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke also sees no reason for the Serbs to be upset that America gave away part of their country. He explained away the Serbian protests by declaring: “The Russians are behind this.”

We can understand why US diplomacy is a failure when we see our diplomats explaining that, had it not been for the Russians stirring them up, Serbians wouldn’t have noticed the loss of a historic part of their country.

Perhaps Kosovo should have its independence. However, the US government could not have handled the issue in a more provocative way.

Washington has been interfering in Serbian internal affairs since the Clinton administration. Told that Americans had to prevent genocide, few paid enough attention to Washington’s facilitation of the breakup of the Yugoslav state during the 1990s and to the Clinton administration’s bombing and murder of Serbian civilians in order to support Muslim separatists in Kosovo in 1999. Clinton used NATO as cover, but the bombing campaign was not backed by the UN Security Council. Bombs fell on Serbia for 78 days, taking out public infrastructure, bridges, factories, power stations, petrochemical plants, telecommunications facilities, markets, refugees, the Chinese Embassy and a passenger train. “Sorry honey, tell the kids I won’t be home tonight. President Clinton decided to bomb my train.” Cluster bombs and depleted uranium were used. Clearly, the US government and its NATO puppets were guilty of war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.

Americans were told by an obedient media that the bombings were necessary in order to prevent Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, from committing war crimes against the separatists who were stealing part of his country. After Clinton’s bombings intimidated the Serbian political establishment, Milosevic was turned out of office and handed over to the Americans for a payment of several hundred million dollars and delivered to the Hague for trial as a war criminal.

Milosevic represented himself at his trial and was more than a match for the trumped up charges. Unfortunately, he died in prison. Many believe he was helped on his way by an embarrassed American Empire unable to convict him.

What is the US government’s secret agenda in the Balkans? Why is the US government on the side of Muslims intent on severing Kosovo from Serbia? What is being served by creating a new Muslim state closer to Europe?

Whose interests are being served by Washington? Clearly, not our own. Or Europe’s.

And, please, none of that BS about “building freedom and democracy.” As one of England’s most famous conservatives, Peregrine Worsthorne, wrote on February 20, America’s reputation as “the West’s conscience is fatally weakened.”

Supposedly our time is the era of globalism and one worldism. Ancient European nationalities are dissolving into the European Union, a new super state. US corporations now have transnational interests devoid of any national loyalties. Yet, the US is hard at work dissolving a small Balkan state into even smaller constituent parts. Why is this happening? Why did Bush order US puppets in Britain, France and Germany to instantly recognize the historic Serbian province as a new Muslim state?

Is the new state of Kosovo, as rumors would have it, Richard Perle’s payoff to the Turks, or is the explanation that Serbia, like Palestine, Iraq, and Iran, lacking any international media reach, was easy for Empire Neocons to demonize in order to establish the precedent that Washington decides what territory belongs to who and who rules it. Clinton’s bombing of Serbia was a precedent for Bush’s bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq and now Africa and tomorrow Iran and Syria.

The day the Empire Crazies bomb Russia or China, we are all fried.

Be a macho super patriot, believe your government, help to fry the world. It’s the American way.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. ^^^^^^^^^^^ .

Saundra Hummer

February 25th, 2008, 02:59 PM

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^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Clinton vs. Obama
November 16, 2007
Who's right on health care, Social Security?
Summary
In the latest debate among the Democrats, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama sparred over their plans for health care and Social Security. We found both presidential candidates guilty of exaggerations and questionable claims:

Clinton said that Obama's health care plan would leave 15 million Americans without insurance, while her plan provided universal coverage. Obama countered that his proposal would cover everyone in the country. Clinton's plan will likely cover more people than Obama's, but it's doubtful the difference between their very similar proposals would be as high as the figure Clinton cites.

Clinton implied that firefighters would be affected by Obama's proposal to raise the income limit for Social Security taxes above $97,000 a year. Obama implied that his proposal would tax only the "upper class." We found both claims misleading.

Obama also said an employer has a greater chance of being struck by lightning than of being prosecuted for employing an immigrant who's in the U.S. illegally. That turns out to be pretty close to the truth.

AnalysisThe debate took place Nov. 15 in Las Vegas and was hosted by CNN. We found sharp exchanges between the front-runners.

15 Million Left Out?
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded words about their health care plans, and we found both dabbled in exaggerations:

Clinton: His plan would leave 15 million Americans out. That’s about the population of Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire. I have a universal health care plan that covers everyone.

Obama: Well, let’s talk about health care right now because the fact of the matter is that I do provide universal health care. ... [W]e’ve put forward a plan that makes sure that it is affordable to get health care that is as good as the health care that I have as a member of Congress.

Clinton uses a dubious statistic when she claims Obama’s plan would leave out 15 million of the uninsured. But Obama’s statement that his proposal provides “universal" health care is also suspect.

Clinton based her claim on a column by The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn, who loosely estimated Obama’s plan would leave 15 million uninsured:

Cohn (The New Republic, June 3): The best studies out there — by Urban Institute researchers, the RAND Corporation, and MIT economist Jonathan Gruber — suggest that, without a mandate, improving affordability will cover roughly one-third of the people who don't have coverage. Mandating that kids (but not adults) have coverage bumps that up to about a half. Obama's advisers think that, by really loading up on the subsidies … they can goose that up to two-thirds. But that's getting optimistic — and, even then, you still have around 15 million people who are uninsured.

Cohn makes it clear here that he is offering an estimate based on the best information available, not a hard and fast calculation. And the best available information doesn't always agree. One of the people Cohn cites, economist and influential health care expert Jonathan Gruber, has gone on record saying that without a mandate, Obama's plan would still leave 6 percent of the nation – about 18 million people – uninsured. But it's not clear whether he meant "without an individual mandate" or "without any kind of mandate." The Obama plan does include limited mandates, including a requirement for employers to either provide health insurance or pay into a public fund. A Gruber study from 2006 estimates that a plan with generous subsidies and an employer mandate would lead to 82 percent of the uninsured gaining coverage, based on 2001 data. Applied to today's figures, that would leave about 8.5 million without insurance. Gruber found that a proposal that included an individual mandate would lead to 100 percent coverage of the uninsured.

Other studies also find only a small discrepancy between the types of plans that Obama and Clinton are proposing. For instance, a 2003 Commonwealth Fund study found that a plan with mixed private-public options (as the leading Democratic candidates have put forth) that also included an individual mandate would reach near universal coverage, leaving just 1 percent of people uninsured. Not including a mandate would still reach most of the uninsured, leaving about 3 percent without coverage.

Similar Plans
It's true that Clinton’s plan would likely lead to somewhat higher levels of coverage than Obama’s, according to the research we've seen. But the difference in outcomes may not amount to much. The main distinction: Clinton calls for a mandate that would require all individuals to have health insurance; Obama requires only that children have coverage and that dependents be covered under their parents' insurance up to age 25. Of the estimated 46.5 million uninsured in the U.S., 9.4 million are children and 37 million are adults, according to an analysis of Census data by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured and the Urban Institute. But neither candidate has provided enough detail for analysts to predict confidently how many might be left uninsured under either plan.

.Sara Collins, an assistant vice president at The Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that calls for higher quality and accessibility in health care, says that the Obama and Clinton plans (as well as Edwards') are “very, very similar in structure.” Studies show that mandates make a difference, but Collins says the “15 million” seems like too big a number based on past analyses.

.Kenneth E. Thorpe, a professor of health policy at Emory University who worked in President Clinton’s administration and who has evaluated several presidential candidates’ health plans, also says that “it’s hard to come up with precise numbers” without knowing the details on the federal subsidies these plans would include. “Whether it’s 15, 20 or 10,” he says, that estimate makes “an assumption on the subsidies that the campaign hasn’t put out.”

.Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy, estimates Obama’s plan would end up covering 5 percent to 10 percent fewer individuals than Clinton’s. But that’s assuming that it’s possible for Clinton to require everyone to purchase insurance. Blendon suspects that it isn’t. “At the end of the day,” he tells FactCheck.org, “it’s not going to be everybody. We have no idea what the actual falloff would be.”

Among the unknown factors is what sort of insurance would turn out to be available under either plan. Preliminary data from Massachusetts, which implemented a sweeping health insurance plan last year, is showing that many people would rather remain uninsured than purchase a stripped-down plan. “People always say having some insurance is better than no insurance,” Blendon says. “It turns out, in some of the focus groups in Massachusetts, people don’t believe that.”

A Trillion-Dollar Tax Increase
Clinton called Obama's proposal to raise Social Security taxes on earnings over $97,500 per year, the current upper limit on which any tax is levied, a trillion-dollar increase on "middle class families."

Clinton: I do not want to fix the problems of Social Security on the backs of middle class families and seniors. (Applause.) If you lift the cap completely, that is a $1 trillion tax increase. I don't think we need to do that.

Taxing all earnings would indeed amount to a $1.3 trillion increase over the next 10 years alone, according to estimates by Cato Institute Social Security expert Michael Tanner, who says he drew his figures from projections by the Social Security Administration staff. A similar estimate comes from Citizens for Tax Justice, which figures the measure would bring in $124 billion per year.

Obama defended his proposal by saying it would fall only on the "upper class."Obama: I've heard you say this is a trillion dollar tax cut on the middle class by adjusting the cap. Understand that only 6 percent of Americans make more than $97,000 — (cheers, applause) — so 6 percent is not the middle class — it's the upper class.
Clinton responded by saying that some of her New York constituents would still find the increase burdensome. "I represent firefighters. I represent school supervisors," she said.

"Upper Class" Firefighters?
It's hard to say who's being more misleading here. The base pay of a New York City firefighter is $68,475 after five years on the job, and even with overtime, holiday pay and other differentials the total pay is $86,518, well below the level affected by Obama's proposal. So Clinton is being misleading to suggest that a rank-and-file firefighter would be affected.

On the other hand, FDNY captains make $140,173 with overtime, according to the department. For them, Obama's proposal could amount to a $2,646 tax increase, not counting what the city would have to pay for the employer's share of the added payroll tax. As for school administrators, in New York state there are few that make less than $100,000 a year, and some superintendents make more than twice that, according to the New York State Education Department. Are fire captains and high-school principals considered "upper class" financially? If so, it would be news to us.

Obama may be correct to say that only the top 6.5 percent of earners would be affected. That's based on that same analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice that we mentioned earlier. But we judge that Obama is being misleading to say that his proposal would tax only the "upper class."

An Unsure Cure
It is also worth noting that Obama's proposed tax increase wouldn't necessarily cure the system's financial ills.

It's true that taxing all earnings could bring in barely enough to make the Social Security system solvent for the next 75 years. Actuarial experts at the Social Security Administration estimated in 2006 that lifting the cap entirely would keep the trust fund going until 2081. That could be pushed out longer if Congress took the drastic step of denying upper-income workers any benefit for the added taxes they would pay, not giving them credit for the taxes when calculating their eventual retirement benefits. But as we've noted, Obama has only proposed raising the cap, without saying how much, or whether he'd also deny pension credit for the increased taxes.

However, Obama isn't necessarily endorsing taxation of all earnings. He's for raising the cap but hasn't specified how far. What he has endorsed, according to a fact sheet on his Web site, is "increasing the maximum amount of earnings covered," and he says he'd "work with Congress and the American people" on the details. Still, he has been more specific than Clinton, who will say only that she'll ask a bipartisan commission to come up with solutions after she's elected.

Truth Strikes
One Obama claim that we wondered about turned out to be true, or at least close enough.

Obama: An employer has more of a chance of getting hit by lightning than be prosecuted for hiring an undocumented worker. That has to change.

We find different estimates of the number of persons struck by lightning. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Severe Storms Laboratory puts the number killed or injured by lightning in the U.S. at about 600 per year. Richard Kithil Jr., founder and CEO of the National Lightning and Safety Institute, estimates the figure to be 1,000, including 300 cases that go unreported.

We have no idea how many of those lightning casualties are employers, let alone how many might have hired illegal aliens. What we do know is that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement service reports that in the most recent 12-month period on record, the total number of arrests of persons in the “employer supervisory chain” was 91.

-by Lori Robertson, Jessica Henig, Brooks Jackson and Justin Bank.

Correction, Nov. 19: Our original story included a typo in quoting the Citizens for Tax Justice's estimate for removing the earnings cap on Social Security taxes. The figure is $124 billion per year. The story has been corrected above.

Sources
Cohn, Jonathan. “Cautious Candidate, Cautious Plan.” The New Republic. 3 June 2007.

Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured. “The Uninsured and Their Access to Health Care.” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. 16 Oct. 2007.

Davis, Karen and Cathy Schoen. “Creating Consensus on Coverage Choices.” The Commonwealth Fund. 1 April 2003.

Lambrew, Jeanne and Jonathan Gruber. “Money and Mandates: Relative Effects of Key Policy Levers in Expanding Health Insurance Coverage to All Americans.” Inquiry 43: 333-344. Winter 2006/2007.

New York City Fire Department, "Benefits and Salary" accessed 16 Nov 2007.

New York State Education Department, "Administrative Compensation Information for 2006-2007," 15 May 2007.

Citizens for Tax Justice, "An Analysis of Eliminating the Cap on Earnings Subject to the Social Security Tax & Related Issues," 30 Nov 2006.

"A SEVERE WEATHER PRIMER: Questions and Answers about LIGHTNING," NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, accessed 16 Nov. 2007.
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http://www.factcheck.org/clinton_vs_obama.html
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Saundra Hummer

February 25th, 2008, 06:13 PM

.:: :: :: :: :: :: ::Clinton Edits 'The Truth'
February 25, 2008
A Clinton mailer quotes Obama's praise for free trade, but it omits his criticisms.
Summary
Hillary Clinton, stung by an Obama mailer that painted her as a supporter of the North American Free Trade agreement, is responding in kind with a barrage of postcards saying, "Ohio needs to know the truth about Obama's position on Protecting American Workers and NAFTA." But the mailer gives less than the whole truth.

It quotes two news reports of Obama praising NAFTA, but it fails to mention that both are from the same event and leaves out his calls for "fair trade" and increased enforcement – and his criticism of trade agreements negotiated "on behalf of multinational companies instead of workers and communities."
Analysis
The Clinton campaign said its new mailer to Ohio voters is meant to counter an earlier Obama mailing that quotes Clinton as praising NAFTA. "In a campaign when you are attacked unfairly it is incumbent on you to set the record straight, and that’s what we’re doing in the mail," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told reporters on a conference call Feb. 25.
Retaliation in Kind
We found the Obama mailer to be misleading in our Feb. 24 article. Here we judge that Clinton is retaliating in kind, with a somewhat misleading mailer of her own.

The mailer says, "Ohio needs to know the truth," and adds, "It's all on the Record." But it quotes the record selectively to misrepresent Obama's position.

The quotes come from two news accounts, one from The Associated Press and another from the Herald & Review of Decatur, Ill. What's not said is that they are both reporting on the same 2004 campaign event in Shirley, Ill., when Obama was running against Republican nominee Alan Keyes for the U.S. Senate. And both are quoted selectively, omitting Obama's criticisms of NAFTA.

The mailer quotes The AP account as saying, "Obama said the United States should continue to work with the World Trade Organization and pursue deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement." That's accurate as far as it goes, but what's left out is that Obama also said the U.S. needs to be more aggressive in protecting American interests and the interests of "workers and communities." Here's the pertinent section, in full:

Associated Press, Sept. 8, 2004: [Obama] said the United States should continue to work with the World Trade Organization and pursue deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the country must be more aggressive about protecting American interests.
"We don't want to set off trade wars. What we want to make sure of is that our farmers are treated fairly," Obama said. "The problem in a lot of our trade agreements is that the administration tends to negotiate on behalf of multinational companies instead of workers and communities."

The Decatur newspaper reported on the same event the following day. The Clinton mailer quotes this part of the article: "Obama said the United States benefits enormously from exports under the WTO and NAFTA." But here's what it left out:
Herald & Review, Sept. 9, 2004: [Obama] said, at the same time, there must be recognition that the global economy has shifted, and that the United States is no longer the dominant economy.
"We have competition in world trade," Obama said. "When China devalues its currency 40 percent, we need to bring a complaint before the WTO just as other nations complain about us. If we are to be competitive over the long term, we need free trade but also fair trade."

We agree with Clinton that any voter "needs to know the truth." We just think it should be the whole truth.

-by Brooks Jackson
Sources
Christopher Wills. "Senate candidates speak on farm, trade issues." The Associated Press, 8 Sept. 2004.

.Ron Ingram. "Obama, Keyes court farmers - U.S. Senate candidates face-off - on agriculture issues near Shirley," Herald & Review (Decatur, Ill.) 9 Sept. 2004.

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Obama and Clinton ads both claim all Americans would be covered by their health plans. Clinton's would come close.
Monday Night Quibbles
No statements made of whole cloth, but some factual embroidery by Clinton and Obama. (It's their staff furnishing these statements I believe and they let it just slip by, either due to the stresses of campaigning, or it's due to the fact that they know full well that people believe what they want to believe, or that the first thing heard or seen is most likely to make a lasting impression, so they're shooting for such a large prize that they are doing all it takes to win. Maybe it's a bit of everything, it all being in the mix. SRH
Copyright © 2003 - 2008, Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania
FactCheck.org's staff, not the Annenberg Center, is responsible for this material.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/clinton_edits_the_truth.html :: :: :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

February 26th, 2008, 12:29 PM

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^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
High court to hear Exxon Valdez damages case
At issue: Should the company pay $2.5 billion in punitive damages for the 1989 oil spill?
By
Warren Richey
Staff writer of
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington
Nineteen years after the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled some 258,000 barrels of oil into the pristine waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound, the debate still rages over how much Exxon should pay beyond the $3.4 billion it has already spent on cleanup.

On Wednesday, that question arrives at the US Supreme Court, where the justices must decide whether to uphold a $2.5 billion punitive-damages judgment against Exxon Shipping. It is said to be the largest punitive damages award ever sustained by a federal appeals court.

The case, Exxon Shipping Co. v. Grant Baker, is being closely followed by shipping executives, environmental activists, oil-industry officials, and commercial fishermen, among others. It has also attracted the attention of scholars monitoring the Supreme Court's emerging jurisprudence on excessive punitive damages.

Lawyers for Exxon offer three main arguments for invalidating the punitive damages.

Under maritime law, Exxon should not be held liable to pay punitive damages for the negligent acts of a tanker captain at sea unless there is evidence that Exxon directed or participated in grounding the tanker, they say.

Second, the Clean Water Act establishes a comprehensive regime to punish and deter illegal behavior that pollutes the nation's water resources. But Exxon lawyers say Congress did not include a provision in the act permitting punitive damages.

Third, the lawyers say punitive damages are unnecessary in a situation like the Exxon Valdez cleanup where Exxon has already willingly paid criminal and civil fines, penalties, compensatory damages, cleanup costs, and other expenses.

"The $3.4 billion Exxon has already paid is enough to deter anyone from anything," writes Washington lawyer Walter Dellinger in his brief to the court on behalf of Exxon Mobil Corp.

Some analysts note that the oil spill was an accident rather than a product of corporate greed. "This is not a case where Exxon was cutting costs to try to increase profits," says Theodore Frank, a legal expert at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "Exxon lost money on this. They are not trying to deliberately steer ships aground and lose their oil."

Others say Exxon's massive cleanup expenses are beside the point. The spill caused extensive damage, not only to the fragile environment but also to the lives of Alaskan residents.

"The implication that Exxon has somehow suffered enough is simply offensive," says Jennifer Gibbons, executive director of Prince William Soundkeeper, a clean-water watchdog group. "Exxon can never make these people whole. You can't replace 19 years of somebody's life," she adds.

"Fleecing a corporation? No. This is about accountability," Ms. Gibbons says. "The true significance of this case is the future accountability of corporate America to clean water."

The current Supreme Court case began in 1994, when a group of 32,677 Alaskans harmed by the oil spill sued Exxon seeking compensation and additional punishment for the oil giant.

At the heart of their case is the allegation that Exxon managers assigned command of the Exxon Valdez to a relapsed alcoholic, Joseph Hazelwood. They argued during a five-month trial that Captain Hazelwood was intoxicated when the ship ran aground. Exxon denied that Hazelwood was drunk, and he was found not guilty of that charge in a separate trial.

Nonetheless, the 1994 jury found that Hazelwood acted recklessly, and that Exxon also acted recklessly. The jury ordered Hazelwood to pay $5,000 in punitive damages, and directed Exxon to pay $5 billion. A federal appeals court later reduced those damages to $2.5 billion.

Exxon can easily afford to pay the damages, says David Oesting, an Anchorage, Alaska, lawyer representing the Alaskan residents, in his brief. The $2.5 billion verdict represents three weeks of Exxon's current net profits, he says.

In answer to Exxon's Clean Water Act argument, Mr. Oesting says the CWA was not the controlling statute during the 1994 trial. The trial judge determined that another statute, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, was the appropriate law. Oesting says neither the TAPAA nor the CWA imposes limits on punitive damage suits.

Lawyers for the residents dispute claims that Exxon's compensation payments provide an effective deterrent to future oil spills. "The only money Exxon has paid above and beyond what an entirely innocent spiller would have paid for this oil spill was the $25 million criminal penalty for harming the environment," Oesting writes.

Exxon could have assigned a captain who was not an alcoholic to take the helm of the Exxon Valdez. But it decided instead to employ Hazelwood despite the risks, Oesting says.

"Alaskans who depended on the sound for their lives and their livelihoods had no way to protect themselves from Exxon's recklessness," Oesting writes in his brief.

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0227/p03s01-usju.html[/
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Saundra Hummer

February 26th, 2008, 12:48 PM

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:: :: ::
The end of multiculturalism
The US must be a melting pot – not a salad bowl.
By
Lawrence E. Harrison

Vineyard Haven, Mass.
Future generations may look back on Iraq and immigration as the two great disasters of the Bush presidency. Ironically, for a conservative administration, both of these policy initiatives were rooted in a multicultural view of the world.

Since the 1960s, multiculturalism has become a dominant feature of the political and intellectual landscape of the West. But multiculturalism rests on a frail foundation: cultural relativism, the notion that no culture is better or worse than any other – it is merely different.

When it comes to democratic continuity, social justice, and prosperity, some cultures do far better than others. Research at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, summarized in my recent book, "The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It From Itself," makes this clear.

Extensive data suggest that the champions of progress are the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – where, for example, universal literacy was a substantial reality in the 19th century. By contrast, no Arab country today is democratic, and female illiteracy in some Arab countries exceeds 50 percent.

Culture isn't about genes or race; it's about values, beliefs, and attitudes. Culture matters because it influences a society's receptivity to democracy, justice, entrepreneurship, and free-market institutions.

What, then, are the implications for a foreign policy based on the doctrine that "These values of freedom are right and true for every person, in every society"? The Bush administration has staked huge human, financial, diplomatic, and prestige resources on this doctrine's applicability in Iraq. It is now apparent that the doctrine is fallacious.

A key component of a successful democratic transition is trust, a particularly important cultural factor for social justice and prosperity. Trust in others reduces the cost of economic transactions, and democratic stability depends on it.

Trust is periodically measured in 80-odd countries by the World Values Survey. The Nordic countries enjoy very high levels of trust: 58 to67 percent of respondents in four of these countries believe that most people can be trusted, compared with 11 percent of Algerians and 3 percent of Brazilians.

The high levels of identification and trust in Nordic societies reflect their homogeneity; common Lutheran antecedents, including a rigorous ethical code and heavy emphasis on education; and a consequent sense of the nation as one big family imbued with the golden rule.

Again, culture matters – race doesn't. The ethnic roots of both Haiti and Barbados lie in the Dahomey region of West Africa. The history of Haiti, independent in 1804 in the wake of a slave uprising against the French colonists, is one of corrupt, incompetent leadership; illiteracy; and poverty. Barbados, which gained its independence from the British in 1966, is today a prosperous democracy of "Afro-Saxons."

Immigration
Hispanics now form the largest US minority, approaching 15 percent – about 45 million – of a total population of about 300 million. They're projected by the Pew Research Center to swell to 127 million in 2050 – 29 percent of a total population of 438 million. Their experience in the United States recapitulates Latin America's culturally shaped underdevelopment. For example, the Hispanic high school dropout rate in the US is alarmingly high and persistent – about 20 percent in second and subsequent generations. It's vastly higher in Latin America.

Samuel Huntington was on the mark when he wrote in his latest book "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity": "Would America be the America it is today if it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil."

In "The Americano Dream," Mexican-American Lionel Sosa argues that the value system that has retarded progress in Latin America is an impediment to upward mobility of Latino immigrants. So does former US Rep. Herman Badillo, a Puerto Rican whose book, "One Nation, One Standard," indicts Latino undervaluing of education and calls for cultural change.

The progress of Hispanic immigrants, not to mention harmony in the broader society, depends on their acculturation to mainstream US values. Efforts – for example, long-term bilingual education – to perpetuate "old country" values in a multicultural salad bowl undermine acculturation to the mainstream and are likely to result in continuing underachievement, poverty, resentment, and divisiveness. So, too, does the willy-nilly emergence of bilingualism in the US. No language in American history has ever before competed with English to the point where one daily hears, on the telephone, "If you want to speak English, press one; Si quiere hablar en español, oprima el botón número dos."

Although border security and environmental concerns are also in play, the immigration debate has been framed largely in economic terms, producing some odd pro-immigration bedfellows, for example the editorial pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Among the issues: whether the US economy needs more unskilled immigrants; whether immigrants take jobs away from US citizens; to what extent illegal immigrants drain resources away from education, healthcare, and welfare; and whether population growth, largely driven by immigration, is necessary for a healthy economy.

But immigration looks very different when viewed in cultural terms, particularly with respect to the vast legal and illegal Latino immigration, a million or more people a year, most of them with few skills and little education. To be sure, the US has absorbed large numbers of unskilled and uneducated immigrants in the past, and today the large majority of their descendants are in the cultural mainstream. But the numbers of Latino immigrants and their geographic concentration today leave real doubts about the prospects for acculturation: 70 percent of children in the Los Angeles public schools and 60 percent in the Denver schools are Latino.

In a letter to me in 1991, the late Mexican-American columnist Richard Estrada captured the essence of the problem:
"The problem in which the current immigration is suffused is, at heart, one of numbers; for when the numbers begin to favor not only the maintenance and replenishment of the immigrants' source culture, but also its overall growth, and in particular growth so large that the numbers not only impede assimilation but go beyond to pose a challenge to the traditional culture of the American nation, then there is a great deal about which to be concerned."
Some recommendations
If multiculturalism is a myth, how do we avoid the woes that inevitably attend the creation of an enduring and vast underclass alienated from the upwardly mobile cultural mainstream? Some policy implications, one for Latin America, the others for the US and Canada, are apparent.

We must calibrate the flow of immigrants into the US to the needs of the economy, mindful that immigration has adversely affected low-income American citizens, disproportionately African-American and Hispanic, as Barbara Jordan stressed as chair of the 1990s Immigration Reform Commission. But the flow must also be calibrated to the country's capacity to assure acculturation of the immigrants.

We must be a melting pot, not a salad bowl. The melting pot, the essence of which is the Anglo-Protestant cultural tradition, is our way of creating the homogeneity that has contributed so much to the trust and mutual identification – and progress – of the Nordic societies.

As with immigration flows of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an extensive program of activities designed to facilitate acculturation, including mastery of English, should be mounted. A law declaring English to be the national language would be helpful.

The costs of multiculturalism – in terms of disunity, the clash of classes, and declining trust – are likely to be huge in the long run. All cultures are not equal when it comes to promoting progress, and very few can match Anglo-Protestantism in this respect. We should be promoting acculturation to the national mainstream, not a mythical, utopian multiculturalism. And we should take care that the Anglo-Protestant virtues that have brought us so far do not fall into disrepair, let alone disrepute.

• Lawrence E. Harrison directs the Cultural Change Institute at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where he also teaches. This article is adapted from a longer essay in the January-February 2008 issue of "The National Interest."

Full HTML version of this story which may include photos, graphics, and related links

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From the February 26, 2008 edition
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Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 11:05 AM

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . .William F. Buckley Jr. dies at 82AP - 40 minutes ago NEWYORK - William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.

Go on-site to gain access to this news brief and slideshow, click on URL:
Slideshow: Author William F. Buckley Jr. dies
URL: http://news.yahoo.com/
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 11:26 AM

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^^^^^^^
Begrudging Obama's Bedazzling

Hillary Clinton can't turn on her own charm and wit because she can't get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Barack Obama not waiting his turn.

Maureen Dowd
February 27, 2008
AP

US Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama shook hands after the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday night in Cleveland. [Go on-site to view photo.]

A huge Ellen suddenly materialized behind Hillary on a giant screen, interrupting her speech Monday night at a fund-raiser at George Washington University in Washington.

What better way for a desperate Hillary to try and stop her rival from running off with all her women supporters than to have a cozy satellite chat with a famous daytime talk-show host who isn't supporting Obama?

"Will you put a ban on glitter?" Ellen demanded.

Diplomatically, Hillary said that schoolchildren needed it for special projects, but maybe she could ban it for anyone over 12.

Certainly, Hillary understands the perils of glitter. The coda of her campaign has been a primal scream against the golden child of Chicago, a clanging and sometimes churlish warning that "all that glitters is not gold."

David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent whose interview with Hillary aired Tuesday, said the senator seemed "dumbfounded" by the Obama sensation.

She has been so discombobulated that she has ignored some truisms of politics that her husband understands well: Sunny beats gloomy. Consistency beats flipping. Bedazzling beats begrudging. Confidence beats whining.

This article has been provided by the New York Times as part of a special agreement between NYTimes.com. You can also find SPIEGEL stories at the New York Times on the Web. Experience does not beat excitement, though, or Nixon would have been president the first time around, Poppy Bush would have had a second term and President Gore would have stopped the earth from melting by now.

Voters gravitate toward the presidential candidates who seem more comfortable in their skin. J.F.K. and Reagan seemed exceptionally comfortable. So did Bill Clinton and W., who both showed that comfort can be an illusion of sorts, masking deep insecurities.

The fact that Obama is exceptionally easy in his skin has made Hillary almost jump out of hers. She can't turn on her own charm and wit because she can't get beyond what she sees as the deep injustice of Obama not waiting his turn. Her sunshine-colored jackets on the trail hardly disguise the fact that she's pea-green with envy.

After saying she found her "voice" in New Hampshire, she has turned into Sybil. We've had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It's-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let's-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary.

Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem. If she can only change this or that about her persona, or tear down this or that about Obama's. But the whirlwind of changes and charges gets wearing.

By threatening to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, the Clinton campaign simply confirmed the fact that they might be going down the drain.

Hillary and her aides urged reporters to learn from the "Saturday Night Live" skit about journalists having crushes on Obama.

"Maybe we should ask Barack if he's comfortable and needs another pillow," she said tartly in the debate here Tuesday night. She peevishly and pointlessly complained about getting the first question too often, implying that the moderators of MSNBC -- a channel her campaign has complained has been sexist -- are giving Obama an easy ride.

Beating on the press is the lamest thing you can do. It is only because of the utter open-mindedness of the press that Hillary can lose 11 contests in a row and still be treated as a contender.

Hillary and her top aides could not say categorically that her campaign had not been the source on the Drudge Report, as Matt Drudge claimed, for a picture of Obama in African native garb that the mean-spirited hope will conjure up a Muslim Manchurian candidate vibe.

At a rally on Sunday, she tried sarcasm about Obama, talking about how "celestial choirs" singing and magic wands waving won't get everybody together to "do the right thing."

With David Brody, Hillary evoked the specter of a scary Kool-Aid cult. "I think that there is a certain phenomenon associated with his candidacy, and I am really struck by that because it is very much about him and his personality and his presentation," she said, adding that "it dangerously oversimplifies the complexity of the problems we face, the challenge of navigating our country through some difficult uncharted waters. We are a nation at war. That seems to be forgotten."

Actually it's not forgotten. It's a hard sell for Hillary to say that she is the only one capable of leading this country in a war when she helped in leading the country into that war. Or to paraphrase Obama from the debate here, the one who drives the bus into the ditch can't drive it out. ^^^^^^^^^^^ .

Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 11:47 AM

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<<<<<O>>>>>

Newspaper Websites and White House Disinformation
By Nieman Watchdog.
The Wall Street Journal print edition didn’t mention a recent report that cited more than 935 false statements by top Administration officials. The Journal’s Web site, however, not only mentioned the report—it attacked it. (Second of two parts. Part I available here.)
By
Morton Mintz
mintzm@earthlink.net

More than 3,000 Web sites and blogs, including those sponsored by AlterNet, CNN, FoxNews. Salon, Wonkette, and Yahoo, carried pieces on the recent report by two related nonprofit journalism groups on the more than 900 false statements made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials about the claimed threat from Saddam Hussein that led to the disastrous war in Iraq.

My focus here is on Web sites sponsored by the two leading national newspapers that didn’t print a story or even an item on Iraq / The War Card / Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, the report prepared by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

At the Washington Post site, Dan Froomkin (who is also deputy editor of this Web site, for which I am a Senior Advisor), began his White House Watch column: “A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001.”

At the Wall Street Journal site, James Taranto, editor of the Journal’s online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com, began by quoting four summary sentences from the Associated Press story. Then, in a sharp right-turn, he took shots at the messenger; threw mud at the CPI, the Fund, and George Soros, and concluded by expressing doubt that the report was – are you ready? – even newsworthy:

Nowhere in the entire dispatch does the AP tell us anything more about the two groups than that they are ‘nonprofit journalism’ organizations. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany. The Fund for Independence in Journalism seems to be but a spinoff; its Web site says its “primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support” for the center.

Certainly if the AP is going to report on this “study,” it ought to disclose the political leanings of the groups that sponsored it. Though come to think of it, given those political leanings, it’s hard to see why this is even newsworthy.

Had Soros likened “contemporary America to Nazi Germany,” as Taranto would have his readers infer? No, he had not. You can read what Soros actually said, in context, and how Taranto twisted it, here, at Huffingtonpost.

Steve Carpinelli, the CPI’s Media Relations Manager, initiated an email exchange with Taranto two weeks after the report was released. Minus greetings and sign-offs, it appears in full below, for this important reason: It enables the reader to make his/her own judgment about whether the report is “even newsworthy” and whether to trust the investigative journalism of the Center or the slash-and-burn punditry of Taranto.

Carpinelli to Taranto, Feb. 8:
First and foremost, the Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on significant issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world.

The Center does not and has never endorsed any legislation, political candidate, party or organization. The Center has strict guidelines on revenue sources, for example, we do not accept contributions from governments, corporations, labor unions, anonymous donors and no advertising. The bulk of our financial support comes from independent foundations and individual contributors. The Center has not received funds from Soros’ Open Society Institute since 2004, and there [were] absolutely no Soros foundation funds used in the creation of our Iraq War Card project. The Center accepts support from many different sources, but regardless of the source, all of the Center’s projects are editorially independent and strictly managed by in-house journalists and staff.

The WSJ [Wall Street Journal] has recently published two front-page articles that featured the Center’s work. “Big Pharma Faces Grim Prognosis” by Barbara Martinez and Jacob Goldstein and “Interest Groups Gain in Election Cash Quest” by Brody Mullins. In addition, WSJ Managing Editor Paul Steiger…has visited the Center to consult with our executive director, Bill Buzenberg, and our staff of in-house journalists and researchers, to learn more about nonprofit investigative journalism as he moves forward with ProPublica. We have a good working relationship with the WSJ and I have personally talked to several reporters, assisting them with their stories.

Journalists from across the country and around the world use our databases and investigative stories to assist their own reporting and do so knowing that we are not a “liberal-left group.” Also, we fully disclose on our website our foundation and significant individual donors and make it clear that we have no “political leanings.”

Regarding the “newsworthy” content of our Iraq War Card project, it has so far been reported on by more than 80 newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution, five major newswire services, international coverage featured in 10 countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting. That’s just in the last two weeks.

Taranto to Carpinelli, later the same day:

I am more than happy to correct or extend the record if I have erred, but I must tell you that nothing you have written here convinces me that I am mistaken to hold the opinion that the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group. Formal nonpartisanship is no guarantee of fairness or detachment, and merely stating that you have no political leanings does not make it so.

Can you give me some examples of work your group has done that runs against type – i.e., that someone who does have a liberal-left agenda might find objectionable?

Carpinelli to Taranto, Feb. 11

Unlike newspapers, including the WSJ, NYT, etc., the Center does not and has never endorsed or supported any political candidate, party or organization - proof of nonpartisanship. Our funders, primarily from foundations and individuals, have absolutely no input in the direction, content or creation of any Center project, so it is incorrect to say that we received money from Soros, when he did not personally give money to the Center and the foundation that did, the Open Society Institute, did so back in 2004, again, with no editorial direction on their behalf at all.

When a foundation or individual contributes to the Center it is because they share an interest in our mission and investigative journalism.

The Center was the first journalism organization to uncover the Clinton White House “selling” of the Lincoln bedroom to big-time contributors in a series of Center stories titled “Fat Cat Hotel,” which also included stories on Vice President Gore’s office refusal to divulge public information on guests to the official residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The Center investigated many topics involving the Clinton/Gore administration, all searchable on our website. The analysis of public information has been a hallmark of the Center’s fact-based investigative journalism since its founding.

The Center’s mission is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. That’s not a liberal-left agenda, that’s a legacy of good investigative reporting that is not swayed by advertisers, corporations, governments, labor unions, contributors or for profit motives that may interfere with independent reporting. The Center is unique in that aspect, sadly as many newspapers across the country have dramatically cut their investigative news divisions.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who has a lifetime rating of 91.9 from the American Conservative Union, and known for leading the GOP effort to have french fries renamed “freedom fries” in House cafeteria menus as a protest against French opposition to the invasion of Iraq, is a Center supporter. He has personally called me to express his interest in the Center’s mission.

You questioned the newsworthiness of our latest project, which I think should be corrected, because clearly it was newsworthy. Your observation that it was not newsworthy was not based on fact or background research. As I pointed out before, so far our Iraq War Card project was reported on by more than 82 newspapers, including the New York Times [.com], Washington Post [.com], Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5 major newswire services, international coverage featured in ten countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting.

As of the posting of this article, Taranto had yet to respond to Carpinellii’s Feb. 11 message.

Unlike the CPI and the Fund, many Washington think-tanks-nonprofits-take millions of dollars annually from the oil, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries; from right-wing foundations, and from extremely wealthy, right-leaning individuals, Richard Mellon Scaife being an example. These think-tanks also issue streams of purportedly scholarly reports and statements that espouse the views of their funders, and that the mainstream press picks up, usually without reference to the think-tanks’ financing or political leanings (see, e.g., this article of mine in Nieman Reports and this, from Sourcewatch).

The key sentence in Taranto’s posting at OpinionJournal.com–”In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany.”–bears repeating. Setting aside the viciously false innuendo about Soros, Taranto was saying, or certainly leading his readers to infer, that the 935 false statements made by President Bush and his top officials about the war in Iraq don’t matter because the organization that documented them is, in the pundit’s phrase, “left-liberal.” This suggested a few questions, which I emailed to Taranto on February 19th:

Would you please explain why the political leaning you impute to the organization that issued Iraq / the War Card renders inconsequential the documentation of 935 administration war-related falsehoods, none of which you challenged?

If the identical report had been released by a conservative-right group, would you have rated the documentation of those 935 falsehoods unimportant?

If the CPI were to issue a report citing 935 scientific studies establishing that night follows day, would you dismiss it because the CPI is “a liberal-left group”?

Having expressed doubt that the CPI report is “even newsworthy” because the Center is liberal-left, would you please specify any reports you may have dismissed in your column as of doubtful newsworthiness because issued by conservative-right corporate-financed think tanks?

Would you please also specify any shots you may have fired in your column at the AP or any other other news organization-including the sponsor of your Web site, the Wall Street Journal-because it did not “tell us anything more” about the sources of funding and political leanings of these same think-tanks?

An hour and a quarter later, I got this response: “Dear Mr. Mintz—My writings on this subject speak for themselves. Judging by your questions, you obviously have your own opinions on the matter. Feel free to express them. Cheers, James”

Morton Mintz (Nieman ‘64) is a senior adviser to the Nieman Watchdog project.

E-mail: mintzm@earthlink.net
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/27/newspaper-websites-and-white-house-disinformation/ <<<O>>> .

Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 11:55 AM

.....

<<<<<O>>>>>

Newspaper Websites and White House Disinformation
By Nieman Watchdog.
The Wall Street Journal print edition didn’t mention a recent report that cited more than 935 false statements by top Administration officials. The Journal’s Web site, however, not only mentioned the report—it attacked it. (Second of two parts. Part I available here.)
By
Morton Mintz
mintzm@earthlink.net

More than 3,000 Web sites and blogs, including those sponsored by AlterNet, CNN, FoxNews. Salon, Wonkette, and Yahoo, carried pieces on the recent report by two related nonprofit journalism groups on the more than 900 false statements made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials about the claimed threat from Saddam Hussein that led to the disastrous war in Iraq.

My focus here is on Web sites sponsored by the two leading national newspapers that didn’t print a story or even an item on Iraq / The War Card / Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, the report prepared by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

At the Washington Post site, Dan Froomkin (who is also deputy editor of this Web site, for which I am a Senior Advisor), began his White House Watch column: “A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001.”

At the Wall Street Journal site, James Taranto, editor of the Journal’s online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com, began by quoting four summary sentences from the Associated Press story. Then, in a sharp right-turn, he took shots at the messenger; threw mud at the CPI, the Fund, and George Soros, and concluded by expressing doubt that the report was – are you ready? – even newsworthy:

Nowhere in the entire dispatch does the AP tell us anything more about the two groups than that they are ‘nonprofit journalism’ organizations. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany. The Fund for Independence in Journalism seems to be but a spinoff; its Web site says its “primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support” for the center.

Certainly if the AP is going to report on this “study,” it ought to disclose the political leanings of the groups that sponsored it. Though come to think of it, given those political leanings, it’s hard to see why this is even newsworthy.

Had Soros likened “contemporary America to Nazi Germany,” as Taranto would have his readers infer? No, he had not. You can read what Soros actually said, in context, and how Taranto twisted it, here, at Huffingtonpost.

Steve Carpinelli, the CPI’s Media Relations Manager, initiated an email exchange with Taranto two weeks after the report was released. Minus greetings and sign-offs, it appears in full below, for this important reason: It enables the reader to make his/her own judgment about whether the report is “even newsworthy” and whether to trust the investigative journalism of the Center or the slash-and-burn punditry of Taranto.

Carpinelli to Taranto, Feb. 8:
First and foremost, the Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on significant issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world.

The Center does not and has never endorsed any legislation, political candidate, party or organization. The Center has strict guidelines on revenue sources, for example, we do not accept contributions from governments, corporations, labor unions, anonymous donors and no advertising. The bulk of our financial support comes from independent foundations and individual contributors. The Center has not received funds from Soros’ Open Society Institute since 2004, and there [were] absolutely no Soros foundation funds used in the creation of our Iraq War Card project. The Center accepts support from many different sources, but regardless of the source, all of the Center’s projects are editorially independent and strictly managed by in-house journalists and staff.

The WSJ [Wall Street Journal] has recently published two front-page articles that featured the Center’s work. “Big Pharma Faces Grim Prognosis” by Barbara Martinez and Jacob Goldstein and “Interest Groups Gain in Election Cash Quest” by Brody Mullins. In addition, WSJ Managing Editor Paul Steiger…has visited the Center to consult with our executive director, Bill Buzenberg, and our staff of in-house journalists and researchers, to learn more about nonprofit investigative journalism as he moves forward with ProPublica. We have a good working relationship with the WSJ and I have personally talked to several reporters, assisting them with their stories.

Journalists from across the country and around the world use our databases and investigative stories to assist their own reporting and do so knowing that we are not a “liberal-left group.” Also, we fully disclose on our website our foundation and significant individual donors and make it clear that we have no “political leanings.”

Regarding the “newsworthy” content of our Iraq War Card project, it has so far been reported on by more than 80 newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution, five major newswire services, international coverage featured in 10 countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting. That’s just in the last two weeks.

Taranto to Carpinelli, later the same day:

I am more than happy to correct or extend the record if I have erred, but I must tell you that nothing you have written here convinces me that I am mistaken to hold the opinion that the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group. Formal nonpartisanship is no guarantee of fairness or detachment, and merely stating that you have no political leanings does not make it so.

Can you give me some examples of work your group has done that runs against type – i.e., that someone who does have a liberal-left agenda might find objectionable?

Carpinelli to Taranto, Feb. 11

Unlike newspapers, including the WSJ, NYT, etc., the Center does not and has never endorsed or supported any political candidate, party or organization - proof of nonpartisanship. Our funders, primarily from foundations and individuals, have absolutely no input in the direction, content or creation of any Center project, so it is incorrect to say that we received money from Soros, when he did not personally give money to the Center and the foundation that did, the Open Society Institute, did so back in 2004, again, with no editorial direction on their behalf at all.

When a foundation or individual contributes to the Center it is because they share an interest in our mission and investigative journalism.

The Center was the first journalism organization to uncover the Clinton White House “selling” of the Lincoln bedroom to big-time contributors in a series of Center stories titled “Fat Cat Hotel,” which also included stories on Vice President Gore’s office refusal to divulge public information on guests to the official residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The Center investigated many topics involving the Clinton/Gore administration, all searchable on our website. The analysis of public information has been a hallmark of the Center’s fact-based investigative journalism since its founding.

The Center’s mission is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. That’s not a liberal-left agenda, that’s a legacy of good investigative reporting that is not swayed by advertisers, corporations, governments, labor unions, contributors or for profit motives that may interfere with independent reporting. The Center is unique in that aspect, sadly as many newspapers across the country have dramatically cut their investigative news divisions.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who has a lifetime rating of 91.9 from the American Conservative Union, and known for leading the GOP effort to have french fries renamed “freedom fries” in House cafeteria menus as a protest against French opposition to the invasion of Iraq, is a Center supporter. He has personally called me to express his interest in the Center’s mission.

You questioned the newsworthiness of our latest project, which I think should be corrected, because clearly it was newsworthy. Your observation that it was not newsworthy was not based on fact or background research. As I pointed out before, so far our Iraq War Card project was reported on by more than 82 newspapers, including the New York Times [.com], Washington Post [.com], Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5 major newswire services, international coverage featured in ten countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting.

As of the posting of this article, Taranto had yet to respond to Carpinellii’s Feb. 11 message.

Unlike the CPI and the Fund, many Washington think-tanks-nonprofits-take millions of dollars annually from the oil, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries; from right-wing foundations, and from extremely wealthy, right-leaning individuals, Richard Mellon Scaife being an example. These think-tanks also issue streams of purportedly scholarly reports and statements that espouse the views of their funders, and that the mainstream press picks up, usually without reference to the think-tanks’ financing or political leanings (see, e.g., this article of mine in Nieman Reports and this, from Sourcewatch).

The key sentence in Taranto’s posting at OpinionJournal.com–”In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany.”–bears repeating. Setting aside the viciously false innuendo about Soros, Taranto was saying, or certainly leading his readers to infer, that the 935 false statements made by President Bush and his top officials about the war in Iraq don’t matter because the organization that documented them is, in the pundit’s phrase, “left-liberal.” This suggested a few questions, which I emailed to Taranto on February 19th: .....
.Would you please explain why the political leaning you impute to the organization that issued Iraq / the War Card renders inconsequential the documentation of 935 administration war-related falsehoods, none of which you challenged?
.If the identical report had been released by a conservative-right group, would you have rated the documentation of those 935 falsehoods unimportant?
.If the CPI were to issue a report citing 935 scientific studies establishing that night follows day, would you dismiss it because the CPI is “a liberal-left group”?
.Having expressed doubt that the CPI report is “even newsworthy” because the Center is liberal-left, would you please specify any reports you may have dismissed in your column as of doubtful newsworthiness because issued by conservative-right corporate-financed think tanks?
.Would you please also specify any shots you may have fired in your column at the AP or any other other news organization-including the sponsor of your Web site, the Wall Street Journal-because it did not “tell us anything more” about the sources of funding and political leanings of these same think-tanks?

An hour and a quarter later, I got this response: “Dear Mr. Mintz—My writings on this subject speak for themselves. Judging by your questions, you obviously have your own opinions on the matter. Feel free to express them. Cheers, James”

Morton Mintz (Nieman ‘64) is a senior adviser to the Nieman Watchdog project.

E-mail: mintzm@earthlink.net
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/27/newspaper-websites-and-white-house-disinformation/ <<<O>>> .

An Article I received in a Newsletter

Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 12:07 PM

.....
<<<<<O>>>>>

Newspaper Websites and White House Disinformation
By Nieman Watchdog.
The Wall Street Journal print edition didn’t mention a recent report that cited more than 935 false statements by top Administration officials. The Journal’s Web site, however, not only mentioned the report—it attacked it. (Second of two parts. Part I available here: http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/25/if-935-falsehoods-fall-from-the-white-house-do-the-news-media-hear-them/
By
Morton Mintz
mintzm@earthlink.net

More than 3,000 Web sites and blogs, including those sponsored by AlterNet, CNN, FoxNews. Salon, Wonkette, and Yahoo, carried pieces on the recent report by two related nonprofit journalism groups on the more than 900 false statements made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials about the claimed threat from Saddam Hussein that led to the disastrous war in Iraq.

My focus here is on Web sites sponsored by the two leading national newspapers that didn’t print a story or even an item on Iraq / The War Card / Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, the report prepared by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) and the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

At the Washington Post site, Dan Froomkin (who is also deputy editor of this Web site, for which I am a Senior Advisor), began his White House Watch column: “A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials hyping the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001.”

At the Wall Street Journal site, James Taranto, editor of the Journal’s online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com, began by quoting four summary sentences from the Associated Press story. Then, in a sharp right-turn, he took shots at the messenger; threw mud at the CPI, the Fund, and George Soros, and concluded by expressing doubt that the report was – are you ready? – even newsworthy:

Nowhere in the entire dispatch does the AP tell us anything more about the two groups than that they are ‘nonprofit journalism’ organizations. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany. The Fund for Independence in Journalism seems to be but a spinoff; its Web site says its “primary purpose is providing legal defense and endowment support” for the center.

Certainly if the AP is going to report on this “study,” it ought to disclose the political leanings of the groups that sponsored it. Though come to think of it, given those political leanings, it’s hard to see why this is even newsworthy.

Had Soros likened “contemporary America to Nazi Germany,” as Taranto would have his readers infer? No, he had not. You can read what Soros actually said, in context, and how Taranto twisted it, here, at Huffingtonpost.

Steve Carpinelli, the CPI’s Media Relations Manager, initiated an email exchange with Taranto two weeks after the report was released. Minus greetings and sign-offs, it appears in full below, for this important reason: It enables the reader to make his/her own judgment about whether the report is “even newsworthy” and whether to trust the investigative journalism of the Center or the slash-and-burn punditry of Taranto.

Carpinelli to Taranto, Feb. 8:

First and foremost, the Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to producing original, responsible investigative journalism on significant issues of public concern. The Center is non-partisan and non-advocacy and committed to transparent and comprehensive reporting both in the United States and around the world.

The Center does not and has never endorsed any legislation, political candidate, party or organization. The Center has strict guidelines on revenue sources, for example, we do not accept contributions from governments, corporations, labor unions, anonymous donors and no advertising. The bulk of our financial support comes from independent foundations and individual contributors. The Center has not received funds from Soros’ Open Society Institute since 2004, and there [were] absolutely no Soros foundation funds used in the creation of our Iraq War Card project. The Center accepts support from many different sources, but regardless of the source, all of the Center’s projects are editorially independent and strictly managed by in-house journalists and staff.

The WSJ [Wall Street Journal] has recently published two front-page articles that featured the Center’s work. “Big Pharma Faces Grim Prognosis” by Barbara Martinez and Jacob Goldstein and “Interest Groups Gain in Election Cash Quest” by Brody Mullins. In addition, WSJ Managing Editor Paul Steiger…has visited the Center to consult with our executive director, Bill Buzenberg, and our staff of in-house journalists and researchers, to learn more about nonprofit investigative journalism as he moves forward with ProPublica. We have a good working relationship with the WSJ and I have personally talked to several reporters, assisting them with their stories.

Journalists from across the country and around the world use our databases and investigative stories to assist their own reporting and do so knowing that we are not a “liberal-left group.” Also, we fully disclose on our website our foundation and significant individual donors and make it clear that we have no “political leanings.”

Regarding the “newsworthy” content of our Iraq War Card project, it has so far been reported on by more than 80 newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal Constitution, five major newswire services, international coverage featured in 10 countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting. That’s just in the last two weeks.

Taranto to Carpinelli, later the same day:

I am more than happy to correct or extend the record if I have erred, but I must tell you that nothing you have written here convinces me that I am mistaken to hold the opinion that the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group. Formal nonpartisanship is no guarantee of fairness or detachment, and merely stating that you have no political leanings does not make it so.

Can you give me some examples of work your group has done that runs against type – i.e., that someone who does have a liberal-left agenda might find objectionable?

Carpinelli to Taranto, Feb. 11

Unlike newspapers, including the WSJ, NYT, etc., the Center does not and has never endorsed or supported any political candidate, party or organization - proof of nonpartisanship. Our funders, primarily from foundations and individuals, have absolutely no input in the direction, content or creation of any Center project, so it is incorrect to say that we received money from Soros, when he did not personally give money to the Center and the foundation that did, the Open Society Institute, did so back in 2004, again, with no editorial direction on their behalf at all.

When a foundation or individual contributes to the Center it is because they share an interest in our mission and investigative journalism.

The Center was the first journalism organization to uncover the Clinton White House “selling” of the Lincoln bedroom to big-time contributors in a series of Center stories titled “Fat Cat Hotel,” which also included stories on Vice President Gore’s office refusal to divulge public information on guests to the official residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. The Center investigated many topics involving the Clinton/Gore administration, all searchable on our website. The analysis of public information has been a hallmark of the Center’s fact-based investigative journalism since its founding.

The Center’s mission is to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable. That’s not a liberal-left agenda, that’s a legacy of good investigative reporting that is not swayed by advertisers, corporations, governments, labor unions, contributors or for profit motives that may interfere with independent reporting. The Center is unique in that aspect, sadly as many newspapers across the country have dramatically cut their investigative news divisions.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), who has a lifetime rating of 91.9 from the American Conservative Union, and known for leading the GOP effort to have french fries renamed “freedom fries” in House cafeteria menus as a protest against French opposition to the invasion of Iraq, is a Center supporter. He has personally called me to express his interest in the Center’s mission.

You questioned the newsworthiness of our latest project, which I think should be corrected, because clearly it was newsworthy. Your observation that it was not newsworthy was not based on fact or background research. As I pointed out before, so far our Iraq War Card project was reported on by more than 82 newspapers, including the New York Times [.com], Washington Post [.com], Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Financial Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 5 major newswire services, international coverage featured in ten countries, more than two dozen national radio and television interviews, 14 newspaper editorials and more than 3,000 blogs and counting.

As of the posting of this article, Taranto had yet to respond to Carpinellii’s Feb. 11 message.

Unlike the CPI and the Fund, many Washington think-tanks-nonprofits-take millions of dollars annually from the oil, tobacco, pharmaceutical and other industries; from right-wing foundations, and from extremely wealthy, right-leaning individuals, Richard Mellon Scaife being an example. These think-tanks also issue streams of purportedly scholarly reports and statements that espouse the views of their funders, and that the mainstream press picks up, usually without reference to the think-tanks’ financing or political leanings (see, e.g., this article of mine in Nieman Reports and this, from Sourcewatch).

The key sentence in Taranto’s posting at OpinionJournal.com–”In fact, the Center for Public Integrity is a liberal-left group that has taken money from George Soros, who has compared contemporary America to Nazi Germany.”–bears repeating. Setting aside the viciously false innuendo about Soros, Taranto was saying, or certainly leading his readers to infer, that the 935 false statements made by President Bush and his top officials about the war in Iraq don’t matter because the organization that documented them is, in the pundit’s phrase, “left-liberal.” This suggested a few questions, which I emailed to Taranto on February 19th:

.Would you please explain why the political leaning you impute to the organization that issued Iraq / the War Card renders inconsequential the documentation of 935 administration war-related falsehoods, none of which you challenged?
.If the identical report had been released by a conservative-right group, would you have rated the documentation of those 935 falsehoods unimportant?
.If the CPI were to issue a report citing 935 scientific studies establishing that night follows day, would you dismiss it because the CPI is “a liberal-left group”?
.Having expressed doubt that the CPI report is “even newsworthy” because the Center is liberal-left, would you please specify any reports you may have dismissed in your column as of doubtful newsworthiness because issued by conservative-right corporate-financed think tanks?
.Would you please also specify any shots you may have fired in your column at the AP or any other other news organization-including the sponsor of your Web site, the Wall Street Journal-because it did not “tell us anything more” about the sources of funding and political leanings of these same think-tanks?

An hour and a quarter later, I got this response: “Dear Mr. Mintz—My writings on this subject speak for themselves. Judging by your questions, you obviously have your own opinions on the matter. Feel free to express them. Cheers, James”

Morton Mintz (Nieman ‘64) is a senior adviser to the Nieman Watchdog project.

E-mail: mintzm@earthlink.net
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/27/newspaper-websites-and-white-house-disinformation/An Article I received in a Newsletter.
Go on-site to gain access to the numerous links within this article and to see other matters of importance in other articles. Just click on the above URL ^^^ <<<O>>> .

Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 12:41 PM

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* * * * * * * * *
Comedian Lee Camp: Fox News Is A ‘Festival Of Ignorance’

By
MediaChannel.

Comedian Lee Camp: Fox News Is A 'Festival Of Ignorance'
During an appearance on Fox News Lee Camp said: "What is Fox News? It's just a parade of propaganda, isn't it? It's just a festival of ignorance. A million people are dead in Iraq. Come on. This is ridiculous. What's the point of this?" The confused anchor then rushed him off and went into a segment that featured four women in Star Trek uniforms discussing Captain Kirk's sex appeal... Watch Here »
http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2008/02/27/comedian-lee-camp-fox-news-is-a-festival-of-ignorance/ * * * * * * * * * * * .

Saundra Hummer

February 27th, 2008, 03:54 PM

.+++++++++++

MojoBlog
Black Immigrants, 'Model' Minority? Plus: Don Imus
In my interview with Don Imus last Wednesday, I finally got around to talking about something I rarely get to - black immigrants. More on that in a minute.

It's amazing how much we fawn over Senator Obama's being 'black' without displaying any interest in that blackness, as if being a half-Kenyan mostly ex-pat tells us all we need to know about him. All that's interesting. That's what I was trying to get at generally in my book, The End of Blackness, and in this infamous piece. I finally got to it on, of all places, the Don Imus show.

That interview with Imus was so unbelievable, you simply have to listen to it. Here's part 1 and part 2. [Go on-site to view both parts.]

Damned if Imus hasn't been doing yeoman's work in moving America's neurotic race obsession forward. I've been talking and writing about race for 12 years now, but I was gobsmacked on the air. Imus schooled a sister. When he said he was through apologizing for Rutgers, I took that to mean he was through talking about it. But he's certainly not through thinking about it, and he's been doing his homework.

Usually, people have me on for conversations that go like this: "I'd really like to know what you think about X race topic." [I attempt to address the question]. "Uh, excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt and I really want to know what you think, but what I think is _." Then the person orates for a long time on the dusty, pre-conceived, self-justifying notion they (black or white, liberal or conservative) have no intention of changing. The 'question' always turns out to be, "Haven't I just brilliantly ended the whole race thing?"

With rare exceptions, I've long known I'm invited on by "enemies" (liberals and conservatives, blacks and whites) as a mere visual aid "proving" their open-mindedness. I might as well be wearing an evening gown, smiling and vamping in the background like Vanna White. I'm just window dressing for a soliloquy. All I can do is hope that somewhere in the audience someone is actually listening, and will actually go back and read what I said and might have talked about if allowed to.

Print interviews with 'liberal' black journalists (they're really quite conservative; you must be black in exactly the way they demand) are the worst. They already 'know' I'm a Tom and talking to me serves two purposes, none of them reportorial: it proves they're 'objective' even though nothing I say or write ever makes a difference and it gives them fodder to dine out on with the other 'real' black people. "You wouldn't believe how self-hating she is." They call me names but they don't engage in actual debate. Kneejerk doesn't begin to cover it. Don seems to have done the impossible and moved beyond that.

Of course, it must be said that Imus sandbagged me.

I was, let's say, surprised' by the invitation and mulled it over for a week. When I thought I could be professional and said yes, it was supposed to be about the election and it was supposed to be short. It was neither; homey went straight to Black History month, everything I'd ever written about race, everything in the black canon about race and—unbelievably—Rutgers. See how The Man is always setting us up?

Two kids, two books, two cities, and about 15 jobs ago, I wrote a Washington Post column that I can't now find, pleading for someone in public life to admit to sexism or racism or immorality so that the rest of us could. Two of my examples where Justice Thomas admitting to having been a pig towards Anita Hill and Rev. Sharpton admitting that he'd been wrong about Tawana Brawley and paying what he owed to the man whose life and career he'd ruined with his ultimately false accusations. Until someone in public life manned up in that way, we'd all just have to go on lying about our all too human failings, waiting in vain for an example of confession and atonement.

Until then, no one could be forgiven, publicly or privately, for our momentary -ism's and we all are guilty of something sometime. Never thought that person in public life would be Don Imus and damned if the whole forgiving thing isn't much, much harder than I could have possibly imagined. What is it they say about being careful what you ask for? Offended as I initially was to be asked, I'm glad I did the show. He made a mistake, he took responsibility, he asked for forgiveness. Done, Don.

Now, black immigrants.

At The Root, a new black site from the Washington Post, Meri Danquah, a Ghanaian immigrant, writes all too briefly about the invisibility that black immigrants face in America. When, that is, they are not facing outright hostility, mostly from slave-descended blacks. She writes:

...Excited by the fact that I, a newly naturalized citizen, was about to vote for the first time, I asked my editor if he would be supporting Sen. Barack Obama, my chosen candidate.

"He doesn't do nothing for me," my editor said. "When I vote for a black man, I want it to be somebody who's really black, somebody who knows the black American experience, somebody whose great-great granddaddy was a slave, like mine. You know, those Africans come over here and just reap the rewards of everything we've worked for. They think they're better than us and white folks love 'em because they're…"

I bit my lip and listened to his diatribe against African immigrants. Surely, I thought, he's forgotten who he's talking to. That didn't come as much of a surprise. I find that a lot of people forget I'm an immigrant; more precisely, an African immigrant.

This, simply, is what I meant when I said Obama isn't black. The way the term is used, all it means is: descendant of West African slaves brought here to labor for whites against their will. How many times can I say this: I'm describing a politico-cultural reality which I reject. Yes, Shirley Chisholm and Malcolm X were of West Indian immigrant stock. They achieved mainstream black power because they kept that side of themselves out of the public eye and focused on the battle with whitey. Had they not, we'd not know their names. (My hero, W.E.B. DuBois, cruelly mocked and isolated the ostentatiously West Indian Marcus Garvey precisely because he was so ostentatiously West Indian.)

I'm critiquing the notion that all that's important about us is our historic relationship of antagonism with American whites, a relationship that immigrant blacks do not have (however similar their histories are to ours). I'm critiquing the notion that knowing someone, at some point, came from Africa provides us any useful information, if they are not descended from slaves. That, we know but we don't know diddly about black immigrants and we don't care to, black or white. I reject this.

What, exactly, do I and an immigrant Nigerian cab driver with a doctorate he can't use here in common beyond the label 'black'? Only they know, because they're not allowed to be 'black' outside of our binary slavery/Jim Crow/police brutality/segregation continuum. Native blacks see to that: when have we ever advocated for immigrant blacks unless they stray into Jim Crow territory (Diallo, etc). Our hostility to immigration is legendary; if we're all 'black,' why haven't we carved out a protective exemption for black immigrants? Because we don't feel a kinship, we don't want them talking outside the box, we don't want them changing the subject to entrepreneurship and immigration reform. And we certainly don't want them taking 'our' jobs and affirmative action slots. Too bad for 'us' they don't need them.

As Clarence Page points out, black immigrants are America's true 'model minority,' not that anyone, outside of admissions offices and hiring offices, cares.

Do African immigrants make the smartest Americans? The question may sound outlandish, but if you were judging by statistics alone, you could find plenty of evidence to back it up.

In a side-by-side comparison of 2000 census data by sociologist John R. Logan at the Mumford Center, State University of New York at Albany, black immigrants from Africa average the highest educational attainment of any population group in the country, including whites and Asians.

That trend continues in their offspring. From The Guardian:

The joint University of Pennsylvania-Princeton report found that although immigrant-origin black students make up only 13 percent of the black population in the US, they now comprise 27 percent of black students at the 28 top US universities surveyed.

And in a sample of the elite Ivy League universities the figures were even more dramatic. More than 40 percent of black students in the Ivy League now come from immigrant families. Overall, however, black students still make up only 6 percent-7 percent of Ivy League students, while 12 percent of the general US population is black. In the non-ivy league selective colleges studied, such as Berkeley, Emory, Stanford, Tufts, Wesleyan, Barnard and Smith, black students make up between 3 percent and 9 percent of the population.

This should cause jubilation at the NAACP, right? Wrong. Also from The Guardian (emphasis added):

"Immigrant and second-generation blacks are over-represented at these schools, while overall black students are still too few," says Dr. Camille Charles, sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the report's co-authors, "which means the problem of access for African-Americans - that group which has the longest history of oppression in the US - is of even greater concern than we thought."

Charles doesn't want immigrant black students to have less access, but she is concerned that African-Americans whose families have been in the US since before the civil war and whose forefathers were slaves are doubly losing out. There is a worry that selective, usually private, universities are taking an "any black student will do" approach to diversity.

If we're all 'black', why won't any black student do?

You have to read the piece to have your mind blown. The words don't even cohere as 'black,' 'African,' and 'African American' try to make sense of themselves. Blacks who run affirmative action programs are quoted being incensed by the 'over representation' of immigrant blacks, and that 'blacks' who've fled war and rape in Haiti are seen as having 'sexier' admission essays than 'blacks' who've overcome South Central.

'Black' is simply a label which obscures more than it illuminates. That's all I was trying to say.

Posted by Debra Dickerson on 02/25/08 at 5:38 PM | Comments (52) Go on-site to gain access to them.

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Saundra Hummer

February 28th, 2008, 11:42 AM

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X X X X XMcCain
Rated As America’s Worst Senator
For
ChildrenToday, the Children’s Defense Fund Action Council released its 2007 Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard. CDF reports some positive news, particularly that average scores for members of Congress “improved from the previous three years with more Members scoring 100 percent than in 2004, 2005 or 2006.”

Many, however, did not fare so well. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) received a 10 percent rating — the worst in the U.S. Senate.

CDF ranked members
on
10 votes affecting children:

1. Increase minimum wage (H.R. 2)
2. Increase funding for children with disabilities (S. Con. Res. 21)
3. Protect children from unsafe medications (S. 1082)
4. 2008 Budget resolution (S. Con. Res. 21)
5. SCHIP Reauthorization (H.R. 976)
6. College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669)
7. SCHIP (H.R. 976 - motion to concur)
8. DREAM Act (S. 2205)
9. Funding child health and education (H.R. 3043)
10. Improving Head Start programs (H.R. 1429)

McCain has missed 57 percent of Senate votes this session, being absent or voting “present” for 8 out of 10 children-related votes. McCain voted “yes” to increase the minimum wage; his only other vote was voting “no” on SCHIP reauthorization on Aug. 2, 2007:
Go on-site to see chart: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/27/mccain-children/

Furthermore, the rankings weren’t divided by party. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Gordon Smith (R-OR) received strong 70 percent rankings.

McCain’s CDF score has steadily declined over the years. In 2004, he received a 38 percent; in 2005, 22 percent; in 2006, 10 percent.
Read the full report here:
http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/DocServer/2007_Scorecard.pdf?docID=6401
Digg It!

Filed under: Congress, Health Care
Posted by Satyam February 27, 2008 5:27 pm

Permalink | Comment (53)

Go on-site to gain access to photo's, charts, and the numerous links within this article by clicking on the following URL:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/27/mccain-children/ X X X X X .

Saundra Hummer

February 28th, 2008, 12:10 PM

:: :: :: :: :: :: ::
UP, UP AND AWAY
What's Really Driving the Price of Oil?
By
Beat Balzli and Frank Hornig
SPIEGEL ONLINE
February 28, 2008, 04:50 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,538412,00.html

The price of crude oil has doubled, from $50 to $100, within months. The increase cannot be attributed to the fundamental data, which have hardly changed. And the looming recession ought to drive the price down. So why is oil getting more expensive.

DPA: Go on-site for photo's
Pumps in Oklahoma are less important to the price of oil than pension-fund managers..
Cushing is the kind of place where you'd expect to see a cowboy ride around the corner and tie his horse to a rail in front of the Buckhorn Bar. This sleepy town of 8,000 on the Oklahoma prairie comes complete with a main street that could double for a set in a Western. Its biggest attractions include a defunct train station and a run-down movie theater, where the price of admission is $1.50.

Robert Felts, a friendly old man who works for the Cushing Industrial Authority, likes to show visitors the historic oil pump in the middle of town. He tells the story of how, in 1912, a giant oil field was discovered nearby that placed Cushing on the map and showered it with more than two decades of prosperity. Up to 50 million barrels of oil bubbled out of the ground each year in those days. "Our refineries could hardly keep up," says Felts. To solve the problem, the oil barons of the day had large storage tanks installed in the surrounding prairieland.

There isn't much to talk about besides oil in this small Oklahoma town. But reports on the situation in Cushing get global markets moving at 10:30 every Wednesday morning. That's when US government officials publish a figure that reflects the amount of oil stored in the hundreds of tanks which now stretch for miles along the horizon.

Located at a key intersection in the North American pipeline system, Cushing is home to the largest oil storage facility in the United States. Oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange literally changes owners here in Cushing. If the tanks are full, prices sink. But if levels in these tanks fall, prices rise. A rule of thumb for traders: Supply and demand control the market.

Normally, at any rate. But in recent months the conventional wisdom has flip-flopped. Within a year the price of a barrel of crude has doubled, from $50 to last week's high of $100. Nothing seems impossible now. Some analysts see prices rising to between $120 and $150, which would have dramatic consequences for the world economy.

Similarly spectacular price developments have only occurred four times in the last few decades: in 1973, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo for the first time; in 1979, as a consequence of the Iranian revolution; a year later, when Iraq invaded Iran; and in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait.

Which leads to one the most provocative questions being asked about the world economy today: Why are oil prices soaring again?

It's All Speculation
There are plenty of answers. Some hold the crisis in the Middle East and constantly growing demand in China responsible. Others blame producing countries for keeping the oil spigot half-closed.

But none of it's very convincing. "Supply and demand cannot explain the high prices," says Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co., a leading commodities analyst. Like many in his profession, Gheit believes financial investors are driving up prices. He's reminded of the Internet bubble around the turn of the millennium. According to Gheit, oil is also seeing "excessive speculation" at the moment.

OPEC arrives at the same conclusion. "The fundamentals are right," says OPEC President Mohammed al-Hamli. In fact, the cartel has expected excess supply on markets since early February -- a result of the American economic crisis.

This excess supply would normally cause the price per barrel to fall. Instead, dealers have now broken through the magic $100 threshold for the second time in only a few weeks.

The mood is festive among oil barons, who seem to be unimpressed by global recession fears. Exxon Mobil recently reported its profits for 2007: $40.6 billion, a record for the world's largest energy company, and in international economic history. A company has never made so much money in a year.

Enormous amounts of money are currently changing hands in the business of oil contracts. With the American real estate debacle infecting ever larger segments of the capital markets, from stocks to bonds, investors are seeking alternatives worldwide. Oil, with its supposedly straightforward market rules and ever-rising prices, seems to be a perfect tool for spreading risk and maximizing profit. But many investors will have a rude awakening when they realize that an investment in oil, though it may look different, is no less a gamble than other types of investments.

The New York Mercantile Exchange, or NYMEX, is the central arena in the game of trading in commodities like oil. For 100 years traders here, at the southern tip of Manhattan, on the banks of the Hudson River, have traded in commodities like butter, cheese and potatoes -- until they recognized, in 1978, that oil was the future.

AP photo: Go on site to view.
Angalleries, shout and gesticulate and perform an almost archaic ritual. When two agree on a deal, they write the basic numbers on a piece of paper and toss it into the center of the stage, where a sturdy-looking exchange employee stands, wearing protective glasses so that the flying wads of paper don't accidentally injure his eyes. By the time he picks up one of these pieces of paper and stamps almost archaic tradition.
The trading floor at the NYMEX looks like a Roman arena. Traders, standing in the it, many barrels of oil will have already exchanged owners.
"I trade in news," says Chris Motroni, 29. He earns his money as a small, independent trader on the NYMEX, with smaller trades and a lot of self-confidence. "The prices will increase to $115," he says. Motroni loves the mood on the trading floor, where both his father and his brother have also worked. But they got out of floor trading long ago.

The same holds true for the big players, the banks, hedge funds and pension funds, which all trade by computer nowadays. Business on the NYMEX has exploded. The world consumes 86 million barrels of oil a day, but trading volume is 15 times as high. The difference represents bets on future price developments.

The traders' activities have generated sharp criticism, even in the US Congress, not exactly famous as an enemy of the oil industry. A congressional hearing in December went by the blunt title: "Speculation in the Crude Oil Market."

The upshot of all this trading is that speculators now hold up to 45 percent of all oil contracts -- three times as many as at the turn of the millennium. "Prices are being distorted," says Senator Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is investigating the speculative trading of oil futures. If supply and demand were the only factors, the price of oil would be at least $20 lower.

How could this have happened?

One of the world's 10 largest energy trading companies, Mercuria, is headquartered on Place du Molard in Geneva, Switzerland. From here, 70 employees analyze the market, dealing with such factors as tanker routes and inventory levels. Thirty billion dollars per year flow through the company's accounts.

CEO Daniel Jaeggi, a former futures trader for Goldman Sachs, knows exactly how the business changed in the late 1990s. "The big pension funds began to diversify their investments, increasingly putting their assets in oil," he says. The pension funds, according to Jaeggi, became the "driving factor in the market."

Wall Street banks were only too happy to service this demand, and Goldman Sachs was at the head of the pack. "They invented a new commodities index that also included oil," says Jaeggi. The new index was wildly successful, and the more major investors put money into it, the more oil contracts Goldman bought and the higher the prices went. An enormous market force had been created.

Everyone jumped into the game. Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and many other financial giants dramatically expanded their trading volume in oil contracts. Investment banks like Goldman even established their own oil reserves, acting as if they were energy companies like BP. They hoped to gain better insight into market events.

As a result, the trading volume in crude oil has almost tripled in the last five years, while demand for the liquid itself grew by only 1.9 percent per year.

Goodbye to Supply and Demand
Once upon a time, all that counted in the oil business was production volume and consumption in the industrialized nations. Those days are gone. Oil is now part of every well-structured portfolio -- as was the case, until recently, with those abstract securities meant to enable the investor to secure a slice of the American real-estate boom.

AP
Even banks have gone into the oil business. (photo)
But nothing is like it was on the commodities markets. Nowadays even the most insignificant piece of news -- like the nonviolent encounter between US warships and Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz in January -- can send oil prices on a roller-coaster ride.

The situation in Cushing, meanwhile, can still keep traders on their toes. Let's say fog cripples the port of Houston for a few days, so not enough new foreign crude flows into American pipelines. Supplies in the tanks in Oklahoma will sink, and the supply bottleneck will drive up prices. Or imagine that the McKee refinery in Texas -- a major oil buyer -- partially shuts down after a fire. Crude reserves in Cushing will rise, and prices will fall.

Strange price distortions are fairly normal. All the oil reserves of the United States have long run higher that the five-year average -- yet for historic reasons, prices on the commodities exchanges are based solely on the levels in Cushing and the type of oil stored in the tanks there, West Texas Intermediate.

"It's astonishing that a type of oil that is produced at a level of only about 300,000 barrels a day serves as the benchmark for the whole world," says Eugen Weinberg, an analyst at Germany's Commerzbank. He even believes that market players "attempt to influence" the key Cushing statistics "through their targeted actions."

Classic models, on the other hand, hardly play a role anymore in explaining the price of oil. The fact that relations with Iran have eased a little, or that there has been cautious improvement in Iraq, won't interest traders. They alternately attribute price changes to the crisis in the Middle East, to winter, to unrest in Nigeria and to exploding demand in China.

"None of this is new," says Fadel Gheit. "There hasn't been peace in the Middle East since Biblical days. And the conflict in Nigeria has also been going on for 40 years." Not to mention the recurring return of winter.

Gheit has been in the business for 30 years. He worked at Mobil Oil and JP Morgan before moving to Oppenheimer. He remembers oil prices of $9 a barrel. In the hearings before the US Congress, he served as a star witness of sorts, attesting to the madness of the speculators. "The traders use every excuse in the book to drive up prices," he says, "it's pure hysteria." On some mornings, when he arrives at his office in Manhattan, London traders have driven up prices by $4 a barrel overnight, perhaps because a pipeline burst somewhere in the world. "I have a degree in engineering," says Gheit. "This isn't heart surgery. It's a plumber's job, child's play." The damaged pipeline was probably repaired even before Gheit found out about it -- but after the traders made their profits.

The question is, how long can these galloping prices continue without doing permanent damage to the US and world economies? Rising prices for gasoline, heating oil and airline tickets will increase inflationary pressures and stifle demand in the short to medium term.

"In the end it's a straw that breaks the camel's back," says Gheit, a native Egyptian. Or it's like a weightlifter hefting weights, he says, until someone places a pencil on top and he crashes to the ground.

"This is a bubble," he insists, "and it will burst."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008
All Rights Reserved
Related SPIEGEL ONLINE links:Paul Krugman: Don't Rerun That '70s Economic Show (02/22/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,537078,00.html
Texas Tea in German Mud: Drilling for Oil in a Coastal Paradise (02/08/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,532656,00.html
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW with OPEC's Secretary- General: 'International Oil Companies Are the Real Dinosaurs' (01/20/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,529564,00.html :: :: :: :: :: .

Saundra Hummer

February 28th, 2008, 01:30 PM

The Huffington Post
Bill Buckley
by
Bill Curry
Posted February 28, 2008
12:27 AM (EST)
Bill Buckley died Wednesday at 82 at his home in Connecticut. He was the most influential public intellectual of his generation in this country, maybe the world.

More than anyone, even Goldwater or Reagan, he was the father of modern conservatism, which was as much an intellectual as a political movement from 1955, when he founded the National Review, to 2000 when, under Bush and DeLay, the movement foundered in a sea of law breaking, war mongering and greed.

I got to know Buckley a little in the 1990s, debating him on his show, Firing Line. The show, the longest running with a single host in TV history, was civil, substantive and high minded; in short, the opposite of everything political talk shows have since become.

Off camera he was witty and articulate and also gracious and warm. A couple of years after the show went off the air I was running for Governor of Connecticut and bumped into him. He put his hand gently on my arm and said, softly, "I will vote against you with the deepest affection."

Buckley evolved over time from one who insisted the constitution forbade us from ending segregation, to one who supported civil rights laws and a national holiday for Martin Luther King.
But the underlying tenets of his thought, grounded in his Roman Catholicism and equally fervent beliefs in free republics and free markets, remained consistent.

It didn't always keep him close to the leaders of his party or of the movement he had led. On the National Review website, Buckley identified himself as a "libertarian conservative," a designation that separated him, ever so slightly, from the excesses of his crowd.

He saw Viet Nam as a mistake and parted company with Bush over Iraq. He sailed to international waters to try marijuana before calling for legalization. His lovely book Nearer My God reveals a real spirituality, as opposed to the hateful, hypocritical swill peddled as religion by his party. Sam Tanenhaus, author of a much anticipated biography, says Buckley couldn't bear Ann Coulter.

I first met Buckley a decade before our Firing Line encounters at a reception for an ailing Mike Harrington, socialist and author of 'The Other America.' Harrington truly regarded Buckley as a friend. So did John Kenneth Galbraith. So did most liberals Buckley knew.

Buckley loved debate. Unlike today's cowardly conservatives, he debated the best minds he could entice on to a stage. He never used his opponents as props or punch lines for fixed fights. He liked them. Loving his own ideas, not just hating theirs, left room for liking them.

What a long sad fall from Bill Buckley to Bill O' Reilly. I'm not part of the crowd that says if we can just get along everything will be alright. But I am part of the crowd that thinks learning to get along better will help.

To get out of Iraq or into a new health care system will require some hard fighting, but also some hard thinking and most of all reasoned arguments to persuade, if not the opposition, certainly the public.

If you want to see how far we are from having that kind of debate, watch an old episode of Firing Line and then watch a random hour of live cable television. That's how far.

Bill Buckley raised an army against a liberal establishment. Like Barry Goldwater, he often dissented in later years from a conservative establishment he helped create.

The political debate Buckley launched is over, many of its old categories defunct. To shape a new debate we'll need at least a few people with the intellect, humanity, civility and great good humor of Bill Buckley. I hope we find them.

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Karl Rove 60 Minutes Expose: GOP Operative Explains Smear Campaign

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TEN MEN YOU MEET IN THE HUDDLE: LESSONS FROM A FOOTBALL LIFE
by Bill Curry

Read More: Ann Coulter, Bill Buckley, William F. Buckley, William F. Buckley Jr., William F. Buckley Jr. Ann Coulter, William F. Buckley Jr. Dies, Breaking Politics News
There are some interesting viewer comments about Mr. Buckley, just click on the following URL:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-curry/bill-buckley_b_88847.html
* * * * *

Saundra Hummer

February 28th, 2008, 01:49 PM

.
~~~~~~~
"The limitation of tyrants is the endurance of those they oppose."

Frederick Douglass
~~~
Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act."

Albert Einstein
~~~
"When the government fears the People, that is Liberty. When the People fear the Government, that is tyranny."

Thomas Jefferson
~~~
"Americans cannot escape a certain responsibility for what is done in our name around the world. In a democracy, even one as corrupted as ours, ultimate authority rests with the people. We empower the government with our votes, finance it with our taxes, bolster it with our silent acquiescence. If we are passive in the face of America's official actions overseas, we in effect endorse them."

Mark Hertzgaard

~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

February 28th, 2008, 02:19 PM

. *************
Dick Cheney’s Song of America

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:[This article explains so much, and lets us see the danger and the folly of continuing down the same path. Do you honestly believe the rest of the world will stand idlely by while we implement these plans once they see the danger in them? SRH]
The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.

By
David Armstrong
Harper's Magazine
0017789X
Oct 2002,
Vol. 305, Issue 1829

Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government policy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney’s masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwriters (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues behind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan.

The Plan was published in unclassified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, (pdf) as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like “Leaves of Grass,” a perpetually evolving work. It was the controversial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992 – from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance himself – and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commencement address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America’s new national security strategy – and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality.

The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.

The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions.

Cheney’s unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are the ideas that we now act upon every day with the full might of the United States military. Strangely, few critics have noted that Cheney’s work has a long history, or that it was once quite unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to circumstances that are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe Ruth-like sureness of his political work. He pointed to center field ten years ago, and now the ball is sailing over the fence.

Before the Plan was about domination it was about money. It took shape in late 1989, when the Soviet threat was clearly on the decline, and, with it, public support for a large military establishment. Cheney seemed unable to come to terms with either new reality. He remained deeply suspicious of the Soviets and strongly resisted all efforts to reduce military spending. Democrats in Congress jeered his lack of strategic vision, and a few within the Bush Administration were whispering that Cheney had become an irrelevant factor in structuring a response to the revolutionary changes taking place in the world.

More adaptable was the up-and-coming General Colin Powell, the newly appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser, Powell had seen the changes taking place in the Soviet Union firsthand and was convinced that the ongoing transformation was irreversible. Like Cheney, he wanted to avoid military cuts, but he knew they were inevitable. The best he could do was minimize them, and the best way to do that would be to offer a new security structure that would preserve American military capabilities despite reduced resources.

Powell and his staff believed that a weakened Soviet Union would result in shifting alliances and regional conflict. The United States was the only nation capable of managing the forces at play in the world; it would have to remain the preeminent military power in order to ensure the peace and shape the emerging order in accordance with American interests. U.S. military strategy, therefore, would have to shift from global containment to managing less-well-defined regional struggles and unforeseen contingencies. To do this, the United States would have to project a military “forward presence” around the world; there would be fewer troops but in more places. This plan still would not be cheap, but through careful restructuring and superior technology, the job could be done with 25 percent fewer troops. Powell insisted that maintaining superpower status must be the first priority of the U.S. military. “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do,” he said at the time. He also insisted that the troop levels be proposed were the bare minimum necessary to do so. This concept would come to be known as the “Base Force.”

Powell’s work on the subject proved timely. The Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, and five days later Powell had his new strategy ready to present to Cheney. Even as decades of repression were ending in Eastern Europe, however, Cheney still could not abide even the force and budget reductions Powell proposed. Yet he knew that cuts were unavoidable. Having no alternative of his own to offer, therefore, he reluctantly encouraged Powell to present his ideas to the president. Powell did so the next day; Bush made no promises but encouraged him to keep at it.

Less encouraging was the reaction of Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense for policy. A lifelong proponent of the unilateralist, maximum-force approach, he shared Cheney’s skepticism about the Eastern Bloc and so put his own staff to work on a competing plan that would somehow accommodate the possibility of Soviet backsliding.

As Powell and Wolfowitz worked out their strategies, Congress was losing patience. New calls went up for large cuts in defense spending in light of the new global environment. The harshest critique of Pentagon planning came from a usually dependable ally of the military establishment, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee. Nunn told fellow senators in March 1990 that there was a “threat blank” in the administration’s proposed $295 billion defense budget and that the Pentagon’s “basic assessment of the overall threat to our national security” was “rooted in the past.” The world had changed and yet the “development of a new military strategy that responds to the changes in the threat has not yet occurred.” Without that response, no dollars would be forthcoming.

Nunn’s message was clear. Powell and Wolfowitz began filling in the blanks. Powell started promoting a Zen-like new rationale for his Base Force approach. With the Soviets rapidly becoming irrelevant, Powell argued, the United States could no longer assess its military needs on the basis of known threats. Instead, the Pentagon should focus on maintaining the ability to address a wide variety of new and unknown challenges. This shift from a “threat based” assessment of military requirements to a “capability based” assessment would become a key theme of the Plan. The United States would move from countering Soviet attempts at dominance to ensuring its own dominance. Again, this project would not be cheap.

Powell’s argument, circular though it may have been, proved sufficient to hold off Congress. Winning support among his own colleagues, however, proved more difficult. Cheney remained deeply skeptical about the Soviets, and Wolfowitz was only slowly coming around. To account for future uncertainties, Wolfowitz recommended drawing down U.S. forces to roughly the levels proposed by Powell, but doing so at a much slower pace; seven years as opposed to the four Powell suggested. He also built in a “crisis response/reconstitution” clause that would allow for reversing the process if events in the Soviet Union, or elsewhere, turned ugly.

With these now elements in place, Cheney saw something that might work. By combining Powell’s concepts with those of Wolfowitz, he could counter congressional criticism that his proposed defense budget was out of line with the new strategic reality, while leaving the door open for future force increases. In late June, Wolfowitz, Powell, and Cheney presented their plan to the president, and within as few weeks Bush was unveiling the new strategy.

Bush laid out the rationale for the Plan in a speech in Aspen, Colorado, on August 2, 1990. He explained that since the danger of global war had substantially receded, the principal threats to American security would emerge in unexpected quarters. To counter those threats, he said, the United States would increasingly base the size and structure of its forces on the need to respond to “regional contingencies” and maintain a peacetime military presence overseas. Meeting that need would require maintaining the capability to quickly deliver American forces to any “corner of the globe,” and that would mean retaining many major weapons systems then under attack in Congress as overly costly and unnecessary, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Despite those massive outlays, Bush insisted that the proposed restructuring would allow the United States to draw down its active forces by 25 percent in the years ahead, the same figure Powell had projected ten months earlier.

The Plan’s debut was well timed. By a remarkable coincidence, Bush revealed it the very day Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait.

The Gulf War temporarily reduced the pressure to cut military spending. It also diverted attention from some of the Plan’s less appealing aspects. In addition, it inspired what would become one of the Plan’s key features: the use of “overwhelming force” to quickly defeat enemies, a concept since dubbed the Powell Doctrine.

Once the Iraqi threat was “contained,” Wolfowitz returned to his obsession with the Soviets, planning various scenarios involved possible Soviet intervention in regional conflicts. The failure of the hard-liner coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, however, made it apparent that such planning might be unnecessary. Then, in late December, just as the Pentagon was preparing to put the Plan in place, the Soviet Union collapsed.

With the Soviet Union gone, the United States had a choice. It could capitalize on the euphoria of the moment by nurturing cooperative relations and developing multilateral structures to help guide the global realignment then taking place; or it could consolidate its power and pursue a strategy of unilateralism and global dominance. It chose the latter course.

In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee, required “sufficient power” to “deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage.” To emphasize the point, he cast the United States in the role of street thug. “I want to be the bully on the block,” he said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that “there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States.”

As Powell and Cheney were making this new argument in their congressional rounds, Wolfowitz was busy expanding the concept and working to have it incorporated into U.S. policy. During the early months of 1992, Wolfowitz supervised the preparation of an internal Pentagon policy statement used to guide military officials in the preparation of their forces, budgets, and strategies. The classified document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance, depicted a world dominated by the United States, which would maintain its superpower status through a combination of positive guidance and overwhelming military might. the image was one of a heavily armed City on a Hill.

The DPG stated that the “first objective” of U.S. defense strategy was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” Achieving this objective required that the United States “prevent any hostile power from dominating a region” of strategic significance. America’s new mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike “that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”

Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.

The DPG also envisioned maintaining a substantial U.S. nuclear arsenal while discouraging the development of nuclear programs in other countries. It depicted a “U.S.-led system of collective security” that implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any king by countries such as Germany and Japan. And it called for the “early introduction” of a global missile-defense system that would presumably render all missile-launched weapons, including those of the United States, obsolete. (The United States would, of course, remain the world’s dominant military power on the strength of its other weapons systems.)

The story, in short, was dominance by way of unilateral action and military superiority. While coalitions – such as the one formed during the Gulf War – held “considerable promise for promoting collective action,” the draft DPG stated, the United States should expect future alliances to be “ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.” It was essential to create “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S.” and essential that America position itself “to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in crisis situation requiring immediate action. “While the U.S. cannot become the world’s policeman,” the document said, “we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends.” Among the interests the draft indicated the United States would defend in this manner were “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism.”

The DPC was leaked to the New York Times in March 1992. Critics on both the left and the right attacked it immediately. Then-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan portrayed candidate a “blank check” to America’s allies by suggesting the United States would “go to war to defend their interests.” Bill Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, characterized it as an attempt by Pentagon officials to “find an excuse for big defense budgets instead of downsizing.” Delaware Senator Joseph Biden criticized the Plan’s vision of a “Pax Americana, a global security system where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by U.S. military power.” Even those who found the document’s stated goals commendable feared that its chauvinistic tone could alienate many allies. Cheney responded by attempting to distance himself from the Plan. The Pentagon’s spokesman dismissed the leaked document as a “low-level draft” and claimed that Cheney had not seen it. Yet a fifteen-page section opened by proclaiming that it constituted “definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense.”

Powell took a more forthright approach to dealing with the flap: he publicly embraced the DPG’s core concept. In a TV interview, he said he believed it was “just fine” that the United States reign as the world’s dominant military power. “I don’t think we should apologize for that,” he said. Despite bad reviews in the foreign press, Powell insisted that America’s European allies were “not afraid” of U.S. military might because it was “power that could be trusted” and “will not be misused.”

Mindful that the draft DPG’s overt expression of U.S. dominance might not fly, Powell in the same interview also trotted out a new rationale for the original Base Force plan. He argued that in a post-Soviet world, filled with new dangers, the United States needed the ability to fight on more than one front at a time. “One of the most destabilizing things we could do,” he said, “is to cut our forces so much that if we’re tied up in one area of the world ..... and we are not seen to have the ability to influence another area of the world, we might invite just the sort of crisis we’re trying to deter.” This two-war strategy provided a possible answer to Nunn’s “threat blank.” One unknown enemy wasn’t enough to justify lavish defense budgets, but two unknown enemies might do the trick.

Within a few weeks the Pentagon had come up with a more comprehensive response to the DPG furor. A revised version was leaked to the press that was significantly less strident in tone, though only slightly less strident in fact. While calling for the United States to prevent “any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests,” the new draft stressed that America would act in concert with its allies – when possible. It also suggested the United Nations might take an expanded role in future political, economic, and security matters, a concept conspicuously absent from the original draft.

The controversy died down, and, with a presidential campaign under way, the Pentagon did nothing to stir it up again. Following Bush’s defeat, however, the Plan reemerged. In January 1993, in his very last days in office. Cheney released a final version. The newly titled Defense Strategy for the 1990s retained the soft touch of the revised draft DPG as well as its darker themes. The goal remained to preclude “hostile competitors from challenging our critical interests” and preventing the rise of a new super-power. Although it expressed a “preference” for collective responses in meeting such challenges, it made clear that the United States would play the lead role in any alliance. Moreover, it noted that collective action would “not always be timely.” Therefore, the United States needed to retain the ability to “act independently, if necessary.” To do so would require that the United States maintain its massive military superiority. Others were not encouraged to follow suit. It was kinder, gentler dominance, but it was dominance all the same. And it was this thesis that Cheney and company nailed to the door on their way out.

The new administration tacitly rejected the heavy-handed, unilateral approach to U.S. primacy favored by Powell, Cheney, and Wolfowitz. Taking office in the relative calm of the early post – Cold War era, Clinton sought to maximize America’s existing position of strength and promote its interests through economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (dominated by the United States), greater international free trade, and the development of allied coalitions, including American-led collective military action. American policy, in short, shifted from global dominance to globalism.

Clinton also failed to prosecute military campaigns with sufficient vigor to satisfy the defense strategists of the previous administration. Wolfowitz found Clinton’s Iraq policy especially infuriating. During the Gulf War, Wolfowitz harshly criticized the decision – endorsed by Powell and Cheney – to end the war once the U.N. mandate of driving Saddam’s forces from Kuwait had been fulfilled, leaving the Iraqi dictator in office. He called on the Clinton Administration to finish the job by arming Iraqi opposition forces and sending U.S. ground troops to defense a base of operation for them in the southern region of the country. In a 1996 editorial, Wolfowitz raised the prospect of launching a preemptive attack against Iraq. “Should we sit idly by,” he wrote, “with our passive containment policy and our inept cover operations, and wait until a tyrant possessing large quantities of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated delivery systems strikes out at us?” Wolfowitz suggested it was “necessary” to “go beyond the containment strategy.”

Wolfowitz’s objections to Clinton’s military tactics were not limited to Iraq. Wolfowitz had endorsed President Bush’s decision in late 1992 to intervene in Somalia on a limited humanitarian basis. Clinton later expanded the mission into a broader peacekeeping effort, a move that ended in disaster. With perfect twenty-twenty hindsight, Wolfowitz decried Clinton’s decision to send U.S. troops into combat “where there is no significant U.S. national interest.” He took a similar stance on Clinton’s ill-fated democracy-building effort in Haiti, chastising the president for engaging “American military prestige” on an issue” of the little or no importance” to U.S. interests. Bosnia presented a more complicated mix of posturing and ideologics. While running for president, Clinton had scolded the Bush Administration for failing to take action to stem the flow of blood in the Balkans. Once in office, however, and chastened by their early misadventures in Somalia and Haiti, Clinton and his advisers struggled to articulate a coherent Bosnia policy. Wolfowitz complained in 1994 of the administration’s failure to “develop an effective course of action.' He personally advocated arming the Bosnian Muslims in their fight against the Serbs. Powell, on the other hand, publicly cautioned against intervention. In 1995 a U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign, combined with a Croat-Muslim ground offensive, forced the Serbs into negotiations, leading to the Dayton Peace Accords. In 1999, as Clinton rounded up support for joint U.S.-NATO action in Kosovo, Wolfowitz hectored the president for failing to act quickly enough.

After eight years of what Cheney et al. regarded as wrong-headed military adventures and pinprick retaliatory strikes, the Clinton Administration – mercifully, in their view – came to an end. With the ascension of George W. Bush to the presidency, the authors of the Plan returned to government, ready to pick up where they had left off. Cheney of course, became vice president, Powell became secretary of state, and Wolfowitz moved into the number two slot at the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy. Other contributors also returned: Two prominent members of the Wolfowitz team that crafted the original DPG took up posts on Cheney’s staff. I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who served as Wolfowitz’s deputy during Bush I, became the vice president’s chief of staff and national security adviser. And Eric Edelman, an assistant deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush Administration, became a top foreign policy adviser to Cheney.

Cheney and company had not changed their minds during the Clinton interlude about the correct course for U.S. policy, but they did not initially appear bent on resurrecting the Plan. Rather than present a unified vision of foreign policy to the world, in the early going the administration focused on promoting a series of seemingly unrelated initiatives. Notable among these were missile defense and space-based weaponry, long-standing conservative causes. In addition, a distinct tone of unilateralism emerged as the new administration announced its intent to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in order to pursue missile defense; its opposition to U.S. ratification of an international nuclear-test-ban pact; and its refusal to become a party to an International Criminal Court. It also raised the prospect of ending the self-imposed U.S. moratorium on nuclear testing initiated by the President’s father during the 1992 presidential campaign. Moreover, the administration adopted a much tougher diplomatic posture, as evidenced, most notably, by a distinct hardening of relations with both China and North Korea. While none of this was inconsistent with the concept of U.S. dominance, these early actions did not, at the time, seem to add up to a coherent strategy.

It was only after September 11 that the Plan emerged in full. Within days of the attacks, Wolfowitz and Libby began calling for unilateral military action against Iraq, on the shaky premise that Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network could not have pulled off the assaults without Saddam Hussein’s assistance. At the time, Bush rejected such appeals, but Wolfowitz kept pushing and the President soon came around. In his State of the Union address in January, Bush labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil,” and warned that he would “not wait on events” to prevent them from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States. He reiterated his commitment to preemption in his West Point speech in June. “If we wait for threats to fully materialize we will have waited too long,” he said. “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.” Although it was less noted, Bush in that same speech also reintroduced the Plan’s central theme. He declared that the United States would prevent the emergence of a rival power by maintaining “military strengths beyond the challenge.” With that, the President effectively adopted a strategy his father’s administration had developed ten years earlier to ensure that the United States would remain the world’s preeminent power. While the headlines screamed “preemption,” no one noticed the declaration of the dominance strategy.

In case there was any doubt about the administration’s intentions, the Pentagon’s new DPG lays them out. Signed by Wolfowitz’s new boss, Donald Rumsfeld, in May and leaked to the Los Angeles Times in July, it contains all the key elements of the original Plan and adds several complementary features. The preemptive strikes envisioned in the original draft DPG are now “unwarned attacks.” The old Powell-Cheney notion of military “forward presence” is now “forwarded deterrence.” The use of overwhelming force to defeat an enemy called for in the Powell Doctrine is now labeled an “effects based” approach.

Some of the names have stayed the same. Missile defense is back, stronger than ever, and the call goes up again for a shift from a “threat based” structure to a “capabilities based” approach. The new DPG also emphasizes the need to replace the so-called Cold War strategy of preparing to fight two major conflicts simultaneously with what the Los Angeles Times refers to as “a more complex approach aimed at dominating air and space on several fronts.” This, despite the fact that Powell had originally conceived – and the first Bush Administration had adopted – the two-war strategy as a means of filling the “threat blank” left by the end of the Cold War.

Rumsfeld’s version adds a few new ideas, most impressively the concept of preemptive strikes with nuclear weapons. These would be earth-penetrating nuclear weapons used for attacking “hardened and deeply buried targets,” such as command-and-control bunkers, missile silos, and heavily fortified underground facilities used to build and store weapons of mass destruction. The concept emerged earlier this year when the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review leaked out. At the time, arms-control experts warned that adopting the NPR’s recommendations would undercut existing arms-control treaties, do serious harm to nonproliferation efforts, set off new rounds of testing, and dramatically increase the prospectus of nuclear weapons being used in combat. Despite these concerns, the administration appears intent on developing the weapons. In a final flourish, the DPG also directs the military to develop cyber-, laser-, and electronic-warfare capabilities to ensure U.S. dominion over the heavens.

Rumsfeld spelled out these strategies in Foreign affairs earlier this year, and it is there that he articulated the remaining elements of the Plan; unilateralism and global dominance. Like the revised DPG of 1992, Rumsfeld feigns interest in collective action but ultimately rejects it as impractical. “Wars can benefit from coalitions,” he writes, “but they should not be fought by committee.” And coalitions, he adds, “must not determine the mission.” The implication is the United States will determine the missions and lead the fights. Finally, Rumsfeld expresses the key concept of the Plan: preventing the emergence of rival powers. Like the original draft DPG of 1992, he states that America’s goal is to develop and maintain the military strength necessary to “dissuade” rivals or adversaries from “competing.” with no challengers, and a proposed defense budget of $379 billion for next year, the United States would reign over all its surveys.

Reaction to the latest edition of the Plan has, thus far, focused on preemption. Commentators parrot the administration’s line, portraying the concept of preemptory strikes as a “new” strategy aimed at combating terrorism. In an op-ed piece for the Washington Post following Bush’s West Point address, former Clinton adviser William Galston described preemption as part of a “brand-new security doctrine,” and warned of possible negative diplomatic consequences. Others found the concept more appealing. Loren Thompson of the conservative Lexington Institute hailed the “Bush Doctrine” as “a necessary response to the new dangers that America faces” and declared it “the biggest shift in strategic thinking in two generations.” Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley echoed that sentiment, writing that “no talk of this ilk has been heard from American leaders since John Foster Dulles talked of rolling back the Iron Curtain.”

Preemption, of course, is just part of the Plan, and the Plan is hardly new. It is a warmed-over version of the strategy Cheney and his coauthors rolled out in 1992 as the answer to the end of the Cold War. Then the goal was global dominance, and it met with bad reviews. Now it is the answer to terrorism. The emphasis is on preemption, and the reviews are generally enthusiastic. Through all of this, the dominance motif remains, though largely undetected.

This country once rejected “unwarned” attacks such as Pearl Harbor as barbarous and unworthy of a civilized nation. Today many cheer the prospect of conducting sneak attacks – potentially with nuclear weapons – on piddling powers run by tin-pot despots.

We also once denounced those who tried to rule the world. Our primary objection (at least officially) to the Soviet Union as its quest for global domination. Through the successful employment of the tools of containment, deterrence, collective security, and diplomacy – the very methods we now reject – we rid ourselves and the world of the Evil Empire. Having done so, we now pursue the very thing for which we opposed it. And now that the Soviet Union is gone, there appears to be no one left to stop us.

Perhaps, however, there is. The Bush Administration and its loyal opposition seem not to grasp that the quests for dominance generate backlash. Those threatened with preemption may themselves launch preemptory strikes. And even those who are successfully “preempted” or dominated may object and find means to strike back. Pursuing such strategies may, paradoxically, result in greater factionalism and rivalry, precisely the things we seek to end.

Not all Americans share Colin Powell’s desire to be “the bully on the block.” In fact, some believe that by following a different path the United States has an opportunity to establish a more lasting security environment. As Dartmouth professors Stephen Brooks and William Woblforth wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “Unipolarity makes it possible to be the global bully – but it also offers the United States the luxury of being able to look beyond its immediate needs to its own, and the world’s, long-term interests. ..... Magnanimity and restraint in the face of temptation are tenets of successful statecraft that have proved their worth.” Perhaps, in short, we can achieve our desired ends by means other than global domination.

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Saundra Hummer

February 28th, 2008, 08:38 PM

FACTCHECK.ORG
ANNENBERG POLITICAL FACT CHECK

Fear and False Claims
February 28, 2008
Playing the terrorism card, a GOP-linked group twists facts about a controversial electronic surveillance bill.
Summary
A widely-seen ad pushes a White House-backed bill that would make it easier for the government to wiretap Americans. It also would give retroactive legal immunity to telecom companies that cooperated with Bush's secret, post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program.

Sponsored by Defense of Democracies, a group with GOP connections, the ad takes the House to task for not passing the bill, as the Senate has. The ad appeals to fear, with its image of Osama bin Laden and similar ploys. But we find that it also makes several misleading claims.

Specifically, the ad says that:."The law" allowing government eavesdroppers to intercept al Qaeda communications has expired. But the main, 30-year-old law that lets them listen in, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is still on the books. It's a law amending FISA, making it easier for intelligence-gatherers to eavesdrop on communications that might include Americans, that has expired.

."[T]he House refuses to vote" to replace the lapsed law. Actually, the House passed its own version of the legislation months ago. The House and Senate are now in conference to resolve the differences in their bills, which is the normal legislative process.

."[N]ew surveillance against terrorists is crippled." The administration has admitted that surveillance authorized under the expired bill will extend at least into August. It has also admitted that when a new member of a known terrorist organization is discovered, that person can be surveilled via authorizations granted under the expired law. And at any rate, FISA itself hasn't expired, and any time the government has strong evidence that someone is a member of a terrorist organization, it can still get a court order to eavesdrop on that person.

Analysis
The ads began running Friday, Feb. 22 in 17 media markets targeting 15 Democratic members of the House. A national version was up and running Monday on the major cable networks, and it was expected to air for most of this week. It appeared during a commercial break in Tuesday night's MSNBC-sponsored debate between Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The group behind the ad, Defense of Democracies, was set up just last week. It was spun off from a nonprofit called Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which was formed after 9/11 and is headed by Clifford May, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee. The three listed members of the foundation's board of directors are Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of the business magazine Forbes and a Republican candidate for president in 1996 and 2000; Jack Kemp, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and GOP nominee Bob Dole's running mate in 1996; and Jeane Kirkpatrick, best known as Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations. Kirkpatrick died in 2006, however. A few Democrats were sprinkled in among the parent group's advisers (as well as Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman), but several of the most prominent, including Sen. Charles Schumer of New York and Donna Brazile, the former campaign manager for Al Gore's presidential bid, have resigned because of this ad. Brazile issued a statement calling the ad campaign "misleading and reckless" and saying it would "have the effect of emboldening terrorists."

Organized under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, the new group is not required to publicly disclose its donors, and it has no plans to do so, according to a spokesman. (Brazile’s statement claimed that "due to the influence of their funders" the parent group has "morphed into a radical right wing organization.") The group also declined to provide a list of lawmakers being targeted by the ad, but we’ve learned that they include Democratic Reps. Kirsten Gillibrand and Michael Arcuri of New York, Tim Mahoney of Florida, Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Nancy Boyda of Kansas, and Tim Walz of Minnesota, all of them first-term lawmakers who may be vulnerable in their reelection bids.

Defense of Democracies TV Ad: "Midnight"

Narrator: Midnight. February 16th. The law that lets intelligence agencies intercept al-Qaeda communications expires.

Senate Democrats and Republicans vote overwhelmingly to extend terrorist surveillance.

But the House refuses to vote and instead goes on vacation.

So new surveillance against terrorists is crippled.

Tell the House of Representatives to do its job and pass the Senate’s terror surveillance bill… to keep us all safe. Osama bin Calling ...

Cue the scary music, black background and misleading statement:

Narrator: Midnight. February 16. The law that lets intelligence agencies intercept al-Qaeda communications expires.
This is simply not true. First, if government eavesdroppers want to listen in on communications between two suspected terrorists who are outside the U.S., they can. That would likely include a lot of al-Qaeda-related chats. No warrant is necessary as long as the communication isn't intercepted over a wire in the U.S.

Second, even if one of the parties targeted for tapping is in the U.S., the government still can rely on the granddaddy of laws that deal with wiretapping as a foreign sleuthing tool, the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Under FISA, intelligence-gatherers must apply to a special court for a warrant to tap the communications of a person in the U.S. The process can be cumbersome, although officials have said that court approval sometimes takes only minutes. And if there's an emergency and the government has strong evidence, the wiretap can proceed before an order is sought; authorities have up to 72 hours to get their application to the FISA court, which seldom swats the government down. Of the 2,181 applications made to the FISA court for authority to conduct electronic surveillance or physical searches in 2006, just one was denied, and only in part, according to the Justice Department's annual report on the statute.

What the ad's narrator really means is that a law updating and expanding FISA to make the government's work easier, which was passed last August, has expired. The Protect America Act was given a life of only six months because lawmakers wanted to put something in place while continuing to debate its civil liberties and national security implications before deciding whether to make it permanent. That's the law that vaporized on Feb. 16, with disagreements between the House and Senate still unresolved.

The Protect America Act, among other things, expanded the range of situations in which the government could operate without a FISA warrant. Controversy arose because the wording of the law could have allowed the government to wiretap the conversations and e-mails of Americans without a court order when targeting a foreigner abroad.

Margarita, Anyone?
Which brings us to the ad's next claim:

Narrator: Senate Democrats and Republicans vote overwhelmingly to extend terrorist surveillance. But the House refuses to vote and instead goes on vacation.

It's true that the Senate passed a bill replacing the Protect America Act, and it was largely to the White House's liking. It's not as though the House sat on its hands, however. It passed its own bill, the Restore Act, back in November.

The Bush administration opposes the House bill, as do its allies at Defense of Democracies, and the point of the ad is to pressure House members to accede to the Senate version. Both bills rein in, to some degree, the Protect America Act's broad wiretapping provisions, which had alarmed civil libertarians. The Senate bill grants more authority to the executive branch with respect to ordering surveillance, however, and a minimal role to the court, while the House bill envisions a larger role for the court.

And there's another major difference that's become a flash point on Capitol Hill. The Senate bill would give telecommunications companies retroactive immunity from lawsuits arising from their cooperation with the Bush administration's post-9/11 intelligence-gathering program. In December 2005, the New York Times broke a story revealing that after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, President Bush secretly authorized a program that allowed the government to bypass FISA in pursuit of terrorists, even when collecting communications in the U.S. More than 40 lawsuits contending that the program was illegal and that telecom companies violated citizens' constitutional rights by participating in it are pending in federal court in California, consolidated from around the country. Bush has accused Democrats who oppose this immunity provision of shilling for the trial lawyers' bar, and he has cast the House Democrats as roadblocks on this issue almost daily.

Castigating the "Cripplers"
The ad's next claim is a very strong statement, but we don't have the security clearance to say how much truth is in it.

Narrator:[N]ew surveillance against terrorists is crippled.
Though the narrator never mentions it, this seems to be a reference to possible refusal by telecom firms to assist with wiretapping. In a letter written to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes last Friday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said:

Mukasey/McConnell letter: We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress' failure to act. ... In particular, [companies] have delayed or refused compliance with our requests to initiate new surveillances of terrorist and other foreign intelligence targets. ... Indeed, this has led directly to a degraded intelligence capability.

The alleged reason for this was because Congress hadn't yet given the firms retroactive immunity. Administration sources had told reporters that same evening that at least one telecom firm was refusing to help the government track newly suspected terrorists, according to the Los Angeles Times. Hours later, though, officials withdrew that claim, saying all the telecom companies would continue cooperating with the government's requests while Congress worked on a compromise.

Critics of the immunity provision point out that it provides blanket immunity and is not specifically targeted to lawsuits arising from the companies' cooperation with the post-9/11 program. Some suspect there may be another secret program that hasn't yet come to light. Telecom companies already have immunity for actions they take in connection with surveillance conducted under the law.

The ad's play to public fear echoes the tactics used by the administration to put strong pressure on Congress. In an interview late last year with the El Paso Times, McConnell even went so far as to say that without quick approval of the law, "some Americans are going to die" because of continuing public discussion of the issue. The reporter asked McConnell how he makes the case that the new law is important.

El Paso Times: You have to do public relations, I assume?

McConnell: Well, one of the things you do is you talk to reporters. ... The fact we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means. ...

El Paso Times: So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

McConnell: That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public.

Unless McConnell is clairvoyant, it's going too far to proclaim that Americans "are going to die" because a wiretapping bill is being publicly debated.

The Ad is careful to specify that "new" surveillance has been crippled. That's because any eavesdropping orders issued under the Protect America Act of last August would be in effect for up to a year, so there's no imminent danger of the communications of known terrorists.

The ad's closing assertion is that the House should "do its job" by passing the Senate bill to "keep us all safe." But if anything in the murky debate over spycraft is clear, it's that the Constitution doesn't make it "the job" of the House to rubber-stamp Senate-passed bills, or bend to the wishes of the president.

– by Viveca Novak

Sources
Meyer, Josh. "White House backtracks on claims of lost intelligence." Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb. 2008.

Riechmann, Deb. "Bush pushes House to pass intelligence bill, says Democrats side with trial lawyers." Associated Press Financial Wire, 23 Feb. 2008.

Lichtblau, Eric. "More sharp words traded over lapsed wiretap law." The New York Times, 23 Feb. 2008.

Risen, James and Eric Lichtblau. "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts." The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2005.

Mukasey, Michael and J.M. McConnell. Letter to The Hon. Silvestre Reyes, 22 Feb. 208.

Roberts, Chris. "Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence Surveillance Act." El Paso Times, 22 Aug. 2007.

Bazan, Elizabeth. "The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: A Brief Overview of Selected Issues." CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, updated 14 Dec. 2007.

Rockefeller, Jay and Patrick Leahy, Silvestre Reyes and John Conyers. "Scare Tactics and Our Surveillance Bill." Washington Post, 25 Feb. 2008.

Saundra Hummer

February 29th, 2008, 12:11 AM

.
~~~~~~~
"A society bingeing on fear makes itself vulnerable to far more profound forms of destruction than terror attacks. The "terrorism war", like a nostalgic echo of the cold war, is using these popular fears to advance a different agenda - the re-engineering of American life through permanent mobilization."

William Greider
~~~
"If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, - not democracy... But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country."

Michael Parenti
~~~
"The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus."

Noam Chomsky
~~~
"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands."

Eric Alterman
~~~
"While vast sums of money are being siphoned off into hidden [military] coffers, Americas schools, hospitals and public services are facing cutbacks and closures."

Representative Henry Waxman

~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

February 29th, 2008, 01:40 PM

.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
NEWS DISSECTOR
T0 THE READERS OF THE NEWS DISSECTOR BLOG: * UPDATE
ENDING A WEEK OF WOE
UPDATE
February 29, 2008

Yesterday I cruised down Route 80 to the Poconos in Pennsylvania to screen my film In Debt We Trust and speak at East Stroudsburg University. It was a cold night. Snow was threatening but never arrived.

I didn't know if I would get any turnout. When I showed up, there was a soldier in a camouflage outfit waiting in the lobby. He was an ROTC instructor and told me he and some his "troops" came because, as I show in the film, the military is also targeted by predatory lenders. He was a big fan of rightwinger Dave Ramsey who he was pleased to see in the film.

Blow the bugle, spread the word: the auditorium was packed and despite my computer breakdown blues and the overall frustration at getting folks riled up on this issue, the event went very well. That means only a trickle left after the film, and I was up for a night of preaching and teaching.

Students there are as worried about their loans and credit cards as are kids all over the country.

One woman in the crowd told me that 36% of the homes in the county were financed by subprime loans. I was delighted when the local TV station showed up as well as a young reporter for the Pocono Record. A big thanks for the University invite and the support of the Sociology Department and the Pocono Progressives.

When I woke up in the morning. I saw some headlines including "US Economy Slows to a Halt," and "President Bush Says There Will Be No Recession." Right!

Later I was told of W's profound insight of the origins of the crisis. Write this down, As related to Ann Curry of the Today Show: ". . . I think this economy is down because we built too many houses."

"WE" did, did WE?
My argument goes further, of course. And apparently The Pocono Record thought it had merit because they turned my appearance into the lead story on the front page of the paper. Get this:

Emmy-winning producer warns ESU students of U.S. credit 'crisis'
By ADAM McNAUGHTON
Pocono Record Writer

EAST STROUDSBURG - College students and other Americans are being aggressively targeted by credit companies to create a growing culture of debt, an independent filmmaker said on Wednesday.

"This is something we really have to pay attention to because ultimately it will affect all of us," said Emmy Award-winning producer Danny Schechter. "You can have every degree from a great university like this, it doesn't mean you're going to find a job if there are no jobs to be had."

After the film, Schechter said that Americans are being tied down by mounting debt that is becoming harder and harder to get out from under and could eventually ruin the economy.

"This crisis has led to the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from the poorest people to the richest people," Schechter said…..

I said alot more but he did get part of my presentation right.

Back in NY I learned that on that same way main funder of college loans in Pennsylvania was cutting back on student loans.

Now if I can only get a real campus tour going. I think we can spread this issue nationwide. I have a written proposal. I just need a funder.

I have often felt very alone on this issue, but to my surprise, more voices are coming out of the woodwork, and from suprising places.

GLENN GETS IT
CNN's Glenn Beck whose arrogance and shoot from the hips provocations I find annoying most of the time is now coming around to the view that the economy is in deep doo doo.

He wrote in his CNNCcolumn yesterday:

"Less than a year ago, a recession was the last thing on anyone's mind. In fact, over the summer, as I was questioning the conventional wisdom, I read an article on my television show that quoted a financial expert as saying, "It is the strongest global market that we've seen in the history of measuring these things."

That's when I realized how fast the herd was approaching the cliff.

But with predictions of a recession now more common than Fed rate cuts - and that's saying something - maybe now it's time to look at a worst-case scenario. After all, considering all sides of an issue, no matter how extreme they may be, doesn't make you a crazy person; it makes you an educated one.

So to understand what a real meltdown could look like, I turned to Nouriel Roubini, chairman of RGE Monitor and professor of economics at New York University's Stern School of Business. (He's someone I also quote warning of a financial disaster.)

….Roubini believes that this will be a "very painful and severe recession" that could last for 18 months or more, but it will be more like 1981 than 1929. Families may be eating soup again, but at least it'll be in their own kitchens.

Now, do I think any of what you just read will happen?

I have no idea, and that's exactly the problem. I'm not an economist or a stockbroker; I'm just a guy trying to make the best decisions I can, and picking the brains of real experts helps me do that.

But I do know one thing for sure: Depressions aren't advertised in advance. Last time around we went from the Roaring '20s to bread lines in a matter of just a few years.

Anyone who says that can't happen again either doesn't know history, doesn't understand how interconnected the world's economies have become, or is lying to you. While that doesn't mean you should panic, it does mean you should prepare - something my grandfather would've done a long time ago."

Already many Ron Paul Supporters are expressing similar fears. Barack Obama told students in Texas the other day to be careful because credit cards may be next.

A word to the wise…..don't ignore this crisis.

MY MAC MORASS
In my personal crisis, more readers are generously sending in contributions to the Global Center at 575 8th Ave #2200 NYC l0018 to help. Thanks to all of you. I am very touched.

Unfortunately, back in reality city, I learned today that the problem in my machine was that a "Seagate Momentus Drive" with a known high rate of frequent failures was driving my MacBook. (Apple is apparently not using them any more but too late for me.)

No one seems to want to accept responsibility for selling these lemons. The tech working on the machine sent my morale into the pits by telling me that he can't recover my data and he doesn't think a very pricey California firm that does specialized data recovery in "clean rooms" can do it either.

There goes a year of work!

I am going to try to see if we can extract some older data from an even older machine that succumbed to a Kernel Panic. I panicked when I heard about that.

So I am still machineless except for my office klunker. The lesson?

I will put it in caps so I will remember it: BACK UP YOUR DATA. (Beware: the tech also told me that sometimes the back-up drives fail too.)

I appreciate all the kind and even some of the not so kind letters.

Reach me at dissector@mediachannel.org

Wednesday Update: I missed Obama misprounouncing Massachusetts. It took me awhile to learn how to pronouce Worcester MA when I was there and it was longer than him. When you go to the Harvard Law School, you are in another state allogether. (Wooster!)….

I missed Hillary going on and on about what she will do on "Day One. She is becoming more macho than ever, and I wonder what military experience she has had. As much as George Bush, I am sure. Also chagrinned to see her posing with former NATO Commaner Wes Clark, the bomber of Belgrade…..My suspicious is that all the candidates will end up making hawkish noises. Does anyone mention the military-industrial complex any more? Certainly not our media?

Tim Russert has more fun showing off his pronounciation of Russian politicians and trying to trick/trip up politicians with a pkoy that has been used before. He really does alot of coverage of Russia, doesn't he? He didn't mention that the new PM to be, Mr M was in Serbia the other day criticizing US policy towards Kosovo..a policy shaped by the Clintonians. No mention of that!

On the economy front,

Not surprising to read that President Bush is siding with the banks and mortgage lenders and threatening to veto a Mortage Relief bill. Hasn't he always sided with them and done their bidding? The sad truth is that many Democrats did too. Larry Summers, ex Treasury Sec says that bankrupcy reform could save 500,000 homes. This is the law that was already "reformed" as I showed in my film, with non-stop lobbying by the industry. Dems and Repugs supported it. It was a non-partisan disaster that is finally revealing its odiousness in the current crisis.

The Fed's Ben Bernanke is about to cut interest rates again. Can anyone rember the reasons he gave last summer for not wanting to? How soon we forget! He said then he was afraid of causing INFLATION. Guess what, as the rates were slashed, inflation climbed. So this continuous rise in prices that we are experiencing in the grocery story and everywhere else is happening by design-a good way to transfer your money into the vaults of corporations and banks. Home prices continue to fall….no "fix" in site.

Gas expected to hit $4 a gallon. Greenspan is now urging oil producers to delink from the dollar. The dollar hit an all time low with the Euro. Is this just happening?

Don't think so.

Fox Business Channel called today. They want to see In Debt We Trust-not to show it of course, but to see it. I guess if I can help educate the Fox Business Channel. I must rise to the task, even at my own expense.

Heard that the New College in San Francisco is in deep distress…..Just what we need: The loss of a unique progressive institution. I hope they can find a way to survive.

Now, back to my soap opera.
Some our readers are coming to the rescue with offers to help pay for the repairs I need and a backup device. Thank you. In this case manna came not from heaven but from Florida. Not sure if he can sign a check there in the dark.

Another reader kindly offers $300 if someone will match it. All donations are tax deductible to the Global Center via Paypal or by check to 575 8th Ave, Suite 2200, NY NY 10018..Thanks to all who are responding to this small problem in world terms but its pretty big for moi.

Still sidelined….lots to say but no technology to say it with…..I hope this older office machine is not going too….Feels creaky, won't print.

Keep hope alive….mmmmm

Also, just as I expected. I wrote to some of the yokels who like to leave anonymous putdowns in the comments section of this blog, inviting them to have a real say or debate. They never respond…..

Off to speak at East Stroudsburg University in the Poconos Tonight at 7PM. (sorry ESU to misspell yr name as Stroudsberg)….

Hope to be back in action sooner rather than later

Danny

TUES UPDATE: , TekServ, one of the best Mac places I know in New York has my ailing machine- I think of it the way musicians think of their "axes"- but as I feared they would rather pop in a new hard drive than fix the one that is supposedly down and out. ("We don't know why it happens, it just happens," said their technie.) I am sure somebody may have been able to fix it another way, but I don't know that somebody and haven;t mastered the mysteries of UNIX tools or Apple mechanics. They charge $600 to retrieve data as well with no guarantees,

Thanks to everyone who wrote to express concern and especially to the reader who offered a no-interest loan to help, but as anyone who has been reading my rantings on debt, I will have to pass on that one. So far, no donor/benefactor like Michael Anthony from the Millionaire TV show of old has materialized even as I read of good samaritans doling out dollars in the streets. Just not on the streets I prowl. (Smile)

A few items:
l. See my piece on a different type of Academy Awards show on Mediachannel.

2. Credit cards may be the next bubble. Millions are trapped in a plastic prison. But the companies are doing very well, thank you. VISA has announced a $18.1 BILLION dollar IPO. American Express revealed that it paid its CEO $53 million in 2007, twice what he was paid a year earlier.

Keep this high interest and fees coming.

3. Was distressed to read that Alex Gibney who gave a great speech at the Oscars when he won the best documentary exposing extra-rendition kidnappings by the US of innocent people has learned that the Discovery Channel which earlier agreed to run the film is now dithering. Hey Oprah, didn't you just do a deal with them. How about using your influence to insure that this film will be seen!

4. There is more to the John McCain story. What issue was he being lobbied on and why. See Jerry Starr's explanation. Also, shouldn't we learn more about the lobbyist Ms. Vicki Iseman and her purported links to Israeli intelligence. Is that true? Is it relevant?

5. Have written a book on the financial crisis called WE ARE SCREWED drawing on all the articles I have written since the markets melted down. I deal with the failure of the companies, the regulators and the media. Word from some publishers is that is too unfocused or that I am not famous enough etc. They don't like exercises that connect the dots more broadly. I keep saying this is NOT just a business story but affects all of us. Sorry……

This is an old story. Almost every important book-and I think this is one-was rejected repeatedly by publishers. I have a great agent. Anyone out there with contacts at a gutsy publisher? I have only had 8 books published up until now but that doesn't seem to matter. This is only one of the most important crisis of our times. As Washington Post editor/columnist David Ignatious wrote yesterday: "The public, fortunately, doesn't understand how bad the situation is. If it did, we might have a real panic on our hands."

"Fortunately?"

I am also still trying to generate speaking gigs and screening dates. Just spoke up at Lincoln Center to some 600 British High School students in New York on a study trip. Tomorrow, thanks to the Pocono Progressives, I will be showing IN DEBT WE TRUST and speaking at East Stroudsberg University in PA. Hope I can beat the snow down there.

Still fighting the media war-and now the tech battle. I am writing from the office…..can't do much more now.

Please stick with me/us. I tend to write at night because during the day I am too busy trying to keep our company afloat. And I don't have a machine anymore to write on.

Some people want to use this occasion to ventilate their spleen and show off their vitriolic personalites by kicking me when I am down. I am losing patience with that because most have nothing to say of substance. I try to delete their spam posing as comments when I can. It's not censorship by the way. All outlets decide what to publish and what not to publish. I do get thoughtful letters though that I am proud to run.

Here's one.

Dear Mr. Schechter,

(Love the Dissector - I hope your computer is okay. :( )

You mention that "the majority" of these foreclosures are for single-family, owner-occupied homes. I'm wondering what your data says about the exact percentage. I've heard and seen several things which indicate that many applications for the high-risk types of financing were riddled with falsehoods, and that claiming the property to be purchased as "sf-oo" was a common practice because underwriters liked to see that phrase. According to a real-estate agent friend, however, the truth is that these loans were taken on properties meant to be turned over for quick profit. According to what she claims she saw, the motive behind
taking out the risky mortgages (no money down, interest only, 3-2-1 buydowns, NINA's, stated-income, etc.) was that the initial monthly payments would be low so that the speculator would not have to pay much before turning the property over for a profit. The "high-risk" types of loans also meant that even if an investor could qualify for a traditional low-risk loan, everyone involved in financing the transaction was able to take away the maximum amount in fees, etc. from the origination of the
high-risk loan.

I've seen articles like this one:
http://money.cnn.com/
and
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/

Reading between the lines leads me to believe that maybe what my friend is saying may be true. (If borrowers were encouraged to overstate their incomes, perhaps they lied about their intention to live in the home as well… could they have simply been waiting for prices to go up as they had been?)

The problem when the bubble burst, though, is that speculators can now no longer sell the properties due to a glutted market and have simply stopped paying for them. That's what my real-estate broker friend is telling me - "a larger percentage than we know about" of these foreclosures are happening to already-vacant properties according to her. Folks like my husband and I, who took out a traditional 30 yr. mortgage during this time, live in the home, and have had no significant change in circumstances throughout this time (even though our property value has dropped 20,000 in the last five years) are still paying for our homes. Is the idea of "not paying for the roof over one's own head" an option in reality? (We had no money to put down, and used the now-vilified AmeriDream program.)

Do you have stats on how many families are now homeless as a result of this? Is the media stifling an outcry from government agencies and charities now strapped for resources to deal with the (invisible?) wave of newly-homeless families? Why are banks, etc., frantically offering re-fi options, but I've heard that few are taking them even with lower interest rates? All of this makes more sense to me if what my real-estate agent friend says is true - that the "sf-oo" tag on these loan applications was a lie and these bad/risky loans were used as part of a profit-generating mechanism on speculative vacant properties.

I'm just wondering if you can help me make sense of this. I'm not trying to be disrespectful of "Sam and Sally Smith from South Bend" who are now losing their home to foreclosure. I just don't get it. The MSM narrative is that ignorant-poor-people took out risky loans they should have known would be unaffordable for them (and are, in the process, toppling the largest economy on Earth! Shame on those poor-people!). Could it be the other way around - people with plenty of assets were trying to get even more? Perhaps now that it's apparent they can't get even more, the better option for them is to let the loans default and make the banks, insurers, and most likely - taxpayers like my husband and me suck it up?

You've educated us all on so many aspects of this implosion. What information might you have pertaining to the validity of my questions?

Thank you for your attention,
Cathy Collins, Columbus, OH

BACK TO MY MONDAY POST
Welcome to my nightmare. I won't bore you with the details but my latest
MAC has crapped out, only a year and a month after I bought it to replace
the last one which died in a Kernel panic. This time, for reasons
unknown, the hard disk with all of my data-only some of which was
backed up-let that be a lesson to you and me (again)- is gone. Of
course, I blame myself but I can't help wondering if these computers
aren't built like cars to fail. At least there are lemon laws protecting
car owners.

So the machine is out of commish for the week….Maybe it's a sign to
slow down. When you work as we are forced to do on the margins, with
little tech support or new technology, shit happens. Over and over
again. I am trying to avoid a psychic breakdown alongside this
unpredictable meltdown.

I can only hope my Apple Care policy covers it or I may be out of
commission for longer than a week. You always hope that just by
announcing this horror in the life of anyone like myself tethered to
technology, some manna in the form of a new machine will fall from
heaven but that rarely happens.

So, through no fault of my own or perhaps every fault of my own, I found
that even a MacBook can't handle the daily Word count.

As a result I can't share my dissections with you today or may be this
week including my full comments on Ralph Nader announcing that he is a
candidate on Meet The Press.

Tim Russert kept referring to it as an exclusive even though Nader
actually announced before the show and the story was making news. His
critique was of course trenchant with lots of truth and "context" to it,
but I don't think campaigns or movements can just be organized by a
website or an individuals ego/drive. There wasn't even the pretense of
the Green Party, no constituency except celebrity.

Incidentally, he is right about not causing Gore's loss in Florida,
See my film COUNTING ON DEMOCRACY for all the screw-ups of the Democrats there, but that doesn't make this candidacy right. I am afraid the
Republicans will fund it hopes of derailing whatever candidate the Dems
put up. As much I respect Ralph's great history and committment to
democracy, there was something sad about the spectacle of his one man
against the machine mission.

In other news, Raul was named predictably to replace his brother in
Cuba, and the US government is hypocritically and falsely accusing the
Serbian government of instigating the riots which were predictable given
US policy vis a vis Kosovo.

What most of the media fails to see that while the protests took place
at the US embassy, they were really aimed at the Democratic goverment
which was just narrowly re-elected and is now being undermined by the
very West it pledged allegiance to…

Add, i was going to discuss of the loss of $1.2 billion USAF plane as
part of this Administrations military record but I won't.

I will end here rather than grouse on.

To comment, offer ideas, or provide material assistance, write me at
this email:

dissector@mediachannel.org

DANNY SCHECHTER
NEWS DISSECTOR

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Saundra Hummer

February 29th, 2008, 04:18 PM

.
~~~~~~~
"Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth."

Mark Crispin Miller
~~~
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

Joseph Goebbels
German Minister of Propaganda
1933-1945
~~~
"With each newly minted crisis, US leaders roll out the same time-tested scenario. They start demonizing a foreign leader ... charging them with being communistic or otherwise dictatorial, dangerously aggressive, power hungry, genocidal, given to terrorism or drug trafficking, ready to deny us access to vital resources, harboring weapons of mass destruction, or just inexplicably "anti-American" and "anti-West." Lacking any information to the contrary, the frightened public ... are swept along."

Michael Parenti
~~~
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

C. S. Lewis
~~~
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

March 1st, 2008, 04:32 PM

.* * * * * * * Congress in turmoil over Air Force tanker decision
By
Kevin Drawbaugh
Sat Mar 1, 2008 6:52 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. Air Force decision awarding a $35 billion aircraft contract to a team including the European parent of Airbus landed like a bomb in Congress on Friday, drawing howls of protest from lawmakers aligned with the loser, America's Boeing Co.

The Congressional delegation from the Seattle area said they were "outraged." Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt vowed to seek a review of the decision "at the highest levels of the Pentagon and Congress" in hopes of reversing it.

Boeing has big facilities in both Seattle and Wichita, which stood to gain from the long-term project to build up to 179 aerial refueling tankers. Although Boeing was favored to win the contract, the Air Force awarded it to a partnership between Northrop Grumman and Europe's EADS.

Conventional wisdom was running so strongly against Northrop-EADS in some corners of Capitol Hill that Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's office issued a statement late on Friday declaring Boeing the winner. It was swiftly retracted.

Lawmakers from Alabama, where Northrop and EADS plan to do some tanker work, were effusive in praising the Air Force.

"I thought all along that the Northrop Grumman-EADS proposal was the best," Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican, told reporters. He said the contract would bring nearly 7,000 jobs to the state.

On the disappointment of Chicago-based Boeing's allies, Shelby said he understood. "If Boeing had won this contract ... I would have been concerned about it."

As for Tiahrt's vow to seek a review, Shelby said, "The Pentagon and the Air Force have made their decision and I think it was for the right reasons and I'll stand by that."

The decision was sure to result in a debate, with a formal protest also possible, said defense consultant Jim McAleese.

The tanker deal will give EADS a huge boost in the U.S. defense market, making it the second biggest foreign supplier behind Britain's BAE Systems, analysts said.

"We are so very excited about having the opportunity to help the Air Force acquire the most modern and capable refueling tanker -- a tanker assembled in America -- by Americans," said Alabama Republican Rep. Jo Bonner.

Bonner represents Mobile, Alabama, where assembly work on the aircraft will be done, although it will largely be constructed in France at facilities of EADS' unit Airbus.

Airbus, with large facilities in Toulouse, is Boeing's arch-rival in the global commercial airliner business.

Wichita's Rep. Tiahrt said, "I am deeply troubled by the Air Force's decision to award the KC-X tanker to a French company that has never built a tanker in its history.

"We should have an American tanker built by an American company with American workers. I cannot believe we would create French jobs in place of Kansas jobs."

Tiahrt said he will seek to have the decision reviewed by both the Pentagon and Congress. "At the end of this laborious process, I hope the Air Force reverses its decision."

Washington Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Democrats, along with six other lawmakers from the state said in a joint statement: "We are outraged that this decision taps European Airbus and its foreign workers to provide a tanker to our American military.

"We will be asking tough questions about the decision to outsource this contract. We look forward to hearing the Air Force's justification."
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2008-03-01T115211Z_01_N29251377_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-AIRFORCE-TANKER-CONGRESS.xml

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Saundra Hummer

March 1st, 2008, 05:05 PM

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~~~~~~~
"I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will take your women and children and make them slaves....The deaths and injuries you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me."

"The Requirement"
Read by Spaniards to native tribes
they encountered in the New World
~~~
"It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -

Albert Einstein
~~~
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper."

Rod Serling
~~~
"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."

Joseph Pulitzer
~~~
"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse."

Mark Twain.

~~~~~
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Saundra Hummer

March 1st, 2008, 05:55 PM

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~*~*~*~ Holocaust In Gaza
Abbas: Gaza Attacks 'a Holocaust'
By Al Jazeera - Video and Text
The total death toll over four days to 86 people, at least a third of which have been children, according to medical sources. Fifty-two people were killed during Saturday's raids alone. Continue

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19446.htm
Abbas: Gaza Attacks 'A Holocaust'

Al Jazeera

01/03/08 "Al Jazeera" -- -Children killed The Palestinian president has accused Israel of "international terrorism", saying its assault on Gaza constitutes "more than a holocaust".

Mahmoud Abbas's comments on Saturday came as more Israeli air raids brought the total death toll over four days to 86 people, at least a third of which have been children, according to medical sources.

Fifty-two people were killed during Saturday's raids alone.

"It's very regrettable that what is happening is more than a holocaust," Abbas told reporters in Ramallah.

"Children who are barely five-months old are being bombed by the Israeli army."

"We tell the world to see with its own eyes and judge for itself what is happening and who is carrying out international terrorism."

Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader living in Syria, also denounced the Israeli attacks against Gaza's civilians as "the real holocaust".

Abbas later requested an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, a spokesman for the Palestinian leader said.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said that "at best" Abbas could hope to get a Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli action.

"And as we know, Israel has ignored tens of UN Security Council resolutions over the last 40 years, and hundreds of UN assembly resolutions - so this is going to be more talk and probably not much will come out of it in the end," he said.

st click the following URL, and you'll gain access to the video on UTube:Rana el-Hindi from Save the Children, speaking from inside the Gaza Strip, told Al Jazeera children were suffering greatly from the Israeli bombardment.
"In the last three days at least 19 children have been killed ... it's a real concern for all organisations here," she said.

"Most of the time, when we go into the field and talk to the children about their fears and concerns, they are always afraid of a new invasion to the Gaza Strip - and obviously the current situation is just ... what they fear."

She said the number of children being hospitalised was increasing "day after day".

Eissam Younis, director of the Al Mizan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army was "intentionally and systematically targeting civilians" and criticised world powers for their muted response.

"Israel puts itself above the law because the international community is always silent," he said.

Missile attacks

The latest attacks mark the fourth day of Israeli bombardment and follow the death of an Israel civilian in a Palestinian rocket attack.

Those killed in Saturday's attacks included at least eight civilians, four of them women, said Dr Muawiya Hassanein, head of Gaza's emergency services

At least 15 of those killed were fighters, including 10 fighters from Hamas and two from the Islamic Jihad.

An operation in the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday marked the deadliest day of fighting in the Hamas-ruled territory for more than a year.

Witnesses said the Jabaliya deaths occurred as a result of gun battles between Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers.

Tariq Dardouna, a Palestinian resident trapped in his house in east Jabaliya, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces targeted civilians.

"The Israeli army opens fire at everything in our area, including children and houses. There are injured children bleeding inside their houses," Dardouna said.

"They are opening fire at everything."

Witnesses also reported clashes in the nearby Tufah neighbourhood in northern Gaza City.

The Israeli army confirmed its operations in northern Gaza, with the Israel Army Radio reporting that five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

Threat of invasion
There has been increasing domestic pressure in Israel to mount a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said on Thursday that "a major ground operation was real and tangible" and that Israel was "not afraid of it".

Senior Palestinian officials have told Al Jazeera that the peace negotiations begun in Annapolis last year, could be at risk if the Israeli military assault on Gaza continues.

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister who heads the Israeli negotiation team, reacted by saying that the Israeli military action would be unaffected by any suspension of the peace talks.

"Even if the Palestinians suspend talks, it won't influence in any way the decisions or operations Israel carries out to defend its citizens," she said.

Gaza rockets
In Israel, six people were wounded, one of them seriously, by long-range rockets fired from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the Israeli army said.

Fighters in Gaza fired over 40 rockets and mortars at southern Israel.

Eight of the missiles were long-range rockets that travelled as far as the seaside Israeli town of Ashkelon, some 11km north of the Gaza Strip.

Israel's political and military leadership has been considering a major ground offensive in the Hamas-ruled territory to prevent fighters from deploying more long-range rockets like those that hit Ashkelon.

Palestinian fighters have launched frequent volleys of rockets and mortars at Israeli communities near the Gaza border, though the missile attacks rarely cause injuries.[/INDENT

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Click on "comments" below to read or post comments: Go on-site to gain access. Just click following URL:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19446.htm
[I]~*~*~*~*~*~*~
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Saundra Hummer

March 2nd, 2008, 01:38 PM

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^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ The country sinks lower, no bottom in sightThis is long, but it's relevant to the crisis in this country. America has hit a new low, but it may not be the bottom. History Will Not Absolve UsBy
Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice

http://disturbingthecomfortable.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_083007G.shtml

Tuesday 28 August 2007
Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.

If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament-as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown).

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world-or else governments wouldn't let them in.

But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do-on the orders of the president-to "protect American values."

She quotes a former CIA officer: "When you cross over that line of darkness, it's hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but . . . you can't go back to that dark a place without it changing you."

Few average Americans have been changed, however, by what the CIA does in our name. Blame that on the tight official secrecy that continues over how the CIA extracts information. On July 20, the Bush administration issued a new executive order authorizing the CIA to continue using these techniques-without disclosing anything about them.

If we, the people, are ultimately condemned by a world court for our complicity and silence in these war crimes, we can always try to echo those Germans who claimed not to know what Hitler and his enforcers were doing. But in Nazi Germany, people had no way of insisting on finding out what happened to their disappeared neighbors.

We, however, have the right and the power to insist that Congress discover and reveal the details of the torture and other brutalities that the CIA has been inflicting in our name on terrorism suspects.

Only one congressman, Oregon's Democratic senator Ron Wyden, has insisted on probing the legality of the CIA's techniques-so much so that Wyden has blocked the appointment of Bush's nominee, John Rizzo, from becoming the CIA's top lawyer. Rizzo, a CIA official since 2002, has said publicly that he didn't object to the Justice Department's 2002 "torture" memos, which allowed the infliction of pain unless it caused such injuries as "organ failure . . . or even death." (Any infliction of pain up to that point was deemed not un-American.) Mr. Rizzo would make a key witness in any future Nuremberg trial.

As Jane Mayer told National Public Radio on August 6, what she found in the leaked Red Cross report, and through her own extensive research on our interrogators (who are cheered on by the commander in chief), is "a top-down-controlled, mechanistic, regimented program of abuse that was signed off on-at the White House, really-and then implemented at the CIA from the top levels all the way down. . . . They would put people naked for up to 40 days in cells where they were deprived of any kind of light. They would cut them off from any sense of what time it was or . . . anything that would give them a sense of where they were."

She also told of the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was not only waterboarded (a technique in which he was made to feel that he was about to be drowned) but also "kept in . . . a small cage, about one meter [39.7 inches] by one meter, in which he couldn't stand up for a long period of time. [The CIA] called it the dog box."

Whether or not there is another Nuremberg trial-and Congress continues to stay asleep-future historians of the Bush administration will surely also refer to Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality, the July report by Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The report emphasizes that the president's July executive order on CIA interrogations-which, though it is classified, was widely hailed as banning "torture and cruel and inhuman treatment"-"fails explicitly to rule out the use of the 'enhanced' techniques that the CIA authorized in March, 2002, "with the president's approval (emphasis added).

In 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced the "torture" memos and other interrogation techniques in internal reports that reached the White House. It's a pity he didn't also tell us. But Powell's objections should keep him out of the defendants' dock in any future international trial.

From the Leave No Marks report, here are some of the American statutes that the CIA, the Defense Department, and the Justice Department have utterly violated:

In the 1994 Torture Convention Implementation Act, we put into U.S. law what we had signed in Article 5 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which is defined as "an act 'committed by an [officially authorized] person' . . . specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control."

The 1997 U.S. War Crimes Act "criminalizes . . . specifically enumerated war crimes that the legislation refers to as 'grave breaches' of Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions], including the war crimes of torture and 'cruel or inhuman treatment.'"

The Leave No Marks report very valuably brings the Supreme Court- before Chief Justice John Roberts took over-into the war-crimes record of this administration. I strongly suggest that Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility send their report-with the following section underlined-to every current member of the Supreme Court and Congress:

"The Supreme Court has long considered prisoner treatment to violate substantive due process if the treatment 'shocks the conscience,' is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities, or offends 'a principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.'"

Among those fundamental rights cited by past Supreme Courts, the report continues, are "the rights to bodily integrity [and] the right to have [one's] basic needs met; and the right to basic human dignity" (emphasis added).

If the conscience of a majority on the Roberts Court isn't shocked by what we've done to our prisoners, then it will be up to the next president and the next Congress-and, therefore, up to us-to alter, in some respects, how history will judge us. But do you see any considerable signs, among average Americans, of the conscience being shocked? How about the presidential candidates of both parties?

# posted by Talapus Pete @ 1:49 PM 0 comments
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ .

Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 11:17 AM

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* * * * * * * * *Precious Metals Dealer Solves the Spam Problem With WoomailTuesday March 4, 7:21 am ET
Press Release Source: Woomail
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With all the press on spam and illicit emails; with all the concern over how to fix the problem; with all the money that companies have thrown at the issue of uncontrollable email spam without effect, it took a successful precious metals dealer named John Halloran to finally bring to market an effective solution that doesn’t block spam, it prevents spam – Woomail.

John Halloran, a Chicago native, is a successful entrepreneur and President of the Certified Gold Exchange, Inc. Mr. Halloran took a great interest in an employee’s distressful story of how his teenage daughter was receiving pornographic and illicit emails and the employee was unable to shield his impressionable and vulnerable daughter from this unwanted communication. That was ten months ago and the day Halloran set out to create a better way to email online that totally eliminated spam and virus threats and Woomail was born.

Woomail is instant email that is quickly replacing conventional, spam-infested email as the standard. Woomail is interactive with email, but it is not email. Woomail is a superior method to message online; a clever and controlled web based communication service that works in a very easy but effective way, preventing spam and protecting registered Woomail users from any form of illicit or unwanted communication.

John Halloran, Founder and CEO of Woomail.com: “We understood the problems that have infected and crippled conventional email and we set out to change the process and the team succeeded. Woomail is an unmatched echelon of online messaging that verifies each message is hand crafted, pre-screened for virus and delivered instantly.”

Woomail works equally well for personal internet users of all ages, and for businesses large and small. At homes across the nation and around the world, parents can feel comfortable knowing that their teens and younger children are shielded from porn emails or unwanted solicitation. Businesses can get back to work without wasting time searching for relevant messages in a sea of spam. With every incoming message authenticated as being generated by a human and not machine control is transferred to the recipient. Instantly, employees are more productive, operational costs are reduced and frustration is alleviated. Large enterprise users are empowered with the knowledge that all communications never leave their domain or control. Woomail is the universal answer to a universal problem. A free individual Woomail account is available online at www.woomail.com.

About Woomail
Woomail is a groundbreaking communication tool that transfers control of email from the sender to the recipient. Woomail brings online messaging into the 21st century with its spam-free, virus-free, instant email platform. Please direct media and press enquiries about Woomail, The World’s Safest Mail™ to John Halloran at 650-739-8082 or www.woomail.com/1.
Contact:
Woomail, San Juan
John Halloran, 650-739-8082
Source: Woomail
Go on-site to gain access to the links within the article, just click the following URL:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080304/20080304005439.html?.v=1&printer=1* * * * * * * .

Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 11:48 AM

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~* ~*~*~
BUZZ FLASH: BREAKING NEWS
David Cay Johnston Talks About the High Cost to Americans of a Free Lunch for Corporations and the Wealthy.
"An Afternoon with David Cay Johnston in Chicago on March 9th" is being sponsored by BuzzFlash.com. The event will be hosted by Columbia College.

More information here: http://www.buzzflash.com/freelunch/

When: Sunday, March 9, 2008 1:00 - 2:30 PM

Where: Columbia College Chicago, 600 S. Michigan, Ferguson Theater (enter through Harrison Street doors)
What: David Cay Johnston, a New York Times investigative journalist, will discuss, "Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)!"

Questions and answers will follow his remarks followed by the opportunity to buy his book, Free Lunch, and have it signed.

Who: David Cay Johnston is the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times who revealed that Enron did not pay taxes, that some companies use a Bermuda mail box to escape American taxes and that Congress raises your income taxes if you get seriously ill, using the money to finance tax cuts for the richest Americans.

His reporting prompted the only major tax policy change made by the Bush Administration, which dropped a stealth plan to cut taxes on the super rich by a quarter of a trillion dollars over ten years.

Cost: Free and open to the public until seating capacity of 100 is reached.
Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
BuzzFlash.com
http://www.buzzflash.comI would hope that they make a transcript of this available to us.

Hearing what this man has to say, would probably get one's blood boiling. That is if you aren't one of many who are benefiting from this administrations handouts to the very rich. SRH~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .

Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 04:18 PM

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~~~~~~~
"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

Gilbert Chesterton
(1874 - 1936)
~~~
A PERSONAL CREED

"I would be a friend to the friendless and find joy in ministering to the needs of the poor. I would visit the sick and afflicted and inspire in them a desire for faith to be healed. I would teach the truth to the understanding and blessing of all mankind. I would seek out the erring one and try to win him back to a righteous and a happy life. I would not seek to force people to live up to my ideals, but rather love them into doing the thing that is right. I would live with the masses and help to solve their problems that their earth life may be happy. I would avoid the publicity of high positions and discourage flattery of thoughtless friends. I would not knowingly wound the feeling of any, not even one who may have wronged me, but would seek to do him good and make him my friend. I would overcome the tendency to selfishness and jealousy and rejoice in the successes of all the children of my Heavenly Father. I would not be an enemy to any living soul. Knowing that the Redeemer of mankind has offered to the world the only plan that will fully develop us and make us happy here and hereafter, I feel it not only a duty, but also a blessed privilege to disseminate the truth.

George Smith
(1870 - 1951)
~~~
"An IDEAL is a vision of the Ought-To-Be - some good to be attained. . . . An ideal is a challenge to a better life. First we must see it in imagination; then we must long to make it a part of ourselves; then we shall guide our conduct by it, we shall live it. An ideal is both light and power. It is light for conscience and motive-power for will. It is a standard by which we judge between right and wrong. When we see a noble ideal lived out in another's life, it gives us a holy discontent with ourselves until we make it our own and it makes more beautiful and strong our own character. This is the way of all progress, as the world grows better, for there is no progress without ideals."

G. Walter Fiske
Source: quoted by Loyd J. Ericson
from
G. Walter Fiske,
Jesus' Ideals of Living
Abingdon Press, 1922
~~~
"You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it."

Faith Baldwin
1893 - 1978

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Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 04:29 PM

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~~~~~~~
Truce or Bloodbath
Ignoring its own people's wishes in attacking Gaza, Israel leaves Hamas no choice but to fight back
By
Azzam Tamimi

03/03/08 "The Guardian" -- - -A recent poll published in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz suggested that 64% of Israelis favoured a negotiated truce with Hamas. But in the past few days, a military onslaught that has so far claimed more than a hundred Palestinian lives, mostly women and children, has made it clear that the Israeli leadership is not interested in any peaceful exit from the current predicament.

The Ha'aretz poll may point to a lack of confidence in the government's ability to settle its problem with Gaza through the use of force, and vindicate those within the military and intelligence community who have been advising the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert to talk to Hamas. A truce as once proposed by Giora Eiland, who served as national security adviser to the former prime minister Ariel Sharon, would entail a reasonable exchange of prisoners and a lifting of sanctions in exchange for a cessation of all hostilities between the two sides. Hamas would, in principle, have agreed to negotiate a truce along these terms. But it seems that Olmert's cabinet has not given up on the idea of bringing Hamas to its knees or finishing it off altogether.

The attack on Gaza comes at a time when all previous means of inciting the Strip's population against Hamas have failed. The sanctions imposed globally on Hamas and the siege that almost suffocates Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants have neither forced Hamas to accept the three conditions set out by the Quartet (the US, the UN, Russia and the EU) nor convinced the Palestinian population to rise against it.

The enormous resources dedicated to empowering an influential group within Fatah to effect a coup against the legitimate government backfired and finally uprooted that group from the Palestinian political scene. Starving Gaza while the Ramallah-based West Bank authority receives financial and political backing from Israel and its allies in the west has failed to shift Palestinian opinion in favour of President Mahmud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad. So, rather than heed the advice of the experts and fulfil the wish of his own public, Olmert has decided to go to war with the Gaza Strip.

Once again Olmert is taking a gamble. He might have been encouraged by the fact that, unlike Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas has no immediate regional backers and is less capable of confronting his troops. The rockets fired from Gaza are nothing compared with the missiles Hizbullah used in July 2006.

This is perhaps what encourages senior Israelis officials to threaten the Palestinians with a "shoah" if they continue to defy Israel. It is not clear whether the Israeli deputy defence minister meant to use the Hebrew word for Holocaust when he warned the Palestinians of Gaza. What really matters is that the message has been delivered; this Israeli administration, which has failed to force capitulation on the Palestinians, is willing to use its war machine to burn them alive.

The Israeli establishment is incapable of learning a single lesson from past experience. Hamas, like Hizbullah, and the Palestinians, like the Lebanese, have no choice but to fight back until the Israelis are forced to retreat. Few people thought that Hizbullah could defeat Israel in 2006. Fewer people may think today that Hamas is capable of something similar. They might be surprised. The number of casualties among the Palestinians will, undoubtedly be much higher, but Israelis will die and suffer too. The only way to avoid a bloodbath is for the Israeli army to withdraw immediately from Gaza and negotiate a truce before it is too late.

Dr Azzam Tamimi, the director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought, is the author of Hamas: Unwritten Chapters - info@ii-pt.com
Go on-site by clicking on the following URL to gain access to this article and several others on issues of the day, as well as their archives, stats, cartoons, etc. Read their lead off anchor articles as well. They tell a lot, they explain a lot.

URL: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info ~~~~~
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Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 04:41 PM

.:: :: :: :: :: CORRUPT ESTABLISHMENTBush: Americans ‘Ought To Say Thank You’ To Telecoms For ‘Performing A Patriotic Service’
The Bush administration has launched an aggressive campaign to pressure the House into passing retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated in the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.

Because they complied in illegally wiretapping their customers, telecoms currently face around 40 lawsuits. Yesterday in a speech to the National Association of Attorneys General, Bush sharply criticized Americans who are suing the telecoms:

Now the question is, should these lawsuits be allowed to proceed, or should any company that may have helped save American lives be thanked for performing a patriotic service; should those who stepped forward to say we’re going to help defend America have to go to the courthouse to defend themselves, or should the Congress and the President say thank you for doing your patriotic duty? I believe we ought to say thank you.

Watch it:
A VIDEO
Just click here>: http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/04/thank-you-telecom/

Bush is implying that Americans who oppose telecom immunity are unpatriotic. But the American people don’t owe the telecoms any gratitude. These corporations chose to break the law and profited greatly from doing so. (At least one company refused to comply with the Bush administration’s request because it knew the actions were illegal.)

Last week in a letter to Congress, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — which represents groups such as Google and Microsoft — said that it “strongly” opposes retroactive immunity: “To imply that our industry would refuse assistance under established law is an affront to the civic integrity of businesses that have consistently cooperated unquestioningly with legal requests for information.”

Transcript:
And I thank you for wading in. There’s a lot of legal complexities on the FISA renewal debate, but the real issue comes down to this: To defend the country, we need to be able to monitor communications of terrorists quickly and be able to do it effectively.

And we can’t do it without the cooperation of private companies. Unfortunately, some of the private companies have been sued for billions of dollars because they are believed to have helped defend America after the attacks on 9/11. Now the question is, should these lawsuits be allowed to proceed, or should any company that may have helped save American lives be thanked for performing a patriotic service; should those who stepped forward to say we’re going to help defend America have to go to the courthouse to defend themselves, or should the Congress and the President say thank you for doing your patriotic duty? I believe we ought to say thank you.

Filed under:
Civil Liberties
Posted by Amanda
at 2:09 pm

Permalink | Comment (115)
115 Comments » :: :: ::
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Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 05:26 PM

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. . . . . . . . . Bush Legacy: Farewell to the Monroe Doctrine?
By
Pablo Bachelet
McClatchy Newspaper
Saturday 01 March 2008
Washington -El Salvador's President Tony Saca, a close U.S. ally, can scarcely contain his frustration.

He calls U.S. politicians “shortsighted” for failing to reform U.S. immigration laws. He says Latin American populism is “a pendulum swing toward disaster” that deserves more U.S. attention.

“The United States, in my judgment, should invest enormous resources in Latin America, along the lines of a Marshall Plan,” he said in a recent interview. "Generally speaking, when you want to have a neighborhood that gives you peace of mind, you have to invest in that neighborhood.”

But Saca is unlikely to be satisfied. President Bush has increased aid to Latin America by record amounts and visited Latin America more than any of his predecessors, but his legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.

He remains unpopular and unable to pass initiatives that Latin Americans want, such as immigration reform and free-trade pacts. Trade between South America and China is booming. Governments from Canada to Iran are cutting deals in the region, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has made challenging U.S. interests his foreign-policy mission, through everything from sweet oil deals to a TV news channel that rivals CNN.

“Requiem for the Monroe Doctrine” is how academic Daniel Erikson put it in an article for Current History, referring to the 1823 declaration by President James Monroe that put the Western Hemisphere off-limits to outside powers.

Think-tank specialists are debating whether Bush, globalization or both are to blame, and whether a change in the United States' unpopular position on Cuba might help. Democrats say the Bush White House has ignored the region.

But the reality is that whoever wins the White House in November will confront a dramatically different geopolitical situation from the one that Bush faced when he was inaugurated in 2001.

“The world has changed in fundamental ways, and the big question is whether the next administration can understand that and adjust to that,” Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue think tank, told a recent gathering in Washington.

“The United States is not as important as it used to be. A lot of countries - I'm talking about Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela - have much more complicated international relations,” he added. "There are much more options than there were before.”

In the 1990s, most of Latin America and the United States shared a common purpose of promoting free trade, democracy and free-market reforms known as the "Washington Consensus.”

Many Latin Americans, however, became disenchanted with economic reforms of the 1990s and resented the Bush administration's focus away from the region after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Iraq invasion only angered Latin Americans more.

“There was a rejection of Washington Consensus-era policies,” says Geoff Thale, with the left-leaning advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America. "We haven't had anything to offer in its place.”

At the same time, other countries have stepped up their diplomatic and commercial outreach, with Europeans and Canadians pointing out that their foreign policy is more aligned with Latin America's preference for multilateral actions.

The European Union has signed trade and investment agreements with Mexico and Chile, and is negotiating similar pacts with Central America and the Andean Community of Nations, which includes Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. The Europeans have also signed an “Economic Partnership Agreement” with the 15-member Caribbean Community.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, declaring Latin America a priority of his administration, last summer embarked on a week-long tour of Chile, Colombia, Barbados and Haiti.

He cast Canada, which is close to signing a free-trade agreement with Colombia, as a middle course between the United States' hard-edged capitalism and Venezuela's state-centered populism.

“Canada's very existence demonstrates that the choice is a false one,” he said.

Canada is the region's second-largest investor, owning assets worth more than $96 billion. The Canadians are in free-trade talks with Caribbean nations and trade more than $1 billion a year with Cuba.

Then there's China.

Bilateral trade between China and Latin America jumped from $200 million in 1975 to $47 billion in 2005. According to the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, between 2000 and 2006 Brazil increased its imports from China six-fold, to $8 billion. China is Chile's second-biggest market.

While seeking raw materials for its industries, China has kept a low political profile, maintaining friendly ties with Cuba and Venezuela but not directly challenging U.S. interests.

China also has historic ties with big left-wing parties in Mexico, Peru and Argentina, writes Argentine scholar Sergio Cesarin in a recent Woodrow Wilson International Center report on China's rise in Latin America.

“When Chinese leaders speak out about their aims and goals in the region, they utilize concepts like growth, mutual benefits, non-interference in internal affairs and, most importantly, development,” he writes. These are more palatable to left-wing leaders than free trade or free-market reforms recommended by Washington, he adds.

In 2005, Air China started weekly flights between Beijing and Sao Paolo, the first such route between China and Latin America by a Chinese carrier. Presidents Hu Jintao of China and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva swapped visits in 2004.

Since 2005, Chavez and Iran's President Ahmadinejad have visited each other seven times, signing deals on issues as varied as tractor manufacturing and oil exploration and establishing a direct flight between Caracas and Tehran, with a stopover in Damascus. Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have also visited Chavez's allies in Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia.

The United States, of course, remains the hemisphere's dominant power. Brazil imported six times more from the United States than China. Immigrants to the United States sent $45 billion in remittances to their families in the region last year.

Bush administration officials dispute the notion that they've ignored the region.

The State Department routinely lists achievements like a $3.4 billion debt-relief package for the hemisphere's five poorest countries, an ethanol-promotion deal with Brazil and a new $1.4 billion anti-drug-trafficking aid package for Mexico and Central America awaiting congressional approval.

Total U.S. aid to Latin America jumped from $1.2 billion in 2001 to - if Congress approves a budget request - $2.7 billion in 2009, according to the aid-tracking website justf.org.

Bush has negotiated numerous free-trade deals and met his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva nine times. Bush's trip to Latin America last year was his eighth, more than any president in U.S. history.

The free-trade umbrella now includes Chile, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Peru, with Colombia and Panama waiting in the wings.

But all that doesn't impress the critics.

“Certainly, there is no consistent pattern of interest or concern in the administration for Latin America,” said Riordan Roett, of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an informal advisor to Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. "Maybe we can't expect this, but there's been no grand scheme, broader integration between the U.S. and Latin America. We're each kind of going our own way.”

Luigi Einaudi, a former U.S. diplomat and head of the Organization of American States, says the United States would generate more goodwill if it shuttered the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, passed a free-trade agreement with Colombia and stopped deporting 70,000 “criminal aliens” every year to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean ill-equipped to receive them.

Some critics say changing the Cuba policy also will help. A new Cuba approach, says Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, would be a “superb opening toward refurbishing” the Latin America policy that he describes as "bordering on failure.”

One program initiated by Bush is seen as working: the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which gives aid to countries that pass a set of 17 development indicators, put together by outside watchdogs like Transparency International.

John Danilovich, who heads the program, says MCC is so popular that even Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, an old Cold War foe and Chavez ally, had to admit as much when he visited an MCC program in the northern town of Chinandega.

With Danilovich at his side, Ortega ended his speech at a local plaza with the words "Viva Estados Unidos!"

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Go to Original http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030208B.shtml . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

March 4th, 2008, 06:45 PM

Now I get it, they've been blocking this newsletter for months now. What kind of people are in charge, cowards one and all? And then there's the fascists at the head of the line. They with their greed and the need to be in total control. How bizare that we, the people of the United States, are slipping into what the Soviets lived under for decades, are we not wiser than this? How is it we're so comlacient and willing to give up all that we hold dear? Why is it that we're so very willing to give up our rights and laws our ancestors and our close relatives have fought and died for. It's shameful. SRHUPDATE: 09.20.07:12:noon:pdt:

It looks like AOL has lifted their ban. While it's still pretty early, it looks like we convinced AOL that you do have the right to read what you want.

Microsoft and Yahoo are still interfering.

Microsoft is dug in and blatantly refusing to deliver messages, that's Hotmail, MSN, WebTV and who knows what else. Yahoo too while not communicating any position to us is sending a large portion of our communications to you to your junk mail folders, apparently according to complaints, even though readers are attempting to designate the newsletters as acceptable in the Yahoo mail interface.

[We had previously listed the names of Microsoft and Yahoo executives in this space. We're pulling them down for now.]
UPDATE: 09.19.07:6:pm:pdt:
OK, at this point we'd like to focus on AOL subscribers. Our server logs indicate deliveries are improving. AOL users only please, are you getting your emails? Thanks for your efforts.

ALSO, I began over the weekend responding to every Truthout reader who wrote to us about their newsletters. I hit the wall on that. There's no way I can keep up the personal responses at this volume. So check here for updates.

Thanks to all of you!

Marc Ash, Executive Director - t r u t h o u t

UPDATE: 09.18.07:5:pm:pdt:
A BIG thank you to all of you who have contacted AOL, Hotmail, MSN, WebTV and Yahoo and demanded delivery of your Truthout communications. Bottom-line, if you are on one of those services you are not guaranteed of being able to get your Truthout newsletters - regardless of what you want. We can learn from this that "FREE" is a farce. And when it comes to AOL, when they are your Internet provider, they are your mommy.

What can you do? Simple, cancel services and tell them why. Go to providers that respect your privacy. You get better service, and they learn a lesson about meddling. Don't threaten to do it - do it.

In the meantime, keep the pressure on and document your communications via email.
UPDATE: 09.17.07:6:am:pdt:
OK, it appears we've started a scrum with Internet's largest players. The complaints from our readers are not diminishing, they're increasing.
What to do:
For the time being just demand your email from the regular user support channels. If they tell you to jump through hoops say, "No ... just give me my emails."
Check the reader comments/complaints below - they are enlightening. Remember, we have received far more complaints than you see posted below. These comments/complaints just document and illustrate the scope of the problem.

FOR REPORTS CLICK HERE - Go on-site: http://www.truthout.org

Marc Ash, Executive Director
UPDATE: 09.15.07:2:pm:pdt:
A few things are becoming apparent at this point:
1.) This problem is far larger than we understood. We are learning a lot from the comments sent to us by readers. So - please - keep them coming.
2.) It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Free Email Services - all of them - are a morass. You are a commodity to these administrators and as far as they are concerned your rights are your problem, not theirs. If you are serious about receiving TO, or any other content they are not supportive of, you are pretty much on your own. Bluntly stated: AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and all of the domains they control restrict what you receive in your inbox. And it is at their discretion, not yours.
3.) We intend to fight this
UPDATE: 09.14.07:12:noon:pdt: We are receiving numerous reports from readers that our communications to them are affected. The reader comments posted below provide valuable additional information.

The most frequent question we are hearing right now is: "What can I do?" NOTHING works better than public pressure. They can ignore us; they can't ignore you.
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications

Thursday 13 September 2007

Currently, AOL- and Microsoft-related email providers, including Hotmail, are preventing delivery of a range of Truthout communications to thousands of our subscribers. Such communications include Truthout's regular newsletters and notifications to our subscribers from individual workstations of Truthout administrators informing those subscribers that they are affected.

For the most part, all other ISPs appear to be delivering Truthout communications normally.

While AOL has been largely evasive and silent about their reasons for blocking communications, our server logs and complaints from subscribers illustrate a clear pattern of interference. Microsoft-Hotmail, while not being forthcoming about their actions to the subscribers involved, have stated to our administrators that they are in fact "throttling" and "blocking" our communications. Further, the Microsoft-Hotmail administrators inform us that they are blocking our communications to Truthout subscribers on their systems due to what they describe as our "reputation."

We believe that you - not your Internet Service Provider - should decide what you will read. In an effort to restore service and send a clear message to the ISPs involved, we ask you to do the following:
1.) Keep us informed. Let us know if your newsletters suddenly stop arriving. We have set up a special email address for those complaints.
2.) It is critically important if it does become clear that you are still on our list, and we are sending to you, that you demand your rights. The only rights you have are the ones you exercise.

We are deeply sorry to all of you affected. But we are confident that this problem can be addressed working hand-in-hand.

Good luck,

Marc Ash, Executive Director - t r u t h o u t Also see below:
Reader comments/complaints •

Saundra Hummer

March 5th, 2008, 10:15 AM

.
<<<<<O>>>>>

Ballot Shortages Plague Ohio Election Amid Unusually Heavy Primary Turnout
[OHIO. Still wallowing in controversy. Was it intentional? What were the demigraphics? What was the make up in the precincts which ran short? Were people turned away due to time? Then Obama supporters really got out of it as well, however, with Ohio, it's more of "Once stupid, always stupid". Ohio: Forever suspect. SRH]
By
Ian Urbina
The New York Times
Wednesday 05 March 2008

A federal judge in Ohio granted a request late Tuesday from Senator Barack Obama's campaign to extend the voting hours in 21 precincts in Cleveland by an extra 90 minutes because of a lack of paper ballots.

But because the order arrived after the polls had already closed, election officials were only able to reopen 10 polling stations, according to the Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner. That resulted in five additional votes being cast, Ms. Brunner said.

After a recent state review of touch-screen machines that raised concern about them, paper ballots were made available at all precincts for those voters who wanted to use them. Many more voters took advantage of the option than officials had predicted. The shortages of ballots were also caused by an unusually heavy turnout, officials said.

The federal judge, Solomon Oliver, denied a similar request for other precincts in Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, and for all precincts in Franklin County, where the capital, Columbus, is located.

Ms. Brunner said that in Clermont and Summit Counties, paper ballots ran out mostly due to a large number of independent and Republican voters crossing over to vote in the Democratic primary. In both counties, only the Democratic ballots ran out.

Heavy rain, sleet and ice forced at least 10 precincts to request permission to move, yet the weather did not decrease turnout statewide. Voting officials predicted that turnout would exceed 50 percent, which, they said, was at least 10 percent more than the turnout in the last two presidential primaries.

The number of requests for absentee ballots more than tripled those requested in the May 2007 primary, to roughly 187,000, according to election officials.

The counting of ballots promised to be slow in part because of the shift away from touch-screen machines and toward paper ballots.

In Texas, where voters faced clear skies and long lines, the campaign of Mr. Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, held a stormy conference call on Tuesday night to sound the alarm about what officials said were numerous examples in Texas where "Obama supporters have taken over the caucus and locked out Clinton supporters who were waiting in line" and had done other things to circumvent party rules. The contest in Texas involved a primary and caucuses.

Contributing to the circus atmosphere of the call, which was full of denunciations against Obama supporters and proclamations about the democratic process, Bob Bauer, a lawyer for the Obama campaign, unexpectedly got on the line and heatedly challenged Mrs. Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, who responded in kind.

Hector Nieto, a spokesman for Texas Democratic Party, dismissed the charges of widespread problems. Mr. Nieto said the party had revamped its electoral and caucus system specifically to address concerns mentioned by the Clinton campaign. There was a call bank at the party's headquarters staffed by 200 volunteers and a dozen lawyers, he said; by late Tuesday, it had fielded just 12 calls from people complaining about specific problems with the caucus system.

Nonetheless, there were many reports of overcrowded and chaotic caucuses, which began when the balloting ended. At one caucus in Austin, well over 300 people jammed into the Maplewood Elementary School cafeteria, quickly overwhelming the space filled with low-slung institutional tables and benches and a sign that said "Increase the Peace," a message heeded by the mellow crowd.

Workers there ran out of sign-in sheets and had to hastily copy more. Steve Wilson, a writer and editor who signed in for Mr. Obama, said he had expected a crowd but not one so large.

"They call this the Texas Two-Step, but it's more like the Cotton-Eyed Joe," Mr. Wilson said, referring to an old-fashioned line dance that is quite a bit more complicated than a two-step.

Turnout in Texas was projected to be above 26 percent, and there were widespread reports of long lines remaining at closing time for the polls. Over three million voters went to the polls, according to state election officials, and more Democrats cast early ballots this year than voted in the entire primary four years ago.

A national voter hot line run by the Election Protection Coalition received 30 to 40 calls from Texas voters who had been turned away from caucus sites. Some were rebuffed by fire marshals because of overcrowding, while others reported being told by people patrolling the front doors of the sites that they had to show proof of having voted to enter the location.

The order by the judge in Ohio to keep the polls open late seemed to have little effect because so many of the voting places had shut down. At Giddings Elementary School on the east side of Cleveland, workers had packed up the voting machines when the order was issued.

Not far away, Patricia Adams, 29, said she received a telephone call at home from the Obama campaign reminding her to vote and telling her that her polling place at the Lonnie Burton Recreation Center would stay open late until 9 p.m. But when she got there at 8:45 p.m., Ms. Adams said, the lights were off and no one was there.

"I was real disappointed," she said. "I feel like they took my voice away."

Of the more than 1,200 calls received by the election coalition's free hot line, about 60 percent were from Ohio and 40 percent were from Texas, said Jonah Goldman, a lawyer with the coalition. Most were from voters who wanted to find out their polling location or who were confused about registration requirements.

Mr. Goldman said that the polling place at the Orchard Elementary School in Cleveland ran out of ballots by 5:30 p.m. and that poll workers started handing out ballots from another district that included candidates in a different Congressional race.

Various precincts in Sandusky County ran out of ballots, and about 300 to 400 voters were turned away. All polling places stayed open there until 9 p.m., said Ms. Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state. She added that the ballot printing devices in the county elections office broke down, so new ones could not be supplied.

Ohio has experience with counting delays. In the 2004 general election, voters waited more than a month for final results, and in the 2006 primary, when absentee ballots had to be counted by hand, the tally took over five days.

A bomb threat at one school in Madison closed its polling place for an hour. A power failure at a polling place in Lake County was taken in stride, as poll workers ran extension cords from a nearby building and used flashlights to usher voters along.

Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said the reason for the increased absentee balloting was that more voters had become acquainted with a 2005 law that eliminated restrictions that previously required an excuse, like being ill, for people to be permitted to cast an absentee vote.

In Cuyahoga County, the secretary of state decided to count the ballots at a central location. The county has had a long history of voting scandals, including the conviction of several election workers on tampering charges after the 2004 presidential election and lines hours long to vote that year.

Also see:
AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications
•
Go to Original:
http://www.truthout.org/

Type in this address on your keyboard to gain access to Truthout.org. for it's many articles, archives, etc. For some reason it isn't linking up on AAJ.
Reporting was contributed by Bob Driehaus in Cincinnati, Andrew Jacobs and Dan Levin in Cleveland, Randy Kennedy in Austin, Tex., Michael Luo in New York and Michael Powell in San Antonio.
<<<<O>>>>

Saundra Hummer

March 5th, 2008, 10:45 AM

^ ^ ^ ^ ^
MARCH 10-12 in Washington DC: Stop-Loss Congress
While Congress plans a vacation from March 15th to 30th, Bush's stop-loss policy requires soldiers to involuntarily extend their tours and prolong the occupation. It is time to Stop-Loss Congress!

On Monday March 10, and Tuesday March 11, we will deliver "official" stop-loss notices to all members of Congress to notify them that all of their LEAVES, VACATIONS and HOME VISITS HAVE BEEN CANCELLED until every soldier and mercenary is home from Iraq. On Wednesday March 12, we will take nonviolent action on Capitol Hill.

http://www.stop-losscongress.org

Go on site to see the several initiatives and a video. One video will be about "Home from the War" testimony and film about the attrocities our military say they witnessed, it sounds as though it is brutal. I can't get it on my computer, but can only imagine the worst, as we know war is hell, and it can turn the best of them/us into something they never thought possible; into something we never dreamed of. SRH

http://us.f523.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?Search=&Idx=13&YY=15824&y5beta=yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&view=a&head=b
Think it will work, work when nothing else has? SRH ^ ^ ^ .

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 11:50 AM

.~ ~ ~ DAMNING REPORTGaza Humanitarian Crisis Worst in 40 Years
A report sponsored by eight British-based aid agencies and human rights groups has described the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip as the worst in 40 years. And a senior UN official has warned that the entire infrastructure there is close to collapse.

A group of aid agencies and human rights organizations say the people of the Gaza Strip are suffering the worst conditions since Israel occupied the territory in 1967.

The damning report on the humanitarian situation released on Thursday says that 80 percent of Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants are now dependent on food aid, while unemployment is close to 40 percent.

PHOTO GALLERY: GAZA'S HUMANITARIAN CRISIS:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,539732,00.htmlClick on a picture to launch the image gallery (16 Photos)
Go on-site to gain acesss, just click below:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,539732,00.html
The report, sponsored by eight British-based groups including Oxfam, Amnesty International UK and CARE International UK, also describes the terrible situation in hospitals where power cuts can last up to 12 hours a day, and where up to 18 percent of patients seeking emergency treatment outside of Gaza were refused permission to leave last year. The organizations warn that the water and sewage systems are close to collapse, with 40-50 million liters of sewage pouring into the sea every day. (OK envirolmentalists, where is your concern? If there's not compassion for people, how about the planet? SRH)

The report comes hot on the heels of the Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip that killed 125 people last week, many of them civilians. The incursion was a response to the escalation in rocket attacks (more...) fired by militants at Israel, which killed one person last week. The Israeli response was condemned by many international observers as disproportionate.

"Israel has the right and obligation to protect its citizens, but as the occupying power in Gaza it has a legal duty to ensure that Gazans have access to food, clean water, electricity and medical care," said Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen on Thursday. "Punishing the entire Gazan population by denying them these basic rights is utterly indefensible."

Israel's Defense Ministry rejected the report, saying Hamas, the militant Islamist rulers in Gaza, was to blame for the hardships. It also pointed out that medicines and medical equipment were shipped into Gaza without limitations.

Israel and the West shun Hamas, labelled a terrorist organization, and have refused to deal directly with the group since it forcibly took control of Gaza last June. Since then Israel has imposed a blockade on the territory, virtually freezing economic activity there.

In response to the Israeli military action over the past week, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who now only controls the West Bank, broke off peace negotiations with the Israelis. However, under pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who traveled to the region on Wednesday, Abbas agreed to resume talks and to drop a demand that Israel first reach a truce with Hamas in Gaza.

The ongoing talks are supposed to prepare the way for a deal on a Palestinian state this year but Israeli military action in Gaza and Abbas' lack of authority there have made negotiations difficult.

While the Israeli media reported on Thursday that peace talks could resume as early as this week, progress could be undermined by ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, which looks set to continue.

On Thursday morning an Israeli soldier was killed and another seriously injured when Palestinian militants blew up an Israeli army jeep on the border with the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said. A spokesman for the Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Reuters.

On Wednesday a senior United Nations official warned that the dire conditions in Gaza would deteriorate even further if Israeli military action escalated. "It would be devastating," John Ging, director of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, told Reuters. "The whole infrastructure is in a state of collapse, whether it's water, sanitation or just the medical services, " he said. "If there's a further military offensive it will again just ... compound an already desperate situation."

smd/reuters/ap: Blogs discussing this story
http://technorati.com/search/http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,539732,00.html?partnerid=160
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS
Photo Gallery: Gaza's Humanitarian Crisis
News Analysis: Gaza Pitfalls in Every Path (03/03/2008)
Brinksmanship in Gaza: Hamas Pursues Dangerous Strategy with Ashkelon Attacks (03/03/2008)
The Dimona Attack: Security Experts Fear New Wave of Terrorism in Israel (02/05/2008)
Graveyard Shift for Islamic Jihad: A Visit to a Gaza Rocket Factory (01/29/2008)Go on site to gain access to link within article, photo's and more articles of interest.http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,539732,00.html~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 12:29 PM

.^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Half of New Orleans's Poor Permanently Displaced: Failure or Success?By
Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 06 March 2008
Government reports confirm that half of the working poor, elderly and disabled who lived in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina have not returned. Because of critical shortages in low-cost housing, few now expect tens of thousands of poor and working people to ever be able to return home.

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) reports Medicaid, medical assistance for aged, blind, disabled and low-wage working families, is down 46 percent from pre-Katrina levels. DHH reports before Katrina there were 134,249 people in New Orleans on Medicaid. February 2008 reports show participation down to 72,211 (a drop of 62,038 since Katrina). Medicaid is down dramatically in every category: by 50 percent for the aged, 53 percent for the blind, 48 percent for the disabled and 52 percent for children.

The Social Security Administration documents that fewer than half the elderly have returned. New Orleans was home to 37,805 retired workers who received Social Security before Katrina; now there are 18,940 - a 50 percent reduction. Before Katrina, there were 12,870 disabled workers receiving Social Security disability benefits in New Orleans, now there are 5,350 - that's 59 percent fewer. Before Katrina, there were 9,425 widowers in New Orleans receiving Social Security survivors benefits; now there are less than half that many - 4,140.

Children of working-class families have not returned. Public school enrollment in New Orleans was 66,372 before Katrina. Latest figures are 32,149 - a 52 percent reduction.

Public transit usage numbers are down 75 percent since Katrina. Prior to Katrina, there were frequently over 3 million rides per month. In January 2008, there were 732,000 rides. The Regional Transit Authority says the reduction reflects that New Orleans now has far fewer poorer, transit-dependent residents.

Figures from the Louisiana Department of Social Services show the number of families receiving food stamps in New Orleans has dropped from 46,551 in June 2005 to 22,768 in January 2008. Welfare numbers are also down. The Louisiana Families Independence Temporary Assistance Program was down from 5,764 recipients (mostly children) in July 2005 to 1,412 in the latest report.

While there are no precise figures on the racial breakdown of poor and working people who are still displaced, indications strongly suggest they are overwhelmingly African- American. The black population of New Orleans has plummeted by 57 percent, while white population fell 36 percent, according to census data. Areas that are fully recovering are more affluent and predominately white. New Orleans, which was 67 percent black before Katrina, is estimated to be no higher than 58 percent black now.

The reduction in poor and low-wage workers in New Orleans is no surprise to social workers. Don Everard, director of social service agency Hope House, says New Orleans is a much tougher town for poor people than before Katrina. "Housing costs a lot more and there is much less of it," says Everard. "The job market is also very unstable. The rise in wages after Katrina has mostly fallen backwards and people are not getting enough hours of work on a regular basis."

The displacement of tens of thousands of people is now expected to be permanent because there is both a current shortage of affordable housing and no plan to create affordable rental housing for tens of thousands of the displaced.

In the most blatant sign of government action to reduce the numbers of poor people in New Orleans, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is demolishing thousands of intact public housing apartments. HUD is spending nearly $1 billion with questionable developers to end up with much less affordable housing. Right after Katrina, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted New Orleans was "not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again." He then worked to make that prediction true.

According to Policy Link, a national research institute, the crisis in affordable housing means barely two in five renters in Louisiana can return to affordable homes. In New Orleans, all the funds currently approved by HUD and other government agencies (not spent, only approved) for housing for low-income renters will only rebuild one-third of the pre-Katrina affordable rental housing stock.

Hope House sees 400 to 500 needy people a month. "Most of the people we see are working people facing eviction or utility cutoffs, or they are already homeless," reports Everard. The New Orleans homeless population has already doubled from pre-Katrina numbers to approximately 12,000 people. Everard noted that because of FEMA's recent announcement that it was closing 35,000 still-occupied trailers across the Gulf Coast, homelessness is likely to get a lot worse.

United Nations officials recently called for an immediate halt to the demolition of public housing in New Orleans, saying demolition is a violation of human rights and will force predominately black residents into homelessness. "The spiraling costs of private housing and rental units, and in particular the demolition of public housing, puts these communities in further distress, increasing poverty and homelessness," said a joint statement by UN experts in housing and minority issues. "We therefore call on the federal government and state and local authorities to immediately halt the demolition of public housing in New Orleans." Similar calls have been made by Senators Clinton and Obama. Despite these calls, the demolitions continue.

The rebuilding has gone as many planned. Right after Katrina, one wealthy businessman told The Wall Street Journal, "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically." Elected officials, from national officials like President Bush and HUD Secretary Jackson to local city council members, who are presumably sleeping in their own beds, apparently concur. Policies put in place so far do not appear overly concerned about the tens of thousands of working poor, elderly and disabled who are not able to come home.

The political implications of a dramatic reduction in poor and working - mostly African-American - people in New Orleans are straightforward. The reduction directly helps Republicans, who have fought for years to reduce the impact of the overwhelmingly Democratic New Orleans on statewide politics in Louisiana. In the jargon of political experts, Louisiana, before Katrina, was a "pink state." The state went for Clinton twice and then for Bush twice, with US senators from each party. The forced relocation of hundreds of thousands, mostly lower-income and African-American, could alter the balance between the two major parties in Louisiana and also change the opportunities for black elected officials in New Orleans.

Given the political and governmental officials and policies in place now, one of the major casualties of Katrina will be the permanent displacement of tens of thousands of African-Americans, the working poor, their children, the elderly and the disabled.

Those who wanted a different New Orleans rebuilt probably see the concentrated displacement as a success. However, if the test of a society is how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members, the aftermath of Katrina earns all of us a failing grade.
--------
Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans. He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com Interested persons can contact Hope House through Don Everard at deverard@bellsouth.net. Also see: AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications •Go on site to gain access to this article and several other eye opening posts, they can be mind boggling as well. Just click on the following URL:http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030608J.shtml ^^^^^^^^^^^ .

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 02:01 PM

.x x x x x x x FBI Chief Confirms Misuse of SubpoenasThe Washington Post
Thursday 06 March 2008
By
Dan Eggen
Security letters used to get personal data.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told senators yesterday that agents improperly used a type of administrative subpoena to obtain personal data about Americans until internal reforms were enacted last year.

Mueller said a forthcoming report from the Justice Department's inspector general will find that abuses recurred in the agency's use of national security letters in 2006, echoing similar problems to those identified in earlier audits.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine reported a year ago that the FBI used such letters - which are not subject to a court's review - to improperly obtain telephone logs, banking records and other personal records of thousands of Americans from 2003 to 2005. An internal FBI audit also found that the bureau potentially violated laws or agency rules more than 1,000 times in such cases.

Mueller testified that a follow-up report from Fine's office, due to be released this month, will "identify issues similar to those in the report issued last March." But Mueller emphasized that the time frame in the report "predates the reforms we now have in place" to avoid further abuses.

"We are committed to ensuring that we not only get this right, but maintain the vital trust of the American people," Mueller said.

At yesterday's hearing, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) condemned the FBI's "widespread illegal and improper use of national security letters," and urged Mueller to be more attentive to the problem.

"Everybody wants to stop terrorists," Leahy said. "But we also, though, as Americans, we believe in our privacy rights and we want those protected."

A year ago, lawmakers of both parties called for limits on the FBI's use of the security letters, which demand consumer information from banks, credit card companies and other institutions without a warrant as part of investigations into suspected terrorism and espionage. Congress has not followed through with legislation, however, and Mueller sought to assure lawmakers that internal changes will solve the problems. He said new FBI procedures will "minimize the chance of future lapses," including the creation of a compliance office tasked with monitoring the use of security letters.

But Michael German, a former FBI agent who is national security policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that "it's becoming more and more obvious that outside oversight is essential since the Bureau's learning curve is sadly unimpressive."

"Instituting judicial oversight would guarantee that someone would be looking over the shoulder of agents using a tool as invasive as an NSL," German said. The ACLU and other civil liberties groups say the government's use of security letters should be significantly narrowed or brought under court supervision.

Under questioning from Leahy about the Bush administration's controversial use of harsh techniques for interrogating suspected terrorists, Mueller defended the FBI's practice of using "noncoercive" techniques on criminal and terrorism suspects, saying they are "effective and sufficient and appropriate."

Mueller said the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit has found that building trust with prisoners is "particularly effective." He pointed to the FBI's interrogation of Saddam Hussein, which yielded crucial details about the former Iraqi government's actions and motivations.

"Our techniques and the experts that we have . . . believe that our techniques are effective, and are sufficient and appropriate to our mission," Mueller said. "And those techniques are founded on a desire to develop a rapport and a relationship."

President Bush is expected to veto a bill this week that would bar the CIA from using harsh techniques, including waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning.

Also see:AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications • Go to Original [on-line]
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030608K.shtml x x x x x .

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 02:33 PM

* * * * * * * BuzzFlash.com Presents:Media PUTZ.comHonoring reporters who just can't handle the truth!March 6, 2008Tim Russert
For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

He's back. Yes, Tim Russert -- General Electric's favorite waterboy for the irrelevant and throwing softballs at the Dick Cheneys of the world -- joins the few, the wealthy, the compromised, and the faux sincere political journalists as a two-time winner of the BuzzFlash Media Putz of the Week Award.

Considering all the grave issues facing the world today, in the Cleveland Democratic "showdown," Russert managed to sound like an inquisitor on secondary character issues that would be better left to the waning minutes of an unimportant news conference.

Conrad N. Sawyer of Fayetteville, Arkansas nominated Russert for "Being a shill for the Republican Party at the Tuesday night Ohio Democratic debate. Why didn't he ask if the candidates have a contingency plan if evil Zircon people from Pluto attack us with Q rays?" Sawyer has a point, even though Russert's questions weren't completely irrelevant, but they reminded us of his past debate question that was burning on every American's mind, Has Dennis Kucinich ever seen a UFO?

MediaMatters.org noted:

"During this week's Democratic presidential debate, Russert didn't ask a single question about global warming, continuing his longstanding habit of all but ignoring the topic. He didn't ask a single question about the mortgage crisis. (As one Cleveland resident noted, "We've got the mortgage industry's toxic waste scattered all over this city, but Mr. Blue-Collar-Buffalo-and-Cleveland-Marshall-Guy Russert couldn't be bothered with a question about it.") He didn't ask a single question about executive power, the Constitution, torture, wiretapping, or other civil-liberties concerns. But that shouldn't come as a surprise; of all the questions he has asked while moderating presidential debates during this campaign, only one has dealt with any of those topics."

Why didn't Russert ask these questions?

Once again, we are brought back to the corporate context and constraints of creating Media Putzes. NBC is owned by GE and GE has business interests that could financially be affected by slowing down nuclear power and ensuring its safety; by reducing greenhouse gas emissions; by increasing regulation on the mortgage markets; and so on. Not to mention that GE doesn't, in any way, want to tick off Dick Cheney or George W. Bush by getting into a meaningful discussion of unitary authority or the assault on our civil liberties.

Russert has a pleasant enough television presence, but so does a golden retriever at the Westminster Dog Show -- and they are both on leashes, of different kinds to be sure.

BuzzFlash has mentioned in the past that Russert has built up a fuzzy narrative about his working class upbringing in Buffalo, New York. Unfortunately, his "success" story has resulted in his abandoning the values he grew up with for the lure of a fat paycheck. He's even abandoned, as his line of questioning showed in Cleveland, the working class stiffs he has left behind to struggle economically for survival.

The working class has been taken for a ride by the entrenched Republicrats in D.C., and Russert is their trusted puppy who they trust to never upset the status quo.

Tim Russert previously won the Media PUTZ of the week onAugust 2, 2007
Click here for early notice of the
MEDIA PUTZ of the WEEK winners:

http://mediaputz.com/08/03/putz0306.html

Go on-site:
http://buzzflash.com * * *

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 06:48 PM

.
~~~~~~~
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

H.G. Wells
Author
The Outline of History
~~~
"We have come out of the time when obedience, the acceptance of discipline, intelligent courage and resolution, were most important, into that more difficult time when it is a person's duty to understand the world rather than simply fight for it."

Ernest Hemingway
~~~
"Today the world is the victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking."

William Mather Lewis
~~~
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like the evil spirits at the dawn of day." -

Thomas Jefferson
Letter
to
Pierre S. du Pont de Nemours
~~~
"Activists who are truly progressive cannot use force or trickery; we can only serve as mentors and midwives, showing the way and facilitating the birth of a new society. Our means must reflect our desired ends if we want our means to lead to those ends."

Randy Schutt
Inciting Democracy
~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 06:57 PM

.
+ + + + + + + + + + +
Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq "1,173,743"
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
+ + +
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America'sWar On Iraq 3,974
http://icasualties.org/oif/
+ + +
The War in Iraq Costs
$500,235,956,086
+ + +See the cost in your community
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182
+ + + + + + + + +

.

Saundra Hummer

March 6th, 2008, 07:07 PM

.
. . . . . . . Who leaked the details
of a
CIA-Mossad plot against Iran?
By
Yossi Melman
06/03/08 "Haaretz" -- -- The Bush administration is prolonging the hunting season against journalists. The latest victim is James Risen, The New York Times reporter for national security and intelligence affairs. About three months ago, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena against him, ordering Risen to give evidence in court. A heavy blackout has been imposed on the affair, with the only hint being that it has to do with sensitive matters of "national security."

But conversations with several sources who are familiar with the affair indicate that Risen has been asked to testify as part of an investigation aimed at revealing who leaked apparently confidential information about the planning of secret Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad missions concerning Iran's nuclear program.

Risen included this information in his book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," which was published in 2006. In the book, he discusses a number of ideas which he says were thought up jointly by CIA and Mossad operatives to sabotage Iran's nuclear capabilities.

One of these ideas was to build electromagnetic devices, smuggling them inside Iran to sabotage electricity lines leading to the country's central nuclear sites. According to the plan, the operation was supposed to cause a series of chain reactions which would damage extremely powerful short circuits in the electrical supply that would have led to failures of the super computers of Iran's nuclear sites.

According to the book, the Mossad planners proposed that they would be responsible for getting the electromagnetic facilities into Iran with the aid of their agents in Iran. However, a series of technical problems prevented the plan's execution.

Another of the book's important revelations, which made the administration's blood boil about James Risen, appeared in a chapter describing what was known as Operation Merlin, the code name for another CIA operation supposed to penetrate the heart of Iran's nuclear activity, collect information about it and eventually disrupt it.
Operation Merlin The CIA counter proliferation department hired a Soviet nuclear engineer who had previously, in the 1990s, defected to the United States and revealed secrets from the Soviet Union's nuclear program. His speciality was in the field of what is called weaponization, the final stage of assembling a nuclear bomb.

The scientist was equipped with blueprints for assembling a nuclear bomb in which, without his knowledge, false drawings and information blueprints were planted about a nuclear warhead that was supposedly manufactured in the Soviet Union. The plan's details had been fabricated by CIA experts, and so while they appeared authentic, they had no engineering or technological value.

The intention was to fool the scientist and send him to make contact with the Iranians to whom he would offer his services and blueprints. The American plot was aimed at getting the Iranians to invest a great deal of effort in studying the plans and to attempt to assemble a faulty warhead. But when the time came, they would not have a nuclear bomb but rather a dud.

However, Operation Merlin, which was so creative and original, failed because of CIA bungled planning. The false information inserted into the blueprints were too obvious and too easily detected and the Russian engineer discovered them. As planned, he made contact with the Iranian delegation to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and handed over to them, also as planned, the blueprints.

But contrary to the CIA's intention, he added a letter to the blueprints in which he pointed out the mistakes. He did not do this with ill intent or out of a desire to disrupt the operation and harm his operators. On the contrary, he did so out of a deep sense of mission and in order to satisfy his American operators. He hoped that in this way he would simply increase the Iranians' trust in him and encourage them to make contact with him for the good, of course, of his American operators.

The result was disastrous. Not only did the CIA fail to prevent the Iranians in their efforts to enhance their nuclear program, this operation may also have made it possible for them to get their hands on a plan for assembling a nuclear warhead.
Freedom of the pressIn Israel, military censorship would have prevented the publication of details such as these. But in the U.S., where the principle of freedom of the press is sacred and anchored in the constitution, there is no compulsory and binding censorship. There is, however, an expectation there that the press will show responsibility. This expectation has increased in recent years, particularly with the conservative Bush administration and in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Risen is not the first journalist to have been subpoenaed to give evidence before a grand jury and reveal his sources. According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, some 65 journalists have been summoned for such investigations since 2001. Some agreed, cooperated and testified. Most refused, so that they would not have to reveal their sources. In this way, they exposed themselves to being charged with contempt of court.

There were some who even preferred to be jailed so long as they were not forced to reveal their source. The best-known case was that of Judith Miller, another New York Times writer. The background to her 85-day imprisonment was her refusal to reveal who had leaked the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, to the media. (The man responsible for the leak was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was sentenced to 30 months imprisonment but was pardoned by President Bush.)

"It is true that there is tension between the Bush administration and the media," says Steve Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy on behalf of the Federation of American Scientists, an independent body which aims at analyzing the activities of government with a critical eye, "but I would not go so far as to say that the administration is waging war against the media."

In Aftergood's assessment, the danger to the freedom of the press comes rather from private citizens and organizations, those who feel themselves harmed by journalistic publications and commentators and who would therefore like to limit the press' freedom. The most conspicuous of these is Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior editor at Commentary, who believes that liberal newspapers like The New York Times are not sufficiently patriotic. In his articles and in testimony before a Senate committee that discussed the issue, Schoenfeld claimed that

The New York Times reporters had revealed confidential material that weakened America's struggle against Al-Qaida. He calls for relinquishing the soft approach which he says the administration has taken against journalists in whose publications, in his opinion, America's security is harmed.

There are many others who take the opposite approach and believe that the right of journalists to keep their sources secret should be anchored in law. Two Congressmen, the Republican Mike Pence, and Rick Boucher, a Democrat, have proposed legislation to this effect - a law for the free flow of information. The House of Representatives has already approved their proposal but the legislation is being held up in the Senate, to the displeasure of the American Civil Liberties Union.

On the face of it, this is a sensitive issue that is intended to draw the lines between the freedom of information, freedom of the media, and the public's right to know, against the right of a democracy to defend itself against enemies that are not democratic. But James Risen has no doubt that the correct and just moral act on his part has to be to defend his sources, even if this means he will lose his freedom.

The next test case in the U.S. concerning the freedom of the press could be of even greater interest to Israel. It is connected to next month's trial of two former senior American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employees, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, who have been charged with crimes based on an old First World War anti-espionage law, which has hardly ever been put into practice since.

The indictment states that they obtained confidential information from officials at the Pentagon and transferred it, inter alia, to Israeli diplomats and journalists. A number of American journalists have already been investigated by the CIA in connection to this, and it is possible that they will be called to give evidence incriminating the two senior AIPAC officials.

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Homer

March 7th, 2008, 09:52 AM

Read the latest on this disgusting president. Sorry excuse for a human being and leader of our nation.

Bill Clinton profits from company tied to felon, China

By Jim McElhatton
March 7, 2008

Former President Bill Clinton speaking at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Thursday, Feb. 28

The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from an Internet search company that was co-founded by a convicted felon and backed by the Chinese government, public records show.

Mr. Clinton had gotten the nonpublicly traded stock from Accoona Corp. back in 2004 as a gift for giving a speech at a company event. He landed the windfall by selling the 200,000 shares to an undisclosed buyer in May 2006, commanding $3.50 a share at a time when the company was reporting millions of dollars of losses, according to interviews.

A spokesman for the William J. Clinton Foundation declined to identify the buyer who was willing to pay so much for a struggling company's stock, saying only that the transaction was handled by a securities broker. It occurred seven months before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her bid to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

The spokesman, Ben Yarrow, declined last week to say whether Mr. Clinton knew about the Chinese government's connection to Accoona or the felony fraud conviction of one of the company's founders.

"President Clinton gave a speech; he did not endorse a product," Mr. Yarrow said.

The $700,000 capital gains was listed on the tax returns of Mr. Clinton's foundation that were reviewed by The Washington Times.

The lack of disclosure about the buyer and the general activities of former presidents' foundations troubles some ethics experts.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political money and ethics, said even though the law doesn't require former presidents to disclose donations and stock transactions to their foundations, they should do so to avoid the appearance that money was buying special access.

"We're in a unique period where the wife of a former president is running for the job of the son of a former president," she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton and the current President Bush.

Accoona offered its own Internet search engine as a rival to giants Google and Yahoo, and Mr. Clinton was the keynote speaker at the company's Dec. 6, 2004, launch in New York. He even joked about the price of the stock that he was given that day as compensation for his speech.

"So I hope you get a big run-up in your stock price, I hope you have a great time doing it, but remember you're doing something profoundly good for humanity and the future as you do," Mr. Clinton told Accoona executives.

Accoona, based in Jersey City, N.J., was co-founded by Armand Rousso, who as of last year held more than 14 percent of the company's shares. He pleaded guilty in 1999 to federal money laundering and other charges in a fraud investigation in New Jersey.

After being jailed for 19 months and cooperating with government investigators for several years, he was sentenced to probation in 2006 and was barred from working in the securities industry.

Rousso "does not get involved in the management of this company; if he did, I would not be here," Accoona's chief executive, Valentine J. Zammit, said in an interview. "I didn't come on board to be told what to do. ... We've made a lot of changes.

The China Daily Information Co., or CDIC, a subsidiary of the Chinese-controlled newspaper China Daily, holds nearly a 7 percent stake in Accoona, records show. Mr. Zammit said CDIC also has no management role.

Still, the company has touted its ties to China to potential investors.

"CDIC's market knowledge and its parent's ownership by the Chinese government gives us an advantage over companies that do not have such a relationship," the company said in a prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year.

The stock

Accoona officials have declined to discuss the arrangement they had with Mr. Clinton. "Obviously, we're a private company. ... I'm not about to give out that [information]," said Mr. Zammit, who wasn't with the company when Mr. Clinton got the stock.

Mr. Clinton's foundation has raised more than $250 million for the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and other charitable causes since 2004.

"The foundation is proud of the work that it does, and its tremendous successes — including its success on previously intractable problems such as the cost of AIDS medicine in the developing world — would not be possible without the generous support it receives from donors," Mr. Yarrow said.

Before calling off a plan to raise money on the stock market last year, Accoona said in a detailed prospectus filed with the SEC that it had issued 200,000 shares of common stock in 2004 for what it called "marketing services," valuing the deal at 66 cents per share. The documents do not name a recipient.

When Mr. Clinton's foundation sold its 200,000 Accoona shares in 2006, the transaction was worth $3.50 per share. The IRS document doesn't name the buyer, and officials did not respond to a request for more information about the transaction.

There is no established market price for the stock because the company is private. But records show that the company posted at least $60 million in losses during the period from 2004 to 2006.

The Chicago Tribune, reporting the stock transaction on Tuesday, quoted a business agent for former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov, saying his client also was paid in stock options after attending Accoona's launch in 2004.

However, the agent said, Mr. Kasparov did not exercise the options because financial advisers said the shares were worth less than the $1 option price, according to the report. The agent, Owen Williams, declined to comment when contacted by The Times.

Pat Huddleston, former branch enforcement chief for the SEC, did not describe the $3.50 per share paid to the Clinton Foundation as inappropriate but speculated that Accoona may have agreed in 2004 to buy back the stock at a predetermined price.

"A private company still owes a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder, ... but the definition of fair price in a private company is what a willing seller and what a willing buyer agree on," he said.

"I wonder if there wasn't an agreement where whoever is arranging the former president's [speaking] engagement is saying, 'I'm going to take stock, but you agree that when I sell it, you're going to have to buy it at such and such a price,' " Mr. Huddleston said.

The concerns

Not all political leaders have been as enthusiastic about Accoona as Mr. Clinton. One prominent member of the British Parliament raised concerns about the company's close ties to the Chinese government after it introduced a European search engine.

Derek Wyatt, who chaired a House of Commons committee on Internet-related issues, reportedly called on advertisers at the time to "shun" the company.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Wyatt told The Times that he was concerned that the company was too close to China, which has been criticized by human rights groups for restricting Web sites critical of the Chinese government.

"You can't have a search engine and restrict the search," Mr. Wyatt said.

Larger search engines have faced scrutiny over cooperation with the Chinese government. Reporters Without Borders in 2005 accused Yahoo of acting as a "police informant" for China in the arrest of a Chinese journalist.

Mr. Zammit said the company does not keep information on its users, adding, "We haven't been approached by the Chinese government to provide any information."

In an SEC filing, the company said, "We are required to report any suspicious content to relevant government authorities and to undergo computer security inspections."

Despite Accoona's connections in China, the company has struggled to turn a profit. Last year, the New York Times reported that plans to raise $80.5 million through a stock offering halted when an underwriter withdrew from the deal.

Accoona disclosed Rousso's criminal history in a prospectus filed with the SEC. The document says Rousso was convicted of securities fraud in France in 1999 and separately pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering in federal court in New Jersey.

Rousso worked for at least two years as an outside consultant to Accoona through New York-based SPBD Consulting, which was paid millions of dollars. Attempts to reach Rousso through the business were unsuccessful.

"SPBD and Mr. Rousso are no longer consulting for Accoona Corporation," the company said in an e-mail last week, adding that Rousso would not comment on any Accoona-related matters.

"The principal underlying activities occurred during a period ending over nine years ago and are themselves completely unconnected to us," Accoona said in its SEC filing.

Rousso has been credited with helping secure 11 criminal convictions and $7 million in forfeited assets during the years that he spent cooperating with the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, according to court records.

"Before I was arrested in January 1999, my conduct was illegal and I deeply regret it," Rousso told a judge in federal court in Newark at his sentencing in 2006.

"The 19 months I did in jail between January 1999 and August 2000 was the best thing that could happen to me. It gave me the strength and courage to carry on," he said.

Homer

March 7th, 2008, 09:57 AM

Slick Willy has to be the worst President in modern times. Here's another ditty for you:

Archivists block release of Clinton papers

Marc Rich
By Rich Schultz, AP

CLEMENCY REQUESTS MADE TO CLINTON

The documents on former president Bill Clinton's presidential pardons released this week by the Clinton Presidential Library include scores of clemency requests for people from all walks of life. Some examples:

Former heavyweight boxing champion Riddick Bowe wrote Clinton a two-page letter seeking a pardon on a domestic violence conviction. It was not granted.

Edward DeBartolo, former co-owner of the San Francisco 49ers football team, sought a pardon on his guilty plea related to an illegal payment he made to former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. It was not granted.

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter sent Clinton a handwritten note seeking a pardon for Patricia Hearst for her role in a 1974 bank robbery while in the custody of the Symbionese Liberation Army. It was granted.

Former president Gerald Ford sent a letter supporting a pardon for former congressman Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., on a mail fraud conviction. It was granted.

By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY
LITTLE ROCK — Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.

The archivists' decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.

Clinton's legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.

The decision to withhold the records could provide fodder for critics who say that the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, have been unwilling to fully release documents to public scrutiny.

Officials with the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., criticized Hillary Clinton this week for not doing more to see that records from her husband's administration are made public. "She's been reluctant to disclose information," Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, told reporters in a conference call in which he specifically cited the slow release records from the Clinton library. "If she's not willing to be open with (voters) on these issues now, why would she be open as president?"

In January 2006, USA TODAY requested documents about the pardons under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The library made 4,000 pages available this week. However, 1,500 pages were either partially redacted or withheld entirely, including 300 pages covering internal White House communications on pardon decisions, such as memos to and from the president, and reports on which pardon requests the Justice Department opposed.

In a statement, the Clinton campaign said that "all of the redactions made to the pardon-related documents were made by (the National Archives)."

Former president Clinton issued 140 pardons on his last day in office, including several to controversial figures, such as commodities trader Rich, then a fugitive on tax evasion charges. Rich's ex-wife, Denise, contributed $2,000 in 1999 to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign; $5,000 to a related political action committee; and $450,000 to a fund set up to build the Clinton library.

The president also pardoned two men who each paid Sen. Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, about $200,000 to lobby the White House for pardons — one for a drug conviction and one for mail fraud and perjury convictions, according to a 2002 report by the House committee on government reform. After the payments came to light, Bill Clinton issued a statement: "Neither Hillary nor I had any knowledge of such payments," the report said.

The pardon records released by the library divulge little that might settle debate about those and other pardons. But they do shed new light on the volume of clemency requests that former president Clinton received — and the pressures he and his staff faced as friends, advisers, political leaders and foreign heads of state weighed in to influence which petitions would be granted.

The files contain handwritten letters from several of the president's close associates. Former Democratic Party chairman Donald Fowler of South Carolina wrote a note seeking clemency for former congressman John Jenrette, D-S.C., who was convicted in the 1980 Abscam sting in which FBI agents, posing as Middle Eastern businessmen, offered lawmakers bribes for political favors. Clinton did not grant the pardon.

Most of the withheld documents, including dozens of clemency pleas sent to the president, were blocked from release under FOIA rules that protect personal privacy. The 300 pages of internal White House documents on pardon requests were blocked under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which allows presidents to maintain the confidentiality of communications with their advisers for up to 12 years after they leave office.

In 2002, Clinton sent a guidance letter to his library that urged quick release of most White House records but retained the confidentiality prerogative covering advice from his staff. Still, Clinton said the restriction should be interpreted "narrowly" and allowed that certain records detailing internal communications could be made public if reviewed and approved for release by his designated legal agent.

Emily Robison, the library's deputy director, said Clinton's agent, former deputy White House counsel Bruce Lindsey, chose not to review the withheld documents.

Lindsey "was given the opportunity to look at what we withheld under the (president's) guidelines, and he chose not to. … Only Mr. Lindsey and the president have the authority to open those," she said.

The William J. Clinton Foundation, which Lindsey helps oversee, said in a written statement that the National Archives is responsible for deciding which records are withheld under the Presidential Records Act. Archivists were exclusively responsible for "determinations with respect to these materials," the statement said.

Clinton's guidance to the library goes beyond his predecessors, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, in urging that most of his presidential records be released quickly, according to Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, a research institute at George Washington University that collects government records for public use.

Blanton noted that Lindsey's refusal to review the withheld documents could be viewed as an effort to ensure the archivists' independence. "He's saying the professional archivists get to make this determination; it's not a political determination."

The archivists' decision to withhold records that could be construed as confidential communications between Clinton and his advisers is more consistent with the Bush administration's hard line on the release of White House records, Blanton said.

President Bush signed an order in November 2001 that broadened former presidents' prerogative to block the release of internal White House records. That order, which Bill Clinton opposed, also allows a president's immediate family to assert the privilege.

In 2004, Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group, went to court to force the Bush administration to release Justice Department records on Clinton's pardons, and a federal judge ordered that the records be opened. But the administration, which argued that such releases would undermine a president's ability to get confidential advice, blacked out most of the documents it made public.

Christopher Farrell, a Judicial Watch director, noted that the pardon records blocked by the library also included all Justice Department reports that were sent to Clinton with recommendations on which clemency requests he should deny. He said it was "ridiculous" to withhold clemency petitions over privacy concerns. "These are people who were convicted in a court, and those cases are a matter of public record."