Friendly Neighbour

Sauce for the Goose

2008-07-22T23:34:00.002-04:00

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
-- John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts, 1630 --

A TERRIFIC POST from Bill W. (who is also a contributor at Crooks and Liars, who've also posted it) really lays on the line just how much harm the criminal Bush administration has done to international law, peace, and just incidentally, America's reputation. And it comes with a great video clip! (uploaded to YouTube by Bill W. - man, this guy does it all and gives you your correct change to boot.)

Sudan Cites US Example Why It Won't Comply With UN, ICC

One sad truth that Bill doesn't go into (and I'm racking my brains here to find a base he hasn't covered) - from the point of view of someone who isn't an American (I'm proudly Canadian, eh?) - is that this is just another example of the idea of American Exceptionalism that has been accepted and even nurtured under the good old Stars and Stripes for far too long.

Ah yes, American Exceptionalism - the bastard child of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. The not-quite-so-evil twin of Might Makes Right. Nurtured and fed on a falsehood that is older than the country itself - the idea that the US is so morally superior to everyone else that it can be described as The City on the Hill, The Beacon of Democracy, the Font of Everything That is Good in The World.

And the reason that the world doesn't have to be concerned about the actions of America or its leaders? - because they're just so darned peachy-keen, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed gee whiz golly gosh dripping with good intentions. And if those good intentions turn out to make some US businesses a tidy profit? Well all the better! We'll throw in a slice of hot apple pie, and teach your folks how to play baseball.

And if those good intentions lead to us backing a coup against your democratically elected leader and installing a business-friendly tinpot dictator who starts murdering the opposition? Well shucks, dang, and whoa there Bessie. That never happens! Except for a few times in Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Panama, and enough places that it's hard to remember them all. But you can rest assured it will never happen again anyway. Trust us.

And not to seem too critical of our well-armed neighbour to the south, I'd like to add that this principle of Exceptionalism is running afoul of another principle that originated in the US, in fact the very principle that the ICC is based on. Yes, that's right, it's called the Nuremberg principle. The idea is that entire countries are not responsible for wars, their LEADERS are. Especially when the leaders in question have been caught in so many lies that no-one can even keep track anymore. And let's not forget that indispensable adjunct to the Nuremberg principle, that the leaders must be held accountable for their actions. Please let's not forget that.

If Bush and his gang of criminals are not held accountable, and significantly if that accounting is not spearheaded by America herself, any credibility you have internationally will be lost forever. Because in Bush's eye's it's not the country as a whole that benefits from this status of City on A Hill, it's himself personally. And that's just not right. As important as it is for the world that Bush be brought to justice it is equally important to America that they take an active role. Else you'll be painted with the brush of complicity in his crimes.

The eyes of all people are upon you.

To wind it up, I've got some more video for you that's to the point:

All Presidential Accountability Goes Out The Window!

Oh, and there's one other thing. Did I mention that this is all going on against the backdrop of a British Parliament report that US assurances that it does not torture can no longer be taken at face value? Well, I meant to. It seems relevant.

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: War Crimes, ICC, International Criminal Court, American Exceptionalism

Hey, I'm Still Blogging

2007-07-13T20:17:00.000-04:00

Visitors to Friendly Neighbour's backyard could not help but have noticed that I haven't posted here in some time. I just want you to know that this doesn't mean I've gone quiet or anything, just that I have devoted all of my blogging energies to my team blog, Les Enragés.org. And things are really hopping over there lately, with the addition of a number of new contributors. Wordsmith and Unconventional Conventionist are new to the game, and are signing on kind of as apprentices to augment the efforts they are putting into their own nascent blogs. Kvatch, of Blognonymous fame, is an old hand, and I'm sure will be able to teach me a thing or two. Kvatch also contributes to If I Ran The Zoo.

The Disappeared

2007-03-11T16:41:00.000-04:00

Human Rights Watch says 38 Rendition Victims are 'Missing'

From BBC News,

"Thirty eight people believed to have been held in secret CIA prisons - or black sites - are missing, according to a report by a US human rights group.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report also details allegations of torture by a terror suspect who was held in secret custody for more than two years."

I speculated in an earlier post on rendition victims that someone who had been tortured and then proven innocent was more likely to be killed than someone who could be shown to be guilty of involvement in terrorism. Why? Because an innocent victim is more of an embarrassment to the government, more of a legal threat to the torturers (with the potential for both criminal charges and lawsuits), and could 'reveal our methods to the terrorists.' - Bush and his administration don't want their methods revealed, after all. Does anyone really believe that Bush's motive is to protect America, and not to shield himself or others from justice? Because I sure as hell don't. And I'll tell you why.

"In a televised address in September, Mr Bush admitted that 14 detainees had been held at secret CIA prisons that used interrogation methods that were 'tough' but 'lawful and necessary.'

'The United States does not torture,' Mr Bush said at the time. 'It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorised it - and I will not authorise it.' "

Rii-iight. Anybody remember this gem? These remarks were made by Bush in April, 2004;

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Bush's statements as pResident show the same credibility as that Jon Lovitz character from Saturday Night Live - "Yeah, that's the ticket." - He is, in short, a pathological liar.

This article from The Washington Post gives you some idea of the treatment rendition victims undergo. Marwan Jabour's ordeal,

"...began in May 2004. In interviews, he said he was muscled out of a car as it pulled inside the gates of a secluded villa in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

In the week before his arrival, Jabour said, Pakistani intelligence officers had beaten, abused and burned him at a jailhouse in Lahore, where he was arrested. There two female American interrogators also questioned him and told him he.. ..would vanish for life if he refused. He said he was later blindfolded and driven four hours north to the villa in a wealthy residential neighborhood.. ..Jabour spent five weeks there, chained to a wall and prevented from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. He said he was beaten nightly by Pakistani guards after hours of questions from U.S. interrogators. Then he and others were whisked off to CIA-run sites. Some sites were in Eastern Europe; Jabour went to one in Afghanistan. Interrogators -- whom he described as Americans in their late 20s and early 30s -- told Jabour he would never see his three children again."

In Jabour's case, there was a relatively happy ending - which can't be said for the 38 still missing and unaccounted for.

"On his last day in CIA custody, Marwan Jabour, an accused al-Qaeda paymaster, was stripped naked, seated in a chair and videotaped by agency officers. Afterward, he was shackled and blindfolded, headphones were put over his ears, and he was given an injection that made him groggy. Jabour, 30, was laid down in the back of a van, driven to an airstrip and put on a plane with at least one other prisoner.
His release from a secret facility in Afghanistan on June 30, 2006, was a surprise to Jabour -- and came just after the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's assertion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners like him."

I've already linked to Maher Arar's first-person account of his rendition to Syria, which follows the same pattern, as does the treatment of Jose Padilla. H. Candace Gorman at Huffington Post has a similarly sickening story of a man named Al-Ghizzawi, who was kept in Guantamo Bay's Camp Six (built by Halliburton at probably obscene profit margins with your tax dollars.) That article has this scathing passage, reminiscent of a recent Jurassic Pork piece. "Mr. Al-Ghizzawi asked me what the American people are doing about Guantánamo. I explained to him that Americans were really busy these days because some two-bit model died and everyone is trying to figure out who the father of her baby is."

Maybe America should spend a little more time on trying to figure out what happened to their democracy, and the rule of law.

TAGS: Disappearances, Torture, Rendition, War Crimes

A Ray of Light?

2007-03-02T00:15:00.000-05:00

News From the Front in the Real War of Terror

On the thread about Chris Dodd's efforts to restore habeas corpus to the American judicial system, GL responded with, "A ray of light breaking through the clouds?" Perhaps, but it may have been little more than the bright line that one detects along the edge of a closed door in a very dark room. A decision rendered by a federal judge in the Jose Padilla case may signal the opening of that door, if only by the slightest crack. With the light may come some much needed air into the room.

As reported by BBC News,

"A US citizen suspected of being an al-Qaeda conspirator is mentally unfit to stand trial, a psychiatrist for his defence has said.

Speaking at a hearing to determine Jose Padilla's competence, Angela Hegarty said he lacked the capacity to assist his counsel in the case."

Padilla was most recently in the news when he was photographed blindfolded and wearing sound-blocking earmuffs on a trip to the dentist. The inhuman sensory deprivation that he has been subjected to for 3½ years is the direct cause of his current mental incompetence. Naomi Klein of Alternet has more details. This is a link I put up in the hope you will actually click on it and read Naomi's entire shocking post.

"Arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare airport, Padilla, a Brooklyn-born former gang member, was classified as an 'enemy combatant' and taken to a navy prison in Charleston, South Carolina. He was kept in a cell 9ft by 7ft, with no natural light, no clock and no calendar. Whenever Padilla left the cell, he was shackled and suited in heavy goggles and headphones. Padilla was kept under these conditions for 1,307 days. He was forbidden contact with anyone but his interrogators, who punctured the extreme sensory deprivation with sensory overload, blasting him with harsh lights and pounding sounds. Padilla also says he was injected with a 'truth serum,' a substance his lawyers believe was LSD or PCP.. ..These same practices have been documented in dozens of cases of 'extraordinary rendition' carried out by the CIA, as well as in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan"

She observes, "America has deliberately driven hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners insane. Now it is being held to account in a Miami court." Let's hope so. The Bush administration has made a habit of ignoring court decisions, including Supreme Court decisions, that didn't go their way. Bu$hCo™ ARE the terrorists, as this case clearly shows, and they are waging a war against the American people and the rule of law. Did I mention, Padilla is an American citizen, arrested on American soil, who has never been anywhere near any armed conflict? His arrest was way before the MCA was passed, and has been a textbook case of abuse of power. For a point of comparison, read Maher Arar's personal account of the way he was treated, in CounterPunch. Clearly this is all part of a wide-ranging program approved at the highest levels of government - they can't blame everything on Lynndie England.

In other related news, the Toronto Star reported Friday on a UNANIMOUS Canadian Supreme Court decision striking down the government's use of so-called 'security certificates' to detain and deport non-citizens suspected of terrorism ties. Turns out the certificate system is in conflict with Canada' Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Kudos to the Supreme Court of Canada - must be all that clean air up here.

In other other news, Les Enragés.org drew the attention of, and a link from Chris Dodd's blog for a piece we ran about Senator Dodd sponsoring the Effective Terrorist Prosecution Act, which aims to reverse the worst aspects of the Military Commissions Act (aka The War Criminals' Protection Act.) Kudos again, senator.

To reiterate: Restore Habeas, Repeal the MCA, and defend the Constitution. Dammit!

TAGS: Jose Padilla, Torture, Human Rights, Abuse of Power

Kudos Chris Dodd

2007-03-01T06:11:00.000-05:00

Fighting to Restore Habeas Corpus Rights

Chris Dodd (D - no really, a Democrat, honest) is the senior senator from Connecticut. In that capacity he has the unenviable task of trying to provide some balance to the other senator from Connecticut, Joe LIEberman (I - diot.) LIEberman, as you all know, took over the post of senior DINO in Washington with the retirement of Zell Millar (D - ecrepit.) Balancing LIEberman's reprehensible career of deception is a task in itself, but Senator Dodd earns his kudos for sponsoring the Effective Terrorist Prosecution Act, which aims to reverse the worst abuses of the Military Commissions Act (Which we deplore here at Les Enragés as the War Criminals' Protection Act.) Here's Dodd's video to explain.

Restoring the Constitution

Note in particular that Dodd urges everyone to 'become in effect a citizen co-sponsor' of the bill. You can do that by visiting Restore-Habeas.org and signing on.

"The bill will restore Habeas Corpus protections to detainees, bar information acquired through torture from being introduced as evidence in trials, and limit presidential authority to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions."

I think this is really important. If the thugs currently in control of the country are allowed to have their way, you are under the thumb of one of the most brutal gang of criminals since ~~Al Capone~~ Atilla the Hun. Do you really think it's safe to let them make up whatever rules they like, then to interpret those rules however they see fit?

BTW, Chris is a 'dark horse' candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination. From what I've seen he is showing more substance and integrity than the front runners. It's typical of the MSM to virtually ignore anyone who could actually bring real change to the political morass.

NOTE: belatedly cross-posted from Les Enragés. I've been spending more of my time on that blog lately, and you may have to check over there from time to time to see my newest stuff.

TAGS: Chris Dodd, Habeas Corpus, Geneva Conventions, Rule of Law

Why Do Federal Judges Hate the Law?

2007-02-24T12:53:00.000-05:00

Jane Smiley did an interesting editorial at HuffPo yesterday entitled, 'What Would You Do If Bush Declared Martial Law?' To tell the truth, she was a lot more optimistic about the outcome than I would have been. I've always had a talent for painting worst-case scenarios, and I have no problem seeing BushCo™ using the most brutal possible methods of repression. I won't go into the depressing details.

"An editorial in the New York Times yesterday pointed out, for those of us who didn't realize it, that the Bush administration had inserted two provisions into last October's defense budget bill that would make it easier to declare martial law in the US. Senators Leahy and Bond have introduced a bill to repeal these changes, and it is important that voters keep track of this bill and hold their Congresspeople to account on it. Along with several other measures the Bush adminstration has proposed, the introduction of these changes amounts, not to an attack on the Congress and the balance of power, but to a particular and concerted attack on the citizens of the nation. Bush is laying the legal groundwork to repeal even the appearance of democracy. Any senator who does not vote in favor of the Leahy/Bond repeal of these provisions should promptly be recalled by his or her constituents."

(I gotta say here, I really love Senator Leahy. He's doing a great job of defending the constitution and making the fascistic bastards like Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales squirm. We need more like him.)

While Jane Smiley's editorial and the underlying New York Times editorial are disturbing and alarming, they don't come close to this piece in yesterday's NYTimes, that has got me tearing the hems of my garments and reaching for the ashes. Because quite frankly, it's stories like this that make Jane Smiley's hypothetical look much more like a real possibility.

"A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a new law stripping federal judges of authority to review foreign prisoners’ challenges to their detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The decision set the stage for a third trip to the Supreme Court for the detainees, who will once again ask the justices to consider a complex issue that tests the balance of power among the White House, Congress and the courts in the murky context of the fight against international terrorism.

The Supreme Court previously ruled twice that federal statutes empowered the courts to consider Guantánamo prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions challenging the grounds for their detention. In response to those rulings, Congress twice rewrote law to limit the detainees’ avenues of appeal. The most recent rewriting was at issue in Tuesday’s 2-to-1 decision.. ..That law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, was signed by President Bush last October. Its enactment followed the Supreme Court’s rejection of his administration’s earlier arguments that the right of habeas corpus — the fundamental right, centuries old, to ask a judge for release from unjust imprisonment — did not apply to foreigners being held outside the United States as enemy combatants."

Article II, section 9 of the Constitution clearly states, "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." So how did these bozos get to be judges without even a rudimentary understanding of the relationship between the legislature and the U.S. Constitution? Yeah, yeah, I know - the simple answer is that they are Republican-appointed partisan political hacks, just like their boss, Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales. They treat Lady Justice like she was just another whore hired to entertain the likes of Dusty Foggo, Brent Wilkes and Randy 'Duke' Cunningham. Pull up her skirt, strip off her panties, and wipe her ass with the constitution, she's bought and paid for. I swear, they're running the government like it was some Skull and Bones kegger.

It makes me want to weep.

TAGS: Military Commissions Act, U.S. Constitution, Police State, Martial Law

Supporting the Troops

2007-02-20T06:11:00.000-05:00

...Some Historical Perspective

Way back in the 16th century a coalition of Catholic nations led by Spain decided that they would invade England and punish them for their heretical Protestant ways. After years of diplomatic efforts, political bickering, bribery and cajoling they finally assembled a fleet we now know as the Spanish Armada. In 1588, after a logistic nightmare getting the ships, men and equipment together they set out for the glory of God. Of course, by this time Queen Elizabeth I was well aware of their intent, and had cobbled together an army from the peasant farmers of the realm to defend against the anticipated onslaught. Her country appeared about to pay in blood for her father Henry VIII's snubbing of the Papacy, and establishment of the Anglican church.

The attempts to land the invasion force were a disaster for the Spanish coalition. Initial attempts were made near Southampton, and were thwarted by local conditions that could best be described as treacherous. Truth be told, in the days of square-rigged ships, any approach to land was fraught with hazards, and could only be taken on by an experienced ship's master equipped with hard won local knowledge of wind, current and tide. Even with the services of such a local pilot, one may have to wait days or weeks for the optimum combination of conditions to occur. To be caught on a lee shore could well lead to the loss of the fleet.

The Armada was forced to make its way further and further north along England's channel coast, but nowhere were conditions to be found that were favorable to longboats laden with soldiers, horses and cannons. Eventually the invasion fleet was forced all the way around the northern end of Scotland. I think a 'plan B' emerged, to stop in the still-Catholic parishes of Ireland to replenish supplies and take on replacements for the crewmen and soldiers who had already been lost. Water and food were running low, as such a lengthy voyage had not been contemplated.

The final blow to the Armada came when a gale force storm came upon the fleet and dashed the ships against the rocks of the Outer Hebrides. They were caught on a lee shore. A true believer could be excused for thinking that maybe God didn't want this particular plan to succeed.

But I digress. I'll admit, I told that story for no better reason than that I think it is one of the greatest examples of hubris in all the great span of human folly - and for background. This next bit I tell to make a point.

Queen Elizabeth I now had a standing army raised ad hoc for the purpose of repelling an invasion that had never come. Even before word made it to her of the Armada's fate, it was clear that the invasion had failed. Winter was coming on, and the soldiers were clamoring to be paid, and released from service to return to their homes and families. Times would be hard enough, for they had been away from their fields all summer, and larders would be thin.

The story goes that the chancellor of the exchequer came to 'Good Queen Bess' that winter to plead for the soldiers' cause. She was advised that many of the troops could and likely would starve to death without immediate relief. Her response was as cold-blooded and cruel as one could imagine. "Good. Let them starve. Then the problem will have solved itself at no cost to my treasury."

History has a terrible way of repeating itself. (Visit Ice Station Tango - more at The Washington Post)

Kansas City Star: "The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans’ health care two years from now — even as wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system." (h/t Americablog)

UPDATE: Read Jurassic Pork's reaction to this scandal here.

"You want to know why we bloggers get outrage fatigue from time to time? It’s because of stories like this, stories such as this that drain the soul, that beggar the imagination at how criminally we’re treating and even exploiting these wounded troops after all the overtures Uncle Sam made them about taking care of them and their families, all the pie in the sky promises under the fucking sun just to get that John Hancock on the dotted line to get them one blip closer to making quota."

IMAGE: Calshot Castle, one of many forts built during Henry VIII's reign to defend England's channel coast.

TAGS: Support the Troops, Veterans Affairs
Spanish Armada, Historical Perspective

Ten Billion Dollars Wasted..

2007-02-18T15:25:00.000-05:00

...Depending on Who's Doing the Math

This AP story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer cites federal investigators in claiming $10 BILLION of waste in the Iraq reconstruction effort.

"About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money is at risk.

The three top auditors overseeing work in Iraq told a House committee their review of $57 billion in Iraq contracts found that Defense and State department officials condoned or allowed repeated work delays, bloated expenses and payments for shoddy work or work never done.

More than one in six dollars charged by U.S. contractors were questionable or unsupported, nearly triple the amount of waste the Government Accountability Office estimated last fall.

'There is no accountability,' said David M. Walker, who heads the auditing arm of Congress. 'Organizations charged with overseeing contracts are not held accountable. Contractors are not held accountable. The individuals responsible are not held accountable.' "

For more details, consult the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Coverage from MSNBC adds another intriguing detail, "Of the $10 billion in overpriced contracts or undocumented costs, more than $2.7 billion were charged by Halliburton Co., the oil-field services firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

To my mind it's much worse than 'just' $10 BILLION wasted. Since nothing has been accomplished in Iraq, if fact the entire foreign policy situation in the Middle East has been made WORSE, far worse by this ill-conceived misadventure, ALL of the money spent has been wasted. How much? This much.

Of course with BushCo™ in charge of things, you could expect that Enron-like accounting is taking place. Losses and liabilities will be passed off to other entities in order to make things look lots better than they are. When nearly all the details are classified, it's even easier to do that. An analysis done over a year ago, and reported in the Boston Globe, tells a more sobering tale;

"The cost of the Iraq war could top $2 trillion after factoring in long-term healthcare for wounded US veterans, rebuilding a worn-down military, and accounting for other unforeseen bills and economic losses, according to a new analysis to be presented today in Boston.

The estimate by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes far exceeds projections made by the Bush administration.

The figure is more than four times what the war was expected to cost through 2006 -- around $500 billion, according to congressional budget data."

YOU do the math. Or would you rather leave it to this fool?

TAGS: Iraq War, Corruption, War-Mongering
Federal Budget, Innumeracy

Hand In Hand

2007-02-17T11:18:00.000-05:00

The Toxic Mixture of Corruption and Secrecy

This Story in the Washington Post had me rushing to update The Growing GOP List of Shame this morning - the putrid fallout of the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal now landing on former CIA official Kyle 'Dusty' Foggo and Brent Wilkes, a California ~~defense contractor~~ bloody-handed war profiteer. It is an old familiar story with the GOP, the best government money can buy being bought and paid for at the taxpayers' expense - dirty business as usual, with the sordid 'hookergate' aspect of it thrown in for good measure.

"The CIA's former executive director and a defense contractor were indicted yesterday by a San Diego grand jury for allegedly corrupting the intelligence agency's contracts, marking one of the first criminal cases to reach into the CIA's clandestine operations in Europe and the Middle East.. ..The 11-count indictment states that Wilkes subsidized meals and lavish vacations for Foggo and his family in Washington, Hawaii and Scotland and promised to employ Foggo after his retirement from the CIA. It also accuses Foggo -- a former ethics official in two divisions at the CIA -- of improperly providing classified information to Wilkes about the CIA, his contracting competitors and 'other matters.'.. ..Last year the probe led to a prison sentence for one lawmaker, Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham -- who, the government said yesterday, used two prostitutes financed by Wilkes."

There is one aspect of this case that I would like to highlight, reported on but not given enough weight by the Washington Post, in my opinion.

"The case involving Foggo is unusual because all of the contracts at issue are classified. But the indictment makes it clear that the agency was allegedly bilked when it wound up paying 60 percent more than it should have for water supplied by a company affiliated with Wilkes to CIA outposts in Afghanistan and northern Iraq."

This is very disturbing when you consider the pervasive and shadowy, unaccountable power of the Military Industrial Complex in the USA. Apparently, the perpetraitors (spelling deliberate) thought the classification would act as a shield to hide their crimes. The Bush administration is of course the most secretive in US history, and we must attribute much of that to cover-up for crime rather than legitimate national security. As testimony in the Libby trial revealed, Dick Cheney even had his own illegal system of classifying documents!! I mentioned this in a different context a few posts back, but it bears repeating here.

A couple more points - in Crooks and Liars' piece on this matter yesterday, Nicole Belle makes note of the fact that the federal prosecutors outrage (Assault on Justice-Les Enragés, Jan. 20) connects to this case. "Alberto Gonzalez went out of his way to try to derail this." And Down With Tyranny describes Foggo as "Bush's eyes and ears (and grabby hands) inside the CIA– he was a political operative and hack." So, seeing as how Foggo is well connected to the BushCo™ power grid, and possibly being protected by personages as high up as the Attorney General, this can't be seen as a small-time one-off incident. It is more likely the tip of a very large iceberg of corruption. But, shhhhh... ... it's a secret.

Secrecy and corruption go hand in hand. It certainly has helped the Military Industrial Complex's bottom line, at the expense of the rest of the country.

Crossposted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: Kyle Foggo, Brent Wilkes, Corruption, War Profiteering

EU Condemns Rendition Flights.

2007-02-16T11:35:00.000-05:00

President Gee Dumbya Bullsh** moved one more step towards official Worst Leader in History status with the European Union endorsing a report condemning so-called 'extraordinary rendition' flights transporting illegally detained kidnapping victims (euphemistically called 'terrorism suspects.) [see BBC story]
Excerpts;

"The EU report said the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture.. ..'This is a report that doesn't allow anyone to look the other way. We must be vigilant that what has been happening in the past five years may never happen again,' said Italian Socialist Giovanni Fava, who drafted the document.. ..The parliament also called for an 'independent inquiry' to be considered and for closure of the US' Guantanamo Bay detention camp."

One of the disturbing things to me in this report is the following,

"Many of those taken from EU states were subjected to torture to extract information from them, the report said.

It said there was a 'strong possibility' that this intelligence had been passed on to EU governments who were aware of how it was obtained."

C'mon, it has been known for centuries that the 'intellegence' extracted under torture is completely unreliable. People just say what the torturer wants to hear. This information, the corrupt 'coin' paid to European governments for their co-operation, is counterfeit.

TAGS: Extraordinary Rendition, Human Rights, Violations, War Crimes

Hu Will Feed China

2007-02-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

Remember in Robert Newman's The History of Oil, when Newman talks about how,

"The President of China is called Hu Jintao and China's Prime Minister is called Wen Jiabao? - So the President is Hu, and the Prime Minister is Wen. Ladies and Gentlemen, we are in a marvelous early twentieth century vaudeville routine."

Well, ladies and gentlemen, here is that vaudeville routine, as performed by 'President Bush' and 'Condi Rice.' Apologies to Abbot and Costello, from whose classic 'who's on first' baseball routine it is taken.

TAGS: Humor, Abbot and Costello, Robert Newman, Hu Jintao

Dick Traitor

2007-02-12T11:19:00.000-05:00

"One Nation Under Cheney"

Anyone who has been watching American politics for the last six long insufferable years should have become aware of one thing. The real power in the White House is not in George W. (must stand for witless) Bush's Oval Office, but down the hall in Dick Cheney's 'undisclosed location', known officially as the OVP (Office of the Vice President.) Bush is nothing more than Cheney's sock puppet - giving speeches, taking the heat, acting as a potential bullet sponge for any possible assassination attempts, and always decidering on things exactly the way Cheney wants them to be decidered. To even imagine the situation otherwise is to be suffering from some Bizarro-world delusions. The chimperor is obviously the monkey to Cheney's organ grinder.

This diary from Kagro X at DailyKos puts some new perspective on just how powerful Cheney is, or at least how powerful he believes himself to be. Not that the Master of All Things Evil has not previously tipped his hand. He has already gone on record recently as saying that if he was subpoenaed by Congress, that he would probably refuse. In his own mind, at least, he is above the law. It remains to be seen if he will actually flaunt the law in the Scooter Libby trial, where he is expected to be called as a witness for the defense. But I digress. Here's the DailyKos story, which is about Cheney's refusal to catalogue his activities in the classification and declassification of official documents;

"A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and 'any other entity within the executive branch'" to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents.. ..but Cheney insists he is exempt."

Where this story really takes wing is WHY Cheney feels himself to be exempt.

"The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see Article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see Article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code)"

But wait, there's more. Kasgro divulges that Cheney has even invented his very own SYSTEM of classification, with no basis whatever in law.

"The OVP has been out of compliance with executive orders on the classification of sensitive national security information for several years. During that time, they've been inventing their own classification system (and spending taxpayer money for official-looking stamps bearing this fake classification)"

Wow. In two hundred and thirty years, no-one has come close to making any sort of claim like this. Not only has Cheney pronounced himself as uniquely occupying both the legislative and executive branches of government, but in doing so he has also intruded on the powers of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution. This is a power grab parallel to, and quite possibly exceeding, the odious theory of 'unitary executive' powers conferred unilaterally on the pResident by Justice Department functionary John Yoo. And finally, in case it escaped anybody's attention, the authority Dick is flaunting here is BUSH's EXECUTIVE ORDER. Unbelievable.

As with much of what BushCo™ have accomplished over the last six years, they are likely to get away with this too. Why? Because no sane person in the late eighteenth century could have possibly provided for the monumental degree of pure evil exhibited here, the deliberate brutal concentration of ill intent. Even while calling King George III a tyrant, conceiving a tyranny like this would only have driven Jefferson, Madison, Adams, etc. into despairing madness. Just as, even knowing about the careers of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy, each one of us still insists on taking solace in the fact that Hannibal Lecter and Freddy Krueger are only fictional characters. To confront the real horror is to invite insanity.

TAGS: Constitution, Secrecy, Dick Cheney, Power Grab

Charity Rejects Strippers' Donation

2007-02-10T19:54:00.000-05:00

Breast Cancer Society of Canada Says Money Not Good Enough

Out of the goodness of their hearts, a group of strippers in Vancouver B.C. called Exotic Dancers for Cancer have put on a special show at the Drake Hotel in Vancouver for the past few years to raise money to fight breast cancer. Only thing is, the recipient Breast Cancer Society of Canada has turned down the money, even though they accepted a $3,000 donation last year. As The Vancouver Sun explains,

" 'Our bottom line was that any woman can get breast cancer. It doesn't matter what they do, what their profession is,' Rany Xanthopoulo, the executive director of the BCSC, said at the time."

So what's different this year? This from (The Vancouver) Courier.com:

"In a letter to [organizer Trina] Ricketts, the society's executive director Rany Xanthopoulo, wrote: 'Unfortunately we will have to decline your kind offer as we have certain major donors that are not in favour of this connection. This decision came as a result of donor disgruntlement and together with the board of directors we have decided not to accept any donations from what donors consider controversial sources.' "

As it happens, I used to work as a musician in the very kind of bars that hire strippers, and often had them living across the hall. They are not, as some people assume, turning tricks on the side, and in my personal experience they are no less 'moral' than any other women. Quite often they are single mothers trying to raise their children, or students raising tuition for their university education. Just ordinary people who happen to look very good naked. And is there anything wrong with that?

Should you doubt their sincerity, they have another organization called Naked Truth, and discussed this issue on their Forum Page. They also do shows to raise funds for Prostitution Alternatives Counseling and Education (PACE) Society, a sex worker advocacy group in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. So they are actively working to get women out of the sex trade and away from the drug addiction and exploitation that often accompanies it. Good for them.

As for the BCSC, I have to agree with the Sun on this one,

"Shame on them and shame on the Breast Cancer Society for caving to this prejudice against these women who are as vulnerable to the disease as anyone else and who are trying to do some good.. ..Last year the Breast Cancer Society got it right. Breast cancer does not discriminate. Neither should it."

TAGS: Strippers, Charity, Pole Dancers

Rogue Nation

2007-02-10T19:04:00.000-05:00

U.S. Declines to Join Accord on Secret Detentions

OUTRAGE OVERLOAD - It's hard to know where to begin. At the same time, how can one begin knowing that there is no end to the list of crimes being committed by your government with your tax dollars. Come to think of it, because of the huge deficit, your children's and grandchildren's taxes will still be paying for GOP policies under the Bush/Cheney regime.

Let's start with this Washington Post article. The US, along with Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy, refused to endorse an agreement obviously aimed at the American government's practice known euphemistically as rendition. I insist on calling it kidnapping. Whatever you call it, the Bush administration still wants to preserve their 'right' to do wrong, in the face of international law and common decency.

"PARIS, Feb. 6 -- Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said the treaty was 'a message to all modern-day authorities committed to the fight against terrorism' that some practices are 'not acceptable.' ...The Associated Press reported that [ State Department spokesman Sean ] McCormack declined to comment on whether the U.S. stance was influenced by the Bush administration's policy of sending terrorism suspects to CIA-run prisons overseas, which President Bush acknowledged in September."

Meanwhile as the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq passes 3,100, Paul Bremer is coming under intense pressure from Henry Waxman in Congressional hearings for his lack of control over billions of dollars sent to Iraq to 'kick start' the economy. Truckloads of hundred dollar bills have gone missing. Charges have been laid against five individuals for illegally diverting over 8 million dollars in funds allocated to rebuilding Iraq. Among those five, three high-ranking US military officers. Still, this accounts for the merest drop in the 12 BILLION dollars that has gone missing due to the absence of any accounting techniques to keep track of it. It's looking more and more as if the real reason for invading Iraq was to make some GOP supporters filthy rich. It's getting me pissed off. Really steaming.

So, now that it is painfully obvious that the Bush administration is little more than a very sophisticated criminal enterprise, what is being done? Due to Republican resistance, the Democrats can't even debate the war in the Senate. Seems their slim majority has been taken away from them by Tim Johnson's illness and Joe Lieberman's...well, Joe LIEberman. Period. The disdain the GOP show for even the appearance of democratic process is staggering.

It would seem that the rule of law has simply ceased to exist in the United States of America. An Italian judge has ordered a US soldier to face trial over the 2005 death of Nicola Calipari, an Italian intelligence agent in a car at a checkpoint in Baghdad - but it seems unlikely that US authorities will co-operate. "He will probably be tried in absentia as he has been cleared in the US." (BBC news)

The administration supports the troops when they are killing foreigners for no good reason, or participating in an illegal war, but what about those like Lt. Ehren Watada, who refuse to follow orders that they feel are illegal? Watada's Court Martial started Monday with the presiding Judge, John Head (whose first and last names, BTW happen to be synonyms for 'toilet') ruling that Watada could not examine the Iraq war's legality in his defense.

"[Watada's defense attorney Eric] Seitz has unsuccessfully sought an opportunity to argue the legality of the war, saying it violated Army regulations that specify wars are to be waged in accordance with the United Nations charter.

Their final attempt was quashed following a hearing last month in which military judge Lt. Col. John Head ruled Watada cannot base his defense on the war's legality. He also refused claims that Watada's statements were protected by the First Amendment, saying that would be up to a military panel."

So, long story short - secure in their control of the White House, Senate, and Supreme Court, the Republican party continues to move towards a legal system where guilt or innocence is determined by how meticulously one agrees with the Codpiece in Thief. In doing so, they are also making America into an international pariah. It makes me so mad.

TAGS: War Crimes, Injustice, Police State, Doomsday

Iranian Diplomat Kidnapped

2007-02-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

..By Gunmen in Iraqi Uniforms

From CBC.ca:

"Thirty armed men dressed as Iraqi soldiers kidnapped a senior Iranian diplomat on the streets of Baghdad, an Iraqi government official said on Tuesday.. ..The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini as saying the Defence Ministry was ordered to detain Jalal Sharaki, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy.

'Iran holds American forces in Iraq responsible for the safety and life of the Iranian diplomat,' Hosseini was quoted as saying, in his condemnation of the 'aggressive act.'

One Iraqi government official backed those statements, telling the Associated Press the diplomat was seized by a special Iraqi army unit that reports directly to the U.S. military.

But a military spokesman denied any U.S. troops or Iraqis could have been involved. 'We've checked with our units and it was not an MNF-I (Multi-National Forces-Iraq) unit that participated in that event,' U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said."

Whether the unidentified gunmen were acting under US authority or not, this is incredibly bad news. On the one hand, assuming they were not acting on American orders, you have a scenario very similar to events of Jan. 22 in Karbala, when a group in Iraqi uniform entered a government compound in GMC SUVs;

"Once inside, [ ] the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen ambushes of U.S. forces in a secure, official area. Five U.S. service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented."

One has to ask, how did these uniforms, weapons, and equipment (GMC SUVs for cryin' out loud !?!) get in the hands of the insurgency? And the simplest answer would be that the insurgents simply stood in line and signed up with the Iraqi army. They were then issued all the necessities to wage war against coalition troops, trained in their use, fed and payed for months.. then, when the time was ripe they deserted, taking as much with them as they could lay their hands on. That's what happens when you arm and train people who hate you. I'm waiting now for the inevitable 'Who could have anticipated this?' statement from Condi Rice.

Of course the alternative scenario, where the kidnappers were under US command, although covertly so, is much worse. That would signal the US invasion of Iran, the expansion of the war in the Middle East, and all the bloody horror that would entail. With only two years to achieve Armageddon, the Stuffed Codpiece in Chief may be kicking it up another notch. Anyone who believes that the Iraq war isn't the biggest foreign policy boondoggle in American history should read this editorial from Common Dreams, by Jay Bookman. Pretty gloomy - but true.

TAGS: Iraq War, Insurgency, Iranian Diplomat, Armageddon

Deja Vu All Over Again

2007-02-03T01:25:00.000-05:00

There's nothing much I can add to this. Keith Olbermann lays it all out perfectly, and anyone can draw the correct conclusion seeing Bush's arguments for war with Iraq in 2003, and his parallel rhetoric now regarding Iran.

Keith Olbermann Video

TAGS: Iran, Iraq, War-mongering, Insanity, President Shrub

The Uncool Quaff..

2007-02-02T14:17:00.000-05:00

..Why You Should NOT Drink Bottled Water

News item from Canada via CBC.ca: Environmentalist David Suzuki has come out against the drinking of bottled water. I agree, having never bought into the idea that water from France or anywhere else is superior to what I can get from my kitchen faucet. "Key environmental issues with bottled water, Suzuki said, are waste and uncertainty over the long-term health effects created by plastic."

In Canada at least, the government holds municipal water supplies to a HIGHER standard than commercial bottlers - so from a quality standpoint, you're better off with the tap. If you don't like the taste, buy some form of activated charcoal filter. There are a few varieties - simple Brita™-type jugs that go into the door of the fridge, inline filters that fit over the tap, and filters that are installed permanently under the sink. These systems provide pure, tasty water at a fraction of the cost of bottled water.

If you actually think that bottled water is safer than tap water, you should probably read this report, based on a four year long study from the Natural Resources Defense Counsel. It's rather long, and I barely skimmed it, but I'll take its conclusion from the opening paragraph, "The petition and report find major gaps in bottled water regulation and conclude that bottled water is not necessarily safer than tap water." For a synopsis, consult this Wikipedia article. If you think the water in your particular municipality is unsafe, I echo Suzuki's suggestion, RAISE HELL ABOUT IT! Anyone who would pump unsafe water into your home ought to be in jail.

The US consumed 25.8 billion litres of bottled water in 2004, spending over nine billion dollars for the dubious privilege. As Suzuki points out,

"It's nuts to be shipping water all the way across the planet, and us — because we're so bloody wealthy — we're willing to pay for that water because it comes from France.. ..I don't believe for a minute that French water is better than Canadian water. I think that we've got to drink the water that comes out of our taps, and if we don't trust it, we ought to be raising hell about that.. ..Not only does bottled water lead to unbelievable pollution — with old bottles lying all over the place — but plastic has chemicals in it.. ..Plastics are ubiquitous. I don't believe that plastics are not involved in a great deal of the health problems that we face today."

So, the water you drink from a bottle pollutes in many ways; the initial environmental and energy costs of manufacturing the bottle, only to taint your water with plastics - then the added environmental cost of shipping and trucking it to somewhere near you, and ultimately the bottle ends up in some landfill somewhere. Meanwhile another $10 billion gets transferred into the pockets of faceless multinational corporations. I don't think it's worth it.

TAGS: David Suzuki, Water, Environment, Pollution,

Winning Hearts and Minds..

2007-02-01T23:16:00.000-05:00

..One Bloody Corpse at a Time

There's not much that needs to be said about this video, other than the fact that this is not something you're likely to see on the corporate-controlled television news channels in the US. If the American people had to watch the unsanitized version of the Iraq war, I'm sure the protest crowds would swell by a factor of ten or more. Kudos and thanks, BTW, to those who endured bad weather to make their outrage visible to the rest of the public.
I got this video through Raw Story, h/t RevPhat for alerting me.

Shia Iraqi soldier beat Sunnis as US trainers watch

Voiceover: "The purpose of these joint patrols is for the Americans to teach their Iraqi protegés how to win hearts and minds and end the bloodletting."

This so emphatically contradicts the official policy of ending ethnic conflict that it boggles the mind. Undeniably, the actions of US forces in Iraq are a concentrated effort to foment violence rather than prevent it. As the audio of US soldiers laughing while witnessing this shows, not only is the training of Iraqi 'friendlies' inadequate, but so too is the training of the US forces themselves.

Words do not exist that could fully express my revulsion at this.

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: Iraq War, Brutality
Atrocities, Ethnic Cleansing

Arar Revisited

2007-01-27T20:05:00.000-05:00

The Sad, but True Significance of The Arar Case

There are a number of reasons that I post a fair bit on the case of Maher Arar. One is that as a Canadian, I sometimes get news that isn't reported in the States, or that is under-reported. As a Canadian, I sympathize with a fellow Canadian who has been so egregiously mistreated by the U.S. government, and I am deeply offended by the Administration's arrogant assumption that an American's rights are more significant than someone else's rights. But it goes WAY beyond that.

Up until now, my posts on Arar largely have been limited to reporting the facts. Consider this the consequent outpouring of rage. For a case timeline, read this synopsis by the CBC.

The Arar case is exemplary of the kind of treatment that has been experienced by at least dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others whose names we will never know. The only reason Maher Arar's name ever came to light is that the Canadian government knew from the outset that he was in American government hands when he was kidnapped by the FBI on September 26, 2002. That's right, kidnapped. To dignify what happened as an arrest would misrepresent the facts. Arar was never charged with any crime, never given access to a lawyer, never afforded any of the due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and its attendant Bill of Rights. I won't even use the CBC's weasel word 'detained.' He was kidnapped, and the officials responsible should be charged with that crime.

Without the due diligence exercised by the Canadian government to obtain his release, Maher Arar may never again have seen the light of day after having been kidnapped by persons in the employ of U.S. agencies acting under color of authority. And it is my considered belief that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people in situations not too much unlike that of Maher Arar were simply disposed of (killed) after extensive torture showed them to be innocent. Arar himself has said that this case's significance lies with those whose kidnap was not protested by their government, or whose government never knew they had been kidnapped. His experience is the mere tip of a very large and very ugly iceberg.

Let's look at the facts. The disclosure of photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison led to little more than the pitifully weak argument that these were isolated cases attributable to low-ranking individuals who were acting outside of sanctioned guidelines. Lynndie England and a few others were responsible. Hogwash!

Revelation followed revelation. Memos from Rumsfeld, signing statements from Bush, secret flights condemned by the EU. Always accompanied by this idiotic appeal for secrecy from the most secretive government America has ever known. Their message, "No, flat out, never: We. Do. Not. Torture! But, no you can't see the relevant documents because we don't want to give away our techniques to the enemy." Poppycock!

Then, when the truth was revealed beyond a doubt - the most damnable lie possible, "This is nothing new - everyone knew this all along (though we were denying it just last week)." Balderdash!

And as always, "If you oppose our abuses of power (which, by the way, aren't happening) you must want the terrorists to win." Bullshit!

Maher Arar was indisputably 'detained' (kidnapped), inarguably 'deported' (renditioned), and unquestionably 'questioned' (tortured) at the hands of U.S. officials or their surrogates with authorization from the administration. Alberto Gonzales is still perjuring himself to cover it up, more than four years after the initial crime. The facts strongly suggest the program of rendition to be widespread.

Steel yourself. What follows is the ineluctable logic that reveals the source of my rage. We are going into a torture scenario that will never be seen on cable television's 24, or in any other corporate media fiction. Where we are going is much more real than that, proven to be real by the experience of Maher Arar, Jose Padilla, and others. We are of necessity going into the mind of those who would torture a fellow human being, and exploring their reasoning, however repugnant that may be. You have been warned.

Here's the thing. You, the torturer, have had someone under your control for some time now. He or she has been waterboarded, beaten repeatedly, their genitals electrocuted, their fingers and toes broken, their teeth extracted one by one, whatever you could think of to extract the desired information about involvement in some heinous act of terrorism against the United States of America. Early on, you got this person to 'give up' friends and acquaintances as co-conspirators. They too were 'detained' and subjected to the same treatment.

But the thing is, none of it panned out. The friends and acquaintances came up with stories of conspiracies too, after sufficient 'persuasion', but no two stories ever matched up. After all the abuse that you, the torturer have inflicted, you must reluctantly conclude that the person is innocent. The ticking time bomb scenario was nothing but an overused dramatic device, a phantom threat with no more basis in reality than the chimera of WMDs that got us in this mess to begin with. As the infamous internet infidel Delos McKown once remarked, "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike."

So what do you do now? Your victim knows intimately the techniques you used on him. It has been repeatedly stressed to you that allowing these techniques to become known will benefit the terrorists. Your orders must have come from high in the chain of command - black helicopters don't come from nowhere, after all. Any tale this person would bring to the outside world would be an immense embarrassment to the Administration, far more so than if he had been guilty. Should he be released you, the torturer could face trial for human rights violations at least, possibly war crimes. You can't just let him go.

So what DO you do now?

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: Rendition, Torture, Murder
Maher Arar, Human Rights Abuses, War Crimes

Maher Arar Update

2007-01-26T11:13:00.000-05:00

Item one: Canadian Government Admits Responsibility

This item from CBC news shows that Canada's government accepts responsibility for what happened to Maher Arar, and is trying to make amends.

"Ottawa has reached a $10-million settlement with Maher Arar over Canada's role in a U.S. decision to deport him to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is scheduled to make the settlement announcement on Friday afternoon, when he will also issue a formal apology to Arar on behalf of Canadians. Sources told the CBC the government will also pick up Arar's legal fees."

We have already reported on how Arar was cleared by a Canadian Commission of Inquiry in September, and how U.S. authorities still refuse to take Arar off a terrorist watchlist. Ice Station Tango has video of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales being questioned by Patrick Leahy on the subject of Arar. And I recently posted on how Gonzo's response was a lie.

Item Two: U.S. Authorities Continue to Act Irresponsibly

To recap from the information above;
- A Canadian Commission has found no credible evidence that Maher Arar has had any connection to terrorist organizations or plots.
- The U.S. still refuses to allow Arar into the U.S. -that includes travelling in a plane in U.S. airspace. The evidence they claim supports this policy does no such thing.

So where is the justification for this?

"U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins on Wednesday criticized Ottawa's efforts to have Maher Arar removed from a United States security watch list, saying the U.S. alone will decide who to let into the country.

Speaking in Edmonton after meeting with new Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, Wilkins warned Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to back off, because a U.S. review determined Arar should remain on the watch list.

'It's a little presumptuous for him [Day] to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country,' Wilkins told reporters Wednesday.

The ambassador reiterated that the U.S. found its own reasons to keep Arar on the watch list.

Day said in a visit last week to Washington that he has seen the information and found nothing new to suggest Arar is a safety risk."

All this is just a continuation of the Bush administration's refusal to ever admit that they could ever make a mistake. Granted, with King Codpiece claiming to be in communication with THE ALMIGHTY, that would be a little problematic. Bush's delusions of grandeur (and for him, feelings of mere adequacy would be delusional) are approaching the level of theories of Papal infallibility.

To say nothing of the John Bolton-like arrogant bluster that the US continues to substitute for diplomacy.

TAGS: Maher Arar, Terrorist Threat, ...NOT!!
Homeland Security

Bush's Credibility..

2007-01-25T14:37:00.000-05:00

..File with: Tooth Fairy, Unicorn

Just prior to the Stoat of the Onion address, Keith Olbermann aired this review of Bush's past SOTU speeches, and the veracity of the statements made therein. Of course most prominent were the lies bringing the country into the war in Iraq, but there were also the repeated broken promises. We will catch Osama bin Laden, whatever it takes. We will provide the army with the troops and equipment they need. We will listen to the generals. This administration has been nothing more than an endless string of lies, broken promises, and failures.

Review of Past SOTU statements

As KO concludes, the only goal truly accomplished by BushCo™ is the Orwellian goal of perpetual war against an implacable and undefeatable enemy. Heckuva job, King Codpiece.

There are broken promises Olbermann omits: No child will be left behind, but no funding will be provided. We will strive towards energy independence, but no funding will be provided for that either. I'm sure I missed some too. But the biggest broken promise of all came in January, 2001; the promise Bush made on assuming office. When he swore to uphold the constitution and the laws of the United States of America.

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: Bush, SOTU, Keith Olbermann, Tooth Fairy

Another One Bites the Dust

2007-01-24T17:37:00.000-05:00

Watergate Burglary Planner, Dead at 88

E. Howard Hunt, the CIA officer who planned the Watergate breakdown, has died at the age of 88. He served a mere 33 months for his act of treason against the principles of democracy. Even so he was bitter that he should have been punished at all when his boss, Richard Nixon, got off scot free.

From BBC News:

"From 1949 to 1970 he worked for the CIA, and was involved in the operation that overthrew Jacobo Arbenz as Guatemala's president in 1954, and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961."

Like the CIA-backed coup which deposed Salvador Allende in Chile during the Nixon presidency, this was a war crime - for which Hunt got off scot free. Arbenz and Allende were BTW both popular, elected leaders. Their hand-picked successors were bloodthirsty dictators - preferred by the GOP leadership for their friendly relations with US business interests, and their brutal repression of workers' rights. So much for promoting democracy outside the US.

Probably the most controversial story associated with Hunt is the theory that Nixon stacked the CIA with Gopper-friendly agents while he was Eisenhower's Veep, and this cabal pulled off the assassination of John F. Kennedy and later his brother Bobby. It is a certainty that bad intel led to JFK's embarrassing involvement in the Bay of Pigs incident. Photos taken in Dealy Plaza on the day of JFK's assassination are reputed to show E. Howard Hunt and fellow Watergate conspirator Frank Sturgis.

Some people will tell you that conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination or connecting it to Watergate are pure flights of fantasy. Magic bullet theories, missing brains, two widely conflicting autopsies, dozens of witnesses dying shortly after the event, the elimination of Lee Harvey 'fallguy' Oswald before trial...

..."Nothing to see here folks, move along."

TAGS: Howard Hunt, Watergate Conspiracy, CIA Operative
War Crimes, GOP Coup, Paranoia

Smoking Gun Burning Pants

2007-01-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

..Gonzales is Lying to Senate Judiciary Committee AGAIN

Patrick Leahy has been a thorn in the Side of Attorney General Alberto 'Abu' Gonzales since his confirmation hearings last year. This Jan. 6/06 article in Slate shows Leahy's frustration with Gonzales over the latter's refusal to give straight answers to Leahy's direct questions about his position on the President's power to authorize torture of detainees.

"Early in the day, Gonzales professed the requisite faith that America was "a nation of laws and not of men," but his opinion of the president's ability—however limited—to authorize individuals to engage in criminal acts suggests the opposite. This is a government of good men, Gonzales implicitly assured the senators, so there's no need to worry about legal hypotheticals like whether torture is always verboten. Don't worry, because we don't do it. It's a strange argument from a conservative: We're the government. Trust us."

This Feb. 6/06 article from the Washington Post shows that Gonzo's position on Presidential authority was still unclear a month later, and just days after his February 3 confirmation. Now the subject is not torture, but the authority to spy on American citizens without a warrant. Note that the WaPo article includes hearing transcripts highlighting Arlen 'magic bullet' Specter's blocking a Leahy motion to swear Gonzo in, and Gonzo's declaration that his testimony would be the same whether he was under oath or not.

Fast forward another month. Gonzo has written a letter to the Senate 'clarifying' his Feb. 6 testimony, which letter prompts this response from Leahy; "More than three weeks after the hearing you send the Committee a six-page letter seeking to alter your live testimony. Your letter, in fact, does little to clarify your testimony. Instead, it raises many questions, both factual and also some going to the credibility of your testimony.. ..you admit that 'the Department’s legal analysis has evolved over time.'..You will still need to correct or better explain your statements on pages 184 and 187 of the transcript, which you recognize 'may give [a] misimpression.' "

So what Gonzo was really saying on Feb. 6 was that his testimony would be false whether given under oath or not. And as all this history demonstrates, the Attorney General has a well established pattern of mendacity in the service of undermining the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.

Enough on Gonzales history with Leahy. Current events focus on Leahy's grilling of Gonzales over the handling of the Maher Arar case. (thanks, Ice Station Tango.) But here's a new wrinkle. To answer Leahy's question of why Arar, who has been vindicated by a Canadian Commission of Inquiry (that spent millions of dollars and heard hundreds of hours of testimony, BTW) remains on a watchlist, Gonzales promised that the information justifying this would be provided to Leahy within a week. The briefing is supposedly already being prepared.

Here is that exchange

The thing is, the Canadian government already know what is going to be in that briefing, as this Globe and Mail article shows,

"Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said yesterday there was 'nothing new' in the American dossier on Maher Arar that would justify keeping him on a terrorist watch list, although a top U.S. administration official indicated an explanation may be forthcoming. 'He should not be on the watch list,' Mr. Day said after pressing the issue with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. 'We have seen some recent information that has not altered our opinion at all.'

Mr. Chertoff refused to comment on why Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, still cannot enter the United States or fly over its territory. Barely a kilometre away in Washington, Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was also demanding an explanation from U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez."

And being lied to. Again. Gonzales should be tried for perjury, and immediately relieved of his job. And based on his fuzzy interpretation of law, he should also be disbarred. Then he and the rest of the Bush Criminal Conspiracy should face war crimes tribunals.

(updated 11:15 pm to add video)

TAGS: Alberto Gonzales, Liar,
Patrick Leahy, Senate Judiciary Committee
Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

Assault on Justice

2007-01-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

Knowing full well that they face defeat in court cases covering issues ranging from public corruption to the NSA wiretapping program and the denial of habeas corpus in hundreds of cases, the Bush administration has turned to a new and disturbing tactic. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is dismissing federal judges and replacing them with judges who he expects will make decisions based on political affiliation rather than legal merit.

From the Washington Post,

"[Gonzales] denied any political motives and vowed to quickly submit new nominees for the jobs to the Senate for confirmation.

'What we're trying to do is ensure that for the people in each of these respective districts, we have the very best possible representative for the Department of Justice,' Gonzales testified, adding later: 'I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation. I just would not do it.'

Gonzales's remarks in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee came in response to questions from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers about the forced removals of at least six U.S. attorneys, including several who have overseen some of the government's highest-profile corruption prosecutions."

Consider one of the judges who is on the way out; "Carol C. Lam in San Diego, who led the corruption prosecution of former congressman Randy 'Duke' Cunningham (R-Calif.)" On the way in is Tim Griffin, who was recently working for the RNC trying to dig up dirt on Democratic candidates. Despite Gonzo's protests otherwise, that looks political to me.
Senator Feinstein seems to agree.

Diane Feinstein Adresses the Senate

Here's Olbermann with Jonathan Turley's reaction:

Assault on Justice

Turley gets right to the point when he remarks that Gonzo is 'more General than Attorney...he seems just inherently hostile towards the rule of law.' Which when you think of it is just what you want if you're trying to set up a police state. This seems to be something they've been planning for some time, too. Under a little known provision added into the USA PATRIOT Act when it was renewed, the judges no longer require congressional confirmation.

Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy, titles his post on this subject simply, with an infamous Bush quote, "This would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship…just as long as I’m the dictator!" - This move seems to put Bush one step closer to that goal.

TAGS: Justice, Alberto Gonzales, Police State, Putsch

Goodbye Denny

2007-01-20T16:05:00.000-05:00

Denny Doherty, the powerful lead voice of The Mamas and The Papas, died today at the age of 66. The Mamas and The Papas' great harmonies allowed them to remain popular through a period when few American bands could hold their own against the British Invasion begun when The Beatles rose to fame.

California Dreamin'

(From Truthdig)

“Everybody used to think that John Phillips, who wrote the songs, was also the main voice of the group, but it wasn’t—it was the angelic voice of Denny Doherty,” said Larry Leblanc, Canadian editor of Billboard Magazine. “He was often overlooked but it was really his voice that carried the group.”

By the way, Denny was a fellow Canadian, born in Halifax, NS.

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: Denny Doherty, California Dreamin', Sixties Music, The Mamas and The Papas

Gonzales Caves In

2007-01-19T07:32:00.000-05:00

Democratic Majority Begins to Bear Fruit

The first of what we hope to be many Senate hearings into administration malfeasance has had new Justice committee chairman Patrick Leahy questioning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the matter of the NSA wiretapping program. The program was declared to be unconstitutional and even criminal by Federal Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor way back in August. There are a couple of articles at Glenn Greenwald's site here and here for those who wish to be brought up to date on the issue.

In a letter to Leahy and ranking minority [insert taunt here] committee member Arlen "The Enabler" Specter, Gonzales claims that the program will now operate under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC.) This of course was always legally required, both constitutionally in accordance with the fourth amendment and statutorily to comply with the FISA law set up after the wiretapping abuses of the Nixon administration. Greenwald, who is the acknowledged expert on this matter, was not impressed by Gonzales' reluctant and belated performance of his clear duty as Attorney General.

"[U]ltimately, there are only two options -- (1) the administration is now complying fully and exclusively with FISA when eavesdropping, in which case all of its prior claims that it could not do so and still fight against The Terrorists are false, or (2) the administration has changed its eavesdropping program some, but it is still not fully complying with FISA, in which case nothing of significance has changed (at least on the lawbreaking issues) because the administration is still violating the law."

Let me rephrase that. The administration is pretending that it will now comply with FISA and the constitution because something has changed. Which frankly is a load of crap. The only thing that has changed is the political landscape, where the word oversight now actually means oversight, not overlook. There is not now, nor has there ever been, a legal ruling that allows wiretapping without a warrant being issued.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
-- Amendment IV, The Constitution of The United States of America

I can hardly wait until Leahy questions Gonzales on what I think are much more pressing issues in Justice's bailiwick: Suspension of habeas corpus under the Military Commissions Act; Incarceration and imprisonment without charges at Guantanamo Bay; Torture; Signing Statements; The theory of unitary executive presidential powers, to name a few. Gonzales needs to be reminded that he swore an oath to uphold the law, not to support his long-time friend George Bush in his newly carved-out dictatorship.

There are few people in the Bush administration who are worse than the Chimperor himself. For his complicity in the kidnapping, torture and deaths of innocent detainees, Gonzales makes it onto that short list.

UPDATE (3 pm., 01/18): Here's a snippet from the New York Times article on this.

"Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is expected to face hostile questioning on Thursday from the Senate Judiciary Committee on the program. And an appellate court in Cincinnati is scheduled to hear arguments in two weeks on the government’s appeal of an earlier ruling declaring the program illegal and unconstitutional.

Some legal analysts said the administration’s pre-emptive move could effectively make the court review moot, but Democrats and civil rights advocates said they would press for the courts and Congress to continue their scrutiny of the program of wiretapping without warrants, which began shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001."

How could this make the standing decision moot? The judge in this case had already determined that there was a prima facie case to pursue CRIMINAL charges against the administration, whatever NSA and CIA operatives that were involved, and even non-governmental agencies like AT&T that may have co-operated. This is like a thief who was already facing charges of holding up several liquor stores being let go because he has promised not to do it anymore. Every criminal in America should be asking their lawyer to pursue that option now that the precedent has been set.

TAGS: Justice Committee, Patrick Leahy
Abu Gonzales, War Criminal

Joining the Swarm

2007-01-15T16:12:00.000-05:00

In my inbox this morning was a link to this post at The Gaelic Starover (h/t Blue Gal.) It seems that the New York Times has picked up on the story of Spocko's Brain, a smallish blog that got itself into a pissing war with media giant ABC/Disney over things being said on the air at Disney-owned KSFO radio.

The story in a nutshell:
-KSFO's right-wing talkshow hosts have been spewing things, including Melanie Morgan's apparent advocacy of murdering Nancy Pelosi, that would make mAnne Coulter think twice. (Check that. I just remembered the 'crème brulée' comment she made about the Supreme Court.)
-Spocko started a campaign against KSFO and ABC/Disney that included posting digital copies of the offensive statements, said copies forwarded to KSFO's advertisers so they would be aware of the hate speech their dollars were funding.
-ABC/Disney retaliated with a letter to Spocko's ISP alleging copyright infringement over the sound clips. The ISP didn't just ask Spocko to remove the clips - they suspended his service, killing his blog.
-Other bloggers, notably Daily Kos, rallied to Spocko's aid, calling for a blogswarm. The Electronic Freedom Foundation agreed to back Spocko by footing his legal bills to fight ABC/Disney. Spocko is back up and running at a new ISP.

My observations:
-For an organization that includes a news service, ABC/Disney seems dismally unaware of the 'fair use' provisions of the Digital Millenium copyright act.
-In Canada, where there is no first amendment, free speech is still protected, but hate speech is a crime, Melanie Morgan, Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly et. al. would find themselves in court facing possible jail time.
-When the MSM does fight for the first amendment, it is in the most egregious and despicable way, as this case involving FOX, resolved in 2003 demonstrates. Court Rules the Media Can LIE

Happy ending: Bloggers really can make a difference. They are showing themselves (at least in the clear air of Greater Left Blogistan, but not in the fetid swampy regions of Lower Reight Blogsylvania) to have a thirst for truth and an understanding of journalistic integrity rare in the highly-paid professional newswhores of FOX, ABC/Disney, et. al. SOME small segment of the MSM is beginning to recognize this, as proven by the NYT article and this video clip. Spocko's story has spread far beyond the small readership he had before this controversy arose. Good on ya' Spocko! Way to cut yourself in for a piece of the action.

CBS SanFran on Spocko

Crossposted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: Spocko's Brain, Blogswarm, Media Bias, Hate Speech

The Secret Government

2007-01-13T19:51:00.000-05:00

Nate at Get In Their Face has just posted the full 90-minute version of Bill Moyer's 1987 documentary The Secret Government - primarily an examination of the Iran/Contra scandal, its investigation, and the aftermath. Even though this was 20 years ago it is still relevant, because the secret government is still in operation. The only thing is, what was being done covertly then is now being done openly, even blatantly. And they've dropped the 'secret' from the name. It's just called The Government now.

The Enterprise, as its operatives referred to it among themselves, was designed from the start to be a stand-alone, self-financing entity free from all government scrutiny and outside the bounds of both domestic and international laws. It was in fact created for the express purpose of breaking the law, and should have been prosecuted vigorously under the RICO ( Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ) statute. Because it illegally diverted US military resources and weaponry outside of the legitimate command structure, many of its members could also have been tried for treason. Instead, even after the worst details of this operation were discovered, leading to the Iran/Contra investigation, many aspects of the scandal were protected by Reagan administration claims of 'National Security.'

Ollie North (pictured right) should have received a cigarette and a blindfold for his part in this mess. Instead he went on to a lucrative career as a speaker at conservative functions and is now a ~~political commentator~~ lying propagandist for FOX "news."

Ollie's boss back then was Reagan's National Security Adviser: Vice Admiral John Poindexter got off scot-free for his central role in the affair and went on to develop the "Total Information Awareness" technology that is at the heart of the NSA wiretapping program.

Anyone who watched the Iran/Contra hearings will tell you I would be remiss in excluding the key role played by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. He missed no opportunity to block the thrust of the investigation and provide a platform from which the conspirators could exalt their crimes as heroic and patriotic.

As the result of the incomplete investigation, we have no assurance that anything more than the tip of the Secret Government's iceberg of activities ever came to light. Barely enough to cool the drinks at a Republican country club function. One would be naive to think that this 'stand-alone, self-financing' organization would just go away. None of its members ever showed anything but pride in their activities, which by the way were very lucrative. There was considerable financial motive for the gang to keep on doing what they had already been caught red-handed at and, having escaped unpunished, there was little incentive for them to stop. As a result this video looks like history, but feels eerily like current events.

Watch the video. Say Hi to Nate for me. Then come back and tell me what you think. See you in comments.

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: The Secret Government, Bill Moyers, Documentary, Iran/Contra Affair

World Protests Illegal Detentions

2007-01-11T17:33:00.000-05:00

Five-year Anniversary of First Arrivals At Gitmo

From CBC.ca:

"Demonstrations were held around the world on Thursday to press the Bush administration to close the prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Protesters gathered in cities such as London, Rome, Tokyo and New York..
..In Washington, D.C., about 100 protesters were arrested inside a federal courthouse, though they had a permit to gather at the building and a judge had allowed them to demonstrate inside the facility..

..Five years ago, the first prisoners from the U.S. war on terror were flown from Afghanistan to the naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Close to 400 prisoners suspected of having links to the militant group al-Qaeda and the Taliban are still being held at the base..

..Guantanamo Bay has become a lightning rod for criticism, with human rights activists saying the prisoners are being held without charge or hope of obtaining a fair trial. Activists have also complained about the treatment of prisoners, alleging that some detainees have been tortured to extract confessions..
..The U.S. military has said it plans to charge 60 to 80 of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and military trials could start next summer. But many of the detainees may never be tried by a military court, and under the U.S. Military Commissions Act, which President Bush signed last October, they could be deprived of the right to contest their imprisonment in a civilian court."

Radio Netherlands Worldwide is carrying this story. So is the BBC. Here's The Guardian's take. The Boston Globe weighs in.

NPR has 'a history of the US military base, and detention of "enemy combatants", plus an analysis of the Bush administration's detainee policies.

Amnesty International describes it as 'a human rights scandal.'

Everybody apparently agrees that it must be stopped. Everybody, that is, outside of the Bush administration and their diminishing number of increasingly ill-informed followers. After five long years, how much longer will it continue?

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: Guantanamo Bay, Detainees, Habeas Corpus, Protests

At Our Expense

2007-01-05T02:01:00.001-05:00

Through a Mirror Darkly

SadButTrue's story about the much-maligned Canadian health care system saving the life of a friend with lymphoma has its dark mirror in my brother Paul's story.

Paul died this past summer, one of more than 18,000 Americans who die every year whose deaths can be linked to their lack of health insurance. That makes it the sixth leading cause of death for people between the ages of 25 and 64 in the United States. That's the equivalent of six 9/11s every year. And it's just as senseless.
I've begun sharing Paul's story, and news regarding health care reform in the United States, at my blog, Ave Cassandra. I'm grateful for the opportunity to share it here at Les Enragés as well.

It was the last Sunday in July, and Paul thought he'd eaten something bad. Or maybe it was the stomach flu.

The next day my other brother Curtis stopped by to find Paul curled up on the couch worrying about whether it would be less expensive in the long run to go to an emergency room or to a doctor.

Self-employed and with a baby on the way Paul could not afford decent health insurance for himself, although he made sure his pregnant fiancée and their baby were covered. The most recent numbers for California show that health insurance for a family of four averages about $11,860 annually.

Paul was a hard-working photographer, caterer, and film-maker — he played "Snake" in "The Real Old Testament," a mockumentary he created together with Curtis that won awards at film festivals around the world.

Tuesday at dawn, he and Sarah finally went in to the nearby UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center. Classic appendicitis. But when they gave him a CAT-scan the doctor decided it looked more like diverticulitis.

Although Paul had been vomiting for two days, they sent him home early in the afternoon with antibiotics he couldn't keep down and advice to follow up at the county hospital, in a far-away and unfamiliar part of town.

Standard procedure, we've been told, would have been to admit Paul, since diverticulitis and appendicitis are so easily misdiagnosed for one another, and because that mistake can be deadly.

Sarah brought Paul back to the Santa Monica medical center late Tuesday night.

They gave him another CAT-scan and talked some more about transferring him to county.

They evidently did not compare the two CAT-scans, which showed a dramatic and frightening disintegration of Paul's condition. If they had, the surgeon told us, surely he would have been rushed into surgery. Studies show that the uninsured do not get as good care in American hospitals as do insured people.

Paul finally went into surgery Wednesday mid-morning. His ruptured appendix was the worst the surgeon had ever seen. Paul died, at age 45, a little after midnight, on Thursday, August 3, 2006.

I cannot explain how much we miss him. We were not ready to say good-bye.

His baby daughter was born this autumn.

We so need universal health care in this country. Paul shouldn't have died.

Paul's widow has spent months beating herself up about why she didn't insist, in the face of his balking, on him going to the hospital. But how could she have known? We've all learned to turn away from those what ifs. When my husband reported to me — calling from visiting L.A. from Denver — that Paul and Sarah had canceled dinner due to some kind of food poisoning or something, why didn't I call? Maybe I would have realized it was more than something he ate. My husband kept saying after Paul died that he should have insisted on going over, that he might have realized it was appendicitis, seeing as he'd had it himself a few years back. Paul's symptoms were classic.

And all the if onlys in the world won't bring Paul back.

Americans need health care reform. Our lives depend on it. We deserve to join the rest of the developed world and provide our citizens affordable, basic health care. We're already paying for it, after all.

Every other industrialized country in the world spends far less per person on health care than we do in the United States. And they cover everyone. Their outcomes for many medical conditions are better than ours. Their life expectancy is longer and infant mortality rates are lower. Their people see doctors more frequently. Waits for surgery, depending upon the country, are less than ours. They are more likely to have had the same doctor for more than five years. Far greater percentages of them are satisfied with their national health care.

Even the supposedly beleaguered Canadians, with their under-funded system, say they're more satisfied. Only 8 percent say they’d trade theirs for ours.

The time is right for the United States to legislate universal health care. We can't allow ourselves to be swayed by the expensive television ads designed to frighten us. The health care industry is the single biggest lobbyist on Capital Hill. In the years leading up to 2003, the ten top pharmaceutical companies made more in profits than the other 490 Fortune 500 companies combined. There’s a lot of money at stake.

But a look at Sweden, France, Italy, Germany, and every other industrialized country should reassure us. Universal healthcare isn’t frightening.

The scary thing is already here. And it's at our expense.

Here's an excerpt from the song that a friend composed and sang at Paul's memorial:
Someone's having fun and it seems at our expense...

the things you don't need, you can always hold and touch
and the ones that disappear are the ones that mean so much
and its so funny we're in tears
and will be for years and years
no lesson learned, no wisdom gained
it's so funny that we're in pain

though every story is a treasure, and every memory gold
we'd trade them all away to watch our friend grow old
so he could laugh once again at the absurdity of life
and be a father and a husband to his daughter and his wife...
Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: Health Care, Reform, Urgent, Vital

Even In Victory, I'm Not Over It

2007-01-04T12:24:00.000-05:00

Crossposted at Ice Station Tango.

When the stolen 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections were fresh in our minds, electoral irregularities seemed synonymous with the death of America and freedom. To me, anyway.

Well, now that the amazing, shutout victory of 2006 (swearing in today), has come and gone and left Karl Rove doing "The Math" on his fingers and toes in a frantic, spastic effort to find out what happened, the stolen election meme has receded.

Well, believe what you want about the conspiracies, nothing has changed in the wake of the Democrats' electoral success. The E-Voting system is broken and dangerously vulnerable to manipulation.

From the New York Times (h/t Russ):

A laboratory that has tested most of the nation’s electronic voting systems has been temporarily barred from approving new machines after federal officials found that it was not following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests.

(more)

By the way something, that Kerry guy can't win no matter what he does.

By the way something else, all week long we've had the myth of Gerald Ford shoved up our asses. The lie that Ford pardoned Bush to heal the country is total crap. Ford admitted as much to Weathervane Woodward. Healing the country would have been to put Nixon's ass on trial and then send his ass to jail. Instead, he got away with it and became a lovable curmudgeon periodically kissing America's ass on Larry King Live until he croaked. Now we got this group of Nixonite traitors because no one made an example of them. So, no, I won't be letting the elections or the WMD, or Katrina, or any of this other bullshit go anytime soon and neither should anyone else. That's not healing.

VIDEO: How about the Al Gore doll for President?
VIDEO: Fox and Friends is always good for a laugh.

Cross-posted from Ice Station Tango
Tags: E-Voting, John Kerry, Al Gore.

A Personal Story

2007-01-01T04:32:00.000-05:00

This piece is in response to a must-read Paul Krugman article in the New York Times, available at Jurassic Pork's site (he who cuts the velvet rope of NYT select - thanks.)

"The U.S. health care system is a scandal and a disgrace. But maybe, just maybe, 2007 will be the year we start the move toward universal coverage.

In 2005, almost 47 million Americans — including more than 8 million children — were uninsured, and many more had inadequate insurance."

Up here in Canada we have a universal, single payer health care system that puts the needs of ordinary citizens above the desires of a few insurance executives to become obscenely wealthy. I have seen the Canadian system criticized harshly in various American forums or rather, I've seen our system misrepresented and the misrepresentation harshly criticized. Conservatives love using the straw man argument, don't they?

Here's my personal story. My best friend was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1997 and told the odds were he wouldn't last a year. I'm happy to say he bucked those odds and is still alive now. He didn't know he had lymphoma until some time after his first medical crisis, when one of his lungs spontaneously collapsed. His wife decided not to wait for an ambulance, just bundled him into the car and broke every traffic law getting him to the emergency ward as fast as possible. Which, the doctors told her, saved his life. After reinflating his lung, the docs decided he should stay in the hospital for further observation. The next day his other lung collapsed. The doctors said that, had he not already been in the hospital, this second crisis would have been fatal. Later still his spleen ruptured. This time the doctors told him he was lucky it happened during the daytime, because the necessary staff that saved him were not available on the night shift. All in all, my friend is one very lucky person.

I don't tell this story to demonstrate the often unsung excellence of our system, though it does just that. The point is this. I was recently talking to his wife about this, and saying how much worse off they would have been had this happened in the USA. The financial burden would have destroyed them, they probably would have lost their home, as rising premiums and uncovered deductibles ate away at their livelihood. But she figures it would have been much worse than that. In America, the wealthiest country in the world, there would have been a 27% chance that she would not have taken her husband to the hospital immediately in the first place, out of concern for the expense. Or so one of the oncologists told her.

If you really need emergency medical treatment, you need it RIGHT NOW, dammit. Not after filling out a bunch of forms, not after confirming that your plan is paid up. What are the odds that an HMO would have quibbled over the cost of the medically necessary period of hospital observation that saved his life at least twice in the first week after his initial crisis? Or that some bean-counter vetoed a necessary aspect of treatment due to a lawyer's interpretation of paragraph 117, subsection 3 in the contract? In nine years, there have been dozens of times when my friend, had he lived in the USA, could have been killed by an accountant. This is unacceptable.

Consider health care reform a priority. Your life could very well depend on it.

Update: One of our readers has kindly consented to post the corollary to this story, HERE.

Cross-posted at Les Enragés.org and Ice Station Tango

TAGS: Health Care, Canada, HMO, Crisis

Justice in a Kangaroo Court?

2006-12-30T02:30:00.000-05:00

As I write this, various news outlets are saying that the Americans have already turned Saddam over for an "imminent" execution. It`s hard to imagine how executing anyone convicted by a kangaroo court advances the cause of justice. It`s hard to imagine how anything good can come of this travesty of a "trial". There may have been a legitimate case against Saddam. There may have been legitimate accusations. But they were not heard in this court where the rules of
evidence clearly did not apply, where the presumption of innocence was abandoned, where defense objections were dismissed out of hand, where the fix was in.

From Information Clearing House:

Saddam Hussein was a secular leader and a staunch friend of India, who consistently supported India on Kashmir and other issues. US corporate and British government media outlets have already tried to convict Saddam by playing up the Halabja massacres and other accusations which are not even part of this trial. When unsubstantiated allegations were made that Iraq was behind the plot to kill former US President George H.W Bush in Kuwait , father of the current US President in 1993, President Bill Clinton had hit Iraq with missiles. Why no charges against him!

Swiss legal expert Prof Marc Henzelin, Professor of international law at Geneva University had declined to defend Saddam Hussein. He put it this way in the same article: "Wonderful material for a US television series but nothing to do with a fair trial. I think it is all about justifying the United States' invasion of Iraq and to string Saddam Hussein up sooner rather than later without asking too many questions.”

The nature of the war --called illegal by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan --raises doubts about the legitimacy of Saddam`s trial itself --let alone the suspicious conduct of it. When Saddam --guilty or not --is executed by the illegitimate government of Jawad al Maliki, the US will have committed another war crime in a string of war crimes not matched since Adolph Hitler.

Is subverting the very concepts of western justice what Bush meant when he said that we were fighting for Democracy in Iraq? Of the many lies told by Bush to justify his war of naked aggression, this must surely be the most egregious. America, under Bush`s criminal regime, proves itself not merely incapable but unwilling to support the very ideals of our founding.

-The Existentialist Cowboy

TAGS:
The Existentialist Cowboy
Saddam Hussein, Imperialism
Bush, War Crimes, Iraq

UK Troops Demolish Police Station

2006-12-29T18:20:00.000-05:00

Iraq Security Forces Untrustworthy

Let's see if I've got this straight. We'll stand down when the Iraqi security forces stand up, right? What I've always wondered is how do the coalition screen those they train and arm to enter into the security forces they hope will stand up at some undefined point in the future. In a country where the vast majority hate the US led occupation of their country, how do you give someone an assault rifle with the assurance it won't eventually find its way into the wrong hands? For that matter that the guy you're training isn't the wrong hands to begin with?

Actions by UK forces in Basra over the weekend really underline the importance of these questions in an undeniable way. Here's the story as reported by CBC news;

"British forces stormed a police station in Basra in southern Iraq on Monday, rescuing prisoners on death row and killing seven Iraqi gunmen during the pre-dawn raid.
More than 1,000 British troops backed by tanks then demolished the building with explosives.
The military called the police headquarters a symbol of oppression for the city's residents and said the unit was suspected of torturing and murdering prisoners.
Many of the 127 people rescued — all of whom were suspected criminals — were crowded together in a small cell, living in "appalling conditions," the military said.
But the Basra council has stopped co-operating with the military in protest of what the council described as an illegal raid...
..The operation came days after Iraqi officers were arrested Friday on suspicions of leading death squads. The unit is also accused of being responsible for murdering both local and international troops."

Once again, let me get this straight - Our guys (the Brits are still on our side, aren't they?) were appalled so much by the Iraqi security forces we trained and armed (the good guys) they've had to arrest some of them, raid a police building, release prisoners (the bad guys - predictably there is evidence of torture) and blow up the police headquarters. Because the 'stand up' guys we're hoping to hand the country over to are suspected of leading death squads. Hoo, boy! I think there is a notable flaw in this plan. And how does this square with this report from the BBC, only five weeks ago?

"The UK has 'confidence' it may be able to hand Basra's security to Iraqi forces 'at some point next spring', the UK's Foreign Secretary has said.
Margaret Beckett told MPs Iraq's fate was 'hanging in the balance' and said it was necessary 'to hold our nerve'.
'The progress of our current operation in Basra gives us confidence we may be able to achieve transition in that province... at some point next spring.' "

Uhhhh...I think you may want to rethink that one guys. If this is the way your brilliant plan is working out (the phrase, 'I doubt six months' bounces around in my head), you may be in it for the long ~~haul~~ hell.

The New York Times has more on this story.
Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

TAGS: Iraq War, Endless, Quagmire, Basra

War Is Over

2006-12-23T17:11:00.000-05:00

If You Want It*

*Disclaimer: May take some effort.

TAGS: John Lennon, Christmas Music,
War Is Over, If You Want It

Two or More Wrongs

2006-12-17T21:36:00.000-05:00

...Don't Make a Right.
..Perpetuating the Victimization of Maher Arar.

What's got me enraged today? Mostly, this article in the Toronto Star, about US authorities refusing to take Maher Arar off a security watch list even though he has been cleared of any wrongdoing by a Canadian Royal Commission.

"In a written statement yesterday, the U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins said his government deported Arar in 2002 to Syria because of 'information from a variety of sources.'

Wilkins appeared to assert that the United States had its own reasons to act against Arar, and does not intend to comply with a Canadian government request to take Arar off its border watch lists.

...Wilkins' letter was not specific about what sources of information he was referring to — whether they were a "variety" of Canadian sources, or whether the intelligence came from U.S. officials or other foreign agents."The decision to remove Mr. Arar from the United States in 2002 was made by U.S. officials based on our own independent assessment of the threat to the United States," said Wilkins.

That means Arar is effectively barred from travelling to about 70 countries that share information with the U.S., Arar's lawyer, Julian Falconer, said last week."Due to a lawsuit in the United States initiated by Mr. Arar which was dismissed at the trial level and is now on appeal, I cannot go into any further detail," Wilkins said in the release."

Mr. Arar was kidnapped by American law enforcement personnel in September of 2002 on flimsy evidence, to whit; "the RCMP passed on erroneous information to the U.S., among other things, labelling Arar and his wife as 'Islamic extremists' linked to Al Qaeda." I use the term kidnapped because no charges were ever laid, so I won't dignify what happened with the word 'arrest.'

Arar was 'renditioned' to Syria where he spent nearly a year in an underground cell barely bigger than a coffin, and only taken out to be tortured daily. I blogged about this last Sept. 19. (Canadian Terror Suspect Vindicated.)

I deeply regret having referred to Mr. Arar as a 'terror suspect,' a term I parroted from the articles I was quoting. The correct term is 'innocent victim.' I do not regret reminding our readers that Mr. Arar's innocence was proven after an investigation that lasted two years. A line from a commenter on Glenn Greenwald's threads comes back to me, in that instance referring to Jose Padilla, but equally applicable here,

"The only thing that has ever gotten through to anyone is to list the evidence against Padilla, and point out, 'They have that much evidence against YOU.' Because, frankly, there is that much evidence on just about every American."

(H/T - DaveCM)

The phrase, "there but for the grace of God" comes to mind.

TAGS: Human Rights, Rendition, Torture, War On Terror, Maher Arar

Cross-posted to Ice Station Tango - A cool place to chill out.

Sickening!

2006-12-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

This Glenn Greenwald article has me literally wanting to throw up. I am so upset I can barely type, and tears are in my eyes. In the first case to test the habeas corpus-negating provisions of the onerous Military Commissions Act (AKA Torture Bill, AKA War Criminals' Protection Act), a district court has ruled in favor of the administration's bid to strip defendants of their constitutional and even pre-constitutional rights going back to the 13th. century Magna Carta. Glenn rightly describes the MCA as a 'legislative atrocity', and up until now I held out some hope that judges would have the decency and good sense to slap it down like an annoying insect.

"The decision was a major victory for the Bush administration's attempt to vest the President with the power to imprison individuals -- even for life -- without according them any meaningful opportunity to contest the validity of their imprisonment.

The district court ruled that (1) the MCA successfully stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions filed by "war on terrorism" detainees, and (2) under controlling Supreme Court precedent, "enemy aliens" who have no substantial connection to the U.S. (i.e., never resided inside the U.S.) have no constitutional right to seek habeas corpus review. As a result, the court dismissed the case of the Guantanamo detainee seeking habeas review here and, in essence, upheld the Bush administration's power to detain such "enemy combatants" forever while denying the detainees all access to our courts."

Glenn obliquely references the fact that the plaintiff, Salim Ahmed Hamdan (The same individual named in the lawsuit Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that forced the creation of the MCA) was protected not only under US law, but the Geneva Convention as well. This decision would seem to make official the status of the US as an out of control rogue state in the international community.
Meanwhile the majority of Americans remain either unaware or unconcerned that their country has been hijacked by war criminals, and calmly and complacently went about their holiday preparations. -baaaaa- I would think it more appropriate for the entire populace to don black armbands over this, wear sackcloth and ashes, or tear at the hem of their garments in mourning for the last hope that the constitution has not been torn to shreds. But that's just me.
Glenn provides links to the Washington Post's article on the decision, as well as the reaction from the Center for Constitutional Rights. I strongly recommend reading the latter in its entirety.

TAGS: Habeas Corpus, Hamdan, Human Rights, Justice, Injustice

Onward Christian Soldiers -Pt. 1

2006-12-12T11:55:00.000-05:00

New Battles in the War Against The First Amendment

A couple of stories today about the ongoing efforts by elements in the Republican party and the current administration to turn America into a theocracy. First up is this item from the Washington Post on the subject of high-ranking officers in the Pentagon violating regulations by proselytizing in uniform.

"A military watchdog group is asking the Defense Department to investigate whether seven Army and Air Force officers violated regulations by appearing in uniform in a promotional video for an evangelical Christian organization.

In the video, much of which was filmed inside the Pentagon, four generals and three colonels praise the Christian Embassy, a group that evangelizes among military leaders, politicians and diplomats in Washington. Some of the officers describe their efforts to spread their faith within the military.
"I found a wonderful opportunity as a director on the joint staff, as I meet the people that come into my directorate," Air Force Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr. says in the video. "And I tell them right up front who Jack Catton is, and I start with the fact that I'm an old-fashioned American, and my first priority is my faith in God, then my family and then country. I share my faith because it describes who I am."
Pete Geren, a former acting secretary of the Air Force who oversaw the service's response in 2005 to accusations that evangelical Christians were pressuring cadets at the Air Force Academy, also appears in the video. The Christian Embassy "has been a rock that I can rely on, been an organization that helped me in my walk with Christ, and I'm just thankful for the service they give," he says.
[...]
In 2003, Army Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin drew criticism for appearing in uniform before church groups and saying, in remarks captured on video, that President Bush was "appointed by God," that the United States is "a Christian nation" and that Muslims worship "an idol." The inspector general's office determined that Boykin had not violated any rules, and he remained in a top intelligence post."

The part about Pete Geren I find particularly disturbing, as I blogged on the Air Force Academy issue HERE, and it is obvious that the response to complaints about this blatant violation of the first amendment is to assign someone who is part of the problem to deal with it. That approach seems to be part of White House doctrine these days, the policy of perpetuating every problem.

I myself am an atheist, but I respect other people's right to make up their own minds about things. I don't even see why some people object to such things as having the ten commandments displayed in public buildings, it sounds too much like censorship to me.
Blatant violations of the first amendment are another thing altogether. The protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights also protect believers and members of faiths not in the majority. See RevPhat's post on this subject HERE.
There is also the issue of being Christian and being a soldier to begin with. Many pacifist faiths require a conscientious abstention from military duty. This post at Lew Rockwell points out why.

"If the U.S. military was engaged in guarding our borders, patrolling our coasts, and genuinely defending the country instead of establishing and guarding a U.S. global empire, then perhaps a soldier would be a noble occupation that one could wholeheartedly perform as a Christian.
[...]
But now more than ever, the Christian in the military faces the possibility of having to kill (in the name of freedom and democracy, of course) for the state in some foreign country that we are not at war with (there has been no declaration of war in the United States since World War II) and many Americans can’t even locate on a map.
[...]
Blind obedience to the state is not a tenet of New Testament Christianity."

I don't even want to begin on the possibility that the Religious Right is deliberately trying to start a perpetual holy war against Islam. That's just too scary.
Onward Christian Soldiers - Pt. 2
Related Posts:
Faith-Based Initiatives Abused
Once Upon A Time
TAGS: Constitution, Faith-Based Initiatives, Pentagon, Theocracy

Cross-Posted from Les Enragés.org

Onward Christian Soldiers -Pt. 2

2006-12-12T11:49:00.000-05:00

New Battles in the War Against The First Amendment

Item #2: From this New York Times article about a government funded program to rehabilitate prison inmates.

"The program — which grew from a project started in 1997 at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was governor at the time — says on its Web site that it seeks “to ‘cure’ prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems” and showing inmates “how God can heal them permanently, if they turn from their sinful past.” "

To qualify for inclusion in the program the inmate had to, "satisfy the evangelical Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual progress." One big problem with it was that it was blatantly sectarian.

"One Roman Catholic inmate, Michael A. Bauer, left the program after a year, mostly because he felt the program staff and volunteers were hostile toward his faith.

“My No. 1 reason for leaving the program was that I personally felt spiritually crushed,” he testified at a court hearing last year. “I just didn’t feel good about where I was and what was going on.” "

Another problem was how do you judge the sincerity of prisoners being bribed for their participation? They were getting the following perks:

"More books and computers were available, and inmates were kept busy with classes, chores, music practice and discussions. There were occasional movies and events with live bands and real-world food, like pizza or sandwiches from Subway. Best of all, there were opportunities to see loved ones in an environment quieter and more intimate than the typical visiting rooms."

Sounds to me like something other than a prison environment. Several programs just like the one in Iowa just discussed have already been declared illegal.

"And, typically, the only penalty imposed when constitutional violations are detected is the cancellation of future financing — with no requirement that money improperly used for religious purposes be repaid.
But in a move that some constitutional lawyers found surprising, Judge Pratt ordered the prison ministry in the Iowa case to repay more than $1.5 million in government money, saying the constitutional violations were serious and clearly foreseeable.
His decision has been appealed by the prison ministry to a federal appeals court and fiercely protested by the attorneys general of nine states and lawyers for a number of groups advocating greater government accommodation of religious groups. The ministry’s allies in court include the Bush administration, which argued that the repayment order could derail its efforts to draw more religious groups into taxpayer-financed programs."

Well Boo frickin' Hoo. It's so typical of the Bush administration to break the law and then whine like babies when their transgressions are pointed out to them. I say Kudos to Judge Pratt for defending the Constitution and the rule of law.

Related Posts:
Onward Christian Soldiers - Pt. 1
Faith-Based Initiatives Abused
Once Upon A Time
TAGS: Constitution, Faith-Based Initiatives, Prison System, Theocracy

Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org

It's Comin' On Christmas

2006-12-10T13:30:00.000-05:00

Sara McLachlan - River

I couldn't find a version of this by Joni Mitchell herself, but this is pretty nice. There's another gorgeous version of this by Canadian Indie artist Allison Crowe HERE. The song poignantly captures the pre-Christmas blues many people get as the year's biggest family interface approaches. I hope you all enjoy it.

This song always makes me think of Ottawa, where every year they clear the snow off of the Rideau Canal to provide the world's longest and largest public skating rink. The little artificial puddle they put in front of Toronto City Hall pales in comparison. Skating is a great way to take off those turkey pounds put on over the holidays.

TAGS: Sara McLachlan, Joni Mitchell, River, Christmas Music

Panel Rejects Fair Elections

2006-12-10T13:28:00.000-05:00

..Votes Against Election Machine Checks

From the AP Wire:

"A federal advisory panel on Monday rejected a recommendation that states use only voting machines that produced results that could be independently verified.

The panel drafting voting guidelines for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission voted 6-6 not to adopt a proposal that would have required electronic machines used by millions of voters to produce a paper record or other independent means of checking election results. Eight votes were needed to pass it.

The failed resolution, proposed by Ronald Rivest, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist and panel member, closely mirrored a report released last week warning that paperless electronic voting machines are vulnerable to errors and fraud and cannot be made secure.

Some panel members who voted against the proposal said they support paper records but don't think the risk of widespread voting machine meltdowns is great enough to rush the requirement into place and overwhelm state election boards.

'They should be longer-range goals,' said Britain Williams of the National Association of Election Directors. 'You are talking about basically a reinstallation of the entire voting system hardware.' "

Question: Who decided that these people were competent and well-informed enough to be deciding this crucial issue? Their decision seems, well..INSANE!

Answer: "Congress created the panel after vote-counting problems in the 2000 presidential election to advise the Election Assistance Commission."

Oh, now I get it. This panel was hand-picked by a Republican Congress to come up with a predetermined conclusion. After SIX YEARS of dragging their feet which resulted in MORE dubious election results in 2002, 2004 and now 2006 (especially in FLA 13) these pinheads treat voter fraud like the Repug EPA treats global warming. And what a lame excuse to justify their decision. Reinstallation of the entire voting system hardware requires nothing more than printing paper ballots and providing enough pencils.

The only thing being preserved here is the Repugs chance to steal the election in 2008. This is disgusting.

Also read: What Election Fraud Looks Like -by Michael Richardson in OpEd News

TAGS: Election Fraud, Voting Machines,
Republican Corruption, Democracy in Peril

Olbermann on Erosion of Privacy

2006-12-04T22:08:00.000-05:00

Perhaps some of you are familiar with Jonathan Turley, Law Professor at George Washington University, and a frequent commenter on Keith Olbermann's show. I really like the guy because he has a clear idea of what Constitutional protections of freedom and privacy are supposed to be about. In this piece he demonstrates that he also has a pretty good sense of humor.

Virtual Strip Search

Get a load of this exchange between Keith and Jonathan.

KO: "Having now seen that photo (right), we can't not begin with the X-Ray machine. It would seem Jonathan to be not just intrusive but actually indecent, so much so .. What is the difference between requiring passengers to subject themselves to that and simply asking them to strip off all their clothes before boarding?"

JT: "Well maybe this is a recruiting tool to get TSA applicants, which should now be called T 'n' A or something, I don't know. But most of us are more afraid we'll be sent to something like Jenny Craig than Gitmo after this, because it is a very revealing picture."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's two zingers in as many sentences, and both worthy of a Saturday Night Live skit, though admittedly neither would be the funniest line on even a mediocre night. And I don't think it's the best comedic technique to laugh at your own joke, especially before you even tell it as he does here. Nonetheless I give Jonathan two thumbs up for his effort, especially the reference to Jenny Craig. Not ROTFLMAO, but at least LOL. And for the record I don't think Turley's venture into comedy undermines his credibility when he speaks seriously to substantive issues.

TAGS: Airport Security, Invasion of Privacy, Keith Olbermann, Humor

Inalienable Rights

2006-12-04T14:20:00.000-05:00

...And Impeachable Offenses

God bless Glenn Greenwald for never letting up on the criminal behavior of the Bush administration and for reminding us that every day they are in power is a day that untold victims languish in torture prisons. And thank you Glenn for today's post refreshing our outrage at the treatment of Jose Padilla, a US citizen who was held in prison for 3½ years without charges, who was finally charged in November of 2005, who still awaits trial on nebulous charges for which there is so little evidence that he will most like be acquitted.

Excerpts;

"Last month, I wrote about the torture -- there is no other accurate word for it -- to which Padilla alleges, quite credibly, he was subjected over the 3 1/2 years of his lawless detention. Today, The New York Times describes the apparently jarring video showing a completely dehumanized Padilla being transported from his black hole to a dentist visit.

They only brought charges against Padilla in November, 2005 -- and transferred him from his military brig to a federal prison -- because the Supreme Court was set to rule on the legality of their treatment of Padilla, something they were desperate to avoid.. . .But the administration continues to argue that it has the power to detain U.S. citizens -- including those, like Padilla, detained not on a "battlefield," but on U.S. soil -- indefinitely and without any charges being brought. Nothing has changed in that regard.

..John Aschroft flamboyantly brand him "the Dirty Bomber" and then leak to the press over the next two years that he wanted to blow up apartment buildings. But the indictment contained none of those allegations (because the "evidence" on which they were based was flimsy from the start and, independently, was unusable because it was obtained via torture).. ..forced to defend their accusations in court, the Bush administration's case against Padilla has been revealed to be incredibly weak.

The Bush administration currently has in its custody 14,000 human beings around the world (at least) who have never been charged with any crime (needless to say, we're not entitled to know the number or what is being done with them, because that's Secret, like everything else)."

The statements in this article seem to compete with one another for the most outrageous or enraging title. Perhaps the statement that comes closest to putting a bottom line on the story comes from the comments;

"The only thing that has ever gotten through to anyone is to list the evidence against Padilla, and point out, 'They have that much evidence against YOU.' Because, frankly, there is that much evidence on just about every American." (H/T - DaveCM)

TAGS: Unlawful Confinement, Inalienable Rights, Bill of Rights, Constitution, Impeachable Offenses
Crossposted at Les Enragés.org

Science Teachers Inconvenienced by Truth

2006-11-29T17:09:00.000-05:00

Money Talks Bullshit

NSTA President earns Olbermann's Worst Person Award

This story really gets me where it hurts. I am an unrepentant fan of science, and a self-described philosophical empiricist, meaning I like to base my beliefs on observable facts. I have no room in my mind for faith-based creation myths, and even less for politically motivated junk science that denies the facts because they are inconvenient to the reich* and powerful in the oil industry.

"In tomorrow’s Washington Post, global warming activist Laurie David writes about her effort to donate 50,000 free DVD copies of An Inconvenient Truth (which she co-produced) to the National Science Teachers Association. The Association refused to accept the DVDs:

Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place 'unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.' "

Those unnamed targeted supporters were of course the reich and powerful in the oil industry.

"As it turns out, those supporters already include “special interests,” including Exxon-Mobil, Shell Oil, and the American Petroleum Institute, which have given millions in funding to the NSTA. And while the NSTA showed no interest in helping educators get copies of Al Gore’s movie (which scientists gave “five stars for accuracy“), it has distributed oil industry-funded “educational” content, like this video produced by the American Petroleum Institute: Fuel-less: You Can't Be Cool Without Fuel."

I feel betrayed. Science is supposed to be above this kind of financial manipulation. I'm already pissed off enough that corporate ownership of the media has led to a wholesale distortion of the 'facts' put in front of the public via the radio and TV airwaves. I'm disturbed and dismayed that the religious right has tried with some success to replace evolution with 'intelligent design' in the classroom. The idea that science teachers would do this is too much.

* - 'reich and powerful' - a typo, I thought it fitting to let it stand as is.
TAGS: Science, Propaganda, NSTA, An Inconvenient Truth

Bush Exit Strategy Collapses

2006-11-20T13:21:00.000-05:00

Remember this infamous gaffe of Bush's when he tried to leave a conference during a trip to China and the door he chose was locked? This incident should become a prominent feature of Bush's recurring nightmares for the rest of his lame-duck illegal occupation of the White House. The door he sees closing in front of him now is morphing in front of his eyes into the gray bars of a jail cell.

The loudest bang and click of a latch came of course when on Nov. 7 the Diebold hacking of thousands of precinct results was insufficient to thwart the will of the people. Sufficient however to be obvious by comparison to the exit polls. Dependence on a compliant and complicit legislature is no longer an option. This is made clear in this story from USNews and World Report. His exit strategy for getting out of criminal responsibility in the NSA wiretapping program just slammed in his face. (Emphasis mine)

"His plea for a legislative stamp of approval on the controversial spy effort is an "important priority in the war on terror," Bush said. The response: deafening silence. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist quickly dispatched aides to put out the word on Bush's request: Not gonna happen.
...And with Democrats promising oversight hearings next year on how the program was hatched and whom it targets, it appears likely that the issue will be decided in court and, ultimately, the Supreme Court."

With subpoena powers in the hands of a Democratic Congress, judges like Anna Diggs Taylor may suddenly find themselves in possession of seriously damning evidence against the administration. The stone wall is crumbling. NSA paper shredders must be working 24/7 destroying related documents. In a more general sense, the return of the concept of checks and balances, and oversight responsibility to the House and Senate spell bad news for the administration. According to this post at The Raw Story, they plan to use their new authority aggressively. Which news is sad for the administration, but true. And good news for America, which I am more than happy to report.

If things go the way US law going back to the Youngstown decision says it should, I may have to change my handle to HappyButTrue. There is still the chance that they will react like cornered rats and lash out, now that their every conceivable exit is blocked.

TAGS: Wiretapping, Congressional Oversight, Bush Administration, Criminality

List of Shame Update

2006-11-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

From Les Enragés.org: An update to sans-culotte's finest work.

On a suggestion from, and with the help of commenter extraordinaire MACACA DOODLE DOO, I posted This Update to Sans-Culotte's GOP List of Shame a few days ago at Les Enragés. It's 'just' a list of links to articles about Republican party politicians who have been investigated, indicted or convicted of various crimes in the last year or so. I put quotes around the word 'just' in the previous sentence because when a list gets this long it becomes far more than the sum of its parts. It becomes a clear and undeniable statement of what sans rightly calls a 'culture of corruption' within the Republican party and their supporters.
If the justice department wasn't run by Roberto Gonzales and the Supreme Court dominated by equally corrupt and partisan Republican appointees, the RICO investigation (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization) would bring the party down, along with a substantial number of higher-ups in the corporate world and the religious right. Unfortunately, the US has a two-party system, and taking the Repugs out of the mix would give them a one-party system. And that ain't democracy.
I can't reproduce the list here, because it's so long that it requires 'folding' the post and I haven't installed the Java script on this blog to do that. So here's the link again:
The Growing GOP List of Shame, and while I'm at it here's a link to Sans-culotte.org. Even though Sans has been MIA since late July (the main reason for the creation of Les Enragés.org)and there are no recent updates, you can learn a lot by clicking on his 'most popular' links in the sidebar.

TAGS: Republican, Corruption, Congress, Senate, Abramoff

Bush's Incredibly Bad Idea

2006-11-05T12:39:00.000-05:00

pResident Bush continues to terrorize the American public while simultaneously holding his administration out as the only protection against terrorists. In one of the most politically cynical and incredibly, insanely idiotic decisions made to date, they have posted archive documents from Iraq on the internet that describe in detail how to build a thermonuclear device.
??WHAT??!! That's right, "diagrams, dimensions, diameters, fusing mechanisms, descriptions of explosive tests..." A road map to the design and construction of an atomic weapon.
This was done to revive the long debunked notion that the war in Iraq was about finding and destroying Weapons of Mass Destruction.

"The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to 'leverage the Internet' to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein."

Against the strident objections of the intelligence community, ignoring all sane advice (as usual), this is nothing short of outright insanity. The material was posted last March, and only taken down after the fact of its existence was revealed in this New York Times article.

Report From Keith Olbermann

(Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org)
TAGS: Atomic Weapons, WMDs, Bush Administration, Insanity

Get Firefox 2.0 Now

2006-11-05T12:33:00.000-05:00

I've been using Firefox's new 2.0 version of their fantastic browser long enough now to be able to give it an unqualified recommendation. We layout and edit Les Enragés.org with Firefox, so naturally the site looks best using this state of the art browser. I know, I know, Internet Explorer version 7.0 has finally caught up with the rest of the world to offer tabbed browsing, but Firefox invented the concept. Long story short;

Friends Don't Let Friends Use IE

Olbermann Demands Bush Apology

2006-11-05T12:06:00.000-05:00

Following cynical exploitation of Kerry gaff

"Get someone to make fun of the cripple."

(Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org)
TAGS: Olbermann, Special Comment, Bush, Kerry, Controversy

Some Important Information

2006-11-05T12:02:00.000-05:00

Glenn Greenwald has a nice post up today that points out the futility of electoral defeatism among progressive voters. His argument, that Democrats can't stay away from the polls on the assumption that their candidate will lose anyway is an important one. Pessimism can often lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. We have to fight that.

This post is not about Greenwald's argument, though. It is about this graphic he linked to, shown above. From the University of Minnesota, it is an accumulation of results from several polls during the Bush ~~Presidency~~ occupation of the White House. If there is one thing that we in the reality-based community like, it's facts. Graphs, charts and maps fascinate us, because they provide a large number of facts in a way that can be analyzed and interpreted. From this analysis and interpretation we derive more facts and conclusions that have a high probability of being valid, based as they are on reality.

Conservatives on the other hand have opinions, which are based on nothing more than the opinions of other conservatives. They titter derisively when they hear the word analysis, because it happens to contain the word anal. And yet, ironically, conservatives like Limbaugh, Coulter and O'Reilly get most of their own 'facts' by pulling them out of their ass. They mumble and turn away when they hear the word interpretation because it reminds them that other languages than English exist. For some conservatives even one language is too much of a challenge. Take the pResident as an example.

Update: from our comment threads, the idea to include this video in the post earns a tip of the revolutionary headgear for Macaca Doodle Doo!! - Great Handle, BTW

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative." -- John Stuart Mill

So what facts can we derive from the graph?

#1) The more people get to know George W. Bush, the less they like him.
#2) Standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn makes you look Presidential, and hugely increases your popularity. (a 35% bump)
#3) Starting a needless war in Iraq makes you look Presidential, and increases your popularity (a 20% bump)
#4) Polls taken by FOX "news", ABC/WP and ABC/Ipsos consistently show Bush approval higher than other polls. Harris, Zogby and PEW often show lower approval, but not quite so consistently.
#5)Differences between the highest and lowest poll results often exceed 10%, despite the standard claim of 4% accuracy.
#6), #7), #8)...For our visitors in comments.

(Belatedly cross-posted from Les Enragés.org)
TAGS: Election, Polls, Bush, ?Popularity?

Neil Young Is the Real Deal

2006-10-31T15:12:00.000-05:00

With hits going all the way back to the sixties band Buffalo Springfield, with anthems like Rockin' in the Free World, with a declaration of integrity like This Note's For You, Neil Young has been there and done that. With songs like Southern Man and Ohio, he has more than proven himself to be a politically aware voice for change. The album Living With War is one of the most significant acts of protest for decades, and the tour with Crosby Stills and Nash was the biggest musical event of the year. I love the man, I love his music, I love the fact that he has never sold out or failed to give his all in forty years in the music business.

And oh yeah, LET'S IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT.

Why am I posting this now? No reason, it's just been a while since we put up a music vid, and I have always loved this song. Happy Halloween.

TAGS: Neil Young, Cinnamon Girl, Rock Video,

Taking Care of Business

2006-10-31T15:10:00.000-05:00

Four States Want Expanded Corporate Power

This Piece from Huffington Post is an indication of the dark days to come if the already insanely powerful corporate community gets even more powerful. In California it is Proposition 90. In Washington it is Initiative 933. In Idaho it is Proposition 2. In Arizona it is Proposition 207. The legal authority contained in these ballot measures is so extreme it can hardly even be accurately described. It seems the corporate community wants the authority to equate potential profits with actual money in the bank. The message sent is, 'screw you America - show us the money.'

"There is a law on the ballot in four states that says if I want to open a hog farm or a chemical plant next door to your house and you don't want me to do that, then YOU have to pay ME not to -- you have to pay me all the money I MIGHT have made..
..if you want to stop a corporation from dumping toxic waste into the river from which you get your drinking water, or stop them from venting dangerous chemicals into the air, then YOU have to PAY that company not to..
..The far right says that a government stopping a company from dumping waste into a river is 'taking money' from that company."

This whole thing reminds me of a recent 'Broken Government' piece on CNN, where I heard that Washington has over 30,000 registered lobbyists, or about 60 for every Senator and Congressman. They spend billions of dollars a year trying to make sure that democracy doesn't work for people, it only works for big business. As your rights and freedoms are eroded on a daily basis, corporate rights are being increased dramatically. Some pigs walk on two legs.

It also reminds me of this piece from yesterday's New York Times. It's about Bob Richardson, a 58 year old Texan who catches feral hogs (with his bare hands, no less) and sells them live to organic restaurants in Europe. Sounds like a heck of a way to make a living. He makes just under $30,000 a year doing this. It sounds like a backbreaking lifestyle.

So I came up with this idea. Somebody should hire Bob to go to Washington D.C., and start rounding up these lobbyists and hogtie them, throw them in the back of his Toyota pickup truck, and we'll pay him a handsome bounty on them. With the reduction in porkbarrel spending by government that would result, I'm sure it would be well worth it. We discretely won't ask what happens to them, just so long as they never return to Washington or any state capitol to carry out their nefarious 'profession.'

TAGS: Corporate Greed, Corruption, Lobbyists, Mmmmm.., Pork chops,

Another Threat to Freedom

2006-10-31T15:07:00.000-05:00

We're getting inured these days to a steady streams of overt threats to freedom and democracy. These range from the NSA domestic surveillance program through electronic voter fraud all the way to the odious Military Commissions Act. Call me a pessimist, but I think that the political and doctrinal subversion of the military is a much more disturbing and frightening trend. In a democracy it is essential that the armed forces be non-partisan, and reflect the values of the general population. That's why this piece in Wonkette is cause for the greatest concern. As the screenshot above shows, the left leaning Wonkette weblog is blocked by the military ISP serving marines in Iraq, while right-tard sites like Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt are allowed a pass.

It would make it all too easy for a police state to emerge if the folks with the guns start thinking in 'us' versus 'them' terms. Which is frightening if the 'them' they're thinking about is us.

Tortured Logic

2006-10-30T03:00:00.000-05:00

The Dubious 'Logic' of Torture

No-brainer #1: The Vice President has no brains.
No-brainer #2: The Vice President is evil.
No-brainer #3: Calling it 'dunking' doesn't change the nature of the act.
No-brainer #4: "Torturing someone is evil. It's not just a war crime. It's the definition of evil." - Jonathan Turley

Olbermann:

"The Military Commissions Act, which as we have discussed here not only killed habeas corpus but essentially gave the President the authority to decide what constitutes torture...but did the Vice President manage to illustrate something even bigger than this, this attitude behind that legislation; as in, 'We're going to do whatever we want, and we're going to call it whatever we need to call it.' "

Turley:

"That's right, and you know the terms keep on getting more innocent, as if you know waterboarding was something you could take the children to...There is a continual effort of this administration to change verbiage to avoid directly dealing with the fact that we have embraced torture as a practice in one of the most despicable changes in this country's history in values."

In the most grotesque instance of irony possible, it is the 'values voters' who on November the seventh will most likely embrace torture as a practice, and vote to re-elect the party that has condoned this despicable change in the nature of the United States of America.

TAGS: War Crimes, Torture, Human Rights, Olbermann, Special Comment
(Also Posted At Ice Station Tango and Les Enragés.org)

CIA to EU: STFU!

2006-10-26T20:45:00.000-04:00

CIA Tried to Silence EU on Torture Flights

There is no effective opposition in the United States to the heinous acts that have become the trademark of BushCo™'s criminal regime. In fact, the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act enjoyed the support of 12 Democratic Senators and 31 Congressional Democrats. Therefore one would fervently hope that some international entity would be putting some pressure on to put an end to the worst abuses. Unfortunately, even that hope could be nothing more than cockeyed optimism, as The Guardian reported today.

"According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and "avert pressure from EU" over human rights abuses in the north African country...classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser of the September 11 strikes.
He was flown from Morocco to Syria on another rendition flight. Syria offered access to the prisoner on the condition that charges were dropped against Syrian intelligence agents in Germany accused of threatening Syrian dissidents. Germany dropped the charges, but denied any link.
After the CIA offered a deal to Germany, EU countries adopted an almost universal policy of downplaying criticism of human rights records in countries where terrorist suspects have been held. They have also sidestepped questions about secret CIA flights partly because of growing evidence of their complicity."

Complicity? That doesn't sound good. Too many EU countries are happy enough to keep quiet about these crimes because they knowingly aided and abetted the miscreants.

"More than 200 CIA flights have passed through Britain, records show.
[Journalist Stephen Grey] describes how one CIA pilot told him that Prestwick airport, near Glasgow, was a popular destination for refuelling stops and layovers. 'It's an "ask-no-questions" type of place and you don't need to give them any advance warning you're coming,' the pilot said...CIA pilots, sometimes using false identities and whose planes regularly passed through Britain, ran up huge bills in luxury hotels after flying terrorist suspects to secret locations where they were tortured. But they revealed their whereabouts and identities by indiscreet use of mobile phones and allowed outsiders to track their aircraft's flights."

This is an interesting look at the type of people that are involved in this program. Nothing makes them feel like partying more than rendering up some (probably innocent) individual to be tortured. And their partying is being paid for with American tax dollars. And the torture is being carried out in America's name.
Torture, Human Rights, European Union, Rendition, War Crimes

Double Stevies

2006-10-22T02:10:00.000-04:00

A Great Music Video, Stevie Wonder with Stevie Ray Vaughan
What More Can I Say?

Faith-Based Initiatives Abused

2006-10-20T16:20:00.000-04:00

Olbermann Exposes Republican Hypocrisy

Do you think the founding fathers may have had a reason when they made the separation of Church and State a key part of US legal tradition? What about Jesus' own answer to the question of taxation? (Mk. 12, 14-17)

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. Render unto God what is God's."

It was mere days after assuming office, long before his assault on the Bill of Rights, even before 9/11/'01, that George W. Bush fired his first shot in a war on the Constitutional system of government in the United States of America. That shot was his 'Faith-Based Initiatives' program. In this two-part exposé, Keith Olbermann explores how this politically motivated farce has betrayed the very people it was supposed to help, and even betrayed the values of the values voters who were supposedly its immediate beneficiaries.

Video, part 2.

"How accurately Isaiah prophesied about you hypocrites when he wrote, 'This people pays me lip service but their heart is far from me. Empty is the reverence they do me because they teach as dogmas mere human precepts.'
You disregard God's commandment and cling to what is human tradition."

-Mk. 7, 6f.
Note: This is a catch-up crossposting from Les Enragés.org. I apologize to Friendly Neighbours visitors for my neglect of my original site, but I have been busy lately and when I do have time I have been devoting it to Les Enragés.

TAGS: Faith, Bush, Hypocrisy,
Olbermann, Commentary, Video

Solidarity

2006-10-12T17:13:00.000-04:00

We're All In This Together

Barn Raising Near Mount Hope, Ohio

It is a matter of great interest to me how right wing interests have so systematically destroyed the sense of community that made America a great country for so long. Good neighbours used to get together like these Amish carpenters and, working together they could build a large barn like this in a single day, leaving enough time to bring the cows in and milk them. Farmers' co-ops were formed for such diverse purposes as purchase of seed, marketing of products, sharing of equipment, even setting up community banks and insurance companies. On the factory floor, urban workers formed unions against great opposition and at great personal risk to counterbalance the sometimes lifethreatening power of their employers These expressions of community-based collective effort have become almost as quaint as the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights. Communities of farmers have given way to agribusiness. The unions and the workplace regulations they fought for are in serious decline.
There is one form of collectivization that has grown immensely in power while the others have declined. I'm talking about the corporation, which is a collective not of people, but of money. One might well argue that the ascendance of the one form has led directly to the decline of the others. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to argue otherwise. What most Americans fail to realize is that the ascendance of the corporate state constitutes a kind of class warfare that has been going on for at least a half century. I'm sorry to say, our side is losing, or may have already lost.
I'm not alone in this gloomy opinion. This is from an essay of Howard Zinn's in Progressive Magazine:

Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country. To ignore that—not to know that the history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor—is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power.

If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there—the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to be “checks and balances”—do not have our interests at heart, we are on a course towards the truth. Not to know that is to make us helpless before determined liars.

Why does America's middle class and working poor succumb to this blatant lie? Perhaps the answer lies in this observation; "In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards." -- Bertrand Russell

The implication is that people of modest means, even people in the lower economic ranks continue to buy into the idea of the American Dream. Someday, somehow they will find themselves in the ranks of the wealthy, and they don't want to restrict their own future enjoyment of that wealth, so they oppose taxation of those currently wealthy.

More Olbermann Excellence

2006-10-08T13:39:00.000-04:00

Keith Olbermann's latest Special Commentary last Thursday was another tour de force, taking Bush, then his top staff to task for their limitless ability to deny the realities of America's problems, especially the war in Iraq. The only problem, from the point of view of a blogger, is that the segment was slightly over YouTube's ten minute length limit. There are therefore two vids here. The first scours Bush himself. The second goes after Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice.

"The President does not just hear what he wants. He hears things that only he can hear. It defies belief that this President and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they can wallow. Yet they do."

"Of course inherent in the Pentagon's warmaking functions is the regulation of Presidential war lust. Enacting that regulation should include everything up to symbolically wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor if necessary."

TAGS: Olbermann, Special Commentary, Video, Bush Cabal

Democracy: NOT a Spectator Sport

2006-10-04T20:12:00.000-04:00

"No Pasaran" - The Battle of Cable Street
Tomorrow, Oct. 5th is the day that World Can't Wait is calling for a public protest to 'drive out the Bush regime', something they have been trying to do since their inception, as far as I know. On their website's home page they ask a simple but powerful question, "Can a regime headed in a fascist direction be driven from power?" We all hope fervently that the answer to that question is a resounding YES collectively and loudly shouted by millions of voices at once.
Here from the UK's Guardian Unlimited, a fine example of well-balanced and socially responsible journalism IMO, is the story of another protest, today celebrating its 70th anniversary. This protest, Oct. 4th, 1936, was mounted by opponents to a fascist Rally in London's east end. An unruly mob of 300,000 may well have turned the tide of history that day. If they had not taken to the streets, Britain could have become every bit as fascistic as Hitler's Germany.

"Shouting the Spanish civil war slogan 'No pasaran' - 'They shall not pass' - more than 300,000 people turned back an army of Blackshirts. Their victory over racism and anti-Semitism on Sunday October 4, 1936 became known as the Battle of Cable Street and encapsulated the British fight against a fascism that was stomping across Europe.

Mosley planned to send columns of thousands of goose-stepping men throughout the impoverished East End dressed in uniforms that mimicked those of Hitler's Nazis. His target was the large Jewish community.

..The Jews did not keep away. Professor Bill Fishman, now 89, who was 15 on the day, was at Gardner's Corner in Aldgate, the entrance to the East End. "There was masses of marching people. Young people, old people, all shouting 'No Pasaran' and 'One two three four five - we want Mosley, dead or alive'," he said. "It was like a massive army gathering, coming from all the side streets. Mosley was supposed to arrive at lunchtime but the hours were passing and he hadn't come. Between 3pm and 3.30 we could see a big army of Blackshirts marching towards the confluence of Commercial Road and Whitechapel Road.

I push the limits of fair use to reprint so much of this article, and hope that The Guardian will forgive me..

"[Eyewitness, Professor William Fishman] 'I pushed myself forward and because I was 6ft I could see Mosley. They were surrounded by an even greater army of police. There was to be this great advance of the police force to get the fascists through. Suddenly, the horses' hooves were flying and the horses were falling down because the young kids were throwing marbles.'
Thousands of policemen were sandwiched between the Blackshirts and the anti-fascists. The latter were well organised and through a mole learned that the chief of police had told Mosley that his passage into the East End could be made through Cable Street.
'I heard this loudspeaker say "They are going to Cable Street",' said Prof Fishman. 'Suddenly a barricade was erected there and they put an old lorry in the middle of the road and old mattresses. The people up the top of the flats, mainly Irish Catholic women, were throwing rubbish on to the police. We were all side by side. I was moved to tears to see bearded Jews and Irish Catholic dockers standing up to stop Mosley. I shall never forget that as long as I live, how working-class people could get together to oppose the evil of racism.'
Max Levitas, now 91, was a message runner and had already been fined £10 in court for his anti-Mosley activities. Two years before Cable Street, the BUF had called a meeting in Hyde Park and in protest Mr Levitas whitewashed Nelson's column, calling people to the park to drown out the fascists. Mr Levitas went on to become a Communist councillor in Stepney.
'I feel proud that I played a major part in stopping Mosley. When we heard that the march was disbanded, there was a hue and cry and the flags were going wild. They did not pass. The chief of police decided that if the march had taken place there would be death on the road - and there would have been,' he said.
'It was a victory for ordinary people against racism and anti-Semitism and it should be instilled in the minds of people today. The Battle of Cable Street is a history lesson for us all. People as people must get together and stop racism and anti-Semitism so people can lead an ordinary life and develop their own ideas and religions.'
Beatty Orwell, 89, was scared and excited. 'People were fighting and a friend of mine was thrown through a plate glass window.' "

There's more: audio links to the actual words of these witnesses are provided at the end of the Guardian's article. These senior CITIZENS are so obviously proud of the actions they took on that day. Their actions put a spine into the entire British populace, something that Winston Churchill could draw upon and build on a few years later when England was under more direct military attack from Hitler's Germany. There has seldom been a finer day in the defense of democracy than Oct. 4, 1936. What stories will you be telling about Oct. 5, 2006 when you reach your twilight years?
Cross-posted from Les Enragés.org
TAGS: Democracy, Civil Liberties, Protest, Free Speech, MCA

A Sad Day

2006-10-02T16:13:00.000-04:00

Looking over comments on several blogs this morning, the dominant reaction I read over and over again is the haunting phrase, "a sad day for America" echoing like the death knell of a great nation.
It is indeed a sad day, but is it really America anymore?

Without the constitution and its protections embodied in the bill of rights, America is little more than a large area of land separating Canada from Mexico. In coming generations this phrase, 'a sad day for America' may become associated with September 28, 2006 in the same way that 'a day that will live in infamy' became associated with Dec. 7, 1941. And that truly is sad.

Other words come to mind, in particular those of John Locke (1632-1704). A philosophical empiricist and social theorist well ahead of his time, his ideas sparked a smouldering fire that burst into full flame long after his death, in the American and French Revolutions. This from Wikipedia;

Locke has often been classified as a British Empiricist, along with David Hume and George Berkeley. He is equally important as a social contract theorist, as he developed an alternative to the Hobbesian state of nature and argued a government could only be legitimate if it received the consent of the governed through a social contract and protected the natural rights of life, liberty, and estate. If such consent was not given, argued Locke, citizens had a right of rebellion.

The words of Locke to which I refer are these;
"Where law ends, tyranny begins."
The War Criminals Protection Act has brought about an end to law, at least as applied to this criminal administration. Need I elaborate ~~Führer~~ further?

TAGS: War Crimes. Treason, Torture Bill, Constitution, Distress Signal
Crossposted from Les Enragés.org

Beyond Outrage!

2006-09-29T01:37:00.001-04:00

George W. Bush has been described as the Worst President Ever, at first just by his opponents on the left, then increasingly by moderates. Lately even some self-described Republicans and many conservatives have grudgingly admitted this to be a fitting epithet. If a bill currently under consideration enters into law we will have to enter Bush and his administration into a whole new league. This bill will put Bush in a class with the worst leaders of any country anywhere, at any time in recorded history.
Move aside Gaius Caligula, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler. Give George Bush some room on history's stage of infamy. Take your hats off Marquis de Sade, Augusto Pinochet, Pol Pot; you are mere pikers compared to this monstrous tinpot despot.
None of the above took a country with a two-centuries-old tradition of freedom, a nation defined by that freedom, "a nation of laws not men" and redefined it in the worst possible terms. For that's what this bill does.
Sold to the nation as yet another 'vitally necessary' anti-terrorist provision, it is better known as the detainee treatment act, but more accurately portrayed as The Torture Bill. Les Enragés.org's own Jump to the Left, currently 'too mad to blog', called it "The War Crimes Protection Bill", but I think she was just a little off the mark. Probably too mad. I think The War Criminals Protection Bill hits the bullseye.

What is it about this bill that makes it so heinous? Well, everything. Here, from a New York Times editorial, are the key provisions: to start, "a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies." A waiver that includes crimes already committed, an afront to the principle that a law cannot be made to apply to acts prior to its passage (ex post facto, in legalese.) Americans that include Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and an undetermined number of war criminals to be named later. Let's see what else this preposterous bill provides for:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

You may think me an alarmist, but the combination of allowing secret, coerced evidence is the part that scares me the most. That would mean you could be accused, arrested, held, tried and even convicted on evidence produced by torture. And the Bush administration would not even have to reveal that that is where the evidence came from. That is the scariest part.

No wait, this part is even scarier: "allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret." Think about it. You torture someone, but you want to have your methods remain forever secret. How does one accomplish that? In the dictatorial banana republics of South America such 'witnesses' came to be known as desaparecidos. You shouldn't need to know Spanish to translate that.
TAGS: Constitution, Detainees, Torture, Malfeasance, War Crimes
LINKS: Glenn Greenwald: Legalization of Torture

Crossposted at Les Enragés.org

Overdue Video Blog

2006-09-24T11:20:00.000-04:00

The other night at Les Enragés an onthread discussion touched on Fenders, genders, and Leslies. Now anybody named Leslie knows that it can be a boy's name or a girl's, and that can cause some gender confusion. But we were talking about the Leslie Rotating Tremolo Speaker System that adds such a haunting tone to many a Hammond organ. We were also talking about a unique Fender Stratocaster guitar that was put together from a right-handed body, and a left handed neck. I can't imagine why.
Here's a great rock video from Steve Winwood, singing the hit he made with the Spencer Davis group at the tender age of 17, when he was no more than a mannish boy.

This tune, besides simply kicking serious ass on its own merits, manages to show off the Fender Stratocaster, the Hammond Organ, and the wonderful sound of the Leslie cabinet all in one go. Hattip to Blue Moonchild.
TAGS: Fender Stratocaster, Hammond Organ, Steve Winwood

Coalition of the threatened

2006-09-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

In an interview to be aired on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claimed that US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to bomb his country if he did not join the war on terror. CBC News has the report;

"The U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan 'back to the Stone Age' after the Sept. 11 attacks if the country refused to help America with its war on terrorism, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says.
In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes to air on Sunday, the Pakistani leader said the threat came from then-deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Musharraf said it was delivered to his intelligence director. 'The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, 'Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,' Musharraf said. 'I think it was a very rude remark.'"

Do ya think? I don't have my etiquette guide to hand, but my instinct says this goes way beyond 'very rude', all the way to PSYCHOTIC RUBBER-ROOM BATSHIT CRAZY. I'll get back to you on that after I've consulted Emily Post.

"Musharraf also said the U.S. made some demands that were 'ludicrous,' including one to suppress vocal support in his country for terrorism in the U.S. 'If somebody's expressing views, we cannot curb the expression of views,' Musharraf said."

Can nothing be done to curb this mad-dog of a pResident? He has admitted to more crimes than Ted Bundy and the Green River Killer put together. He brings shame to the White House and to America every time he opens his stupid, smirking mouth. He's ruining the economy while enriching his small circle of fiends (not a typo). He cares nothing about the average American, as amply demonstrated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He calls himself a Christian while going against every article of faith. He has sworn to defend the Constitution, and uses it to wipe his ass. Would someone at least force him to take his medication?
Consider this an open thread. Express your views.
Links: BBC News Report
TAGS:Bush, Musharraf, Foreign Policy, War Crimes, Batshit Crazy

Arar Redeemed

2006-09-19T10:55:00.000-04:00

After being kidnapped by the FBI in Sept., 2002 and held in a Syrian jail where he was repeatedly beaten and tortured, Maher Arar is now vindicated. After 127 days of public testimony, and many days of testimony behind closed doors, a commission of inquiry headed by Justice Dennis O'Connor concluded, "I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr Arar has committed any offence or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada."Obviously the 'post-9/11' FBI have failed to distinguish the difference between legitimate security operations and common thuggery, but it was not within the commission's mandate to assess the actions of non-Canadian entities. The commission did find considerable fault with Canada's RCMP, as reported in the Toronto Star.

"In the tense and suspicious aftermath of 9/11, the federal government foolishly rushed an in-experienced (sic) and ill-prepared RCMP back into the complex, shades-of-grey world of spying.
It was a mistake with sadly predictable consequences. Within months, the RCMP was stomping all over an innocent Canadian's rights as well as his privacy and, two years later, it was again hiding its actions from political masters...It wrongly identified him as an Islamic extremist, fingered him to the U.S., and then slowed Foreign Affairs efforts to rescue him from a filthy Syrian cell not much bigger than a coffin."

The ensuing actions show Canada approaching the brink of the same kind of tyranny characteristic of the American 'anti-terrorism' efforts under the BushCo™ reign of terror, but thankfully stepping back from that brink.

"Jean Chrétien's government blurred the critical line between intelligence-gathering and crime-prevention, with awful results for Arar as well as for public confidence in the RCMP...the RCMP brought that public humiliation on itself when it figuratively kicked down Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill's door. Until that January, 2004, raid, the federal government stood steadfast against rising demands for a public inquiry into the Arar affair.
But what was widely seen as an attempt to intimidate the press was too much for a new Paul Martin administration, trying to distance itself from its predecessor. Martin publicly declared O'Neill innocent and promised to get to the bottom of the Arar case."

The result is in the report handed down by Justice O'Connor. The bottom of the Arar case has proven to be very low indeed. If we go beyond the Arar case to US activities of kidnapping, rendition and torture in general the bottom is lower still. At least in Canada we have a government that shines a light into their darkest places.
In America we see a government that continues to deny their own criminal activity. Then when it becomes undeniable, they deny that there is anything illegal about it. Then, when THAT becomes undeniable, they try to retroactively make legal the most egregiously despicable actions. Sickening. As Glenn Greenwald asks, "How can you be an American citizen and not be completely outraged, embarrassed, and disgusted by this conduct?"

Cross-posted to Les Enragés

LINKS:
Unclaimed Territory - "Moral Authority" under Bush.
BBC News - article.
TAGS: Rendition, Torture, Human Rights, Maher Arar

Chris Rea - Workin' On It

2006-09-17T13:47:00.000-04:00

Les Enragés Mobster HillCountryGal posted a fantastic music video on her blog last night, The Road to Hell, by British blues-rock star Chris Rea. It blew me away, but I find it a bit unsettling that someone this great gets no airplay in North America. Could it be the airwaves in America have become a little too corporatist? Anyway, I was thinking of posting it here too, but how would that give anyone the incentive to visit HCG's blog? Instead, I'm posting this other Chris Rea video, 'Workin' On It.' Enjoy!

The Lyrics:
Oh how I'd love it girl, just you and me
Take the day and fly
But oh this job, it's got the best of me
Tell you why, tell you why

Somebody above is in a desperate state
Some kind of urgency, the kind that won't wait
I say tomorrow, he say today
And the man in my head well he tell me no way
Keep working
I got eight little fingers and only two thumbs
Will you leave me in peace while I get the work done
Can't you see I'm working
Oh, oh I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working on it

Well they're coming from above me
And they're coming from below
Yea they're in there right behind me
Everywhere that I go
And my buddy, he's screaming down the telephone line
He say gimme, gimme, gimme
I say I ain't got the time
Oh, oh can't you see I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working on it
Yea, yea, oh tell 'em

How I'd love it girl, just you and me
Take the day and fly
But oh, this job it's got the best of me
Tell you why

Well they're coming from above me
And they're coming from below
Yea they're in there right behind me
Everywhere that I go
My buddy, he's screaming down the telephone line
He say gimme, gimme, gimme
I say I ain't got the time
Oh, oh can't you see I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working on it
Oh, oh I'm working
Oh, oh can't you see I'm working on it
I wish I'd had this video when I was posting for Labour Day!
TAGS: Music, Video, Chris Rea, YouTube

One Jackbooted Step

2006-09-13T21:25:00.000-04:00

Closer to a Full-Blown Police State.

As the November mid-term elections approach, many Republican Congressional and Senate candidates will be trying hard to distance themselves from the unpopular occupant of the White House. Anyone who buys this poppycock should be carefully examined for a scar on the base of their skull where the control chip was implanted. That dog, as they say, don't hunt. But it will bite.
The ever-reliable Glenn Greenwald blogged on THIS STORY in the Washington Post today;

"A Senate committee today approved a bill supported by President Bush that would enable the administration to continue a warrantless wiretapping program that the White House launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The approval came after Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee blocked an amendment by Democrats that would have limited Bush's eavesdropping program and required the National Security Agency to report more often to Congress on its surveillance activities.
...Bush has urged Congress to give him "additional authority" to continue his administration's warrantless eavesdropping program."

The repetitive theme in this article is notable; "enable the administration...expand Bush's authority...additional authority...continue warrantless eavesdropping...said he needs more power...authorizing the President...sweeping authorities...authorize his warrantless eavesdropping." Pardon me for jumping to the conclusion that Bush is making a power grab. In fact, what he is hoping is that Congress can somehow retroactively legitimize the illegal, unconstitutional, and criminal acts that he has already willfully engaged in for years. After key legal decisions against him, most critically the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision and the more recent decisions in Michigan and Oregon against the NSA wiretapping, our boy George is seeing his moronarchy crumbling around him.
Make no mistake, Congress cannot retroactively authorize the President to break the law. It is against the Constitution. The Supreme Court does not have the authority to allow such a law, should Congress pass it, to stand. That would be nothing short of treason. But let me get back to my opening point. As much as Republican candidates will try to distance themselves from chimpy between now and November, the vote in committee on whether to approve this odious bill was split along party lines. NOT ONE Republican voted to restrict Bush's illegal, unconstitutional and criminal behaviour in any way, shape or form. If you want checks and balances, vote them out of office.
TAGS: Constitution, Civil Rights, NSA, Wiretapping

Olbermann's 9/11 Address

2006-09-12T23:28:00.000-04:00

It IS Beyond Shameful

This one is full of juicy quotes, Olbermann once again showing himself to be the one bright shining light in the black hole that is the MSM.

"Five years later, there is no memorial to the dead...Five years later, this country's mass grave is still unmarked. Five years later,this is still just a background for a photo op. It is beyond shameful.
...They promised protection, and then showed that to them protection meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken… a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did. The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war on the false premise that it had something to do with 9/11 is, 'lying by implication.'...The impolite phrase is, 'impeachable offense'."

A brilliant speech requires a brilliant closing, and Olbermann delivers.

"When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11"… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you."

On this last point I disagree with Mr. Olbermann. I hope the country neither forgives, nor forgets the crimes of Bush and his evil minions.
TAGS: Olbermann, video, commentary, 9/11

Path to 9/11: YouTube Videos

2006-09-07T13:54:00.000-04:00

If you've been watching this blog you're aware of the unconscionable propaganda miniseries ABC has scheduled for this Sunday and Monday. Here are some reactions on YouTube. First up, from Countdown, Richard Ben-Veniste, who was on the 9/11 commission on which the series is supposedly based.
Next, from the C-span footage of the actual 9/11 commission testimony, Republican Fred Fielding questions George Tenet about the so-called opportunity to take out Osama bin Laden. Hat-tip to YouTube member ChurchCommittee.
Key Scene in ABC's 9/11 Docudrama is a LIE - Part 1
In this next clip, Republican Senator Slade Gorton tries the same stunt with witness Richard Clarke.
Key Scene in ABC's 9/11 Docudrama is a LIE - Part 2Notice that in both these clips key Republican commission members try to act as witnesses, putting ideas into the public record that they know are not true, and trying to manipulate the testimony of the real witnesses. Further, they are trying to promote the same untruths that are presented in the ABC 9/11 'mockumentary.'
TAGS: ABC 9/11 miniseries, truthiness, propaganda, media bias

Hardhat Atheism

2006-09-07T12:42:00.000-04:00

Hat-tip to Boo at Boo's Tatoos (and Other Stories) for steering me to this Brit site, New Humanist.org, with their funny survey to find out what kind of atheist one is. Here are the results I came up with:

Hardhat

You are an atheist, a rationalist, a believer in the triumph of science and of reason over libido. You can’t stand mumbo jumbo, ritual, spiritual nonsense of any kind, and you refuse to allow for these longings in others.

Astrologers, Scientologists and new–age crystal ball creeps are no different in your view from priests, rabbis and imams. They’re all just weak–minded pilgrims on the road to easy answers. Nature as revealed by science is awesome enough for you, but it’s a nature that needs curbing and taming by us on our evolutionary journey to perfection.

Your heros are Einstein, Darwin, Marx and — these days — Gould, Blakemore, Watson, Crick and Rosalind Franklin. Could you be hiding a little behind those absolutist views, worried that, if you let in a few doubts and contradictory ideas, the whole edifice might crumble? Loosen up a bit and try to enjoy the amazing variety of human belief systems. Don’t worry — it’s unlikely you’ll end up chanting your days away in some distant mountain cult.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

Bush Confesses Again

2006-09-07T00:20:00.000-04:00

Publicly Admits to War Crimes

From BBC News:

President Bush has acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons and said 14 key terrorist suspects have now been sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The suspects, who include the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have now been moved out of CIA custody and will face trial.
Mr Bush said the CIA had used an "alternative set of procedures", agreed with the justice department, once suspects had stopped talking.
But he said: "The US does not torture. I have not authorised it and I will not."

Apparently his well-publicised signing statement virtually nullifying the McCain anti-torture bill went down the grossly overused memory hole into which the administration throws all official records, along with Alberto Gonzales' notorious declaration that the Geneva Conventions were 'quaint.' Let's examine the implications.

First is the obvious fact that this is a too-little too-late response to the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision, which declared last June that all detainees were 1) subject to the 'common article three' terms of the Geneva Conventions, and 2) NOT subject to the ill-conceived and patently unconstitutional military tribunals proposed by the administration to try the detainees. Most legal experts concur that this decision exposes Bush, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and several CIA officials to criminal charges. Sorry, there is no constitutional way to retroactively make these crimes legal.

Second is the trap the Bushites have sprung on themselves vis a vis Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling in the NSA wiretapping case. In that case, the administration was deprived of the use of the State Secrets shield because they had already admitted the existence of the program. How bad a lawyer is Gonzales that this fact escaped him? Up until this, I didn't think anyone was dumber than Bush. I stand corrected.

The third point was brought up by Sam Seder of AirAmericaRadio's The Majority Report. Some of these detainees are really bad people, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Bush administration may have set up a situation where any body making a decision as to the disposition of his case will be forced into a choice between two equally repugnant options. They can either accept the illegal nature of Mohammed's detention, and the use of torture in obtaining evidence against him, or they can let the mastermind behind 9/11 go free. If this issue were to come up in, say, an impeachment trial, it's hard to see even the most partisan Democrat ignoring this. What politician would want to risk taking the heat of being perceived as directly responsible for letting a 9/11 conspirator off the hook, no matter how principled and constitutional that decision was?
TAGS: war crimes, rendition, torture, Guantanamo, Bush
Cross-posted to Les Enragés

The Path to Truthiness

2006-09-06T21:07:00.000-04:00

Stealth Swiftboat Wearing Corporate Business Suit...
Today, Think Progress posted information on the “docudrama”, “The Path to 9/11” that will air on ABC on September 10 and 11. Written by conservative Cyrus Nowrasteh, the film is being promoted on ultra-rightwing sites across the web. (Part of a 9/11 TV blitz.) Director, David Cunningham, is hedging on the film's accuracy, asserting “this is not a documentary”, though it's being promoted as “based on The 9/11 Commission Report.” Very Truthy, indeed.

William Rivers Pitt's excellent perspective piece posted at Truthout, Clinton, 9/11 and the Facts, a MUST READ, sharply contrasts this “drama” with the reality of Clinton's aggressive anti-terrorism programs, revealing the truth of the GOP's castration of Clinton's efforts to protect the nation. A tiny morsel:

In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm's wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors. (Read the rest...)

Media Matters (posted 9/1/06, 7:24pm) has more. Furthermore, they plan to brainwash the children...

To Do List: Read the full article, and those that follow to get armed with the facts. Write to ABC-Disney. Call ABC-Disney. Tell them that Fox's nose-dive is contagious, and that you will boycott them and their advertisers forever if they deliberately mislead the American public by airing this “drama.” Keep your eye on Source Watch. And, keep your feet on “The Path to Democracy!”
Related Links:
Digby's Hullabaloo: Disney and the Dobsonites
Think Progress: ABC Plans Massive Free Distribution
Truthdig: Top Former Counterterror Official Blasts ABC 9/11 Docudrama
Open Letter to ABC -links to lots of action you can take! A super effort.
TAGS: Path to 9/11 9/11 media watch truthiness brainwashing
media bias

Ministry of Make Believe

2006-09-06T21:05:00.000-04:00

When History Offends...Rewrite it!

In his novel, 1984, George Orwell portrays a time when, “History and memory are actively erased and rewritten so as to support the omnipotence and infallibility of The Party and its pronouncements” (plot summary, here). Orwell wrote:

“And if the facts say otherwise then the facts must be altered. Thus history is continuously rewritten. This day-to-day falsification of the past, carried out by the Ministry of Truth, is as necessary to the stability of the regime as the work of repression and espionage carried out by the Ministry of Love.”

We have been Ministried by Bush before:

The 2000 presidential campaign introduced us to Bush's family ~~theatre~~ ranch in Crawford. Despite the “family history” feel, it was an August, 1999 purchase. The newly built Bush ~~theatre~~ “ranch house” served as a stage and was scheduled for completion election night, November 1999--a place where Bush, the “windshield rancher”, likes to spend time. (Shhhhh, don't tell.)

Pfc. Jessica Lynch was rescued by U.S. forces on April 1, 2003 in a dramatic, heroic rescue. Lynch's recovery was later (5/15/03), revealed to have been staged.

On April 9th, 2003, we were presented with images of angry Iraqi citizens, pulling down a statue of Saddam. It was later reported (7/3/04) that the fall was “stage-managed” by the Army.

On May 1st, 2003, we were fed images of Bush's dramatic jet landing on the U.S.S. Lincoln aircraft carrier, with his ~~costume~~ flight suit and declaration, “My fellow Americans: Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” The media fawned. We later learned that Bush's helicopter was in range, and the jet landing was an unnecessary, highly choreographed theatrical addition.

And we are being Ministried again:

DISNEY'S PATH TO 9/11 IS MORE BUSH MAKE-BELIEVE.

This propaganda is rewriting the history of the past to create a desired history of the future (maintaining control of congress to avoid checks, balances, accountability). I call this Disney's “Ministry of Make Believe.” Pure fantasy.

Another Knockout From KO

2006-09-06T14:25:00.000-04:00

America's Last Living Journalist?

Posting Keith Olbermann opinion pieces is becoming an obligatory function for progressive blogs these days, and I wish it wasn't so. I wish that we had something approaching journalism coming from other quarters, but it looks like Olbermann is America's last living journalist. WMV and QT versions available at Crooks and Liars, with transcripts.
TAGS: Olbermann, Bush, commentary, media
Crossposted at Les Enragés

Olbermann Takes A Shot At Rummy

2006-09-01T11:14:00.000-04:00

From C&L via YouTube
I was going to upload this to YouTube, and found I didn't need to - dozens of users had got there before me to do so. This piece is too good to ignore.

TAGS:keith olbermann,donald rumsfeld,video

YouTube Comes to Friendly Neighbour

2006-08-29T11:53:00.000-04:00

Since I just found out how easy it is to put YouTube videos into a blogpost, you're going to be seeing a lot more of them. Here's a 1994 performance from Paul Rodgers and Friends. I've always been a huge fan of Paul Rodgers, since the days of the '60s band FREE (biggest hit; All Right Now), and later Bad Company (who had a hit of the same name.) Here they are doing a song called Wishing Well. I LOVE the hook line; "And I know what you're wishing for...Love in a Peaceful World."

Paul's latest tour was with Queen, doing some of their tunes, some Free tunes, and some Bad Company tunes. From the cuts I've seen it must have been a great tour!

A Proud Republican Redneck

2006-08-27T18:37:00.000-04:00

BITES THE DUSTA worker cleans up sludge from the Prudhoe bay oilspill.
Redneck Governor Frank Murkowski has lost his primary race in Alaska,
cleaning up another black spot on the landscape.

The audio tracks here are from the failed primary campaign of lame-duck Republican Governor of Alaska, Frank Murkowski.

"We don't care about no PETA boycott..And we might shoot some wolves from DC-3's."
WTF!?! - Could you be any more blatantly anti-environment than that? The only thing this song doesn't say is that oilspills are good. Frankly, I'm flabbergastered.

Well, now I'm at least getting a bit of what Murky's campaign workers are trying to do. Having filled the previous cut with lyrics about shootin' fer some food, they hit the Alaskan voters with the tune from The Beverly Hillbillies. Subliminal message; when 'real Alaskans' are out hunting to fill their freezers full of meat, they may pull a Jed Clampett, discover some oil, and move to Beverly...Hills, that is. Swimmin' pools, movie stars. Who's going to want to protect the environment with that prospect lookin them in the eye?

Taking Care Of Business

2006-08-26T13:29:00.000-04:00

How about taking care of people?
In This Recent Alternet article, Russ Baker talks about how

the Democratic Party, or at least a good number of its most influential members, are part and parcel of the pro-business culture that permeates the halls of power in Washington, D.C. He uses Joe Lieberman as a classic example.

"Lieberman is...famous in the capital for his undying support for corporate causes. There are countless examples: Remember Lieberman's role in blocking the reforms of stock option accounting that former SEC chair Arthur Levitt was trying to enact? This was a question of honest accounting that became part and parcel of the corporate corruption scandals of recent years, and Lieberman was a champion of the wrong side.

Beyond that, Lieberman happily has done the bidding of the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance companies and many others... And of course, his support of and continued rationalization of the Iraq invasion, like many of Lieberman's other stances, has served chiefly to benefit large corporations, in this case the "national security/homeland defense" industry that got a huge boost from Bush's reckless military adventurism."

Baker goes on to detail how this perversion of democracy goes well beyond Lieberman, naming prominent consultants and operatives in the Democratic party with close connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore among others. (And of those, by the way, I rather like Al Gore.) It's a lengthy article, and I'd like to use this excerpt to prompt you to read the whole thing.

"Jack Quinn served as Vice President Gore's chief of staff and later as counsel to President Clinton. In January 2000, he left what was still a Democratic White House and formed Quinn Gillespie with Ed Gillespie, a Republican and close friend of Tom DeLay. This firm was among the pioneers of the one-stop-shopping approach that has since swept Washington. Want to influence the legislative process? Now you can get right to the top of both parties by hiring a single firm.

Quinn Gillespie has represented clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American creditors, and prevent the introduction of more healthy dairy substitutes in school lunches. Quinn helped secure a controversial pardon for the fugitive financier Marc Rich as Clinton was leaving office."

This comes from Russ Baker's Real News Project, blogrolled here for further reading.

Stalin spoke of how he didn't care who voted, only who counted the votes. In the American system of 'democracy', the situation is even worse than that, notwithstanding the potential abuse of Diebold and ES&S voting machines. Who cares who votes when the same corporate moguls decide who both candidates are? The American flag might as well look like this.
Going Deeper:
The Corporation. This Canadian-produced documentary by Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbot and Joel Bakan is so good it's frightening. Not to my knowledge available on the net in streaming form. I suggest you buy a copy of the DVD set, watch it several times, then donate it to your local library or high school. Same goes for the companion book.

Evangelists Infiltrate USAF Academy

2006-08-22T12:18:00.000-04:00

Air Force Cadets: ‘Ten-shun. Right face.'That is what the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado,has been training its cadets to do
– move to the right – politically and religiously.

I find this item from The Bradley Report to be more than a little disturbing. Are taxpayer dollars being spent within the military to ensure an officer class that is predominately Born-Again Christian and Republican? If so, the consequences for America's future worry me. Excerpts;

"This begins with President George W. Bush and goes all the way down to the individual cadet...He is, himself, a born-again Christian evangelist, and that is the starting point. Often Mr. Bush’s self-proclaimed evangelism gets in the way of his duties as president. This is one of those places.
Administrators, staff, upper classmen and cadets all get the message and they get it with abundant clarity – if you are going to be an upstanding United States Air Force officer, well you had better be an upstanding evangelical Christian, or else. If evangelical Christianity exists in the USAF Academy, and clearly it does, this is its mission.
Bush knows this and the Air Force hierarchy knows Bush’s wishes, even if Bush never passed them along directly or specifically.
It is nonetheless reasonable to ask why this particular strain of religious practice suddenly gained hold at the Air Force academy – coincidence? Unlikely. It’s much more likely that no one tried to stop this because the top guy liked this brand of preaching."

So, if no-one tried to stop this, what has been done? And why is there anything wrong with this? Don't the religious believers have a right to discuss their faith with others? (As argued here) Well, I'll try to answer the second question first, by referencing this Washington Post story from last November;

"A private missionary group has assigned a pair of full-time Christian ministers to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where they are training cadets to evangelize among their peers...'Praise God that we have been allowed access by the Academy into the cadet areas to minister among the cadets. We have recently been given an unused classroom to meet with cadets at any time during the day,' the husband-and-wife team of Darren and Gina Lindblom said in [a] letter to their donors.
Michael L. Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy alumnus...has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Air Force of violating the First Amendment's establishment clause by fostering evangelical Christianity over all faiths...'The only group that gets 24/7 unrestricted access to cadets is this fundamentalist, born-again Christian group,' Weinstein charged."

The military, faced with this lawsuit, did an investigation into practices at the Air Force Academy. Citing The Bradley Report again (italics where military report quoted), here are some of their conclusions;

"[T]he air force discounts overt religious discrimination...but is willing to admit that some teachers, administrators and upper classmen failed to discern 'where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expressions of belief.' In other words, some in authority arrogantly proselytized subordinates with their right-wing, evangelical Christian beliefs.

Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, atheists and even some other Protestant worshipers did not enter the Air Force Academy to be discriminated against.
But they were.
They were discriminated against because some administrative USAF Academy staff and some upper classmen protégés tried to preach evangelical Christianity to them, and whenever they failed to win over the given cadets, those young men and women were then treated differently, as though they were utterly without military worth; this was pure religious discrimination, as ugly as it gets."

So, what has been done, officially, is that this report was made. None of the Academy's officers who either tolerated or encouraged this behaviour have been disciplined so far, and I doubt they will be. Last January the Bush White House dishonestly framed the issue as though the evangelicals were the ones being discriminated against, as reported in The Washington Times. "The White House will pressure the Pentagon into being more explicit in saying that military chaplains can pray in the name of Jesus Christ, an evangelical Christian chaplains' group says." For more background on this issue, Religion and Ethics newsweekly (PBS) has a forum here with plenty of links.

Why am I worried about this? I can't help thinking this is happening in the Army, Navy and Marines as well. The administration and their stenographers in the mainstream media have been increasingly trying to blur the line between legitimate dissenting US citizens and terrorist sympathizers. It's ~~almost~~ as if they're gearing up to declare martial law or something. A military officer corps with a monolithic belief in the ~~Führer's~~ President's God-given infallibility would make that a serious concern.

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction." -- Pascal
That's what worries me.
(Endnote): Pictured is an F-16 parked in front of the 'chapel', an enormous building that dominates the cadet area of the Air Force Academy. Printable map of campus here.

What Can One Man Do?

2006-08-20T07:15:00.000-04:00

Putting The War In Iraq on TrialHer whole family died during the bombing

The moral courage of one man has the potential to change the outcome of the war in Iraq. That one man, Army Lt. Ehren Watada, refused last June to deploy with his unit to Iraq, citing his obligation as an officer not to obey illegal orders. He did not run, he did not hide, he stood up and faced the music. The army has charged him with disobeying an order, and he could face court martial. Time magazine reported on his case on the occasion of his first hearing Thursday.

...[L]awyers for Lt. Watada used the opportunity to put the war itself on trial, trying to prove he was right to see the war as "manifestly illegal," and as a result, to refuse to participate. "A soldier has an obligation to disobey illegal orders," said Francis Boyle, a Harvard-trained professor of international law who testified on behalf of Lt. Watada and whose mentor wrote the Army's field manual for land warfare. "Under the circumstances of this war, if he had deployed, he would have been facilitating a Nuremberg crime against peace."
As recently as last summer he was willing to go to Iraq. But the more he learned about the war, the more doubts he had, according to his public statements.
In January, after he became convinced that the war was illegal, he tried to resign rather than go to Iraq, but the Army wouldn't let him do so. As a compromise, he asked to be sent instead to Afghanistan, a war he supports. His request was not granted.

Capt. Dan Kuecker, one of the prosecutors, had this to say: whether the war is legal, "is not a decision for a lieutenant to make — it's a decision for politicians and legislators." What he doesn't say is that Congress has failed in its duty to scrutinize the legality of this war in any way. What he doesn't say is that Congress was defrauded by spurious claims of WMDs and a Saddam-El Qaida connection from the start. He doesn't mention that the Republican majority in congress has blocked Democratic attempts to examine the faulty intelligence that led to the war. He doesn't mention that 'this war' is not even a war under US law, because Congress has never declared it to be one.
The implications of Lt. Watada's decision are enormous. By his refusal to serve in Iraq he is shining a light on a very dark place, forcing the media to pay attention to an issue they would prefer to ignore. His case may force some politicians to reexamine their tacit support of this war. It may lead eventually to war crimes trials against high administration officials. All because of one man's courage. The personal costs to Lt. Watada are by no means insignificant. If court martialed and convicted, he would face up to seven years in prison. Lt. Ehren Watada, we salute you.For further reading on this story, Jeanine Plante at Alternet has this column. And visit Thankyoult.org for background on the support Ehren is getting from his mother, the ACLU, and a former UN Undersecretary General.

Crossposted to Les Enragés

Backs Against The Wall

2006-08-19T16:42:00.000-04:00

When I put up this post yesterday I knew that there would be a lot more to be said about the NSA wiretapping decision reached by US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor yesterday. The thought at the top of my mind was, "doesn't this expose a lot of people to felony charges?" Well, it does indeed, as pointed out in the follow-up Glenn Greenwald article on the matter here. In fact, the legal consequences for defying the FISA laws passed after Watergate could be weighing heavily on the minds of a number of Bush Administration officials, not to mention those in the NSA who carried out the wiretapping. In retrospect Judge Taylor may have erred by not issuing arrest warrants for at least some of the individuals involved. I think she committed a worse error by allowing the wiretaps to continue in spite of her ruling while awaiting further resolution.
Going back to Glenn's first column yesterday for details of the ruling;

The court ... emphasized...that it is vital to our democracy that the administration's conduct not remain beyond the reach of judicial scrutiny.
the court ruled -- rather emphatically and without much doubt -- that warrantless eavesdropping violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures
the court ruled independently -- again, without all that much reasoning -- that the NSA program violates the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights
the court relied upon Youngstown to hold that the Executive's powers in the national security area do not entitle him to act beyond the law or the Constitution
since the court found warrantless eavesdropping unconstitutional, Congress could not authorize warrantless eavesdropping by statute.
the court made its scorn quite clear for the administration's Yoo theory of executive power because, as the court put it, "there are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution."...the President is subject to constitutional restrictions -- a proposition long unquestioned in our system of government until the Bush administration began inventing radical theories of executive power.
the court (a) declared the NSA program to be in violation of FISA, the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment and (b) issued a permanent injunction enjoining the Bush administration from continuing to eavesdrop in violation of FISA. (Which injunction was immediately stayed pending appeal)

The declaration that the program was in violation of FISA is the sticky point on which Glenn's second column follows up. This is serious stuff; the penalty for violating FISA is 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine. That's got to have a lot of the people who wear headphones and take notes feeling a little uncomfortable. Higher-ups could be responsible for thousands of individual incidents, the fines reaching levels that would even bankrupt Dick Cheney's Halliburton-bloated holdings. Not to mention the jail time.
It is not unreasonable to assume that the potential defendants of FISA charges, as well as those who are complicit in the torture and murder of those illegally detained in the Great War on Terror will do everything in their power to escape justice. And when 'everything in their power' includes the powers of the Bush White House and the Gonzales Justice Department, that could mean martial law. As scary as that sounds, I wouldn't bet against it. Their backs are really up against the wall, and they know it.

Originally Posted at Les Enragés

NSA Wiretapping Ruled Unconstitutional

2006-08-19T16:33:00.000-04:00

Federal Judge Orders Immediate Halt

In perhaps the best news to come along in some time, US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has unequivocally ruled against the Bush Administration's unwarranted domestic surveillance program, ordering its immediate cessation. The case was filed by the ACLU on behalf of several clients including a number of lawyers with overseas clients.

It's about time. This program has been going on at least since 9/11, and possibly even longer. This blatant defiance of the Constitution boggles the mind. Here are excerpts from the original AP wire report as published by the Idaho Statesman:

"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.
"By holding that even the president is not above the law, the court has done its duty," said Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. Beeson predicted the government would appeal the ruling and request that the order to halt the program be postponed while the case makes its way through the system. She said the ACLU had not yet decided whether it would oppose such a postponement.

Glenn Greenwald of the excellent Unclaimed Territory blog, is understandably jubilant over the decision. The NSA's various programs have been his focus for some time now. I urge readers who want a more substantial analysis of this story to head for Glenn's. This is a legal issue. He is a lawyer. 'Nuff said.

While this is undoubtedly the most significant story in the news today, it is politically embarrassing for the Bush administration that they have been legally determined to be involved in criminal activity. What do you want to bet that the Jon Benet Ramsey story gets 24/7 coverage for the foreseeable future?

Originally Posted at Les Enragés

Republicans Backing Lieberman

2006-08-19T16:10:00.000-04:00

False Flag Operation Exposed

Breaking news: In a move that should surprise no-one, the Republican party has withdrawn support from their Senate candidate for Connecticut Alan Schlesinger in favour of Joe Lieberman. This report just in from The New York Observer:

This morning, a source at the National Republican Senatorial Committee confirmed in a phone interview that the party will not help Schlesinger or any other potential Republican candidate in Connecticut, and it now favors a Lieberman victory in November.
'We did a poll and there is no way any Republican we put out there can win, so we are just going to leave that one alone,' said the NRSC source.
Instead, the NRSC is pulling for Lieberman over Ned Lamont, who rode an anti-war message to a victory in the Aug 8 primary.

This is sleazy on so many different levels I hardly know where to begin. First is that it unmistakeably exposes Lieberman's entire career as a false flag operation. Well, he's flying his true colours now, and those colours are solid red Republican. Second is that it puts the lie to a longtime Republican talking point that certain measures supported by LIEberman and other DINOs were 'bipartisan.' Third is the laughable idea that Joe is running as a 'Democratic Independent.' Infamous for the kiss he exchanged publicly with George W. Bush at the State of the Union address, one suspects he's kissing a little lower down in private.
***
h/t to David Sirota of Working For Change, from whom I first heard this story on Al Franken's Air America Radio show. I love that I can stream their stuff up here in Canada.

Originally Posted at Les Enragés

Not Quite Torture?

2006-08-19T16:04:00.000-04:00

Unless It's Being Done To You

Remember back on June 29 when the Supreme Court made their decision in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld? It was big news that the Supremes had decided the US government was illegally holding hundreds of prisoners without warrants while awaiting judgement by military tribunal. Here are some excerpts from SCOTUSblog about the decision:

"[T]he principal, powerfully stated themes emanating from the Court, ~~which~~ are (i) that the President's conduct is subject to the limitations of statute and treaty; and (ii) that Congress's enactments are best construed to require compliance with the international laws of armed conflict. Even more importantly for present purposes, the Court held that Common Article 3 of Geneva applies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda."

This last bit (the one about Common Article 3) is the sticky part from the point of view of the Bush administration, because it is the part that leaves them open to criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act of 1996. The Bush crime family is trying to respond to the Hamdan decision in two ways. The first is pure bluff.

Knowing that the 'backwash' 30-something percent that still support them ~~can't~~ don't read the big words anyway, they're pretending that the Hamdan decision has only one component. The component they acknowledge is predictably the one that gives them the least trouble. Flagrantly misrepresenting the true facts of the case, they are pretending that it is just a legal flaw in the way Military Commissions were set up, and that this is something that can be remedied by an act of Congress. It can't, but the claim gives them a flimsy excuse to continue holding the detainees while they get this little problem fixed.

The other way they are trying to respond to Hamdan is even more insidious. Having failed in their hamfisted attempts to separate detainees from their legal rights (they're not covered - they're 'illegal combatants') they now are trying to separate themselves from their own legal culpablity. As this recent article in Slate details, they are now seeking legislation that will retroactively immunize government employees from prosecution under the War Crimes Act. And once again they are using false pretenses to further their agenda, specifically the claim that this proposed legislation only covers acts that are not quite torture, such as waterboarding.

Administration officials say that under Hamdan, CIA and military personnel could be prosecuted for violations of the act, presumably by U.S. attorneys in a future administration, and not merely by "rogue" prosecutors in the existing Justice Department. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recently told Congress that [Common Article 3] terms like "inhuman" and "outrages upon personal dignity" are "inherently vague," and that there were "unacceptable" risks of spurious prosecutions under the War Crimes Act.

This is so disingenuous as to defy description. "The administration, in sum, is asking Congress to retroactively decriminalize the abuses we saw at Abu Ghraib." Why? Because, "In many cases, soldiers say that abusive practices were authorized up the chain of command, making military and even civilian officials potentially complicit." That's interesting. So this isn't about helping Pfc. Lynndie England get on with her life. So what are they trying to protect the bigwigs from? Here's a clue.

We now know that dozens of detainees have died in custody in Afghanistan and Iraq. In several cases, interrogators literally beat detainees to death.

No, that's not quite torture. That's murder.

Originally Published at Les Enragés

Olbermann Nails It

2006-08-19T15:55:00.000-04:00

With Piece on Politics and Terror

Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Uh, I think so, Brain, but where will we find a duck and a hose at this hour?

Last Night Crooks and Liars put up this piece with a 12-minute video of Keith Olbermann talking about the nexus between BushCo™'s political fortunes and their deployment of news related to the Great War On Terror (GWOT). - "It refuses to assume that counter-terrorism measures in this country are not being influenced by politics." The premise is simple: whenever the White House finds itself in political trouble or sees a dip in the polls, they haul out whatever dubious terror threat they can cobble up, and use it to knock the bad news off the front pages. When a real threat occurs, it is held 'on ice' and released to the public at whatever time is most propitious for the government. Next to war-mongering, fear-mongering is the Republicans' favourite mongering.

Olbermann starts out with the recent British Airways arrests and the fact that the US pressured British authorities to act precipitously, tying this to the Lamont victory over Joe Lieberman last week. Then he uses this quote from Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security. Talking about the infamous colour-coded terror warning system, Ridge said,

"More often than not, we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment, sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on alert There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it. And we said, 'For That?'"

Using this as a takeoff point, Olbermann meticulously associates the top ten instances of dubious, spurious or mis-timed GWOT news releases with some political embarrassment to the White House or the Republicans. Apparently any time little Georgie watched an episode of Pinky and the Brain was reason enough to ring alarm bells. After all, each episode contains the following exchange, clearly subversive;

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky . . . Try to take over the world!

Now I personally see Pinky as George Bush and the Brain could be KKKarl Rove or Dick Cheney. One could do a dissertation on that subject, but I digress.

Watch the Olbermann report, and see what you think. I think he nailed it.

Originally posted at Les Enragés

Death Takes a Holiday

2006-08-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

Well, More Like a Coffee Break.

Eighteen hours into the negotiated ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah both sides are loudly trumpeting the victory they have achieved. I'm very skeptical about those claims. In war there are no winners and losers, only survivors and casualties.
Those inhaling in preparation for breathing a sigh of relief, don't hold your breath. As detailed in this NPR report, the rhetoric coming from both sides gives little cause for optimism.

"Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas remain poised to resume fighting. Israel says its troops will continue to destroy Hezbollah assets until those areas are handed over to the Lebanese army and U.N. troops. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, says fighting against Israel will continue as long as Israeli troops are on Lebanese soil."

Hmm, looks like both sides heard 'cease' as an indistinct whisper, but 'FIRE' came through loud and clear. Meanwhile the Israelis have used the pause to direct their military's efforts elsewhere, as reported less than two hours ago by Reuters,

"Israeli aircraft carried out an air strike in Gaza on Monday, witnesses and the Israeli military said.
The Israeli army confirmed the strike, saying it targeted a command center of the Islamic Jihad militant group.
Witnesses said a house was destroyed and that the residents were notified ahead of the bombing. They said the house belonged to the family of a member of Islamic Jihad. There were no reports of any casualties."

Even if things were smoothing out in and around Israel, there's still that other carnage going on in Iraq, as reported by The Guardian.

"More than 60 people were feared dead today after a barrage of rockets and car bombs hit a predominantly Shia Muslim district of Baghdad.
Another 148 people were injured during the wave of violence which started last night in the Zafraniya district in the south of the city."

The predictable response from Iraqi defense officials sounds depressingly familiar,

"The terrorists are in a critical state because they realise the security plan is succeeding so they have begun targeting innocent people."

Yeah, right they're in their last throes. Yo, Death, don't gulp. You'll burn your tonsils.

Originally Posted at Les Enragés

Israel's Official Policy

2006-08-13T13:15:00.000-04:00

Shoot First and Ask Questions Later

Members of the Lebanese army and security forces, coming from the town of Marjayoun which was seized by the Israeli army on Thursday, arrive at the village of Rachaya, north of Beirut August 11, 2006. REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl

The Scotsman (a good news source - Bookmark it!) has this report on the assault by Israeli warplanes on a convoy of civilians trying to flee southern Lebanon yesterday. At least seven PEOPLE were killed, and 36 wounded. The convoy had been organized by the Red Cross under the auspices of the UN, and one of the dead was a Red Cross worker. The murderous message being sent by Israel is unmistakebly clear, "Stay in your homes and we will kill you. Try to leave and we will kill you anyway."

For about 48 hours after this war broke out I still clung to the meme "Israel has the right to defend itself. Hizbollah and their Arab neighbours have sworn to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth." No more. By their continued and continuing acts of naked aggression, Israel's leaders have lost all claims to any shred of moral authority. Here's what spokespersons for Israel had to say after the attack was a fait accompli;

The Israeli army confirmed it carried out an air strike on the convoy, saying it had acted on the mistaken suspicion Hizbollah guerrillas were smuggling weapons in the vehicles and that it regretted any harm to non-combatants.
The army said a military inquiry concluded the convoy had been denied a request for permission to move but that it had set out anyway.
"The attack was carried out based on a suspicion. It was found to be incorrect," an army spokeswoman said.

Well, I'm sorry but that just doesn't cut it for the seven PEOPLE who lost their lives nor for the 36 who survived the terror of the attack and the agony of their wounds. Many I'm sure will have crippling injuries that they will have to cope with for the rest of their lives. All of those who got away 'unscathed' were nonetheless severely traumatized and will be having nightmares about this for some time to come. Many will have permanent psychological consequences of PTSD.

Asking questions later is not going to make this go away.
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Footnote: In this article I capitalize the word PEOPLE when referring to casualties who lost their lives. I will continue to do so in any future reports on this conflict, to emphasise that they were living, breathing, feeling humans who loved and were loved by their families and friends.

Crossposted from Les Enragés

The Truth About the Mainstream Media

2006-08-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

An Essay by SadButTrue

David Sirota has this hard-hitting piece on his blog today about the depths to which the American Mainstream Media (MSM) has sunk in recent times. In unequivocal terms he describes how the same MSM who are constantly being accused of liberal bias (ironically these accusations come from the MSM themselves) are in fact parrots for the right wing establishment. Here is a juicy excerpt:

...all the talk of the Establishment's disdain for ordinary citizens is not just talk or conspiracy theory - it's very real, and very powerful.
Take, for instance, New York Times columnist David Brooks's piece yesterday - it is arguably the most brazen admission of elite disdain for democracy that has ever been printed in a major American newspaper. Before you dismiss that as hyperbole, read the third line of Brooks' piece:
"Polarized primary voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics."

Yes, you read that correctly: According to one of the most prominent columnists in America, "voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics."

It's hard to believe that American public discourse could have reached such a low point. That such a statement could be made in one of the most prominent newspapers without the editor firing this columnist's sorry ass and throwing him out on the street is inexcusable. Less than 90 days from the midterm elections this so-called journalist is ~~all but~~ calling for the suspension of democracy. I'm going to let Jefferson and Lincoln speak for me on the vital link between a free press and a functioning democracy.

"An informed citizenry is the bulwark of democracy" -- Thomas Jefferson
"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crises. The great point is to bring them the real facts." -- Abraham Lincoln
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be" -- Thomas Jefferson
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." -- Abraham Lincoln

What can the ordinary citizen do to resist this insidious transition from objective reportage to blatant propaganda? First don't watch it or listen to it. There are thousands of good sites on the internet from which you can get your news. I particularly recommend that you seek out sources from outside the US, who can hardly be accused of partisan political bias. BBC News puts out a very good website version of their worldclass news service. So does The Guardian. Second, bookmark Media Matters for America, a site that issues regular reports on the manipulation of fact by the MSM. You'll be surprised to learn how often (well, constantly) they misrepresent what's going on in the world. Remember that their motive for manipulating the news is ultimately to manipulate you; your beliefs, your opinions, and even your actions. Don't put up with it.

Crossposted from Les Enragés.

Spike In Fearmongering Follows Lamont Victory

2006-08-10T11:51:00.000-04:00

Snow Caught Dealing From the Bottom Of The Deck.
You've all heard by now (how could you not have) about the increase in the terror alert level due to the alleged thwarting of yet another plot, this one to blow up airliners travelling between the UK and the US. I just stumbled across a new element that is almost laughable in its idiotic bluntness. This item from Think Progress,

At a press briefing moments ago, Tony Snow claimed that last night’s Connecticut Senate primary gave voters the chance to answer the question, “Do you take the war on terror seriously?” Snow said that Connecticut voters who backed Ned Lamont (and the 57 percent of Americans who support his position on Iraq) were choosing to “ignore the difficulties and walk away.” That is the same approach, he said, that led Osama bin Laden to the conclusion “that Americans were weak and wouldn’t stay the course and that led to September 11th.”

Geez Louise, are these guys wetting themselves over Lamont's victory, or what? And just how long do the Republicans think they can keep playing the fear card before its corners become so dog-eared and tattered that it can no longer be shuffled back into the deck? Grant in Houston over at Les Enragés, had this memorable line in comments, "These guys act like none of us read 'Chicken Little' when we were little kids. I am getting too old for the games they keep throwing our way."

Games indeed. This kind of gamesmanship harkens back to the 1940 Presidential election. The Republicans, who then as now were happy to profit from war in spite of the misery, and who were dealing with both sides, had this as their isolationist campaign slogan, "A vote for Roosevelt is a vote for war." Then as now fearmongering was their strong suit. The Democrats shot back with a slogan of their own, "A vote for Wilkie is a vote for Hitler." The Dems still knew how to sit in on a high stakes game back then.

Well, the more things change the more things stay the same. One difference stands out though. In the upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats could well combine the two slogans, "A vote for BushCo™ is a vote for war. And for Hitler." Anybody ready to place a wager on the outcome?

Cross-posted At: Les Enragés.org

All The Bad News Is True

2006-08-08T01:04:00.000-04:00

Special Feature: Guest Post By LEN HART, of Existentialist Cowboy.

How did we get here? I don't know —but I have some theories, some hunches, some "off-the-wall" insights. First of all: what is meant by the term here when there is defined as being something somewhere between Thomas Jefferson's near utopian vision of agrarian Democracy and Alexander Hamilton's dreams of an industrialized north? Roughly, Hamilton's dreams have ended in the American version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis found inside Manhattan, Houston, Chicago et al. Jefferson's vision, however, is all but dead and Democracy, like the Constitution under Bush, is quaint. From an IMD review of Fritz Lang's classic: Metropolis:

In the future, the society of Metropolis is divided in two social classes: the workers, who live in the underground below the machines level, and the dominant classes that lives in the surface. The workers are controlled by their leader Maria (Brigitte Helm), who wants to find a mediator between the upper class lords and the workers, since she believes that a heart would be necessary between brains and muscles. Maria meets Freder Fredersen (Gustav Fröhlich), the son of the Lord of Metropolis Johhan Fredersen (Alfred Abel), in a meeting of the workers, and they fall in love for each other. Meanwhile, Johhan decides that the workers are no longer necessary for Metropolis, and uses a robot pretending to be Maria to promote a revolution of the working class and eliminate them. —Claudio Carvalho, Brazil

Ironically, while Hamilton's dreams of industrialization must surely exceed Hamilton's expectations, it is there, I suspect, that in the midst of Bush's assaults upon the rule of law, due process, and presumptions of innocence, that Democracy seems most alive. It is no accident that Bushco pulled off a most un-democratic coup d'etat in Florida. Go figure!

Presently, democracy is like fireflies' flight —winking, blinking, and sometimes disappearing altogether in the darkness. Here and there are easily confused in darkness. But it is possible to outline some characteristics of here. As a nation we have never been more crowded and at the same time more isolated. Even as demographers predict votes with house to house accuracy, the broader picture of ourselves is hidden in plain sight. That is: we are divided along many lines the most pernicious being wealth, on the one hand, and the lack of it on the other. In the past, this dramatic division might have precipitated violent revolution —but not in America where the extremely wealthy have literally hidden themselves away inside ever smaller concentric rings of gated communities —security inside security inside security. This must surely be the domain of dull conversation, duller wit, and misplaced super-materialism.

The rest of us are reduced to being mere consuming machines inside a bigger machine which requires of us our total obeisance. There is no room for Abraham Maslow's "self-actualized" individual in this unfeeling super-structure of corporate bureaucracies and machine designed skyscrapers. Maslow is remembered for having created the human potential movement, for having ranked human needs from the most basic — air, water, food, sex, security, stability —to the more complex: acceptance and love. At the very top: the self-actualizing needs i.e., the need to fulfill oneself, presumably upon criteria of our choosing, our making. But, in fact, we labor not in Maslow's vision of truly free individuals, but in the dark canyons of Metropolis. The only function left us is to create the wealth that trickles up to an un-elected, neo-fascist priesthood. All the bad news has come true!

How do those who cower behind concentric rings of super security rationalize the existence of their regressive, recursive society? Among super sized fries we are sold a myth: that by acquiring the latest gewgaw, we, too, can become truly self realized! We can buy hip; we can buy cool; we can buy self-realization! It comes in a bottle, a pill, an SUV. And it's cheap: your soul!

Thanks to Len Hart for permission to reproduce this here. The original is from Existentialist Cowboy, one of the finest blogs on the web.

Constitutional Devolution

2006-08-04T16:46:00.000-04:00

So, how do we feel about Bush's plans for labeling U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants” and their consequent loss of legal rights and protections? There's a nice opinion piece in the ContraCosta Times today. Simply stated and on the money:

“FROM TIME TO TIME in our history, our leaders have allowed, even manipulated, a reasonable concern about a real threat to escalate into an excessive fear that dangerously undermined our liberties. The Red Scare of the McCarthy era was one example. Today, it is fear of terrorists.”

Aziz Huq, author of the soon to be released book, Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in Times of Terror (New Press, 2007) warns, we're all enemy combatants now:

“The power to label individuals as 'enemy combatant'—and detain them indefinitely—presents one of the most basic threats not only to elemental human liberties, but also to the democratic order. Why? Because a government that can simply banish its foes—and those it erroneously seizes—from public sight simply by labeling them as beyond the pale is not a government that labors under the rule of law.”

Even top military leaders oppose Bush's plan for special courts. And although an early draft of the plan, leaked to the courts last week, has been softened, the new plan still allows the Secretary of Defense “to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction...[and] would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries.” CSM posted a good description of how the proposal would dramatically expand military court powers today.

Damn lamenting, liberty-loving liberals!

An Exciting New Project

2006-08-03T20:42:00.000-04:00

I have been extremely busy over the last three days on a very exciting project: a team blog created for a group of enthusiasts who had never blogged before, but who were all regular commenters at Americablog and Sans-culotte.org. The site is called Les Enragés, (unrulymob.blogspot.com) and is very much patterned after the work of sans-culotte.

Sans is, as my regular readers know, my favourite all-time independent blogger. His boundless enthusiasm for what he does is matched by an uncanny ability to gather and analyse the most relevant information. On top of that is his habit of finding the rare and unusual items that other bloggers seem to miss. I personally see very little point in visiting ten or twenty blogs in a day that are all discussing the same issue, and all giving it the same spin. The occasional rare nuggets that sans finds provide a break from the same-old same-old. The problem is that sans has been inexplicably missing since July 23, which left his regulars feeling, I think, as though they had been set adrift.

My stopgap solution, suggested by reader and now blogger RevPhat, was to create a team blog patterned after san-culotte's work. This has been a smashing success, as a team of seven (including myself) has now formed. Of the seven, only myself and one other, Dena Shunra, have ever written blogs before. Three of the rookies, RevPhat, *grins* and Hornet, have already stepped up to the plate, and driven terrific pitches out of the park. Home run! Dena, a major asset in today's trying times in the middle east due to her being a Hebrew speaker, has also shown herself to be an excellent blogger, as well as an inspiringly sensitive soul. I have no doubts that the remaining team members, HillCountryGal and Jump to the Left, will also make significant contributions when their respective schedules allow it. In three short days this fledgling blog has come a long way towards being an outstanding effort.

My only regret in this is that I haven't had time to visit and comment at my other favourite blogs, all unique and outstanding in their own ways. So here's a shoutout (and a link that will bring their technorati rankings up a bit) to those places I haven't been able to visit since last Monday, with their latest posts linked as well.

Existentialist Cowboy: Israeli Soldiers Were Captured, Not Kidnapped

Firestarter5: Would You Like Fries With That?

Get In Their Face!: Hillary Makes Rumsfeld Squirm

Ice Station Tango: Report--Neocons Using Bush and NSA to start Four-Front War

Les Enragés: Breaking: Venezuala Recalls Ambassador From Tel Aviv

Welcome to Pottersville: Bob Herbert: Hot Enough Yet?

I love to end my posts with a quote or two, and it happens that my fellow Canadian blogger Firestarter5's penultimate post, Table Scraps, is rife with a lot of very good and timely ones. I blatantly ripped him off to provide you with the following food for thought. Take it away, Firestarter5:

America is a country that produces citizens who will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won't cross the street to vote.

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor,
for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword.
It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows
the mind.
And when the drums of war reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has 'closed',
the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry.
Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what
I have done. AND I AM CAESAR." --Julius Caesar

“There is no war on crime. There is no war on drugs, no war on terrorism. There is only the ongoing effort by the federal government to collect as much information on as many people as possible.” — Jim Redden author of,
Snitch Culture: How Citizens Are Turned Into the Eyes and Ears of the State

I don't have to like Bush to love America

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President..." -- Theodore Roosevelt

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber.

Update: Word is just in that in her latest post on Les Enragés, Shunra (which means cat in Aramaic) has scored an English-language exclusive, scooping Reuters and the BBC in providing the story of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez's recall of his ambassador from Tel Aviv. Not bad for a blog that's only into its third day of existence. Kudos, Shunra.

Update 2:We've done it again! Shunra beat out the bigs in reporting a Military push into Ramallah, picked off yNet and published ahead of the Mainstream Media.