The Fifth Estate

2004-10-11T16:22:00.000-05:00

Legal Blogger: Why Bush Will Lose

Via Legal Fiction:

Rove figured out that you reach more people by getting all the arms of your political and media team to say the exact same thing in every medium in which they communicate. If the people who read Drudge don’t listen to Rush, it’s OK because they’ll read the same message that the Rush audience hears. If people don’t watch the news regularly, they’ll eventually hear the same message in a prime-time presidential speech, and so forth. When you think about - and aggregate - the effect of all of the communications conveyed across all the various nodes of the vast political and media network, it’s sort of like one giant, monolithic Super Bowl ad that reaches literally hundreds of millions of people. It’s quite an innovation and it will be noted by historians – and emulated by future campaigns. And that’s why so many people – maddeningly – parrot the narrative listed above. They’ve heard the same thing over and over for seven months. That’s how Bud Light stays in business.

So here’s how Bush went and screwed it all up - perhaps tragically. Over sixty million people watched the first debate – SIXTY MILLION. It was the Super Bowl of politics. You never get that many people in one place at one time. And what happened? Bush completely contradicted the narrative, and allowed Kerry to do the same. And just like that, seven months of careful planning got flushed down the toilet as uninformed, impressionable Americans watched Kerry seem more consistent, more knowledgeable, more articulate, more honest, and much stronger than the irritated and unlikeable Bush, who seemed like he didn’t know what he was talking about. These people – that is, the impressionable people who actually matter (unlike me, and very likely you too) – probably caught wind somewhere of the post-debate conclusion that Bush came across horribly. That confirmed their impressions and then poof, they’re gone. They disappear back into the black recesses of sitcoms and reality shows where the news does not intrude. If they heard anything else, they heard that Kerry was surging (in every poll) or saw Bush ridiculed on Saturday Night Live. The dissonance was too great, and the Rove narrative broke down (again, to those who matter, not the people who have already made up their minds).

2004-10-11T15:56:00.001-05:00

Boob Tubed

Errors and omissions? No, they just lied. And there's more than 1,000 soldiers that died because of it.

Look out: major scandal. Those who have been persuaded for a long time that the White House lied about Iraq will perhaps shrug their shoulders, but it's one thing to suspect, another to prove. The huge article published in last Sunday's "New York Times", equivalent in length to six pages of the "Nouvel Observateur", is a turning point in the investigation of the American decision to invade Iraq.

At the center of the argument are the famous tubes Saddam Hussein sought to procure for himself, some of which were intercepted in June 2001 in Jordan. According to the White House, all the evidence pointed to these tubes being designed for the production of uranium enrichment centrifuges. It was these tubes that allowed Dick Cheney to assert that "Saddam has started up his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons again." It was these tubes that "couldn't really be used except for nuclear armament programs," according to Condoleezza Rice. It was these tubes that, finally, "most American experts consider are intended for use as rotors in centrifuges to enrich uranium," Colin Powell claimed in his sadly famous presentation to the UN.

The "New York Times" has good reason to denounce these lies today: at the time, it took them up and ran them, an error all the more serious given that the nuclear threat was the most important argument the Americans advanced to justify the invasion. Now, what does this inquiry demonstrate? That the tubes, which corresponded exactly to the specifications for Iraqi rockets, were unusable for centrifuge production; that the certainty of the CIA, which judged the opposite, was essentially supplied by the expertise of a single minor analyst whose presentation at the International Atomic Energy Agency was described as "embarrassing and disgusting" by the Vienna experts; that other very sharp experts from the Energy Department even before the June 2001 interception, had, repeatedly, proclaimed their doubts loud and clear, going so far as to assert that if the Iraqis really wanted to use those tubes for centrifuges, "we should give them to them"!

Most seriously: neither Cheney, nor Rice, nor Powell - and consequently, Bush - could be unaware of this disagreement among the experts, nor of the extremely strong and detailed arguments put forward by the Energy Department. Consequently, it has been proven today that they all lied, not only by omission, but by defending a thesis they knew to be contested by the best American experts. It is difficult to imagine a more harmful scandal one month away from the election.

2004-10-11T15:56:00.000-05:00

Boob Tubed

Errors and omissions? No, they just lied. And there's more than 1,000 soldiers that died because of it.

Look out: major scandal. Those who have been persuaded for a long time that the White House lied about Iraq will perhaps shrug their shoulders, but it's one thing to suspect, another to prove. The huge article published in last Sunday's "New York Times", equivalent in length to six pages of the "Nouvel Observateur", is a turning point in the investigation of the American decision to invade Iraq.

At the center of the argument are the famous tubes Saddam Hussein sought to procure for himself, some of which were intercepted in June 2001 in Jordan. According to the White House, all the evidence pointed to these tubes being designed for the production of uranium enrichment centrifuges. It was these tubes that allowed Dick Cheney to assert that "Saddam has started up his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons again." It was these tubes that "couldn't really be used except for nuclear armament programs," according to Condoleezza Rice. It was these tubes that, finally, "most American experts consider are intended for use as rotors in centrifuges to enrich uranium," Colin Powell claimed in his sadly famous presentation to the UN.

The "New York Times" has good reason to denounce these lies today: at the time, it took them up and ran them, an error all the more serious given that the nuclear threat was the most important argument the Americans advanced to justify the invasion. Now, what does this inquiry demonstrate? That the tubes, which corresponded exactly to the specifications for Iraqi rockets, were unusable for centrifuge production; that the certainty of the CIA, which judged the opposite, was essentially supplied by the expertise of a single minor analyst whose presentation at the International Atomic Energy Agency was described as "embarrassing and disgusting" by the Vienna experts; that other very sharp experts from the Energy Department even before the June 2001 interception, had, repeatedly, proclaimed their doubts loud and clear, going so far as to assert that if the Iraqis really wanted to use those tubes for centrifuges, "we should give them to them"!

Most seriously: neither Cheney, nor Rice, nor Powell - and consequently, Bush - could be unaware of this disagreement among the experts, nor of the extremely strong and detailed arguments put forward by the Energy Department. Consequently, it has been proven today that they all lied, not only by omission, but by defending a thesis they knew to be contested by the best American experts. It is difficult to imagine a more harmful scandal one month away from the election.

2004-10-11T15:37:00.000-05:00

Out of Baghdad

Iraq Veterans Against the War get some press in Mother Jones' next issue. Here's their Web site.

When Hoffman arrived in Kuwait in February 2003, his unit’s highest-ranking enlisted man laid out the mission in stark terms. “You’re not going to make Iraq safe for democracy,” the sergeant said. “You are going for one reason alone: oil. But you’re still going to go, because you signed a contract. And you’re going to go to bring your friends home.” Hoffman, who had his own doubts about the war, was relieved—he’d never expected to hear such a candid assessment from a superior. But it was only when he had been in Iraq for several months that the full meaning of the sergeant’s words began to sink in.

“The reasons for war were wrong,” he says. “They were lies. There were no WMDs. Al Qaeda was not there. And it was evident we couldn’t force democracy on people by force of arms.”

When he returned home and got his honorable discharge in August 2003, Hoffman says, he knew what he had to do next. “After being in Iraq and seeing what this war is, I realized that the only way to support our troops is to demand the withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq.” He cofounded a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and soon found himself emerging as one of the most visible members of a small but growing movement of soldiers who openly oppose the war in Iraq.

2004-10-04T16:25:00.000-05:00

Another resignation, another book?

So, Bush's head of Cybersecurity, Amit Yoran, has bailed. Same story, different position:

The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention paid to computer security issues within the agency.

Some background on the guy.

2004-10-04T15:50:00.000-05:00

And the 'Iraq Equivalent' is...

Mother Jones does an analysis of the needs of America's home security versus the time it takes for the money to be spent in Iraq.

Amount needed for basic security upgrades for subway and commuter trains in large cities: $6 BILLION
(Iraq spending equivalent: 20 days)

Bush budget allocation for train security: $100 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 8 hours)

Amount needed to equip all U.S. airports with machines that screen baggage for explosives: $3 BILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 10 days)

Bush budget allocation for baggage-screening machines: $400 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 32 hours)

Amount needed for security upgrades at 361 U.S. ports: $1.1 BILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 4 days)

Bush budget allocation for port security: $210 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 17 hours)

Amount needed to buy radiation portals for U.S. ports to detect dirty bombs in cargo: $290 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 23 hours)

Bush budget allocation for radiation portals: $43 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 3 hours)

Amount needed to help local firefighters preparefor terrorist attacks: $36.8 BILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 122 days)

Bush budget allocation for firefighter grants: $500 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 40 hours)

Amount needed to get local emergency medical crews ready for terrorist atttacks: $1.4 BILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 5 days)

Bush budget allocation for emergency medical training grants prior to eliminating program altogether: $50 MILLION
(Iraq equivalent: 4 hours)

2004-10-04T15:47:00.000-05:00

From the trenches in Iraq

Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference. Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people's homes and never walk in the streets. I can't go grocery shopping any more, can't eat in restaurants, can't strike a conversation with strangers, can't look for stories, can't drive in any thing but a full armored car, can't go to scenes of breaking news stories, can't be stuck in traffic, can't speak English outside, can't take a road trip, can't say I'm an American, can't linger at checkpoints, can't be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can't and can't....

There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second. It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush's rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a 'potential' threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to 'imminent and active threat,' a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess 'the situation.' When asked 'how are things?' they reply: 'the situation is very bad." What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn't control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country's roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war.

In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health- which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers-- has now stopped disclosing them. Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day. A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating. I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America's last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date-- and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.As for reconstruction: firstly it's so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they'd take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler. I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, "President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost."One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it's hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral.The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can't be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a 'no go zone'-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they'd boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: "Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?"

-Farnaz

2004-10-04T15:43:00.000-05:00

Attention 'Undecided' Trekkies

This just in from a friend: Shatner and Nimoy give Kerry a big thumbs up!

Hi There,
OK, so, for real. I'm something of a Trek fan, and I went
to check out a Star Trek convention this past weekend, in Cherry Hill NJ.
Celebrities attending, included William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

Each did a big stage appearance of an hour or so, where they did
casual free form reparte, sharing anecdotes, topical chit chat, etc,
and question & answer.

So Nimoy (Spock) appeared first, and he kicks off saying "So this is a
swing state". Dead silence. Leonard continues "You dont follow this stuff?".
So I call out "That's Pennsylvania, across the river, this is Jersey,
safetly Democrat". Through audience laughter, Leonard says "ah yes". When he
got to questions and answers, I was 3rd or 4th at the mic. After giving him
kind compliments, I asked "So I know this a question one isn't supposed
to ask, and maybe you won't want to answer, but the Bush administration,
thumbs up, or thumbs down?". The audience went nuts wanting to know.
Leonard egged them on, asking if they wanted to know. Then he laughed
for a while, gave a couple false starts, you could see he wanted to answer,
but then said "I probably shouldn't say". Again the crowd went nuts. So I
walked up to him on the low stage, leaned towards him, cuffing one hand
to my ear, and I watched him theatrically mouth "Thumbs way down". Now
the audience went crazy, because they weren't in on the answer. So Leonard
stands there for a moment, then addresses the mic, and says quickly "I'm
voting Kerry". Much applause. Later that evening, I got about 2 minutes to
talk with Leonard pretty much alone during a photo op thing, where he
stated, "I'm a big Kerry supporter", as I gave him a copy of the new anti-Bush CD
single we just finished making, Whole World - "Two Fake Plastic Turkeys".
It'll be on the CMJ music marathon issue CD as well. Yea Team!

Much later, it was Shatners turn. This time I was first on line, to ask him
the same question. The crowd cheered and Ooo'd, as Bill pondered, waited for relative
silence, and said matter of factly "I'm voting Democrat". Again, the crowd cheered.
Shatner is less friendly, and less accessible, than Nimoy, but I did get about a minute
to talk with him about Paragliding, and I gave him a copy of the CD as well.

So there you have it. Kirk and Spock are anti-Bush, and voting Kerry.

That's one piece of news you won't hear on Fox, or probably anywhere else.

2004-10-04T15:40:00.000-05:00

The Voting Game

Try to vote for the democratic candidate. I dare you.

2004-10-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

Dumbing it Down

After the debate last night, I surfed around the TV, listening to a variety of reactions from pundits and people. This one guy noted how great it was the Bush got down the names of political leaders. Ooooh, golly gee, Georgie Porgie remembered people's names and even pronounced them correctly. Good boy. He gets a gold star that he can stick to the notepad on his podium with the names of all the leaders next to their country's names. Probably in crayon, phonetically spelled. Uh, Georgie, that's pronounced fo-net-i-klee.

Steven Cobble over at Alternet gets it:

George W. has always only had to "exceed expectations", which are always set low to begin with. He has never actually had to "win" a debate; he wins by not losing, or in some cases, even by not losing badly.

2004-09-19T17:01:00.000-05:00

Thought for the Day

Off the Web site of the National Priorities Project...

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953

2004-09-19T16:06:00.000-05:00

'Deep trouble'

I must say, I was deeply pleased to see this headline when my homepage popped up.

Republicans Criticize Bush 'Mistakes' on Iraq

Ah, doesn't that just feeeeel good. Thanks Reuters! Check it out...

Leading members of President Bush's Republican Party on Sunday criticized mistakes and "incompetence" in his Iraq policy and called for an urgent ground offensive to retake insurgent sanctuaries.

In appearances on news talk shows, Republican senators also urged Bush to be more open with the American public after the disclosure of a classified CIA report that gave a gloomy outlook for Iraq and raised the possibility of civil war.

"The fact is, we're in deep trouble in Iraq ... and I think we're going to have to look at some recalibration of policy," Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

"We made serious mistakes," said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned at Bush's side this year after patching up a bitter rivalry.

McCain, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," cited as mistakes the toleration of looting after the successful U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and failures to secure Iraq's borders or prevent insurgents from establishing strongholds within the country.

He said a ground offensive was urgently needed to retake areas held by insurgents, but a leading Democrat accused the administration of stalling for fear of hurting Bush's reelection chances.

The criticisms came as Bush prepared this week to host Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and focus strongly on Iraq after stepped up attacks from Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

After the CIA report was disclosed on Thursday, Kerry accused the president of living in a "fantasy world of spin" about Iraq and of not telling the truth about the growing chaos.

2004-09-17T16:06:00.000-05:00

'Lazy,' 'flippant," 'devoid of compassion'

My, my...everyone's coming out of the woodwork to do their part on exposing Bush.

Yoshi Tsurumi, in his first on-camera interview on the subject, told CNN that Bush confided in him during an after-class hallway conversation during the 1973-74 school year.

"He admitted to me that to avoid the Vietnam draft, he had his dad -- he said 'Dad's friends' -- skip him through the long waiting list to get him into the Texas National Guard," Tsurumi said. "He thought that was a smart thing to do."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"What I couldn't stand -- and I told him -- he was all for the U.S. to continue with the Vietnam War. That means he was all for other people, Americans, to keep on fighting and dying."

Tsurumi got to know Bush when the future president took his "Economics EAM" (Environmental Analysis for Management), a required two-semester class from the fall of 1973 to the spring of 1974, Bush's first year at Harvard's business school.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tsurumi said he remembers Bush because every teacher remembers their best and worst students, and Bush was in the latter group.

"Lazy. He didn't come to my class prepared," Tsurumi said. "He did very badly."

Tsurumi concedes that he disapproves of Bush's politics. He wrote a letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper, the Scarsdale Inquirer, that derided the president's claims to "compassionate conservatism."

"Somehow I found him totally devoid of compassion, social responsibility, and good study discipline," Tsurumi said. "What I remember most about him was all the kind of flippant statements that he made inside of classroom as well as outside."

2004-09-08T11:52:00.000-05:00

Feel the Love, Be the Love, 'Practice' the Love

Would somebody please fire this guy already so we're not subject anymore to his blathering comments.

At a rally of cheering supporters in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, Bush made his usual pitch for limiting "frivolous lawsuits" that he said drive up the cost of health care and run doctors out of business.

But then he added, "We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

2004-09-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

Access with a Crowbar

Bought and paid for with taxpayer dollars, access to this medical research is should be free.

A battle over a proposal to make taxpayer-funded medical research reports available to the public is brewing on Capitol Hill, pitting some publishers and members of the scientific and medical communities against each other.

"The issue here is research that has been created with taxpayer money," said Rick Johnson, director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. The coalition is part of the Open Access Working Group that has promoted the notion of open access to research.

At issue is language in the House Appropriations Committee report on the bill to fund the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments in fiscal 2005. The report calls for authors funded by the National Institutes of Health to deposit their research into a central, digital repository that would be freely available to the public.

2004-09-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

So they were trying to take out Bush too?

I hadn't heard of this anywhere else.

Bush awoke a little before 6:00 a.m. on September 11, pulled on shorts and an old T-shirt and laced up his running shoes. [CBS, 11/1/02] At 6:30 a.m., Bush, a reporter friend, and his Secret Service crew took a four-mile jog in the half-light of dawn around a nearby golf course. [Washington Post, 1/27/02, Washington Post, 09/11/01] At about the same time Bush was getting ready for his jog, a van carrying several Middle Eastern men pulled up to the Colony's guard station. The men said they were a television news crew with a scheduled "poolside" interview with the president. They asked for a certain Secret Service agent by name. The message was relayed to a Secret Service agent inside the resort, who hadn't heard of the agent mentioned or of plans for an interview. He told the men to contact the president's public relations office in Washington, DC, and had the van turned away. [Longboat Observer, 9/26/01]

General Ahmed Shah Massoud. The Secret Service may have foiled an assassination attempt. Two days earlier, Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, had been murdered by a similar ruse. Two North African men, posing as journalists from "Arabic News International," had been requesting an interview with Massoud since late August. Ahmad Jamsheed, Massoud's secretary, said that by the night of September 8, "they were so worried and excitable, they were begging us." An interview was arranged for the following day. As it began, a bomb hidden in the video camera exploded, killing the two journalists. Massoud was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Tajikistan, but was pronounced dead on arrival (although his death was not acknowledged until September 15). [International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism, 10/30/01, Newsday, 10/26/01] The assassination is widely believed to have been timed to remove the Taliban's most popular and respected opponent in anticipation of the backlash that would occur after the 9/11 attacks. [BBC, 9/10/01, BBC, 9/10/01 (B), Time, 8/4/02, St. Petersburg Times, 9/9/02] The Northern Alliance blamed al-Qaeda and the ISI, Pakistan's secret service, for the attacks. [Radio Free Europe, 9/10/01, Newsday, 9/15/01,

2004-07-25T11:10:00.000-05:00

Not so Sheikh

By Michael Meacher
Michael Meacher (massonm@parliament.uk) is Labour MP for Oldham West and
Royton. He was environment minister 1997-2003

Omar Sheikh, a British-born Islamist militant, is waiting to be hanged in
Pakistan for a murder he almost certainly didn't commit - of the Wall Street
Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002. Both the US government and Pearl's wife
have since acknowledged that Sheikh was not responsible. Yet the Pakistani
government is refusing to try other suspects newly implicated in Pearl's kidnap and
murder for fear the evidence they produce in court might acquit Sheikh and
reveal too much.

Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General
Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI),
wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is
extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to
trial on this count. Why not?

Ahmed, the paymaster for the hijackers, was actually in Washington on 9/11,
and had a series of pre-9/11 top-level meetings in the White House, the
Pentagon, the national security council, and with George Tenet, then head of the CIA,
and Marc Grossman, the under-secretary of state for political affairs. When
Ahmed was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the
hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf. Why hasn't
the US demanded that he be questioned and tried in court?

Another person who must know a great deal about what led up to 9/11 is Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly arrested in Rawalpindi on March 1 2003. A joint
Senate-House intelligence select committee inquiry in July 2003 stated: "KSM
appears to be one of Bin Laden's most trusted lieutenants and was active in
recruiting people to travel outside Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of
Bin Laden." According to the report, the clear implication was that they would
be engaged in planning terrorist-related activities.

The report was sent from the CIA to the FBI, but neither agency apparently
recognized the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant sending terrorists to the
US and asking them to establish contacts with colleagues already there. Yet
the New York Times has since noted that "American officials said that KSM, once
al-Qaida's top operational commander, personally executed Daniel Pearl ... but
he was unlikely to be accused of the crime in an American criminal court
because of the risk of divulging classified information". Indeed, he may never be
brought to trial.

2004-07-25T11:02:00.000-05:00

Giving a fox the keys

I'll bet they hate it when someone actually asks a quesstion without letting the Administration just slide through their evil deeds.

At least one senator will ask the Bush administration to disclose its reasons for asking the current archivist of the United States, former Kansas Democratic Gov. John Carlin, to resign, before approving his potential successor, Allen Weinstein.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., pointed to the White House's responsibility to provide Congress with an explanation for its decision to dismiss a sitting archivist and urged the other members of the Senate Governmental Affairs committee to join him in his request Thursday at Weinstein's nomination hearing.

Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was not aware Carlin had not resigned voluntarily until Levin brought forth a letter from him. She said she needed time to discuss the issue with Governmental Affairs ranking member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., before deciding whether to request an explanation.

2004-07-11T12:34:00.000-05:00

Saw this coming...

They know they're going to lose. They send us into Iraq on the back of 911. Now, they'll try to stay on the back of a terrorist threat.Fuckheads.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are looking at an emergency proposal on the legal steps needed to postpone the November presidential election in case of an attack by al Qaeda, Newsweek reported on Sunday

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned last week that Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al Qaeda network may attack within the United States to try to disrupt the election.

The magazine cited unnamed sources who told it that the Department of Homeland Security asked the Justice Department (news - web sites) last week to review what legal steps would be needed to delay the election if an attack occurred on the day before or the day of the election.

The department was asked to review a letter to Ridge from DeForest Soaries, who is the chairman of the new U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the magazine said.

2004-06-22T16:03:00.000-05:00

Oprah Sucks!

So I'm at the laundromat and Oprah is interviewing Bill Clinton about Monica, and whether he regrets it, etc. etc.

Who the hell cares? How 'bout asking him for comments on how he feels this current administration is running roughshod on the following...

The Bush-led War on terrorism/Iraq/Afghanistan/WMD's
Bush's AWOL/Desertion issue
The 911 Investigation
Valerie Plame
The most negative Presidential campaign ever run by an incumbent
The highest no. of bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures ever!
Electronic Voting discrepancies
Throwing away Clinton's budget surplus
The largest deficit
Unemployment
Rollback of environmental policies

Christ, Oprah! no one died 'cause Clinton lied. So what if the guy got a blowjob, cheated on his wife. I care more that Bush is destroying all of us.

Shouldn't you?

2004-06-18T11:51:00.000-05:00

That'll be $400,000 for a new tent flap

Ok, raise your hand if you're surprised about this one.

Republicans Wednesday blocked an effort by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Judiciary ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to create stiffer criminal penalties for war profiteering.

The Leahy/Daschle amendment to the fiscal 2005 defense authorization bill would have created new penalties -- including up to 20 years in jail -- for government contractors convicted of inflating the cost of goods or services. It was defeated 52-46.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., later filed a motion to invoke cloture on the defense authorization bill, setting a deadline of 1 p.m. Thursday for any further amendments to be filed. The cloture vote could be held as early as Friday.

Daschle and Leahy introduced the war-profiteering amendment in response to growing accusations by Defense Department whistleblowers and House and Senate Democrats that Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, has overcharged the government for a host of services provided to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2004-06-18T11:47:00.000-05:00

Go see it

A quiet review of Michael Moore's new "Fahrenheit 911.

Much of the material in "Fahrenheit 9/11" has already been covered in books and newspapers, but some is new, and it all benefits from the different kind of impact a movie has. Near the beginning of the film, as Congress moves to ratify the election of Bush after the Florida and Supreme Court controversies, it is positively eerie to see 10 members of Congress -- eight black women, one Asian woman and one black man -- rise to protest the move and be gaveled into silence by the chairman of the session, Al Gore.

On the night before his film premiered, Moore, in uncharacteristic formalwear, attended an official dinner given by Gilles Jacob, president of the festival. Conversation at his table centered on the just-published New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh alleging that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld personally authorized use of torture in Iraqi prisons.

Moore had his own insight into the issue: "Rumsfeld was under oath when he testified about the torture scandal. If he lied, that's perjury. And therefore I find it incredibly significant that when Bush and Cheney testified before the 9/11 commission, they refused to swear an oath. They claimed they'd sworn an oath of office, but that has no legal standing. Do you suppose they remembered how Clinton was trapped by perjury and were protecting themselves?"

Would something like that belong in the film?

"My contract says I can keep editing and adding stuff right up until the release date," Moore said. He said he expects to sign a U.S. distribution deal this week at Cannes; the film's producer, Miramax, was forbidden to release it by its parent company, Disney.

After the first press screening on Monday, journalists noted on their way out that Moore was more serious in this film and took fewer cheap shots. But there are a few. Wait until you see Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz preparing for a TV interview. First he puts a pocket comb in his mouth to wet it and combs down his hair. Still not satisfied, he spits on his hand and wipes the hair into place. Catching politicians being made up for TV is an old game, but this is a first. "

2004-06-17T10:55:00.000-05:00

Oh, please!

So much for charity and helping those in need. Way to put a nefarious spin on something good.

Leading the attempts to give her the "Hillary treatment" thus far is the Capital Research Center (CRC), a conservative, Washington-based organization that studies the spending of nonprofits. Grant Oliphant, who served as Senator John Heinz's press secretary and is now executive director of the Heinz Endowments, says that the CRC has "aggressively tried to drum up interest in the notion it would be a conflict of interest to be an active philanthropist and also be First Lady."

In April, CRC published a report titled "The Heinz Foundations and The Kerry Campaign" which concluded ominously:

The United States has never had a wealthy spouse overshadow its president. But Teresa Heinz Kerry leads and funds philanthropic foundations and she sits on the board of directors of highly political nonprofit groups that receive her foundations' support and that can advance or frustrate the policies of her husband, should he become president. That's unprecedented political power. More public scrutiny of Heinz Kerry's public role is in order. While there is still time.

The reality is that people on both ends of the political spectrum have publicly lauded Heinz Kerry for her philanthropic activities in western Pennsylvania. According to the Boston Globe, her foundations have poured nearly $200 million into an array of environmental causes, including large sums for cleanup projects in western Pennsylvania and a riverfront park in Pittsburgh -- all of which have helped turn that region into an environmental model for the rest of the nation.

2004-06-16T11:33:00.000-05:00

So's ketchup, eh Ronnie?

The latest in stupid government tricks. And you just know somewhere down the road, this "classification applies only to rules of commerce, not nutrition" will be used in the vegetable argument in school cafeterias.

Batter-coated french fries are a fresh vegetable, according to the Agriculture Department, which has a federal judge's ruling to back it up.

But the department said Tuesday that the classification applies only to rules of commerce, not nutrition, and it doesn't consider an order of fries the same as an apple in school lunches.

The ruling last week by federal District Judge Richard Schell in Beaumont, Texas, allowed batter-coated french fries to be considered fresh vegetables under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act. Most other frozen fries had been on the list since 1996.

Regulations under the law help to assure buyers of commodities such as french fries that they are getting what they ordered, said George Chartier, a spokesman for the department's Agricultural Marketing Service. Frozen fries are fresh simply because they don't meet the standard necessary for them to be listed as processed, and adding batter to the fries does not change the classification, he said.

2004-06-16T11:24:00.000-05:00

No exothermic reactions here

We already knew Randy Beers was on Kerry's side, so I don't know why this article came out like it was a fresh bit of news, but, hey!

Me? I'm waiting on the book.

"He's an extraordinarily thoughtful, very civil, easy-to-deal-with, courteous guy," said McCaffrey, who stressed he is staying neutral in the presidential race. "He doesn't produce exothermic reactions; he produces solutions." Translation: Beers is no hot head.

2004-06-10T19:47:00.000-05:00

Basking in the economic recovery. NOT!

I still can't find a full-time job, which was why I work three smaller ones. And I'm probably one of the luckier ones. Look at how they play/spin the numbers on this one.

The number of Americans filing initial claims for jobless aid rose unexpectedly last week, government data showed on Thursday, and the rolling average rose to its highest level since late April.

First-time claims for state unemployment benefits rose 12,000 to 352,000 the week ended June 5, the Labor Department said. Despite the rise in layoffs, economists still consider claims near the 350,000 level as a token of an improving labor market.

Wall Street analysts had forecast a fall in claims to 335,000 from a revised 340,000 the previous week. This was originally reported as 339,000.

2004-06-10T19:43:00.000-05:00

Waste not, want not

Another "Your Tax Dollars at Work" piece. What would we do without the GAO?

The Defense Department has wasted at least $100 million on tickets for flights that employees never boarded, General Accounting Office investigators told lawmakers Wednesday.

GAO has previously reported widespread abuse of individual employee travel cards, which work like credit cards. But the latest research, published in two reports, (GAO-04-576 and GAO-04-398), indicates that problems of waste and abuse extend to travel items, most notably airline tickets, bought using centrally billed Pentagon accounts.

From 1997 to 2003, the Defense Department paid as much as $100 million for plane tickets that went unused, Gregory Kutz, GAO director of financial management and assurance, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. His estimate is based on data provided by five major airlines and the Bank of America, where Defense holds its central credit card accounts.

In fiscal 2001 and 2002 alone, the Pentagon paid at least $21.1 million for nearly 28,000 unused tickets, the data shows. These figures likely underestimate the true extent of waste, Kutz told lawmakers, because the financially strapped airlines lacked incentives to fully report tickets that weren't used.

Of the five major air carriers surveyed, only American Airlines willingly provided data, responding to GAO's request within two weeks, Kutz said. The other carriers (Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways) supplied the data in six to eight weeks, after subpoena threats and letters from lawmakers.

2004-06-06T15:15:00.000-05:00

Don't let her win

Via Legal Fiction:

Ok - I couldn't pass this up. As many of you probably know, Kos is raising money for a handful of House candidates (and 2 Senate candidates yet to be determined). One of the House candidates is the opponent of Marilyn Musgrave, the sponsor of the federal marriage amendment. She is apparently concerned about the competition (she's a freshman Rep.), and Kos has a copy of the fund-raising letter she sent out. I would strongly encourage everyone to read it.

It's a one to two page letter that uses the word "homosexual" twenty-four times. TWENTY-FOUR. My friends, there is a culture war a-comin' this fall. You can see the storm clouds forming in the distance. I'll have a lot more to say about this later (hopefully later today). Back to work.

[Update: Andrew Sullivan did some research on Musgrave:

2004-06-06T13:34:00.000-05:00

They returned him to London and were told to forget about it

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just let him talk to the 911 Commission. Add another witness. It's all good.

Khan told NBC and The Wall Street Journal that he was lured into joining a group of Islamic radicals in Britain who offered to pay his gambling debts and was trained to hijack planes at a camp in Pakistan.

A congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks confirmed that in April 2000 an unnamed "walk-in" source told FBI agents in Newark, New Jersey, that he "was to meet five or six persons," some of them pilots, who would take over a plane and fly to Afghanistan, or blow up the plane, NBC said.

During the Wall Street Journal interview, Khan produced business cards from two FBI counterterrorism agents with whom he said he spent about two weeks in 2000, the newspaper reported.

Citing records and law-enforcement officials, the report also said Khan passed two FBI polygraph tests of his story.

NBC quoted a former FBI official as saying that the Newark agents believed Khan but were ordered by headquarters to "return him to London and forget about it." But the FBI insists it investigated Khan's allegations thoroughly, could not confirm them, and had no grounds to hold him, NBC said.

2004-06-06T13:28:00.000-05:00

Penta- and octa-brominated diphenyl

What the hell are those, you demand? Just more stuff that'll kill you. This time it's on our computers.

PBDEs, which have caused neurological damage in laboratory rats in numerous studies, are related to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). PCBs have been used in fire extinguishers, fluorescent lights and liquid insulators since the 1920s.

PCBs were outlawed in the 1970s, but the toxins don't erode and still persist in the environment.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and several other organizations have confirmed that PCBs damage brains of human fetuses.

2004-06-06T13:13:00.000-05:00

Uh, another new book alert — see who wrote it

Andreas von Bulow, former federal Minister of Defense in Germany wrote "9 11 and the CIA." Apparently it's selling as well over there as Clarke and Suskind's did here. Imagine that.

Here's one tidbit from a transcript of an Alex Jones interview with von Bulow. Read the whole thing...have fun.

AJ: That’s right my friends it’s eight minutes ten seconds into this 3rd hour of global transmission. I am so honored to have on Andreas von Bulow former German defense minister, head of their defense department and of course until just a few years ago, head of their technology system which is, that is a very high level post, just as high level as defense minister there in Deutschland. And he’s written a best selling book and I’ve read some quotes out of it that have been translated into English. And the title translated is ‘911 and the CIA.’ And he lays out the evidence of the military-industrial complex carrying out the attacks. Also we have lined up Michael Micher. And he of course was the English environmental minister who resigned over Tony Blair’s fraud. He has written articles saying that if they didn’t carry it out, they certainly funded and allowed them to take place. So, if you’ve got a brain, it’s clear, and Mr. von Bulow, very intelligent individual has gone over this. So, sir, you’ve said that on the day of the event you began to look at it, you began to research it. And, from your specific expertise in intelligence and military and technology, you know heading up entire sectors of the world’s third largest economy. Please discuss for us your research and how you wrote the book and what really happened o

n 9 11.

AvB: Err, 9 11, I just watched the scenery. And I said there must have- gone something very [wrong]. I watched the TV for example and in the same minute that the TV showed the planes driving into the World Trade Center, you found these Palestinians dancing and laughing. And a few days later one could find out that this was fake. It was made by a TV crew of the defense ministry in Israel and they gave candies to the people and they laughed about it. And, nobody told it. And the question for me was who brought this TV stuff right in time into the national networks like CNN and CBS and so on and so on. And then we look for the, the story came out that this had been done by bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda and these 19 people of Muslim background, which did this. And you could watch the Persian journalist, and nobody showed up. Not one Arabic name was showing up there. And then one is interested to see video because all these 19 passengers must have passed the video, a lot of video cameras in Dallas, and New York, and Logan in Boston, and Portland in the North. You don’t get this stuff. And then we’re looking for the black boxes and we don’t get them. And the story how these, these World Trade Center buildings broke down, they were constructed against an approach by airplanes. And, the firemen of New York, they were able to come to the floor where the fires were burning, and they said, the fire commander said he needed two teams, small, to fight these fires and then it’s finished. So the heat, it is impossible that the heat was as high as it has been written in the papers and in all the media. AJ: And then, and then the feds declared that all firefighter tapes malfunctioned, turns out that wasn’t true; we’ve got copies of them. And it did say that the firefighters said the fires were out or almost out. There is video of people standing in the holes of the buildings with no fire around them. And we’re going to go over the evidence that’s in your book, sir, and why you came to these educated conclusions.

2004-06-04T11:48:00.000-05:00

What's good for the goose...

Columnist John Dean takes a gander at why Bush retained outside counsel on the Valerie Plame investigation. Apparently, Kenneth Starr did too great a job decimating attorney-client privilege in the Clinton Administration.

Ironically, it was the fair-haired Republican stalwart Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who decimated the attorney-client privilege for government lawyers and their clients - which, to paraphrase the authority Wigmore, applies when legal advice of any kind is sought by a client from a professional legal adviser, where the advice is sought in confidence.

The reason the privilege was created was to insure open and candid discussion between a lawyer and his or her client. It traditionally applied in both civil and criminal situations for government lawyers, just as it did for non-government lawyers. It applied to written records of communications, such as attorney's notes, as well as to the communications themselves.

But Starr tried to thwart that tradition in two different cases, before two federal appeals courts. There, he contended that there should be no such privilege in criminal cases involving government lawyers.

In the first case, In re Grand Jury Subpoenas Duces Tecum, former First Lady Hillary Clinton had spoken with her private counsel in the presence of White House counsel (who had made notes of the conversation). Starr wanted the notes. Hillary Clinton claimed the privilege.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit agreed with Starr. The court held that a grand jury was entitled to the information. It also held that government officials -- even when serving as attorneys -- had a special obligation to provide incriminating information in their possession.

In the second case, In re Lindsey, Deputy White House Counsel Bruce Lindsey refused to testify about his knowledge of President Clinton's relationship to Monica Lewinsky, based on attorney-client privilege. Starr sought to compel Lindsey's testimony, and he won again.

This time, Starr persuaded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to follow the Eighth Circuit. The court ruled that exposure of wrongdoing by government lawyers fostered democracy, as "openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the people remain in control of their government."

Based on these precedents, President Bush has almost certainly been told that the only way he can discuss his potential testimony with a lawyer is by hiring one outside the government.

2004-06-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

What about the other 49 states?

Will somebody update their computer systems already?

It's funny that I can use my debit card to buy gas and two hours or so later go online and look at the activity on my bank account and see the recent purchase. Yet it seems that government agencies, ok, government employees, are unable to be as efficient when processing data that impugnes people's rights.

Priorities.

CNN sued Florida's elections office Wednesday to get access to a state list with names of possible felons who may need to be deleted from voter rolls. The state uses the list to provide names of possible felons to county elections officials, who must review them to determine if individuals should be removed from the rolls. The list is of interest to journalists because of the potential for mistakes.

------

The list is a public record. But state law allows only certain people and groups - such as political parties or candidates - to make copies. Others may view it, but may not make copies.

The lawsuit in state circuit court claims the requirement is unconstitutional and irrational and says some people on the list have no way of knowing it unless someone contacts them.

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for the Florida Department of State, said allowing anyone to make copies of the list could "potentially violate the privacy of innocent voters." She said that's because the list only includes potential - not certain - matches of voters and felons.

State and county officials acknowledge the list likely contains many people who legally should continue to be allowed to vote.

2004-06-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

More shit, different day

Back door censorship is how I see this one. Perhaps this post is why I don't blog so often: because it's all so awful and it just never stops - the insidiousness of it all.

Established by an act of Congress in 1979, the Federal Procurement Data System was a rare island of public information, the only complete record of federal contracts. Using the database, journalists, auditors and federal investigators could review the million or so agreements with corporations Uncle Sam signed each year. They could find the companies reaping the largest awards, track the rise in no-bid deals, and measure the recent drive to replace federal employees with corporate employees. But under a new contract, the General Services Administration has now turned over responsibility for collecting and distributing information on government contracts to a beltway company called Global Computer Enterprises, Inc.

In signing the $24 million deal, the Bush Administration has privatized not only the collection and distribution of the data, but the database itself. For the first time since the system was established, the information will not be available directly to the public or subject to the Freedom of Information Act, according to federal officials. "It's a contractor owned and operated system," explains Nancy Gunsauls, a project manager at GCE. "We have the data."

With the compiled database under private control, journalists, corporate consultants, and even federal agencies will be barred from independently searching copies of it. Instead, GCE has pledged only to produce a set of public reports required by the government, and to provide limited access to the entire database for a yet-to-be-determined fee.

"It seems that something quite inappropriate has been done here," says Angela Styles, who served until last year as President Bush's chief procurement official, noting that Congress requires the government to compile and share this information. "They have ceded their responsibility."

Experts in federal contract law worry that the new system could cripple public scrutiny of federal contracts. "This is the ultimate metaphor for the administration's view of contracting out," says Paul Light, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who has used the procurement database for his own work. "It insulates the process from inspection, which I think is exactly what this administration prefers. They don't want people digging. They don't want people looking." Similarly, Charles Tiefer, a professor at Baltimore Law School who wrote a textbook on contract law, described the change as a political move. "They are covering up," he said. "They are making it more difficult to know that we have less competition."

2004-06-03T11:05:00.000-05:00

Well, duh!

Of course the soldiers must stay on in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can't have a bunch of chatty, dismembered soldiers splattered all over everyone's hometown paper during election season, now can we?

Army officials estimated that the new orders will affect tens of thousands of soldiers over the next year and a half but did not offer a precise figure. They said that on average about 25 percent of any given division can be expected to retire or otherwise depart the service during an 18-month period.

2004-06-03T10:41:00.000-05:00

Does this mean there's another book coming out?

Hmmm, George Tenet resigned.

2004-05-26T18:18:00.000-05:00

Save the Whales

Ok, I'm blogging this because it's not something I'm accustomed to seeing these days. Right?

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration is considering speed and routing restrictions for East Coast shipping to protect North Atlantic right whales, one of the world's most endangered large whales.

Officials with the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said they plan to release details by month's end of the first step in the process of issuing the new rules.

Only about 300 right whales exist, in U.S. and Canadian waters of the western North Atlantic, the species depleted largely by centuries of commercial whaling. Now, accidental collisions with ships or entanglements with nets threaten recovery. Adult right whales, which can live about 70 years, range from 45 to 60 feet long and weigh 30 to 80 tons.

2004-05-26T18:08:00.000-05:00

A Slice of Life in Ashcroft's World

Just another example of the way things are now...

What is justice?

The first time they allowed Brandon Mayfield any visitors, he reached out toward the heavy glass partition and spoke into the telephone, trying to reassure his wife and mother:

"Even after the FBI had searched his house, carried away belongings and confiscated credit cards and checkbooks – without charging him with a crime – Mayfield told his family that he had faith in the system.

"'He said he believes in this system. He said it is the best system in the world,' AvNell Mayfield, 63, recalled. 'He knows he will be exonerated. He said no matter what transpires, just be patient, reassure the children and don't let the waiting get to you. He said, `This will all turn out alright.'"

And so it did – but not until John Ashcroft's Justice Department had done everything to keep him jailed, defenseless, and smeared as a "terrorist" in the eyes of the world.

Two weeks after the March 11 Madrid terrorist bombings, the FBI started watching the 37-year-old lawyer and Muslim convert 24/7. The ostensible reason was that a computer search matching up fingerprints found at the scene of the bombing matched his – along with 15 others. The FBI narrowed it down to three, and honed in on Mayfield because of his religion, his associations, and his political views. This is what one FBI official later described as "an absolutely incontrovertible match."

Using the power granted them by the "PATRIOT" Act, FBI agents broke into his house and conducted a search in his absence, rifling through his kids' Spanish homework, and leaving the doors double-bolted – which immediately alerted the Mayfield family that someone had been on the premises. Mayfield called 911 when it happened a second time, and he found a man's footprint on the rug. They couldn't pick up the phone without hearing an odd clicking. When the FBI finally swooped down on the Mayfields' home in a quiet suburb of Portland, Oregon, they burst in the door, trashed the place, and trundled him off in handcuffs without a word. He was jailed for weeks without charges: Ashcroft's goons told the media he was being held as a "material witness" to the Madrid bombings.

2004-05-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

In case you missed this on Suburban Guerrilla

2004-05-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

I can do it! Yes I can!

He wants us all to think he's not just one great big pussy. We're not to suppose to notice his beady little shifty eyes when he speaks. We're supposed to turn a deaf ear to his verbal fumblings that makes us ALMOST feel sorry for him, the poor guy, bungling his words, speaking in short sentences. Not a drop of sincerity about him.

So does it really surprise anybody that this illiterate village idiot believes he can accomplish this latest in his littany of lies?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush outlined plans on Monday to hand over power to a friendly Iraqi government and promised with Iraqi approval to tear down the infamous prison where American soldiers abused inmates.

The president was using a prime-time speech on television to try and convince Americans that he can turn around the deteriorating situation in Iraq with just five weeks to go before the United States plans to hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30.

BTW: No station during prime time in Philadelphia aired his speech.

2004-05-25T14:12:00.000-05:00

We know, we know

It's all just so unbearable anymore. It's all the same crap, and so insidious!!! But, if you need something to further fuel the fire of your political outrage, read this LA Times piece about Rumsfeld...

By the normal standards of business or government, Donald Rumsfeld should long since have resigned or been fired as secretary of Defense.

The reason is not ideology, nor is it his role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, horrifying though that may be. The reason is incompetence. His record in Iraq over the last 13 months is the most dramatically incompetent performance by a public official in recent American history.

United States forces entered Baghdad in triumph in April 2003. Today they cannot prevent an assassination on the doorstep of occupation headquarters. Insecurity roils the country. Six weeks before some uncertain form of sovereignty is to be turned over to an Iraqi regime, no one knows what that regime will be.

2004-05-25T14:04:00.000-05:00

Matrix, redux

Ok, so, once again, senior officials had no knowledge of known terrorists, or those who would be likely to -- oh, never mind...what's the use.

Before helping to launch the criminal information project known as Matrix, a database contractor gave U.S. and Florida authorities the names of 120,000 people who showed a statistical likelihood of being terrorists - sparking some investigations and arrests.

The "high terrorism factor" scoring system also became a key selling point for the involvement of the database company, Seisint Inc., in the Matrix project.

Public records obtained by The Associated Press from several states show that Justice Department officials cited the scoring technology in appointing Seisint sole contractor on the federally funded, $12 million project.

Seisint and the law enforcement officials who oversee Matrix insist that the terrorism scoring system ultimately was kept out of the project, largely because of privacy concerns.

However, new details about Seisint's development of the "terrorism quotient," including the revelation that authorities apparently acted on the list of 120,000, are renewing privacy activists' suspicions about Matrix's potential power.

"Assuming they have in fact abandoned the terrorist quotient, there's nothing that stops them from bringing it back," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, which learned about the list of 120,000 through its own records request in Utah.

2004-05-25T13:58:00.000-05:00

Well, we all knew this

John Dean asks retired political scientist David James Barber to take a stab at predicting a potential second Bush term. The results are, well, discomforting.

Barber's active/positive criteria requires a "relatively high self-esteem [with] … an emphasis on rational mastery," which is not Bush. Bush no doubt loves being head of state, enjoying the pomp of his high office, as well as the politics of the presidency. Yet there is no evidence he even likes being head of the government (for it involves far more intellectual rigor than Bush enjoys). In fact, Bush is like Nixon in that he gets out of the White House every chance he has to do so.

There is an abundance of evidence (from simply watching television coverage of the seldom smiling, often annoyed, forehead-wrinkled Bush) that demonstrates that Bush reaps a "relative[ly] low emotional reward" from the job -- to quote one of Barber's active/negative criteria.

2004-05-20T20:45:00.000-05:00

Cleaning the Environment=More jobs

So, cleaning up pollution brings jobs. Not surprising that jobs in that sector have been lost under Bush.

The Commerce Department reported in 1998 that the environmental products industry employed 1.3 million Americans, generated $181 billion in revenues and contributed $16 billion to U.S. exports. The Bush administration has not published an update.

Some jobs are still being created as a result of actions taken by President Clinton. For example, on April 7, Corning Inc. opened a new factory in upstate New York to make pollution control devices for diesel trucks, which Clinton�s EPA required to clean up. And membership in the boilermaker union surged as power companies bought pollution controls required by President Clinton.

But the Bush administration's decision to weaken enforcement of the Clean Air Act has contributed to the nation's loss of manufacturing jobs. For example, DTE Energy (the Michigan-based site of a presidential visit last September to tout his environmental policies) stopped a planned cleanup program.

The Institute of Clean Air Companies-a trade group of more than 75 suppliers of air pollution control equipment-recently noted that the pro-polluter Bush approach could lead to additional job losses.

The pollution control industry actually should face a job boom in the coming years thanks to tougher national health standards for smog and soot set by the Clinton EPA. (Power plants and other smokestack industries eventually will have to clean up to meet the standards.) Yet even here the Bush administration has intervened to delay progress.

2004-05-13T10:48:00.000-05:00

On the backs of taxpayers

If this happened in the private sector, the people holding these bogus degrees would be fired immediately.

A General Accounting Office investigation has uncovered three National Nuclear Security Administration managers with top-level security clearances who received fraudulent degrees from diploma mills, schools that essentially sell degrees while requiring little or no academic work.

The NNSA, an Energy Department agency, is responsible for handling, maintaining and protecting the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile. NNSA officials have reviewed the situations of all three employees and determined "the conditions of employment did not rest on the education that they were claiming," NNSA spokesman Brian Wilkes told Government Executive . As a result, the revelations will not affect their job status.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, chairwoman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that revelations of fraudulent degrees cast doubt on the employees' technical qualifications and their integrity.

The NNSA employees work in the Office of Emergency Operations and have Q-level security clearances, an Energy Department standard which allows access to nuclear weapons information.

One of the employees paid $5,000 for a master's degree from a diploma mill in Louisiana known as LaSalle University in 1996. In an interview with the GAO, he referred to his degree as a "joke." The second NNSA employee received a bachelor's degree in 2000 from Chadwick University, an unaccredited institution. The GAO reported that the second employee had not received any legitimate postsecondary academic degrees. The third person received a doctoral degree in engineering administration in 1985 from Columbia Pacific University, an institution that was shut down in 1999 by a California judge for failing to meet academic requirements, awarding undue credit for life experience and failing to employ qualified staff members.

To see it for yourself, the GAO report No. is GAO-04-771T

2004-05-13T10:46:00.000-05:00

Been out of town for my cousin's wedding in Mexico...

Came home to a dead car battery and a full schedule.

2004-05-02T21:25:00.000-05:00

Word play

Fungelical.

Fun: A source of enjoyment, amusement or pleasure.

Fundamental: Of or relating to the foundation or base; elementary: the fundamental laws of the universe; Forming or serving as an essential component of a system or structure; central; Of great significance or entailing major change

Fungicide: A chemical substance that destroys or inhibits the growth of fungi

Evangelical: Of, relating to, or in accordance with the Christian gospel.

Mental: Of or relating to the mind; intellectual: mental powers; Executed or performed by the mind; existing in the mind: mental images of happy times; Of, relating to, or affected by a disorder of the mind; Intended for treatment of people affected with disorders of the mind.

2004-05-02T12:22:00.000-05:00

Another train leaving the station

First a Treasury Secretary, then the nation's Counter-terrorism czar, now a voice from the EPA. America, are you reading?

Russell Train, a life-long Republican and evironmental czar who helped craft the EPA from the Nixon years and on, has a memoir of his own, Politics, Pollution and Pandas.
Mother Jones has the interview.

Even some Republicans are starting to sound the alarm on Bush's environmental record. One of them is Russell Train, one of the major players in the creation of both federal environmental policies and agencies under Nixon, and the second ever EPA chief, and is still active in environmental causes. Train has written a memoir, Politics, Pollution and Pandas, a fascinating memoir of his experiences as an environmentalist, which, on top of his government service, included a stint as head the World Wildlife Fund.

In the book, Train doesn't hold back from criticizing the Bush administration's environmental record. "During my time as EPA administrator," he has said, "I don't recall a single instance of the White House ever, ever interfering with a regulatory decision I had to make." That Train, at 84 a life-long Republican, feels the need to speak out, shows how far environmental policy and regulation have strayed from their early promise.

2004-04-27T16:42:00.000-05:00

A History Lesson

Back in the early '90s, I took a course in Middle East Politics beause I knew nothing about the region that brought us the Gulf War. Or is that vice-versa? Anyway, in the March/April issue of Utne Reader I found myself back in class with the article, Al Qaeda's Surprising Origins.

No, it wasn't about Saudi Arabia, but rather the "persecuted minority," the Asiris, within the 80-year-old country, with ties to Yemen and a hatred of the Wahhabi.

"Of all the tribes in Asir, the al-Ghambi tribe has provided most of al Qaeda's foot soldiers and stands at its strongest base of support," says the article. "Five, possibly six, of the SAauydi hijackers were Ghamdis," reports John R. Bradley, in Prospect, the British political and cultural magazine. "The cave in Afghanistan wherre the plan for Sept. 11 was hatched was named the 'al-Ghamdi house.' The man visiting bin Laden in a wildly circulated video in which he reflects on the 'victory' of September 11 was called Sheik al-Ghamdi. "

Here's what I gather is the original piece from Prospect. (Utne requires a subscriber login to read their article)

At least three, and possibly four, of the al Qaeda cell who carried out the 12th May attacks in Riyadh this year were al-Ghamdis, including the alleged mastermind, Ali Abdul Rahman al-Faqaasi al-Ghamdi. However, when his capture was announced by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, Ali al-Ghamdi's tribal name was left out and, following protocol, none of the Saudi newspapers therefore carried it the next day. What the media did report almost every day for the next month were official statements and photographs showing tribal leaders from the Hijaz and Asir meeting Crown Prince Abdullah and Interior Minister Prince Naif in Taif, scene of the Wahhabi massacres in the 1920s. In almost identical speeches, all these leaders pledged loyalty to the kingdom and its "wise leadership."

2004-04-26T19:17:00.000-05:00

No Administration left behind

Seems like the White House can't get history right, unless, of course, it's just an oversight. Thom Hartmann is on the case.

The White House's website opens Jefferson's biography in a startlingly out-of-context way that seems to imply Jefferson was a Bible-thumping believer like George W. The lead sentence of his biography says: "In the thick of party conflict in 1800, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a private letter, 'I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.'"

Jefferson's letter, in fact, had nothing to do with party conflict. Instead, it had to do with attacks against him from Christian fundamentalists, the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of his day, and how the First Amendment should keep religion separate from government. On September 23, 1800, a few months before the election in which he became president, Jefferson wrote to his good friend, the physician Benjamin Rush:

"DEAR SIR, - ... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry preachers (the same root word as "Vatican")] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened.

"The delusion ...on the [First Amendment] clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me [such as being elected President], will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion."

The White House website tries to recast Jefferson (among many others of the various presidents) as an early version of George W. Bush. It highlights that "he was no public speaker," and emphasizes that he was elected by a vote in the House of Representatives - implicitly not unlike Bush's selection by the Supreme Court.

2004-04-26T19:13:00.000-05:00

'The FBI wants to shut her up completely'

Another example of the Administration trying to squelch witnesses.

The Bush administration will today seek to prevent a former FBI translator from providing evidence about 11 September intelligence failures to a group of relatives and survivors who have accused international banks and officials of aiding al-Qa'ida.

Sibel Edmonds was subpoenaed by a law firm representing more than 500 family members and survivors of the attacks to testify that she had seen information proving there was considerable evidence before September 2001 that al-Qa'ida was planning to strike the US with aircraft. The lawyers made their demand after reading comments Mrs Edmonds had made to The Independent.

But the US Justice Department is seeking to stop her from testifying, citing the rarely used "state secrets privilege". Today in a federal court in Washington, senior government lawyers will try to gag Mrs Edmonds, claiming that disclosure of her evidence "would cause serious damage to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States".

Mrs Edmonds, 33, a Turkish-American who had top secret security clearance, claimed this month that while working in the FBI's Washington headquarters, she saw information proving senior officials knew of al-Qa'ida plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strikes. She has provided sworn testimony to the independent panel appointed by President George Bush to investigate the circumstances surrounding 11 September.

2004-04-26T19:06:00.000-05:00

Toward a 'Global Glasnost'

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the world's former other superpower, now the president of Green Cross International, has a few words...go read them all.

In the first two years of his presidency, under the pretext of liberating business growth, Bush made several major changes to national environmental policies that have substantially undermined the central pillars of ecological legislation in America established during the previous four decades. Yet he did not think twice before spending billions (not to mention thousands of human lives) on the war in Iraq.

Such a course of action is fraught with danger, not only for the environment but also because it exacerbates the global conflicts between the North and the South, between the rich and the poor. The terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, were a graphic display of what can emerge from deep disparity.

Is there any alternative? Yes.

History is not predetermined. There is room for an alternative in any situation. It was this pursuit of an alternative model that led to the elaboration of a sustainable development program for the world back in 1992.

Agenda 21 was supported by the United Nations and endorsed by the heads of state and government of most states in Rio. For the first time in history, the world community managed to map out and agree on a strategic plan designed to address the twin problems of poverty and ecological disruption.

2004-04-23T12:18:00.000-05:00

Every day, life appears more and more insidious

Now this is truly taking the fun out of fundamentalism, except this time, it's the Mormons...

Mark Morford explains...

ClearPlay has, thank the Lord Almighty, developed a method that automatically bleeps out and/or completely skips over words, scenes and entire sections of Hollywood films it has deemed offensive or inappropriate, and displays the rest in sanitized, defanged, nipple-free form, so you won't ever find yourself having to explain to your precious wide-eyed heavily Ritalined 8-year-old just exactly what part of Penelope Cruz Tom Cruise is sucking in that one part of "Vanilla Sky." I mean, praise Jesus.

ClearPlay is a content-filtering company. It relieves all twitchy God-fearing Americans of the horrible and brain-draining duty of actually taking a modicum of responsibility for what they see and hear and for what they allow their children to see and hear, and replaces it all with a type of hapless willful ignorance, mislabeled as "choice."

All you have to do is buy ClearPlay's cheapass scene-deleting DVD player from Wal-Mart (of course), set the level of filtering you want from 1 to 16 (1 being, presumably, "Sex is icky" and 16 being, I suppose, "Lobotomize me now"), pop in a ClearPlay-approved DVD from your local video store and, voilà! -- your movie experience is pure and holy and now shows only happy bunnies and nummy butterflies and people kissing sweetly without tongue or moan or bulge. And, lo, the world is a better place.

2004-04-21T10:46:00.000-05:00

Rumsfeld never said that; it's not in the transcript, after all

So Bob Woodward put out a book. And there's all this hoo-ha going on even though Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neil already said as much in their books. But it's Woodward, after all. Mr. Oh-lucky-me-I-broke-Watergate-because-I-got-a-tip.

So everybody's listening to media boy. Mind you, Clarke and O'Neil -- even Eric Alterman -- already said all this. Hell, John O'Neil is screaming from the grave.

But Woodward got good quote, though. I'll give him that. Even if Rumsfeld did have it censored.

The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bushhad decided to invade Iraq.

At issue was a passage in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen.

The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003, in Vice President Cheney's West Wing office. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended.

Pentagon officials omitted the discussion of the meeting from a transcript of the Woodward interview that they posted on the Defense Department's Web site Monday. Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing yesterday that he may have used the phrase "take that to the bank" but that no final decision had been made to go to war.

2004-04-20T14:43:00.000-05:00

More from the closet

Someone else remembers John negroponte, former US Ambasador to Honduras.

So much good reading here for an historian! So much to remember. What the Walsh Report does not speak to, what it glosses over, are the wretched facts of our involvement in Central America during this time. This omission is pressing today, because the ghosts of Iran-Contra have come back to haunt us.

John Dimitri Negroponte stands today as the nominee to represent the United States at the U.N. Negroponte is currently the Executive Vice President for Global Markets at McGraw Hill Companies, Inc., and served for 37 years with the United States Department of State as a career diplomat.

One of his diplomatic postings was as the American Ambassador to Honduras. He served there from 1981 to 1985, at the height of the Iran-Contra actions taking place in Central America. If nominated, Negroponte will join Elliot Abrams in the governmental service. Abrams was convicted of lying to Congress for his role in covering up the operation for the President and Vice President.

Eyewitness accounts have allowed us, with the passage of time, to understand the horrors that occurred in Honduras because of the direct actions of the Reagan administration. Eyewitness accounts tell us what Negroponte and Abrams surely knew at the time.

One such eyewitness is Sister Laetitia Bordes, a nun who worked in Central America during the 1980s and the 1990s. She has written a book entitled 'Our Hearts Were Broken.' Sister Bordes describes Honduras and Ambassador Negroponte in words we all need to hear:

"My mind went back to May 1982 and I saw myself facing Negroponte in his office at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa. I had gone to Honduras on a fact-finding delegation. We were looking for answers. Thirty-two women had fled the death squads of El Salvador after the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980 to take refuge in Honduras. One of them had been Romero's secretary.

"Some months after their arrival, these women were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared. Our delegation was in Honduras to find out what had happened to these women. John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. There had been eyewitnesses to the capture and we were well read on the documentation that previous delegations had gathered.

"Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the US Embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government and it would be to our advantage to discuss the matter with the latter.

"Facts, however, reveal quite the contrary. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to Honduras grew from $4 million to $77.4 million; the US launched a covert war against Nicaragua and mined its harbors, and the US trained Honduran military to support the Contras.

2004-04-20T14:35:00.000-05:00

Extra, Extra

The skeletons of the newly appointed Ambassador to Iraq:John Negroponte.

..with a few admirable exceptions, news stories about Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte and Otto Reich have largely relied on past reporting and he-said, she-said soundbites by the usual supporters and critics, rather than in-depth investigations into their complicity in one of the bloodiest scandals of the past 20 years. And their guilt is based not on speculation or gossip, but on hard evidence that they aided torturers and death squads, circumvented Congress and the Constitution, and deceived the American people.

2004-04-15T11:37:00.000-05:00

'It would have been nice'

An open letter to Condi from a foreign affairs analyst for the NGO. Read it all.

It would have been nice if you were more forthcoming with the 9/11 Commission regarding Zalmay Khalizad, the expert you hired to help you with a strategic plan for Afghanistan et al. But all you told them was “America’s al-Qaeda policy wasn’t working because our Afghanistan policy wasn’t working. And our Afghanistan policy wasn’t working because our Pakistan policy wasn’t working. To address these problems, I made sure to involve regional experts. I brought in Zalmay Khalizad, an expert on Afghanistan, who as senior diplomat in the 1980s worked closely with the Afghan mujaheedeens. . . .”

Maybe you could have mentioned that Zalmay Khalizad, according to truth-seeker Wayne Madsen, was a consultant for Cambridge Energy Research Associates and was negotiating with the Taliban for the TransAfghanistan Central Asia Gas Pipeline (Centgas). You could have mentioned that the consortium behind the project involved Chevron, where you sat as a member of the board of directors, and Halliburton, which Vice President Cheney headed. You could have also added that Enron did the project feasibility studies. And wait, there’s more. Khalizad was also the liaison between now Afghanistan President Hamid Kharzal and the Taliban leader Mullah Mohamed Omar, who was a good friend of both the al-Qaeda and the Pakistani chief of intelligence, Gen. Mahmud Ahmed. You would have given me the opportunity to characterize your hiring of Khalizad as replacing the old “swatting flies” strategy with a “flypaper” strategy.

2004-04-15T11:36:00.000-05:00

Shorter Bush:

"You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hasn't yet...."

2004-04-12T18:42:00.000-05:00

Just an exercise, nothing to see here

More and more coinkydinks from that pesky governmeent that didn't know folks would be slamming planes into buildings.

On 9/11, CIA Was Running Simulation of a Plane Crashing into a Building

Associated Press picks up story first reported by The Memory Hole [ see below ]

Here's another admission which destroys the government's lie that it couldn't possibly have foreseen the use of planes to ram buildings.

The National Law Enforcement and Security Institute will be holding a conference called "Homeland Security: America's Leadership Challenge" in Chicago on 6 Sept 2002. The star speaker is Rudolph Giuliani. One of the other speakers is CIA man John Fulton. Here is the crucial sentence from the promotional literature for the conference:

On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response\ issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.

2004-04-09T19:18:00.000-05:00

Maybe Condi should attend

Date: May 3 - 6, 2004
Location: Washington, D.C.
Event Name: Congress and the Intelligence Community
Event Sponsor: Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University
Event Description: Conducted entirely on Capitol Hill, this four-day workshop is open to both civilian and uniformed employees from any department or agency with an interest in the intelligence area. The purpose of the workshop is to increase participants' understanding of the various ways that Congress interacts with the intelligence community, and therefore increase participants' effectiveness in this environment. Speakers will include Members of Congress, congressional staff, academic observers, news media representatives, and executive branch officials. Participants will also have the opportunity to observe congressional committee hearings and floor action in the House and the Senate.

Contact Information: Joan Milan { gai@georgetown.edu } 202-333-4838
Web site: { http://www.georgetown.edu/ssce/gai }

2004-04-05T15:35:00.000-05:00

"...rambling and not terribly informative..."

At first glance, I thought it was yet more copy on Iraq. This one's about Afghanistan, "the other war." Don't worry, the Administration's spin control is on it.

Retired Army Colonel Hy Rothstein, who served in the Army Special Forces for more than 20 years, wrote in a military analysis he gave to the Pentagon in January that the US failed to adapt to new conditions created by the Taliban's collapse, The New Yorker magazine reported.

"The failure to adjust US operations in line with the post-Taliban change in theater conditions cost the United States some of the fruits of victory and imposed additional, avoidable humanitarian and stability costs on Afghanistan," Rothstein wrote in the report.

"Indeed, the war's inadvertent effects may be more significant than we think."

2004-04-05T15:30:00.000-05:00

Love and Marriage

This via an e-mail I received from a friend, who's brother wrote this letter to the editor:

A Vote for Love

I would like to speak out in favor of gay marriage, and against any dilution of the equality now guaranteed by the Massachusetts state constitution, the oldest in the country.

Let me say first that I am a heterosexual, happily married, with two grown daughters. I should also say that one of my daughters is in a committed same sex relationship…and thrilled to be planning her wedding for next August.

I think I can agree with the opponents of gay marriage on a fundamental idea: the importance of the family as the basic building block of our society. There has definitely been an erosion of the family on some levels as it is threatened by marital instability and other social ills of our day. But I think those who wish to defend “traditional marriage” don’t really realize what they are defending.

Traditional marriage in biblical times was a contract between two families, in which the bride and groom had very little say. It was about an exchange of sheep and goats, or, if the families were privileged, of land and money. When the bible speaks of love, it is love between man and his God, or man and his neighbor; when it speaks of marriage it speaks of faithfulness and duty.

The idea of marriage for love has only really taken hold in the last 200 years! The ideas of romantic love we get from medieval ballads and poetry had nothing to do at the time with the business of marriage. Today we have something infinitely better than “traditional marriage”: the right of each person to marry the one they love.

I heard a very persuasive black man arguing that exclusion of gays from marriage was not discrimination, as was discrimination based on race, because unlike our race our sexual preference is a choice. It’s true, any relationship is a choice. Any marriage is a choice both for the one who asks and the one who accepts. But love is not a choice. We do not choose the person we fall in love with.

2004-04-03T15:44:00.000-05:00

I found it!

I've been looking for this and finally located the hard copy. I'm sure this allegation that Israel initially established Hamas will likely piss off a few people. I'm not here to be liked. Just inform.

Speaking in Jerusalem Dec. 20, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer made the connection between the growth of the Islamic fundamentalist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and Israel's promotion of the Islamic movement as a counter to the Palestinian nationalist movement. Kurtzer's comments come very close to EIR's own presentation of the evidence of Israel's instrumental role in establishing Hamas, and its ongoing control of that organization.

Kurtzer said that the growth of the Islamic movement in the Palestinian territories in recent decades—"with the tacit support of Israel"—was "not totally unrelated" to the emergence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and their terrorist attacks against Israel. Kurtzer explained that during the 1980s, when the Islamic movement began to flourish in the West Bank and Gaza, "Israel perceived it to be better to have people turning toward religion rather than toward a nationalistic cause [the Palestinian Liberation Organization—ed.]." It therefore did little to stop the flow of money to mosques and other religious institutions, rather than to schools.

According to the Dec. 21 Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Kurtzer made these extraordinary statements at a seminar on religion and politics sponsored by Oz V'Shalom-Netivot Shalom, a largely Anglo-American organization that promotes peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, the head of Har Etzion Yeshiva in Alon Shvut, who is an active advocate of a just regional peace, also spoke. Kurtzer said that as a result of the growth of Islam at the expense of education, there are now Palestinians who are "determined terrorists that use religious beliefs in a perverted way to appeal to the masses."

Kurtzer said that cultural and religious interaction is potentially a way to "build bridges." But instead, "the perverted use of religion in the region is today becoming one of the great challenges for the years ahead." He said that there is no "inherent component" in Islam that advocates violence. But one of the five principles of Islam, jihad—resistance—"in classic religious associations connotes religious belief and fervor, not violence." But extremists have distorted the meaning of jihad, so it now has a connotation of violence in the service of a religious purpose.

2004-04-02T17:18:00.000-05:00

Hope the 911 Commission gets this

Stand-down orders? Rumsfeld? What does this mean?

Jim Hoffman has discovered a document which I believe may be very important to the 911 skeptic movement. This document superseded earlier DOD procedures for dealing with hijacked aircraft, and it requires that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is personally responsible for issuing intercept orders. Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act. This amazing order came from S.A. Fry (Vice Admiral, US Navy and Director, Joint Staff) so it appears to me that responsibility for the US armed forces "Failure to Respond" rests directly with Fry for issuing this instruction, as well as with Donald Rumsfeld for failing to execute his responsibility to issue orders in a timely fashion.

2004-04-01T19:25:00.000-05:00

Who am I?

Perhaps I'll discover myself with a little help from my pharma friends, according to The Guardian.

"Become who you are," wrote the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. A century later, millions of people are taking Nietzsche's advice to heart. Instead of turning to philosophy, however, they are using drugs and surgery. "I feel like myself again on Seroxat," says the woman in the anti-depressant advertisements; and so do users of Prozac, Ritalin, Botox, Propecia, Xenical, anabolic steroids, cosmetic surgery, hormone replacement therapy and even sex-reassignment surgery.

Even as people undergo dramatic self-transformations, altering their personalities with psychoactive drugs and their bodies with surgery, they describe the transformation as a matter of becoming who they really are. It was only by using steroids, writes the bodybuilder Samuel Fussell, "that I looked on the outside the way I felt on the inside". With sex-reassignment surgery, writes Jan Morris, "I achieved identity at last." If Nietzsche were alive today, he could be pitching anti-depressants for Pfizer.

2004-04-01T18:38:00.000-05:00

Catch No. 2 (reeling them in)

Via SG again, via Bad Attitudes, a New York Times prize-winner about how Bush-boy "just turned down an IRS request for 80 more criminal investigators to block the flow of funds to Al Qaeda?"

Not unless you happened to read a story tucked away on page C3 of today’s New York Times; it didn’t make the AP wire, or the news roundups on Google and Yahoo.

Yet it offers a truly fascinating glimpse into Bush’s Washington, where a GOP congress joins hands with a GOP White House to hide embarrassing truths from the American people. And Bush would have got away with it clean if a single Democratic congressman hadn’t been paying close enough attention to spot the pea under the shell.

By all means read David Cay Johnson’s whole article — maybe even twice, to get the confusing details straight in your mind.

2004-04-01T18:32:00.000-05:00

Your taxpayer dollars at work

Look what Suburban Guerrilla saw over at Daily Kos, under Politicizing the government:

Really, this administration thinks that the entire federal government is part of Bush/Cheney 2004. First it was ordering the CIA to pore over Clarke's old testimony seeking inconsistencies with his 9-11 remarks.

Now it is using the Treasury Department to "analyze" Kerry's budget proposals.

Go read it. Then spread the word.

2004-04-01T12:31:00.000-05:00

Dragged through the mud

There are so many things wrong with this, let's take it apart.

Gruesome images of dead American contractors being dragged through the streets of Iraq on Wednesday may trigger flashbacks to Somalia in 1993, where a U.S. soldier suffered a similar fate.

But don't expect U.S. companies to flee Iraq any time soon. Simply put, they can't afford to leave.

Just some more "collateral damage." Otherwise known as expendable people.

Pulling out of an effort so important to the Bush administration would hurt their chances of winning future government contracts, reconstruction experts say. So even though the companies rebuilding Iraq, including San Francisco's Bechtel Corp., have the right to withdraw if they deem the country too dangerous, they have an enormous incentive not to.

...

Bechtel lost an Iraqi subcontractor in March when a mortar round exploded near the company's Baghdad compound. Houston's Halliburton has seen about 30 of its employees or subcontractors killed.

And we're just hearing this now?

"As gruesome and brutal as this was, it's an attack, and we've had other attacks in the area," said Jack Herrmann, spokesman for Washington Group International.

The Idaho construction company repairs power lines in the Sunni triangle, the rebellious area northwest of Baghdad that witnessed Wednesday's attack, and lost two Korean subcontractors in a November ambush.

"If we get to the point where we feel we can't defend our people, we won't be there," Hermann said.

Bechtel spokesman Jonathan Marshall said his company had no plans to leave. "We're still committed to fulfilling our contracts, which run through 2005," he said.

Even by the bloody standards of postwar Iraq, Wednesday's incident in Fallujah stood out.

Because our own history -- as soon as three years ago -- has seen people dragged through the street?

Two sport utility vehicles carrying employees of North Carolina's Blackwater Security Consulting drove into an ambush inside the restive town and burst into flames. A mob of Iraqis surrounded the blazing vehicles, pulled charred corpses from the wreckage, and beat them with sticks -- the scene captured by an Associated Press news cameramen arriving on the scene.

Blackwater is one of the firms that have poured an estimated 15,000 private security agents into Iraq since Saddam Hussein's fall. The company guards food shipments in Fallujah.

Gurads food shipments for whom? I picture contractors and soldiers eating, with desperate Iraqi children's faces pressed against the window of the tent; they're starving.

Violence also struck the U.S. military Wednesday, with five soldiers killed by a roadside bomb not far from Fallujah.

How many does that make now? When do we stop counting?

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of operations for the coalition running Iraq, called the two incidents tragic.

"But that isn't going to stop us from doing our mission," he told reporters in Baghdad. "In fact, it would be disgracing the deaths of these people if we were to stop our missions."

I'm sure the families of the dead soldiers and contractors feel exactly the same way.

2004-03-30T12:09:00.000-05:00

Maybe Clarke should submit his resume

The United Nations has created a new counter-terrorism post.

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council has created a new post for director of its counter-terrorism committee as the United Nations tries to take a bigger role in the global fight against terror.

"The United Nations cannot remain passive, cannot play a secondary role in such a big threat as terrorism," said Spanish ambassador Inocencio Arias, who heads the committee.

2004-03-28T16:45:00.000-05:00

Someone thanks Bush, praises Allah

This is not from The Onion.

2004-03-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

Details from Down Under

This simply struck me as odd. I mean, how is it all this info about this dude gets printed, yet the last time I saw anything come out of Saddam's mouth it was a tongue depressor checking his tonsils?

It makes a chilling picture. The mastermind behind the September 11 attacks has told interrogators that he and his terrorist nephew leafed through almanacs of US skyscrapers when planning the operation.

Sears Tower in Chicago and Library Tower in Los Angeles – which was "blown up" in the film Independence Day – were both potential targets, according to transcripts of interrogations of al-Qa'ida operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. "We were looking for symbols of economic might," he told his captors.

He recounted sitting looking at the books with Ramzi Yusuf, his nephew by marriage, who was the man behind the first World Trade Centre bombing in 1993. In that attack Yusuf succeeded only in ripping a crater into the foundations with a van bomb.

"We knew from that experience that explosives could be problematic," Khalid said, "so we started thinking about using planes."

When he was captured last March in the house of a microbiologist in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the paunchy 37-year-old was unshaven and wearing a baggy vest. He looked more like a down-and-out than one of the most dangerous men in the world.

The interrogation reports make clear, however, that he was not only the chief planner for September 11 but also introduced Osama bin Laden to Hambali, the Indonesian militant accused of orchestrating the Bali bombing 13 months later.

To date, Khalid is the most senior al-Qa'ida member to have been caught. Until now there has been no word of where he is being held or what, if anything, he is saying.

Although the interrogation transcripts are prefaced with the warning that "the detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead", it is clear that he is talking – and that the September 11 conspiracy was much more extensive than has previously been revealed.

2004-03-28T15:53:00.000-05:00

Duck, Duck, Goose!

While we're still busy being infuriated over Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from a case involving his duck-hunting pal Dick Cheney, we might want to take a looksy at other judges who are just as disgusting. Is there one in your hometown?

Corporate special interests are wining and dining judges at fancy resorts under the pretext of "educating" them about complicated legal issues. Nothing for FREE , a July 2000 report by Community Rights Counsel (CRC), showed that these junkets appear to be working as their sponsors intend, encouraging rulings that strike down environmental protections and line the pockets of junket sponsors.

2004-03-25T16:08:00.000-05:00

Meet General Donald Kerrick, corroborator

If you don't know about Richard Clarke's book and his recent numerous interviews yet, I implore you to come out of the cave. It's Spring, you know. Stretch those muscles, pick up a paper, watch C-Span, read blogs and talk to people. And if all the information is too much to digest, and you're thinking it's a he said, she said type of situation, think again.

Please think. Exercise those critical thinking skills. For the love of the truth and all that is right. Why would every one who has fled screaming into the night from their government positions be saying the same thing? How many fat ladies can sing before Americans wake up and realize they've been lied to, again and again and again. Clarke, like Paul O'Neill, has nothing to lose by revealing the truth.

But his account need not stand on his reputation alone. Clarke was not the only national security professional who spanned both the Clinton and Bush administrations. General Donald Kerrick served as deputy national security adviser under Clinton and remained on the NSC into the Bush administration. He wrote his replacement, Stephen Hadley, a two-page memo. "It was classified," Kerrick told me. "I said they needed to pay attention to al-Qaida and counterterrorism. I said we were going to be struck again. They never once asked me a question, nor did I see them having a serious discussion about it ... I agree with Dick that they saw those problems through an Iraqi prism. But the evidence, the intelligence, wasn't there."

2004-03-25T15:53:00.000-05:00

World leader Colin Powell?

I wish these headline writers would read the copy before they start throwing together subjects and verbs.

How about: Most world leaders attend state funeral in Spain

British Prime Mininster Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac showed up, even Prince Charles, for God's sake.

2004-03-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

Boldly asserted, plausibly maintained

US Supreme Court Justice Scalia sure can spin it. I'm almost convinced. Aaron Burr once said that the law is simply whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained. Scalia provides what may be deemed a plausible argument by any reasonable person. But I respectfully disagree. And since I don't have to worry about offending a subscription base, I have one more thing to add: fucking elitists! More on this from findlaw columnist Michael Dorf:

The not-so-subtle subtext of the opinion goes something like this: "We Supreme Court Justices are part of the ruling elite and we're entitled to live like it. How dare you commoners question our integrity!"

Indeed, these sentiments are not just in the subtext. Without a hint of apology, Justice Scalia writes that "[m]any Justices have reached this Court precisely because they were friends of the incumbent President or other senior officials." Having friends in high places is, in other words, a qualification for the job, the Justice suggests--and it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise.

To be clear, I believe that Justice Scalia made the right call and I do not mean to single him out among his colleagues. The elitism I detect in his memorandum could have emanated from any of the Justices. Even Justice Thomas, who grew up poor, is by this point part of the Washington establishment.

The problem the Sierra Club thought it saw in Justice Scalia's hunting trip was that he was too closely connected to the Bush Administration. Ultimately, that's exactly backwards.

The real problem with the Court is not its connection to the other powerful elites that run the country. The problem is the collective disconnection of all of these elites, taken together, from the masses of ordinary citizens. And that's something to think about as you decide which Skull and Bones man to vote for in November.

2004-03-23T16:38:00.000-05:00

Maybe they should go back to using payphones

The Columbian Journalism Review spotlights a glitch in the US Dept. of Justice's investigation of a Newsweek reporter's phone records.

Guidelines adopted by the Department of Justice after Watergate establish a clear procedure for subpoenaing a journalist’s phone records. First, the government must take all other reasonable steps to obtain the desired information. Once it has exhausted those options, the department may seek a subpoena of the reporter’s phone records from a court, but must notify the reporter so that he may oppose the request. Under extraordinary circumstances, and with the direct authorization of the attorney general, federal agents may subpoena a reporter’s records from the phone company without the reporter’s knowledge, but are still required to inform the reporter within forty-five days that it has done so. At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Yet another example of this administration making up the rules as they go along.

2004-03-22T14:09:00.000-05:00

Keeping folks all doped up

Forbes does a round-up of the world's top selling drugs, complete with chart. Once upon a time, the only commercials for drugs on TV were Pepto Bismal, Ben Gay and St. Joseph's aspirin for children. Now, we're splayed with ads all the time, which extoll the benefits of some "little purple pill" to new-agey music, while, at the end, an auctioneer spits out the side effects.

Global pharmaceutical sales tallied in at $500 billion. Of that revenue, $230 billion was in North America. That's more than double the dollar sales booked in the European Union. But cost differences become even more striking when one looks at the nine top-selling medicines in the world. Comparing the global sales figures released yesterday with the U.S. sales figures released last month reveals that all but one of these medicines won most of its dollar sales in the United States. The reason is not likely merely that people in the U.S. use more medicine, but also that they are more expensive.

It is worth noting some caveats. First, some medicines could have most of their sales in the U.S. because they are off-patent elsewhere. Second, the IMS doesn't reach all sales channels, but its estimates of total sales actually seem to be higher than those released by the drug makers themselves. For instance, Pfizer (nyse: PFE -news -people ) puts sales of Lipitor--a cholesterol drug that is the world's top-selling medicine--at $1 billion less than IMS does. But the differences look similar for all of these medicines, and IMS provides a source in which the sales are all counted in exactly the same way, not according to different company accounting procedures.

But the amount of money being poured by the U.S. into brand-name drugs is striking, and can be expected to drive the political debate about drug costs in America. Expect drug companies to continue to argue that the rest of the world is simply too cheap to pay a fair price for its medicines.

2004-03-21T16:09:00.000-05:00

I should say so!

The 9-11 Family Steering Committee is demanding the immediate resignation or the firing of the 9-11 Commission's Executive Director Philip Zelikow. Information has come to light that he was directly involved with failing to heed warnings on al Qaeda in the months preceding the attack.

It is clear that Dr. Zelikow should never have been permitted to be a member
of the Commission, since it is the mandate of the Commission to identify the
source of 9/11 failures. Dr. Zelikow has a conflict of interest that extends
beyond just the transition. It is now apparent why there has been so little
effort to assign individual culpability. We now can see that trail would
lead directly to the staff director himself.

2004-03-21T16:04:00.000-05:00

How did the war affect you?

The Arizona Daily Sun asks folks how the war has affected them?

Here's one:

JANELLE MAYCUMBER

This year of war has made me, for the first time, afraid for my country and afraid of my government. I was shocked by the extent to which our 'leaders' are willing to use fear-mongering, deception and denial in order to promote an agenda not in the interests of our people or the people of the world -- and at any cost. I was even more disheartened by the seeming willingness of much of our citizenry to ignore, deny or accept all of this. Has 60 years of propaganda finally destroyed our ability to think?

2004-03-18T22:35:00.000-05:00

Suburban Guerrilla is pissed!!!

I have nothing to add. Go read the whole thing.

I think my outrage meter may be broken. I mean, I sit here every day, reading the latest from the Regime, and I'm numb. Like this: when I first read it, I thought, "Oh, there's a big surprise."

They're so fucking insidious, these people. Such lying, hypocritical bastards. Unfortunately, too many voters are so busy trying to figure out how to live on 30% less than they did three years ago, they're not paying attention.

And what I really, really hate is what they've done to a perfectly good religion: Christianity. (As G.K. Chesterton said, "It's not that it's badly practiced so much as that it's rarely practiced at all." [UPDATE - From Melanie over at Bump in the Beltway: "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.")

These Fascists are not Christians. They're some mutant breed, like the three-eyed fish that live downstream from Mr. Burn's nuclear power plant.

Jesus was approached by the religious leaders of his day (previous incarnations of Russert, Kurtz and Stephanopoulous, no doubt) and in a attempt to trick him into starting a controversy, they asked him, "What is the greatest commandment?"

2004-03-18T22:18:00.000-05:00

Free it up!

Freecycle in Philadelphia has been great! Giving and receiving, meeting interesting people, hearing their stories. I met this guy who picked up a computer monitor I offered who was homeschooling his kid and endeavoring to open up a democratic charter school in West Philly. Another one I got my bed frame from is this cute, cool guy who's looking to open a some sort of resort in Vietnam. He's become very Siddhartha-like, giving away his possessions.

Here's some homage to freecycling by the New York Times.

Dusty but new exercise equipment, a five-person hot tub, and enough white Ikea bookshelves to furnish a small college town have been posted online through a new group that practices freecycling, the giving away of useful but unwanted goods to keep them out of landfills and maybe help someone less fortunate in the process.

2004-03-18T22:03:00.000-05:00

As we expected

Scalia defends himself on not recusing from Cheney's case

"If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," Scalia said.

Sorry, Scalia, the events of the past few years say otherwise.

2004-03-18T21:48:00.000-05:00

Take a sec, sign a worthy petition

The world's second largest rainforest — in the Congo — is being threatened.

The World Bank and UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are stealthily seeking to increase logging by sixty times in the world's second largest intact rainforest found mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). According to World Bank documents, they intend to "create a favorable climate for industrial logging" by subsidizing the development of comprehensive new forestry laws in the Congo, as well as the 'zoning' of the country’s entire forest area. Joseph Bobia, spokesperson for the Congolese development organization CENADEP, fears that as a result of industrial logging "much of the country [will be] turned into a vast logging concession.” More than 100 environment, development, and human rights groups in the Congo have called on the World Bank to stop these plans. Please demand the World Bank and FAO immediately halt plans for the expansion of industrial logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo and remaining ancient primary forests around the World [more information].

2004-03-17T19:01:00.000-05:00

Oh Make-up, my forehead's shining

Only an hour each for the 9-11 Commission is about all the time Bush and Ashcroft have for 3,000 people who died. However, from "deep inside the bowels of the Department of Homeland Security" comes a new TV show, with plenty of time for sound bites from our White Houise officials. (Funny, I always pictured DHS Director Tom Ridge, sitting at a big, empty desk with a dusty red phone, bored and lonely.)

Now it just so happens that the president has been generous with his time, along with Secretary of Justice John Ashcroft, when dealing with Hollywood helpers such as the Trinity Broadcasting Network. TBN is co-producing a show called D.H.S, which bills itself as a behind-the-scenes look at the war on terror from deep inside the bowels of the Department of Homeland Security. Having gotten a whiff of what the show’s all about, the pair are said to be delighted to offer authoritative soundbytes- not surprising, considering that TBN is:

“…a Christian faith channel where the biggest star is bible-thumper Jan Crouch, a big haired gal with a grim smile that would wither flowers. Ms. Crouch is related to Mathew Crouch, an executive producer of the pilot for D.H.S.”

According to the Globe & Mail, on-line discussions of the show’s pilot have noted the underlying “Christian message.” The Christian connection seems to have influenced the casting. The paper reports that among the show’s “noted thespians” we find leading lady Alison Heruth Waterbury, a “businesswoman-actor” committed to Christian charities as well as to the LA County Sheriff’s “…quest to have an extra state tax to help fund the fight against terrorism.”

God bless us all, America's going straight to hell.

2004-03-17T18:57:00.000-05:00

Are the 9-11 victims the enemy of the right-wing?

A USA Today op-ed piece gives us the skinny.

On March 10th I wrote an article titled A Not-So-Mighty Wind: Limbaugh Blows It Once Again about how Rush Limbaugh had bashed two 9-11 widows along with the group September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows for having the audacity to criticize the Bush Campaign ads for using 9-11 footage.

On his radio show, Limbaugh rushed to judgment and accused the family members of being manipulated by the Democrats and insinuated that Peaceful Tomorrows was being funded by Teresa Heinz Kerry. I then documented how a series of articles in the press over a period of a week had been spun by the right wing into what appears to be an orchestrated disinformation campaign to discredit the 9-11 Families who were critical of the ads in the press. To read the article you can go to the URL below and verify what I reported.

2004-03-17T18:50:00.000-05:00

What jobless recovery?

No, it's not manufacturing this time.

Bank of America Corp. plans to cut as many as 13,000 jobs as it completes its $47 billion acquisition of FleetBoston Financial Corp., according to a newspaper report.

The cuts will coincide with the expected completion of the purchase next month, The Wall Street Journal reported in Wednesday editions, citing unidentified people familiar with the plans.

The cuts would come through layoffs and attrition from the operations of both banks and amount to about 7 percent of their combined work force of 181,000, the report said.

2004-03-16T00:23:00.000-05:00

Walter Annenberg lives here

When Bush came to Pennsylvania today, he was in my former stomping ground. Ardmore, you see, is on the Main Line, the western suburbs, a tony Republican stronghold in Montgomery County. Picture petite, sculpted soccer moms in Expeditions or Escalades. Botox and country clubs. Lexus and Range Rover car dealers. Lots of Starbucks. High-end shops and attitudes. Plenty of self-entitlement to go around. Except in a small section of Ardmore.

But this ain't no North Philly, folks.

It's Lower Merion School District, for chrissakes! You know, swimming pools, basketball stars...

The article neglected to mention the 50 protesters that were there; my kid was one of them, holding a sign that told Bush to go to some real projects, not the new, affordable housing units in a small enclave in Ardmore.

Bush spewed strong home ownership rhetoric while there, but failed to mention that foreclosures and bankruptcies were at an all-time high. He probably just forgot.

2004-03-16T00:09:00.000-05:00

Mystique? Mystique?

I would not have ever chosen to put the word "Mystique" anywhere near Bush, not even an A/P headline.

Damn, Bush is as transparent, vacant and predictable as they come. There's no mystery, folks, perhaps just an awe of the depths of his ignorance.

With the election still nearly eight months away, Bush has surrendered some of the mystique of the presidency to take on a very public role as candidate for re-election. After spending months steadily building up campaign cash, he now is taking on Democrat John Kerry directly by name both in speeches and in a huge first burst of campaign ads.

Many think the president had no choice but to shift into an overtly political role early, given his deteriorating poll numbers, the speedy selection of a Democratic presidential candidate and continuing public concern about the state of the economy. Plus, he's got all that money burning a hole in his pocket.

"And so, off you go," said presidential scholar Calvin Mackenzie of Colby College in Maine. "It's a trade-off. You're not going to look as presidential. You're going to be down in the gutter slinging mud. And I assume somebody smart in the Republican strategy sessions has said, 'We've got to do this.'"

But Democratic consultant Paul Begala, a former chief political adviser to President Clinton, said Bush has turned himself into "politician in chief," giving up one of his greatest assets - the mystique and power of incumbency.

2004-03-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

Getting 'screwed'

A new book by David Cay Johnston shows how the middle class are paying the rich's tax share.

We already knew this:

...from 1983 to 1999 corporate profits stocked away in tax havens increased by 735 percent.

2004-03-15T23:52:00.000-05:00

This is not just about Pakistanti suicides post 9-11.

2004-03-15T11:14:00.000-05:00

Making the case for monopolies

Forbes reports that the US house of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (391-22) to pass the "Decency Act." The General Accounting Office may be required to study a link between indecency and media ownership concentration.

Even without such a study, it would seem clear that that risqué or indecent programming thrives where there is a wider range of media outlets. The major media companies like Time Warner (nyse: TWX -news -people ) and The Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS -news -people ) have grown through merger, and Comcast 's (nasdaq: CMCSA -news -people ) bid for Disney, if successful, would be another step in that direction. But wider trends in communication have been fueled by the growth of new media over the last several decades like cable television, satellite television, new broadcast networks and the Internet.

So are they saying that the less media outlets we have will insure less indecency? I'm so confused.

2004-03-14T13:51:00.000-05:00

A monthly battle of wits with an unarmed person?

While Kerry was visiting the site of one of seven famed Lincoln/Douglas debates, in Quincy, Illinois, he challenged Bushie to a series of monthly debates.

"I believe the American people are hungry for a genuine conversation about the fundamental questions before us," Kerry said in Quincy, Illinois, site of one of the seven historic Abraham Lincoln-Stephen Douglas debates.

The 1858 senatorial debates between Douglas and Lincoln, who lost the Senate race but won the presidency two years later, are legendary in U.S. political history for their reasoned discussion of burning issues like slavery and states' rights in the period before the Civil War.

Kerry said modern candidates "find it easier to exchange insults than to face issues" and called for a campaign that "honors the best in America."

2004-03-14T13:34:00.000-05:00

So, who has them now?

Reuters reports that Japan, "the only country to be attacked with an atomic bomb," sold Libya a uranium conversion plant back in the 1980s.

Libya never managed to convert uranium successfully into uranium hexafluoride, the uranium product fed into centrifuges for the enrichment.

After delivery as six portable modules in 1986, the plant was moved around the country "for security reasons" several times before being dismantled and removed from the country when the disarmament process began in December.

On Wednesday, Libya signed the IAEA Additional Protocol permitting intrusive, snap inspections of its nuclear facilities and vowed it would never pursue an atom bomb. The IAEA board commended its actions to the U.N. Security Council.

Ok, wonderful. But then who did Libya sell them to?

2004-03-13T11:45:00.000-05:00

It's called looting!

Rumsfeld and others fancy taking 911 debris to decorate their offices.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Friday night that Rumsfeld has a shard of metal from the jetliner that struck the Pentagon on a table in his office and shows it to people as a reminder of the tragedy Pentagon workers shared on Sept. 11, 2001.

2004-03-11T22:17:00.000-05:00

The case against Bush: Reason No. 3,864,999

He used 9-11 to get us into war, never attended one soldier's grave, yet here Bush is, for yet another photo op, and a pit-stop before a fundraiser. Bastard!

President Bush, caught in a controversy last week over campaign ads using images of Sept. 11, 2001, will attend groundbreaking ceremonies for a 9/11 memorial on New York's Long Island on Thursday, then attend a campaign fund-raising event.

Bush will visit East Meadow, New York, for an Eisenhower Park ceremony breaking ground for the Nassau County 9/11 memorial. Nearly 300 people with ties to Nassau County were killed in the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

Fortunately, some of us Americans aren't being quiet about this and rallied at the Park today.

2004-03-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

Your tax dollars at work

The auto industry uses dummies; the military uses bodies.

Officials at New Orleans' Tulane University say seven human bodies donated to the medical school were sold to the Army and blown up in land mine tests.

This makes me sick.

2004-03-11T22:03:00.000-05:00

Kerry in a better light

As a "Deaniac" myself, I'm glad that The Nation has laid out a case as to why Kerry is not "Bush lite."

There is, as evidence, his nineteen-year Senate record, during which he has voted consistently in favor of abortion rights and environmental policies, opposed Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, led the effort against drilling in the Alaskan wilderness, pushed for higher fuel economy standards, advocated boosting the minimum wage and pressed for global warming remedies. But what distinguishes Kerry's career are key moments when he displayed guts and took tough actions that few colleagues would imitate. One rap on Kerry is that he is overly cautious and conventional. He's no firebrand on the stump, nor does he come across as the most passionate and exciting force for change. But his history in Washington includes episodes in which he demonstrated a willingness to confront hard issues, to challenge power, to pursue values rather than political advantage, to take risks for the public interest.

2004-03-11T21:48:00.000-05:00

A day in my life

So I'm at a media event last night in Philly and I'm talking to an entertainment/feature writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. First, he told me he was a republican, later he said he was a libertartian. "Do you know what a libertarian is?" he asked me.

Sigh.

Then he started extolling the virtues of the republicons and began lambasting Clinton, to which I replied, "Yeah, but nobody died because he lied about getting a blow job."

Once he recovered from me saying "blow job", he persisted. Again, I kept repeating that 500-plus soldiers did not die because Clinton lied. Finally, he gave me that. "Ok, yeah."

Now, about those weapons of mass destruction, the deficit, 9-11, Bush's desertion/AWOL, Valerie Plame, gay marriage, hacking into democrats files, peace activist subpoenas, Scalia and Cheney, partial birth abortion medical records for Ashcroft, et al.

2004-03-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, and you get to kill people - or be killed

Be all that you can be. Go to college on Uncle Sam for a mere three-year tour of duty.

The Montgomery GI Bill offers over $35,000 in tuition in return for a three-year commitment on full-time duty. You contribute $100 a month for a year. You get $985 a month for three years, almost 30 times what you put in. A very handsome return on investment.

Especially if you don't get blown up first.

2004-03-11T14:46:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Salon!

Usually, Salon only gives you a peek at their articles unless you're a subscriber. This article, however, was too important to keep so they're letting us non-subscribers read the whole thing. Read it and then go subscribe, if only just to say thank you.

The new Pentagon papers
A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.

snip

From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.