A Controversial and/or Informative Site [Archive] - Page 27

Saundra Hummer

July 2nd, 2008, 06:36 PM

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*^*^*^*Hey Y’all Watch This!By David Glenn Cox
02/07/08 "ICH" -- - -When did you stop beating your wife? When will you prove yourself innocent? When will you stop lying? When will you produce the murder weapon? All of these statements presuppose guilt and had this prolonged campaign against Iran not mimicked the prolonged campaign against Iraq it would be easy enough excuse the surreal nature of it all. The Alice through the looking glass, world turned upside down flavor to it of the leader who hasn’t invaded anyone cast as the next Hitler by the nation occupying two foreign countries by force of arms.

Being accused of clandestinely developing nuclear weapons by a nation, which clandestinely developed nuclear weapons. Iran is a signature of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has opened her facilities up to international inspections and despite this, after every round of inspections has been accused by Israel and the United States of hiding a weapons program. Proof of innocence is grounds for suspicion, Israel has never allowed nuclear inspectors in to her facilities Israel has never signed the non-proliferation treaty. The United States attempted to sign an agreement with India to sell her nuclear fuel; India is not a signature either making such a deal a violation of the treaty.

Nuclear non-proliferation by its very definition means not giving selling or otherwise transferring nuclear technology precisely what the Bush administration was trying to do. The US accuses Iran of supporting and supplying terrorists in Iraq but the US invaded Iraq following a campaign of lies and disinformation leaving Iran with a hostile and bellicose power on her border. Repeated charge after charge are made with very little evidence. We have reached a point where the lies and rhetoric doesn’t even have to make sense anymore.

Israel is training/posturing by making training assaults across the Mediterranean imitating a raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The world turned inside out, Israel practicing publicly for an unprovoked attack against a sovereign nation accused of developing nuclear weapons by a nation, which clandestinely developed nuclear weapons. If however you untie the knots the attack would come precisely because Iran doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. The purpose then becomes Israel preserving her clandestine nuclear hegemony.

It was mutual assured destruction that helped preserve the peace during the cold war. The Cuban missile crisis made us focus on how precarious the situation could quickly become, how some junior commander’s miscalculation could spell the deaths of millions and lead to a nuclear war. The west did not find out for nearly a generation of four nuclear-armed Soviet submarines in the area that could have turned Kennedy’s quarantine into a vaporous cloud.

The world was run by prudent leaders then, leaders who had survived a world war and had no desire to see another one. What would the world say if Iran were to hold exercises feigning a strike on Israel? While Israeli newspapers are full of war fever about why Israel should Iranian papers are full of calming words of why Israel shouldn’t. Even Iranian promises of self-defense are postulated by the media as threats of aggression. The Israeli newspapers are full of letters to the editor that sound like something out of "Gone with the Wind" Why one Israeli gentleman can whoop a hundred of those Islamic rabble.

Iran threatens, if attacked, to close the straight of Hormuz and were I the President of Iran I would no doubt say the same thing. His nation is being threatened with unprovoked attack for having a program that they deny that they have. When Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor outside Baghdad they were careful to strike before it had been fueled with nuclear isotopes the same cannot be said in Iran. Prudent leaders would have the Iranian reactor defueled immediately, as an attack on a fueled reactor could create a Chernobyl situation in Iran. A dead zone caused by an unprovoked attack.

The Iranian’s followed suit promising to launch their missiles at Dimona where the Israeli clandestine nuclear program is carried out. Prudent leaders would defuel the Israeli reactor immediately, but we are living in never never land these days, verbosity and macho strut are the marching orders. The commander of the US fifth fleet counters the Iranian promise to close the straights by saying that the US won’t allow it! Who does he think he is? The amazing Spiderman!

There is closing and then there is closing, the Berlin wall effectively closed off East Germans from the west. There are no sentries in New York’s Central Park at two AM, so go on, walk on through; I don’t see anyone stopping you. Iran only needs to make the announcement that the straight is closed and for most of the world the straight is closed. Your car insurance doesn’t cover stock car racing and oil tanker insurance doesn’t cover traversing declared war zones. The US carrier task forces would be helpless against idle threats or God forbid idle threats made good.

One missile launched across the twenty mile wide straight at seven hundred miles and hour pointed at an oil tanker bigger than the Empire State building and you do the math. Only if the Amazing Spiderman were standing on the deck at the time could he stop it. If Israel were to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran and destroy a fueled reactor creating a nuclear dead zone what would Iran have to lose? These potentates postulate and premeditate with powerful plans and pre-justifications of what will happen if they don’t attack. Dare they turn the coin over for a moment and ponder what might happen if they do.

The US economy hangs precariously by a thread, her banks on life support as the price of oil rises and the value of the dollar fades. An Israeli attack would be the deathblow to the American economy and would lead the world’s economies into and inflationary spiral and no man can see the bottom. At what price Israel’s security? Does a perceived paranoid threat give Israel the right to lead the world into a worldwide depression?

How much support will she find in international quarters when an unprovoked attack causes death and misery to millions? Iran will be flattened and radicalized and assuming Israel causes twice as many deaths as she suffers herself will it be worth it? As the whole Middle East will be inflamed the United States will become imfeebled, no bucks, no Buck Rogers! Even now John McCain works on his snow balls chance campaign following the most unpopular man ever to assume the Presidency. When the smoke cleared from an unprovoked Israeli attack he’d be lucky to hold his seat as Senator.

Not since the Cuban missile crises has the world faced two such frightening futures. A Cuban missile crises on top of an economic crises, the difference being in 1962 the leaders on both sides practiced prudence and sweated blood out of a fear that one or the other of them would make a mistake. This time like drunken rednecks they swing from the flagpole hollering, "Hey y’all watch this!" Playing nuclear chicken with the world, betting all of our futures on one double down bet!http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20217.htm *^*^*^*^* .

Saundra Hummer

July 2nd, 2008, 06:46 PM

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Deception
By
Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.” - Aristotle
02/07/08 "ICH" -- - A re-born Christian, the world’s most powerful president believes: "Behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and a purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God." His tyranny disguised, he continues his barbaric assault on humanity. One civilization already destroyed with a death toll of over a million and counting, the mainstream media having conveniently sent the Afghan war to oblivion, Mr. Bush puts attacking Iran at the forefront of his agenda. This time, his message from a ‘higher father’ will drown the whole Middle East in blood and leave America bankrupt for decades. All the while the ‘voices’ tell him that he must continue to arm Israel so that the Palestinians can be slaughtered.

It appears that for Iran to prove its nuclear energy is for peaceful purposes is akin to the myth of Sisyphus. Just as the gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly roll a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight, considering it that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor; so the U.S. , Israel, and their allies constantly demand that Iran prove its innocence, the negative, even though the IAEA has stated that Iran of the charges. It has become a futile task – frustrating, and hopeless. Each time, the goal post is moved - the threat of bombing Iran dangerously real. The stone will not roll back; it will fall on 70 million innocent people.

But why?

No doubt America would like to attack Iran using the civilian nuclear energy as a pretext so that it can have more bases given that most desirable for expanding its empire are in Iran. As a comparison, “[t]he Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia”. As of 2005, the US has 16 large, 22 medium, and 699 small bases making a total of 737. The number does not include 20 bases in Turkey owned by the Turkish government but used by both; the espionage installation in Britain paid for by the U.S. and disguised as the Royal Air Force; other secret bases and garrisons established since 9/11. As with Iraq where the oil was an obvious factor, in 2005 the U.S. military upgraded the Balad International Airport so that military flights could fly into Balad and commercial flights use Baghdad International Airport. Balad houses over 250 aircraft (Johnson, 2006).

And of course Israel would be so pleased to see Iran destroyed!

Bush was put in the White House with the strong backing of the Evangelicals. His ‘Devotion’ to religion has cost over one million lives and should Iran be attacked, millions more will die. In a democratic society, every individual who submits to apathy is equally guilty as the man who is in command. Gone are the days when Americans were loved and welcomed, separated from their government. They voted for a man who with the spilling of American lives, allowed the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation and caused the death of so many Iraqis, the total destruction of their country, and their treasures looted. The Supreme Court put Bush in the White House, and by voting for him in 2004, we kept him there. Lest we remove him, America will have no more tears to shed for undone deeds.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has lived and studied in Iran, the UK, France, and the US. She obtained her Bachelors Degree in International Relations from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20219.htm lllllllllllllllllllllllll .

1/2 Baked, Not Fried

July 2nd, 2008, 06:47 PM

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~~~~~~~
'Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime"

Ernest Hemingway
~~~"How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?"

Adin Ballou
The Non-Resistant
5 February 1845
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"There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed."

Gil Bailie
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"Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace"

Charles Sumner

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Sandi, I don't know where you get your quotes, but they are frequently excellent. Numerous times I have cut and pasted one or more into a separate file to call upon later. Keep 'em comin', please!

Saundra Hummer

July 2nd, 2008, 07:05 PM

Sandi, I don't know where you get your quotes, but they are frequently excellent. Numerous times I have cut and pasted one or more into a separate file to call upon later. Keep 'em comin', please!

Thanks, I really enjoy them as well, and have had requests for my sources.

There's some really great quote sites, however, I really do like ICH: the political site - Information Clearing House, so I subscribe to Tom Feeley's news letter, and the quotes come in it every day. A few times I've left his out as they didn't suit my mood for the day, too dark and not hopeful. For the most part they are terrific, so I use them. Sometimes I go on to the humorous sites and put something in from one of them, but since I like ICH so well and like to steer people to it, I usually put it up above or between one of their articles in the news letter.

If I were really plush, I would like to have leather bound books of quotes. I find them fascinating.

Just click below to access his site and once there subscribe.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info .
.

1/2 Baked, Not Fried

July 2nd, 2008, 10:47 PM

Thanks, I really enjoy them as well, and have had requests for my sources.

There's some really great quote sites, however, I really do like ICH: the political site - Information Clearing House, so I subscribe to Tom Feeley's news letter, and the quotes come in it every day. A few times I've left his out as they didn't suit my mood for the day, too dark and not hopeful. For the most part they are terrific, so I use them. Sometimes I go on to the humorous sites and put something in from one of them, but since I like ICH so well and like to steer people to it, I usually put it up above or between one of their articles in the news letter.

If I were really plush, I would like to have leather bound books of quotes. I find them fascinating.

Just click below to access his site and once there subscribe.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info .
.

Thanks, Sandi!

Saundra Hummer

July 3rd, 2008, 09:14 AM

Thanks, Sandi!

You're welcome.

Saundra Hummer

July 3rd, 2008, 10:16 AM

..?.?.?.?.?.?. Panel Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal
By
JAMES GLANZ
&
RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
July 3, 2008

Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq’s central government, a Congressional committee has concluded.

The conclusions were based on e-mail messages and other documents that the committee released Wednesday.

United States policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and to strengthen Iraq’s central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it, the documents show.

The company, Hunt Oil of Dallas, signed the deal with Kurdistan’s semiautonomous government last September. Its chief executive, Ray L. Hunt, a close political ally of President Bush, briefed an advisory board to Mr. Bush on his contacts with Kurdish officials before the deal was signed.

In an e-mail message released by the Congressional committee, a State Department official in Washington, briefed by a colleague about the impending deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government, wrote: “Many thanks for the heads up; getting an American company to sign a deal with the K.R.G. will make big news back here. Please keep us posted.”

The release of the documents comes as the administration is defending help that United States officials provided in drawing up a separate set of no-bid contracts, still pending, between Iraq’s Oil Ministry in Baghdad and five major Western oil companies to provide services at other Iraqi oil fields.

In the no-bid contracts, the administration said it had provided what it called purely technical help writing the contracts. The United States played no role in choosing the companies, the administration has said.

Disclosure of those contracts has provided substantial fuel to critics of the Iraq war, both in the United States and abroad, who contend that the enormous Iraqi oil reserves were a motivation for the American-led invasion — an assertion the administration has repeatedly denied.

Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, has condemned the Kurdistan deal as illegal because it was not approved by Iraq’s central government and was struck without an oil law, which has still not been passed.

After the deal was signed last year, a senior State Department official in Baghdad criticized it, saying, “We believe these contracts have needlessly elevated tensions between the K.R.G. and the national government of Iraq.”

The State Department said Wednesday that it had discouraged the deal. Hunt officials declined to comment, and Kurdish government officials said there was no impropriety.

In a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose chairman is Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, a State Department official wrote that the department had strongly discouraged Hunt from signing the deal until an oil law had been passed.

The State Department told Hunt that “we continue to advise all companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing contracts” before then, wrote Jeffrey T. Bergner, an assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the department, in one of the documents made public on Wednesday.

But in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Waxman wrote that the documents his committee had collected “tell a different story about the role of administration officials.” In letters obtained by the committee, Mr. Hunt informed the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, of which he was a member, last July and August that he was pursuing serious business interests in Kurdistan.

“We were approached a month ago by representatives of a private group in Kurdistan as to the possibility of our becoming interested in that region,” Mr. Hunt wrote to the board last July 12. “We had one team of geoscientists travel to Kurdistan several weeks ago and we were encouraged by what we saw.”

In August 2007, Mr. Hunt informed State Department officials directly of his intentions in Kurdistan, and on Sept. 5, three days before the deal was signed, a flurry of e-mail messages among Hunt and State Department officials make clear that the department was aware of what was in the works.

In a message to a colleague with the subject line “Hunt Oil to Sign Contract With K.R.G.,” one State Department official gives a highly detailed summary of the agreement. Mr. Hunt, the official wrote, “is expecting to sign an exploration contract with the K.R.G. for a field located in the Shakkan district, an area under K.R.G. control (inside the Green Line) but technically in Nineveh Governorate.”

“Hunt would be the first U.S. company to sign such a deal,” the official wrote, suggesting that the news should be rushed onto the State Department’s internal distribution network as quickly as possible.

Despite those exchanges, a State Department official said Wednesday that the company had in fact been discouraged from completing its deal.

“All companies, including Hunt Oil, which have spoken with the United States government about investing in Iraq’s oil sector, have and will continue to be given the same advice,” John Fleming, an Iraq press officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, wrote Wednesday in an e-mailed response to questions. “We advise companies that they incur significant political and legal risk by signing any contracts with any party before a national law is passed by the Iraqi Parliament.”

Another State Department official, who asked to remain anonymous, expressed frustration, saying that a local State Department official in Erbil, the Kurdish provincial capital, who was the head of a so-called Regional Reconstruction Team, tried to dissuade Hunt officials from making the deal.

But no notes were taken at that meeting, the official said, and Hunt representatives later gave a conflicting account of what had been said.

“I have talked to the R.R.T. team leader personally, and he sticks by his story and they stick by theirs,” the State Department official said.

Jeanne L. Phillips, a senior vice president for corporate affairs and international relations at Hunt Oil whose correspondence appears at certain points in the documents released Wednesday, said that because Mr. Waxman’s letter was not addressed directly to the company, she could not comment on it.

“As a matter of company policy, Hunt Oil Company does not comment on correspondence between third parties,” Ms. Phillips wrote in an e-mail message.

An official in the Kurdistan Regional Government reached late Wednesday who asked not to be named said that the government had written some 22 contracts to date.

“Anyone can have a contract with the K.R.G., but it must be accepted and suitable according to assessment by our experts,” the official said. “Hunt is a good company and never had its contracts with us illegally or improperly.”

The documents released by Mr. Waxman also lay bare what has become a serious dispute between the company and the State Department over what was said between them before the deal last year.

For example, a senior Hunt official said he was told by State Department officials during a meeting on June 15, 2007, that the United States government did not object to deals with the Kurdish regional government.

“I specifically asked if the U.S.G. had a policy toward companies entering contracts with the K.R.G.,” the Hunt official, David McDonald, wrote in an e-mail message to a colleague last Sept. 28. The State Department officials, Mr. McDonald wrote, replied that there was no policy, neither for nor against.

His message concluded: “There was no communication to me or in my presence made by the nine State Department officials with whom I met prior to 8 September that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact, there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen.”

The encouragement by State Department officials did not end with the signing of the contract on Sept. 8, the documents suggest. Five days later, a State Department official in the southern city of Basra wrote to Ms. Phillips, “I read and heard about with interest your deal with the regional Kurdish government.”

“I don’t know if you are aware of another opportunity,” the official wrote, mentioning an enormous port project and a natural gas project in the south. After a few more lines, the official concluded, “This seems like it would be a good opportunity for Hunt.”

James Glanz reported from New York, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Baghdad. Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow, Mudhafer al-Husaini from Baghdad and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kurdistan.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.buzzflash.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin .?.?.?. .

Saundra Hummer

July 3rd, 2008, 11:16 AM

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Center for American Progress Action Fund
THE PROGRESS REPORTJuly 3, 2008
By
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, Benjamin Armbruster, and Brad Johnson
ENERGYWhite House Suppresses Key Global Warming Document
A ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that details both the threat of global warming and our ability to address the problem has been suppressed by the White House since December. This document, produced in response to a "monumental" Supreme Court mandate, includes a "multimillion-dollar study conducted over two years" that finds "the net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion" if strong carbon dioxide emissions standards for the automotive industry are issued. The proposal to increase today's fuel economy standards by 50 percent from 25 miles per gallon to 38.3 mpg by 2020 is stronger than those included in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which called for a 40 percent increase. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson used the signing of the act as the public excuse to reject the findings of his staff and block California's proposal to regulate greenhouse tailpipe emissions. In fact, congressional investigations have revealed that officials in the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) refused to open the email containing the EPA plan and that Johnson has been stonewalling to prevent disclosure of President Bush's role.

$2 TRILLION BENEFIT: As first revealed by the Detroit News, an advanced model used by the EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) foundthat iincreasing fuel economy standards by 4 percent a year would have a net benefit to society of $1.4 to two trillion dollars by 2040. The benefit is strongly tied to the price of gasoline. Using the latest estimates from the Energy Information Administration, the EPA study assumed that gasoline prices would get no higher than $3.50 a gallon. Those figures are already outdated, as gasoline prices have reached an average of $4.09 a gallon, and oil prices are nearing $146 a barrel. With higher gasoline prices, the benefits of high carbon dioxide standards would be even greater. Consumers are responding already to the spiking price by moving away from gas guzzlers. Detroit automakers have suffered hard sales declines: "Ford Motor was down 28 percent in June, General Motors was off 18 percent, and Chrysler dropped 36 percent." Toyota likewise fell 21 percent. Only Honda Motor, with its fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles, saw any sales gains.

NEW STANDARDS: The ruling prepared by the EPA in December, after being rejected by the White House was pared down and recrafted as an "Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" -- a draft version with a request for further rounds of public comment, thus delaying any implementation until the next administration. Even after major cuts from the December version, this document makes a mockery of Bush's claim in April that applying the Clean Air Act to global warming pollution "would have crippling effects on our entire economy" and be a "glorious mess." In fact, the ruling finds "technology is readily available to achieve significant reductions," "the benefits of these new standards far outweigh the costs," and the new standards "would result in substantial reductions" in greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, under the terms of the 2007 Energy Act, NHTSA proposed gas-mileage standards that the Center for Biological Diversity criticized for being kept low "through a number of bizarre assumptions, including asserting that gas will cost $2.36 per gallon in 2020 and $2.51 in 2030." In contrast, the automotive industry -- after arguing they "acted in good faith" to develop the law -- is challenging these standards saying the NHTSA implementation "goes beyond what it is technologically feasible and economically practicable" and will create "net social costs."

INTENSE BATTLE: Johnson testified before Congress on May 20 that he would issue this rulemaking draft by the end of spring. (A version acquired by The Progress Report is dated May 30.) The Detroit News reported that the EPA proposal would be published June 23, but an "intense private battle" between OMB officials and the EPA has blocked publication. According to published reports, the political appointee in charge of the plan, Jason K. Burnett, stepped down because of this "collision course between the agency and the OMB." As the Wall Street Journal reported, the OMB "has asked the EPA to delete sections of the document that say such emissions endanger public welfare, say how those gases could be regulated, and show an analysis of the cost of regulating greenhouse gases in the U.S. and other countries." The OMB instead "wants the document to show that the Clean Air Act is flawed and that greenhouse-gas regulations should be developed under new legislation," reflecting the public stance taken by Bush. The EPA's findings raise serious questions about whether Bush’s statements to the American public were made in good faith and why he asserted executive privilege on June 20 to block the congressional investigation.

UNDER THE RADAR
CIVIL LIBERTIES -- ACLU: ADMINISTRATION 'CONTROLS AND SUPPRESSES' WAR INFORMATION: Yesterday the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released "thousands of pages of documents related to Navy investigations of civilians killed by coalition forces in Iraq." The documents were obtained from the Navy through a Freedom of Information Act request and reveal that the Bush administration and Defense Department have gone "to unprecedented lengths to control and suppress information about the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," the ACLU noted. The practices detailed in the documents include "inviting U.S. journalists to 'embed' with military units but requiring them to submit their stories for pre-publication review; paying Iraqi journalists to write positive accounts of the U.S. war effort; and erasing journalists' footage of civilian deaths in Afghanistan." Appearing on the Daily Show last month, CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan said that "no one really understands" the situation in Iraq, saying: "Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier. What does that look like? Who in American knows what that looks like?"

CONGRESS -- COMMITTEE: ADMINISTRATION KNEW ABOUT BUSH DONOR'S OIL CONTRACTS: Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee concluded that despite White House denials, "administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government (KRG) that ran counter to American policy and undercut Iraq's central government." The company, Hunt Oil, is owned by Ray L. Hunt, a former Halliburton board member who has donated $35 million to the Bush presidential library. When the oil deal was made in September 2007, Bush claimed that he "knew nothing about the deal." The State Department called it "counterproductive" and said that the contract "needlessly elevated tensions between the KRG and the national government of Iraq." The documents, however, show that State Department officials were well aware of Hunt's intentions, "did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it." These findings led House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) to send a letter yesterday to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice questioning the U.S. role in the awarding of other Iraqi oil contracts with Western companies.

ETHICS -- TEXAS REALTORS TO PROTEST ROVE AT UPCOMING CONVENTION SPEECH: The Daily News of Galveston County, TX reported yesterday that former top Bush aide Karl Rove is scheduled as the keynote speaker at the Texas Realtors Association's convention in San Antonio this September. But when local realtors Karen Derr and Alice Melott heard the news, "they were appalled." In fact, Derr, Melott, and other area realtors have "launched an e-mail campaign to persuade the association's leaders to strike Rove from the speaker lineup." "What kind of message are we sending to the public we seek to serve by our very invitation to such an infamous politico?" Melott said in a letter to association leaders. Bill Hammond, an associate of Kerr's, agreed, saying he if the campaign proves unsuccessful, he plans to protest Rove at the convention. "Rove definitely does not embody the ethics we want the public to associate with Realtors," Hammond said. While the realtors are concerned that Rove would disrupt the convention, the realtors association chairman Randy Jeffers said that he has no plans to withdraw the offer to Rove to speak at the convention, saying he is proud that the organization will feature "one of the most influential and controversial people in public policy today."

THINK FAST
The Justice Department is currently considering "letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups." The ACLU criticized the announcement, saying that the FBI could begin investigations simply "by assuming that everyone's a suspect, and then you weed out the innocent."

ABC News reports that in the past week, high-level discussions amongst senior administration officials about the status of Guantanamo Bay have "escalated," and President Bush is expected to soon decide whether to close the prison.

According to the G8 Climate Scorecards 2008, "the U.S. has done the least among the world's eight biggest economies to address global warming." The study also found that none of the G8 nations has taken enough steps to prevent catastrophic temperature changes.

"High levels of formaldehyde found in trailers provided to Hurricane Katrina evacuees on the Gulf Coast probably resulted from cheap wood and poor ventilation in designs used by manufacturers." The revelations confirm "the role that manufacturers' practices and weak federal regulation played in the public health disaster after" the hurricane.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen warned Wednesday that an Israeli air strike against Iran would make the Middle East more unstable. "Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful for us," he said. "This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don't need it to be more unstable."

And finally: Long before he wanted to join government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wanted to be…a zookeeper. In the introduction to "America's Best Zoos: A Travel Guide for Fans and Families," Gingrich writes that he "fell in love with seeing animals in all their glory and diversity." Guidebook co-author Allen Nyhuis said his publisher was initially "skeptical" of allowing Gingrich to write the introduction "because of the image that conservatives don't like the environment."

GOOD NEWS
A federal judge said yesterday that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act established by Congress "was the 'exclusive' means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans," rejecting the government's claim that the president's "constitutional authority as commander in chief" trumped that law.

STATE WATCH
MISSOURI: "A judge has denied a request from critics of stem cell research to block spending from a state life-sciences research fund."

MASSACHUSETTS: Gov. Deval Patrick (D) signs a landmark energy bill that does away with "long-standing obstacles to building renewable power projects in Massachusetts and making homes and businesses more energy efficient."

ARIZONA: Two initiatives designed to toughen Arizona's undocumented immigration will not appear on the November ballot.

BLOG WATCH
THINK PROGRESS: Radio host Lars Larson rips "Wall-E" film as "propaganda" that teaches kids "humans are bad for planet Earth."

WONK ROOM: In controversy over Medicare pay cuts, conservatives side with insurance industry.

MEDIA MATTERS: Fox News airs altered photos of New York Times reporters.
EDITOR & PUBLISHER: Five years ago, President Bush declared, "Bring 'em on."

DAILY GRILL
"I don't think the federal government of the United States needs to get involved."
-- White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, 6/25/08, on Iraqi oil contract negotiations
VERSUS
"State and Commerce department officials knew about Hunt Oil's negotiations [in Iraq] and had told company officials that there were no objections. In one note, a Commerce Department official...invited them to contact him 'in case you need any support.'"
-- Washington Post, 7/3/08
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http://www.americanprogressaction.org
This is only a summary, go on site to view complete articles and the numerous links. SRH . . . . . .

Homer

July 3rd, 2008, 01:19 PM

Saundra Hummer

July 3rd, 2008, 02:31 PM

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. . . . . . .FactCheck.orgANNENBERG POLITICAL FACT CHECK http://www.FactCheck.org
Tax Tally Trickery
July 3, 2008
Republicans claim Obama "voted 94 times for higher taxes." But their count is inflated and misleading.
Summary
The McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee both claim that Obama has voted 94 times “for higher taxes.” We find that their count is padded.

After looking at every one of the 94 votes that the RNC includes in its tally, we find:

..... .Twenty-three were for measures that would have produced no tax increase at all; they were against proposed tax cuts.

...... Seven of the votes were in favor of measures that would have lowered taxes for many, while raising them on a relative few, either corporations or affluent individuals.

..... . Eleven votes the GOP is counting would have increased taxes on those making more than $1 million a year – in order to fund programs such as Head Start and school nutrition programs, or veterans’ health care.

..... . The GOP sometimes counted two, three and even four votes on the same measure. We found their tally included a total of 17 votes on seven measures, effectively padding their total by 10.

..... .The majority of the 94 votes – 53 of them, including some mentioned above – were on budget measures, not tax bills, and would not have resulted in any tax change. Four other votes were non-binding motions related to conference report negotiations.

It's true that most of the votes the GOP counts would either have increased taxes for some, or set budget targets calling for such increases. But by repeating their inflated 94-vote figure, the McCain campaign and the GOP falsely imply that Obama has pushed indiscriminately to raise taxes for nearly everybody. A closer look reveals that he's voted consistently to restore higher tax rates on upper-income taxpayers but not on middle- or low-income workers. That's consistent with what he's said he'd do as president, which is to raise taxes only on those making more than $250,000 a year.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:

Desktop users: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/tax_tally_trickery.html

Mobile users: http://www.factcheck.org/mobile/article.php?id=644
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Saundra Hummer

July 3rd, 2008, 02:57 PM

Does anyone think this will increase your taxes?

Taken from today's Drudge Report which will be replaced as soon as their 'scoop' is published.
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Due to pending disasters predicted because of global warming, government scientists are urging the creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency -- by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey...

'The United States faces unprecedented environmental and economic challenges in the decades ahead,' the group warns. 'Foremost among them will be climate change, sea-level rise, altered weather patterns, declines in freshwater availability and quality and loss of biodiversity'... Developing...

Let's see now, the recent floods might cause us to pay more, as there are roads to pave, and bridges to rebuild, landfills to fill up and then the refuse to be carted off to some third world country who will accept it, as toxic refuse all about is better than abject hunger.

Katrina? How much has that cost us? Not so much as little is being done down there.

The fires in California have hit the high income areas, and there will much to repair there as well, so this in itself will cause taxes to increase if repairs are to be made, as I doubt there is enough funding in reserve to handle it all.

This is the beginning of the disaster season, so what else is in store. The severity has been worse than usual we're being told.

Taxes and death are a sure thing, and, with the cost of everything we need and want going up and up in price, and as we live and breathe, disasters of all sorts are happening, and we're being told that the severity and frequency of these events are related to global warming.

Cataclysmic events are happening to us and others around the world, so it's enevitable that taxes will go up, regardless of who is in office. It's either that, or borrow and borrow, but borrow from whom?

Too many want to be on the dole, and I'm speaking of "Corporate Welfare". It's been proven that it's a drag on us and still those in power keep giving billions to those who fund their campaigns and feed their power needs.

If a larger agency is needed, then taxes will have to pay for it, and then if it works and works well without too many cooks ruining the soup, then fine, if not, well....

Saundra Hummer

July 4th, 2008, 11:08 AM

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~~~~~~~
In Congress, July 4, 1776
July 4, 2008
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
WHEN IN the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience heth shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the People.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States, for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislature, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

GLOBE EDITORIAL

© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/07/04/in_congress_july_4_1776/
http://www.buzzflash.com Read Our Actual Declaration of Independence: It's a Radical, Revolutionary Document That Needs Us to Reinvigorate Its Promise With Every Generation~BuzzFlash.com~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

July 4th, 2008, 11:40 AM

.<<<<<o>>>>> Iraq Oil Deals Fulfill Cheney's Goals
By
Jason Leopold
03 July, 2008
Countercurrents.org

Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world’s second largest oil reserves.

“Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East,” the report said.

“Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets Therefore the U.S. should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.”

The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

Those companies now stand to earn tens of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts in a U.S.-brokered deal that was recently announced to drill Iraq’s untapped oil fields.

James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.

Ken Lay, then chairman of the energy-trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.

At the time of the report, Cheney was leading an energy task force made up of powerful industry executives who assisted him in drafting a comprehensive “National Energy Policy” for President George W. Bush.

A Focus on Oil
It was believed then that Cheney’s secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

But Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.

In Ron Suskind’s 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, O’Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up.

O’Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was “find a way to do this,” according to O’Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

The New Yorker ’s Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated Feb. 3, 2001 – only two weeks after Bush took office – instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney’s task force, which was “melding” two previously unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states” and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.” [The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 2004]

By March 2001, Cheney’s task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch.

A Commerce Department spokesman issued a brief statement when those documents were released stating that Cheney’s energy task force "evaluated regions of the world that are vital to global energy supply."

There has long been speculation that a key reason why Cheney fought so hard to keep his task force documents secret was that they may have included information about the administration’s plans toward Iraq.

‘Conspiracy Theory’
However, both before and after the invasion, much of the U.S. political press treated the notion that oil was a motive for invading Iraq in March 2003 as a laughable conspiracy theory.

Generally, business news outlets were much more frank about the real-politick importance of Iraq’s oil fields.

For instance, Ray Rodon, a former executive at Halliburton, the oil-service giant that Cheney once headed, said he was dispatched to Iraq in October 2002 to assess the country’s oil infrastructure and map out plans for operating Iraq’s oil industry, according to an April 14, 2003 story in Fortune magazine.

“From behind the obsidian mirrors of his wraparound sunglasses, Ray Rodon surveys the vast desert landscape of southern Iraq's Rumailah oilfield,” Fortune’s story said. “A project manager with Halliburton's engineering and construction division, Kellogg Brown & Root, Rodon has spent months preparing for the daunting task of repairing Iraq's oil industry.”

“Working first at headquarters in Houston and then out of a hotel room in Kuwait City, he has studied the intricacies of the Iraqi national oil company, even reviewing the firm's organizational charts so that Halliburton and the Army can ascertain which Iraqis are reliable technocrats and which are Saddam loyalists.”

At about the same time as Rodon’s trip to Iraq – October 2002 – Oil and Gas International, an industry publication, reported that the State Department and the Pentagon had put together pre-war planning groups that focused heavily on protecting Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

The next month, November 2002, the Department of Defense recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to Kellogg, Brown & Root to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires.

The contract also called for “assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations.”

In January 2003, as President Bush was presenting the looming war with Iraq as necessary to protect Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported that oil industry executives met with Cheney's staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq's oil industry.

“Facing a possible war with Iraq, U.S. oil companies are starting to prepare for the day when they may get a chance to work in one of the world's most oil-rich countries,” the Journal reported on Jan. 16, 2003.

“Executives of U.S. oil companies are conferring with officials from the White House, the Department of Defense and the State Department to figure out how best to jump-start Iraq's oil industry following a war, industry officials say.

“The Bush administration is eager to secure Iraq's oil fields and rehabilitate them, industry officials say. They say Mr. Cheney's staff hosted an informational meeting with industry executives in October [2002], with Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton among the companies represented.

“Both the Bush administration and the companies say such a meeting never took place. Since then, industry officials say, the Bush administration has sought input, formally and informally, from executives and industry experts on how best to overhaul Iraq's oil sector.”

Guarding the Oil Ministry
Despite the Bush administration’s denials about oil as a motivation for war, the Bush administration’s focus on Iraqi oil was firmly set.

On April 5, 2003, Reuters reported that the State Department's “Future of Iraq” project headed by Thomas Warrick, special adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, held its fourth meeting of the oil and energy-working group.

Documents obtained by Reuters showed that “a clear consensus among expert opinion favoring production-sharing agreements to attract the major oil companies.”

“That is likely to thrill oil companies harboring hopes of lucrative contracts to develop Iraqi oil reserves,” the news agency reported. “Short-term rehabilitation of southern Iraqi oil fields already is under way, with oil well fires being extinguished by U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown and Root …

“Long-term contracts are expected to see U.S. companies ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips compete with Anglo-Dutch Shell, Britain's BP, TotalFinaElf of France, Russia's LUKOIL and Chinese state companies.”

After U.S. troops captured Baghdad in April 2003, they were ordered to protect the Oil Ministry even as looters ransacked priceless antiquities from Iraq’s national museums and stole explosives from unguarded military arsenals.

Now, the long-held dreams of U.S. dominance over the Iraqi oil spigot now seem close to fulfillment.

Last weekend, The New York Times reported that State and Commerce department officials have been secretly working with Iraq’s Oil Ministry in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and Western oil companies to develop Iraq’s oil fields.

Unacceptable Options
This outcome for U.S. and other Western oil companies now appears to have been foretold by the Baker Institute report more than seven years ago.

In April 2001, the report laid out a series of unacceptable options, including helping Iraq under Saddam Hussein extract more oil by easing embargoes that were meant to hem Hussein in.

“The U.S. could consider reducing restrictions on oil investment inside Iraq,” the report said. But if Hussein’s “access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to U.S. allies in the region if weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, weapons regimes and the coalition against him are not strengthened.”

Iraq is a “key swing producer turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest,” the report said, adding that there even was a ''possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time'' in order to drive up prices.

“Under this scenario, the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages,” the report said. “These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention.”

The report recommended Cheney move swiftly to integrate energy and national security policy as a means to stop ''manipulations of markets by any state” and suggested that his task force include “representation from the Department of Defense.”

“Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game,'' the report said, ''U.S. firms, U.S. consumers and the U.S. government [will be left] in a weaker position.”

Two years after the Baker report, the United States – along with Great Britain and other allies – invaded Iraq. Now, more than five years after that, with Hussein dead and a U.S. expeditionary force still occupying Iraq, the U.S. oil industry finally appears to be in a strong position relative to Iraq’s oil riches.

However, the price that has been paid by American troops, Iraqi civilians and the U.S. taxpayers has been enormous.

http://www.countercurrents.org/print.html
<<<o>>> .

Saundra Hummer

July 4th, 2008, 02:09 PM

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~ ~ ~
A
NEWSLETTERThe House I Live In
America is a nation of losers. It’s the best thing about us. We're the dregs, what the rest of the world barfed up and threw on our shores.

John Kennedy said we are "a nation of immigrants." That’s the sanitized phrase. We are, in fact, a nation of refugees, who, despite the bastards in white sheets and the know-nothings in Congress, have held open the Golden Door to a dark planet. We are not imperialists and that’s why Bush lies and Cheney lies and, yes, the Clintons lied.

Winston Churchill didn’t lie to the Brits about their empire: He said, These lands belong to the Crown, we own'm and we’ll squeeze the value from them. "Imperialism," as Karl Marx complained, was a good word in Britain, a word that got you elected in Europe until too recently.

Ignore the fey university hideouts of Europe. Go to Vietnam or to Brazil or to Morocco or to Tibet and you’ll ?nd the same thing: America's music, America's freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of spirit and the heartfelt friendship of Americans for others have made the USA truly “the light unto the nations.” Americans are not liked worldwide, but loved-sometimes I ?nd that weird, but it’s true-and that drives Osama to bombs and madness.

We are a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the cause that all men and women are created equal. It’s silly and precious to point out that these ideals have been mangled, abused, ignored and monstered by those with plans to make us an empire. We know that.

America is indeed exceptional. That's not a boast, that’s a job we have to do. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson burdened us with that exceptionalism in crafting the most important international law signed up until the Geneva Convention: The Alien Torts Act, in which the USA takes onto itself the right to bring civil penalties against any act of torture, political murder and piracy that occurs anywhere in the world. It is now being used in suits brought against Chevron Oil in Ecuador and against IBM for the death of slave laborers in Nazi Germany.

Damn right America is exceptional. It is America that de?antly walked out of the ?rst “world trade organization,” known as the British Empire, announcing, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are ENDOWED BY THE CREATOR with INALIENABLE rights, and AMONG THESE are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Now, think about that. These rights don’t come from Congress or Kings or Soviets, they come from The Creator, that is, we are born free-and “we” are Sri Lankans as much as Minnesotans. Our rights are “INALIENABLE”: no one, NO ONE, may take them away, not the Ayatollahs of Tehran or Generalissimo Negroponte at the Department of Homeland Security or the kill-o-crats in Baghdad pre- or post- Saddam.

Will the snarling closet imperialists try to turn America from its cause and soul? Damn right they will. That’s why two U.S. military lawyers resigned from their posts at the Guantánamo prison camp. They wouldn’t put up with Bush-niks tearing up their Constitution. ("We the people" own it, not "them the Republicans.") In Iran, these two guys would have been shot, in Britain arrested. In America, Bush fears them-that their story would come out-as it did. Only in America could that happen.

No question, the USA holds itself exempt from the legal standards of this world-which are execrable. Whose standard should we adopt? China’s torture standard? Britain’s Secrecy Act as a standard? Switzerland’s Nazi-money-protection standard?

Only in America would a Lyndon Johnson order federal troops to protect Black school kids' right to attend class. You don’t have to tell me that Johnson then ordered the slaughter of three million Vietnamese-I know, I went to jail to oppose it. But go to Vietnam today and ask what people they most admire? Mention Russians, they laugh; mention Chinese, they may hit you; mention Americans and they say (to my astonishment, I’ll admit), “We love Americans.”

They don’t love Bush. That’s because George Bush is not an American. Look, I didn’t think much of Bill Clinton, and he dropped into some of the worst quasi-imperial habits of the New World Trade Order. But Clinton was also more popular worldwide than the pope and pizza combined because he represented that American sense of giving- a-shit, empathy and sincere friendship which are hallmarks of America’s Manifest Destiny.

Yes, America does have a Manifest Destiny-to Let Freedom Ring-which the evil and greedy and pernicious would twist into a grab for land and resources and ethnic cleansing. And so the Manifest Destiny of the journalists in our shitty little of ?ces in New York and London is to expose these motherfuckers.

Ronald Reagan said, "America is the shining city on the hill." And he hated it, doing his best to turn it into a dark Calcutta of the helpless. And when that didn’t work, George II tried to drown us in the Mississippi.

Go back to Taos, New Mexico, Voting Precinct 13. What you’ll ?nd there is Pueblo Native war veterans who raise the ?ag every day and will ?ght and die for it knowing full well that the ?ght must also be taken to the pueblo’s racially biased voting booths.

Howard Zinn, a shining historian on our hill, reminds us, "It should be understood that the children of Iraq, of China, and of Africa, children everywhere in the world, have the same right to life as American children."

Damn right, they do. That’s what Jefferson meant by "inalienable."

And they won’t get their rights to life and liberty from Osama's Caliphate of oil states or China’s money-crazed "Communism" nor half of Africa’s neo-colonial presidential Draculas or the puppet princes installed today in Iraq by George Bush.

Bush is so far away from his refugee loser roots that he just doesn’t get what it is to be American. So he steals the one thing that every American is handed off the boat: a chance. When they take away your Social Security and overtime and tell you sleeper cells are sleeping under your staircase, you don't take a chance, you lose your chance, and the land of opportunity becomes a landscape of fear and suspicion, an armed madhouse.

You want to say that George Bush is an evil sonovabitch? I’d go further: he’s UN-AMERICAN.

And that’s why he lost the election. TWICE.

******************
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans – Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild from which this is excerpted. Sign up for Palast's investigative reports at:

http://www.GregPalast.com

~~~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

July 4th, 2008, 02:40 PM

.
^^^^^^^^^An Open Letter To
Senator Barack Obama
By
Case Wagenvoord
02 July, 2008
Countercurrents.org

Dear Senator Obama,

You had us going there, for awhile. We really thought you were the stiff breeze from the West that would dissipate the rankness wafting from the vomitorium that is our nation’s capital.

We should have known better. You are simply another in a long string of Democratic candidates who sing the Populist Rag on the way to the nomination, until it is locked up. Then a strange thing happens: party hacks crawl, like vermin, from their nooks and crannies and mute the populist theme.

This is a practice that that has a long and noble history. As one writer explains, “Its [the Democratic Party] particular function, well established by the latter part of the nineteenth century, was to capture mass discontent and channel it along non-revolutionary lines, so as to uphold the essential class interests of American big business.”

We keep forgetting that the Democratic platform has but two planks: fear of the neocon right and fear of a genuine populist uprising.

However, to a people fatigued by an endless flow of political rhetoric that says nothing by pretending to say everything, any promise of change, no matter how vacuous, is seized upon; just as an air bubble offers a split second of hope to a drowning man.

True to form, you have moved towards that traditional graveyard for democratic candidates, the center.

--When you appeared before APIAC, they fiddled and you danced to their tune.

-- One writer calls our attention to an article you published in last year’s Foreign Affairs, titled “Renewing American Leadership” in which you said, “This century’s threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past.” It’s Cold War rhetoric all over again, and a variation on the mantra that has governed American politics since the end of World War II: If you scare the chickens enough, they’ll vote for the fox.

On Monday you promised to expand Bush’s faith based programs, saying, "The challenges we face today, from putting people back to work to improving our schools, from saving our planet to combating HIV/AIDS to ending genocide, are simply too big for government to solve alone. We need all hands on deck." Of course government can’t do it, It’s spending all its money on empire building.

--When Rep. Keith Ellison, the only Muslim in the House, asked you to appear at a mosque, your campaign refused. In explaining why, one of your aides told Ellison, “We have a tightly wrapped message.” This is a polite way of saying that you’re running scared of the neocon right.

Finally, in commenting on the FISA bill that further undermines our democratic republic you said, “Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay.”

The Cold War warriors of old beat the bass drum of communism; our new-age warriors are tapping the tin can of terrorism. Thanks to a supine media, the decibel level remains the same.

I was saddened to see you picking up a tin can.

Another writer described your game plan when he said, “There are nuances of liberal thought in the Obama campaign, but that is terribly overshadowed by the ‘though police’ in his campaign that don’t want to give the McCain people any ‘talking points’ that they can use against him.”

Senator, if you were serious about change, you wouldn’t consider a day complete until you had made at least one statement that sent the neocon right into a spittle-spraying frenzy of black rage.

Some commentators see your move to the center as the exercise of old-fashioned political pragmatism. Such an approach makes sense, all things being equal.

But, senator, things ain’t equal.

The last asset bubble has popped; the Pentagon and our misguided quest for empire are bankrupting us. Empire building is a form of dementia that ultimately destroys all who attempt it. Faith-based initiatives would be unnecessary where we to redirect our resources away from trying to build a corporate empire overseas, to repairing our damaged social safety net.

In truth, Senator, these problems pale compared to the elephant in the room everyone is trying to ignore. We are chained to an economic system that is grounded on a geological fluke, the Age of Oil. Capitalism is on life support, and we act as if it’s still a randy young stud, screwing everything that crosses its path. That’s hubris for you. On the grand scale of things, our Industrial Age will barely register as a cosmic fart on the scale of geological time.

This is why power has to scare people about all the wrong things; fear-mongering directs the public’s attention from real problems. The paradox of fear mongering is that the further down the scale of probability a threat is, the greater is its potential to generate fear. Real threats don’t faze us, which is why nobody puts on a flame-retardant suit and crash helmet before getting behind the wheel, even though driving is one of the most life-threatening activities we engage in.

We really shouldn’t be too hard on you, though. The truth is that even if you were serious about change, there would be little you could do if elected. A toxic, bureaucratic momentum has driven us to the precipice, and we are staring down into the abyss. It is not a conspiracy, but an accretion of forces and bad decisions driven by a toxic combination of hubris, exceptionalism and greed.

Our only hope is that once we have plunged into the abyss and once the dust has settled, we will construct a decent and democratic society out of the shards that remain, though it is possible an even ranker society would emerge. (Those who envision an ecological paradise after the fall would do well to contract for protection with the nearest motorcycle gang before they begin plowing their fields.)

Some have suggested we start the revolution by voting for Nader, or by not voting at all. In my moments of dystopian bleakness, I think the best way to bring on the revolution would be to vote for McCain. McCain is mad, and his madness may be all we need to push us over the edge so we can began building anew.

That could well be the change we could count on.

I hope to hell I’m wrong.

Regards,

Case Wagenvoord

Case Wagenvoord blogs at http://www.belacquajones.blogspot.com. He welcomes comments at Wagenvoord@msn.com.
http://www.countercurrents.org/wagenvoord020708.htm I enjoyed this article, as I did other articles on this site. Hard hitting for certain. SRH
^^^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

July 5th, 2008, 08:18 AM

.lllllllllllllllllll Judge Rejects Bush's View on Wiretaps
Thursday 03 July 2008
By
Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times
SATURDAY 5 JULY 2008

A federal judge ruled that Bush's views on wiretapping were beyond the constitutional authority of the president.
(Photo: ABC News) Go on-site for photo:
http://www.truthout.org/article/judge-rejects-bushs-view-wiretaps
Washington - A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the "exclusive" means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government's claim that the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law. The judge, Vaughn R. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of California, made his findings in a ruling on a lawsuit brought by an Oregon charity. The group says it has evidence of an illegal wiretap used against it by the National Security Agency under the secret surveillance program established by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Justice Department has tried for more than two years to kill the lawsuit, saying any surveillance of the charity or other entities was a "state secret" and citing the president's constitutional power as commander in chief to order wiretaps without a warrant from a court under the agency's program.

But Judge Walker, who was appointed to the bench by former President George Bush, rejected those central claims in his 56-page ruling. He said the rules for surveillance were clearly established by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a warrant from a secret court.

"Congress appears clearly to have intended to - and did - establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted," the judge wrote. "Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch's authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities."

Judge Walker's voice carries extra weight because all the lawsuits involving telephone companies that took part in the N.S.A. program have been consolidated and are being heard in his court.

Jon Eisenberg, a lawyer for Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the plaintiff in the case, said the legal issues Judge Walker's ruling raised were significant. "He's saying FISA makes the rules and the president is bound by those rules," Mr. Eisenberg said.

A Justice Department official said the department was reviewing the opinion late Wednesday and would consider its options.

Officials at Al-Haramain say they were mistakenly given a government document revealing the N.S.A. operation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded the document back, and Judge Walker's ruling made it more difficult for Al-Haramain to use what it claims to have seen . But he refused to throw out the lawsuit, giving the charity's lawyers 30 days to restructure their claim. "We still have our foot in the door," Mr. Eisenberg said. "The clock is a minute to midnight, but we've been there before and survived."

The ruling comes as the Senate is overhauling the foreign intelligence law. The measure would reaffirm FISA as the exclusive means for the president to order wiretaps through court warrants, but it would also provide legal immunity to phone companies involved in the eavesdropping program. A vote could come Tuesday.

The immunity issue would not directly affect this lawsuit because Al-Haramain is suing the government, not the phone companies. But the nearly 40 other lawsuits against phone companies that Judge Walker is overseeing would almost certainly have to be dismissed if immunity is signed into law, legal analysts say.
© 2008 truthout lllllllllllllllll
.

Saundra Hummer

July 5th, 2008, 10:24 AM

.
A NEWSLETTER
&
A PETITION
. . .
Dear Saundra,

Since President Bush came to office, gas prices have more than doubled, the Big Oil companies have made more than half a trillion dollars in profits, and the United States is even more dependent on oil.

Stand up for the Consumer-First Energy Act, and help force oil companies to change their ways »

Senate Democrats have introduced a solution, the Consumer-First Energy Act of 2008, which includes rolling back tax breaks for oil companies and investing in renewable energy, forcing Big Oil to pay their fair share through a windfall profits tax, protecting consumers from price gouging, and standing up to OPEC - to make it clear that actions designed to fix oil prices are illegal under U.S. law.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has taken over $580,000 from the oil and gas industry, seems to have forgotten that he doesn't work for Big Oil, as he and his Republican colleagues continue to block the Consumer-First Energy Act.

Apparently, Republicans need reminding that they should care about more than just Big Oil and their corporate lobbyists. Let Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues know you want them to hold Big Oil accountable for unconscionable price gouging »
Thanks for taking action!

Natasha
Care2 Campaign Team

. . . . . . .
Tell Republicans It's Time to Stand Up Against Big Oil!
TAKE ACTION!
( GO ON SITE)
The impact of disastrous Bush Administration policies and priorities has created an energy and economic crisis that is now plaguing consumers at the gas pump and damaging our national security.
Forward to a friend >>http://www.thepetitionsite.com/taf/950675908
Read the petition >> Go on-site:
URL: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/950675908?z00m=15615764

If at any time you get my already signed petition, click on "log out" on the petition site, it will then post an unused petition form to sign, I had to do this to sign onto it after Rich sent his signature and letter.
Just click on the URL: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/950675908
Care2.com, Inc.
275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 300
Redwood City, CA 94065

http://www.care2.com
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

July 5th, 2008, 04:37 PM

.
~~~~~~~

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)
Physicist and Professor
Nobel Prize 1921
~~~
"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about his religion. Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and of service to your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place. Show respect to all people, but grovel to none. When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home."

Tecumseh
Shawnee Chief
(1768-1813)

~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

July 5th, 2008, 09:41 PM

.)))))o(((((Marching Toward Hell
By
Jim Miles

05/07/08 "Palestine Chronicle" -- Michael Scheuer's new work "Marching Toward Hell" is very clear with its overall purpose of exposing where American interests have gone wrong in their interactions with the various peoples, beliefs, and religions of the Middle East. As an ex-CIA agent specifically working on gathering information on Osama bin Laden and al Queda, Scheuer appears to have a solid background of information on the message and intentions of bin Laden. He also has a solid perspective of putting ‘America first' that more often than not contradicts the neo-traditional view of American exceptionalism and unilateralism.

There are moments when his obvious pro-American rhetoric becomes too edgy, but given the nature of his career and his place within the American establishment, those moments can be seen as a natural part of his personal paradigm - America first, quit the stupidity of a foreign policy that only attracts more people of the world to dislike, hate, and attack us. There are several main ideas that run through the course of the work, each receiving slightly different emphasis as time and place changes through events.

Scheuer starts very strongly, stating that his goal is to "reconstruct how the United States found itself in an untenable set of foreign policies and national-security strategies" on 9/11; and secondly, to explain and "assess the costs of the U.S. government's stubborn and obviously losing rearguard action to maintain these catastrophically deficient policies and strategies." The latter idea he reinforces consistently and very simply by stating throughout the book that, yes, the U.S. has lost the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, always referring to the loss in past tense - not that it is a possibility but that it has already happened.

Associated with the maintenance of the catastrophic policies he argues effectively "policy makers from both parties...must stand guilty of wilful historical ignorance, a paucity of common sense, and...a disastrous degree of intellectual hubris." That statement is no news for many who have opposed war from a well-informed perspective, but to an American audience, coming from someone obviously proud of their country in many other respects, it is a clear stark statement of culpability in the disasters in the Middle East.

Ignorant elites
From that starting point the concept of ignorance is also tied in with the "elites", not well defined, but obviously intended to mean the foreign policy decision makers and power controllers in a fully bipartisan critique. The elites reveal a "staggering level of ignorance and dishonesty," "ignorant of history," hold "those who have made it in contempt," the seeming "permanent obtuseness of their [Americans] elite," and a "wilful blindness to this reality."

The reality that the elite are blinded to in the realm of foreign policy carries several facets. First he recognizes that "the energy resources upon which the U.S. economy depends are controlled by foreigners, among whom are Muslim leaders." Secondly he understands that "our immense and growing debt," which allows the continuation of the war effectively subsidized by possible economic/ strategic opponents, "is increasingly held by" foreigners who are either economic rivals or energy masters who "run directly counter to U.S. national security interests." Finally, and this is repeated at intervals throughout the book, the elite "has put the United States in the addle-brained position of backing both sides in a vicious religious war between Israelis and Arabs, thereby making us part of an endless war in which we have nothing at stake but the emotions, religious affiliation, and divided loyalties of two small segments of our population."

Israeli Firsters
Scheuer recognizes the power of one of those "small segments." It is not so much the Israeli lobby itself that he criticizes, but the "Israeli-firsters," those of the elite who whole-heartedly adopt the cause of Israel as the cause of America. He describes them as "dangerous men...seeking to place de facto limitations on the First Amendment to protect the nation of their primary attachment ." He vociferously denies that "to believe that relationship is not only a burden but a cancer on America's ability to protect its genuine national interests...equates to either anti-Semitism or a lack of American patriotism." He concludes that these elite Israeli-firsters "are either the most suspect in the realm of loyalty or simply resolute liars who champion the fantasy of identical U.S. and Israeli national interests."

Within his extensive and well referenced notes, a worthy read for further details and support, Scheuer says "it ought to be a source of pride for Israeli citizens" for the success of their intelligence services, but it also "speaks volumes abut the gullibility or cupidity of the U.S. governing elite." That note follows a text comment on "what can only be describes as superbly effective covert political action by Israel's intelligence services [remember the author's CIA experience for this perspective]." The issue of foreign policy with Israel is "perhaps the only one that is certainly immune to challenge or change." American policy towards Israel is "absolutely irrelevant and manifestly counterproductive to the national-security interest of the United States," and further "Americans and their future are put increasingly at risk," as Israel "contributes nothing to America's economic welfare or strategic security but is a drain on both."

Scheuer also recognizes the contradiction in Israel demanding that the "fairly and democratically elected Hamas government...must renounce a large part of the basis for its election." Accordingly it seems clear that the "right to exist is based not on a right at all but on one side's ability to coerce abject surrender from the other." Americans themselves do not demand a right to exist, and "has no more right to exist than does Israel, Palestine, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Belgium or Russia."

All this on Israel is the first part of the "shackles" placed on American foreign policy.

Oil, Saudi Arabia, and bin Laden
The second shackle is oil. What common sense is there to a foreign policy that after the Saudi demonstration of intent with the oil embargo in 1973, continued to rely on that same country for its energy sources? In his usual bold strongly worded manner of criticism, Scheuer says "shortsightedness, negligence, and stupidity were and are blatant in Washington's decisions to tie U.S. national security to that of another nation-state, and to acquiesce in ceding to the anti-American Saudis control over U.S. access to the strategic commodity of oil," leaving American governments with "virtually no room to manoeuvre in the Muslim world," leading directly into "bin Laden's well-laid trap."

Unlike the popular media that echoes the mindless semi-theological name calling from the elite - use of the words such as "evil", "wickedness", "savages", "immoral" - Scheuer does not underestimate his opponent. Quite the opposite as he says of bin Laden that his "focus on the impact of U.S. foreign policies in the Muslim world suggest either genius or extraordinary good luck." Not having much belief in the significance of luck he continues, "I think it is best to give America's most dangerous enemy the benefit of the doubt and judge bin Laden to be a near political genius."

Scheuer's position arises from examining the consistent wording, demands, and actions from bin Laden himself. Well before 9/11 the CIA had information on the tactics and whereabouts of bin Laden, information not utilized to capture or kill him because, as Scheuer sees it, the leaders, the elite, always had other "nuances in international politics" that trumped any actual attack on bin Laden himself. It might need to be considered that the elite needed someone like bin Laden in order to push forward with their own designs, however misguided they might be. Bin Laden, unlike the Iranian Ayatollahs who have played the American game of labelling the other "evil" and "wicked", has consistently put forth several demands that are the ‘trap' into which the Americans have stepped.

Bin Laden's demands are quite explicit and clear, and unlike the projections from Bush and his coterie of neocons, it has nothing to do with "They hate us because of our freedoms." Scheuer lists them as "precise, limited, and consistent": U.S. presence on the Arab Peninsula; unqualified support of Israel; support for states oppressing Muslims (e.g. Russia); exploitation of oil resources; military presence throughout Islamic world; and U.S. support and funding of Arab police states. Each step the U.S. has taken with its foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia and Africa has only provided support for bin Laden's contentions and "have strengthened bin Laden's argument in the minds of hundreds of million of Muslims."

The focus on U.S. foreign policy produces a "glue of unity" for the "diversity of a highly fragmented Islamic civilization"; "those who argue that hatred of U.S. lifestyles and electoral process motivates our Islamist enemies....is either sadly stupid or a studied liar." Another additional fear factor dispelled is that of global jihad. None of bin Laden's focus as presented above has anything to do with Muslim global domination, and this as well fits into the recognition of his activities of a defensive jihad against transgressions on Muslim territory, not against American activities in other parts of the world.

Solutions explicit but undefined
The shackles of oil and Israel, the elitist ignorance of the American government, the antagonism of the Muslim world supported by the predictions and indictments of bin Laden have created a losing position for the Americans no matter what they attempt to do. The height of the hypocrisy and ignorance are Americans blaming the Iraqis and Afghanis for not being able to put together a decent democratic society in the American image. Scheuer works within the realm of American exceptionalism with one major qualification, "American democracy and republicanism are unique and largely unexportable.[italics added]" The theme of "arrogance...ignorance and naiveté" of the elite is reiterated for American leaders "trying to install America's system in devoutly Islamic lands."

His answers are not as well developed as his testament to the losing cause of the current foreign policy based on the six elements of bin Laden's basic demands listed above. However, he is quite explicit in saying America first (domestic policy trumps foreign policy, let's do something about our own class divisions first), forget about supporting Israel and being dragged into any war it wants; physically secure the U.S. (border fences, trenches, watch towers, minefields) - a bit of a paradox in his arguments here as means of separation are highly porous and expensive, and in this case, in my mind, only reinforce the militant insularity of the American elite; state control over militias; congressional control over declarations of war rather than the "tyranny...where the decision to go to war rests with one individual;" energy independence; and finally, a foreign policy toward the Islamic world that is "noninterventionist, commerce oriented, non-ideological, focussed on life and death national interests."

The latter statement is a weakness throughout the work, in that while advocating to leave the Muslim world alone, Scheuer does not define what his perceived "life and death interests" are, certainly not domestic policy of an American firster, one would hope. He does not indicate what the national security interests of the U.S. are. All U.S. presidents since Eisenhower have indicated that oil is of strategic interest to the U.S. How will that be handled, other than the vague reference to energy independence? What then are the U.S. national interests that would lead to American intervention abroad, if any? Commercial interests in the past as with Latin America? And what of the CIA's own role in undermining various governments and associations since the 1950s, will that continue?

A final note on Scheuer's position with the CIA. He admits that he is one to have initiated the rendition program but says that the way it was intended to be used is not how it actually was used - a valid idea, good intentions, with different outcomes. As one of his underlying themes throughout his book is that of "unintended but predictable consequences" regardless of intent, he loses his argument in this case, as he does not seem to have been able to predict or foresee that a rendition program, to states that do use torture and do not have the legal protections as provided by U.S. law, would have many negative consequences, both for the individual and for the reality and perceptions of American foreign policy as well.

There are moments of Scheuer's own America-centrism that are not easy to accept but do not detract validity from his arguments to any degree (as with Ronald Reagan being the unqualified conquering hero of the Soviet Union). Otherwise "Marching Toward Hell" is a readily accessible read and Scheuer has supported well his ideas on bin Laden and why America has lost the wars in the Middle East. He does not mince his words, and will probably make many enemies at home, but his arguments will not be defeated by rhetoric and hubris alone, the main weapons the elite would have against him.

[I]- Marching Toward Hell - America and Islam after Iraq. Michael Scheuer. Free Press (Simon & Schuster), New York, 2008.
Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.
)))o((( .

Saundra Hummer

July 6th, 2008, 02:20 PM

.
:: ::XXXXX:: :: Ex-worker on Crusade Against Chemical PlantBy
Susan Sward
The San Francisco Chronicle
SUNDAY 6 JULY 2008
News"It was the dead birds that set Rita Smith off." Here, a bird rescued from Searles Lake. (Photo: International Bird Rescue Research) Go on-site to viewEx-worker on crusade against chemical plant.
It was the dead birds which set Rita Smith off.

Her husband, Steve, had been ill for years, with oozing sores on his skin, shortness of breath and mental confusion. She suspected that it all was tied to a Mojave Desert chemical plant where they both had worked.

The company, now named Searles Valley Minerals, fiercely denied that working there made Steve Smith gravely ill, and by 2000, Rita Smith's hunt for answers had turned up little, despite all her letters and calls to regulators.

That was before she learned of the largely unpublicized deaths of thousands of migratory birds that landed on a lake created by the plant's discharges at its desolate site northeast of Los Angeles.

"When I was a girl, I read about miners dying in the coal mines, and it is a known fact, if the birds are dying, there is something wrong in the mine," Rita Smith said. "At that plant, the birds were a first warning there was a hazard there, something wasn't safe."

Soon, Smith would begin an assault against the plant in a campaign reminiscent of those waged by crusaders Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich, whose battles against corporate giants in the 1970s and 1990s became subjects of Hollywood films.

Sometimes crude, always relentless, Smith would investigate the plant's operations stretching back for decades. She would pore over thousands of documents and pester regulators. She would hear harrowing stories of sick workers and persuade some of them to file claims against the plant alleging health problems caused by exposure to toxic substances.

This is the story of Rita Smith's decadelong journey, from the exhilarating high of her husband's eventual court victory over the company to a devastating low that she did not see coming.

For its part, the company assails the 50-year-old Smith, who lost a 1995 sexual harassment lawsuit against the plant, as someone entirely lacking in credibility. The company says she has waged a baseless campaign, spewing false allegations about the plant that no regulatory agency has seen fit to act on.

Today, the state says the company's injury claim and illness rates are lower than the industry average, and air, water and toxic-substances regulators say the company's record has improved considerably in recent years.

The company says there is no cancer cluster in the area and no prevalence of illness evident among its workers. It adds that a review of Steve Smith's records "did not support the finding that our facility was somehow linked to chemical toxicity in Mr. Smith." In extensive answers the company provided in response to dozens of Chronicle questions, it maintained that it has an excellent safety program, that it has spent millions reducing its emissions and tackling its bird problem, and that there is nothing about the plant's operations that should be considered harmful for workers or neighboring residents.

"Frankly, the wild assertions that reflect on our local community and the background and regulatory framework of our operations are shameful," Searles Valley Minerals' executive director, Arzell Hale, told The Chronicle.

In her campaign, Rita Smith has undeniably hurt herself with her outbursts. She speaks of "toothless, useless-as-tits-on-a-boar regulators" and wants plant executives arrested for murder.

So far, she has failed to persuade any agency to file environmental or labor-safety charges against the plant. But some experts, asked by The Chronicle to review her allegations, say she raises some valid concerns that merit investigation.

In the past two decades, the companies owning the plant have paid out more than $2 million to state and federal agencies to settle air, waste, wildlife and water-related problems, including a turbine modification that for more than a decade sent 40-plus tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxide into the air each year. The plant is also one of the state's biggest industrial air polluters, ranking in 2006 among the top 10 emitters of lung-damaging particulate matter and nitrogen oxide.

Smith remains unconvinced the plant has changed its ways.

"People work to provide for their families and bam! They get sick," Smith said. "That is my bitch with the damned state - that we are kept too ignorant about the hazards coming from these corporations. It's criminal."

Fleeing a bad marriage, Rita arrived in the Searles Valley in 1989. She left behind a painful period in her life that culminated with several months in prison for her conviction in a case involving possession of marijuana for sale.

In Trona, she lived with her sister, right next to the plant site, where mining operations have been conducted by a string of companies for more than a century. In 1993, at a local Mexican restaurant, Rita was introduced to Steve Smith, a fellow worker she had never met because they were based in different parts of the sprawling plant. They were soon married.

Though Trona sits 170 miles northeast of Los Angeles, it feels as if it were thousands of miles from anywhere: It faces a windswept vista of sand and stark mountains that border the barren, rock-strewn valley.

What attracted miners in the 19th century were the minerals deposited in the valley over millions of years. Today, Trona has only about 1,885 residents, and many structures are boarded up. Bits and pieces of people's lives - machine parts, broken cars, a toppled ornamental fountain - are strewn about in many front yards.

Searles Valley has a shimmering lake spread out over 2 square miles. The lake exists only because of discharges from the plant.

In a nonstop loop, the plant pumps millions of gallons of brine - a highly saline mixture of water and minerals - into the plant from a groundwater basin underlying the valley. After targeted minerals are extracted, spent brine is pumped to the lake surface or into the basin below.

The company employs 640 workers and produces almost 2 million tons of products annually, including soda ash, boron minerals and sodium sulfate. Its products show up in everyday items such as glass, detergent and carbonated drinks.

Rita was hired at the plant in January 1990. She operated machinery and sometimes worked on a spill cleanup crew. Steve operated equipment, shoveled up spills, cleaned out chutes and did testing in the laboratory.

Daily, the couple said, they got splashed with "product" - which they said could be anything from a fine dust to a coarse, wet material, all coming from processed chemicals. "The equipment leaked, spewing product and brine," Rita Smith said. "The brine would get on my face. I would breathe it in, and sometimes it would burn my damn nose and my eyeballs."

After Smith had worked at the plant for almost 3 1/2 years, she said, the company terminated her in 1995 while she was off work because of an on-the-job back injury. The company denies it fired her, saying that rather than expect her to work while she was in pain, it "removed her from duty" and provided her with occupational training funding through its insurance company.

By 1998, when he had put in 19 years on the job, Steve Smith said he was too sick to work - suffering from oozing sores, exhaustion, full-body nerve spasms, painful tingling in his limbs and shortness of breath.

Rita Smith was angry over what she saw as the company's refusal to pay for all her husband's needed medical treatments, including tests to pinpoint what was wrong with his nervous system. She wanted answers about why Steve was ill.

At first, Rita Smith's detective work moved slowly. But her search accelerated in 2000, when the state Fish and Game Department began looking into bird deaths at the lake. Initially, it appeared that the deaths were tied to an oil spill from the plant, but Fish and Game noticed that some of the dying birds didn't seem to have oil on them. The agency investigated and concluded that the primary cause of death was the high salt content of the lake, though the company cited other factors, such as the dehydration of migrating birds.

"Salt toxicosis kills these birds within hours or days," said Steve Hampton, the department's resource economist. "When the birds drink the brine, the high salt levels impact the birds' neurological and other systems. The levels of other contaminants that might be out there in the lake are unlikely to kill the birds this quickly."

The state tested the birds for some toxic substances, but not others. Smith said the state should have tested for every possible chemical in the brine.

There would be no lake for the birds to land on if the plant did not pump brine onto what otherwise would be a mostly dry lakebed. But such pumping has gone on for more than 90 years. The company says its return of depleted brine to the lake is the only way it can comply with a U.S. Interior Department requirement aimed at conserving the resource.

The company also asserts that although it has devoted "extensive resources to determining" why the birds die, "we have not secured a definitive statement to answer that question." It says some birds apparently die because they are old or succumb to predators or illness.

Since 2000, when Fish and Game began tracking dead or dying birds at the lake, the department says about 4,000 birds have died there - mostly ducks, grebes and loons.

To Smith, the bird deaths underscored her gnawing question: What chemicals are in the brine that plant employees have worked with for decades, and how do the chemicals, when mixed together, affect human health?

Melanie Marty, chief of the air toxicology and epidemiology branch of the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said that even if the state has identified high salt levels as the cause of the birds' deaths, such a finding is a separate issue from the question of what potential health problems the brine's contents might pose for workers.

In 2001, Fish and Game expressed concern about the arsenic in the brine in a letter to the state Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which regulates waste discharges from more than 1,400 public and nonpublic entities in eastern California. The letter stated that arsenic and several other substances in the brine "should be expressly addressed" by the board's regulatory actions, particularly because those substances are hard to clean up "when accumulated over time."

Arsenic was not put in the brine by the company. "Through geologic time, arsenic - a naturally occurring element in the earth's crust - was carried by water down to Searles Lake. The arsenic in the brine today is there because it dissolved from the sediments where it had been deposited as a result of the evaporation of the water in the lake," said Carl Hauge, the former chief hydro-geologist for the state's Department of Water Resources.

Lahontan's top officer, Harold Singer, said the chemicals in the spent brine pumped back to the lake "are below hazardous waste levels, except for naturally occurring arsenic." He added that the board "allows the arsenic discharge under an exemption provided for in state law" for such a naturally occurring element.

Singer says that because the plant doesn't increase the level of arsenic already pre-existing in the brine, "there is no regulatory purpose to setting arsenic limits because they aren't changing the naturally occurring level in the brine."

In 1978, more than two decades before Fish and Game raised its concern with the water board, the federal government had adopted a revised standard for arsenic in the workplace, citing the cancer risk it posed for workers.

In 1985, the plant owner, then Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp., issued an employee safety handbook that made no mention of arsenic in the brine. The handbook reassured workers that company products producing airborne dust "are all water soluble" and "even heavy airborne concentrations are not known to have a harmful effect on your health now or at any time in the future."

A year later, a Lahontan board engineer wrote a memo to his boss recounting his conversation with the Kerr-McGee plant's environmental coordinator. The memo suggests that at that point, the company's environmental coordinator knew about arsenic's contribution to the lake's toxicity.

To this day, the company argues that there is no need to alert workers about arsenic because skin exposure is not viewed as a hazard and because "the brine does not pose an exposure (risk) for workers as it cannot be ingested." It also maintains that brine "cannot evaporate into the air where it can be inhaled."

Ten ex-workers told The Chronicle, however, that sometimes brine got splashed in their mouths. Many also said that both wet brine and dried product from the brine got on their skin and clothes. The company counters that any of the foul-tasting brine entering a worker's mouth would be spit out immediately, and that the small amount involved would not pose a risk. The company adds that dermal contamination isn't a problem, either, because the skin acts as a barrier.

Based on the figure provided by the company on the amount of arsenic in the brine, the level is 10,000 times greater than the federal limit for arsenic in drinking water, which is 10 parts per billion. But the company says that because no one drinks the brine, its arsenic level "does not suggest a toxic exposure simply because it exceeds drinking water standards."

The company points to a 1985 state probe that sampled the plant's air and brine and concluded there was no evidence of overexposure to airborne arsenic or any pattern of arsenic-related illnesses evident at the plant. Searles Valley Minerals also says it sharply cut its arsenic emissions into the atmosphere - by 90 percent from 1989 to 1996 alone. The company says its reduction of several pollutants' emission levels in recent years helped cut the nearby community's possible cancer risk from such emissions to an extremely low level.

For Marty, of the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, one central question is workers' possible inhalation of contaminants in the brine.

Marty said that if dry brine regularly gets on workers and is often blown about in the air by desert winds, "the question is how much arsenic and other chemicals from the brine are getting inhaled by the workers, and how much take-home exposure is occurring when these workers go home and change their clothes and track the stuff around."

Though the plant does have some showers, the company says there are "no formal employee change or central shower areas, and we are not required to provide them as there is nothing in our work environment that would require those facilities."

On the issue of worker exposure inside the plant, Patrick Wilson, a senior toxicologist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said: "It comes down to whom you believe.

"If the workers do have routine and repeated contact with brine that has elevated concentrations of arsenic, either through inhalation or ingestion, then a lot of us in the scientific community would have concern about the long-term impacts of that contact," Wilson said. "But if the company runs a clean shop and exposure to arsenic in brine is well controlled and workers have access to personal protective equipment and the protection of state labor regulations, then it would be difficult to make a connection between any illnesses that are currently observed and historical exposure to arsenic."

As Rita Smith sees it, anyone talking about the arsenic in the brine "can say it's 'naturally occurring' all they want to, but if they don't let you know how potent it is, then they killed your ass intentionally because it's admitted it's one of the most toxic substances known to man."

Experts consulted by The Chronicle say that arsenic is no chemical to be underestimated. They add that arsenic contamination typically occurs through ingestion or inhalation.

"Arsenic is a very powerful carcinogen," said arsenic expert John Froines, director of UCLA's Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. "There is significant risk of cancer from arsenic down to the part per trillion level, and further investigations of possible arsenic exposures at the plant are very much in order."

One expert also noted that even though the plant has achieved a sharp drop in its arsenic emissions, the arsenic in the brine remains a concern. David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany in New York, said: "Arsenic is listed by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry as the No. 1 dangerous contaminant, and this reported level of arsenic in the brine is very high.

"Any arsenic exposure increases the risk of cancer," Carpenter said. "Having a brine with a high level of arsenic in the mouth, even if spit out quickly, and on clothes certainly increases the risk of cancer and other diseases associated with arsenic exposure."

The EPA's Wilson added that tests done now cannot reflect levels of arsenic exposure that occurred a decade or more ago. He said: "Following exposure, there is a latency period before symptoms develop - it can be 10, 15 or 20 years later."

Arsenic isn't the only matter at the plant that has received attention. In 2002, the Lahontan board approved a settlement with the company under which the plant - while admitting no liability or fault - paid the state $250,000 and agreed to complete other environmental projects that the state estimated cost $1.75 million. The settlement cited company waste discharge "that may have contributed to detrimental responses in birds," violations exceeding discharge limits on petroleum hydrocarbons, and illegal discharges of spent brine from pipe breaks. At the time, Lahontan's executive officer, Harold Singer, said the settlement was one of the largest "in many, many years."

In 2003, Steve Smith got sicker. His weight plummeted from 215 to 155 in only a few months. "Steve didn't want to live anymore - he was ready to put a gun to his head and kill himself," Rita Smith said.

The company was refusing to pay for doctors who are experts in caring for chemical workers, she said. The company said it would pay for any of the Smiths' medical bills approved by the workers' compensation system.

Angry at the company, Rita Smith returned to Trona in 2003 to hunt for the cause of Steve's illness. As the daughter of a construction worker who grew up in a small North Carolina town, Smith felt at ease with workers and their families.

Going door to door in Trona, Smith got people to write down their families' illnesses and deaths. One woman, the wife of an ex-plant worker, wrote that she had lost three sons - 20, 41 and 44. She added that two died of cancer and one of a heart attack. Smith said the woman told her that her sons had worked in the plant. It is impossible to know whether their plant work contributed to their deaths, and the woman wouldn't talk to The Chronicle.

But some who had worked in the plant did.

In 2004, at Kristy's Family Restaurant in Ridgecrest, Smith sat down with Michael Avery to hear his story.

A tall man with gray hair and a wide grin, Avery was hired at the plant in 1978, when the company was owned by Kerr-McGee. He worked there for 17 years, mainly in shipping.

Some days, he said, he would go home looking like a snowman with product all over him.

In 1994, when he had pneumonia, Avery's doctors told him that although he was 38, he had the lungs of a man who was 78.

In January 1996, Avery said the company terminated him and falsely claimed he had not shown a desire to return to work after being out ill. The company said it received a letter from Avery stating he would like to return to work eventually, but it said Avery himself acknowledged he was not physically able to work at that time.

Avery, now 51, told the Chronicle that in the 1980s, he was on a crew assigned to spray pesticide - he doesn't remember which pesticide - onto pallets used to ship product overseas. "This pesticide I used was full strength out of the five-gallon bucket. It was later learned that this insecticide should have been applied with rubber boots, disposable gloves, disposable coveralls and a special respirator the company didn't even own."

Asked about Avery's account, the company quoted a longtime shipping department manager who "does not recall any form of pesticides being applied to our pallets" before 2004, when spraying began being required in some cases and the plant bought pretreated pallets. But a co-worker of Avery's at the time, Don Huggins, confirmed Avery's story.

Avery also said that in the company's lunchrooms, it was often so windy that he could taste "chemical dust from plant operations" as he ate his sandwich.

Philip Harber, the chief of occupational and environmental medicine at UCLA who was Avery's doctor, said, "Based on what Mr. Avery described and the properties of what was involved, it appears likely his occupational exposure contributed significantly to his lung problem." Citing respiratory, internal and spine injuries, Avery eventually won a $657,000 settlement after negotiations between his lawyer and the insurance company administering the plant's workers' compensation claims.

The company notes that Avery's settlement was reached in the workers' compensation system, which compensates injured workers without regard to fault. Avery also recently filed a new claim with the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board, alleging he suffered "extreme cumulative chemical and toxin exposure" in his years at the plant.

The claim, which seeks a financial award for "serious and willful misconduct" by the company, alleges that chemicals from "leaking pipes, lines, pumps and valves would fall upon" Avery as he worked at the plant.

The company said it has no record of Avery voicing concerns about toxic exposure previously. Avery says it was only recently that he had his blood tested and learned that his body had high levels of chemicals not normally found in the general population.

The San Bernardino County district attorney's office told Rita Smith in 2004 that it was rejecting her request to prosecute the company. The office concluded there was insufficient evidence of environmental or other crimes.

Some state Fish and Game Department personnel had a different opinion. Two retired warden supervisors told The Chronicle that they advocated the company be prosecuted for bird deaths.

Mark Caywood, a retired patrol lieutenant, said state Fish and Game management "inferred that pushing the issue or prosecuting the company would result in the closing of the plant. But the game wardens knowledgeable about pollution who worked out there say it's a crime - the company is killing birds."

Donna Davis, the other retired patrol lieutenant, said: "There was no doubt there was a violation. There was no doubt that we had dead birds and the company was the cause of the deaths." But, she added, "There were a lot of politics involved in the County of San Bernardino, and the politics in the county were they couldn't afford to lose that tax base of the plant because that was money in the county's pocket."

Davis and Caywood said they were taken off the case, and a prosecution never happened. "We had freezers full of dead birds," Davis said. "It makes you sick to your stomach when these ducks have a convulsion and die in your arms."

Fish and Game's spokesman, Steve Martarano, said Davis and Caywood were moved to other projects after the investigation was over, and it was not a transfer to silence them. He added that the department settled the case by requiring the plant to do several things, including rescuing and rehabilitating birds and creating a new wetlands for birds in the Owens Valley, about 55 miles north of Searles Lake.

"The department believes the number of birds protected or saved by the new wetlands area at Owens Valley will fully offset the number of birds dying at Searles Lake," Martarano said.

Bill Sellers, an investigator for the county district attorney's office, said he did not find evidence supporting Smith's claims of criminal conduct by the plant. According to Smith, Sellers told her that workers have to prove an injury was caused by the chemicals. Smith said she responded: "Excuse me, do people walk around with laboratories attached to their damned asses?"

One evening in January 2005, Rita Smith was at home watching a "CSI" show on television when she heard a character mention a toxicological investigation into someone's death. Immediately, she knew she had a new tool in her own investigation.

She wanted to have her husband's fat tissue tested for a precise picture of his contamination levels. She started hunting for experts who could tell her where her husband could get these tests. Later, almost as an afterthought, she got tested, too.

That's when the mystery deepened. Rita Smith, who had fought for so many years to learn why her husband was ill, found out she was contaminated herself - with one of the most toxic compounds on the planet.

About the Series
Rita Smith first called The Chronicle wanting to tell her story in 2002. She told an editorial assistant who answered the phone that her husband, a former chemical plant worker, was very sick after working at a plant in the San Bernardino County town of Trona in the Mojave Desert. She said thousands of birds had died near the plant - then named IMC Chemicals Inc. The details were sketchy.

The notes taken by the editorial assistant were passed on to Chronicle reporter Susan Sward. Over the next few years, Sward listened to Smith tell bits and pieces of her story over the phone, and more than a year ago, Sward began pursuing the story.

During her investigation, Sward interviewed more than 100 people - plant supervisors, former and current plant workers, some of their families, regulators, scientists, professors and Trona residents. She traveled twice to Trona. She asked the company dozens of questions about its operations. The company, now named Searles Valley Minerals, responded with hundreds of pages of detailed answers.

Today
Rita Smith, a former employee of a chemical plant in the Mojave desert, wages a campaign to learn why her husband, who also worked there, had become so ill.
Monday
After struggling for years to understand her husband's ailments, Rita Smith receives alarming news about her own health.
-------- Chronicle research librarians Kathleen Rhodes and Lois Jermyn contributed to this report. E-mail Susan Sward at: ssward@sfchronicle.com

» Go on-site for more by this author, clicking on the links: http://www.truthout.org
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-next-erin-brockovich© 2008 truthout :: ::XXX:: ::

Saundra Hummer

July 6th, 2008, 04:40 PM

.~~~~~~~~~Kids With Pets Just Grow Up Nicer
Jul 6 2008 Scott Miller
Pets Corner
It's official: Pet owners make much better all-round citizens so you could be doing your kids a favour by bringing home a pet.
A new survey found 91 per cent believe pets have a positive impact on kids.

Keeping a pet is believed by 70 per cent to make you more intuitive, while two thirds say it makes you more caring, the National Office of Animal Health survey reveals.

And of course ownership will give your child a real sense of responsibility.
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/lifestyle/home-and-garden/2008/07/06/kids-with-pets-just-grow-up-nicer-78057-20632950/ ~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

July 7th, 2008, 12:47 PM

.~~~~~~~WHO WILL SAVE THE WORLD?
Fighting Hunger, Rising Oil Prices and Inflation at the G-8
SPIEGEL ONLINE
07/07/2008 12:21 PM
By
Rüdiger Falksohn
&
Wolfgang Reuter

Energy and food prices seem to be rising by the day, and inflation is on the rise, too. With a new strategy paper, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is hoping to find a path out of a three-prong crisis at this week's G-8 summit in Japan.

REUTERSA Japanese shop employee holds a souvenir mailing envelope featuring caricatures of leaders of G-8 countries: Will the club be able to come up with answers to the three crises that threaten to create mass turmoil? Go on-site for photo.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,564223,00.html
As far as billionaires go, Richard Rainwater, 65, of Texas, is pretty run of the mill. His assets are valued at an estimated $3 billion (€1.9 billion), placing him squarely in the mid-range of the American super rich.

A mathematician by academic training, Rainwater is a visionary -- famous for being the "capitalistic cowboy of the 1990s," because 11 years ago he sold lucrative shares in diverse companies and, together with others, invested a further $300 million in an energy market that was shaky at the time. The Dot-Com Internet crash and recent real estate crises did little to hurt him, and his company Rainwater was recently pleased to announce a $2 billion profit.

Back in 1997, a barrel of crude oil cost only $20. The price has since exploded and today stands at $144 on the global market. But forward-looking Rainwater sold its oil interests when the price reached $129 and the company is, at least for now, avoiding oil. Rainwater views the turbulent activity on commodities exchanges as a distant observer and is astonishingly critical of it. If things go on as they have been, he recently told Forbes magazine, the survival of humanity could be at stake.

The world has already been shaken by three recent financial crises. As a result of the real estate crash in America, banks and insurance companies around the world are getting hit. On top of that, the prices of the world’s most important goods are being driven up -- for both energy sources and food. And the more expensive commodities get, the further they accelerate the process of global inflation.

Inevitably, Third World and emerging industrial nations are getting pulled into these crises. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund made opening their internal markets to Western capital and products -- including food and consumer goods -- a pre-condition for obtaining loans. And now this.

In Vietnam, only recently considered to be a South Asian tiger economy, the inflation rate is currently 25 percent. In June, the population had to spend 74 percent more on food than it did just one year ago. Workers are striking for higher wages in many parts of the country.

Diesel prices in Bangladesh have risen by one-third to about 80 US cents per liter; the price of natural gas has risen by two-thirds. Of the country's population of 145 million, 58 million must make ends meet with less than $1 per day.

In Thailand, protesters blockaded streets because of the devaluation of the baht, which is painfully inflating import prices. Fears are increasing of a renewed Asian crisis.

In India, protests are becoming ever more frequent. Train lines are being blocked. Schools are being closed. And last week millions of truck drivers went on strike after the government in New Delhi reduced fuel subsidies, a new policy which affects not only diesel prices, but also those for cooking oil.

Fast growing economic power India is battling against an inflation rate of 11.6 percent. In Pakistan that rate is 19.3 percent, 20.2 percent in Iran, and Russia, Serbia and Bulgaria are registering rates of about 15 percent. In 50 other counties, the rate is greater than 10 percent.

If Germany, for example, were to experience the 30 percent drop in consumer buying power now being seen in Ethiopia or Venezuela, it would mean the recipients of the country’s highest benefit for the long-term unemployed, currently at €378 ($594) per month, would see their purchasing power slashed to €264 within one year.

All attention is now being focused on Japan’s Hokkaido island. Starting Monday, the chief leaders of the G-8 states will converge in the island city of Toyako to discuss a gamut of issues that could hardly be any more complicated. How, for example, do you repress the potential destructive power of a globalized economy? Is the capital system headed for a collapse? And how do you rescue the world from this triple crisis -- and by what means?

Astonishingly, the world’s eight biggest industrial nations didn’t even want to put these issues at the center of their agenda at first. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, 71, lacked the courage or perhaps power to place the issue of the triple crisis on the agenda. Instead he focused on climate change and Africa, the same issues adopted by his predecessor, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who hosted the last G-8 conference at Heiligendamm in 2007 on the Baltic Sea coast.

AFP
A malnourished boy in Ethiopia: Rising prices will have "serious consequences for security and food supplies of needy and poor families in urban and rural areas in developing countries." Go on-site for this telling photo, link at end of article.

However, in April, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote to the Japanese and called for the global food situation to be addressed at the meeting. Merkel also recognized the need for action. Quietly, they called together an inter-ministerial working group. They informed G-8 chairman Fukuda as well as the heads of state and government of the other member countries of their findings last Monday.

SPIEGEL obtained a copy of the six-page letter, which addresses the fundamental problems with the befitting seriousness and will now guide the G-8 discussion.

Rising prices will have "serious consequences for security and food supplies of needy and poor families in both urban and rural areas in developing countries," it states. Food shortages and conflicts over the control of and access to natural resources could "endanger democratization, destabilize states and spiral into international security problems."

In addition to "demographic and economic growth," and "changing consumer eating habits" in the Third World, the authors also attribute the ever-expanding farming of plants for fuel as a culprit behind the price explosion. Finally, the devaluation of the dollar and speculative trading with futures are also having a significant influence on the level of and fluctuations on food prices."

Merkel’s advisors assume that prices for grains, rice and oilseeds will become a little less expensive, but not by a great degree. At the same time, they are expecting even greater price fluctuations. In the G-8 advisory paper, they recommend:
..... . an increase in agricultural productivity -- primarily in developing countries, where it has only represented, on average, 1 percent of industry
..... . that assurances be made that the hardest hit are provided with access to food and financial aid
..... . that supplies of seeds, manure and farming equipment are provided quickly (preferably to states that put such aid to "good use" and responsibly).
..... .The immediate lifting of export restrictions to, for example, countries like India

The German government believes that the world's 30 poorest countries need to come up with an additional $20 billion for food imports to cover the shortfall of supplies -- a development that would massively aggravate their existing deficits. Merkel's government wants the International Monetary Fund to ensure that these states remain solvent. In order to cope with the "dramatic nature" of the crisis, global food production must also be increased -- especially in the world’s poorest countries. The German government is arguing that it would be prudent for rich countries to invest in agriculture in those countries.

This year alone, Merkel has announced, Germany will make $750 million available to help guarantee food supplies for these countries. In Tozako, she is expected to push for the creation of an agricultural task force at the UN level as well as a plan for further action.

AFP
A truck-driver's strike in Mumbai, India: Is everything that we said was right yesterday wrong today? Go on-site to view photo.

Berlin's proposals are in no way new or revolutionary. Nevertheless, they do represent ways in which the major industrial nations are actually pushing to deal with these major problems.

As with Heiligendamm one year ago, German Chancellor Merkel is also setting the tone at this G-8 summit. But will the club be able to undertake the appropriate measures? After all, hunger is just one aspect of this three-fold problem.

The aim is to undo a Gordion knot, preferably without violence. A hard line needs to be taken with the hedge funds, which have been recklessly enriching themselves; the markets need to be adjusted and regulated. But which rules should be applied? And which supervisory mechanisms can be justified without further spreading the damage?

The fact, for example, that the billion-strong Chinese population is eating more meat and consuming more gasoline than before and that demand is growing is the result of tremendous economic growth. The Middle Kingdom has allowed investors into its country and quality of life is rising -- it's a textbook example. The thousandth McDonald's franchise in China will soon erect its Golden Arches to the delight of the company’s US headquarters in Illinois.

Still, the recent boom in investment and consumption in Beijing and Shanghai has recently been identified as one of the causes of the growing global imbalance. One reason is that China is becoming a more formidable competitor in the scramble for finite resources like crude oil. The fact that the country is also eliminating farming land on a daily basis to make way for industry is also now being viewed critically because by contributing both to the reduction of its own farmlands and thus global agricultural areas, China must now consequently import corn, soy and wheat.

Indeed, China's long march from an agrarian country to the industrial power it is today is starting to show its dark side. Should this industrial development, once so praised, now be condemned?

In order to keep important economies on track, completely contradictory measures are being undertaken in the short-term. The Federal Reserve in Washington, for example, is lowering its leading interest rate in order to boost the US economy. By doing so, it willingly accepts the inflation that comes with it. At the same time, the European Central Bank does the opposite -- raising interest rates last Thursday to 4.25 percent in order to bring inflation (currently at 4 percent in the euro zone) under control.

In the meantime, the IMF is calling for more rigiorous financial market controls, more detailed bank reports and better risk management at financial institutions and ratings agencies. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn believes "the need for public intervention is becoming more evident."

For its part, as the world learned on Friday, the World Bank has been sitting on a report since April that concludes that farming of plants used for biofuels has had a far greater impact on increasing food prices than previously believed. But the report has been kept under wraps in deference to the US government, which has been decrying growing demand for food in China and India as the cause of soaring prices rather than demand for biofuels at American and European gas stations.

The large majority of experts is, at the very least, united in their belief that the boom times are over and that the reins need to be tightened, especially amongst speculators. Governments will have to take a stronger role in controlling the markets again. Now it's up to the G-8 representatives to draw reasonable conclusions and make reasonable decisions based on the Merkel paper and other analyses.

URL: Click below to go on site for the numerous links within this article, there are several as well as a few photo's:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,564223,00.html
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:
Farm Aid from Brussels: EU Pledges €1 Billion in Seeds, Fertilizer and more for Africa (07/07/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,564261,00.html
The World from Berlin: G-8 Is a 'Western Club' Incapable of Solving the World's Problems (07/07/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,564277,00.html
World Bank Leak: Biofuels May Be Even Worse than First Thought (07/04/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,563927,00.html
A Dangerous Cocktail: Europe Grapples with Threat of Stagflation (06/30/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,563499,00.html
The Attack on Prosperity: How Speculators Are Causing the Cost of Living to Skyrocket (06/13/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,559550,00.html
Europe's Energy Crisis: Skyrocketing Oil Prices Threaten Prosperity (05/29/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,556367,00.html
Global Food Crisis: The Struggle to Satisfy China and India's Hunger (04/28/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,550943,00.html
Global Food Crisis: The Fury of the Poor (04/14/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,547198,00.html
Our Hungry Planet: The Choice between Food and Fuel (01/24/2008)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,530791,00.html
SPIEGEL 360: Our Full Coverage of the Global Financial Crisis
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,k-7312,00.html
SPIEGEL 360: Our Coverage of the G-8 Summit in Germany
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,k-7125,00.html
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2008
All Rights Reserved
~~~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

July 7th, 2008, 02:55 PM

.X X X X X X X
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Revised and Updated]
--
2008 Paperback Edition
Jeremy Scahill
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

As we mentioned before, we don't often carry paperback versions of hardcover editions that BuzzFlash has featured, but we did recently with Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. And we are are doing it again for the updated and revised paperback edition of Jeremy Scahill's "Blackwater."

Right wing Republicans used to say that the only thing the Federal government should provide for is a national military for national defense. Now, they don't even believe in that spare public policy. They want a privatized, profit-making military -- and they pay for it with our tax dollars.

None of the privatized military companies is more notorious than Blackwater, and Scahill has got the dirty low down in this definitive book.

From Nation Books:
Meet Blackwater USA, the powerful private army that the U.S. government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. Its contacts run from deep inside the military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House. Blackwater is the elite Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror," with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 soldiers at the ready. Run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies, its forces are capable of overthrowing governments, and yet most people have never heard of Blackwater.

Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary exposï¿½ by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists.

"Jeremy Scahillï¿½s exposï¿½ of the Blackwater mercenary firm forcefully demonstrates the grave dangers of outsourcing the governmentï¿½s monopoly on the use of force."
--Joseph Wilson, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq

"Jeremy Scahill skillfully chronicles the birth of America's frightening Praetorian Guard, one that has been unleashed--25,000-strong--in Iraq. These hired guns, with their black uniforms and automatic weapons, appeared on the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. They operate, at home and abroad, beyond the bounds of legal constraints and are controlled by secretive puppet masters, such as Erik Prince, who have close ties to the radical Christian Right. Should our nation enter a period of instability following another terrorist attack on American soil, an economic collapse or a series of environmental disasters the tyranny that groups such as Blackwater impose on others could become the tyranny they impose on us. The rise of this unchecked mercenary force, as Scahill understands, could presage the final stage in the collapse of American democracy."
--Chris Hedges, former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief

"If the Republicans lose in 2008, they will leave office armed and dangerous. Blackwater is the utterly gripping and explosive story of how the Bush Administration has spent hundreds of millions of public dollars building a parallel corporate army, an army so loyal to far right causes it constitutes nothing less than a Republican Guard. The most important and chilling book about the death throes of U.S. democracy you will read in years and a triumph of investigative reporting."
--Naomi Klein, author No Logo

"Of all the insane Bush privatization efforts, none is more frightening than the corporatizing of military combat forces. Jeremy Scahill admirably exposes a devastating example of this sinister scheme."
--Michael Moore, Academy Award Winning Director

This engrossing investigative piece exposing, in shocking detail, a U.S. government-outsourced Frankenstein replete with helicopter gun ships may leave you incredulous. But you better believe it, for it poses a grave and gathering danger to the future of our Republic."
--Ray McGovern, CIA veteran and former intelligence briefer for George H. W. Bush

"In this terrifying and thrillingly written book, Jeremy Scahill introduces us to the shape of things to come, and to the kind of people and corporations who are likely to govern our lives if we don't do something about it pretty quickly."
--Arundhati Roy, author The God of Small Things

"Jeremy Scahill's comprehensive research and reporting lifts the veil off the ever-tightening relationship between the federal government and unaccountable private military corporations such as Blackwater USA. . . ."
--U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/1188
X X X X X .

Saundra Hummer

July 7th, 2008, 03:41 PM

.^^^^^^^^^
Hanging Tough with Obama When Obama is Not Hanging Tough
By
mark karlin
Created 07/07/2008 - 6:01am
THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher
July 7, 2008

As I've mentioned more than once, BuzzFlash is the oldest and largest progressive Internet news and commentary site between the two Coasts. We have the perspective of the Heartland -- and we were founded on a premise that only when we hang tough for Constitutional values will we prevail.

The most basic and fundamental message of BuzzFlash -- long before the other sites that now get branded on television all the time (we were founded in May of 2000) -- was that you don't win victories by laying down like a doormat; and you don't sell out the Constitution, one person-one vote, economic justice and the energy future of our nation by cowering in a corner every time that the Republicans pull a national security scare.

Of course, there are other factors at work, like the DLC, which have made many Democrats as complicit as Republicans when it comes to voting with big corporations because of the money channeled to their campaigns by "K" Street lobbyists.

Barack Obama offered a vision of an end to this cowardice and betrayal.

We believe that he still does.

I want to make it emphatically clear that I and BuzzFlash oppose Obama's position on the latest House FISA bill; on "redefining" an Iraq pullout; on giving a green light to the unprecedented Supreme Court gift to the NRA; and on his "carve out" of exceptions to late term abortions that would exclude the mental health of a woman.

These are not progressive perspectives (although the Iraq statement was consistent with his prior qualifications -- and those of Hillary Clinton). We oppose his stances as stated above, and will continue to do so. As I have often stated, we are beholden to principles, not to an individual. As a grassroots organizer, Obama, we suspect, understands that.

There's been a lot of Internet speculation about why Obama made these counter-progressive comments. Is he following the advice of his strategists because he needs to ease the concerns of key voting blocks in new states that they plan to possibly pick up (e.g., Colorado, New Mexico, Montana, Georgia, Virginia, etc.)? In that case, Obama loses some of his luster as being the "genuine" candidate. Or are these nuances that Obama actually believes? Or are they a lot of "dog days of summer" attention focused on issues that will pass once he becomes president and appoints Supreme Court justices who will lean progressive, along with having a heavily Democratic Congress, including the Senate?

The answer: probably a little of all of the above.

Being in Chicago, as we have said, we have worked with Obama in the past on some advocacy issues, such as putting an end to Payday Loans (although we have absolutely no connection with his campaign; we're talking about when he was a state senator). We also know a lot of people who know him from Hyde Park -- both socially and politically -- and elected officials who worked with him in the legislature.

Most of them will tell you this: if he has a core center upon which he will not compromise, it is related to Constitutional issues. We wager that he and his campaign know that Harry Reid doesn't have the votes to maintain a filibuster on the House FISA bill, so Obama is taking the chance to innoculate himself from the only thing the Republicans got to run against him; i.e., that he is a furtive Muslim sympathizer. As BuzzFlash has speculated before, we think that too many Democrats were given classified briefings about the FISA illegalities and would be implicated if Bush and Cheney were held to account. As for Telecom Immunity, show us the money. When you have the Democratic head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, cheerleading for Telecom Immunity, you know that the fix is in.

Do we justify such "business as usual" political moves? No, but we are going to hold our judgment on Obama, barring some radical departure from his primary positions, until he is elected. This guy is committed to the Constitution, and BuzzFlash and the rest of the netroots are going to be all over him like a panther on the prowl if he doesn't roll back the Bush usurpations of the Constitution and our civil liberties. The same goes for abortion.

Because while he's made these objectionable statements, he's also been "framing" the national security issue in a way that Democrats have not done before; he is boxing McCain in on the definition of what makes our nation secure. That is the larger battle that has to be won.

We've talked in the past with George Lakoff -- the master of "framing" -- and it is clear that he not only approves of Obama's ability to redefine and reframe issues to pull more people into the progressive tent, but that Lakoff has given the Obama camp advice and counsel. (Although as Lakoff's just-posted commentary on the Huffington Post [1] indicates, the Obama campaign didn't listen to him on the "move to the center" statements, of which Lakoff disapproves -- as, we repeat, do we.)

Most Americans share progressive values, but they have been tugged by the demagogic slogans and think tank positions of the right wing. In general, Obama has the rare ability to double down on the right wing by bringing in a larger context to the debate and debunking their charlatan bag of demagogic tricks.

So, I would contend Obama is hanging tough, even when it appears that he is not. The Democrats are going to try and realign the electoral map from the gridlock of the last two elections, and Obama is at a point in the election cycle when he is trying to up the comfort level of swing voters while closing off lines of attack from the Republicans -- or at least reducing their impact.

Will it work? We'll see.

But we'll end with this historical note. In 2000, before the theft of the election by Bush Inc., many BuzzFlash readers wrote us and asked what we would do if Gore won because we were so anti-Republican?

Our response was simple; we would keep advocating Constitutional principles and progressive values -- and when Gore deviated from them, we would criticize him. (Although Gore, after the 2000 election, then went through a transformation and became such a strong change agent and fiery spokesman of truth that he became disinterested in the compromises demanded by the political process.)

So it will be with Barack Obama. We will be there pounding away at his lapses when necessary while defending him from attacks from the right wing beer hall putsch crowd.

The power of government in America is derived from the people.

Let no president forget that, whatever his or her party affiliation is.

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Update: 8:35 EST, July 7th

Published on BuzzFlash.org

(http://www.buzzflash.com/articles)
LINKS:

[1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/the-mind-and-the-obama-ma_b_111105.html
[2] http://www.buzzflash.net/submit.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Far ticles%2Feditorblog%2F101
[3] http://del.icio.us/post?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles %2Feditorblog%2F101&title=Hanging+Tough+with+Obama+When+Obama+is+Not+H anging+Tough
[4] http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Farticles%2Fed itorblog%2F101&title=Hanging+Tough+with+Obama+When+Obama+is+Not+H anging+Tough
[5] http://technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzflash.com%2Fa rticles%2Feditorblog%2F101
[6] http://technorati.com/tag/EditorBlog
[7] http://technorati.com/tag/Obama
[8] http://technorati.com/tag/ Hanging Tough
[9] http://technorati.com/tag/ BuzzFlash
^^^^^^^ .

Saundra Hummer

July 7th, 2008, 05:41 PM

.
* * * * * * *

California law firm files class-action lawsuit against major oil companies
By
IBI Magazine
http://www.ibinews.com/ibinews/newsdesk/20080310155418ibinews.html

The Los Angeles law firm of Kabateck, Brown, Kellner, LLP has filed a class-action lawsuit against the main oil companies on behalf of California boaters. The law firm said in a statement that oil companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, Valero, and ConocoPhillips are manufacturing and selling ethanol-blended gasoline that damages marine fuel tanks, engines and other components. The lawsuit was filed earlier this week in the US District Court, Central District of California in Los Angeles.

"The price of gas is bad enough, but selling gasoline that dissolves gas tanks is a new low even for the oil companies," said Brian Kabateck, managing partner of Kabateck Brown Kellner and the lead attorney on the case, in a statement. "The oil companies knows this fuel is corrosive, but they're keeping consumers in the dark to pump up their profits. The cost to the consumer is thousands of dollars in repairs."

The suit seeks to represent all owners of boats with fibreglass fuel tanks who filled their tanks with ethanol blended gasoline from a California retailer.

The statement noted that oil companies replaced MTBE with ethanol in 2004, when MTBE was banned in many states because of environmental concerns.

"Consumers were never informed about the differences between MTBE and ethanol-mixed gasoline, nor were they informed about the disastrous effects ethanol has on fibreglass marine fuel tanks," said the statement.

"The environment pays the price for Exxon and Chevron's deception each time a damaged fuel tank leaks gasoline into the water," said Kabateck.

Kabateck said his firm has won more than US$750 million against Google, Farmer's Insurance, Eli Lilly and other major corporations.
(10 April 2008) I need to start a campaign and have our own petition to sign, this for small motor owners who have lost so much, even their livelihoods. This ethanol debacle is a terrible situation. Perhaps this is why Bill Gates divested himself of so much stock? It will, we've been told, not be good for cars as well, and, it being illegal in airplanes tells you something. SRH
*******
.

Saundra Hummer

July 7th, 2008, 05:55 PM

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~~~~~~~
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Galileo Galilei
~~~

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

Arthur Schopenhauer
1788-1860

~~~

"Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, "War is an evil in as much as it produces more wicked men than it takes away."

Immanuel Kant
~~~
"If a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime"

Charles Eliot Norton

~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

July 7th, 2008, 07:13 PM

::Concluding Remarks

Breaking Iraq and Blaming Iran

British Black Ops and the Terror Campaign in Basra

By
Andrew G. Marshall

British Black Ops in Basra
OPENING OF ARTICLE<>FIRST FEW PARAGRAPHS AND THE NUMEROUS LINKS:07/07/08 "Global Research" In September of 2005, the southern Iraqi oil city of Basra, under British occupation since the 2003 invasion, was the scene of an extraordinarily controversial incident, which has since exposed the anatomy of the Anglo-American "dirty war" in Iraq, and in fact, the relevance to the wider "War on Terror".

On September 19, 2005, two white men, dressed as Arabs, obviously suspicious to the British-trained Iraqi police, were pulled over in their car as they approached the city center of Basra. As the Independent reported, "the two men had been driving in an unmarked car when they arrived at a checkpoint in the city." What followed was a confrontation between the two men and the Iraqi police, with shots fired and an Iraqi police officer killed and another wounded.[1] The men were then detained by the Iraqi police and taken to the central jail. As it turned out, the two men were members of the British elite SAS Special Forces.[2]

In an interview with Al-Jazeera TV, Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly representing Basra, stated that, "I could see that the UK forces were always provoking the Iraqi people in Basra. There are indiscriminate arrests and pressure," and that a representative of the British embassy informed him that, "two UK soldiers were trying to stir up disturbances. Explosive materials were found in their car and they opened fire." He further elaborated that, "what the UK forces are doing is not necessarily known by the Iraqi forces or coordinated with them through exchange of information. There are occupation forces, armoured vehicles, tanks and military aircraft in Basra. Moreover, there are members of the British intelligence present in Basra especially, since Basra is currently a sensitive and important area in Iraq. There are members of the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] and Mossad [word indistinct], as well as many institutions in this city."[3]

British journalist Robert Fisk asked in an article he wrote on the subject, "what [were] our two SAS lads were doing cruising around Basra in Arab dress with itsy-bitsy moustaches and guns? Why did no one ask? How many SAS men are in southern Iraq? Why are they there? What are their duties? What weapons do they carry? Whoops! No one asked."[4]

The Great Escape
Go on-site to view the complete article. These first few paragraphs are just a start on this article up to the Great Escape and the last paragraph. To see the rest, as well as the links, go on-site:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20243.htm
Last Paragraph:
Understanding the anatomy of the conflict that has raged in Basra since 2003 is a pivotal study in understanding the wider "War on Terror." The British, for nearly a century maintaining a destabilizing presence in the region, notably in Basra, have not given up their Empire’s long-standing tradition of "Divide and Conquer." From the two SAS terrorist, to their dramatic "rescue," the destruction of the Serious Crimes Unit and eventually, the liquidation of the Basra Intelligence Ministry, the British have maintained a position of being above the law and beyond moral restraint.

Notes
[1] Helen McCormack, The day that Iraqi anger exploded in the face of the British occupiers. The Independent: September 20, 2005:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-day-that-iraqi-anger-exploded-in-the-face-of-the-british-occupiers-507597.html
[2] BBC, Iraq probe into soldier incident. BBC News: September 20, 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm
[3] Global Research, Iraqi MP accuses British Forces in Basra of "Terrorism". Al Jazeera: September 20, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050920&articleId=983
[4] Robert Fisk, When nature and man conspire to expose the lies of the powerful, the truth will out. The Independent: September 24, 2005: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-when-nature-and-man-conspire-to-expose-the-lies-of-the-powerful-the-truth-will-out-508135.html
[5] Times Online, British forces break soldiers out of Basra jail. Times Online: September 19, 2005:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article568439.ece
[6] Ibid.
[7] AP, British soldiers free two from Basra jail. USA Today: September 19, 2005:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-09-19-british-basra_x.htm
[8] Ellen Knickmeyer and Jonathan Finer, British Smash Into Iraqi Jail To Free 2 Detained Soldiers. The Washington Post: September 20, 2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900572.html
[9] BBC, Iraq probe into soldier incident. BBC News: September 20, 2005:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm
[10] John Pilger, John Pilger blames Basra on the British. The New Statesman: October 3, 2005: http://www.newstatesman.com/200510030009
[11] Michel Chossudovsky, Britain "apologizes" for terrorist act in Basra. Global Research: October 15, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1094
[12] Kim Sengupta, Senior military investigator found dead in Iraq. The Independent: October 17, 2005:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/senior-military-investigator-found-dead-in-iraq-511240.html
[13] Michael Evans, Top military investigator is found dead in Basra. The Times Online: October 17, 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article579399.ece
[14] Richard Norton-Taylor, Investigator found dead at Basra base. The Guardian: October 17, 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/oct/17/military.iraq
[15] The Age, Captured SAS soldiers 'spied on drill torturer'. The Age: October 17, 2005: http://www.theage.com.au/news/iraq/captured-sas-soldiers-spied-on-drill-torturer/2005/10/16/1129401144904.html
[16] Ian Herbert, Suicide in Basra: The unravelling of a military man. The Independent: July 31, 2006:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/suicide-in-basra-the-unravelling-of-a-military-man-409965.html
[17] Telegraph staff, British troops storm 'execution prison'. The Telegraph: December 25, 2006:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/migrationtemp/1537806/British-troops-storm-'execution-prison'.html
[18] Thomas Harding, 'Rogue' police officers seized in Basra. The Telegraph: December 23, 2006: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1537714/%27Rogue%27-police-officers-seized-in-Basra.html
[19] BBC, Iraqi police ambushed near Basra. BBC News: October 29, 2006: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6097180.stm
[20] Marc Santora, British Soldiers Storm Iraqi Jail, Citing Torture. The New York Times: December 26, 2006: http://www.truthout.org/article/british-soldiers-storm-iraqi-jail-citing-torture
[21]Sudarsan Raghavan, Basra Raid Finds Prisoners With Signs of Torture. The Washington Post: March 5, 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/04/AR2007030400345.html
[22] Matthew Moore, Iraqi PM criticises 'illegal' British raid. The Telegraph: March 6, 2007: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/migrationtemp/1544637/Iraqi-PM-criticises-'illegal'-British-raid.html
[23] Reuters, Iraqi PM orders probe of raid on Basra prison. Reuters: March 4, 2007: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04686706.htm
[24] Paul Wood, Basra raids raise power concerns. BBC News: March 6, 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6423691.stm
[25] Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks, As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates. The Washington Post: August 7, 2007: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601401_pf.html
[26] Kim Sengupta, British leave last remaining Basra base: What was achieved? The Independent: September 3, 2007:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-leave-last-remaining-basra-base-what-was-achieved-401284.html
[27] Kim Sengupta, The 'proxy war': UK troops are sent to Iranian border. The Independent: September 12, 2007:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-proxy-war-uk-troops-are-sent-to-iranian-border-402083.html
[28] Paul von Zielbauer, British Hand Over Basra to Iraqis. The New York Times: December 16, 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/world/middleeast/16cnd-iraq.html?ex=1355461200&en=3c6761e2acb08c5a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
[29] Ralph Peters, Blood Borders: How a better Middle East would look. Armed Forces Journal: June 2006: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
[30] The Times, Iraq: the battle for Basra. Times Online: March 28, 2008:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/leading_article/article3635662.ece
[31] Patrick Cockburn, British and US forces drawn into battle for Basra. The Independent: March 30, 2008:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/british-and-us-forces-drawn-into-battle-for-basra-802626.html
[32] BBC, Britain and the battle for Basra. BBC News: March 30, 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7321461.stm
[33] Patrick Cockburn, Al-Sadr calls ceasefire after six days of clashes. The Independent: March 31, 2008: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/alsadr-calls-ceasefire-after-six-days-of-clashes-802735.html
[34] Charles Levinson, Iranians help reach Iraq cease-fire. USA Today: March 31, 2008:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2008-03-30-iraqnews_N.htm
[35] AP, In push for political unity, Cheney visits Iraq. MSNBC: March 17, 2008: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23667595/
[36] Tom Coghlan, Dick Cheney tour sparks Iran war rumours. The Telegraph: March 21, 2008:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1582409/Dick-Cheney-tour-sparks-Iran-war-rumours.html
[37] Real News, Ex-CIA analyst on Petraeus and Cheney. The Real News Network: April 11, 2008:
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1323
[38] Dana Milbank and Justin Blum, Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force. The Washington Post: November 16, 2005:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501842.html
[39] Press Office, CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE DOCUMENTS FEATURE MAP OF IRAQI OILFIELDS. Judicial Watch: July 17, 2003: http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_iraqi-oilfield-pr.shtml
[40] AP, Iraq in talks with Royal Dutch Shell on joint venture deal to invest natural gas. The International Herald Tribune: June 17, 2008: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/17/business/ME-FIN-Iraq-Natural-Gas.php
[41] Andrew E. Kramer, Deals with Iraq are set to bring oil giants back. The International Herald Tribune: June 19, 2008: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/19/africa/19iraq.php
[42] AFP, Iraq presidency rejects provincial election law. AFP: February 27, 2008:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hYO3MajPLR6JQiP1E71sgMz0ufzg
[43] Sholnn Freeman, Iraqi Council Clears Key Legislation on Provincial Elections. The Washington Post: March 20, 2008:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/19/AR2008031903520.html
[44] Leslie Gelb, The Three State Solution. The New York Times: November 25, 2003:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/6559/threestate_solution.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F3325 %2Fleslie_h_gelb%3Fpage%3D3
[45] Michel Chossudovsky, "Osamagate." Global Research: October 9, 2001:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO110A.html
[46] George W. Bush, Bush's Speech on the Global War on Terror, March 2008. CFR: March 27, 2008: http://www.cfr.org/publication/15867/bushs_speech_on_the_global_war_on_terror_march_200 8.html
[47] Conn Hallinan, Column: Dispatches FromThe Edge: The Story Behind the Battle for Basra. The Berkeley Daily Planet: April 11, 2008: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-04-11/article/29715
[48] Leslie Gelb and Joseph Biden, Jr., Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq. The New York Times: May 1, 2006: http://www.cfr.org/publication/10569/unity_through_autonomy_in_iraq.html?breadcrumb=%2F bios%2F3325%2Fleslie_h_gelb%3Fpage%3D2
[49] Linda S. Heard, The Prophecy of Oded Yinon. Counter Punch: April 25, 2006: http://www.counterpunch.org/heard04252006.html
[50] Richard Perle, et. al., A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies: June 1996: http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
[51] Leslie Gelb, The Three State Solution. The New York Times: November 25, 2003:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/6559/threestate_solution.html?breadcrumb=%2Fbios%2F3325 %2Fleslie_h_gelb%3Fpage%3D3
[52] Daniel Dombey and Andrew Ward, Oil tops Cheney’s Middle East tour agenda. The Financial Times: March 16, 2008: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d132d1e2-f3a2-11dc-b6bc-0000779fd2ac.html
[53] Chris Floyd, US Attack on Iran: Worried Yet? Saudis Prepare for "Sudden Nuclear Hazards" After Cheney Visit. Global Research: March 31, 2008: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8494
[54] World Tribune, U.S. charges Iran behind renewed violence in Iraq. The World Tribune: March 27, 2008: http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2008/ss_iran_03_27.asp
[55] Claudia Parsons, US envoy to UN blames Iran for fueling Iraq violence. Reuters: April 28, 2008:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKN28305593._CH_.242020080428
[56] Gareth Porter, US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan. IPS: June 6, 2008: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42696
[57] Mark Mazzetti, U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work. The New York Times: December 3, 2007: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/03/5588/
[58] Gareth Porter, POLITICS-US: Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE. IPS: November 8, 2007: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39978
[59] Seumas Milne, Secret US plan for military future in Iraq. The Guardian: April 8, 2008: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/08/iraq.usa
[60] Patrick Cockburn, Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control. The Independent: June 5, 2008: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-secret-plan-to-keep-iraq-under-us-control-840512.html
[61] Ismail Salami, US hidden agenda in Iraq security agreement. Press TV: June 7, 2008: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=59060&sectionid=3510303
[62] AP, Iraq, US seek security compromise. Associated Press: June 19, 2008: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4Sx1RDO6xF-Ggz2GsqBY6y0vq6AD91DC1TG1

Click on "comments" below to read or post comments (Go on-site to view, or join in.)http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
....

Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 02:17 PM

.
.<<<<<<o>>>>>
Iran's Ahmadinejad calls for US bases to be 'eradicated'

Tue Jul 8, 8:51 AM ETIran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for United States military bases across the world to be "eradicated" and said there must be "fundamental change" in the next US government.

"The greatest threat in the Middle East and to countries in the world is US intervention," he told a press conference after a summit of the "D8" group of developing nations.

"The military bases in the whole world should be eradicated and removed," he said.

"To build confidence in the region is to have fundamental change in the next US government," the Iranian leader added.

Ahmadinejad, who is embroiled in a wrangle over Iran's nuclear enrichment programme, called on the major powers to "withdraw from animosity and hostile actions against us".

"Justice, peace and friendship is also in their benefit," he said.

"To rebuild confidence, the US must withdraw its forces from Iraq and allow the fate of the people of Iraq and regional countries to be written by the hands of their own people," he said.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080708/wl_mideast_afp/iranusd8malaysia
~~~
What is it about men in high places? Their abuse of power, and their overwhelming desire for more wealth is astonishing. Control of all we think and all we do is on also on their agenda.

They say that people who've killed, often times had a brain pattern that predisposed them to murder their fellow human beings. What is in the brain pattern of men like Ahmadinejad, and others who when not even threatened would kill by sending others off to carry out their wishes? Preemtive strikes for no good reason? They do come to mind. Most of us can't grasp their rationale, other than the obvious in the case of the USA under Cheney and Bush, their's is known by everyone, and if not, it should be, this being that their agenda is all about this: it's nothing more than greed and power. That they'll go after all they desire and crave with every resource available to them, even our lives.

Hold onto your hats everyone, here we go. Just ake a look at the latest from the gulf. We are showing him our might. Our bodies at the forefront. SRH <<<<<<<O>>>>>>> .

Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 02:31 PM

. lllllllllllllllll

US holds Navy exercise after Iran comments on Gulf
Filed by Reuters
07/07/2008 @ 10:50 am

DUBAI, July 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said on Monday it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf, days after vowing that Iran will not be allowed to block the waterway which carries crude from the world's largest oil-exporting region.

"The aim of Exercise Stake Net is to practise the tactics and procedures of protecting maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil installations," Commodore Peter Hudson said in a U.S. Fifth Fleet statement.

The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in remarks published late last month that Tehran would impose controls on shipping in the Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it was attacked.

Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its nuclear programme has risen since a report last month said Israel had practised such a strike.

Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, said last week the United States would not allow Iran to block the Gulf.

Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, has helped propel oil prices over $140 a barrel.

Two U.S. vessels were taking part in the exercise alongside a British warship and one from Bahrain, a Gulf Arab ally which hosts the Fifth Fleet. "Stake Net seeks to help ensure a lawful maritime order as well as improve relationships between regional partners," the fleet's statement said.

Western powers say they fear Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear programme. Tehran says the work aims to generate electricity.

A cargo ship hired by the U.S. military fired warning shots at two unidentified boats which approached it in the Gulf in April. In January, the United States said five small Iranian speedboats aggressively approached three U.S. Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz and a radio message was transmitted, warning they could explode.

Iran said its boats were simply trying to identify the U.S. vessels and military experts have since said the warning may have come from an independent radio operator.
Reporting
By
Inal Ersan
Editing
By Mark Trevelyan
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/US_holds_navy_exercise_after_Iran_0707.html ~~~~~~~ .

Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 04:29 PM

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.~~~~~FACTCHECK.ORG
ANNENBERG POLITICAL FACT CHECK
http://www.FactCheck.org

The $32,000 Question
July 8, 2008
McCain falsely claims that Obama voted to raise income taxes on individuals earning "as little as $32,000 per year."
Summary
The McCain campaign claims that Obama voted to raise income taxes on individuals who earn as little as $32,000 per year. That's wrong.

.The resolution Obama voted for would not have increased taxes on any single taxpayer making less than $41,500 per year in total income, or any couple making less than $83,000. The $32,000 figure is approximately the taxable income of a single person making $41,500 per year, after all deductions and exclusions.

.Obama's vote (for a non-binding budget bill) does not change the fact that his own tax plan would provide a tax cut of $502 for a non-married taxpayer earning $35,000.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:

Desktop users:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/the_32000_question.html

Mobile:

http://www.factcheck.org/mobile/article.php?id=651 Frankly, I think this campaign is way too long, wearing everyone out, the men seeking the Presidency and everyone surrounding them. Mistakes are made and choices are strange. I know, a person will have to have the wherewith-all to withstand the rigors of the Presidency, however, I somehow feel, after all of this, The Presidency might seem an easy task.

I think it would be good to have some sort of opening gate, starter blocks, a start, and a finish line, just for campaigning. Enough already. Calm it down and let those in the race gather themselves up for another day. This is too long an ordeal. It's starving everyone's brains for oxygen, it really is. SRH ~~~~~~~~~
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Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 04:59 PM

.^^^^^^^^^Cheney Aides Altered CDC Testimony, Agency Official Says

By
Juliet Eilperin
The Washington Post
Tuesday 08 July 2008
Follow Links below to read other articles by Juliet Eilperin. SRH
A former EPA official says Vice President Dick Cheney's staff censored Congressional testimony in order to remove any references to the human health consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. (Photo: iStockphoto) Go on-site to view.
Ex-administrator says official from vice president's office edited out six pages.
Members of Vice President's Dick Cheney's staff censored congressional testimony by a top federal official on the health threats posed by global warming, a former Environmental Protection Agency official said today.

In a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett said an official from Cheney's office edited out six pages from the testimony of Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last October.

Several media outlets, including The Washington Post, reported at the time that Gerberding had planned to say that "CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern," among other passages.

Boxer said the administration feared that Gerberding's testimony would force it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. The White House has opposed mandatory limits and insisted that voluntary measures and increased research are the best way to address the problem.

"The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Office of the Vice President (OVP) were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony," Burnett, a 31-year old Stanford-trained economist and a Democrat, wrote in response to an inquiry from Boxer's committee. "CEQ requested that I work with CDC to remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change."

Burnett, a member of the wealthy Packard family, has given more than $100,000 to Democratic campaigns in recent years, including $3,600 to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (Ill.). He did not identify who in the vice president's office called him.

"I'm not interested in pointing fingers at any individual," he said at a press conference with Boxer this morning, adding he was focused on seeing how the federal government will address climate change in response to last year's Supreme Court decision requiring EPA to deal with the issue of rising carbon dioxide emissions. "I'm interested in helping inform the next administration to help make those decisions, while recognizing Congress could act to pass a better law."

Boxer demanded that, in light of Burnett's allegations, EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson turn over "every document related to the agency's finding that global warming poses a danger to the public" - a determination the EPA reached late last year - and issue a rule finding that greenhouse gases endanger public welfare. The White House has refused to open the email making that finding, which Burnett sent over on Dec. 5, thereby leaving the recommendation in limbo.

"I'm calling on Mr. Johnson to act now, and if he doesn't have the courage or the strength or determination to act, he should resign," Boxer said.

Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride declined to comment in detail on Burnett's allegations, saying, "We don't comment on internal deliberations."

However White House spokesman Tony Fratto noted that White House officials in past administrations have vetted congressional testimony from agency officials.

"There's absolutely nothing unusual here in terms of the inter-agency review process, whether it's testimony, rules or anything else," Fratto said in an interview. "The process exists so that other offices and departments have the opportunity to comment and offer their views. There's nothing unusual about that, there's nothing nefarious about that, and there's nothing different here from previous administrations."

Frank O'Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said the latest revelations confirm that the vice president has been steering the nation's environmental policy during President Bush's tenure.

"For years we've suspected that Cheney was the puppeteer for administration policy on global warming," O'Donnell said. "This kiss-and-tell account appears to confirm the worst."

Articles by Juliet Eilperin
Go on-site to gain access these articles and photo's.
http://www.truthout.org/article/cheney-aides-altered-congressional-testimony
Cheney Aides Altered Congressional Testimony
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
NEWS
Report Says Severe Weather to Increase as Earth Warms
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
NEWS
Congress Pushes to Keep Land Untamed
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
NEWS
Scientists Were Censored by NASA
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
NEWS
White House Blocking Rule to Protect Endangered Whale
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
NEWS
Inaction on Polar Bear Criticized
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
NEWS
Gore Launches Ambitious Advocacy Campaign on Climate
by: Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post
^^^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 05:18 PM

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////o\\\////o\\\\
Pelosi wants Bush to release oil from strategic reserve
By
Mike Soraghan
Posted: 07/08/08 06:12 PM [ET]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on President Bush to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to bring down prices.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced to Democratic leaders Tuesday night that she has written a letter to President Bush, urging him to release a “small” amount of oil from the government stockpile to increase supply and decrease prices, a leadership aide said.

In the letter, Pelosi said the price of a barrel of oil has risen nearly five-fold during Bush’s tenure and called the effects "devastating."

"These are the kind of circumstances, in addition to national security, in which utilization of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is more than justified," Pelosi wrote in the letter, dated Tuesday.

The reserve comprises a series of Gulf Coast salt caverns that house the largest emergency oil stockpile in the world. It currently holds 706 million barrels, about 97 percent of the reserve’s 727 million barrel capacity. That’s the most the reserve has ever held and would replace foreign supplies for about 58 days.

It is not clear what impact a release would have on current prices. The U.S. uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day.

Pelosi’s letter noted that a release at the time of the start of the first Gulf War in 1991 brought prices down $8 a barrel. When President Clinton ordered a swap in 2000 to lower prices, she wrote, prices dropped 34 percent, to a little more than $20 a barrel.

The most recent drawdown, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, lowered prices by about $5 a barrel, she said.

The reserve’s previous record of 700 million barrels was reached shortly before that post-Katrina drawdown.

Earlier this year, congressional Democrats scored their biggest success over Bush on energy when they passed legislation freezing the size of the reserve by a veto-proof majority. It was also supported by the three remaining presidential candidates at the time.

Bush opposed the idea, saying the 70,000 barrels a day being pumped into the reserve was too small to make a difference in prices. But he later relented. He signed the bill and deliveries stopped.

Pelosi’s is not the only proposal related to the reserve. Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) has introduced a bill to take out more expensive “light” crude, and replace it with cheaper “sour” crude. He would use the difference in price to fund energy research.

The oil stockpile is designed to prevent an economically threatening disruption in oil supplies, according to the Department of Energy, which runs the reserve.

The stockpile has grown larger under President Bush, who has made it bigger and filled it fuller than ever before.

The 2005 energy bill ordered the Department of Energy to expand the capacity of the reserve to 1 billion barrels.

Bush went further in January 2007, announcing plans to double the size of the reserve to 1.5 billion barrels.

A NEWLETTER
THE HILL
An article from The Hill
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/pelosi-wants-bush-to-release-oil-from-strategic-reserve-2008-07-08.html
////o\\\\o////o\\\\ .

Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 06:00 PM

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REPORTING FROM DUBAI: HEARING/SEEING THE VOICES WE RARELY HEAR
08 Jul
WAR GAMES OFF THE COAST OF IRAN;
ECONOMIC GAMES HERE AT HOME

IRAN IN THE SNIPER SCOPE
FED CLOSES BARN DOOR AFTER HORSES GONE
POLEMICIZING

Left Dubai 1 2 AM. Arrived New York at 7:30. A day seems to have disappeared. I was at the Documentary Voices event with a number of impressive Iranian filmmakers but had a sense of dread about what future may be facing if There is a war against Iran.

When I left, local papers in The United Arab Emerates were reporting that their stock market in Dubai dropped because of anxieties with all the war talk. Also yesterday or whatever day it was, the UAE forgave Iraq’s 7 BILLION debt. This was followed, maybe coincidentally by Iraqi government demands that the US produce a withdrawal plan, and and new attacks by the resistance.

Ironically, when I boarded the Air Train at JFK, I saw a young man with a large sign that read AIPAC. He was probably greeting visitors at the airport for the Israeli Lobby. I asked him if, in the event of war, he and the other machers at AIPAC are willing to fight or do they just want others to do it for them.

He smiled nervously and said that AIPAC wants strong sanctions. He had no response when I told him that the sanctions they want will will lead to war.

When I got home, I saw this:

The U.S. Navy said on Monday it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf, days after vowing that Iran will not be allowed to block the waterway which carries crude from the world’s largest oil-exporting region.

“The aim of Exercise Stake Net is to practice the tactics and procedures of protecting maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil installations,” Commodore Peter Hudson said in a U.S. Fifth Fleet statement.

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in remarks published late last month that Tehran would impose controls on shipping in the Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it was attacked.
Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its nuclear program has risen since a report last month said Israel had practiced such a strike.

Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, said last week the United States would not allow Iran to block the Gulf.

Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, has helped propel oil prices over $140 a barrel.

ALSO IN THE UAE: A bill to encourage press freedom

The legislative committee of the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) approved a new bill which, if passed by the parliament, will make it illegal to sentence journalists to prison. Although the new initiative would protect journalists from imprisonment, it would allow the government to fine journalists up to USD 27,000 (EUR 17,235) for what it considers a violation of the law. The new bill will become law if passed by the UAE parliament and signed by the president, Jordanian newspaper al-Ghad reported. (International Journalists Network)

ANOTHER REPORT: THE MEDIA LINE: Iran, U.S. Flex Muscles with Gulf Drills

The Media Line/Rachelle Kliger

Iran and the United States are both conducting military exercises in the Gulf area, prompting speculation that they are preparing for a military showdown.

The U.S. is carrying out drills in the Gulf, which began last week and end on Monday.

The U.S. vowed this week it would not let Iran block the strategic waterways, which are used to transport significant parts of the Gulf’s oil to the rest of the world.

The exercises include vessels from the U.S., the United Kingdom and Bahrain, operating as part of Combined Task Force (CTF) 152.

“The aim of the exercise is to protect the maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil terminals which are vital to the world’s economy and gets out through the Strait of Hurmuz,“ Lt. Nathan Christensen, spokesman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain told The Media Line.

The Fifth Fleet said the current exercise was planned a long time in advance and like many other exercises, aims to maintain coalition proficiency.

Analysts say this heightened military activity in the Gulf area could be the precursor to a military standoff between the U.S. and Iran.

BIG BEN TO THE RESCUE

Once back in the saddle. The economic crisis appeared to be dominating the news.

First, a report that the Federal Reserve Bank has finally decided to protect homeowners—only after 3 and a ½ million families faced foreclosures. Swift work, guys:

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve will issue new rules next week aimed at protecting future homebuyers from dubious lending practices, its most sweeping response to a housing crisis that has propelled foreclosures to record highs.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke of the much-awaited rules in a broader speech Tuesday about the challenges confronting policymakers in trying to stabilize a shaky U.S. financial system. To that end, Bernanke said the Fed may give squeezed Wall Street firms more time to tap the central bank’s emergency loan program./blockquote>

OTHER NEWS OF THE DECLINE

FT: G8 leaders play down hopes over oil price

Members of the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations on Monday night sought to damp down expectations that they could rescue the global economy from the impact of high oil prices.

CNN: Stocks slipped Monday, with the S&P 500 ending just a hair above the bear market levels that the Nasdaq and Dow industrials already sit in, as investors abandoned a late-day recovery attempt amid more financial market woes.

RGA: The world may realize that it’s no longer reasonable for dollar to be the anchor currency. If Fed refrains from hiking rates and several dollar-pegged currencies are revalued, we could see some panic selling in USD (BMO)

THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN 1929 AND 2008 ARE TERRIFYING

KUNSTLER: A DESPERATE REALITY IS OVERTAKING THE NATION
“As the black hole of derivatives sucks away these “new clothes,” America will stand naked against the elements of fate.”

THE SUBPRIME TRUMP CARD–STANDING UP TO THE BANKS

THE CREDIT CRISIS IS GOING TO GET WORSE

Fannie Mae needs to raise an extra $46 billion in capital and Freddie Mac $29 billion?

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae Plunge

MEANWHILE, IRAN IS STILL BUYING US GOODS

IS NEO-LIBERALISM DEAD?

NAKED CAPITALISM: Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz tells us that neo-liberalism, witch is a catch phrase for policies that favor domestic deregulation and dismantling trade barriers internationally, has failed.

The problem that Stiglitz fails to acknowledge is that despite the questionable record of these practices, they still hold considerable sway in the media and in the popular imagination. Twenty-five years of repetition have created an almost Pavlovian reflex that equates “free markets” with “good” Willem Buiter might call it “cognitive capture.” I think of it as closer to brainwashing. And the romantic appeal of the neo-liberal model has impeded moving beyond it.

The evidence, at least in the US, is despite growing public anger about regulatory lapses and policies that favored the top echelon at the expense of everyone else, is that politicians still seem loath to impose more regulation even in the area where lapses have been considerable. There is still too much respect for the palaver of “not impeding financial innovation.” In an environment of shrinking capital bases at banks and brokerage firms, increasing interest rates (certainly on the long end) and high volatility, there will be just about nada appetite for fancy financial footwork. This is the perfect environment to road test some new rules and hire experienced people as Wall Street hemmorrhages employees, provided changes are in a thoughtful, integrated fashion and include mechanisms to allow for tweaking and adaptation as regulators gain courage and experience.

PAKISTAN DAILY: FEAR A US –ISRAEL KIDNAP PLOT

Israeli and American Operation To Kidnap Nuclear Scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in Pakistan

The credit for two best known cases of smuggling a nuclear scientist out from another country goes to Israel’s Mossad and Pakistan’s ISI. Pakistanis understand the game that targets them today.

Dr. A. Q. Khan, Pakistan’s notorious nuclear scientist, is under threat of being kidnapped and bundled out of the country in a joint Israeli-American operation that could take the lid off Pakistan’s massive nuclear and strategic arsenal.

Pakistani security officials went on red alert in the last week of June 2008 after receiving information that Israel’s Mossad, possibly in a joint operation with some elements from CIA, is planning to kidnap Dr. Khan, who lives in a house in an Islamabad suburb, and take him out of the country. The officials are tightlipped about the source of the information.

THE MEMORYHOLE.ORG IS BACK

The Memory Hole 2.0 Is Here

By Russ Kick at 1 July, 2008, 3:43 am

After an extended hiatus, The Memory Hole is back and ready to post more documents, usually of a sensitive, governmental type nature.

To jog your memory - it has been a while - the site is best known for obtaining and releasing 288 photos of flag-covered coffins containing the remains of troops from Iraq, digitally uncensoring a Justice Dept report, and obtaining and posting the uncut 5-minute footage of George W. Bush doing nothing as the 9/11 attacks raged (this video had already been downloaded well over 200,000 times by the time Michael Moore used it in Farenheit 9/11 exactly one year later).

There’s been a lot of other nifty material here: all 21 CDs of the FDNY’s dispatch tapes from 9/11, the ultra-rare Kerry hearings into narco-corruption, a massive guide to unseen NSA publications, the National Archives’ investigation into the missing papers of Chief Justice John Roberts, US Army Chemical Corps reports, the previously unreleased reports from the Future of Iraq Project, photos of the Iranian hostage crisis that had never been seen outside of Iran (which were then prominently used, with credit, by Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden in Guests of the Ayatollah), 19 politically inconvenient reports that were yanked from the Civil Rights Commisssion’s website … well, there’s a whole lot more.

CHINESE TORTURE TACTICS USED AT GITMO

U.S. Seeks Data Exchange

The United States is negotiating deals with European countries to exchange fingerprint and DNA data in criminal and terrorist cases, and in some circumstances to transfer data on race or ethnic origin, political and religious beliefs, or sexual orientation.
(By Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post)

LETTER FROM DA’UD X MOHAMMED

Russia ‘backed Litvinenko murder’
BBC News

“The murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was carried out with the backing of the Russian state, Whitehall sources have told the BBC.”

So what about Anna Politkovskaya, shot to death in her apartment building? Was that too a death that linked-to the Russian government - as somehow “officially” sanctioned? If the Litvinenko allegations are true, odds lean toward, yeah, they (the Cheka) did it.

Which reminds me, how did Gary Webb manage to commit suicide by shooting two bullets into the back of his head? Never mind. “

Still on the move. Off to Washington for a press conference. Just wanted to share some news of note. That’s what I don’t get paid to do. Smile.

Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Daily Dissections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. http://www.newsdissector.com/blog/2008/07/08/war-games-off-the-coast-of-iran-economic-games-here-at-home/
. .

Saundra Hummer

July 8th, 2008, 06:20 PM

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codepinknyc.org
July 8, 2008

Dear Saundra R.,

Come join CODEPINK NYC and other local peace groups in some fun and creative actions this month!

Event by Land:FREEZE IN GRAND CENTRAL
Thursday, July 10th 5:00-5:35 p.m.
Lexington & 42nd Street
Join CODEPINK NYC and several other organizations in saying "No Attack on Iran!" by participating in a "freeze" or silent protest in Grand Central Station. After meeting at 5:00 PM on Lexington & 42nd Street, we will enter the terminal wearing provided signs reading "No Attack on Iran!" or "Peace with Iran" and "We will not be silent" t-shirts available by donation, and spread out, acting normally. At precisely 5:30 PM everyone will stop for five minutes exactly where they are and freeze what they were doing. This is not an illegal action and will only be 5 minutes, but we will make an impact!

Email wcwfreeze@gmail.com to RSVP or with questions.

Event by Sea: "COST OF WAR" PANEL AND PEACE BUILDING CONCERT ON THE PEACE BOAT
Sunday, July 13th, 3-7:30 PMPier 92 in the NYC Passenger Ship Terminal, at 12th Ave & W 55th St.
Come on board the Peace Boat with CODEPINK NYC, UFPJ, Iraq Veterans Against the War, International Women's Tribune Centre, and 15 other organizations for the "Cost of War" panel followed by the 4th Annual People Building Peace Concert: Social Justice from Local to Global!

Peace Boat is a Japan-based international, non-governmental, non-profit organization that promotes peace and various social, economic, and environmental justice issues through the organization of global educational voyages.

Doors will open at 3 PM. From 3:30- 4:45, the expert panel will discuss issues of militarization, disarmament and the economic and human cost of war, followed by music from around the world from 5 -7:30 PM! Join us for an evening of global music and dance, activist speeches, booths and more!

You MUST RSVP by THURSDAY JULY 10 to attend this event.
To RSVP please send an email to event@peaceboat-us.org with your
FULL NAME, DATE OF BIRTH and ID NUMBER from a valid photo ID. Don'tforget to bring your ID on July 13, you'll need it to get on board!

Coming in August: WEAPONS OR WINDMILLS?
Coming Together to Convert the Permanent War Economy
Tuesday, August 5th, 6:30 PM
All Souls Church, 1157 Lexington Avenue (at 80th Street)
A presentation by Mary Beth Sullivan, Outreach Coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space about the need for anti-war, labor, social justice, religious and environmental groups to come together to challenge militarism.

Next meeting: Join us at our next organizing meeting Thursday, July 10th at 6 p.m. at the WEDO offices- Lexington between 40th & 41st. Email codepinknyc@gmail.com by July 9th to RSVP.

In peace,
Amy, Dana, Nancy, Sasha and the CODEPINK NYC team

July 10th: 5:30 PM Freeze in Grand Central
6 PM CODEPINK NYC meeting

July 13th: 3:30 PM Peace Boat

SAVE THE DATE
August 5th: 6:30 PM Weapons or Windmills?
CODEPINK NY visits DC
2008 11:30:40 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
From: codepinknyc@gmail.com
Reply To: codepink@mail.democracyinaction.org
.

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 11:47 AM

.
. . . . . . . FACTCHECK.ORG

ANNENBERG POLITICAL FACT CHECK
http://www.FactCheck.org
A False Accusation About Energy
July 9, 2008
An RNC ad claims Obama has "no new solutions" to the energy problem, when he actually proposes $150 billion worth.

Summary
A new ad from the Republican National Committee claims Barack Obama proposes "no new solutions" for the energy and climate crises. In fact, the Illinois senator has proposed $150 billion in spending over 10 years for biofuels, plug-in hybrids, low-emission coal plants and the rapid commercialization of other new, clean energy technologies. The ad also recycles the misleading claim that Obama has said "no" to nuclear. Obama said he is open to nuclear if it is clean and safe.

And while the ad correctly says that Obama is against lifting the gas tax and against more production "here at home" (read: lifting the federal ban on more offshore oil drilling), neither of those steps is likely to be a "solution" for the problems at hand.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:
Desktop users
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/a_false_accusation_about_energy.html
Mobile users
http://www.factcheck.org/mobile/article.php?id=652
This message was sent from FactCheck.org to %Member:Email% . It was sent from: FactCheck.org, 320 National Press Building, Washington, DC 20045
. . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 12:18 PM

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. . . . . . .
TOLD YOU SO ~YEARS AGOSRH The Permanent Occupation

By
Ghali Hassan
09 July, 2008
Countercurrents.org

The U.S government is in the process of imposing a “security agreement” on Iraq to allow U.S. occupying forces to remain in the country indefinitely. The “agreement” is a euphemism for a permanent colonial occupation of Iraq in flagrant violation of the Iraqi people’s demand and right to freedom and national independence.

In 2003, the stated justification for the U.S.-Britain illegal act of aggression against the Iraqi people was Iraq’s (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction, “democracy” and the “liberation” of the Iraqi people. But these were simply pretexts to manipulate world public opinion and justify unprovoked aggression. The real motives had much to do with the destruction of Iraq as an independent nation and control over Iraq’s oil resources.

From the outset of the illegitimate Occupation, the U.S. began to prepare for a long-term Occupation of Iraq despite the U.S. Administration claims to the contrary. Early in 2003, the New York Times reported that the U.S. is “planning long-term military relationships with Iraq”. (Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt, New York Times, April 20, 2003). Just few weeks after the illegal invasion, U.S. military bases, prisons and torture centres mushroomed throughout the country. At the same time, Iraqi schools, civil institutions and vital infrastructure are being destroyed gradually.

With the UN playing the role of an accomplice in U.S. crimes against the Iraqi people – in violation of its own Charter and independence –, the Bush Administration (the occupying power) did every thing to justify a permanent occupation. From the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and police to encourage violence and lawlessness to the deliberate bombings of civilians to incite civil strife to the fraudulent elections, the U.S. aim has always been to destroy the Iraqi society and justify a permanent colonial Occupation of Iraq. Iraqi professionals, including scientists, doctors, academic, teachers and prominent politicians were terrorised and thousands were murdered in cold blood by the occupying forces and their collaborators.

As the colonial Occupation continue – from Washington and the Occupation headquarter (the “Green Zone”) in Baghdad – behind a façade of expatriate Iraqi collaborators (dubbed by Western media as the “Iraqi government”), the U.S. is secretly coercing and bribing the stooges to sign an “agreement” to legitimise the Occupation before the UN fraudulent order of legitimacy expired by next December. The so-called “negotiations” were first leaked to the Iraqi media and later by the British Independent newspaper.

The Independent (June 06, 2008) reported that the U.S. “is holding hostage some $50 billion of Iraq’s money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an “agreement” to prolong the U.S. occupation indefinitely”. The freeze on financial Iraqi assets is part of the genocidal sanctions which is still partially in place. The U.S. is using Iraq’s tens of billions of dollars in seized Iraqi assets as a bullying tactic to push through its demands. The Bush administration is also refusing to support lift Iraq’s UN designation as a threat to international security. Western media report Iraqi officials will ask the UN Security Council today to expend its protection of Iraq against compensation claims.

According to a National Security Archive Briefing, if the “agreement” is signed, it will make Iraq not just an occupied country but an illegally annexed territory. The Briefing reveals that the U.S. military will have no less than fifty military bases throughout Iraq. Initially the U.S. demanded control of more than 200 military bases. In addition, U.S. forces would also be able to continue to murder and carry out arrests of Iraqi citizens, and conduct military raids without consultation with the puppet government. American soldiers and mercenaries will enjoy legal immunity.

Iraqi parliamentarians say the U.S. has demanded control of at least fifty-eight military bases, as well as Iraqi airspace up to 30,000 feet. U.S. officials also demanded the right to refuel the planes while in flight, stoking fears the U.S. would use Iraq as a staging ground for an attack on Iran. In what could be seen as a threat to Iran, the lawmakers also say the U.S. has demanded rights that would effectively allow it to decide if another country is committing aggression against Iraq territory. For example, the U.S. could decide that Iran or Syria have committed aggression against U.S. forces in Iraq and therefore justify attacking them. Of course, Israel and Turkey are exempted, and would have no problem receiving U.S. approval if either decides to invade tack Iraq.

If signed, the “agreement” will be in contempt of the Iraqi people who are overwhelmingly (98 per cent) against the Occupation, and want U.S. troops and mercenaries to leave their country and end the violence. This has been demonstrated time and time again in polls and also in the result when troops do withdraw from the region. Indeed, after the withdrawal of British troops from Basra in December 2007, there has been a significant decrease in violence there.

Western media reveal that Iraqi lawmakers (in the U.S.-imposed Iraqi parliament) have released a letter showing a majority would oppose any agreement with the U.S. if it lacked a commitment for a U.S. withdrawal: ‘The majority of Iraqi representatives strongly reject any military-security, economic, commercial, agricultural, investment or political agreement with the united states that is not linked to clear mechanisms that obligate the occupying American military forces to fully withdraw from Iraq’. Nadeem Al-Jaberi, a former political science professor and a co-founder of the al-Fadhila political party, asked: "What are the threats that require U.S. forces to be there?" "I would like to inform you, there are no threats to Iraq. We are capable of solving our own problems".

Furthermore, Khalaf al-Alyan, a member of parliament from the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), told Iraqi media (Voices of Iraq): “The Iraqi-U.S. agreement contains several items that impinge upon the sovereignty of Iraq, including the right of the U.S. forces in Iraq to attack any nation and raid any Iraqi house and arrest people without prior permission from the Iraqi government”. The Bush Administration is in a hurry to sign by the end of July “to avoid any legal vacuum that may arise”.

As the opposition intensified, the Bush Administration has moved to call it “framework of operation” to avoid (Iraqi) parliamentary approval. The Bush Administration is also determined to avoid submitting the “agreement” to Congress for approval, because it is opposed by the majority of Democrats in the Senate. Unlike other agreements, the Iraq-U.S. “security agreement” designed to protect a subservient Iraqi government and would include fighting the Iraqi Resistance and holding Iraqi prisoners of wars. According to Professor Oona Hathaway of Yale Law School: ‘There is literally no question that this is unprecedented … The country has never entered into this kind of commitment without Congress being involved, period’. (Charlie Savage, Boston Globe January 25, 2008).

The only people who are happy to remain under U.S. army boots are the stooges in the puppet government because without U.S. tanks their day are numbered inside the “Green Zone”. In a recent visit to Iran, the U.S.-imposed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was in vain trying to explain to the Iranians – who are rightly concern about the increasing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq and the Gulf – that a U.S.-occupied Iraq will not be used as a staging post for attacking Iran or interfering in Iranian affairs. But al-Maliki is deliberately ignoring history and distorting facts on the ground. The primary purpose of U.S. military presence in Iraq and the region is violence and the destabilisation. Further, the U.S. is already conducting ‘covert operations’ (a.k.a. U.S.-sponsored terrorism) against Iran (Seymour Hersh, New Yorker July 07, 2008). Unaware, al-Maliki is playing the same role and game played by his predecessor Nuri al-Said under the British colonial regime.

We all know that U.S. military bases around the world are often used as staging post to attack other countries in violation of international laws and UN Charter. Yugoslavia and Iraq are just recent examples. For more than a decade, the U.S. attacked Iraq from U.S. military bases in Turkey, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia and even from U.S. bases in Germany an Italy. “American and British war planes flew from 30 bases in about a dozen countries”, reported the New York Times. Only in 2003, the elected Turkish Government, bowed to domestic pressure and rejected US request to use its territory to invade Iraq. Turkey’s decision was condemned by the Zionist elements (Paul Wolfowitz) in the Bush Administration and the Administration’s propaganda mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal.

After five years of murderous Occupation, the illegal aggression proved to be about oil and colonial control of the region and its natural resources. Western “Big Oil” Corporations are back to exploit Iraq’s oil resources. The New York Times reports that the Bush administration is directly involved in deals between the puppet government and U.S. oil corporations to privatise Iraq’s oil. Major Western oil companies – Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, Chevron and BP – are in the final stage of negotiations on no-bid contracts that will see them take control of Iraq’s oil, 36 years after they were thrown-out to by the late president Saddam Hussein nationalisation of Iraq’s oil (Andrew Kramer, New York Times June 19, 2008). Iraqi media reveals that Oil Corporations are refusing to offer ‘consultancy’ based on fees – proposed by the Iraqi officials – and wanted ‘a share of Iraq’s oil’. Meanwhile, the Iraqi people are left wondering at history repeating itself.

After five years of murderous Occupation, the Bush regime has caused the deaths of more than 1.3 million of innocent Iraqi civilians, mostly women and children, and maimed millions more. Iraqi civilians are being killed every day by U.S. forces and their collaborators. The Bush regime’s practice of torture, including rape is the most abhorrent of sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses. Since the illegal invasion, U.S. forces carried out unlawful and wanton destruction to vital Iraqi civilian properties, including the destruction of entire cities and towns. Iraq’s civilian infrastructure and services, including health care services and the education system have been destroyed. At least 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced, according to UNHCR estimates. Of these, more than 2.6 million Iraqis are displaced internally displaced persons (IDPs), while more than 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries. As a result of the illegitimate Occupation, an entire generation of Iraqi children have been terrorised and destroyed. According to UNICEF, more than 800,000 Iraqi children are unable to go to school and only 40 per cent can access safe drinking water. Child malnutrition in Iraq has increased from 19 percent in 2003 to 28 percent in 2007.

Every Iraqi family has experienced the terrifying experience of a raid and terror, said journalist and author Laila al-Arian. In Nazis-like violence, U.S. troops often “storm into a house, they turn the entire house upside-down, making it look like a hurricane hit it. They usually separate the men from the women and children. Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, they actually arrest the men. They zip cuff them, and they take them to a detention facility or a prison, which leaves the family looking for them for days”, added al-Arian. Like Nazi war criminals, George Bush and his criminal gang should be charged with murder, terrorism and crimes against humanity.

Arab leaders should wake up to their impotent policies and start supporting the legitimate Iraqi National Resistance against the Occupation in the same way the U.S. and Europe supporting and funding Israel‘s terror and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. There is no noble cause better than supporting your fellow Muslims legitimate fight against foreign occupation and oppression. History has shown that the U.S. is anti-Arabs/anti-Muslims imperialist-Zionist power. Arabs should not let themselves be deceived by U.S. propaganda that Iraq would fall under Iranian domination if U.S. troops are withdrawn. The U.S. and Israel pose the greatest threat to Iraq and the region in general.

Finally, the real motives for the 2003 U.S.-Britain illegal act of aggression against the Iraqi people had more to do with the permanent colonisation of Iraq. Iraq’s security is embedded in its independence and nationhood. The ongoing murderous Occupation of Iraq is against the development and wellbeing of the Iraqi people. Only a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will ensure Iraq’s security and national independence.

Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan090708.htm . . . . . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 12:39 PM

.
~~~~~The Goodbye Republic
By
Rand Clifford
09 July, 2008
Countercurrents.org
Imagine mainstream media reliably telling Americans the truth about the most vital issues of our time. Indeed, that’s quite a stretch—but try forgetting for a moment the millions of Americans oblivious to rampant omission; citizens who, after so much manipulation and deceit, also still believe lies on the fresh list. Just envision a well-informed population that knows their way past omission, while knowing the difference between lies/propaganda, and the truth. Envision the New World Order dead in its tracks.

A free and independent mainstream media could be a precious ally of the people; dreadfully, we have the opposite. For instance, people who get most or all of their news from television know little or nothing about what is really happening in the world at large. Television news would certainly never mention the country having been reduced to what Gore Vidal calls "...a framework for crooks to go in and steal money". Evidence is rife that, by so faithfully serving its owners, corporate mainstream media (CorpoMedia) has become a powerful enemy of the people.

If CorpoMedia were an ally of the people, would the wildly fraudulent presidential "election" of 2000 have been allowed to kick start the evisceration of our Constitution, and final destruction of the nation from within? Would 9/11, vicious false-flag horror involving psychopathology at the highest levels of our government, remain after almost seven years an official fairy tale in contempt of science and STILL not even legitimately investigated...same as the home-grown anthrax attacks? Would we have been cheerleaded into war crimes convincing the rest of the world’s people that the two greatest threats to global peace are the United States, and Israel? Day by day the list grows, bristling with clear designs on destroying the Republic....

The United States stands in the way of the elitist dream of a one world fascist government. Predatory elite and their global corporations enjoying unfettered access to the planet’s remaining resources, while vassals and slaves make up the necessary human herd of a billion or less—it’s called "friendly fascism" (http://www.oilempire.us/fascism.html). The next step is collapse of the world economy to usher in the "post-industrial" age—including a 90% reduction in human population. Lots of smoke smudging the horizon; meanwhile, CorpoMedia blackout of the elitist smolder is as pervasive as blackout of the recent Bilderberg meeting where further progress was hammered out.

Bilderberg...the most powerful people in the world assembled for the first time in 1954, under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown, along with the Rockefeller family, at the Bilderberg Hotel in the Dutch town of Oosterbeck. They discussed the future of (their) world, named themselves the Bilderberg Club...and have ever since gotten together once a year in a maximumly-secured luxury venue to plot the future, or, their New World Order (NWO).

This year’s 3-day Bilderberg meeting was in early June at Chantilly, Virginia. Barack Obama attended, as did Hillary Clinton, Ben Bernanke, Condoleezza Rice, and the usual top CEOs, banking and finance heavyweights from Europe and the Federal Reserve, NSA officials, Prime Ministers and European royalty, oil company chairmen, NATO and UN officials and others that are potent news makers on their own—but when over 125 of these global power brokers got together to further chart civilization’s course, CorpoMedia blackout was complete.

Perhaps Daniel Estulin (http://www.danielestulin.com/?
op=noticias&noticias=ver&id=318&idioma=en is a man we should thank most for what us common folk do know about the predators who are actually deciding things like sending oil to $200 a barrel and beyond to help finish off the middle class. Several years ago a Bilderberg conclusion was that Americans need to be weaned from their freedom and democracy...sound familiar? Whatever they decide is what usually happens. As far as summary goals of the New World Order....

Commanding the highest bluff in the area of Elbert County, Georgia, are blue-granite slabs called the Georgia Guidestones: (http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/stones.htm). Some call them the "American Stonehenge" for perhaps no reason other than certain visual and astronomical similarity. (Also, a Google search of "Georgia Guidestones" will bring up many other very interesting sites).

The four corner slabs are inscribed on each face with messages in eight different languages (English, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Spanish and Swahili) involving the four major themes of: 1) Governance and the establishment of one-world government 2) Population and reproduction control 3) The environment and man’s relationship to nature 4) Spirituality.

Many people aware of the NWO in some detail consider the main message of the Georgia Guidestones, roughly, the New World Order’s Ten Commandments:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

2. Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.

3. Unite humanity with a living new language.

4. Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.

5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

8. Balance personal rights with social duties.

9. Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.

10. Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.

The missing six billion people? A fairly standard NWO target.

Back to Bilderberg, and David Rockefeller specifically—also a top predator in the Trilateral Commission (http://afgen.com/trilateral.html) and the Council on Foreign Relations (http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/
Council_Foreign_Relations.htm)...from "Information Liberation" (http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=18188):

"Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure---one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

--David Rockefeller, Memoirs, page 405

Note: Yes, many of us realize you are working against the best interests of the United States, have been for a long time, and are so proud of it.

"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promise of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The super-national sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

---David Rockefeller, at a 1991 Bilderberg meeting

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."

---David Rockefeller

"But this present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for long. Already there are powerful forces at work that threaten to destroy all of our hopes and efforts to erect an enduring structure of global interdependence."

---David Rockefeller, speaking at the Business Council for the United Nations, September 14, 1994

Most of David’s unabashed statements need little or no commentary, except perhaps the summary: Super national sovereignty of world bankers and an intellectual elite riding herd over a billion or so human cattle (they often use that term) surely seems preferable to the handful at the top—ALL the worlds resources owned by a cabal of predators who lord over everyone else...that hardly sounds sustainable. Cattle often find a way to stampede, eventually.

And so gracious of David to laud CorpoMedia for betraying humanity—or at least the 90% of us who must die, and the winnowed herd to remain. Catastrophe is on the horizon and all we get from CorpoMedia are omission, lies, propaganda, and omission; they are owned by the elite, a tool of subjection and conquest that provides not the information people need, but rather, what the elite want people to believe. Our greatest enemies swirl among us in ostentatious luxury, and right now their main weapon is our "free and independent press"...or is that "liberal press"?

Rand Clifford is a writer living in Spokane, Washington, with his wife Mary Ann, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Mink. Rand's novels CASTLING, TIMING, VOICES OF VIRES, and PRIEST LAKE CATHEDRAL are published by StarChief Press: http://www.starchiefpress.com

http://www.countercurrents.org/clifford090708.htm An odd article, at least parts are.

What's fact and what is a stretch, is there anything here to be believed?

I know we have a neighbor who, at one time, was always talking New World Order this, and New World Order that, it being quite different from the PNAC, or I thought it was, and we just ignored it all, just thinking it was no more than radicalism at work with him. What is the deal with this article, anyone with any sensible explanation? Or is this how it is? SRH ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 02:50 PM

.
* * * * *Leading The News
Kennedy returns to decide Medicare vote
By
J. Taylor Rushing
Posted: 07/09/08 04:13 PM [ET]

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) returned to the Senate Wednesday to cast the decisive vote on stalled Medicare legislation, making his first appearance in the chamber since he was diagnosed two months ago with brain cancer.

The 76-year-old senator entered the Senate through the first-floor entrance. The longtime chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee underwent successful brain surgery at Duke University Medical Center on June 2 and has been undergoing cancer treatments in Massachusetts for the tumor.

Kennedy was greeted on the Senate floor by a long, sustained burst of applause from other senators and public visitors watching from the gallery.

His vote on the measure is critical; the Senate fell one vote short of the needed 60 on June 26 when considering the bill that would have prevented a scheduled 10.6 percent cut to physicians who treat Medicare patients.

Wearing a dark suit and a wide grin, Kennedy gave a grand gesture during the Medicare roll-call vote.

"Aye," he said, to laughter.

Kennedy looked fine and fit, shaking hands with a crowd of senators. His white hair was largely intact and perhaps even longer than before his absence.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/kennedy-returns-to-decide-medicare-vote-2008-07-09.html * * *
.

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 03:14 PM

Waxman: No More Rove-Like Advisers I'm all for this.
In fact how about a retro-active refund? Then putting it in a fund for honesty in government?
To inforce it would be next to impossible, but to limit the ability to put someone such as him on the payroll would be great if it the money could be stopped, but realistically I don't see how it can be.
I guess the government could always spy on those close to the office of the presidency, find out if someone like him is on the dole, as they have their finger on everyone else don't they?
SRH

:thewave

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 8:45 PM
California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is considering legislation that would eliminate Karl Rove-type advisers in the White House.

The bill under consideration could ban the use of federal funds to finance such a politically partisan position.

“Why should we be using taxpayer dollars to have a person solely in charge of politics in the White House?” Waxman said in an interview with The Hill newspaper.

Rove concentrated on President Bush’s re-election while earning a White House salary during the first Bush administration, heading the Office of Political Affairs and the Office of Public Liaison.

Lawmakers and their staffers are required to abide by stricter rules dividing government business and political activity than are senior administration officials, The Hill noted.

In Congress, chiefs of staff and other high-ranking officials are barred from using government phones, computers and facilities for political purposes.

Republican strategist Rich Galen is skeptical of the legislation Waxman is considering.

“The notion of taking politics out of governing is silly,” he said. “I understand what he’s getting at, but Rove would have had the influence he had no matter what his title and what his duties were.”

Waxman will decide in September whether to push the legislation this year or wait until next year in hopes of having a Democrat in the White House to sign the bill.

Rove resigned from the White House staff in August 2007 and was later hired as a Wall Street Journal contributor and political analyst for Fox News.

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
RSS ARCHIVE . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 03:56 PM

.
.
A NEWSLETTER
&
A PETITION

Dear MoveOn member,
Last week, we kicked off a campaign to stop FOX from launching racist and hate-filled smears against Barack and Michelle Obama.

Good news: Over 428,000 people have signed a message protesting FOX. That's unprecedented—thanks for signing! Early next week, our partners at ColorOfChange.org will hold a major event to deliver boxes and boxes of petition signatures to FOX's headquarters.

Other media outlets will be invited to cover this event. If we can deliver half-a-million signatures, this becomes a much more powerful media story. And when that happens, FOX's advertisers will get the hint that it's not a good idea to associate their products with FOX's hate-speech.

Can you help us get to half-a-million signatures by the time of the big delivery next week by forwarding this message to 5 friends today? They can just click here to sign:

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/foxsmears.html?rc=sn

The petition reads: "FOX must stop injecting racism, prejudice, and fear into our political dialogue. We intend to hold FOX, its advertisers, and its personalities accountable for FOX's attempts to smear the Obamas."

You can let your friends know that FOX is shameless: In the last several weeks alone, they've "confused" Obama's name with Osama's, referred to Michelle as "Obama's Baby Mama," and called an affectionate fist bump by Barack and Michelle a "terrorist fist jab."1

This morning, Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films launched a short video called "FOX Attacks: Michelle Obama" showing some of the latest FOX smears on the Obama family. You can see it on our petition page. Greenwald's previous videos documenting FOX's smears on Barack Obama and the black community have been seen millions of times on YouTube.2

If we reach half-a-million signatures, we can generate media coverage that sends a message to FOX that their racist and hate-filled smears go over the line—and put the heat on FOX advertisers as well. Can you help us reach that goal by forwarding this email to 5 friends today? They can just click here to sign the petition:
https://pol.moveon.org/donate/foxsmears.html?rc=sn

Thanks for all you do.
–Adam G., Peter, Anna, Justin, and the rest of the team

P.S. Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) has a new book out, and we thought you might be interested. The Nation called Wexler the country's "Most Valuable Congressman," and he's stood with MoveOn on numerous causes, from ending the war to stopping warrantless wiretapping in FISA. Now he's written Fire Breathing Liberal, a fascinating account of life as an outspoken progressive in the House of Representatives. Says comedian Stephen Colbert, "I enjoyed Congressman Wexler's book even more than I enjoy cocaine and prostitutes." You can check it out here:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3906&id=13182-4054703-ryh55bx&t=1

You can also sign up for Wexler's email list here:
http://www.wexlerforcongress.com/join.asp

Sources:

1. "Fox News Jokes About Killing Obama," YouTube video posted May 25, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjYpkvcmog0

"Fox News' E.D. Hill teased discussion of Obama dap: "A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab?" Media Matters, June 6, 2008
http://mediamatters.org/items/200806060007?f=h_clips

"Fox News in trouble again over Obama smear: 'baby mama,'" Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3855&id=13182-4054703-ryh55bx&t=2
2. "Fox Attacks: Obama," Brave New Films at FoxAttacks.com, February 2007
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/573-fox-attacks-obama

"Fox Attacks: Black America," Brave New Films at FoxAttacks.com, June 2007
http://foxattacks.com/blog/572-fox-attacks-black-america

"Fox Attacks: Obama, Part 2," Brave New Films at FoxAttacks.com, March 2008
http://foxattacks.com/blog/32376-fox-attacks-obama-part-2

Want to support our work? We're entirely funded by our 3.2 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

than 428,000 people signed a petition telling FOX to stop their racist and hate-filled smears against Barack Obama—thanks for signing! If we hit half-a-million signatures, we can draw media attention and put pressure on FOX's advertisers.

Can you help us reach half-a-million by forwarding this email to 5 friends today? They can sign the petition—and watch a new video about FOX's smears—by clicking here:

Sign the petition
(Go on-site to sign and go on-site to see Bill O'Reilly's Video)https://pol.moveon.org/donate/foxsmears.html?rc=sn
.

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 07:40 PM

.
lllllllllllllllIf It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It!
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
09/07/08 "ICH" -- -- On July 7th, U.S. navy announced that it would carry out exercises in the Persian Gulf. Commodore Peter Hudson claimed that these exercises were being carried out to protect “maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil installations”. As the expression goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. If in the 1980s the United States managed to fool the world into believing that it was protecting the crude oil passage with its naval build up in the Persian Gulf, 20 or so years later it can use the same argument and no one will be the wiser for it. After all, most people think that “relying on foreign oil” is a sin and any act, even ensuring the flow of ‘foreign oil’ justifies provocative U.S. action.

But before we send our boys to protect our interests in someone else’s back yard, lets examine what happened in the 80s that makes these brave men report for duty so readily, and confident in their success.

It has always been the U.S. position that it should be the only country allowed to dominate the region, notwithstanding Israel of course. When the war between Iran and Iraq broke out (1980-88), it gave Regan the perfect pretext to send the navy to ‘protect the passage of oil’. Later however, a Congressional report found that during 1981-1987, the U.S. naval buildup had made shipping more dangerous[i]. The aggressive naval buildup in the Persian Gulf was to provoke Iran into war in order to secure alliances in the region. It was no accident that in 1987, the U.S. fired on a UAE fishing boat thinking it was Iranian[ii].

Furthermore, while the U.S. has often declared that the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner and the killing of all 290 passengers by the Vicennes was an accident, the commander of another U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf has said that while "the conduct of Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident was pointedly non-threatening," the actions of the Vicennes "appeared to be consistently aggressive”. The Vicennes inclination to kill ruthlessly earned it the nickname “Robo Cruiser”[iii]

At the cost of innocent lives, prompting the continuation of the Iran-Iraq war which many blame solely on Khomeini-- thanks to Washington, the U.S. reached its main objective. The tensions caused the Arab states to turn to the United States for security and protection in return for which, the U.S. built bases for expanding its empire and was paid for it. On a per capita basis, the Persian Gulf states are the biggest spenders of “protection money’. Bahrain pays a total of $53.4 million, Kuwait 252.9 million, Qatar 81.3, and United Arab Emirates $217.4 million[iv].

Mr. Bush is following in Reagan’s footsteps. With Israeli military maneuvers threatening war and provoking Iran without any protest from the international community, Mr. Bush has ordered a naval buildup in the Persian Gulf for ‘protecting’ the safe flow of oil. No doubt, the U.S. navy will be hard at work provoking Iran and the tension caused will enable the U.S. to demand more ‘protection money’ from the Arab states; even though they have been amply armed by the biggest arm-dealer in the world – the United States. Should Iran fail to respond to America’s provocations, no doubt a false flag operation will be substituted.

The navy is off to protect the $140 per barrel of oil which before the Iraq invasion was under $30/barrel. If history is any indication, the naval buildup, Israel’s bellicose and expansionist policies, the Iraq war, and Mr. Bush’s personal history of repeated failures, all implications are that America is headed for disaster, taking with it all those who ‘are with us’, and destroying all those ‘who are with them’.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an Iranian-American studying at the University of Southern California. Her research focus is U.S. foreign policy and the influence of lobby groups. She is a peace activist, essayist, and public speaker.

NOTES
[i] War in the Persian Gulf: The U.S. Takes Sides, staff report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 1987.

[ii] Ronald O'Rourke, "The Tanker War" (1988)

[iii]Stephen Shalom “The United States and the Iran-Iraq War: 1990”

[iv] Chalmers Johnson ‘Commission on Review of Overseas Military Facility Structure, Report p.Mp’
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

July 9th, 2008, 07:47 PM

.. . . . . . .
Sistani Opposes Iraq-US Security Deal
By Press TV
09/07/08 "Press TV" -- - Iraq's most senior cleric voices opposition to a proposed security deal with the US, saying such a deal would threaten Iraq's sovereignty.

In a meeting with Iraqi national security adviser Muwaffaq Al-Rubaie on Tuesday, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani expressed his concerns over the security deal by calling it an excuse that will justify the presence of US forces in Iraq.

Ayatollah Sistani had earlier noted that any long-term pact with the US should observe four key terms: safeguarding Iraqis' interests, national sovereignty, national consensus, and parliament approval.

On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggested a timetable for the departure of US forces from Iraq.

However, Washington played down calls for a firm withdrawal deadline, saying any pullout will be based on the conditions on the ground.

"We're looking at conditions, not calendars here," State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said on Tuesday.

Baghdad and Washington are negotiating a treaty that would allow the American troops to stay in Iraq after their mandate under the UN expires in December 2008.

The controversial security deal has faced fierce opposition from Iraqi religious and political figures who believe the deal would turn the country into a US colony.
Go on-site to gain access to comments and to leave your own:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20254.htm . . . . .
.

Saundra Hummer

July 11th, 2008, 06:40 PM

.~~~~~~~ " The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own"

Aldous Huxley
English novelist & critic
1894-1963~~~
"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity"

George Bernard Shaw
~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

July 11th, 2008, 07:19 PM

.
$.$.$.$.$.

A Work Force Betrayed
Watching Greed Murder the Economy

By
Paul Craig Roberts

09/07/08 "ICH" -- - The collapse of world socialism, the rise of the high speed Internet, a bought-and-paid-for US government, and a million dollar cap on executive pay that is not performance related are permitting greedy and disloyal corporate executives, Wall Street, and large retailers to dismantle the ladders of upward mobility that made America an “opportunity society.” In the 21st century the US economy has been able to create net new jobs only in nontradable domestic services, such as waitresses, bartenders, government workers, hospital orderlies, and retail clerks. (Nontradable services are “hands on” services that cannot be sold as exports, such as haircuts, waiting a table, fixing a drink.)

Corporations can boost their bottom lines, shareholder returns, and executive performance bonuses by arbitraging labor across national boundaries. High value- added jobs in manufacturing and in tradable services can be relocated from developed countries to developing countries where wages and salaries are much lower. In the United States, the high value-added jobs that remain are increasingly filled by lower paid foreigners brought in on work visas.

When manufacturing jobs began leaving the US, no-think economists gave their assurances that this was a good thing. Grimy jobs that required little education would be replaced with new high tech service jobs requiring university degrees. The American work force would be elevated. The US would do the innovating, design, engineering, financing and marketing, and poor countries such as China would manufacture the goods that Americans invented. High-tech services were touted as the new source of value-added that would keep the American economy preeminent in the world.

The assurances that economists gave made no sense. If it pays corporations to ship out high value-added manufacturing jobs, it pays them to ship out high value-added service jobs. And that is exactly what US corporations have done.

Automobile magazine (August 2008) reports that last March Chrysler closed its Pacifica Advance Product Design Center in Southern California. Pacifica’s demise followed closings and downsizings of Southern California design studios by Italdesign, ASC, Porsche, Nissan, and Volvo. Only three of GM’s eleven design studios remain in the US.

According to Eric Noble, president of The Car Lab, an automotive consultancy, “Advanced studios want to be where the new frontier is. So in China, studios are popping up like rabbits.”

The idea is nonsensical that the US can remain the font of research, innovation, design, and engineering while the country ceases to make things. Research and product development invariably follow manufacturing. Now even business schools that were cheerleaders for offshoring of US jobs are beginning to wise up. In a recent report, “Next Generation Offshoring: The Globalization of Innovation,” Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business finds that product development is moving to China to support the manufacturing operations that have located there.

The study, reported in Manufacturing & Technology News, acknowledges that “labor arbitrage strategies continue to be key drivers of offshoring,” a conclusion that I reached a number of years ago. Moreover, the study concludes, jobs offshoring is no longer mainly associated with locating IT services and call centers in low wage countries. Jobs offshoring has reached maturity, “and now the growth is centered around product and process innovation.”

According to the Fuqua School of Business report, in just one year, from 2005 to 2006, offshoring of product development jobs increased from an already significant base by 40 to 50 percent. Over the next one and one-half to three years, “growth in offshoring of product development projects is forecast to increase by 65 percent for R&D and by more than 80 percent for engineering services and product design-projects.”

More than half of US companies are now engaged in jobs offshoring, and the practice is no longer confined to large corporations. Small companies have discovered that “offshoring of innovation projects can significantly leverage limited investment dollars.”

It turns out that product development, which was to be America’s replacement for manufacturing jobs, is the second largest business function that is offshored.

According to the report, the offshoring of finance, accounting, and human resource jobs is increasing at a 35 percent annual rate. The study observes that “the high growth rates for the offshoring of core functions of value creation is a remarkable development.”

In brief, the United States is losing its economy. However, a business school cannot go so far as to admit that, because its financing is dependent on outside sources that engage in offshoring. Instead, the study claims, absurdly, that the massive movement of jobs abroad that the study reports are causing no job loss in the US: “Contrary to various claims, fears about loss of high-skill jobs in engineering and science are unfounded.” The study then contradicts this claim by reporting that as more scientists and engineers are hired abroad, “fewer jobs are being eliminated onshore.” Since 2005, the study reports, there has been a 48 percent drop in the onshore jobs losses caused by offshore projects.

One wonders at the competence of the Fuqua School of Business. If a 40-50 percent increase in offshored product development jobs, a 65 percent increase in offshored R&D jobs, and a more than 80 percent increase in offshored engineering services and product design-projects jobs do not constitute US job loss, what does?

Academia’s lack of independent financing means that its researchers can only tell the facts by denying them.

The study adds more cover for corporate America’s rear end by repeating the false assertion that US firms are moving jobs offshore because of a shortage of scientists and engineers in America. A correct statement would be that the offshoring of science, engineering and professional service jobs is causing fewer American students to pursue these occupations, which formerly comprised broad ladders of upward mobility. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ nonfarm payroll jobs statistics show no sign of job growth in these careers. The best that can be surmised is that there are replacement jobs as people retire.

The offshoring of the US economy is destroying the dollar’s role as reserve currency, a role that is the source of American power and influence. The US trade deficit resulting from offshored US goods and services is too massive to be sustainable. Already the once all-mighty dollar has lost enormous purchasing power against oil, gold, and other currencies. In the 21st century, the American people have been placed on a path that can only end in a substantial reduction in US living standards for every American except the corporate elite, who earn tens of millions of dollars in bonuses by excluding Americans from the production of the goods and services that they consume.

What can be done? The US economy has been seriously undermined by offshoring. The damage might not be reparable. Possibly, the American market and living standards could be rescued by tariffs that offset the lower labor and compliance costs abroad.

Another alternative, suggested by Ralph Gomory, would be to tax US corporations on the basis of the percentage of their value added that occurs in the US. The greater the value added to a company’s product in America, the lower the tax rate on the profits.

These sensible suggestions will be demonized by ideological “free market” economists and opposed by the offshoring corporations, whose swollen profits allow them to hire “free market” economists as shills and to elect representatives to serve their interests.

The current recession with its layoffs will mask the continuing deterioration in employment and career outlooks for American university graduates. The highly skilled US work force is being gradually transformed into the domestic service workforce characteristic of third world economies.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20259.htm.$.$.$.$. .

Saundra Hummer

July 11th, 2008, 08:02 PM

.
:: :: ::Is There an Oil Shortage?
By Ismael Hossein-zadeh
11/07/08 "ICH" -- - The popular perception of the recently skyrocketing oil price is that there is an oil shortage in global energy markets. The perceived shortage is generally blamed on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting countries (OPEC) for “insufficient” production, or on countries like China and India for their increased demand for energy, or on both.

This perception is reinforced—indeed, largely shaped—by the Bush administration and its neoconservative handlers who are eager to deflect attention away from war and geopolitical turbulence as driving forces behind the skyrocketing energy prices.

Impressions of an oil shortage are further bolstered by Wall Street and its financial giants that are taking advantage of the insecurity created by war and geopolitical turmoil in oil markets and are making fortunes through manipulative speculation in commodity futures markets.

Perceptions of insufficient oil supply are also heightened by the recently resuscitated theory of the so-called Peak Oil, which maintains that world production of conventional oil will soon reach—if it has not already reached—a maximum, or peak, and decline thereafter, with grave socio-economic consequences.[1]

However, claims of an oil shortage are not supported by facts. Evidence shows that, in reality, there is no discrepancy between production and consumption of oil on a global level. Citing statistical evidence of parity between production and consumption of oil, OPEC President Chakib Khelil recently emphasized that there was no shortage of oil: "As far as fundamentals are concerned I think we have equilibrium between supply and demand. . . . In fact right now we have more supply than demand."[2]

Facts of abundant oil supplies in global markets are now also being acknowledged and reported by mainstream media. For example, Ed Wallace of Business Week recently reported that “that worldwide production of oil has risen 2.5% in the first quarter, while worldwide demand has grown by only 2%. Production is expected to increase by 3.3% in the second quarter, and by as much as 4.1% by the third quarter. The net result is that the U.S. daily buffer for oil production against demand, which was a paltry 1.5 million barrels as recently as 2005, is now up to 3 million barrels in excess capacity today.”

Wallace then asks, “So what is going on here? Why would our Energy Secretary say there's a supply and demand problem when none exists? Why would he say that speculators have little or nothing to do with the incredibly high price of oil and gasoline, when it's clear they do? President Bush—a former oilman—gives the ever-growing demand for gasoline as the primary reason prices are so high, yet that notion can be dispelled with one minute of research.”[3]

So, if indeed there is no imbalance between production and consumption of oil in global markets, how do we then explain the skyrocketing oil prices?

The answer, in a nutshell, is: war and geopolitical instability in oil markets. Contrary to the claims of the champions of war and militarism, of the Wall Street speculators in energy markets, and of the proponents of Peak Oil, the current oil price shocks are caused largely by the destabilizing wars and political turbulences in the Middle East. These include not only the raging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the danger of a looming war against Iran that would threaten the flow of oil out of Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz.

Close scrutiny of the soaring oil prices shows that anytime there is a renewed U.S. or Israeli military threat against Iran, fuel prices move up several notches. For example, Agence France-Press (AFP) recently reported, “Crude oil prices went on a record-setting surge Friday as fears of a new Middle East conflict were fanned by comments from a top Israeli official about Iran. New York's main oil futures contract…leapt 10.75 dollars a barrel—its biggest one-day jump ever.”[4]

War and political chaos in the Middle East tend to increase energy prices in a number of ways. For one thing, as war plunges the U.S. deep into debt, it depreciates the dollar—thereby appreciating, or inflating, the price of dollar-denominated commodities, especially oil.

Depreciated dollar tends to raise the price of oil (and other commodities) in two major ways. First, since oil is priced in U.S. dollars, oil exporting countries would demand more of the cheaper dollars for the same barrel of oil in order to maintain the purchasing power of their oil. Second, when the dollar falls, oil prices rise because investors are more likely to use their money to buy tangible assets or commodities such as oil and gold that won't lose value.

According to a number of energy experts, between 30- and 40-percent of the recent increases in the price of oil can be attributed to dollar depreciation. One of the simplest ways to calculate this is to compare the price per barrel of oil in dollars and euros over the last five years. “The widening gap between the two [dollar price vs. euro price] indicates that 35 percent of the increase in the price of oil could be attributed to currency [dollar] devaluation.”[5]

Stronger than the impact of dollar depreciation on the price of oil has been the impact of manipulative speculation: war and political instability have served as breeding grounds for hoarding and speculation in energy futures markets. According to F. William Engdahl, a top expert on energy and financial markets, “As much as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. It has nothing to do with the convenient myths of Peak Oil. It has to do with control of oil and its price. . . . Since the advent of oil futures trading and the two major London and New York oil futures contracts, control of oil prices has left OPEC and gone to Wall Street. It is a classic case of the tail that wags the dog.”[6]

U.S. Representative Bart T. Stupak, Democrat – Michigan, chairman of the subcommittee investigating commodity market speculation, attributes even a higher percentage of the oil price hike to market manipulation: “Speculations now account for about 70% of all benchmark crude trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up from 37% in 200.”

Wall Street financial giants that created the Third World debt crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the tech bubble in the 1990s, and the housing bubble in the 2000s are now hard at work creating the oil bubble. By purchasing large numbers of futures contracts, and thereby pushing up futures prices to even higher levels than current prices, speculators have provided a financial incentive for giant futures traders to buy even more oil and place it in storage.

Unrestrained by an appalling lack of regulation, this has led to a steady rise in crude oil inventories over the last two years, “resulting in US crude oil inventories that are now higher than at any time in the previous eight years. The large influx of speculative investment into oil futures has led to a situation where we have both high supplies of crude oil and high crude oil prices. . . . In fact, during this period global supplies have exceeded demand, according to the US Department of Energy.”[7]

The fact that the skyrocketing oil prices of late have been accompanied by a surplus in global oil markets was also brought to the attention of President George W. Bush by Saudi officials when he asked them during a recent trip to the kingdom to increase production in order to stem the rising prices. Saudi officials reminded the President that “there is plenty of oil on the market. Iran has put some 30 million barrels of oil that it can't sell into floating storage. ‘If we produced more oil, it wouldn't find buyers,’ says the Saudi source. It wouldn't affect the price at all."[8]

And why producing more oil “wouldn’t affect the price at all”? Well, because what is driving the soaring oil prices is not shortage but speculation: “with so much investment money sloshing around in the commodities markets, the Saudis calculate they have no hope of controlling short-term price fluctuations. They blame the recent price run-ups on speculation and fear of shortages [not real shortages], factors they say are beyond their control.”[9]

To sum up, manipulative speculation and dollar depreciation account for most of the recent increases in the price of oil—speculation accounts for nearly 60 percent, dollar depreciation for almost 40 percent. This is no longer a secret. What remains largely a secret, and needs to be exposed, however, is the relationship between speculation and dollar depreciation, on the one hand, and war and geopolitical instability, on the other.

While it is important to point out the impacts of dollar depreciation and commodity speculation on the price of oil, it is even more important to show that both of these factors are byproducts of war and militarism. Not only has the war played a critical role in the weakening of the dollar (through plunging the U.S. deep into debt), it has also created favorable grounds for manipulative speculation in commodity markets, especially energy markets.

Therefore, while efforts to curb speculation in energy markets (through regulation of the largely unregulated futures markets) or buttress the dollar from further declining may sound comforting, such efforts will remain illusive and ineffectual unless the devastating wars and military adventures in the oil-rich Middle East are terminated; that is, unless the root causes of currency depreciation and commodity speculation are exposed and cut out.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh, author of the recently published The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), teaches economics at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.
References
[1] Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling, “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management,” Testimony on Peak Oil before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Industry (7 December 2005), http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf
[2] “No oil shortage in markets,” Reuters (24 June 2008),
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/No-oil-shortage-in-markets-OPEC-chief/326935/
[3] Ed Wallace, “There Is No Gas Shortage,” Business Week (1 April 2008), http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/apr2008/bw2008041_945564.htm
[4] “Oil Surges to New Heights after Israeli Warning on Iran,” Agence France-Press (6 June 2008), http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hkLCJIKdipOHqJ8bwdjN1JUZSFtA
[5] “Record oil prices tied to dollar depreciation,” GeoTimes.org (15 April 2008), http://www.geotimes.org/apr08/article.html?id=WebExtra041508_2.html
[6] F. William Engdahl, “Perhaps 60% of Today’s Oil Price Is Pure Speculation,” financialsense.com (2 May 2008), http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2008/0502.html
[7] Ibid.
[8] Stanley Reed, “Help from the House of Saud: Why the leading oil producer wants to cool off the market,” Business Week (29 May 2008), http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/08_23/b4087030945015.htm
[9] Ibid.

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Saundra Hummer

July 11th, 2008, 08:46 PM

.^^^^^^^
Rove Ignores Committee's Subpoena, Refuses to Testify
Thursday 10 July 2008
By
CNN
FRIDAY 11 JULY 2008

Former White House political adviser Karl Rove, seen here on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" in May, failed to comply with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena Thursday. Go on-site for photo.
Washington - Karl Rove, President Bush's longtime political guru, refused to obey an order to testify before a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday.

Karl Rove's lawyer says he is immune from a congressional subpoena.

Rove's lawyer asserted that Rove was "immune" from the subpoena the committee had issued, arguing that the committee could not compel him to testify due to "executive privilege."

The panel is investigating allegations that Rove and his White House allies dismissed U.S. attorneys and prosecuted officials who they saw as political opponents.

The panel subpoenaed Rove in May after his lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, made clear the former White House deputy chief of staff would not appear voluntarily.

Luskin responded immediately that Rove still would not appear, prompting a threat of prosecution from the Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, and Rep. Linda Sanchez, a California Democrat who chairs the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law.

"A refusal to appear in violation of the subpoena could subject Mr. Rove to contempt proceedings, including statutory contempt under federal law and proceedings under the inherent contempt authority of the House of Representatives," Conyers and Sanchez wrote.

"We are unaware of any proper legal basis for Mr. Rove's refusal to even appear today as required by the subpoena," Sanchez said Thursday morning when Rove failed to show up. "The courts have made clear that no one - not even the president - is immune from compulsory process. That is what the Supreme Court rules in U.S. v. Nixon and Clinton v. Jones."

In May, Conyers contrasted Rove's refusal to testify before Congress with his paid work as a commentator for the Fox News Channel and Newsweek magazine.

"Although he does not seem the least bit hesitant to discuss these very issues weekly on cable television and in the print news media, Mr. Rove and his attorney have apparently concluded that a public hearing room would not be appropriate. Unfortunately, I have no choice today but to compel his testimony on these very important matters."

Rove's lawyer cited a letter from the Justice Department saying Rove is "constitutionally immune from compelled congressional testimony." He said Rove is willing to submit to an "informal interview" or to answer written questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose ouster Rove is accused of orchestrating.

"Threatening Mr. Rove with sanctions will not in any way expedite the resolution of the issue," Luskin wrote in a letter to the panel on Wednesday.

Luskin noted in May that his client had already received a separate subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee. "While the [House] committee has the authority to issue a subpoena, it is hard to see what this will accomplish, apart from a 'Groundhog Day' replay of the same issues that are already the subject of litigation," the lawyer wrote, referring to a movie in which a person lives the same day over and over again.

Luskin added that "issues of executive privilege and separation of powers" could limit Rove's testimony.

In response, Conyers said the two committees are focusing on different matters, with the House committee delving into the prosecution of the former Alabama governor, a Democrat who lost his bid for re-election in 2002 and was convicted on corruption charges in 2006.

Conyers also noted that other former White House officials have testified under subpoena in the past and have dealt with issues of executive privilege on a case-by-case basis. "Mr. Rove should follow the same course," he said.

Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called the subpoena "a sham."

The Democratic-controlled Congress has been battling for months to force the White House to disclose information about the firing of the attorneys and the prosecution of Siegelman.

Current and former White House aides have refused to testify, citing executive privilege.

See Documents Below:
*Letter explaining why Rove refuses to testify (PDF)

*Chairwoman's ruling on privilege claims (PDF)
Comments
This is a moderated forum. It may take a little while for comments to go live.
There is a need to keep the
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 23:03 — Anonymous (not verified)
There is a need to keep the pressure on with holding Karl Rove accountable to the rule of law. Please contact the judiciary and your representative at the addresses below: http://judiciary.house.gov/Contact.aspx http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml
For all of the talk about
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 12:18 — Anonymous (not verified)
For all of the talk about morals and principles these people love to spew, it is amazing what happens when they get within a mile of being under oath. That shows the utter hypocrisy, which is unfortunately trumped by the utter spinelessness of the Democrats.
I believe it is important,
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 11:55 — Anonymous (not verified)
I believe it is important, critical in fact, to hold people in "high places" accountable for their actions. Had Nixon been properly tried and convicted for his abuses of power we might not be having the problems we are now with the "imperial presidency" of GWB. When we protect Henry Kissinger from the attempts of legitimate nations to bring him to trial we forfeit our right as a nation to prosecute war criminals from other countries. When we allow Olive North to, for all intents and purposes, walk away from his traitorous actions we say to the world that, in the US, it's okay to break the law if the President and a certain Party in Congess share your criminal agenda if not your willingness to commit a crime.
Definitely arrest Rove for
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 10:23 — Anonymous (not verified)
Definitely arrest Rove for not responding to the subpoena. And arrest his lawyer too, for aiding and abetting a criminal. Someone has to punish these people for behaving like outlaws and expecting to get away with it.
I wish it were so simple as
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 08:27 — Genklag (not verified)
I wish it were so simple as "ditto"! These people are fundamentally dishonest both to the Constitution and to the letter-of-Law. You cannot expect avowed sociopaths to play by the rules : they deem that they are above the common 'people's' law being the high priests of their own political religion! And on and on...Genklag
It will do nothing! P.Bush
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 07:01 — Anonymous (not verified)
It will do nothing! P.Bush will commute his sentence before he is out of the White House. Better yet is to Impeach Bush first, so he can't commute and forgive if he is out of power. As much as I would like to try all of his cohorts as soon as he (Bush) is gone. Otherwise they all will walk away chanting "Stick You, we are untouchable" Remove Bush first before he leaves all these thieves safe from justuice.
So now what? More of the
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 06:43 — Anonymous (not verified)
So now what? More of the same, I suppose. Karl, like so many others in this administration, are thumbing their noses at our system of government. Congress lies limp and fallow. What of it? The people are not being represented here or anywhere by this government. Karl and the Fisa bill on the same day. What a great group of people in congress.
The Congress may not control
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 06:10 — Tony Sacco (not verified)
The Congress may not control a police force, but they do point out that Mr. Rove is in violation of Federal Law and may then be held by Federal Law Enforcement. Go get him!
Are the American people so
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 04:55 — Leo Seligsohn (not verified)
Are the American people so anesthetized that once again they are going to let Karl Rove thumb his nose at them, their Constitution and the rule of law? Not this time What's happening is as clear as it is important. Rove and mouthpiece Robert Luskin are in the process of acting out the latest in the eight-year Bush administration assault on our democratic republic. They are betting that the good citizens of this country are still asleep as the United States continues its not-so-glacial slide toward fascisim. If the entire Congress doesn't rise up to make sure Rove gets slapped in jail pronto then a terrible, ineradicable precedent will have been set.The people should rise up to prevent that. Simply put: Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of their country or there will be no country left to come to the aid of.
Karl Rove by refusing to
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 02:24 — Anonymous (not verified)
Karl Rove by refusing to appear in response to to a lawful subpoena has broken the law. He must be arrested immediately and brought to justice. There is no excuse for inaction in this respect. The consequences of failure to arrest Karl Rove are dire for the future of justice and law throughout the whole nation. Think about it.
Remember Baretta? (Robert
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 01:16 — Zuma (John Farwell of OKC, OK) (not verified) Remember Baretta? (Robert Blake's old TV show) What was it he used to say? 'Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.' However that phrase went, it comes to mind. What is at issue here, the firing of those attorneys, itself subverted due our rule of law and well made the point against any illusion of law. These people are pirates. And should say so flatly, as that is the only dignity a pirate has. They ought fly the skull and bones and leave Old Glory to the people. Let us cirizens have our privacy and a transparent governance, not a naked citizenry ruled by a secret government. "The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money." -Jeb Bush
Seems to me if a person is
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 00:38 — Anonymous (not verified)
Seems to me if a person is receives a subpoena to appear before a judge or a court and refuses to obey that summons, then he must be picked up by the police and jailed so that he can appear to answer the summons. Is Karl Rove thumbing his nose at the whole US justice system? Seems to me that Hitlerism is alive and well and operating in the USA.
Yes, that's it, end of
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 00:30 — Anonymous (not verified)
Yes, that's it, end of story, go home... because Congress does not command a police force or a militia to send out into the streets to arrest Rove. All they have is a sorry Sargent at Arms who can lock him up in the Capitol basement if he ever sets foot on the premises. That's it! Congress' power is to make laws, not execute them or compel obedience. They'd be better off issuing unconditional retrospective immunity to Rove and putting themselves out of their misery once and for all. Interesting question: when Shrub refuses to hand over the keys and return to Crawford in Jan.'09, citing executive privilege, war-time "commander-in-chief" powers and his own signing statements, what's Obama gonna do?
Ditto on "throw his sorry
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 00:13 — Anonymous (not verified)
Ditto on "throw his sorry ass in jail"
Throw his sorry ass in jail
Thu, 07/10/2008 - 22:28 — Anonymous (not verified)
Throw his sorry ass in jail for not responding to the subpoena and let him prove he has the right to claim privilege. if someone is accused of a crime, they don't get to escape the trial by simply saying they don't have to appear. This whole thing is nonsense, the administration just says no and that's it?
Add a comment:
© 2008 truthout http://www.truthout.org
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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Saundra Hummer

July 11th, 2008, 10:09 PM

.
X X X X X X
Putting Her Foot Down and Getting the Boot
Opinion
By
Dana Milbank
The Washington Post
Thursday 10 July 2008
FRIDAY 11 JULY 2008
Former Arlington Public Affairs Director Gina Gray speaks out about military's attempts to block media coverage of Arlington Cemetery funerals. (Photo: Ricky Carioti / The Washington Post)
The ghost of Rummy is proving difficult to exorcise.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has tried to sweep out the symbols of his predecessor's capricious reign, firing acolytes of Donald Rumsfeld and bringing glasnost to the Pentagon.

But in one area, Rummy's Rules still pertain: the attempt to hide from public view the returning war dead.

When Gina Gray took over as the public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery about three months ago, she discovered that cemetery officials were attempting to impose new limits on media coverage of funerals of the Iraq war dead - even after the fallen warriors' families granted permission for the coverage. She said that the new restrictions were wrong and that Army regulations didn't call for such limitations.

Six weeks after The Washington Post reported her efforts to restore media coverage of funerals, Gray was demoted. Twelve days ago, the Army fired her.

"Had I not put my foot down, had I just gone along with it and not said regulations were being violated, I'm sure I'd still be there," said the jobless Gray, who, over lunch yesterday in Crystal City, recounted what she is certain is her retaliatory dismissal. "It's about doing the right thing."

Army Secretary Pete Geren, in an interview last night, said he couldn't comment on Gray's firing. But he said the overall policy at Arlington is correct. "It appears to me that we've struck the right balance, consistent with the wishes of the family," the secretary said.

Gray, in tank top, jeans, Ray-Bans over her Army cap and flip-flops revealing pink toenails, struck an unlikely figure for a whistle-blower yesterday as she provided documents detailing her ill-fated and tumultuous few months at Arlington. She worked for eight years in the Army as a public affairs specialist in Germany, Italy and Iraq, then returned to Iraq as an army contractor doing media operations. While working with the 173rd Airborne in Iraq in 2003, her convoy was ambushed and, she says, she still has some hearing loss from the explosion. The 30-year-old Arizonan was hired to work at Arlington in April.

Just 10 days on the job, she was handling media coverage for the burial of a Marine colonel who had been killed in Iraq when she noticed that Thurman Higginbotham, the cemetery's deputy superintendent, had moved the media area 50 yards away from the service, obstructing the photographs and making the service inaudible. The Washington Sketch column on April 24 noted that Gray pushed for more access to the service but was "apparently shot down by other cemetery officials."

Gates had his staff inquire with the cemetery about the article and was told that "the policy had not in any way changed," Gates's spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said yesterday. Geren, the Army secretary, added that "the policy has not changed, and I understand the practice hasn't, either."

That, however, is false. Through at least 2005 - during Rumsfeld's tenure, no less - reporters were placed in a location where they could hear the prayers and the eulogies and film the handing of the folded flag to the next of kin. The coverage of the ceremonies - in the nearly two-thirds of cases where families permitted it - provided moving reminders to a distracted nation that there was a war going on. But the access gradually eroded, and Gray arrived to discover that it was gone.

And soon, so was Gray. After Gates's inquiry into The Post column, Gray, still days into her new job, began to get some rough treatment. "Gina, when you leave the building let me know," said a one-line e-mail from her supervisor, Phyllis White, on May 2. Then Gray was instructed not to work overtime without written approval, and then was ordered to take down a Marines poster from her cubicle wall. "Please change your title from public affairs director to public affairs officer," White instructed in a June 9 e-mail.

Gray complained to Arlington's superintendent, John Metzler, and was briefly removed from White and Higginbotham's supervision. But on May 27, White sent an e-mail announcing that "Mr. Metzler changed his mind, I will continue as your supervisor." The acrimony increased. Gray went to the hospital complaining of stress-related headaches; while she was recovering, her BlackBerry was disconnected "to alleviate you from stress," as White put it.

Arlington's problems with the burial of the Iraq dead go far beyond Gray; the cemetery is looking for its fourth public affairs director in the past few years. Gray contends that Higginbotham has been calling the families of the dead to encourage them not to allow media coverage at the funerals - a charge confirmed by a high-ranking official at Arlington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Gray says Higginbotham told staff members that he called the family of the next soldier scheduled for burial at Arlington and that the family, which had originally approved coverage, had changed its mind. Gray charges that Higginbotham admitted he had been making such calls to families for a year and said that the families "appreciated him keeping the media out."

Higginbotham, White and Metzler did not respond to e-mail messages yesterday seeking their comment. An Army spokesman said Higginbotham and other Arlington officials call families only if their wishes regarding media coverage are unclear.

On June 27, Gray got her termination memo. White said Gray had "been disrespectful to me as your supervisor and failed to act in an inappropriate manner." Failed to act in an in appropriate manner? The termination notice was inadvertently revealing: Only at Arlington National Cemetery could it be considered a firing offense to act appropriately.

CommentsThis is a moderated forum. It may take a little while for comments to go live.
Obama is unlikely to change
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 12:39 — franya (not verified)
Obama is unlikely to change this. Look again at his policies - not his rhetoric!! Let's not postpone everything to "when Obama is elected" as if it were "when Santa comes".
This again points up the
Fri, 07/11/2008 - 00:10 — Anonymous (not verified)
This again points up the need to get this election over with and hopefully back to normalcy. When ineptitude and insensitivity is present at the top, it runs like sewage downhill and makes everyone it touches dirty. When Obama is elected I hope he will reinstall all whistle blowers to be supervisors in the divisions which so callously damaged their careers and psyche.
Add a comment: Go on-site to access this function by clicking the link at bottom of post.
© 2008 truthouthttp://www.truthout.org/article/military-whistleblower-highlights-new-limits-funeral-coverage
X X X X X .

Saundra Hummer

July 12th, 2008, 08:07 PM

.
^^^^^^^
A MUST READ
FOR THOSE WHO CARE
SRHFoiling A 'Lottery Of Death'
By
Andrew Kishner
11 July, 2008
CounterCurrents.org
While the mainstream media is running news articles with headlines such as 'How might Israel attack Iran' and 'Can Israel do it alone, or do they need the U.S.?', 99% of the world's citizens reading these news pieces remain oblivious to the radiation effects of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Such an attack would employ either nuclear weapons, resulting in global radiation fallout, or conventional bunker buster weaponry that would unleash harmful, radioactive uranium dust from Iran's facilities that would likewise circle the globe and endanger the lives of millions.

In either case, innocent citizens in near and far-away lands would be players in a 'lottery of death'. This is how the lottery of death will work: If a rainstorm occurs where you live, in your hometown, and the fallout clouds are, at that moment, above you in the upper atmosphere, you will get irradiated. You can be thousands of miles from Iran and it doesn't matter. The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), who have been a leading voice in educating folks on the dangers of a nuclear attack on Iran, won't tell you that radiation from an attack on Iran's facilities can end up in your village or city regardless of where you live. Most people don't know that dust particles regularly fly off the surface of deserts in China or North Africa and land in California or Florida. Or from the Nevada Test Site to towns in Utah or Missouri or New York or Quebec or London. Uranium dust will act no differently. The fallout, containing uranium dust or radioisotopes from a nuclear bomb yield, could manifest in the form of rain or snow and contaminate milk or leafy vegetables or other food products anywhere on the globe.

This frightful scenario might remind some of the 'black rain' that occurred after the bombing on Hiroshima. A heavy dark rain fell in areas to the northwest of Hiroshima after the firestorm that destroyed the bombed Japanese city nearly 63 years ago. The rain contained large amounts of radioactive soot and dust that contaminated areas far from the hypocenter.

As for the one percent of the world that is 'in the know' about the real dangers of a 21st century war, they are trying their darnedest. Perusing the blogosphere and the indy-press, one can find rare voices of reason that are attempting to foil an attack by trying to reason with humanity that war is not the answer and that attacking Iran's nuclear facilities with 'limited collateral damage' low-yield nuclear bombs would be a disaster as bad as or worse than Chernobyl.

Activists, peace groups, PSR and other anti-nuclear groups are doing what they can do. It is important that people understand that since our elected leaders aren't listening to reason then we are the ones that must act. And if we don't act, if each and every person doesn't act because they individually feel that one person can't change the world, then the world will never change. Educate yourself about the dangers of nuclear fallout, spread the word, and make your elected leaders know loud and clear that they must listen to reason in order to foil a 'lottery of death.'

Andrew Kishner is a downwinder activist and founder of www.Idealist.ws.
Go on-site to view article and to access other topical issues of the day from a different perspective than the main stream press. Just click on the following URL: http://www.countercurrents.org/kishner110708.htm ^^^^^^^^^^^ .

Saundra Hummer

July 12th, 2008, 08:30 PM

.
~~~~~~~
"We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, will be known only as Americans."

Martin Kelly
~~~
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force"

Unknown
~~~
"Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.'"

Gore Vidal
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire
~~~
"If a baseball player slides into home plate and, right before the umpire rules if he is safe or out, the player says to the umpire - 'Here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe. If a lawyer was arguing a case before a judge and said, 'Your honor before you decide on the guilt or innocence of my client, here is $1,000.' What would we call that? We would call that a bribe.

"But if an industry lobbyist walks into the office of a key legislator and hands her or him a check for $1,000, we call that a campaign contribution. We should call it a bribe."

Janice Fine
Dollars and Sense
Magazine

~~~~~
.

Saundra Hummer

July 12th, 2008, 10:33 PM

.
:: :: :: :: :: American Progress Action Fund

Don't Buy the Big, Oily Lie

Or

How the President Can Lower Oil Prices NOW

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The truth is the president can lower prices immediately by releasing some of OUR oil reserves. The American people own over 700 million barrels of oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This is OUR oil, purchased with OUR tax dollars for emergencies. We released some of this oil after Katrina because Americans were hurting. Today we are hurting again.

Call President Bush today and ask him to start selling 500,000 barrels a day for 100 days from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which would still leave the reserve 90 percent full!!

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Background Info for Your Call
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If he does, he would:

.Increase oil supply
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That's right. Selling off 500,000 barrels a day for 100 days would do all this while leaving the reserve 90 percent full. Since we paid an average of $28 a barrel for the oil in the reserve, even selling it off at less than the current outrageous price would net us billions of dollars, while LOWERING THE PRICE OF OIL AND GASOLINE for hard-working American families.

Call now!

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Thanks,
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The Center for American Progress Action Fund is the sister advocacy organization of the Center for American Progress. The Action Fund transforms progressive ideas into policy through rapid response communications, legislative action, grassroots organizing and advocacy, and partnerships with other progressive leaders throughout the country and the world. The Action Fund is also the home of the Progress Report and Think Progress, the blog that pushes back daily. http://www.americanprogressaction.org :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

johndunlapjazz

July 18th, 2008, 10:52 PM

Moderator? spam?

I came here to discuss.... not read a book.

jonesy

August 7th, 2008, 06:43 PM

Where's Saundra?

glab

August 7th, 2008, 07:14 PM

Moderator? spam?

I came here to discuss.... not read a book.

Where's Saundra?

that's what i'm wondering jonesy.

and if saundra being gone has something to do with the newbie dunlap's cry of 'spam' to the mods, there'll surely be hell to pay. don't be fooled by my sign up date - i've been reading and lurking for many years and i know what saundra means to this board, and i know what this thread means to a good number of people/posters.

jkelman

August 7th, 2008, 07:47 PM

that's what i'm wondering jonesy.

and if saundra being gone has something to do with the newbie dunlap's cry of 'spam' to the mods, there'll surely be hell to pay. don't be fooled by my sign up date - i've been reading and lurking for many years and i know what saundra means to this board, and i know what this thread means to a good number of people/posters.
Just to be clear, it has nothing to do with dunlap's cry of spam. We are frankly as concerned as everyone else about what's happening with Saundra, as we've been unable to ascertain anything ourselves.

Saundra is a valued, long-time member of this board, and this particular forum has been her little home for a long, long time. It was, in fact, created for her, so nobody is going to call "spam" and have us take it away from her.

Just want to make sure there's no misperception.

If anyone hears anything about her, please let us know...frankly, we're worried.
Best,
John

Jay Norem

August 7th, 2008, 07:51 PM

I sent Sandi a PM several weeks ago, maybe more. No response. And that got me worrying a little.
Maybe she's in Costa Rica. She's been talking about moving down there.

Justin V

August 7th, 2008, 07:56 PM

I tried emailing her a week and a half ago or so and haven't heard back. I was on JC for a few years and always enjoyed her posts, and continued to enjoy her posts when I lurked and later joined this forum. I look forward to her return.

Jay Norem

August 7th, 2008, 08:01 PM

Moderator? spam?

I came here to discuss.... not read a book.

Dunlap, a modicum of respect would go a long way, young man, if you intend to be a part of this community.

glab

August 7th, 2008, 08:28 PM

Just to be clear, it has nothing to do with dunlap's cry of spam....

Saundra is a valued, long-time member of this board, and this particular forum has been her little home for a long, long time. It was, in fact, created for her, so nobody is going to call "spam" and have us take it away from her.

i figured as much. it was just that the gap was right after that 'spam' post. coincidences happen, but that was a doozy.

I sent Sandi a PM several weeks ago, maybe more. No response. And that got me worrying a little.
Maybe she's in Costa Rica. She's been talking about moving down there.

yeah. i remember her talking about that move. she's probably on the beach laughing and knowing we're all yelling, "Where's Sandy?!" :cheers

RonF

August 15th, 2008, 07:58 AM

Still no news about Saundra?

jonesy

August 19th, 2008, 07:55 AM

Blowback From Bear-Baiting
By Patrick J. Buchanan

15/08/08 "ICH " -- - Mikheil Saakashvili's decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia's invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser's blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili's blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili's army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America's lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight -- Russia finished it. People who start wars don't get to decide how and when they end.

Russia's response was "disproportionate" and "brutal," wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more "disproportionate"?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili's provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia's nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia's doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin's birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia's Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic "revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia's space and getting into Russia's face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost -- in Tbilisi.

Saundra Hummer

August 23rd, 2008, 12:03 AM

glab

August 23rd, 2008, 06:05 AM

Thanks fella's. No move, drats; nor drama, just technical upsets.

Can't use this new keyboard, so I'm going to switch back to my old one, this one is terribly hard to use properly.

Jonesy's holding down the fort with his last post I see, havn't gone back to earlier pages to see what else has been happening.

Till I dig out my old keyboard, sayonara.

words fail, so...

:thewave:thewave :tanz: :tanz: :cheers :cheers :elephant: :elephant: :dill: :dill: :D :D :banana: :banana: :bananafunky: :bananafunky: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

good to hear from you saundra.

RonF

August 23rd, 2008, 08:49 AM

Welcome back, Sandi! :cheers :clap:

Jay Norem

August 23rd, 2008, 01:03 PM

Hooray!

Saundra Hummer

August 24th, 2008, 10:55 AM

Welcome back, Sandi! :cheers :clap:

How to make a girl feel great.

THANKS EVERYONE!

Saundra Hummer

August 24th, 2008, 11:01 AM

~~~~~~~

Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth

Publius Cornelius Tacitus
~~~
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."

Frank Herbert
~~~
"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."

William Blake
~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

August 24th, 2008, 11:08 AM

^^^^^^^
America Is the Rogue Nation

By
Charley Reese

29/06/08 "Antiwar" -- -One gets the impression that there are some people in Washington who believe that Israel or the U.S. can bomb Iran's nuclear reactors, fly home, and it will be mission complete.

It makes you wonder if perhaps there is a virus going around that is gradually making people stupid. If we or Israel attack Iran, we will have a new war on our hands. The Iranians are not going to shrug off an attack and say, "You naughty boys, you."

Consider how much trouble Iraq has given us. Some 4,000 dead and 29,000 wounded, a half a trillion dollars in cost and still climbing, and five years later, we cannot say that the country is pacified.

Iraq is a small country compared with Iran. Iran has about 70 million people. Its western mountains border the Persian Gulf. In other words, its missiles and guns look down on the U.S. ships below it. And it has lots of missiles, from short-range to intermediate-range (around 2,200 kilometers).

More to the point, it has been equipped by Russia with the fastest anti-ship missile on the planet. The SS-N-22 Sunburn can travel at Mach 3 at high altitude and at Mach 2.2 at low altitude. That is faster than anything in our arsenal.

Iran's conventional forces include an army of 540,000 men and 300,000 reserves, including 120,000 Iranian Guards especially trained in unconventional warfare. It has more than 1,600 main battle tanks and 21,000 other armored combat vehicles. It has 3,200 artillery pieces, three submarines, 59 surface warships and 10 amphibious ships.

It's been receiving help in arming itself from China, North Korea and Russia. Unlike Iraq, Iran's forces have not been worn down with bombing, wars and sanctions. It also has a new anti-aircraft defense system from Russia that I've heard is pretty snazzy.

So, if you think we or Israel can attack Iran and not expect retaliation, I'd have to say with regret that you are a moron. If you think we could easily handle Iran in an all-out war, I'd have to promote you to idiot.

Attacking Iran would be folly, but we seem to be living in the Age of Folly. Morons and idiots took us into an unjustified war against Iraq before we had finished the job in Afghanistan. Now we have troops tied down in both countries.

For some years now, I've worried that we seem to be more and more like Colonial England – arrogant, racist, overestimating our own capacity and underestimating that of our enemies. As the fate of the British Empire demonstrates, that is a fatal flaw.

The British never dreamed that the "little yellow people" could come ashore by land and take Singapore from the rear or that they would sink the pride of the British fleet, but they did both.

I suppose no one in Washington can imagine the Iranians sinking one of our carriers in the Persian Gulf. How'd you like to be the president who has to tell the American people that we've lost a carrier for the first time since World War II?

Exactly how the Iranians will respond to an attack, I don't know, but they will respond. In keeping with our present policy, our attack on Iran would be illegal, since under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

Who would have thought that we would become the rogue nation committing acts of aggression around the globe?

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969-71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column three times a week for King Features, which is carried on Antiwar.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner.
Go on-site to view this article and several others. Just click on the following URL: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info^^^^^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

August 24th, 2008, 11:23 AM

* * * * * * *
Israel has a year to stop Iran bomb, warns ex-spy
A former head of Mossad has warned that Israel has 12 months in which to destroy Iran's nuclear programme or risk coming under nuclear attack itself. He also hinted that Israel might have to act sooner if Barack Obama wins the US presidential election.
By Carolynne Wheeler in Tel Aviv and Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 5:08PM BST 29 Jun 2008A satellite image of Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility
Shabtai Shavit, an influential adviser to the Israeli parliament's defence and foreign affairs committee, told The Sunday Telegraph that time was running out to prevent Iran's leaders getting the bomb.

Mr Shavit, who retired from the Israeli intelligence agency in 1996, warned that he had no doubt Iran intended to use a nuclear weapon once it had the capability, and that Israel must conduct itself accordingly.

"The time that is left to be ready is getting shorter all the time," he said in an interview.

Mr Shavit, 69, who was deputy director of Mossad when Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq in 1981, added: "As an intelligence officer working with the worst-case scenario, I can tell you we should be prepared. We should do whatever necessary on the defensive side, on the offensive side, on the public opinion side for the West, in case sanctions don't work. What's left is a military action."

The "worst-case scenario, he said, is that Iran may have a nuclear weapon within "somewhere around a year".

As speculation grew that Israel was contemplating its own air strikes, Iran's military said it might hit the Jewish state with missiles and stop Gulf oil exports if it came under attack. Israel "is completely within the range of the Islamic republic's missiles," said Mohammed Ali Jafari, head of the feared Revolutionary Guard. "Our missile power and capability are such that the Zionist regime cannot confront it."

More than 40 per cent of all globally traded oil passes through the 35-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz, putting tankers entering or leaving the Gulf at risk from Iranian mines, rockets and artillery, and Mr Jafari's comments were the clearest signal yet that Iran intends to use this leverage in the nuclear dispute.

Despite offering incentives, the West has failed to persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium. Israeli officials believe the diplomatic process is useless and have been pressing President Bush to launch air strikes before he leaves office on January 20 next year.

They apparently fear that the chances of winning American approval for an air attack will be drastically reduced if the Democratic nominee wins the election. Mr Obama advocates talks with the regime in Tehran rather than military action.

That view was echoed by Mr Shavit, who said: "If [Republican candidate John] McCain gets elected, he could really easily make a decision to go for it. If it's Obama: no. My prediction is that he won't go for it, at least not in his first term in the White House."

He warned that while it would be preferable to have American support and participation in a strike on Iran, Israel will not be afraid to go it alone.

"When it comes to decisions that have to do with our national security and our own survival, at best we may update the Americans that we are intending or planning or going to do something. It's not a precondition, [getting] an American agreement," he said.
Go on-site to gain access to this article as well as war stats, human and monetary. Just click on the following URL:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info * * * * * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

August 24th, 2008, 06:55 PM

^^^^^Brrr! Almanac Predicts Cold Winter Ahead By
JERRY HARKAVY
AP

Maine (Aug. 24) - People worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers' Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S.

Farmers' Almanac Predictions: Robert F. Bukaty, AP Old man winter will be on a tear this coming season, if the Farmer's Almanac is to be believed. The 192-year-old publication, which claims an accuracy rate of 80 to 85 percent, predicts "Numb's the word" for much of the U.S. Click through to see predictions for your region.

1 of 7
PHOTOSX | Go on-site to view.

"Numb's the word," says the 192-year-old publication, which claims an accuracy rate of 80 to 85 percent for its forecasts that are prepared two years in advance.
The almanac's 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder-than-average temperatures this winter, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings.
"This is going to be catastrophic for millions of people," said almanac editor Peter Geiger.
The almanac predicts above-normal snowfall for the Great Lakes and Midwest, especially during January and February, and above-normal precipitation for the Southwest in December and for the Southeast in January and February. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions will likely have an unusually wet or snowy February, the almanac said.
In contrast, the usually wet Pacific Northwest could be a bit drier than normal in February.
Looking ahead to summer, the almanac foresees near-normal temperatures in most places. But much of the Southwest should prepare for unusually hot weather in June and July, while Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas will get oppressive July heat and humidity.
The almanac — not to be confused with the New Hampshire-based Old Farmer's Almanac which is 26 years older — attributes its forecasts to reclusive prognosticator Caleb Weatherbee, who uses a secret formula based on sunspots, the position of the planets and the tidal action of the moon.
Weatherbee's outlook is borne out by e-mails the almanac has received in recent days from readers who have spotted signs of nature they say point to a rough winter, Geiger said. These folklore signs range from an abundance of acorns already on the ground to the frequency of fog in August.
The almanac is at odds with the National Weather Service, whose trends-based outlook calls for warmer than normal weather this winter over much of the country, including Alaska, said Ed O'Lenic, chief of the operations branch at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. The almanac and the weather service are in sync, however, in pointing to a chance of a drier winter in the Northwest.

O'Lenic wouldn't comment specifically on the almanac's ability to forecast the weather two years from now, but said it's generally impossible to come up with accurate forecasts more than a week in advance.
"Of course it's possible to prepare a forecast with any lead time you like. Whether or nor that forecast has any accuracy or usable skill is another question," he said.

Geiger sticks to his guns, saying the almanac was on target in the 2008 edition when it said the Northeast and the Great Lakes would have a long, cold winter with lots of snow.

The almanac claims a circulation of about 3 1/2 million. Most are sold to banks, insurance companies and other businesses that give them away. Other versions are sold by retailers in the U.S. and Canada.

Circulation has dropped in recent years, a reflection of a trend that affects many print publications. The almanac has been increasing emphasis on its Web site and also offers a half-hour program that airs weekly on about 90 percent of the nation's public television stations.

However, some aspects of the almanac never change. The 2009 retail edition has the usual mix of helpful hints, recipes, gardening tips, riddles, anecdotes, corny jokes and inspirational messages.

If there's a theme to this year's almanac, it's environmental awareness, frugality and living a sustainable life. There are articles on water conservation, gas-sipping motor scooters, natural cures and preventions for colds and other illnesses, and on growing food without a yard.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

posted: 1 HOUR 43 MINUTES AGOcomments: 0filed under: National NewsPrintShareText LEWISTON,
2008-08-24 14:04:14
^^^^^^^

jonesy

August 24th, 2008, 07:33 PM

John McCain Discovers America
By David Michael Green

23/08/08 "ICH" -- - Hey, have you heard? America is worse off than it was four years ago!

Big shocker, eh? I mean, it’s not like the clues are all around us or anything.

So how ‘bout that John McCain, eh? For an old geezer who hasn’t yet tried out the Internets, he’s a pretty sharp feller, no? Not only has he figured out that his country is worse off than it was four years ago, he’s even running ads saying so.

At one level, that seems a bit odd. For the majority of the last four years, his party and his ideology have controlled the entirety of the federal government. Nor did that change much, even after the other set of wankers supposedly got control of Congress following the 2006 election. It ain’t exactly like congressional Democrats have tried to do anything at all with their gavels over the last eighteen months, but whenever they accidentally did, Mitch McConnell and his band of merry filibusterers made sure nothing ever actually happened. And for the odd item that somehow did manage to escape Congress, there was old what’s-his-name down on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue waving his veto pen. Say, remind me again, wouldya – which party is he in?

Let’s be clear on this, shall we? As successful as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have been at doing absolutely nothing, it isn’t doing nothing that got this country into its present predicament. The Grand Old ‘Pocalypse will no doubt try to run and hide from themselves a thousand times a day, but the truth is nevertheless fully transparent: This is a Republican bummer, through and through.

And let’s not play chronological hide-and-seek, either, if you don’t mind. We’re not worse off than we were four years ago – we’re worse off than we were eight years ago. A lot worse off. Moreover, the worse parts of that worse off came during the first four years of the BushCo nightmare, when Cheney was absolutely running wild through the forest – rather than the most recent four, when even the Neanderthals came to realize that the Cro-Magnons were out of control and tried to reel it back in a little.

And there’s one other small point worth noting as well. McCain, who actually calls himself a “maverick” (if I never hear that word again I may have to hurl) in his ads, would like you to forget that he helped bring you this nightmare by avidly campaigning for George Bush in both 2000 and 2004, telling us what a great choice Lil’ W would be for president. He’d like you to forget that he agrees completely with Bush on the issues Americans are most unhappy about, including economic policy, fiscal policy, energy policy, and the Iraq nightmare. He’d like you to forget that he actually bragged in 2003 about having voted with the president over 90 percent of the time. And he’d also like you to forget – though die-hard Fox Snooze was so angry at him for having the temerity to comment even semi-honestly about the emperor’s new clothes that they themselves reminded his campaign – that last year he voted with Bush over 95 percent of the time. Some stray calf he is, eh?

So, um, ouch, Senator McShame. Why didn’t you just get it over with and run an ad saying “America is incredibly worse off than it was eight years ago, and I’m one of the nice folks who brought you this disaster”? Maybe that kind of straight talk would be just a bit too straight for a guy trying to become president.

And let’s not kid ourselves, either. These years of regressive rule have been disastrous for America, and for the world. As lame a nothing-burger as Bill Clinton was, a comparison of 2008 to 2000 shows how far south the country has traversed. In 2000 the economy was booming, workers were starting to get a share of rising GDP for the first time in a long time, gasoline was cheap, the federal government had the largest budget surplus in its history and was paying down the debt, America was respected and well-liked, natural disasters were responded to rapidly and efficiently, the Bill of Rights was still operative, we weren’t at war, and we had a president who actually cared about protecting the country from terrorism.

All of that has now been completely inverted by McCain, by his party and ideology, by his voting record, and by the president whom he insisted was the only right choice for America.

Our economy is in shambles, though the president insists that the ‘fundamentals’ are just fine, and McCain’s former chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, told Americans that there was no real recession going on and they should just stop whining about it. Gasoline prices have hit the stratosphere, to the point where many people can no longer even afford to get to work and make the money necessary to fill their tanks. Wait ‘til they see their home heating bills this winter. Too bad the election can’t be in February, eh? Meanwhile, the wealthiest Americans have just been raking it in, hand over fist, these last years, while middle class workers have been stuck, with stagnant wages, now being eaten alive by rising inflation to boot.

The record surplus that Bush inherited was fast turned into a record deficit. Piled high on each other, year after year, we now have a national debt approaching $10 trillion. It’s worth noting here that it took every single one of Bush’s 42 predecessors more than two centuries to run up half that bill. Then he doubled all of them – combined – in one presidency, and it will be even worse if his time-limited (so we wouldn’t know the real impact) tax policies are renewed, as McGramm is now advocating.

McCain is, of course, being absurdly disingenuous when he talks about ending the deficit, which he says he can do in four years, especially while keeping the Bush tax transfers in place and continuing to spend a cool $10 billion per month in Iraq. In any other country – or even this one at any other time – this shameless deceit would also be considered so absurd as to be laughed off the airwaves. But this is selfish America, where we want it all, at any cost, even while we’re being served up continually less each year. So we narcissists will continue to believe that schools can be properly funded by the Lotto, that infrastructure and other government expenses come for free, and that people like John McCain aren’t treating us like complete imbeciles when they say that spending can be radically cut by trimming away the ‘waste and fraud’ in the federal government – none of which, conveniently enough, ever quite seems to reside in the Pentagon. Obama will have to go through the obligatory ritual of demanding that McCain specify the cuts he’ll make, with the Old Geezer then pretending to refuse to speculate about an unknown future. If Obama has half a brain, he’ll then demand that McCain show the cuts he would have made to the present budget. Watch what happens as he squirms, thinking of all the pork barrel votes that would be thrown to the wind if he did that.

The country is also a helluva lot worse off today than it was eight years ago foreign policy wise, and Obama needs to say this. Not only because it is true, and because even hapless Americans now recognize this, but also because he needs to steal a page from Karl Rove’s playbook and dismantle McCain’s only remotely plausible reason for claiming a nod from voters, however dependent even that rationale is on the shop-worn notion that only the most belligerent Americans can ever be trusted with handling our foreign policy. What in the world is Obama doing, letting this guy who has repeatedly shown the worst imaginable judgement on these issues – and, worse, who is running around questioning not only Obama’s judgement but even his patriotism – what is Obama doing giving McCain a pass on national security? Why is he not treating us to endless reels of McCain doing his absurd Baghdad market tour? My god, that is his Dukakis-in-the-tank moment. It should be in everyone’s face every minute their television set is turned on! Obama should also be driving home the notion, over and over, that every allied soldier who isn’t fighting and/or dying next to an American somewhere means another American soldier there instead, and that therefore stupid and arrogant foreign policy choices have very real consequences for very real and fragile American GIs. And why don’t we hear endlessly about how Osama bin Laden has still not been caught, and how Afghanistan is worse than ever, with al Qaeda free to hatch new terrorist plans? America is worse off? No kidding, McLame.

Well, at least that whole environmental thing has been looking up since Bush and Cheney came to town, eh? Oops. Okay, never mind on that. Sure, it’s true that we only have one planet to live on, and yep, there’s some evidence that while we Americans continue to exacerbate the problem, global warming may possibly now have surpassed the tipping point from which no remedy is even possible. But, hey, no worries there! If McCain really wants to talk about the damage done to America and to the world by his homies, he should start right here. And if Obama wants to effectively challenge McCain’s absurd positioning of himself on this issue as an environmentalist leader, he should push him to get the GOP filibuster crowd in the Senate to promise they’ll allow meaningful legislation to emerge. Good luck with that.

America is also so much the worse because of the coarse and cheap politics that Karl Rove and his minions have perfected these last decades. This was nothing new, but it did get uglier and more sophisticated in its application. There were at least two reactions it might have produced in John McCain, who was himself among its earlier victims. One was to abhor such practices and the damage done to the frail social fabric of democracy. The other, which he instead adopted, is particularly ironic given his Big Lie motto of “country first”. Instead of being disgusted at Rovolitics, McCain recognized it as the way to win his greatest prize – the presidency – and thus hired the next generation of its practitioners. In doing so, he has absolutely put country last. Just like when he traded governmental favors for campaign support, or when he sold-out black Americans on the confederate flag issue, or as he’s politicized Iraq mercilessly – only worse this time – McCain has a clash between personal ambition and the welfare of the country to grapple with, and his choice of another round of Rovism is intensely dishonorable.

There are so many other ways in which America is worse off than it used to be since the Republicans rode into town, but surely one of the worst of these is the degree to which the country has been polarized, especially between rich and poor, as well as politically. George W. Bush had the opportunity to unite America and bring it together in the wake of Election 2000 and especially 9/11. But he instead has taken every opportunity to divide us and exploit our fears for the crassest purposes of looting and wealth transfer. This has been unconscionable, and McCain has hardly been standing in the doorway blocking the looters, the lone voice of reason in his party.

We could go on and on here. The wreckage of the Bush years is as wide as it is deep. I found Newsweek’s cover story last week on “What Bush Got Right” unintentionally telling in this sense. I was surprised to find inside the covers of the magazine that Fareed Zakaria excoriated Bush’s devastation almost as aggressively as I might have. Turns out that Zakaria’s answer to his own title question is ’just about nothing’. He more or less gives Bush credit only for abandoning some of his own insanely destructive policies from the first term, and lamely shuffling back to the center-right policies of his own party (and father) and the so-hated Clintons. Me, I don’t call it “getting it right” when you set the neighborhood on fire and then decide that playing with matches ain’t such a great idea just before the last house goes down.

So what’s up with the title of the article? No doubt that – even now – wimpy centrist American media outlets can no longer just come right out and say what everyone knows, themselves included – that this administration, and more broadly, the regressive ascension of the last decade (and two more behind that) has been catastrophic.

McCain should be made to own this disaster fully.

Because he does.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

Saundra Hummer

August 25th, 2008, 04:24 PM

After the hits John McCain and his entire family took at the hands of "Mr. Pink", and the Cheney/Bush machine, it hurt to see him crawl under their wing and become part of their machine. It was a pitiful change of course.

Great post jonesy.

Saundra Hummer

August 25th, 2008, 04:29 PM

~~~~~~~

"Peace is rarely denied to the peaceful."

Johann Von Schiller
~~~
"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."

T.s. Eliot
~~~
"Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself."

Francis Meehan
~~~~~

Jay Norem

August 25th, 2008, 04:31 PM

Is it just me or does all seem right with the world again?

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 10:41 AM

* * * * * * * * *
CONVENTION DISPATCH:
Kennedy & The Rise
of the
Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
From: David Sirota <ds@davidsirota.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 8:49 am

FYI - Here is the second of my regular dispatches about the Democratic
convention in Denver for In These Times magazine. This one deals with
the big story of the day: The Kennedy speech, and its historic place
solidifying the rise of the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.
- D

http://www.theittlist.com/site/ittlist/ind/5087/

CONVENTION DISPATCH: Kennedy & The Rise of the Democratic Wing of the
Democratic Party

By David Sirota
In These Times, 8/26/08

Yesterday morning during a CNN discussion from the floor of the
Democratic convention in Denver, I told anchor John Roberts that
despite the personality tiff between the Obama and Clinton people,
and despite some blemishes on Joe Biden's record, one thing is
undebatable: The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has finally
defeated the corporate wing of the party. You can watch the clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve5fDMZ4Rug
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve5fDMZ4Rug>

This morning - the morning after Ted Kennedy's electrifying
convention speech, the Wall Street Journal's headline reiterates this
point with a striking headline: "Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the
Table."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121969145343270091.html
The story takes a deeper look at the remarkable rise of
progressives - a rise that was so powerfully woven into the fabric of
this convention by Ted Kennedy's emotional speech last night.

As someone who has fought the trench war against corporate front
groups like the Democratic Leadership Council way back when it was
considered uncouth, I can tell you that I have never seen the party
so ideologically unified. After years of watching the Washington
Democratic Party Establishment attack economic populists and anti-war
activists, progressives have come back. The turnaround can be
explained by two factors: George W. Bush and the 2008 Democratic
Primary.

In so aggressively overreaching on so many issues, Bush has been
America's polarizer-in-chief to the point that the center of public
opinion has tectonically shifted in a progressive direction. Today,
polls show broad consensus support for the major tenets of a
progressive agenda: namely, universal government-sponsored health
care, trade policy reform, a re-regulation of Wall Street, and an end
to the Iraq War.

Within the Democratic Party, Bush's extremism has galvanized
progressives to reassert themselves after years of watching
Clintonism run "over the dead bodies"
http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/over-the-dead-bodies-again.html
of kitchen table priorities, as American Express's CEO famously
praised Bill Clinton for doing. And, as the Washington Post's Chris
Cillizza and I agreed last night on Minnesota Public Radio
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/25/dnckerrimiller/
, recent election results have only bolstered progressives'
arguments. Instead of listening to corporate front groups who wrap
corruption in the language of "moderation" and political "expertise,"
progressives point to 2006 candidates
http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=1471
who won some of the toughest swing districts and states with
full-throated populist campaigns. They make the convincing argument
that in forcing the Democratic Party to be more progressive,
activists are not only helping to accelerate the pace of policy
change, but also helping Democrats win elections.

By the time the 2008 Democratic presidential primary hit,
progressives had laid the groundwork for a full takeover of the
party. Because labor, environmental, antiwar and other grassroots
groups had set the stage so effectively, the competition between John
Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama became a competition to show
who was a more full-throated progressive. The heat of that
supercharged battle ended up burning off the corporate naysayers and
unifying the party.

Of course, the work still continues, as money remains a persistent
and powerful force. For all his populist rhetoric, Obama still
surrounds himself not with the grassroots organizers that he brags
about starting his career around, but instead with a mix of Wall
Street profiteers
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701688.html
and Ivory Tower elites like Cass Sunstein
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=7154
, who wrap their free market fundamentalism in the argot of academia.
That means remembering this specific passage in the Wall Street
Journal's article:

"David Sirota, a liberal analyst and author with the Campaign for
America's Future, which bills itself as "the strategy center for the
progressive movement," expresses particular concern about whether
Sen. Obama will attack corporate interests on behalf of the working
class. "If we are serious about developing the tactics and strategies
to bring about real change after the election, we have to first know
if Barack Obama is even with us," he wrote a few days ago on the
Campaign for America's Future Web site. Mr. Sirota expressed
particular qualms about the candidate's choice of economic advisers
who support free-trade agreements and hail from the
investment-banking world."
At the convention last night, a video showed a young Kennedy
thundering away at a podium, slamming his fist down demanding
universal health care. The video's grainy hair and the senator's
then-black hair was haunting. It reminded the audience of how long
the fight over health care - and all other progressive causes - has
been going on, and how little we've moved forward. it was a subtle
message that reminded that enough is enough - and that we don't want
to look back on this moment, and wonder why - again - we did not move
forward. Twenty years from now we don't want to be ruefully watching
at a grainy video of a young Barack Obama insisting he's going to
reform our trade policy so as to revive the American job base - and
know that he was never forced to fulfill those promises.

Thankfully, the millions of rank-and-file citizens who comprise the
Democratic Party have finally answered the age-old question: Which
side are you on? And they have answered it by siding with America's
progressive majority, suggesting that a progressive pressure system
will indeed follow Obama into office, if he is elected. That is
critical, because Obama hasn't yet decisively answered the same
question - the question of which side he is on. It will be up to the
newly invigorated Democratic wing of the Democratic Party to make
sure he listens to the public - not the Establishment job-seekers now
flocking to his inner circle - when he answers that question.

To update your preferences visit
http://davidsirota.com/list/?p=preferences&uid=6ae828830b19248dd8387e94fe93fddc
To forward this message to a friend visit
http://davidsirota.com/list/?p=forward&uid=6ae828830b19248dd8387e94fe93fddc&mid=1629
* * * * * * *

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 11:08 AM

*******
THE PROGRESS REPORT
Debunking The Spin Campaign
From: The Progress Report: http://wwwprogress@mx3.americanprogressaction.org
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 8:40 am

August 26, 2008 by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Ali Frick, and Ryan Powers
WOMEN'S RIGHTS
Debunking The Spin Campaign

According to a 2008 Planned Parenthood Action Fund poll, many pro-choice voters are under the impression that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would protect women's rights, particularly in the area of reproductive rights. Forty-six percent of women supporting McCain said they’d like to see Roe v. Wade upheld, and a quarter of the all the pro-choice women polled thought McCain's views were consistent with theirs. The poll reflects the need for greater awareness of McCain's record, as 51 percent of female voters in battleground states don't know what McCain's positions are on women's reproductive health issues. The poll numbers also hint at a spin campaign from McCain and his surrogates to portray a "maverick" image on women's issues and cover up his hard-right record. McCain's long opposition to birth control measures, fair pay legislation, and his support for conservative justices such as Sam Alito and John Roberts -- who have undermined women's rights on the Supreme Court -- underscore his poor support for women.

THE REALITY: McCain said in 2006 that he would repeal Roe v. Wade. His campaign website calls for overturning Roe, returning the issue of abortion to the states, and then building "the necessary consensus to end abortion at the state level." "I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies," he told Pastor Rick Warren this month. Planned Parenthood and NARAL have both given him a zero rating on abortion issues. According to NARAL, of 130 congressional votes by McCain related to reproductive freedom, 125 have been against abortion. "I've got a consistent zero from NARAL throughout all those years," he trumpets. On other reproductive health issues, McCain toes the right-wing line, having voted against requiring health care plans to cover birth control, comprehensive sex education, public education for emergency contraception, and restoring Medicaid funding for family planning for low-income women. "The guy I really respect on this is Dr. Coburn," McCain told the New York Times in March 2007, referring to the vociferously anti-abortion Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). McCain has also supported anti-women's rights judges such as Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

THE SPIN: McCain and his campaign, however, have wildly misrepresented McCain's record on reproductive health. McCain supporter Debra Bartoshevich said at a press conference yesterday that McCain is pro-choice, referring to a 1999 quote of McCain saying that "overturning Roe v. Wade doesn't make any sense." McCain chief surrogate Carly Fiorina in July suggested that McCain opposes "health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won’t cover birth-control medication," forgetting that in 2003, McCain voted against legislation requiring coverage of birth control. Fiorina falsely told women in Ohio this year that McCain "has never signed on to efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade." "When pressed to speak about [women's issues], he often evinces stunning ignorance, a fact that helps reassure the moderate middle that he could not possibly be as conservative as his record suggests," Sarah Blustain of The New Republic observes this week. In July, a reporter asked McCain if it is "unfair" that insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue," he said, pausing uncomfortably for several seconds. "It's something that I had not thought much about." When asked whether contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV, he paused, finally answering, "You've stumped me. ... I think I support the president's policy."

WOMEN ON THE BACKBURNER: McCain's record is poor not only on reproductive health issues but other issues related to women's rights. Last month, he skipped the vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have made it easier for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims. McCain explained his opposition to the bill by saying that instead of stronger pay protection, women simply needed "education and training." In May, he told a 14-year old girl that he didn't think equal pay protections would do “anything to help the rights of women," claiming the legislation could "violate[e] the rights of the individuals who are being sued." (In July, however, he maintained that he is "committed to making sure that there’s equal pay for equal work.") McCain has also opposed the reauthorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Act. NARAL President Nancy Keenan reminded the public yesterday that McCain said he would vote against a family-planning program that "provides millions of low-income women with access to birth control and breast-cancer screenings" and that his record suggests he would "force teachers to censor life-saving information from our teens" in support failed abstinence-only policies.

UNDER THE RADAR
ENVIRONMENT -- BECK ENCOURAGES LISTENERS TO 'WIPE OUT ANY POTENTIAL ENERGY SAVINGS' AT THE DNC: In April, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised that the Democratic National Convention this week will be the "greenest, most sustainable" convention in history. The greening efforts include the use of biodegradable balloons and signage, an army of volunteers for recycling, and a calculation of the convention's carbon footprint. Responding to these efforts, conservative global warming denier Glenn Beck mockingly called on his listeners yesterday to participate in a "carbon ONset program" aimed at counteracting progressive efforts to offset the environmental impact of the convention. On his website, Beck is encouraging Americans to "use more energy for mother nature." "We are asking you to make just a few small sacrifices to completely wipe out any potential savings," wrote Beck. On his radio show yesterday, he also offered suggestions for how his listeners could help "raise 70 million pounds of carbon." "How many extra miles can you pledge? Can you drive five extra miles a day," asked Beck while repeatedly claiming that it needed to be done "for the children."

IRAQ -- MALIKI URGES 'SPECIFIC DEADLINE' FOR U.S. WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ: Last Thursday, the U.S. endorsed a draft agreement with the Iraqi government that would remove "combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011." Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters that the 2011 date was an "aspirational timeline." However, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki explicitly disagreed with their characterization of the time frame as "aspirational." In a speech to tribal leaders yesterday, Maliki said that the U.S. and Iraq have reached an agreement on "a fixed date" for withdrawal. "No pact or an agreement should be set without being based on full sovereignty, national common interests, and no foreign soldier should remain on Iraqi land, and there should be a specific deadline and it should not be open," Maliki said, adding that "an open time limit is not acceptable in any security deal that governs the presence of the international forces." While Maliki claims the U.S. has agreed to his demand, the White House said "no final deal had been reached."

JUSTICE -- FBI EXPLAINS IMPROPER REQUEST FOR REPORTERS' RECORDS AS 'MISCOMMUNICATION': Earlier this month, the FBI revealed that in 2004, it improperly obtained the phone records of reporters from the New York Times and the Washington Post. "The records were apparently sought as part of a terrorism investigation, but the FBI did not explain what was being investigated or why the reporters' phone records were considered relevant," the Times reported. While the Justice Department "requires the approval of the deputy attorney general" before accessing reporters' records, no such approval was given. Today, the Washington Times reports that the FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, said the records were obtained as a result of "miscommunication - not malevolence." Caproni said "her explanation was based on a preliminary review of e-mails sent among agents at the time." Mike German, who serves as policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It's clear the FBI wants to minimize this as a mistake and not abuse." "The facts are, there was a ridiculous amount of misuse and abuse," he added. A forthcoming Inspector General report is expected to address the circumstances surrounding the incident; the case likely will be brought up on September 17, when FBI Director Robert Mueller who will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

THINK FAST
In court documents filed yesterday, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) "accused the Justice Department of trying to smear his character” and "making accusations haphazardly, hoping to damage his reputation at trial." Stevens's attorney called DoJ's alleged smear campaign "obvious" and one that extends to "the senator's family."

"In another large-scaled workplace immigration crackdown," federal officials raided a Laural, Mississippi factory on Monday, "detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally."

The oil industry is holding an "Energy Mid-Day Reception for invited guests only" today at the Democratic convention. "Location: Unannounced," writes the Houston Chronicle. "The event is sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, the American Gas Association and the Edison Electric Institute."

In Iraq today, three blasts killed at least 34 Iraqis, "most of them in a suicide car bombing that struck a group of police recruits," resulting in "one of the highest daily casualty toll in recent months."

Twelve states and two cities, New York City and Washington, D.C. "are suing the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries." The lawsuit "accuses the agency of violating the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards, known as new source performance standards, for controlling the emissions."

Lawyers representing White House counsel Harriet Miers are holding "confidential talks" with the House Judiciary Committee about resolving the legal impasse over her subpoena. There have been "preliminary discussions" between the two sides, although "no concrete progress has been made."

The Pentagon estimates that "as many as 300,000, or 20 percent, of combat veterans who regularly worked outside the wire, away from bases, have suffered at least one concussion." But "some veterans -- it is impossible to know how many -- remain unscreened." "No doubt that there are significant numbers out there," says Dr. Barbara Sigford of the Department of Veteran Affairs.

And finally: Daily Show host Jon Stewart called Fox News' "fair and balanced" slogan an insult "to people with brains." "I'm stunned to see Karl Rove on a news network as an analyst," said Stewart, adding only "Fox News Sunday" moderator Chris Wallace "saves that network from slapping on a bumper sticker...Barack Obama could cure cancer and they'd figure out a way to frame it as an economic disaster."
~~~~~~~
GOOD NEWS
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has called for a set withdrawal date from Iraq with the goal of ending the presence of U.S. troops by 2011.

STATE WATCH
ARKANSAS: "Proposed ballot initiative to ban unmarried couples who live together from adopting or fostering children in Arkansas qualified for the November general election.'

COLORADO: State's "burgeoning renewable energy industry is using the Democratic National Convention as its coming-out party."

FLORIDA: "Reported incidents of mortgage fraud jumped 42 percent nationwide in this year's first quarter, with Florida reporting the highest number of cases."

BLOG WATCH

THINK PROGRESS: Fox News reporter tasked with "causing trouble" at Democratic convention.

WONK ROOM: Freezing a fractured Iraq.

YGLESIAS: The great power that wasn't there.

MEDIA MATTERS: Bill O'Reilly's guest host's comment on Chinese Olympic team: "I thought 'baby fat' was one of the Chinese volleyball players."

THE DAILY GRILL
"[The Lugar bill] was a minor housekeeping measure. ... It was so relatively unimportant and uncontroversial."
-- Karl Rove, 8/25/08

VERSUS

"[The Lugar bill] eliminates conventional weapons stockpiles and assist other nations in detecting and interdicting weapons of mass destruction."
-- Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), 1/11/07
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The research team that brings you The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org needs fall interns! Click here for more information.
http://thinkprogress.org

Go on-site to gain access to the full story and the numerous links within these reports.
*****

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 12:53 PM

Former Trail Blazers Kevin Duckworth dies at 44 AP
posted: 1 HOUR 45 MINUTES AGO LINCOLN CITY, Ore. -Former Portland Trail Blazers center Kevin Duckworth died while on a trip to the Oregon Coast to host a free basketball clinic. He was 44.
The Lincoln County sheriff's office confirmed the death. He died Monday.
The 7-foot Duckworth averaged 11.8 points and 5.8 rebounds over 11 seasons in the NBA, helping Portland reach the NBA finals in 1990 and 1992. The two-time All-Star also played for San Antonio, Washington, Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Clippers.
"Kevin will be remembered by fans as one of the most popular and recognizable players to ever wear the Blazers uniform, but to people who knew him, he'll be remembered as one of the warmest and biggest-hearted," Trail Blazers president Larry Miller said.
The Blazers said he was representing the team on a 19-city tour of Oregon.
Duckworth grew up in the Chicago area and was drafted by the San Antonio Spurs out of Eastern Illinois University in 1986.
The Spurs traded him that season to the Trail Blazers, where he had his greatest success, playing with Clyde Drexler, Terry Porter, Buck Williams and Jerome Kersey on two Western Conference championship teams.
Duckworth remained in the Portland area after he retired in 1997, doing woodwork, fishing and hunting. He ran a construction company in Northern California for a time, and a restaurant venture in Vancouver, Wash., with former NBA player Kermit Washington went out of business.
The cause of death was to be determined by a medical examiner. I'm so sorry to hear of this. Kevin was a player on the great playoff Blazer's back in the day. The team was a great one, often times being cheated out of the championship by one terrible referee, who by the way was later fired after penalizing "Clyde the Glide" Drexler once too often. His biased or crooked officiating ended his own career when he started picking on the former Trail Blazers team members who were then playing on other teams after being let go by the wacked Trail Blazer head office, him doing the same to them after they were on other teams. Talk about frustrating to have to sit and watch him do his dirty tricks. It was great to have him finally pay for his misdeeds.

I always enjoyed Kevin and his family, and my heart goes out to them.

Kevin was too young to have this happen, and for me, learning of this is a shock.

God Speed Kevin.

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 05:27 PM

^^^^^^^
Warnings to Russia
from
Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham

By
Glenn Greenwald

26/08/08 "Salon" -- - John McCain's two most loyal supporters and most influential foreign policy advisers, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, have an Op-Ed in The Wall St. Journal today proclaiming that "Russia's invasion of Georgia represents the most serious challenge to this political order since Slobodan Milosevic unleashed the demons of ethnic nationalism in the Balkans." Just as their neoconservative comrade, Fred Hiatt, does in today's Washington Post, Lieberman and Graham demand that the U.S. expend vast resources and assert itself both militarily and politically in order to thwart the New Russian Menace ("This means reinvigorating NATO as a military alliance, not just a political one . . . The credibility of Article Five of the NATO Charter -- that an attack against one really can and will be treated as an attack against all -- needs to be bolstered. . . .The Georgian military should be given the antiaircraft and antiarmor systems necessary to deter any renewed Russian aggression").

The painful absurdity of hard-core warmongers who supported the invasion of Iraq (and, in Lieberman's case, advocating we do the same to Iran and Syria) parading around as defenders of the "political order" is too self-evident, and by now too common, to merit much comment. But this warning from the neoconservative duo about the folly of imperialistic Russian policies is really a sight to behold:

In the long run, a Russia that tries to define its greatness in terms of spheres of influence, client states and forced fealty to Moscow will fail -- impoverishing its citizens in the process. The question is only how long until Russia's leaders rediscover this lesson from their own history.
To recap: the U.S. is going to impede Russian aggression, re-build and protect Georgia, revitalize the military strength of NATO, and restore peace and order to Europe. We're going to stare down the Hitlers of Iran (also in the Post today, Lieberman comrade -- the super-tough-guy and Iran obsessive Micheal Rubin -- lashes out at Joe Biden for "blinking on Iran" and being "Tehran's favorite senator"). We're going to re-build, occupy and safeguard Iraq for decades if necessary. We will single-handedly promote Israel's interests and view each of its enemies and its wars as our own. We're also going to get much tougher on China, just like Russia:

A John McCain presidency would take to a more forceful approach to Russia and China, according to senior foreign policy advisers to the Republican candidate. . . .

Robert Kagan, who wrote much of the [foreign policy] speech delivered in Los Angeles, told the Daily Telegraph: "Russia will loom large for both Europe and the US, and John McCain has been ahead of the curve and has seen this coming down the road. . . .While continuing a "multi-faceted approach" to Beijing, [McCain foreign policy adviser Max] Boot said the US needs "to be forthright on their human rights abuses and not shrink from condemning what they are doing in Tibet for example, or from trying to help Chinese dissidents to stay out of jail".

And we're going to do all that while cutting taxes further. But remember: it's Russia, bulging with cash from oil exports, that better realize -- for their own good -- that its efforts "to define its greatness in terms of spheres of influence, client states and forced fealty to Moscow will fail -- impoverishing its citizens in the process."
The foreign policy team exerting chief influence over John McCain is truly more extremist -- in a purer and more deranged form -- than the foreign policy team of the Bush administration. They're not only the most extremist faction in American political life, but also the most delusional. These aren't just the people who led the U.S. to war in Iraq -- though they are that -- but they're also the ones who actually believe that the Bush administration has been far too meek in its assertion of U.S. military force and too passive in its interference in the affairs of other countries. They want to accelerate -- massively intensify -- virtually every one of the polices that has brought the U.S. to such disgrace and near ruination over the past eight years. There is nothing "moderate" or "centrist" about any of them. John McCain is the Candidate of Bill Kristol and Joe Lieberman and John Bolton for good and clear reasons (including in Georgia): he's the best and most devoted instrument to advance their militaristic agenda.

Is there any real discussion of any of that? Hardly. Here's the trite soap opera pablum and royal court intrigue which, instead, dominates our media's campaign coverage:

Riveting. Being in Denver has meant that I've been in the proximity of the herds of establishment media figures for the first time, to actually hear what they say and how they conduct themselves off camera, and it's all exactly the same. The only topics they're capable of thinking about are the same ones they chatter about on the TV -- is Obama Making a Mistake by speaking in the stadium because the heartland Americans (who they know and understand so well) will think he's too big for his britches? What Must Hillary Do? How will Michelle Play in the Bowling Alleys? To say it's bereft of substance is to understate the case dramatically.

Digby was on some "media vs. bloggers" panel yesterday with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter and the Post's Chris Cilizza and -- after Alter ranted that bloggers, to cite Digby's summary, "have a psychological condition called 'disinhibition' -- like Alzheimers patients" (as contrasted with the extreme psychological health and balance displayed by Alter when he demanded, in an article excerpted at length by Digby, that the U.S. Government torture people) -- this is what happened:

Ari Melber asked the pertinent question about how a reporter can possibly fail to call out illegal and immoral acts like wiretapping and torture for what they are, under some misguided definition of objectivity or neutrality. Cilizza answered the question honestly, admitting that they don't do a good job of it.
When Cilizza said "they don't do a good job of it," what he was referring to was "reporting on and covering what the Government of the U.S. actually does." If they don't do that well, what do they do well? And Cilizza is right -- they don't do a "good job" of that because they don't do it at all (along those lines, Jerry and Joe Long have a super-concise and appropriately acerbic post on just some of the media's Convention behavior that is quite worth reading).
John McCain himself, and especially those who whisper foreign policy wisdom in his ear, have long had a lengthy list of New Enemies We Must Confront in the World -- beyond those we're already fighting. They not only want to add China, but now especially Russia, to that list, without the slightest concern for the severe degradation they have already imposed on the U.S. military and America's economic security (but, Lieberman and Graham warn, Russia will go bankrupt if they have a 10-day border skirmish with a neighboring state). But infantile calls for Standing Tall in the Face of American Enemies and Not Blinking is still the definition of Seriousness in American political discourse, and the pure derangement and extremism that lies at the heart of this McCain foreign policy mentality will thus continue to go largely unexamined.
[B]~~~
To on site to gain access to this article, with it's links to the Wall Street Journal article as well as others.

We all know foreign detractors always test new administrations. We just hope to know which candidate will not be itchy to hit the doomsday button. These times we're in are trying, if not spooky. Which world leader is hoping to ride the bomb out of the bomb bay to some wacked perception of glory? SRH
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
^^^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 05:38 PM

lllllllllllllllllllllWar With Russia Is On The Agenda
By
Paul Craig Roberts

26/08/08 "ICH" -- -- Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark--indeed brainwashed--about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.

The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary is available here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm

As a result of the US media’s one-sided coverage, few Americans are aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection of America’s veto in the United Nations. Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack innocent Israel.

If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than the propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical pulpits.

Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American sailors. But few have heard of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded. Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain, father of the Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To this day there never has been a congressional investigation.

The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.

Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet “president” of Georgia, the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.

This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging tool of US hegemony, was a war crime. In truth, the Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than was Saddam Hussein. But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US media has demonized.

Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s Big Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt “freedom and democracy” and live under a Ministry of Propaganda.

Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war. But every one of Reagan’s successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia. In violation of the agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia’s borders, and the US is determined to put former constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent and compromise her independence, the US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders.

The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or the Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century. The neocon lies, propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the interests of a few military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that direction.

The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war. But the opportunity might already have been missed. The Republicans have chosen as their candidate one of the most ignorant warmongers alive. The Democrats’ choice was between one of the most divisive women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny name. Considering American’s taste for war, the Democratic candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.

Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black. Why does mixed ancestry confer the black label? If America’s population was predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?

Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.

The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.

Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology.

But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim terrorists” and “Russian aggressors.” Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway and keep on killing.

I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, “if we had nuked them we would have won.”

What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss of the cold war.

For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media” and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won’t happen again. These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.

Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama has shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby’s thumb as McCain. Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon, but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole’s animosity toward Russia. The Bush administration has already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack. With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet states and military bases, war is inevitable.

Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of Obama’s appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations and the Israel Lobby. There is no assurance that an Obama administration would not be positioned on “the issues” by the same special interests that have positioned the Bush administration.

Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, a 16-year columnist for Business Week, and a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service and Creator’s Syndicate in Los Angeles. He has held numerous university professorships, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by the President of France and the US Treasury’s Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of US economic policy.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20626.htm lllllllllllllllll

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 07:00 PM

~~~~~~~

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."

Adolph Hitler
in
My New World Order
Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin
February 1, 1933
~~~
"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."

George W. Bush
Commenting to
Texas evangelist James Robinson
In the run-up to his presidential campaign
~~~
"And I just -- I cannot speak strongly enough about how we must collectively get after those who kill in the name of -- in the name of some kind of false religion".

Press appearance
with
King Abdullah of Jordan,
Aug. 1, 2002
~~~
"Only the winners decide what were war crimes."

Author
Gary Wills
~~~
"Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war."

Andrew Holmes
~~~
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."

Eleanor Roosevelt
~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

August 26th, 2008, 07:13 PM

~~~~~~~~~
Army, Flag, and Cross

Reverie on a Ribbon
By
Stephen J. Gallagher

When Fascism arrives it will be wrapped in a Flag and carrying a Bible.
—Sinclair Lewis

26/08/08 "CSH" -- - -Brilliant. It was the first word that came to mind when I saw the bumper sticker. The vehicle ahead ground slowly through rush-hour traffic. I had time to study it, to think about what the thing meant.

It was yet another variant on the ubiquitous American “yellow ribbon.” Across the front, on a field of yellow, were the words “Support Our Troops.” The ribbon looped back and showed a field of white stars on a blue background, evoking the American flag. The cleverest part of the ribbon was the last section, hanging below the “Support Our Troops” slogan. It was red-and-white striped, intended to carry forward the American flag theme. But a subtle suggestion of a white sunburst joined with the vertical white stripe and overlaid it with a faint horizontal white stripe. It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to realize that this was intended to be a subtle evocation of the Christian cross.

There it was encapsulated, complete, uncut, pure: the symbolic essence of an America that has drifted far from civilization, an America that has grown very, very strange. The America that bumper sticker symbolizes has left behind the world of rational nation-states and slipped off into a sentimental realm of Romanticism.

Romanticism is a worldview that privileges strong emotions such as pride, horror, and awe. (The ominous, drum-beating music that opens American news broadcasts today screams “War! Terror! Fear! Pride! Revenge!,” striving to derange the viewer’s senses and conflate these primitive emotions with a feeling of patriotism.) Additionally, Romanticism privileges the individual imagination as the single, unshakable source of truth, which stems from the American insistence on a “personal relationship with God” rather than traditional hierarchical religious practices. When speaking of Roman*ticism, as Baudelaire pointed out, it is not the truth of the thing in question that is important but rather the overwhelming personal emotions that the thing inspires.

Such is very much the case with America’s fetishistic Romanticism. At the political level, Romantic nationalism takes as its starting point the “white man’s burden” and America’s unique world-historical mission to “bring” democracy to the benighted peoples of the world.
We need to look closely at that ribbon, understand its symbolism, and above all understand how its dangerous Romantic sentimentalism plays out in the real world.

America has always been besotted with religion. The Puritans abandoned Europe because their religious lunacy put them beyond the pale of acceptable behavior. Considering that during these years Europe was knee-deep in blood from its many religious wars and witches were being routinely hanged and burned for consorting with the Devil, the idea that this group was too extreme speaks volumes.
While Europeans are more secular, Americans remain a people for whom the Devil is real. Our nation’s history bristles with Romantic religious enthusiasms, revivals, and fundamentalist upsurges. The forward march of civilization has done nothing to dampen this.

One is often left speechless after reading the public pronouncements of high-ranking military personnel—pronouncements more suitable to Europe at the time of the Crusades than to a developed country in the opening years of the new millennium. For example, we have the infamous “Christian Soldier,” General William G. Boykin, strutting in full dress uniform and thumping his chest as he proclaims to gatherings of hard-Right religious groups: “We, in the Army of God, in the Kingdom of God, have been raised for such a time as this!” General Peter Pace, seemingly a sensible and levelheaded Marine who rose to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once defended the leadership of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by stating, “He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country.” This increasingly brazen willingness of our top military leaders to publicly “witness for faith” is alarming, to say the least.

Yet more alarming is the well-organized, brilliantly executed strategy of “breeding up” the next generation of religious-lunatic military personnel, starting as early as the preteen years. America is experiencing an explosion of organizations that resemble the “youth on the march” organizations so often seen in totalitarian nations during the last century.

The Christian youth movement Battle Cry holds massive gatherings in stadiums and other large public venues all over America. The rallies are high-energy, high-concept, and driven by the frenetic musical beat of a shoot-em-up video game. Live “action figures” of Navy SEALs and other military paragons charge onstage, screaming to the crowd that they are proud “Christian warriors” and acting out scenes from “the war against Islamic Fascism” while they brief the stadium full of kids on their heroic future as part of the “battle plan for Jesus.” These disturbing antics are followed by the reading of an endorsement of Battle Cry by George W. Bush, a moment that sends the thousands of overwrought young people into paroxysms of testifying, swooning, weeping, and general adolescent hysteria. This combination of testosterone-laden posturing paired with military and Christian symbolism is a brilliant recruiting tool for the apocalyptic “long war” that so many on the religious Right crave. One hopes those kids will wake up the next day feeling the way kids do after a night of binge-drinking and slam-dancing: beat-up, sheepish, and resolved never to engage in that particular form of idiocy again. One suspects not; most of these kids have never felt such overwhelming emotional and physical excitement in their entire lives, and they are going to want more.

Coupled with the resurgence of a broad-shouldered, muscular Christianity is a fetishistic new obsession with the Stars and Stripes as a quasi-religious object. There has always been a certain sentimental attachment to the flag in American culture (phrases like “Old Glory” and songs like “She’s a Grand Old Flag” are not recent inventions), but since the events of September 11, 2001, the irrational defense of the flag as a physical object has become increasingly strident. Everywhere one turns in America, the iconography of The Flag is thrust into one’s face in a way that I have never before seen in my lifetime. The most disturbing aspect may be the premise that the flag itself may not be burned or otherwise “desecrated.” Perhaps alone among the nations of the world, America has decided that the actual, physical flag—rather than the ideas it represents—must be kept physically pure and protected from the ravages of the unworthy.

Flag worship in America has revealed a deep well of Romantic, fetishistic thinking, imbuing an object in the physical world with some sort of ineffable mojo. Such behavior is a form of emotional voodoo. Flags are not to be worshipped in a free and democratic state.

Free democracies also do not worship their armies. When they think about them at all, they regard them as necessary evils. For over two hundred years, America kept faith with George Washington’s caution that “overgrown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty.” Even at the height of the Cold War, the military was never glamorized as it is now. It is impossible to find anything like the current Army worship anywhere in American history; indeed, to find any equivalent in the twentieth century, one must turn to such totalitarian societies as Nazi Germany, the USSR, North Korea, or Saddam’s Iraq. The title of a 2007 “ultimate fighting” television program—Warrior Nation—sums up the new order of things. Modern America sees itself as the new Sparta. And in the new Sparta, the imperative to worship the warrior class is one of the few taboos that must never be violated.

Unlike other Western countries whose citizens have come (through centuries of bleeding) to view war as a horrible aberration—a failure of rational solidarity—America’s Romantic nationalists embrace the prospect of spending years, decades, and even centuries in the righteous work of fighting the long war to “rid the world of evil.” The “warrior” is fetishized and lifted to a place beyond any possibility of criticism. Implicit in the mantra “Support the Troops” is a hissed addendum: Or else!

Review the images in your mind: Grainy newsreel footage of Hitler “blessing the colors.” The massive, militarized May Day love fests in Red Square. The manic triumphalism of military parades staged by every tin-pot dictator ever to reign in the Third World. And realize that now it is America’s turn.

America has begun to worship the professional military class and, more ominously, to glorify military ideals. The unspoken demand is that the civilian population must now embrace these same values and glorify these same things. Woe betide anyone foolish enough to challenge this new national religion.

One important facet of this Army worship reveals it for the sentimental and Romantic thing that it is: Americans love their military, but in great numbers they refuse to serve in it and refuse to let their kids get lured into serving in it. Yet these “latté liberal” suburban parents who work so hard to make sure little Melissa and Cody don’t get any crazy ideas about joining up are the first to chant the tribal mantra: “Condemn the war but not the warrior.” How very problematic this new mantra is—as if one could actually decouple the policy from those who voluntarily implement it.
At what point in our history did blind obedience to bad orders become a virtue? Does it make sense to lionize people for doing something that our rational minds tell us is an extremely bad idea? If one opposes the war, how can one support the troops and still claim to be thinking rationally? Doing so has the stench of bad faith. If the people at the top giving the orders are complicit, the people who pull the triggers share in that complicity. No one is innocent; we all own our own decisions.

The evasions Americans prefer in order to give “the warriors” an easy out tend to fall into two categories: “Blame the decision-makers, not the warriors,” and “They only enlisted for economic reasons.” These rationales are alibis and clumsy ones at that.
The first alibi is easily disposed of. Principle I of the Nuremberg Tribunal (to which the United States was a signatory) states that “any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment.” Lest anyone complain this is too vague, Principle IV gives us all the clarification we need: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” And let us be clear: one always has to make clear moral choices. There are moments, as Camus reminds us, “when everything becomes clear, when every action constitutes a commitment, when every choice has a price.” This is one of those moments, and to pretend that the people pulling the trigger are not in a very real sense decision-makers is both naïve and absurd. Even at the lowest rungs of the ladder of command, refusal to say “no” is tantamount to complicity.

The second alibi is popular among many Americans, including leftists. In November 2006, The New York Times analyzed the demographic patterns of military recruits and discovered that in fact they are slightly better off in terms of education, neighborhood, family income, and job prospects than the population as a whole. Are some American soldiers in Iraq there for economic reasons? Sure, but not very many. Did some sign up for the chance to go over and blow away some “rag-heads”? Of course; armies throughout history have always attracted their share of sociopaths. But after removing these two small groups from the list, we are left with the vast majority who went voluntarily and for their own reasons. They made a moral decision. They made a choice. Having made their free choice, are they somehow magically immune from all blame?

They are immune because they are granted immunity from blame by the sentiment of the American people. They are given the alibi of the “pure warrior” because the donning of the uniform has become equivalent to the donning of priestly vestments in an earlier age. The “warrior” is immediately sanctified, justified, raised up beyond all criticism from us lesser mortals who lack the moral fiber to wear the vestments. The American people, living in the midst of this enormous superstructure of myth and alibi, are incapable of understanding that they have armored themselves against evil by manufacturing not the new Sparta, but rather a dystopian and sentimental dreamland.

In America, it appears that the more pathological the coupling between army, flag and cross, the greater need there is to honor “the warrior.” We should be clear on the fact that this is not necessarily something new. This way of thinking was never more clearly expressed than by Secretary of War Elihu Root, who in 1899 declared, “The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the world began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness.”

As these words were being written, American soldiers in the Philippines were in the early stages of a near-genocidal rampage that would kill more than six hundred thousand Filipinos. Not new, this warrior-love, but rampant now and metastasizing.

The American mythos today is saturated with the Holy Trinity of God, the flag, and the armed forces. All are glorified and sanctified in a manner that is overtly sentimental, Romantic, and irrational. These three pillars of American society support an invigorated sense of Manifest Destiny, a wonderful feeling of exceptional purpose that was lost after the collapse of Soviet communism. Americans are excited again: standing tall, feeling the pride, and above all, “on the march.” This toxic mix of army worship, flag worship, and God worship has erupted in a nation where every hope and fear can be rendered down to a slogan on one of the many variations on the yellow ribbon. The irony of it all is that the yellow ribbon was originally a symbol of the grinding, endless sense of victimhood that Americans felt during the Iran hostage crisis. Americans everywhere showed the yellow ribbon because there was quite literally nothing else they could do about the situation except sit there and take it. For those of us who live in America—and for the rest of the world as well—an understanding of this dangerous liaison between rampant militarism and the sanctified yellow fetish of the angry victim is critically important. This yellow shroud—and make no mistake, it is a shroud and possibly even a death shroud—is a voodoo fetish designed to buck up the courage of a people who have, in a few short years, devolved into a nation of frantic, ribbon-worshipping victims.

Stephen J. Gallagher is a scholar and writer who lives in North Carolina. A frequent contributor to Free Inquiry, Gallagher’s work has also appeared in the Peace Review, the Monthly Review, and the Journal of Contemporary Thought
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20625.htm
Are these evolving and past historical events and attitudes from an overcrowded society, an over crowded and over burdened world? Have many of the worlds countries turned into yet another society marching towards distruction as the ancient Mayan and other societies on the verge of ecologalical and social collapse have done for centuries?

Is this desire for war inbred into a mentality which is mob oriented, yet another part of our "primative brain", with us not being able to stop these urges programed into us from birth since the dawn of time? SRH~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

August 27th, 2008, 12:07 PM

~~~~~~~
Turn Down the Commercials!
Target: U.S. House and Senate
Sponsored by: Care2.com

Have you ever been watching a television program that switched to commercials - and perceived a sudden blast of sound?

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM Act) could stop this sudden sound explosion. The bill would require advertisers to smooth the transition to commercials and create ads that are not "excessively noisy or strident" and would set informed, practical volume standards.

Please tell your representative to enact a simple fix to a simple problem by supporting the CALM Act.
deadline: Ongoing...
goal: 20,000

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Dear [Decision maker],

As a consumer who does not enjoy being blasted by noise, I urge you to vote for Rep. Anna Eshoo's Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM Act).

When scheduled television programming switches to commercials, viewers can experience a "perceived loudness" that makes them dive for the volume control on their remotes. Also, advertisers often use the loudest settings in their audio file to get viewers' attention, making the average volume in some commercials higher than that in regular programming.

In fact, the FCC has received a significant number of complaints about the blast of sound resulting from some transitions to commercials. This jarring transition and generally loud commercials are totally unnecessary and could be easily fixed. The FCC should take action to make sure viewers are never subjected to such harshness.
view more

The CALM Act would direct the FCC to regulate advertisers to smooth loud or loud-seeming transitions and refrain from making their commercials "excessively noisy or strident." Specifically, it would require advertisements to be no louder than the television material that precedes it. The bill would also give technical experts at the FCC room to make wise, science-based decisions on volume standards for television advertisements.

[Your comments here]

Even Adonis Hoffman, senior vice president and general counsel of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, can see the potential in this legislation. Hoffman has said, "Perhaps the most practical solution is to rely on the judgment of the technical and engineering experts at the FCC to determine an acceptable sound range or standard for commercials and content alike."

You will do viewers a small but significant service if you vote for the CALM Act. As television programming is going digital, the resulting wider range of volume will lead to commercials with even higher peak volumes. Don't let the problem get worse: please vote "yes" on this timely legislation to reduce jarring volumes in television commercials.

view less

Sincerely,
[Your name here]

View Signatures: |< < 9,529 9,500 9,450 ... 150 100 50 > >|
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Hi,
I signed the petition "Turn Down the Commercials!". I'm asking you to sign this petition to help us reach our goal of 20,000 signatures. I care deeply about this cause, and I hope you will support our efforts.

We hate spam. We do not sell or share the email addresses you provide.

Go on site to sign petition by clicking on the following URL:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction807852745?z00m=16066312

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Borys_Pomianek

August 27th, 2008, 12:29 PM

although i dont watch tv and i dont live in the states:

Nice idea Suandra, i hope it will succeed.

Love
BP

Saundra Hummer

August 27th, 2008, 12:38 PM

although i dont watch tv and i dont live in the states:

Nice idea Suandra, i hope it will succeed.

Love
BP

I see that the petition has been moved, but if you go onsite there are ways to find it. There are several other petitions to sign as well, ones for saving the Artic and it's animals, the environment, a free press, the internet, etc. Anti Murdoch and Bill O'Reilly petitions, and such. Petitions demanding less corporate control over the press is one that is interesting.

Thanks BP,

Saundra Hummer

August 27th, 2008, 02:45 PM

Polino Gonzales from Wilmington CA & Long Beach CA, grandson of the founder & owner, Cinco de Mayo Mexican food restaurant and the other one called Gonzale's, both in Wilmington, son of Ray Gonzales, get in touch with me again. My computer crashed and I wasn't able to contact you as you had asked me to do, and I see you haven't been back on AAJ since August 18, 2008. Maybe you'll see this in another google search for your families restaurants, or for "The Cinco", the restaurant you used to own in Long Beach. We'll talk.

Saundra Hummer

August 27th, 2008, 03:11 PM

lllllllllllllll
Rep. Dennis Kucinich:
“Wake Up America!”
Rep. Dennis Kucinich

Former presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich delivered one of the most passionate addresses Tuesday night. “Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more,” Kucinich said. “War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.”

Go on-site for video: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20631.htm
Kucinich wakes up Democratic Convention

26/08/08 DENVER -- Who lit a fire under U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich?

The Ohio Democrat went to church at the Democratic National Convention today, lighting up the 4 o’clock hour as time marched toward Sen. Hillary Clinton’s much anticipated appearance.

Kucinich preached.

I mean he preached like he’d had some lessons from the Rev. Jesse Jackson. And he woke up an audience that until that moment appeared to be mostly waiting to hear anybody else.

“We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call,” he preached. “Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil, and twice what we paid for health care.”

Sleepy delegates in a half-empty arena began to take notice. A couple of them pointed.

“If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold,” Kucinich said. “World records for violations of national and international laws … we can't afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America.

“The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing. Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America.

He had them. Where was this speech when the tiny Ohio congressman was running for president? Or did we really just not pay attention?

“This administration can tap our phones. They can't tap our creative spirit,” he said. “They can open our mail. They can't open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

“Wake up, America! This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages.”

And Dennis Kucinich began to bounce, the way the ministers of my girlhood churches did.

“Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems,” he said, his voice rising, people rising and grinning at the Dennis Kucinich who was surprising them.

“Up with health care for all,” he said. “Up with education for all. Up with homeownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden!”

Hmmmmm. Did the Democrats miss something along the way from the only man with the courage to introduce a resolution in June to impeach President George W. Bush and whose speech reminded those gathered who their fight actually was with?
lllllllllllllllllllllll

Saundra Hummer

August 27th, 2008, 03:19 PM

~~~~~~~
"There can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth."

George Jacob Holyoake
1817-1906
English secularist
~~~
"Better than a thousand useless words is one word that gives peace."

Buddha
~~~
"Mark! where his carnage and his conquests cease, He makes a solitude and calls it--peace!" :

Lord Byron
(George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: The Bride of Abydos
(canto II, st. 20)
~~~
"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade; Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more"

William Cowper
Source: Task (bk. II, l. 1)
~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

August 27th, 2008, 03:53 PM

:: :: :: :: ::
Meet Harold Simmons:
the sole Obama-Ayers attack ad contributorSubmitted by AmyW on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 2:33pm. Analysis
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by
Amy Weiss
Harold Simmons, the billionaire funding the Obama-Ayers ad, forged his daughters' signatures to make political donations they didn't agree with (including to Jesse Helms), tried to dodge $80 million in taxes, added lead to paint his company distributed, and expanded the dumping of dangerous nuclear waste for profit.

Simmons was one of three principal contributors to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth effort against John Kerry in 2004. Earlier this month he donated almost $3 million to the American Issues Project, the group running the Ayers ad. (The "independent" group was founded by a man who worked for the McCain campaign in 2007.)

Simmons's hometown paper, The Dallas Morning News, details his questionable donation history:
Mr. Simmons, an investor who heads the corporate holding company Contran, is one of the most prolific political donors in the country. He was among President Bush's largest campaign contributors and has given millions of dollars to candidates and groups aligned with the GOP.

He and two other Texans, Houston homebuilder Bob Perry and Dallas oilman T. Boone Pickens, were primary backers in 2004 of Swift Boat Veterans, which challenged Mr. Kerry's military service. Many of the group's charges were subsequently discredited, but its ad campaign proved politically devastating.

Mr. Simmons is a major benefactor of Texas politicians. He has given more than $500,000 to Gov. Rick Perry and more than $300,000 to both Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Mr. Simmons is the major owner of Waste Control Specialists, which is seeking state approval to expand its radioactive waste operations in West Texas to include a higher level of nuclear material. The state's environmental commissioners are appointed by Mr. Perry.

Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit group that monitors campaign contributions, said, "Texas is a breeding ground for this type of dirty politics."

Two of Simmons' daughters sued him for violating the law by using a trust set up for them against their wishes. They objected to "donations to conservative Republican political candidates they loathed, the purchase of luxury homes for his use, jewelry for his third wife, and distribution of millions of dollars into charitable foundations that made gifts in his name."

Although a mistrial was ultimately declared and they reached a settlement before a retrial, "The six jurors unanimously agreed that Mr. Simmons had breached his financial duty as a guardian of their inheritance."

One of his daughters, Andrea Swanson, saw her father's attempt at dissolving the trust for tax purposes as a scheme to reduce her and her sisters' inheritances:

Their strained relationship collapsed when his single-minded pursuit of the financial juggling led him to insist on serving legal papers related to the proposed changes quickly on all affected descendants. That required dropping them in the crib of her son, Ryan Swanson, who had recently been born three months prematurely and was vulnerable to infection.

Simmons admitted to forging his daughters' signatures to contribute above the maximum amount to the campaign of Senator Jesse Helms:
"I thought it was right to sign the names because it would help the Helms campaign. It was a mistake, wrong and bad judgement," he testified.

Simmons doesn't just try to cheat his daughters, he frequently attempts and often succeeds at extorting the American taxpayer. Texans for Public Justice outlined how Simmons makes a profit:
With 2000 sales exceeding $1 billion, Simmons' empire depends on friendly government policies. Taxpayers subsidize Simmons' sugar prices, bankroll military purchases of his aerospace metals and ultimately pay for the limits that government officials place on his tax and pollution liabilities. Then-President Clinton used the line-item veto to narrowly avert a 1997 loophole for Simmons to dodge $80 million in taxes.

A 1997 New York Times article titled "Billionaire Feels Sting of Line-Item Veto" said:
In using one of his first three line item vetoes, President Clinton today dashed a Texas billionaire's plan to preserve a capital gains tax break while renegotiating the sale of one of his businesses. And in doing so, Mr. Clinton highlighted the sort of special benefits that have long found their way into the nation's tax laws, often to the benefit of only a handful of wealthy or influential people.

The Obama campaign believes Simmons' ad is illegal because it violates election law for this type of group because it advocates Obama's defeat and there is no policy in question. The Politico reported:
The project is "a knowing and willful attempt to violate the strictures of federal election law," Obama general counsel Bob Bauer wrote to Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Keeney last week in a letter provided to Politico. Bauer argued that by advocating Obama's defeat, the ad should be subject to the contribution limits of federal campaign law, not the anything-goes regime of issue advocacy.

So while the Obama campaign is setting records for the numbers of contributors, many of them first-timers making modest contributions, McCain's campaign depends on guys like Simmons who smear their opponents while breaking laws and misusing millions to ensure the election of those who will help them expand their fortunes.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash.com http:://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/365
We, or at least many of us here in the United States, know just who was behind the Swift Boat fiasco and whose payroll those men have been on since the Vietnam War. GHW Bush saw the threat to his plans for dynasty and who would ultimately control the Republican party and there you have it. Do you think the American public will be so foolish as to go along with this latest attempt to subvert "our Democracy"? If we are, then what is being said in Europe holds true. We will have desrved what we get. We haven't much left to hold onto, so we had better be careful from here on out. SRH. :: :: :: :: :: ::

Saundra Hummer

August 28th, 2008, 11:24 AM

////O\\\\X////O\\\\
Rove tried to kill Lieberman VP pick
By
JONATHAN MARTIN
8/28/08 12:28 PM EST
Updated: 8/28/08 12:28 PM EST

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) late last week and urged him to contact Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to withdraw his name from vice presidential consideration.
Photo: AP (Go on-site to view)

Republican strategist Karl Rove called Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) late last week and urged him to contact John McCain to withdraw his name from vice presidential consideration, according to three sources familiar with the conversation.

Lieberman dismissed the request, these sources agreed.

Lieberman “laughed at the suggestion and certainly did not call [McCain] on it,” said one source familiar with the details.

“Rove called Lieberman,” recounted a second source. “Lieberman told him he would not make that call.”

Rove did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rove, President Bush’s former top campaign adviser and arguably the most prominent political operative of the past generation, has no formal role in McCain’s campaign. But he knows much of the Arizona senator’s high command and has been offering informal advice, both over the phone and in his position as a Fox News analyst, since McCain wrapped up the GOP nomination.

His decision to wade into the vice presidential selection process could provide Democrats fresh ammunition to tie McCain to the polarizing Bush.

It is also chafing some Lieberman allies and others wary of the selection of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“Rove is pushing Romney so aggressively some folks are beginning to wonder what's going on,” grumbled one veteran Republican strategist.

From his perch on Fox, Rove has touted McCain’s fierce primary rival as strong vice presidential material.

“Romney is already vetted by the media, has strong executive experience both in business and in government, has an interesting story to tell with saving the U.S. Olympics, and also helps McCain deal with the economy, because he can speak to the economy with a fluency that McCain doesn’t have,” Rove said on “Fox News Sunday” in June.

The sources spoke about Rove’s involvement after Robert Novak, writing his first column since being diagnosed with brain cancer, reported Wednesday that McCain and some of his close associates would like to tap Lieberman for the number two slot but that putting an abortion-rights-supporting former Democrat on the Republican ticket was likely to be unrealistic.

The column said Lieberman had made that clear to McCain personally at the behest of a “close friend,” but a Lieberman source called that “totally and absolutely false.”

Reached by phone, Novak would say only: "I don't talk about my sources."

The maneuvering comes just days before McCain is to publicly unveil his pick Friday at a large rally in Ohio. A senior campaign official said Wednesday that McCain has settled on his ticket mate and that the person is to be notified Thursday.

Lieberman has his advocates, especially among those who believe McCain needs to make a transformative pick to help disassociate himself from Bush and the GOP, but most establishment Republicans believe tapping the Connecticut senator would blow up next week’s Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., and create major problems for McCain and the conservative base of the party this fall.

A source close to Lieberman said: "If it's Lieberman, none of us know about it" — meaning staff, aides and friends. The source said Lieberman is currently on vacation on Long Island, N.Y.

Martin Kady II contributed to this story
What I find disturbing in this story is that it reafirms my belief that Karl Rove is still a puppet master, or, at the very least, he isn't out of the politics of our country. He is still working it, and look at where we are due to his undue influence over the past 8 years. He presided over the biggest political and government debacle in United States history.

Instead of tucking his tail between his legs and leaving the politics of the country to better men, he is in there stirring up the brew, never having left at all. God help us.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12922.html///O\\\X///O\\\

Saundra Hummer

August 28th, 2008, 12:11 PM

Union of Concerned Scientists
Citizens and Scientists
for
Environmental Solutions
http://www.ucsusa.org
Bush Takes Parting Shot
at
Endangered Species Act
Dear Richard R.,

The Endangered Species Act has protected hundreds of species from extinction, as well as contributed to population increases and the recovery of species like the peregrine falcon. But now the Bush administration has proposed weakening this historic legislation by allowing any federal agency to decide for itself whether or not protected species would be threatened by projects such as roads, dams, or mines.

Many federal agencies do not have the scientific expertise needed to determine when species need protection. For decades, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists have provided critical analysis of the consequences of federal projects for endangered species. The proposed changes cut these scientists out of the process.

Congress must step in to prevent these changes before they go into effect—possibly as soon as September 15. Please call immediately and urge your representative to stop these eleventh hour changes from going through.

Representative Greg Walden can be reached at (202) 225-6730.

Help UCS advocate for this critical issue by providing us with more details about your call. Simply click "Report Back" to get helpful tips for making your call and report back to us about the response you received. Any information you can provide on how your representative is responding to this issue will help us protect the Endangered Species Act.

Sincerely,

Michael Halpern
National Field Organizer
Scientific Integrity Program

Take Action!
Instructions:
Click here to take action on this issue.
http://ucsaction.org/ucsaction/leg-lookup/search.html

Tell-A-Friend:
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
Tell-a-Friend!
http://ucsaction.org/campaign/9_27_08_ESA_Rule_Change/forward

What's At Stake:According to press reports, these new regulations were drafted behind closed doors with little or no input from endangered species biologists. Furthermore, the public has been given only 30 days to comment on the changes before they are finalized. The Associated Press has reported that the proposed regulations were not even shown to expert federal scientists, but instead were written by attorneys in the Departments of Commerce and the Interior. More...

Saundra Hummer

August 29th, 2008, 12:59 AM

. . . . . . . . . . . . . Denver: In Curious Case, "Authorities" Inexplicably Downplay Obama Assassination Threat by Armed and Ready Meth Heads.Submitted by meg on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 3:18pm. Analysis
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White
DENVER: In Curious case, "Authorities" Inexplicably Downplay Obama Assassination Threat by Armed and Redy Meth Heads With Alleged Aryan Nation Ties. If a Druken Old Geezer Mutters While Urinating That He'd Like to Punch Bush in the Face, the Secret Service Tosses Him In Jail, But Meth Heads with Sniper Rifles Threatening to Assassinate Obama Get the "All Clear." Something is Very Troubling Here. -- A BuzzFlash News Analysis

Though one of them is on tape saying he told federal officials his friend planned on assassinating Sen. Barack Obama with a high-powered rifle during the presidential nominee's acceptance speech in Denver this evening, the three men arrested Sunday will not be charged with threatening an assassination.

The plot began to unfurl Sunday morning after a routine traffic stop of Tharin Gartrell, who was found to have weapons, drugs, and other illegal materials in the rented vehicle he was driving. Gartrell then led authorities to hotel rooms where two others implicated in the plot, Shawn Robert Adolf and Nathan Johnson, were also arrested.

After what they call an "intensive" investigation lasting only a couple of days, the FBI and Secret Service say there is no real threat to Obama, and that no related charges will be brought in the case. U.S. Attorney Troy Eid seemed to say that because the men were on drugs, they shouldn't be taken as a serious threat:

"From a legal standpoint, the law recognizes a difference between a true threat and the racist rantings of drug abusers."

So just because these people were drug users means they couldn't possibly have carried out a killing? Seems to me, meth users kill a lot of people. Eid admitted that judgment is impaired in meth users.

"A bunch of meth heads get together, we don't know why they do what they do," Eid said. "People do lots of stupid things on meth."

According to a report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, figures on meth use and violence are closely correlated:

"Every community with a methamphetamine abuse problem has experienced violence in some form, most commonly appearing as domestic disputes. For example, police in Contra Costa County, California, report that methamphetamine is involved in almost 90 percent of the domestic dispute cases investigated by that agency. The extreme agitation and paranoia associated with use of the stimulant often lead to situations where violence is more likely to occur. Chronic use of methamphetamine can cause delusions and auditory hallucinations that precipitate violent behavior or response."

In an era where a drunk bar patron raving against the continued existence of a president or candidate could be picked up and questioned by the Secret Service without the bat of an eyelash, anyone should be seriously concerned by a driver in Denver hauling the following:

"...two high-powered rifles, including one with telescopic sights, along with radios, wigs, a bullet-proof vest, a high-magnification spotting scope, three identifications not belonging to Mr. Gartrell, and 44 grams of the stimulant methamphetamine. One rifle had a threaded barrel so that it could be fitted with a silencer."

Sounds like a classic assassination kit. The fact that it was only uncovered after a chance traffic stop is troubling.

One of the men arrested even said that the evidence in the hands of federal investigators undoubtedly pointed to an assassination plot. In a local news interview from jail, Nathan Johnson said that when he was faced with the facts, he had to admit it sure looked like his associates planned on assassinating Obama during the acceptance speech.

"With everything laid out on the table, I could see how it was possible that they could go through with it," Johnson said. When asked how he came to the conclusion that his friends were in Denver specifically to assassinate Obama, Johnson said, "I'm basing it off of the information that the feds gave me."

"When the feds came in and laid everything out that had taken place," Johnson said, "I could see from their vantage point how, okay, yeah: There was the possibility that they were here to do it, and I said 'yes' to those comments."

Yet no charges will be filed. In similar circumstances, some offenders face jail time.

Just earlier this month, the Secret Service arrested a young Miami man and charged him with verbally threatening Obama's life. Raymond Hunter Geisel faces up to five years in prison for talking about, without any evidence of planning, an assassination attempt on Obama. In fact, some who know him have said he poses no threat, while others postulated that he meant he wanted to kill Osama bin Laden instead.

The men arrested Sunday are also said to have ties with the white supremacist group Aryan Nations and a splinter group called The Order, as well as to a Neo-Nazi biker group called Sons of Silence. The three men were reportedly upset that a black man like Obama might become president.

Aryan Nations did not return a call for comment. But their Web site notes the affiliation of a commando group trained in violence:

"...several members of the Aryan Nations and Robert J. Matthews went on to form 'The Order' -- a group that conducted practical acts of economic sabotage, assassination and other forms of covert direct action against the tyrannical and anti-Aryan Zionist system."

The Order has produced murderers in the past. Jason Hamilton, who went on a shooting spree before committing suicide last year was allegedly a member of The Order and, by extension, Aryan Nations.

Writers around the world are noticing the lack of concern and coverage of this story in U.S. media outlets. Some allege the U.S. is afraid of exposing the existence of, or paying undue attention to racists in the country. Others are using the lack of coverage to "prove" outlandish conspiracy theories.

The Associated Press reports that the Secret Service sees the case as the exact opposite:

"In an AP interview last week, the head of the Secret Service's Protective division said the white supremacist threat to Obama has been exaggerated.
'I think that it's something that, at times, the media tried to make more of,' Nick Trotta said. ‘We've always watched them, as we watch all the other groups.'"

There are a couple of reasons for the Secret Service to downplay this event. The fear of publicity bringing out copycat killers is a serious one. Also, the Obama campaign has been doing everything in its power to control the story coming out of Denver this week. With an event as political as a convention, that is an understandable desire, but the three men arrested in Denver this week deserve more scrutiny than they received in this age of heightened security risks.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/370
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS . . . . . . . .

Saundra Hummer

August 29th, 2008, 01:50 PM

~~~~~~~

"It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably."

Immanuel Kant
1724-1804
German philosopher
~~~
"A man does what he must -- in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers -- and this is the basis of all human morality."

John F. Kennedy
1917-1963
35th US President
~~~
"If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless, since their chief purpose is to make us bear with patience the injustice of our fellows."

Molière
[Jean-Baptiste Poquelin]
1622-1673
French playwright
~~~~~

Saundra Hummer

August 29th, 2008, 02:18 PM

$$$ A Master-Slave Society
Democrats in Denver Should Skip One of Their Parties and Read the American Monetary ActBy
Richard C. Cook 28/08/08 "ICH"--How are things going at the Democratic Party National Convention in Denver this week?

Are they talking about the fact that the Western world is run by an international financial elite headquartered in London, the financial capitals of mainland Europe (such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris, and Milan), and, of course, New York City?

Are they mentioning at their cocktail parties that the financial elite exert control over the world’s population through the cartels that make up the world’s producing economies and through the civilian and military bureaucracies who work for the governments that kow-tow to them?

Of course they know that the most important cartels are those which control energy resources. And that of these, the commodity of central importance is oil. But is any of this helping them draw conclusions regarding the doubling of oil prices during the last year or about the largest oil company profits in history?

Also, they should be drawing the right conclusions from the fact that every private and pubic enterprise operates on the basis of a money economy, though it would be more accurate to call it a credit economy. This means that whoever controls the issuance of money and credit controls the world. And the world’s monetary systems function on the basis of money and credit being introduced into circulation through loans from the banking system, loans for which interest is charged. So what should that tell them?

In fact, they should be pointing out to each other and their TV viewers that the charging of interest for the use of money is a chain around the neck of everyone on earth. Further, that these cumulative interest charges are built into the price of every product that is manufactured or consumed. And that growth of debt means price increases too.

They should be honest in making it clear that the world is a master-slave society, that the slaves are those who borrow and pay interest, that the masters are those who collect the interest, and that this unjust system has existed in one form or another for thousands of years.

The candidates and delegates are talking about the aspirations of the American people and how everyone should have an opportunity to achieve their dreams. But if the United States were a free nation, they would also be talking about a financial system that destroys people’s dreams.

Unfortunately, the highest rung the candidates and delegates have been able to reach on the ladder of modern-day slavery is the need for more jobs—but they fail to note that jobs are not only the means by which people live, but also the instruments for them to pay the heavy burden of interest the masters of finance require.

What they won’t say is that the world economy is based on usury, something religions used to consider a crime (and which Islam still does). Usury is the charging of interest for the use of money. As the religions backed off from their prohibitions of interest, usury became just excess interest. But that’s not what the word really means.

So what have over two centuries of usury done to the United States?

The best answer ever given to that question was contained in a paper entitled “Revisiting U.S. Public and Private Debt” published in January 2005 by Dr. Bob Blain, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University. The paper updated an earlier study by Dr. Blain published for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the International Social Science Journal, November, 1987, Paris, pages 577-591.

In his paper, Dr. Blain examined the growth of total public and private debt in the U.S. Total debt includes “the debts of governments (federal, state, and local), corporations, farmers, home mortgages, and consumer, commercial, and financial debts.”

In his analysis, Dr. Blain began with data from the Bureau of Economic Analyses of the United States Department of Commerce which covered the years 1916-1976. After that year the Bureau stopped publishing the data.

The figures showed that from 1916-1976, total U.S. debt grew from $82 billion to $3,800 billion ($3.8 trillion). But most of that growth was during the last 21 years, from 1955-1976, when it began to grow exponentially. Dr. Blain wrote, “The consistency of the pattern suggests that some imperative is at work, something that requires debt to increase.”

Dr. Blain found the answer by researching American history. He wrote: “Then I read G.R. Taylor’s 1950 book, Hamilton and the National Debt, which described the debate over Alexander Hamilton’s plan to fund the new economy with borrowed money.” He continued:

“The most revealing account was a speech by the first congressman from Georgia, James Jackson, on February 9, 1790, in which he predicted that adoption of Hamilton’s funding plan would lead to the explosive growth of debt. Jackson said, ‘Though our present debt be but a few millions, in the course of a single century it may be multiplied to an extent we dare not think of.’” (Annals of Congress, Vol. I, February 1790, pp. 1141-2)

From the very beginning, the U.S. had a monetary system based on borrowing and debt. First came the thousands of state chartered banks that began operating late in the Revolutionary War period and continued in one form or another until today. Then there were the two early central banks: the First Bank of the United States (1791-1811) and the Second Bank of the United States (1816-1836). Today’s national banking system began during the Civil War with the National Banking Acts of 1863-64. Then there is the system we are living under today, the Federal Reserve, chartered by Congress in 1913. Even during the times when the government has sold its debt directly to the public, as with war bonds, savings bonds, and Treasury notes and bills, that too has been money borrowed at interest.

Although there have been times in history when money entered into circulation other than through debt, such as with coinage and the Civil War greenbacks, those were exceptions and today are of little importance.

Dr. Blain estimated that from the time Alexander Hamilton placed the U.S. under a debt-based monetary system until today, the debt has compounded at 5.8 percent annually. The big problem with this system, he said, was “that no money was created to pay interest.” He continued:

“Loans created only the principal. Interest had to be paid out of principal. So payment of interest reduced the money supply and slowed economic activity. Recovery could come only when new loans were taken out at least equal to interest paid.”

Dr. Blain concluded, “As long as the money supply of a nation is created as debt costing interest, debt must grow by compound interest.” From a longer-range view, it’s a system that is constantly collapsing and that must constantly be bailed out.

Dr. Blain next sought to update his figures past the 1976 data from the Bureau of Economic Analyses. Turning to the Federal Reserve’s series on “Total Credit Market Debt Outstanding,” he found remarkably similar indicators.

He found that adding data from the Federal Reserve from 1945 to 2003 showed the “debt explosion” continuing. In 1945 total debt was $463.4 billion. In 2003 it was $44,967.7 billion ($45.0 trillion). When he projected the debt level for 2010, he arrived at a figure of $74.9 trillion. By this time the debt curve was climbing so steeply there would be almost a doubling of the amount of total debt in only nine years.

It might be argued that these figures do not take into account inflation. This is because lending at interest is the cause of inflation. The dollars still have to be repaid with interest. The problem occurs when economic growth, measured by GDP, does not keep up.

Looking at the growth of GDP from 1945 to 2003, the increase was from $223.1 billion to $10,987.9 billion, a factor of 49. But the debt ($463.4 billion vs. $44,967.7 billion) grew by a factor of 97, almost twice the rate of GDP growth. Thus the total debt burden on the economy has doubled from a ratio of 2:1 to more than 4:1 (though it was much less than that during the early days of the nation).

But with continued compound growth of debt and a slow- or no-growth state of the economy as we head into a recession, we are starting to see what Dr. Blain called an “acceleration to meltdown.” He wrote:

“We are buying more and more in the same amount of time. Witness the efforts of people to get rid of their excess through yard sales, storage units, and big trash pickup days, and the massive size of what are euphemistically called landfills. While two billion people in the world lack basics such as clean water, food, and shelter, Americans throw away their microwave ovens, televisions, computers, refrigerators, furniture, and cars. Meanwhile, acceleration is applauded as increasing productivity. It’s like arguing that cancer is good because it grows.”

These are the things the Democrats in Denver should be talking about, instead of going to so many parties. They should be making note that the U.S., to quote economists close to the Federal Reserve, is “functionally bankrupt.”

In fact, the debt this nation owes to the banks, to foreign creditors, and to each other can never be paid off. Further, one big reason for all of our fruitless military endeavors overseas may simply be to escape unpleasant economic realities at home. But this is pointless. Nothing creates more debt than war, as the bankers have always known.

The only solution is to adopt a monetary system that is not based on debt. Dr. Blain makes a couple of specific recommendations: 1) “Stop using percentage rates to calculate charges for the use of money”; and 2) “Congress must supply the economy with a money base that is debt-free and interest-free.”

The second point is a call for a new monetary system, not one based solely on lending by the banks or on government borrowing. One organization that has developed a blueprint for such a system is the American Monetary Institute (AMI), headquartered in Chicago. The director of the AMI is Stephen Zarlenga, author of a massive, groundbreaking work: The Lost Science of Money (AMI, 2002). Zarlenga’s assistant is Jamie Walton, a monetary reformer from New Zealand.

AMI will be holding its fourth annual conference in Chicago on September 25-28. Expected as keynote speaker is Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose wife Elizabeth once worked as an intern at AMI. Dr. Bob Blain will be a featured speaker.

On the AMI website at www.monetary.org is a remarkable document, the American Monetary Act. The product of several years of work by Zarlenga and his network, which now includes a number of local chapters around the country, the American Monetary Act would replace today’s debt-based monetary system with one where the government spends or loans money directly into circulation.

Under the Act, the Federal Reserve would be retained as a national financial clearinghouse but would no longer be a bank of issue. The system would be overseen by a Monetary Control Board within the U.S. Treasury Department. The Act also includes a provision for a citizens’ dividend, similar in some respects to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which would inject desperately needed purchasing power into the economy without additional government debt or taxation.

Also promoting a citizens’ dividend, by the way, is Stephen Shafarman in his important new book, Peaceful, Positive Revolution. (Tendril Press, 2008)

It’s the American Monetary Act the candidates and delegates in Denver should skip one of their parties to read, because it’s the only way any of their hopes for America can ever be realized. Says AMI’s Jamie Walton:

“This is a crucial time. Things are happening. We have got some key media people talking and writing about our kind of reforms. The inertia is starting to yield. Things are starting to roll. The worsening conditions in 2009 will give us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be heard above the propaganda.”

Copyright 2008 by Richard C. Cook
Richard C. Cook is a former U.S. federal government analyst, whose career included service with the U.S. Civil Service Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury Department. He is a contributor to the American Monetary Act. His articles on economics, politics, and space policy have appeared in numerous websites and print magazines. His book on monetary reform, entitled We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform, will soon be published by Tendril Press. He is the author of Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age, called by one reviewer, “the most important spaceflight book of the last twenty years.” His website is www.richardccook.com. Comments or requests to be added to his mailing list may be sent to WhiteLightPress@gmail.com

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
$$$$$$$

Saundra Hummer

August 29th, 2008, 02:26 PM

^^^^^ It's Time for Real Change
How the Democrats Helped Bush Hijack the Country
By
Cynthia McKinney
28/08/08 "ICH" -- - Our country has been hijacked and the Democrats have proven themselves to have been in on the plan. When it came to the Constitution, the Democratic leadership showed us that aiding and abetting illegal spying on us was more important to them than protecting our civil liberties.

When it came to war and occupation, the Democratic leadership showed us that financing an illegal and immoral war, based on lies, was more important to them than the people's desire for peace.

And when the people, hurting from the financial mismanagement of this country, called for accountability for the crimes that have been committed against the people here, against the global community, against nature, itself, the Democratic leadership took impeachment off the table!

Grassroots Democratic Party activists want a livable wage! A "Medicare-for-all" type of health care system, repeal of the Bush tax cuts that have ushered in the greatest income inequality in this country since the Great Depression. But the Democratic Party has shown itself to be incapable of providing even a semblance of the values even of its own activists.

The Democratic Party's national leadership didn't even mention Hurricanes Katrina and Rita survivors in their Congressional agenda for the first 100 days.

The Democratic Party's national leadership gave us the Iran Naval Blockade bill, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and telecom immunity. They continue to fund war and occupation to the tune of $720 million a day while our children graduate from college tens--or even hundreds--of thousands of dollars in debt. Entire cities are going into receivership while the Democratic leadership in Congress gives the Pentagon one half trillion dollars annually with no accountability, no strings attached. That's over and above spending for war.

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are the hallmarks of the new U.S. gulag Democrats are helping to create.

They want us to believe that China and Russia are our enemies, in addition to the 60 countries on Dick Cheney's list. They want us to believe that workers, who come to this country to support thier families after Democratic leadership in the country saddl3ed workers with NAFTA, are our enemies. But we are here today to declare that we know who the real enemies are: those false patriots that George Washington warned us of, who wrap themselves in the flag while betraying our values.

We are the true patriots!

We know that the strength of this country lies in the way it countenances dissent. And we are here to dissent. We are not deterred by reports of sleek, new detention facilities or recently-acquired taser guns that kill. For we come to dissent in peace. Indeed, we dissent for peace.

Today, we declare our independence from conformity and "go-along-to-get-along" politics. We declare our willingness to be radical in pursuit of peace and in our hunger for justice. We can see clearly now who the real stickup artists are and that's why we're in Denver!

Our actions here this week begin the disarming of the hijackers. We no longer are afraid. And we won't be deceived. We know that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for more war in Afghanistan and other parts of the world.

But today, we are now free.

Free to stand on the four pillars guiding our political engagement: environmental wisdom, peace, grassroots democratcy, and social justice. And finally, we know our power. We know the power of the people. We know that true power rests in the hands of the people. People who are willing to take a stand.

We need look no further than Haiti, Code,I'voire, Spain, and India to see the power of the people at the ballot box. No further than Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Paraguay to know that if they can do it, so can we.

Provided our elections are fair!

And if the Democrats cave in, in the face of fraud, disfranchisement, and theft, then we will be there to demand election integrity!

All over this country, the signs are there. People from New York to Florida, Washington State to California, Colorado to Texas are liberating themselves. We must not stop! Our country is worth it! Let's take our country back! Power to the People!

Cynthia McKinney is the Green Party's nominee for president

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info ^^^^^^^

Saundra Hummer

August 30th, 2008, 03:30 PM

+++++++++++
McCain's
dangerous choice Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for "inexperience," here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people.

Huh?

Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:

She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.1

Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.2

She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. 3
Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4

She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.5

She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6

How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.7

This is information the American people need to see. Please take a moment to forward this email to your friends and family.

We also asked Alaska MoveOn members what the rest of us should know about their governor. The response was striking. Here's a sample:

She is really just a mayor from a small town outside Anchorage who has been a governor for only 1.5 years, and has ZERO national and international experience. I shudder to think that she could be the person taking that 3AM call on the White House hotline, and the one who could potentially be charged with leading the US in the volatile international scene that exists today. —Rose M., Fairbanks, AK

She is VERY, VERY conservative, and far from perfect. She's a hunter and fisherwoman, but votes against the environment again and again. She ran on ethics reform, but is currently under investigation for several charges involving hiring and firing of state officials. She has NO experience beyond Alaska. —Christine B., Denali Park, AK

As an Alaskan and a feminist, I am beyond words at this announcement. Palin is not a feminist, and she is not the reformer she claims to be. —Karen L., Anchorage, AK

Alaskans, collectively, are just as stunned as the rest of the nation. She is doing well running our State, but is totally inexperienced on the national level, and very much unequipped to run the nation, if it came to that. She is as far right as one can get, which has already been communicated on the news. In our office of thirty employees (dems, republicans, and nonpartisans), not one person feels she is ready for the V.P. position.—Sherry C., Anchorage, AK

She's vehemently anti-choice and doesn't care about protecting our natural resources, even though she has worked as a fisherman. McCain chose her to pick up the Hillary voters, but Palin is no Hillary. —Marina L., Juneau, AK

I think she's far too inexperienced to be in this position. I'm all for a woman in the White House, but not one who hasn't done anything to deserve it. There are far many other women who have worked their way up and have much more experience that would have been better choices. This is a patronizing decision on John McCain's part- and insulting to females everywhere that he would assume he'll get our vote by putting "A Woman" in that position.—Jennifer M., Anchorage, AK

So Governor Palin is a staunch anti-choice religious conservative. She's a global warming denier who shares John McCain's commitment to Big Oil. And she's dramatically inexperienced.

In picking Sarah Palin, John McCain has made the religious right very happy. And he's made a very dangerous decision for our country.

In the next few days, many Americans will be wondering what McCain's vice-presidential choice means. Please pass this information along to your friends and family.

Thanks for all you do.

–Ilyse, Noah, Justin, Karin and the rest of the team

Sources: 1. "Sarah Palin," Wikipedia, Accessed August 29, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

2. "McCain Selects Anti-Choice Sarah Palin as Running Mate," NARAL Pro-Choice America, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17515&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=1

3. "Sarah Palin, Buchananite," The Nation, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17736&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=2
4. "'Creation science' enters the race," Anchorage Daily News, October 27, 2006
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17737&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=3

5. "Palin buys climate denial PR spin—ignores science," Huffington Post, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17517&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=4

6. "McCain VP Pick Completes Shift to Bush Energy Policy," Sierra Club, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17518&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=5

"Choice of Palin Promises Failed Energy Policies of the Past," League of Conservation Voters, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17519&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=6

"Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor," The Times of London, May 23, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=17520&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=7

7 "McCain met Palin once before yesterday," MSNBC, August 29, 2008
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=21119&id=13661-4054703-fe2ccWx&t=8

This came in a news-letter from:
http://www.moveon.org
+++++++++++++++

RonF

August 30th, 2008, 06:36 PM

6 things the Palin pick says about McCain
By JIM VANDEHEI & JOHN F. HARRIS | 8/30/08 8:57 AM EST

The selection of a running mate is among the most consequential, most defining decisions a presidential nominee can make. John McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says a lot about his decison-making — and some of it is downright breathtaking.

We knew McCain is a politician who relishes improvisation, and likes to go with his gut. But it is remarkable that someone who has repeatedly emphasized experience in this campaign named an inexperienced governor he barely knew to be his No. 2. Whatever you think of the pick, here are six things it tells us about McCain:

1. He’s desperate. Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests. The truth is McCain is essentially tied or trailing in every swing state that matters — and too close for comfort in several states like Indiana and Montana the GOP usually wins pretty easily in presidential races. On top of that, voters seem very inclined to elect Democrats in general this election — and very sick of the Bush years.

McCain could easily lose in an electoral landslide. That is the private view of Democrats and Republicans alike.

McCain’s pick shows he is not pretending. Politicians, even “mavericks” like McCain, play it safe when they think they are winning — or see an easy path to winning. They roll the dice only when they know that the risks of conventionality are greater than the risks of boldness.

The Republican brand is a mess. McCain is reasonably concluding that it won’t work to replicate George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s electoral formula, based around national security and a big advantage among Y chromosomes, from 2004.

“She’s a fresh new face in a party that’s dying for one — the antidote to boring white men,” a campaign official said.

Palin, the logic goes, will prompt voters to give him a second look — especially women who have watched Democrats reject Hillary Rodham Clinton for Barack Obama.

The risks of a backlash from choosing someone so unknown and so untested are obvious. In one swift stroke, McCain demolished what had been one of his main arguments against Obama.

“I think we’re going to have to examine our tag line, ‘dangerously inexperienced,’” a top McCain official said wryly.

2. He’s willing to gamble — bigtime. Let’s face it: This is not the pick of a self-confident candidate. It is the political equivalent of a trick play or, as some Democrats called it, a Hail Mary pass in football. McCain talks incessantly about experience, and then goes and selects a woman he hardly knows, who hardly knows foreign policy and who can hardly be seen as instantly ready for the presidency.

He is smart enough to know it could work, at least politically. Many Republicans see this pick as a brilliant stroke because it will be difficult for Democrats to run hard against a woman in the wake of the Hillary Clinton drama. Will this push those disgruntled Hillary voters McCain’s way? Perhaps. But this is hardly aimed at them: It is directed at the huge bloc of independent women — especially those who do not see abortion as a make-or-break issue — who could decide this election.

McCain has a history of taking dares. Palin represents his biggest one yet.

3. He’s worried about the political implications of his age. Like a driver overcorrecting out of a swerve, he chooses someone who is two years younger than the youthful Obama, and 28 years younger than he is. (He turned 72 Friday.) The father-daughter comparison was inevitable when they appeared next to each other.

4. He’s not worried about the actuarial implications of his age. He thinks he’s in fine fettle, and Palin wouldn’t be performing the only constitutional duty of a vice president, which is standing by in case a president dies or becomes incapacitated. If he was really concerned about an inexperienced person sitting in the Oval Office we would be writing about vice presidential nominee Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge or Condoleezza Rice.
There is no plausible way that McCain could say that he picked Palin, who was only elected governor in 2006 and whose most extended public service was as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 8,471), because she was ready to be president on Day One.

Nor can McCain argue that he was looking for someone he could trust as a close adviser. Most people know the staff at the local Starbucks better than McCain knows Palin. They met for the first time last February at a National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Then, they spoke again — by phone — on Sunday while she was at the Alaska state fair and he was at home in Arizona.

McCain has made a mockery out of his campaign's longtime contention that Barack Obama is too dangerously inexperienced to be commander in chief. Now, the Democratic ticket boasts 40 years of national experience (four years for Obama and 36 years for Joseph Biden of Delaware), while the Republican ticket has 26 (McCain’s four yeasr in the House and 22 in the Senate.)

The McCain campaign has made a calculation that most voters don’t really care about the national experience or credentials of a vice president, and that Palin’s ebullient personality and reputation as a refomer who took on cesspool politics in Alaska matters more.

5. He’s worried about his conservative base. If he had room to maneuver, there were lots of people McCain could have selected who would have represented a break from Washington politics as usual. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman comes to mind (and it certainly came to McCain’s throughout the process). He had no such room. GOP stalwarts were furious over trial balloons about the possibility of choosing a supporter of abortion rights, including the possibility that he would reach out to his friend.

Palin is an ardent opponent of abortion who was previously scheduled to keynote the Republican National Coalition for Life's "Life of the Party" event in the Twin Cities this week.

“She’s really a perfect selection,” said Darla St. Martin, the Co-Director of the National Right to Life Committee. It is no secret McCain wanted to shake things up in this race — and he realized he was limited to a shake-up conservatives could stomach.

6. At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain. People may find him a refreshing maverick, or an erratic egotist. In either event, he marches to his own beat.

On the upside, his team did manage to play to the media’s love of drama, fanning speculation about his possible choices and maximizing coverage of the decision.

On the potential downside, the drama was evidently entirely genuine. The fact that McCain only spoke with Palin about the vice presidency for the first time on Sunday, and that he was seriously considering Lieberman until days ago, suggests just how hectic and improvisational his process was.

In the end, this selection gives him a chance to reclaim the mantle of a different kind of politician intent on changing Washington. He once had a legitimate claim to this: after all, he took on his own party over campaign finance reform and immigration. He jeopardized this claim in recent months by embracing ideas he once opposed (Bush tax cuts) and ideas that appeared politically motivated (gas tax holiday).

Spontaneity, with a touch of impulsiveness, is one of the traits that attract some of McCain’s admirers. Whether it’s a good calling card for a potential president will depend on the reaction in coming days to what looks for the moment like the most daring vice presidential selection in generations.

RonF

August 30th, 2008, 06:41 PM

McCain's Palin pick is the epitome of tokenism
Suddenly all anyone needs to qualify as a potential commander in chief is to be a religious ideologue with female gender characteristics?

By Joe Conason

Aug. 30, 2008

It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Having served as governor of Alaska for less than two years -- and as mayor of a small town before that -- her qualifications for national office are minimal.

Palin is the epitome of tokenism, exactly what conservative Republicans have always claimed to scorn, until today, as the politics of quotas and political correctness. Even Rush Limbaugh is a feminazi now (at least until Election Day).

But if Palin's résumé is limited, to put it politely, she possesses the only two qualities that McCain now seems to consider essential: She is a right-wing religious ideologue with female gender characteristics. Suddenly that is all anyone needs to qualify as a potential commander in chief of the world's most powerful military. We probably won't hear so much from now on about "experience" and "judgment," McCain's vaunted standard for the presidency until ... today. We certainly won't hear again about the "person most prepared to take my place," the phrase he has used more than once to describe his main criterion for a running mate.

When CNN political correspondent Dana Bash interviewed McCain last April, she mentioned his joke that one of the two main tasks of the vice president is to check on the president's health every day, a job of particular importance in his case. What did he mean by that? It was just a humorous remark, he said. But when she pressed him further, McCain said: "I think about whether that person who I select would be most prepared to take my place. And that would be the key criteria [sic]."

Sometime between then and now, a focus group must have told McCain and his handlers that the experience argument wasn't cutting against Barack Obama, that the nomination of Joe Biden as Obama's running mate had eviscerated it completely -- and that instead he and his consultants had better find a way to corral disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, or forget about winning come November.

Clearly nobody in the Republican camp is concerned that Palin would be clueless in a national security crisis, should a 72-year-old or older President McCain abruptly die or become disabled. Perhaps the GOP will have to mothball all those "Country First" banners along with the experience meme, because no candidate who puts the security of the nation above politics would ever contemplate this maneuver.

Even as a political tactic, choosing Palin may well backfire. Presumably the same Clinton voters who were willing to vote for McCain mostly to vote against Obama -- despite the Arizona senator's right-wing record on reproductive rights and pay equity -- will be pleased by the choice of Palin. But by definition those voters were already attracted to the Republican side. The calculation is that millions of undecided Hillary backers will cross partisan lines because a woman is on McCain's ticket. But will they believe that Palin is comparable to Clinton just because both happen to be female? Or will they regard that comparison as an insult to their heroine?

The Palin nomination will be celebrated as a measure of social progress by optimists like my friend Joan Walsh. At the very least, let us hope that the Republicans will no longer complain so bitterly about affirmative action, since they have taken that policy to its absurd conclusion in what may be the most fateful decision of this campaign.

Back when the first woman was nominated by a major party to be vice president, conservatives didn't react quite so positively as today. In August 1984, an editorial in the National Review mocked Democrats for choosing Geraldine Ferraro to run with former Vice President Walter Mondale. "The Democrats will attempt to project the issue as 'whether a woman can be Vice President,' a point the Republicans can cheerfully concede, returning to the question of whether this woman in particular should be the Vice-President ... Mrs. Ferraro is manifestly an affirmative-action nominee. She has been in the House only since 1979 and cannot be said, on the record, to be as qualified to be President, if necessary, as, say John Glenn, Fritz Hollings, Mo Udall, or -- George Bush."

Looking back on the Ferraro nomination, another well-known conservative wrote: "I believe that someday we are going to have a woman president, possibly during my life, and I've often thought the best way to pave the way for this was to first nominate and elect a woman as vice-president. But I think Mondale made a serious mistake when he picked Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate. In my view, he guessed wrong in deciding to take a congresswoman that almost nobody had ever heard of and try to put her in line for the presidency ... I don't know who among the Democrats might have been a better choice, but it was obvious Mondale picked Geraldine Ferraro simply because he believed there was a 'gender gap' where I was concerned and she was a woman."

Those are the words of Ronald Reagan in his 1991 memoir, "An American Life," pouring scorn on the nomination of a woman who had served six years in Congress working on foreign policy issues. In retrospect, he had a point. Only this Palin gambit could make the Ferraro mistake look responsible and wise.

Saundra Hummer

August 30th, 2008, 11:37 PM

Wrote my feelings and thoughts about her being his choice (I don't believe this for a moment), and will post them tomorrow. My daughter called mid post and didn't get to finish it, so will tomorrow when things are a bit more sane around here.

Anyway, what a deal, and, the Christian Right is pouring money into John McCains funding machine so heavily in one day, just since the announcement that no one can quite believe it. I believe I heard that 6 million dollars has been given to his campaign in the the one day since it became known that she is the chosen one.

We know the Christian Right's motives and we've seen the outcome of it's interference in politics.

This is all just crazy.

Saundra Hummer

August 31st, 2008, 10:54 AM

////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\
Over 150,000 march in Mexico against crime
Sun Aug 31, 2008 11:06am EDT
By
Mica Rosenberg

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - More than 150,000 Mexicans dressed in white marched on Saturday to protest a wave of kidnappings and gruesome murders, putting pressure on President Felipe Calderon to meet his promises to crack down on crime.

Demonstrators filled the capital's historic Zocalo Square, holding candles and pictures of kidnap victims and bearing signs that read, "Enough Is Enough".

People marched in cities throughout the country, including along the U.S.-Mexico border where increasingly brazen drug gangs are battling each other for control of smuggling routes. More than 2,300 people have been killed in drug murders this year.

Long used to violent crime, Mexicans were nevertheless outraged by the kidnapping and murder of Fernando Marti, 14, whose body was found in a car trunk in Mexico City on August 1, even though his businessman father had paid a ransom.

"We are prisoners in our own homes," said Maricarmen Alcocer, 40, a housewife.

Mexico is one of the worst countries in the world for abductions, along with conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia.

Protester Manuel Ramirez, 50, who has not seen his daughter Monica since she was kidnapped in 2004, complained that criminals were becoming bolder.

"They are more bloodthirsty, they make their victims disappear, they mutilate them, they cut their ears off just as in the case of my daughter. We do not know where she is," Ramirez said.

Kidnappings jumped almost 40 percent between 2004 and 2007, according to official statistics. Police say there were 751 kidnappings in Mexico last year, but independent crime research institute ICESI says the real number could be above 7,000.

Calderon, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and state governors held an emergency crime summit last week and vowed to stamp out abductions and violent crime.

CORRUPT POLICE
Most crimes in Mexico go unsolved, with corrupt police and justice officials often complicating investigations. Several policemen were arrested for Marti's kidnapping.

Drug violence has also exploded in the past three years as Mexico's most-wanted man, escaped convict Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, takes on the Gulf cartel and other gangs for control of the drug trade.

Eleven headless bodies were dumped in a small town in the Yucatan peninsula on Thursday and another decapitated corpse was found nearby. Police suspect the Gulf cartel, and Mexican media say the victims were likely alive when their heads were cut off.

Calderon sent 25,000 troops and federal police against the drug cartels after he took office in December 2006, but killings have increased.

While much of the drug violence is between rival smugglers and does not affect ordinary Mexicans, kidnappings and robberies at gunpoint are common threats.

Protesters were angry at both Calderon and Ebrard, a possible leftist presidential candidate in 2012.

"The message is: Get to work or we'll hold you accountable. We're angry," said Eduardo Gallo, an accountant whose 25-year-old daughter was kidnapped in 2000 and murdered.

Hundreds of thousands of people held a similar anti-crime march in Mexico City in 2004.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.
Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

Last week we rented the Kiki Camerana movie on DVD. We had seen it in bits and pieces on television, however we had never seen it in it's entirety. This event happened several years ago when Ronald Reagan & GHW Bush held office.

Actual news clips, within the movie, showed Ronald Reagan canoodling with a Mexican official, being the gracious good natured host, the usual drill, giving this known associate of the darkest underworld figures in Mexico, and all the drug lords within the Mexican government and along the sidelines, all they had asked for, as "Ronnie" laughed the way we were all so accustomed to seeing, with his cocky shaking of his head, as he knew the inside joke, the one the American public had no clue about; thus making sure that the drug trade and it's violence could & would continue unabated. This debased attitude from "Ronnie" after the hours up hours of torture Kiki Camerana had endured due to our fight against the drug lords of Mexico, and it's corrupt and extremely violent culture. Ronnie kept laughing and being his most charming self when he knew full well the horrific suffering Kiki Camerana had endured. Death for Kiki didn't come quickly or easily.

No conscience, not with any of these men, Ronald Reagan included.

This act by Ronald Reagan just goes to show the type of men who run for government positions. It's about number one more often than not, with them not caring about the pain and real suffering of others, as long as their own agenda is on track, this no matter however much they profess publically that they do.

Look at Kissinger's involvement in South America and how many died down there due to his acts, acts he denied for years, but his involvement has been proven, his falsehoods are now out in the open, we now know about his nefarious involvements, the things he has done under two different presidents.

Look at our dirty wars in Central America, and now, here we are in Iraq with hopes of bombing the hell out of Iran and any number of dissadent countries.

This pattern which has evolved is evil; and looking back on our past acts, nothing good has ever come of them. SRH ////\\\\////\\\\

Saundra Hummer

August 31st, 2008, 12:07 PM

So, George W. Bush is going to head to Texas to drop in on the weather center where they're tracking and monitoring Gustav. Like his late interest in hurricanes really matter?

I remember him having flown in the most expensive lighting system's that Hollywood uses at enormous cost and effort just so he could stand in a sweat permeated blue shirt, sleeves rolled up like he'd done a hard days work, standing in front of the beautiful church in New Orleans for the most expensive photo op imaginable.

The locals were so happy to have some light to try to live in, but GW, once off the stage and in the helecopter did nothing to keep any light sourse going for Katrina's victims, for the people of New Orleans darkness was back upon them. There was no help or compassion for them. It wasn't how it was, instead, they were left to go without; to suffer in the dark.

Helicopters could bring in GW along with his body guards, the Secret Service and more, but helicopters couldn't take in food or water for those who were dying? It was to me that GW and Cheney saw nothing to be gained by helping anyone. Instead, it was the giant photo ops which were the order of the day, but helping those who needed everything just to survive wasn't part of their mindset.

Three years later, just look at what has and hasn't been done. It's pitiful

I say, along with those in the know, "Bring in the Dutch" along with their expertise. They've held back the force of the stormiest of oceans now for decades. Why is it that we only build puny earthen dikes and levee's, depending on them while holding our collective breath, knowing full well they are subject to failures with each and every storm. This when we are the most powerful & richest world power.

Expensive for sure, however, how much would such a project help the economy in states subject to flooding and storm surges? I believe the area would prosper if they could work on an equivelent system, as holding back the ocean would, in the end, stop after-storm expenses; stop the deaths and destruction of lives.

We have the Netherlands to look upon for their own success story, the stats are there for us to see and we could be doing the same couldn't we?

What a deal, Bush going to visit a Hurricane area. Infuriating isn't it? Sure it is, especially after his past history. He should put money spent doing this into relief for those who are still suffering from Katrina. Sure. Right. Like he would, as he really doesn't care in my estimation.

Saundra Hummer

August 31st, 2008, 01:23 PM

~~~~~~

Alaskan Is McCain’s Choice;
First Woman on G.O.P. Ticket
By
MICHAEL COOPER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
August 30, 2008
DAYTON, Ohio — Senator John McCain astonished the political world on Friday by naming Sarah Palin, a little-known governor of Alaska and self-described “hockey mom” with almost no foreign policy experience, as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.

Ms. Palin, 44, a social conservative, former union member and mother of five who has been governor for two years, was on none of the widely discussed McCain campaign short lists for vice president. In selecting her, Mr. McCain reached far outside the Washington Beltway in an election year in which the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, is running on a platform of change.

“She’s not from these parts, and she’s not from Washington, but when you get to know her, you’re going to be as impressed as I am,” Mr. McCain told a midday rally of 15,000 people in a basketball arena here shortly before Ms. Palin, with her husband and four of her children, strode out onto the stage.

Within moments, Ms. Palin made an explicit appeal to the disappointed supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by praising not only Mrs. Clinton but also the only other woman in American history who has been on a presidential ticket, Geraldine A. Ferraro, Walter F. Mondale’s Democratic running mate in 1984.

“Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women of America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all,” Ms. Palin said to huge applause.

Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain then embarked on a bus tour across Ohio and north into western Pennsylvania to Pittsburgh, a route that took in a wide swath of the central battleground in this year’s presidential campaign.

Mr. McCain’s pick, Ms. Palin, who opposes abortion, played especially well among evangelicals and other social conservatives, who have always viewed Mr. McCain warily and who have been jittery in recent weeks because of reports that Mr. McCain was considering naming a running mate who favors abortion rights.

The McCain campaign sees Ms. Palin as a kindred spirit to Mr. McCain, particularly in her history of taking heat from fellow Republicans for bucking them on issues and spotlighting their ethical failings. Like Mr. McCain’s, her political profile is built in part on her opposition to questionable government spending projects.

But they differ on a number of policies. Ms. Palin opposed Mr. McCain on one of the most prominent Alaskan issues: She supports drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Mr. McCain opposes it, much to the consternation of some Republicans. Mr. McCain’s environmental policy accepts that global warming is driven by pollution; Ms. Palin has said she is not convinced. A spokeswoman for Ms. Palin, Maria Comella, said, “Governor Palin not only stands with John McCain in his belief that global warming is a critical issue that must be addressed, but she has been a leader in addressing climate change.”

Ms. Palin, a former mayor of the small town of Wasilla, an Anchorage suburb, rose to prominence as a whistle-blower uncovering ethical misconduct in state government. Her selection amounted to a gamble that an infusion of new leadership — and the novelty of the Republican Party’s first female candidate for vice president — would more than compensate for the risk that Ms. Palin could undercut one of the McCain campaign’s central arguments, that Mr. Obama is too inexperienced to be president.

Democrats and at least some shocked Republicans questioned the judgment of Mr. McCain, who has said repeatedly on the campaign trail that his running mate should have the qualifications to immediately step into the role of commander in chief.

Mr. McCain’s words on the matter have had more than usual resonance this year because of his age — he turned 72 on Friday, and hopes to be the oldest person ever elected to a first term — and his history with skin cancer.

Ms. Palin appears to have traveled very little outside the United States. In July 2007, she had to get a passport before she visited members of the Alaska National Guard stationed in Kuwait, according to her deputy communications director, Sharon Leighow. She also visited wounded troops in Germany during that trip.

Mr. McCain’s announcement of Ms. Palin came in the immediate afterglow that Democrats were enjoying from their nomination of Mr. Obama, and for one news cycle at least, as Republicans intended, Ms. Palin effectively muffled the news coverage of Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech to 80,000 people at the Democratic National Convention in Denver on Thursday night.

Mr. Obama wished her well in a call from his campaign bus.

“He also wished her good luck, but not too much luck,” said Robert Gibbs, a senior strategist to Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama’s fellow Democrats were considerably less welcoming, and most said they were flabbergasted by what they characterized as a desperate, cynical or dangerous choice, given Ms. Palin’s lack of any experience in national security.

“On his 72nd birthday, this is the guy’s judgment of who he wants one heartbeat from the presidency?” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, who said the selection smacked of political panic. “Please.”

Mr. McCain’s advisers said Friday that Mr. McCain was well aware that Ms. Palin would be criticized for her lack of foreign policy experience, but that he viewed her as exceptionally talented and intelligent and that he felt she would be able to be educated quickly.

“She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years, and most doctors think that he’ll be around at least that long,” said Charlie Black, one of Mr. McCain’s top advisers, making light of concerns about Mr. McCain’s health, which Mr. McCain’s doctors reported as excellent in May.

Many conservatives said that the choice would energize them, giving Mr. McCain the support of a highly active group of voters and volunteers whose support was crucial to both of President Bush’s victories.

“They’re beyond ecstatic,” said Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition.

Ms. Palin is known to conservatives for opting not to have an abortion after learning that the child she was carrying, her youngest, had Down syndrome. “It is almost impossible to exaggerate how important that is to the conservative faith community,” Mr. Reed said.

The choice of Ms. Palin was reminiscent of former President George Bush’s selection of Dan Quayle, then a barely known senator from Indiana as his running mate in 1988.

It was far from clear Friday whether adding a woman to the ticket would persuade Clinton supporters to come over to the Republicans, given Ms. Palin’s differences with Mrs. Clinton on issues from abortion rights to her positions on health care and climate change. Some women said that the pick could be seen as patronizing, a suggestion that women would vote based on a candidate’s sex rat