Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing. -- Arundhati Roy
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Query - Nell will look at all comments in support of or correcting any facts offered in YWA. She will also consider any questions about topics covered, or any specific topic of interest that isn't being covered.
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Favorite Forum Quotes
"So, just to get this straight once and for all: We don't hate you. We're not jealous of you. As a matter of fact, we are worried. Worried because of the effects your country's actions will have on our countries, and worried because, frankly, we just don't recognize the US anymore." - Snow (from Munich)
What a huge stinking shadow government olive green repturd pile of fragging disinformationalistic fusterclucked crap. -Anonymous
While tens of thousands of innocent human beings were perishing in preternaturally boiling seas, the president was busy sawing logs and cutting brush on vacation in Crawford, Texas. Only three days after the onslaught, now dressed in a formal suit, did he give a press conference regretting the tragedy.
The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, had claimed that "the rich nations are not giving enough" and were "stingy." President Bush, obviously peeved during his press conference at the criticism, seemed to want to say, "I am not stingy!" But then he only replied testily that "the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed." In truth, Egeland, one of the U.N.'s most serious and spirited officers, had actually not mentioned the U.S. by name at all but had only said that he thought the wealthy of the world were not giving enough to "the largest natural disaster in recorded human history."
He was right, but for a different reason than probably most observers and readers perceived.
First of all, it is true, as the president said, that the United States, including individuals and organizations, has for many years been the major donor to humanitarian disasters in the world; in fact, its donations were, last year, an impressive 40 percent of the world's, or some $2.4 billion in food, cash and humanitarian relief. But it is also true that the initial American offering this week of $15 million for tsunami victims, not incidentally most of them Muslim, was rightly considered ludicrous by a world critical of humongous American investments in Iraq.
Second of all, when we talk about another kind of aid -- not immediate disaster aid, but long-term development aid -- the story changes dramatically. America's foreign aid adds up to only 0.14 percent of the country's gross national product, compared with 0.92 percent given by the most generous nation, Norway, with barely 5 million people. The New York Times reported this week that, according to polls, "most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent."
Fifteen mil was just our opener. Okay, so it took a little shaming to get us to raise it to $35 mil. Just look here:
The usual U.S. contribution during major disasters is 25 to 33 percent of total international aid, according to J. Brian Atwood, a former USAID administrator. So far, the U.S. contribution is 13 percent of the $270 million in international aid that has been pledged, the United Nations said Wednesday.
Spain has pledged $68 million, almost twice what the United States has contributed so far. Japan has pledged $30 million, Britain $29 million, Australia $27.6 million, Germany $27 million, France $20.5 million and Denmark $15.5 million, the United Nations reported.
As teams assessing the impact of last week's Indian Ocean tsunami report their findings, President Bush has increased U.S. aid to the region to $350 million – 10 times the initial pledge made before the disaster's scope unfolded.
[...]
The United States is leading a core group that also includes India, Australia and Japan in coordinating the international relief efforts.
The United Nations said the death toll from Sunday's colossal sea surge may be approaching 150,000 as the emergency relief operation struggled against debris-clogged harbours, power outages, washed-away roads and shattered towns from Indonesia to Somalia.
[...]
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has rejected suggestions that Washington has been trying to edge out the United Nations as leader of the international relief effort for the Indian Ocean tsunami.
Powell, during a visit to U.N. headquarters for talks with Secretary-General Kofi Annan, also denied that President George W. Bush had just increased U.S. disaster aid to $350 million (180 million pounds) from $35 million because he had been stung by criticism that wealthy nations were stingy.
Ayn Rand institute says US aid to disaster victims is wrong, though private charity "may be entirely proper, especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are suffering through no fault of their own." (emphasis added)
I'm waiting to hear about the minority of victims suffering because of self-inflicted tsunami damage.
This is really an incredible stance to take publicly, but David Holcberg at the Ayn Rand site is taking it:
Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or man-made disaster on the face of the earth
[...]
The reason politicians can get away with doling out money that they have no right to and that does not belong to them is that they have the morality of altruism on their side. According to altruism--the morality that most Americans accept and that politicians exploit for all it's worth--those who have more have the moral obligation to help those who have less. This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it.
[...]
It is past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them.
Next time a politician gives away money taken from you to show what a good, compassionate altruist he is, ask yourself: By what right?
You know, I've been asking myself that about my tax money the government uses to bomb other people into the afterlife. I think the answer is (in this administration, anyway): divine right.
It does appear, however, that this administration has not been too keen on coughing up disaster aid for those lazy, unworthy Indonesians. Holcberg will no doubt want to spend some of his discretionary dollars on all future Republican campaigns.
Fighting to survive without water or food since the tsunami, villagers on a remote southern archipelago forbidden to outsiders are starving and desperate for humanitarian aid to reach them, survivors and officials said Friday.
"There is nothing to eat there. There is no water. In a couple of days, people will start dying of hunger,'' said Anup Ghatak, a utilities contractor from Campbell Bay island, as he was being evacuated to Port Blair, the capital of India's island territory of Andaman and Nicobar.
India has so far denied permission to international aid groups trying to gain access to go deep into the islands, the last tsunami blind spot where casualties are not known but feared in the thousands.
[...]
Relief operations on the remote archipelago - which starts approximately 300 miles northwest of the quake's epicenter - have been limited to Indian officials and local volunteers who have struggled to deliver tons of rations, clothes, bedsheets, oil, and other items, hampered by lack of transportation to the remote islands.
"We would like to be invited to join the relief effort, and to be part of any helicopter or boat trip to the area,'' an official with the Paris-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) said at a news conference on Thursday.
International humanitarian group Oxfam also requested entry, but Lt. Gov. Ram Kapse, administrator of the federally governed territory, said no decision had been made. He said four Indian volunteer groups have been allowed to travel to the islands.
Entry to foreigners is prohibited on most of the hundreds of islands scattered over some 4,350 miles in the Bay of Bengal, and even Indians need special permits to travel there.
Some 40 percent of the densely forested area is designated as a tribal reserve where indigenous people live; the remaining area is protected for wood cultivation.
How nice of mother nature to lend a hand in ridding a country of its unwanted indigenous.
I saw a news report yesterday with a film of that conference where the (very agitated) Doctors Without Borders official plead for access. "We'll let you know in the morning," said the obviously healthy government official.
These people haven't even had water to drink since Sunday. Hope they have a lot of coconut trees that held on to their fruits.
The Pentagon is considering cutting some of its largest programs, including the F/A-22 Raptor, to help bring down the budget deficit during the next few years and offset Iraq war costs, according to congressional and industry sources.
The proposals are considered tentative and have not been approved by the Office of Management and Budget or Congress, where they could face substantial resistance.
If the Pentagon is actually offering up some programs to be cut, it's a damned safe bet that they are programs that are not needed, but are sucking up a shitload of taxpayer money which goes into the pockets of defense contractors. Know anybody by the name of Bush that might have some stake in that? It will undoubtedly be argued that we need to keep those programs, but we can cut some more food aid or health care or other social program where "our" money is being wasted.
Terrorists may seek to down aircraft by shining powerful lasers into cockpits to blind pilots during landing approaches, U.S. officials warned in a bulletin distributed nationwide.
The memo, sent by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department, says there is evidence that terrorists have explored using lasers as weapons.
There is no specific intelligence indicating al Qaeda or other groups might use lasers in the United States, they added.
Six commercial airliners in the past four days have had their cockpits illuminated by laser beams while attempting to land, a government official told CNN Wednesday.
[...]
"In certain circumstances, if laser weapons adversely affect the eyesight of both pilot and co-pilot during a non-instrument approach, there is a risk of airliner crash," the bulletin said.
The Doc Holiday of laser shooters with his fast draw and deadly aim, a laser pistol in each hand, targets pilot and co-pilot simultaneously to bring down a high-flying jet.
Uh-huh.
In September, a Delta Air Lines pilot reported damage to his retina from a laser beam during a landing in Salt Lake City, Utah.
A report for the FAA in June 2004 examined the effect of laser beams on pilots. Of 34 pilots who were exposed to lasers during simulated flights, 67 percent experienced adverse visual effects at even the lowest level of laser exposure. Two high exposure levels resulted in significantly greater performance difficulties and nine aborted landings.
Then, it could be that the incidents are another military secret experiment, which will ultimately lead to nothing, but which does carry the small risk of damaging the eyesight of innocent pilots.
Not only did he lose his stop-loss case before the courts, but the soldier who had nearly completed eight years of military service has had his contract extended for twenty-six years.
Incidents of rape and abduction by organized gangs has increased fear of sexual violence in Baghdad, deterring women from returning to work or seeking employment and families from permitting their daughters to go to school. Victims refrain from contacting the police or hospitals, for fear of being killed for bringing shame on family honor. Armed conservative religious groups are pressuring schools and workplaces to require women and girls to wear the veil under threat of acid attack or abduction. Girls enrollment and attendance is on a steep dive across the country.
LANDMINES left from years of civil war are likely to endanger survivors and rescuers after a devastating tsunami hit Sri Lanka and other Asian countries, UNICEF said today.
“Mines were floated by the floods and washed out of known mine fields, so now we don't know where they are, and the warning signs on mined areas have been swept away or destroyed,” UNICEF's Ted Chaiban said from the agency's office in Colombo in a statement released at UN headquarters in New York.
“The greatest danger to civilians will come when they begin to return to their homes, not knowing where the mines are,” Chaiban added.
The president's announcement last week that he plans to renominate [federal judge candidates whose confirmations have been blocked] followed signals from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., that he was considering a rules change that would eliminate filibusters of judicial nominees. Taken together, the actions underscore Republicans' willingness to confront Senate Democrats, who return to Washington in diminished numbers[...]
Here's how President Bush's ended his brief meeting with reporters yesterday at the Crawford Ranch, which began with his statement that he feels really, really bad about the whole tsunami tragedy. Some eunuch ball licker from the gathered reporters asked Bush if he had any New Year's resolutions. A compassionate man at that point might have said something about resolving to help the countries through this crisis. A wise man may have said he was going to reach out more to others who are across the political aisle. There's a million things he could have said. Instead, he decided to take a giant shit on the statement of sympathy he had just given: "I'll let you know. Already gave you a hint on one, which is my waistline. I'm trying to set an example."
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called on creditor nations Wednesday to suspend debt repayments from Indonesia and Somalia to help in their recovery from the quake-tsunami disaster.
In the wake of back-to-back ethics slaps at the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, House Republicans are preparing to make it more difficult to initiate ethics investigations and could remove the Republican chairman who presided over the admonishments of Mr. DeLay last fall.
You don't have to slap them more than twice. Or was it three times? Like Wal-Mart when the truth of its practices gets out, it just ramps up the PR machine. When the truth of the Repukes ethics gets out, they just stomp out ethics investigations. There. All fixed.
And don't you Demwits get conceited. You've been playing along in their game. You just haven't been as good at it.
It was snowing recently in Galveston and Corpus Christi, too. And here I am trying to get to the Gulf so I can be warm. Maybe I should just stay put and wait for warm to get to me.
Climate experts are speculating about the end effect of global warming (with some saying places that are now warmed by the Gulf Stream will become frozen wastelands). On the other hand, if it's military mucking with the weather, it's bound to be a total cock-up, and the whole thing is a huge crap shoot.
A frontal assault on U.S. troops by dozens of Iraqi insurgents in Mosul left an American soldier and about 25 guerrillas dead in one of the boldest attacks yet on occupying forces in Iraq.
Battle raged late on Wednesday as President Bush said his forces would do all they could to make it possible to hold next month's election in Mosul and other violent cities. But many residents of Mosul say they are too afraid to vote.
The soldier died of wounds, the military said on Thursday.
He had been on a patrol that was hit by a suicide car bomb close to a U.S. outpost. Gunmen tried to overrun the area, sending in another suicide truck bomber and firing mortars and rockets in an apparent bid to wipe out an entire U.S. unit.
About 15 U.S. troops were wounded before jets screamed in low over the rooftops to bomb the attackers and force them to break off, leaving about 25 insurgents dead, U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Paul Hastings said.
[...]
The U.S. military has conceded it is not in control of some parts of Mosul and plans to send thousands more troops to Iraq's third city for the election. Many residents of the largely Sunni Arab city of two million still say they are too afraid to vote.
Bush said bin Laden's message showed the importance of an election he said would counter al Qaeda's "dark vision." "The task at hand is to provide as much security as possible for the election officials as well as for the people inside cities like Mosul to encourage them to express their will," Bush said.
[...]
U.S. generals conceded this month that they face a "sophisticated" and increasingly effective enemy.
As for Bubblehead's driveling, it looks to me like the people inside Mosul are expressing their will. Just like the people inside Falluja. And those additional thousands of American troops to be sent in kind of begs the question of just who it is that will be securing Iraq for elections. It's going to be sadly comical when we prop up a couple of masked Iraqi policemen (maybe - under those masks, who knows?) with a battery of U.S. troops behind them.
Republican Dino Rossi called for a new election in the race for Washington governor Wednesday night, a day before Democrat Christine Gregoire is to be certified as the winner by 129 votes.
Rossi, a real estate salesman and former state senator, held a press conference at his Bellevue headquarters to say he'd sent a letter to Gregoire asking for her support in seeking a new election to restore the public's faith in the outcome, which is "shrouded in suspicion."
"Quite frankly, folks, this election has been a mess," Rossi said.
Gregoire's campaign and the state Democratic Party immediately rejected the idea.
For once a Democrat stood up and demanded a true count of all the votes and didn't back down. Now the Repuke wants a new vote. Maybe they think they've figured out a way to make sure they get more votes? It'll be a little harder than just rigging machines and throwing out ballots; it might cost them heavily in bribes or make them have to call in favors from da family.
Of course we all know that our monetary system is all smoke and mirrors, but it's generally too complex to try to understand how and why and what it means in the long haul. So, I thought a book titled Creature from Jekyll Island - a second look at the Federal Reserve - looked like a promising resource for some better understanding.
I see Bob is also reading it, and so maybe we'll get some comments from him. I won't promise to keep you informed, but if you think you might want to read it yourself, click on the graphic below for more information.
What I will do, is give you a few quotes from the first chapter. (And by the way, I stumbled upon Jekyll Island in one of my meanderings around the country. Very cool. A resort for the ultra rich back a hundred years ago or so. Now a Georgia state park.)
We pick up at a train station in New Jersey...
Chapter One
The Journey to Jekyll Island The secret meeting on Jekyll Island in Georgia at which the Federal Reserve was conceived; the birth of a banking cartel to protect its members from competition; the strategy of how to convince Congress and the public that this cartel was an agency of the United States government
[...]
And so, as the passengers drifted off to sleep to the rhythmic clicking of steel wheels against rail, little did they dream that, riding in the car at the end of their train, were seven men who represented an estimated one-fourth of the total wealth of the entire world. This was the roster of the Aldrich car that night:
1. Nelson W. Aldrich, Republican "whip" in the Senate, Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, business associate of J.P. Morgan, father-in-law to John D. Rockefeller, Jr; 2. Abraham Piatt Andrew, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; 3. Frank A. Vanderlip, president of the National City Bank of New York, the most powerful of the banks at that time, representing William Rockefeller and the internaitonal invesment banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Company; 4. Henry P. Davison, senior partner of the J.P. Morgan Company; 5. Charles D. Norton, president of J.P. Morgan's First National Bank of New York; 6. Benjamin Strong, head of J.P. Morgan's Bankers Trust Company; 7. Paul M. Warburg, a partner in Kuhn, Loeb & Company, a representative of the Rothschild banking dynasty in England and France, and brother to Max Warburg who was head of the Warburg banking consortium in Germany and the Netherlands.
[...]
The elite group of financiers was embarked on an eight hundred mile journey that led to Atlanta, then to Savannah and, finally, to the small town of Brunswick, Georgia. [...] [T]he Sea Islands that sheltered the coast from South Carolina to Florida already had become popular as winter resorts for the very wealthy. One such island, just off the coast of Brusnwick, had recently been purchased by J.P. Morgan and several of his business associates, and it was here that they came in the fall and winter to hunt ducks or deer and to escape the rigors of cold weather in the North. It was called Jekyll Island.
[...]
Even after arrival at the remote island lodge, the secrecy continued. For nine days the rule for first-name-only remained in effect. Full-time caretakers and servants had been given vacation, and an entirely new, carefully screened staff was brought in for the occasion. This was done to make absolutely sure that none of the servants might recognize by sight the identities of these guests. It is difficult to imagine any event in history - including preparation for war - that was shielded from public view with greater mystery and secrecy.
The purpose of this meeting on Jekyll Island was not to hunt ducks. Simply stated, it was to come to an agreement on the structure and operation of a banking cartel. The goal of the cartel, as is true with all of them, was to maximize profits by minimizing competition between members, to make it difficult for new competitors to enter the field, and to utilize the police power of government to enforce the cartel agreement. In more specific terms, the purpose and, indeed, the actual outcome of this meeting was to create the blueprint for the Federal Reserve System.
[...]
Competition also was coming from a new trend in industry to finance future growth out of profits rather than from borrowed capital. This was the outgrowth of free-market interest rates which set a realistic balance between debt and thrift. Rates were low enough to attract serious borrowers who were confident of the success of their business ventures and of their ability to repay, but they were high enough to discourage loans for frivolous ventures or those for which there were alternative sources of funding - for example, one's own capital. [...] Even the federal government was becoming thrifty. It had a growing stockpile of gold, was systematically redeeming the Greenbacks - which had been issued during the Civil War - and was rapidly reducing the national debt.
Here was another trend that had to be halted. What the bankers wanted - and what many businessmen wanted also - was to intervene in the free market and tip the balance of interest rates downward, to favor debt over thrift. To accomplish this, the money supply simply had to be disconnected from gold and made more plentiful or, as they described it, more elastic.
Now, here's where my one accounting course comes in. The one thing I remember is that banks are permitted to make loans at ten times the amount of reserves they hold. In other words, banks are loaning (to reap the rewards of interest) money they do not have.
A method had to be devised to enable them to continue to make more promises to pay-on-demand than they could keep. To do this, they had to find a way to force all banks to walk the same distance from the edge, and , when the inevitable disasters happened, to shift public blame away from themselves. By making it appear to be a problem of the national economy rather than of private banking practice, the door then could be opened for the use of tax money rather than their own funds for paying off the losses.
Here, then, were the main challenges that faced that tiny but powerful group assembled on Jekyll Island:
1. How to stop the growing influence of small, rival banks and to insure that control over the nation's financial resources would remain in the hands of those present; 2. How to make the money supply more elastic in order to reverse the trend of private capital formation and to recapture the industrial loan market; 3. How to pool the meager reserves of the nation's banks into one large reserve so that all banks will be motivated to follow the same loan-to-deposit ratios. This would protect at least some of them from currency drains and bank runs; 4. Should this lead eventually to the collapse of the whole banking system, then how to shift the losses from the owners of the banks to the taxpayers.
Just minutes after the earthquake in the Indian Ocean on Sunday morning, Thailand’s foremost meteorological experts were sitting together in a crisis meeting. But they decided not to warn about the tsunami “out of courtesy to the tourist industry,” writes the Thailand daily newspaper The Nation.
[...]
“We finally decided not to do anything because the tourist season was in full swing,” the source said. “The hotels were 100 percent booked. What if we issued a warning, which would have led to an evacuation, and nothing had happened. What would be the outcome? The tourist industry would be immediately hurt. Our department would not be able to endure a lawsuit.”
Bob has some interesting quotes from a book he has read, The New Pearl Harbor (click the graphic below). Two that I find especially intriguing are these:
Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, was a principal in a company called Securacom, which provided security for the World Trade Center…[T]his company was in charge of security for the WTC between 1996 until September 11, 2001, and that it installed a new security system between 1996 and 2000.
[...]
On the weekend of [September 8-9, 2001], there was a “power down” condition in WTC tower 2, the south tower. This power down condition meant there was no electrical supply for approximately 36 hours from floor 50 up…The reason given by the WTC for the power down was that cabling in the tower was being upgraded…Of course without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors [while] many, many “engineers” [were] coming in and out of the tower.
I had known about Marvin, but I didn't know about the "power down" (or if I did, I didn't remember it).
I expect Bush, on his vacation, is welcoming the public distraction by the South Pacific.
Put aside the stunning fact that American officials could not figure out that people anywhere will fight for their families instead of for the foreign invaders; the recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies states that the numbers of trained Iraqi army and police are far below what is required. Only one example: As of Dec. 6, the Pentagon reported that 27,000 trained army troops were needed, but that only 3,428 were listed as "trained/on hand."
[...]
"Senior U.S. military sources in the region tell CNN the city of Mosul has been wracked by violence for weeks. Local Iraqi security forces have virtually melted away, say those officials. One senior U.S. officer tells CNN, we have no Iraqi police force up in Mosul today.
"The problem in getting Iraqis to fight the insurgency may be deeper across Iraq. The military assessment now is that the U.S. miscalculated Iraqi tribal and religious loyalties and did not realize Iraqis are likely to fight only for their brethren ... So in cases like Mosul, they simply will not fight the intimidation of the insurgents, the U.S. now believes."
And remember, until now Mosul was one of our success stories!
But if there's one thing we all know about George Bush, even before Michael Moore made it starkly clear, is that the motherfucker clings to his vacation time like, say, a father holding a child clinged to a palm tree in the Maldives. Sure, sure, we're gonna see him today, when he holds a "teleconference" and make a "brief appearance" from the ranch, but this is, as all things in this arrogant President's schedule, done grudingly, only in response to the hue and cry of people who, in this case, wonder why Bush can't take a break from brush clearing and, really, "thinking" to say, in person, "Damn, bitches. This shit sucks for you." When a reporter suggested that "the actual question is whether the people of Asia and those who are suffering from all of this, whether there would be any benefit from seeing and hearing from him directly," Trent Duffy, subbing for Scott McClellan in the spread of lies and misinformation, assured us that the President had "sent letters" of condolence. Howzabout some flowers with that, huh? But we know, from another press gaggle, that Bush is "monitoring" the situation overseas by watching Fox.
Besides, as Duffy added, the President receives a morning briefing, and, in addition, he's "continuing to think about the Inauguration and the State of the Union speech; he's clearing some brush this morning; I think he has some friends coming in either today or tomorrow that he enjoys hosting; he's doing some biking and exercising as he normally does, taking walks with the First Lady; and thinking about what he wants to accomplish in the second term." Now, the Rude Pundit doesn't know about you, but "thinking" seems like a euphemism for "napping." Or "taking a dump." Or "jacking off."
On Monday, the Rude Pundit wondered how long until terrorism was somehow tied to the tsunami. Thanks to a heads up from reader Rosamond, the answer is, well, Monday, when a reporter asked Duffy, "Is there any anti-terrorism component to this? Is the administration concerned about -- that the terrorists might take advantage of the situation?" The proper answer might have been, "Deb, shut the fuck up." Instead, Duffy assured us, "we wouldn't get into any classified types of information, but the American people can rest assured that no matter what happens in the world, that the government will be doing everything it can to protect the American people from terrorism."
The Washington Post reports that Hastert is considering replacing the current chair of the House ethics committee, Joel Hefley, who has shown a modicum of independence by not sweeping under the rug charges levied against Majority Leader DeLay. As the Post points out, Hefley has had the temerity to say he will treat charges against the Hammer "like I would handle anything else."
Hastert is considering replacing Hefley with a pliable ally of the leadership, Lamar Smith of DeLay's home state of Texas.
An American family caught in the Asian tsunami finds the American government's heart of compassion.
Once they returned to shore, the couple did what they could to help, Helen Wachs said.
"I can't describe carrying a moaning person who just saw his girlfriend killed down a hill in the middle of the night," the e-mail said. "I saw more bodies than I care to report. The hotel where we were staying is mostly gone. We lost everything, but our lives."
Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but "she was appalled at the treatment they got" from the U.S. government, her mother said.
At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.
That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.
Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.
But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.
The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said.
"She was really very surprised" that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said.
Twenty-eight Iraqi policemen have died in a powerful explosion in western Baghdad.
An interior ministry official said the blast, which also wounded 18 people, occurred early on Wednesday when the police were raiding a house in which fighters were suspected to be living.
This strikes me as a completely foreseeable turn in Iraqi resistance. After all, time and time again, the misadministration has stated that its success in Iraq lies in getting an Iraqi security force trained and working. Not to mention, the insistence that it will be Iraqi forces that secure polling places.
Former US attorney-general Ramsey Clark is to join Saddam Hussein's defence team, a spokesman for the ousted Iraqi president's lawyers says.
Ziad Khasawna said on Wednesday that Clark, who held the office of attorney-general under US president Lyndon Johnson, had "honoured and inspired" the legal team by agreeing to help defend Saddam.
The former top US justice official, who arrived on Tuesday in Jordan where the defence team is based, has become known as a left-wing lawyer and firm critic of US foreign policy since leaving office.
Clark, unlike our current AG, has always been a champion of civil and legal rights.
"In international law, anyone accused of crime has the right to be tried by a confident, independent and impartial court, and there can be no fair trail without those qualities," he said.
You go, Rams. Expect some serious trouble, eh?
Clark also said the US itself must be tried for the November assault on Falluja, destruction of houses, torture in prisons and its role in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis in the war.
Tom sends a World Net Daily link to something that seems to be getting swept under the rug. At least in the mainstream. No surprise there.
It appears that in Rumsfiend's little Christmas visit to the troops in Iraq, he made either a slip of the tongue, or a confession. (Transcript)
World Net Daily decided to take on this case (which is mainly running around the internet - CNN says amongst "conspiracy theorists" - the old catch-all to discredit anyone talking about touchy subjects), and yet, what the WND article says is really not addressing what Rumsfiend said. I'm confused. Here's WND:
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been questions about Flight 93, the ill-fated plane that crashed in the rural fields of Pennsylvania.
The official story has been that passengers on the United Airlines flight rushed the hijackers in an effort to prevent them from crashing the plane into a strategic target – possibly the U.S. Capitol.
During his surprise Christmas Eve trip to Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the flight being shot down – long a suspicion because of the danger the flight posed to Washington landmarks and population centers.
Was it a slip of the tongue? Was it an error? Or was it the truth, finally being dropped on the public more than three years after the tragedy of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000?
[...]
On the Sept. 16, 2001, edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney, while not addressing Flight 93 specifically, spoke clearly to the administration's clear policy regarding shooting down hijacked jets.
Vice President Cheney: "Well, the – I suppose the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft."
NBC's Tim Russert: "And you decided?"
Cheney: "We decided to do it. We'd, in effect, put a flying combat air patrol up over the city; F-16s with an AWACS, which is an airborne radar system, and tanker support so they could stay up a long time ...
"It doesn't do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don't give them instructions to act, if, in fact, they feel it's appropriate."
You'll notice that WND is running with the idea that the U.S. actually did shoot down the Pennsylvania flight due to concerns for its target. And that may well be true. Afterward, then, to avoid admitting they shot it down - for any number of reasons - they may then have made up the story about the heroic passengers taking the plane down to save the would-be target. Lord knows there's lots of unanswered questions and plenty of cover-ups going on over the attacks.
But, what Rumsfiend actually said was (and WND quotes him correctly, while questioning something that he didn't say - bizarre):
And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word "terrorized" is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be. [Emphasis added]
That is saying that the "bad guys" shot down the plane in Pennsylvania. A whole new story. Is that what he meant to say? And even if not, why are the media avoiding the issue? I only see WND and CNN even bringing it up. CNN trying to sweep it under the rug of "conspiracy theory".
The Pentagon insists he "misspoke". Uh-huh. Whatever. Seems like a very specific thing to throw in to a speech that didn't need it.
Next time you hear some politician or conservative pundit blather on about what a generous country we are, remember this; we’re devoting less than half of what Bush is planning to spend on his own inauguration to helping people recover from one of the worst natural disasters in human history.
The confirmed toll resulting from the massive earthquake and tidal waves that devastated Indian Ocean shorelines over the weekend has exceeded 60,000, amid warnings it is likely to rise higher.
Politics is a game played by rules. And the most important rule regarding close elections is that you don't win by being conciliatory during the recount process. Indeed, the only way a candidate who trails on election night ends up taking the oath of office is by refusing to concede and then confidently demanding that every vote be counted -- even when the opposition, the media and the courts turn against you.
That is a rule that Al Gore failed to follow to its logical conclusion in 2000, and that John Kerry did not even attempt to apply this year. Both men were so determined to maintain their long-term political viability that they refused to fight like hell to assure that the votes of their supporters were counted. That refusal let their backers down. It also guaranteed that, despite convincing evidence that the Democrat won in 2000, and serious questions about the voting and recount processes in the critical state of Ohio in 2004, George W. Bush would waltz into the White House.
Maybe someday, if the Democrats really want to win the presidency, they will nominate someone like Christine Gregoire.
If you haven't been following John Kerry closely, get ready to hear of surprising developments. The vote-defrauded, potential president-in-waiting has just indicated through his lawyer that the validity of George Bush's reelection is no longer a given.
On 23 December, 2004 Kerry's lawyer confirmed to MSNBC's 'Countdown' that John Kerry will be seeking (likely on Monday 27 Dec.) to expedite court proceedings and secure evidence in an ongoing recount suit by the Green and Libertarian parties. That might sound like just another "count every vote" exercise by the Kerry campaign, were it not for two important details.
Kerry's court filing will conjoin him to existing allegations that Triad GSI, a Republican-linked supplier of voting machines to around half of Ohio counties --"orchestrated" a covert campaign to thwart a legitimate recount in Ohio. If the allegation proves well founded, it could invalidate the Ohio recount and eventually even hand the presidency to John Kerry.
The role of the media in the siege of Falluja has been nearly as extraordinary as the battle itself. The siege began on November 8, but by Nov. 15 the military had declared "victory" and the story disappeared from all the major media.
[...]
The fact is, the siege is ongoing and the final results are far from certain.
[...]
The curtain has been drawn on Falluja; allowing the military to pulverize the city beyond the scrutiny of the world community. The only news to emerge is from the eyewitness accounts of independent journalists. Everyone else has complied with the "total news blackout".
[...]
The siege of Falluja continues to be a huge story, despite the fact that the establishment media is nowhere to be found.
[...]
The extent of America's war crimes in Falluja is gradually becoming apparent. On December 24, approximately 900 former residents of the battered city were allowed to return to their homes only to find that (according to BBC) "about 60% to 70% of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit. Of the 30% still left standing, there's not single one that has not been exposed to some damage."
[...]
Over 250,000 people have been expelled from their homes and the city has been laid to waste. The US military targeted the three main water treatment plants, the electrical grid and the sewage treatment plant; leaving Fallujans without any of the basic services they'll need to return to a normal life.
[...]
Most of the city's mosques have been either destroyed or seriously damaged and entire areas of the city where the fighting was most fierce have been effectively razed to the ground.
So far, the army has only removed the dead bodies from the streets; leaving countless decomposed corpses inside the ruined buildings. A large percentage of these have been devoured by packs of scavenging dogs. The stench of death is reported to be overpowering.
[...]
Two weeks into the campaign, the military claimed victory saying they had "broken the back of the insurgency", but the truth has proved to be far different. In reality, the assault has only dispelled the illusion of US invincibility. Pockets of resistance still maintain a tenacious grip on parts of the city and the guerilla-style tactics have negated the overwhelming force of their adversary. If anything, the siege has only emboldened the resistance and broadened its sphere of influence.
[...]
The obliteration of Falluja makes the prospects of "losing the war" all the more likely. The pointless murder of 6000 civilians (Red Cross estimate) will only galvanize the resistance and hasten the inevitable defeat of America's misguided crusade.
[...]
If the military succeeds, life in Falluja will become very similar to life in the West Bank; a demeaning daily struggle with the brutish enforcers of occupation.
Insurgents continued their relentless assault on Iraq's fledgling security forces today, killing at least 23 police and national guard officers in multiple attacks across the Sunni-dominated zone to the north of Baghdad.
[...]
"Today was an extraordinary day," Lieutenant Atkins said in a telephone interview from his base in Tikrit.
[...]
American officials describe the mustering of effective Iraqi security forces as the linchpin of their strategy for the country, but the campaign of murder has left many officers so frightened that they wear face masks while working.
In a looming challenge, Iraqi officers are supposed to provide the main security for national elections on Jan. 30.
In my earlier post, I said Mr. Egeland would probably be made to regret his statement about a stingy U.S. contribution to the Asian earthquake/tsunami victims.
The U.S. Agency for International Development is adding $20 million to an initial $15 million contribution for Asian earthquake relief as Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled at a United Nations official's suggestion the United States has been "stingy."
Jacklyn Hoerger's job was to treat children with HIV at a New York children's home.
But nobody had told her that the drugs she was administering were experimental and highly toxic.
"We were told that if they were vomiting, if they lost their ability to walk, if they were having diarrhoea, if they were dying, then all of this was because of their HIV infection."
In fact it was the drugs that were making the children ill and the children had been enrolled on the secret trials without their relatives' or guardians' knowledge.
As Jacklyn would later discover, those who tried to take the children off the drugs risked losing them into care.
[...]
When I first heard the story of the "guinea pig kids", I instinctively refused to believe that it could be happening in any civilised country, particularly the United States, where the propensity for legal action normally ensures a high level of protection.
But that, as I was to discover, was central to the choice of location and subjects, because to be free in New York City, you need money.
This report documents the ongoing reaction of law enforcement to the legal exercise of free speech in the United States. It finds that legitimate concerns regarding public safety have been abused by the United States Department of Justice. The abuses have been so aggressive that rights of free assembly and free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution are simply no longer available to the citizens of this country.
This report surveys federal and local police actions in the United States during the period 1999-2004 involving lawful public expressions of dissent and free speech. All of the police activities cited are from firsthand experience of the National Lawyers Guild, the oldest human rights organization in the country. Hundreds of Guild attorneys, legal workers, and law students around the country have served both as legal observers at First Amendment protected public assemblies and as counsel to individuals who sought to air their views at such public assemblies.
The conclusion of this survey is that rather than protecting First Amendment rights of United States citizens and prosecuting police abuses as it ought to do, the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft has systematially encouraged these abuses and acted as a cheerleader for government officials using excessive force and abusing their authority against citizens engaged in free speech.
By making enemies of those who speak out, law-enforcement agencies engage in unneccessary, costly, and dangerous practices against law-abiding individuals, wasting limited resources and frightening many from voicing their opinions. And by turning a blind eye to rampant and systemic police unlawfulness, the Attorney General is abrogating his duty to uphold the laws of the United States. [Emphasis added]
Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent: A National Lawyers Guild Report on Government Violations of First Amendment Rights in the United States
Three California companies that paid no state income tax last year have been awarded $5 million in tax refunds, angering critics who say the cash-strapped state cannot afford them.
The California Board of Equalization, which oversees state tax policy, voted this month to give the refunds to Conexant Systems of Newport Beach, Grundfos U.S. Holdings of Fresno and Lightwave Electronics of Mountain View.
The board may also consider refund requests from 22 other companies totaling $77 million as early as next month.
State tax lawyers said the credits were intended to attract and keep manufacturers in California; lawmakers let the credits expire last year after they failed to create expected job growth.
But the board ruled the three companies applied for the refunds before the program ended.
The attack heightened suspicions that the bomber could have infiltrated or spent months among them, gaining first-hand knowledge of the base and preparing for the attack.
[...]
Now, the Iraqi soldiers are searched more thoroughly and more often, and there is "stricter accountability" with head counts. Their vehicles are thoroughly inspected when they return from leave or a patrol.
[...]
Security has been tightened around the Iraqi compound as it was around the American living quarters next to it, where fresh spools of razor wire were uncoiled, making it more difficult to walk around at will, and sometimes confusing soldiers driving Humvees who now have to learn the mazelike layout of new routes.
"They now suspect everyone here," said Lt. Col. Ahmed Ibrahim Ali, the commander of the Iraqi Army battalion. "We feel like we live in a prison."
Separately, Captain Uthlaut said, "We are a little more careful with searching these guys. "The fine line is treating them as partners, while not treating them like prisoners."
[...]
On a joint patrol here on Sunday, the Iraqis set off in uncovered vehicles that resembled small Jeeps, with only a few metal plates fastened to the back with plastic-coated wires or canvas straps but no armor. The vehicles would afford no protection from a roadside bomb, one of the biggest dangers on Mosul's streets.
Their American counterparts on the patrol, on the other hand, were in hardened Stryker vehicles. When one of the Strykers was hit by a bomb recently, an officer said, it still managed to recover to move 50 miles an hour on the rest of its seven wheels.
The spectacle of the United States single-handedly destroying the mid-December meeting in Buenos Aires on global warming offered further proof, if such were needed, that the world needs to confront this rogue state. Representatives of 200 nations had gathered to develop a plan for further reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.
According to press reports, the Bush Administration's recalcitrance shocked and dismayed even longtime friends and allies like Australia. U.S. obstructionism ranged from the sublime (insisting that the Conference change the phrase "climate change" to the more ambiguous "climate variability") to the ridiculous (strongly backing Saudi Arabia's request for compensation for lost revenue resulting from reduced global oil consumption).
Our nation's antics so infuriated many participants that an exasperated Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists told Reuters, "Frankly, it might be a lot easier to do it without the U.S. and the Saudis in the room."
The Missouri Supreme Court overturned Brandon Hutchinson's death sentence in a case where co-defendant Freddy Lopez received 10 years based on ineffective assistance of counsel in the penalty phase. However, the court also noted that during the trial, Lopez's sister won the lottery, and used $230,000 of her winnings to settle a wrongful death action with the victims' family, in exchange for their agreement to recommend that the prosecutors accept a 10 year sentence. According to the court, which found no error on this ground, "Under the settlement agreement entered into evidence at the hearing, Lopez would pay the victims' family $230,000.00 if: the family recommended to the prosecutor that Lopez receive no more than ten years in prison and the judge actually sentenced Lopez to a prison term not to exceed ten years." The prosecution and court went along; Lopez got 10 years, Hutchinson was sentenced to death.
Of course the legal system and the courts are corrupt. But this is just plain wierd. What are these people thinking? I guess the victims' (two brothers) family were thinking a quarter of a million dollars was a better deal for them than keeping a killer off the streets.
Hey, if Lopez has a beef with another member of that family, maybe he can capitalize on this deal again in ten years. By then, maybe his sister's lottery winnings will have been wisely invested, and they'll have another tidy sum to pay off another killing.
Hutchinson had better just count his blessings and keep his nose clean.
(Oh, by the way, Lopez testifed against Hutchinson. Perhaps his sister should think about coming up with some protection dinero when Hutchinson is back on the streets.)
It appears that Bin Laden is so weak now that he is forced to play to his own base
[...]
If Bin Laden had been politically clever, he would have phrased his message in the terms of Iraqi nationalism. By siding with the narrowest sliver of Sunni extremists, he denied himself any real impact. By adopting Zarqawi, who has killed many more Iraqis (especially Shiites) than he has Americans, he simply tarnishes his own image inside Iraq.
[...]
It is a desperate, crackpot hope. The narrow, sectarian and politically unskilfull character of this speech is the most hopeful sign I have seen in some time that al-Qaeda is a doomed political force
Okay, call me jaded and an America-hater if you must, but I haven't thought that al-Qaeda was ever truly a political force of any consequence. Where's the evidence? An attack on the WTC? It wasn't done all on their own. And even if you believe it was, where was the follow-up political gain? The increase in their power was, according to all evidence, created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And even that has turned into what looks most like an Iraqi - not al-Qaeda - resistance. Bin Laden began as a puppet creation of the U.S., and has remained so. Al-Qaeda has never been more than a disperse terrorist organization. Even those groups who have come together under the umbrella of al-Qaeda appear to me to simply be capitalizing on the name recognition.
I am certainly not qualified to argue with Juan Cole. I'm just saying this is the way it looks to me.
There is one sentence in Cole's post that does nothing to dispell that niggling question of whether bin Laden was ever off the CIA payroll.
Bin Laden's intervention in Iraq was hamfisted and clumsy, and will benefit the United States and the Shiites enormously.
Bingo.
P.S. If playing to your own base is a sign of weakness, then what does that make the Bush administration?
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday the United States "will do more" to help the victims of a massive earthquake and tsunamis in Asia and said he regretted a statement by a United Nations official suggesting that it hadn't helped enough.
"The United States has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world," Powell said when asked about a suggestion by Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief, that America was being "stingy."
Initially, the U.S. government pledged $15 million and dispatched disaster specialists to help the Asian nations devastated by the catastrophe that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
On Monday, President Bush sent letters of condolence and Powell exclaimed, "This is indeed an international tragedy, and we are going to do everything we can."
[...]
"We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries," Egeland said. "And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really ... Even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become."
Asked about this on ABC, Powell said, "We will do more. I wish that comment hadn't been made."
And Mr. Egeland will no doubt be made to wish he hadn't said it.
From his ranch in Crawford, Texas on Monday, Bush had sent letters of condolence to the leaders of the seven countries wracked by the disaster.
[...]
Powell made condolence telephone calls and offered American assistance to the foreign ministers of Thailand, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.
American ambassadors released $100,000 each to India, Indonesia, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and Powell said $4 million would be given to the Red Cross.
Bush deigns to write letters. The flunky Powell has to make the phone calls. And what's that $100,000? Did they dip into their pockets when the collection plate was passed? This is chump change. And insulting.
A spokesman at U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii said Monday that in addition to three Navy P-3 Orion surveillance planes sent to Thailand, the military also is loading five or six Air Force C-130 cargo planes with tents, clothing, food and other humanitarian goods for delivery to Thailand.
Pacific Command also is assembling small assessment teams that will be dispatched to three countries in the region to assess how U.S. military resources can best be applied in those countries.
[...]
And James D. Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, said bank teams were discussing potential assistance with the governments of the countries that suffered losses.
On Sunday, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Rodrigo de Rato, said the Fund "stands ready to do its part to assist these nations with appropriate support in their time of need."
Ah, those lucky countries. Probably why the Bush administration isn't willing to offer up more money directly and quickly. They'll profit handsomely from this disaster if the World Bank and IMF make loans.
Memo dated November 22, 1963, from FBI Special Agent Graham Kitchel to the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Houston.
At 1:45 p.m. Mr. George H. W. Bush, President of the Zapata Off-shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.
BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.
BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in the area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLENE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.
BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.
Of course, Bush's Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company had been a CIA front since 1960 and had supplied the Bay of Pigs invasion (code named "Zapata") force with two of his company's ex-U.S. Navy landing craft, renamed the "Barbara J" and the "Houston." In any case, Bush's phone call to the FBI was a false lead, and Parrott was cleared. However, Bush's phone call creates more questions about him than about Parrott. First of all, there is no evidence that Bush was in Tyler when Kennedy was shot. There was no Caller ID in those days that would have allowed Special Agent Kitchel to know, for a fact, that Bush was calling from Tyler. Bush's wife, Barbara, claimed he was in Tyler but Bush once said he may have been in Port-au-Prince, Haiti that day. But Bush himself admits to the FBI that he was booked into the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas on November 22.
This is just weird. Everybody in the world who was over the age of 10 knows where they were the day Kennedy was shot. Poppy Bush, whose CIA operative status surely meant he hone a sharp mind for details, can't recall?
When he was CIA Director in 1976, Bush wanted to see all the agency's files on the Kennedy assassination. His memos specifically requested information on Oswald, Jack Ruby, and others linked to the assassination. In her book The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, author Kitty Kelley writes that "Years later, when [Bush] became president of the United States, he would deny making any attempt to review the agency files on the JFK assassination… when he made this claim, he did not realize that the agency would release 18 documents [under the Freedom of Information Act] that showed he had indeed, as CIA director, requested information-not once, but several times-on a wide range of questions surrounding the Kennedy assassination."
Why lie about it? He was CIA director and the Kennedy assassination was always a matter of interest. That should be legitimate reason for wanting to look at the information.
The Bushes seem to have connections wherever presidential assassinations are found, and memory problems to go along with them.
An audio tape purportedly from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Iraqis Monday to boycott January's elections, saying anyone who takes part would be an "infidel."
The speaker on the tape, aired by Arabic television channel Al Jazeera Monday, also praised bloody attacks by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on U.S. troops and government officials in Iraq, hailing the Jordanian militant as a true "soldier of God" and al Qaeda's leader in Iraq.
You know, he works very well with Bush, doesn't he? Providing tapes at opportune moments - like just prior to the November elections. And now just prior to the January elections in Iraq. And what a bonus - adding weight to BushCo's claim of a Jordanian mastermind.
Katz sent it to the Seattle Times who requested permission and received it from Silicio to publish the picture.
Since then, Silicio has also lost her husband (who was fired, as well). And she is still unemployed.
Another person ground under the wheels of the mighty machinery.
Photo sales earned Silicio nearly $20,000, which was shared with Katz.
[...]
Silicio also reproduced the photo on posters and postcards, selling some of the reprints and donating profits to the Fallen Heroes Last Wish Foundation, which offers support to the minor children of soldiers killed in combat. A donation from reprint sales also was made to charity by Zuma Press, said McKiernan.
[...]
In June, the debate reached the U.S. Senate, which voted 55-39 to reject legislation that would have restored access to the Dover homecomings. Since April, the media have published no more images of coffins returning home from Iraq.
PARIS: A French judge has widened a probe into the financial network surrounding the family of Osama bin Laden after questioning his half-brother and learning of a E241 million ($425.7million) transfer to Pakistan.
[...]
Although he denied having had any contact with his half-brother for the past 20 years, the paper said, documents held by Swiss banking authorities suggest that Yeslam and Osama bin Laden held a joint account in Switzerland between 1990 and 1997, according to Jean-Charles Brisard – a private investigator hired by families of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
Yeslam told French investigators on September 27 this year that he had omitted to mention the existence of that account, while still insisting he had not mixed with his half-brother, Le Monde said.
I always think that if anyone is anywhere close to become Hitlerian, it's the Bushites. True to form, they are pre-empting claims that might be leveled at themselves, and are pointing fingers at Putin. Justin Raimondocomments:
Putin has won the overwhelming support of the Russian people, and his party – "Unity" – dominates the Russian parliament, because he ran on a platform of smashing the "oligarchs" and completing the transition to Western-style democracy (albeit with Russian characteristics). The "privatization" of Russian state assets that took place as the old Soviet system collapsed is seen by many Russians as the Great Rip-Off: politically-connected bureaucrats suddenly transformed themselves into "entrepreneurs" and bought up the economic infrastructure for a mere pittance. Vast fortunes were acquired this way, and then secreted out of the country. Former Communists became the new red billionaires, whose "market" Leninism formed the foundations of the new state capitalism. It was, however, a system founded on corruption, and its consequences are widely resented. Putin rode this wave of resentment, and it propelled him into power, but, unlike other reformers, he actually began to keep at least some of his promises: the oligarchs were summarily targeted, in some cases jailed for theft and fraud, and in other cases forced into exile or marginalized.
[...]
Putin's drive to smash the power of the oligarchs represents Russia's final reckoning with the old Soviet ruling class. It is a push to reclaim stolen wealth and finally break the power of parasites who have been feasting on the Russian body politic since 1917.
Raimondo adds his own cautionary note:
Huge state enterprises are inherently inefficient, as well as corrupt, and while the income generated may be enough to cover up the tremendous waste of resources, it may not be enough to stave off rising social and political discontent for very long. Stability is what Putin has to offer, but if that should begin to break down, or even show signs of stress, his presently unassailable position could be significantly weakened. In re-nationalizing Yukos, Putin is sowing the economic seeds of his own destruction.
Anybody got the answer? I think we're just going round and round. And even carousel rides get boring.
In all of Iraq, Jumana Hanna was the bravest witness to the horror of Saddam's regime, telling the Americans of torture, rape, and mass murder. In Washington, Hanna became a potent symbol of Iraqi liberation, and the Bush administration brought Hanna and her children to the United States for their protection.
[...]
Hanna became a symbol of survival, of the indomitability of the human spirit in one of the most repressive states in modern history. "I've been in seventy countries and taken testimony about many atrocities—including right after My Lai," said Donald Campbell, a New Jersey superior court judge who served as the coalition's top judicial advisor. "And I have to tell you that I found her story to be the most compelling and tragic I've ever heard."
Her case was given top priority by Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who was in Iraq as senior policy advisor at the interior ministry; he assigned two military investigators to look into her claims. Their investigation lasted four months. Having heard her description of the prison concealed behind the Baghdad Police Academy, with its dead tree stumps still trussed with barbed wire for yoking and raping women prisoners, Kerik went to see for himself. "To be physically there, to look at the barbed wire that was hooked into the trees, to think about the stories she told and then actually see the devices they used . . ." He paused. "It was sickening."
[...]
The two young men were ill-prepared for the job in many ways. "I was overwhelmed," says Dryden. "I was so misinformed about what the crimes were. I was told it was a rape case, but I never imagined it would be rape, sodomy, physical and sexual torture. I never imagined so many suspects and so many victims. When I met her and heard her story directly, I couldn't believe she was in front of me. But she always smiled. I think the only thing she cared about was whether we were comfortable."
The logistics of the investigation were also a nightmare. "They all told me how high-profile and important this case was," Dryden said. "Paul Bremer, he wanted something done. Bernie Kerik, he tells me how important the job is: 'Get it done.' "
They were given few resources—not even a shovel or a backhoe with which to exhume the bodies that Hanna said lay buried in the prison yard. Frustrated, the two men started digging up the ground with a metal bowl. By the time they finally rounded up an excavation team, the water and sewer mains had burst, flooding the area and making further excavation difficult.
[...]
I'd been a reporter for twenty-five years and considered myself a professional skeptic, yet I'd been duped. I consoled myself with the thought that I was in good company. If I'd been duped, so had the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority, and one of the nation's most esteemed newspapers.
[...]
Perhaps if American officials had been more knowledgeable about Middle Eastern culture, they would have questioned her claim about her husband's heritage. His name provided a clue: Haytham Jamil Anwar is an Arabic name, not an Indian name. He was, according to numerous Iraqis who knew Hanna, an Iraqi Arab—a simple fact that undermines the very premise of her story. But the American investigators never talked to any Iraqi citizens about Hanna. Dryden and Mejia were so isolated in the Green Zone that they couldn't do basic detective work. They didn't even have a car.
"I don't think the U. S. did much to verify her story," Judge Campbell told me in September, when I called him to discuss what I was learning. "Once the Washington Post article came out, we treated it as gospel. We were skeptical; as lawyers, we are always skeptical. But once the investigators looked me in the eye and said they believed her story, I accepted it. Nevertheless, they were young men, not seasoned investigators."
[...]
Iraq, the context for her amazing story, was an astonishment of human cruelty. That is why her story was so terribly believable. She was telling a larger truth. And the American government, out of sincere altruism or rank political opportunism, responded to this truth. Even if it wasn't her truth. Even if it was, in fact, a mirage. Even if she was, after all, a liar.
[...]
Read the whole Esquire article. It's amazing for the number of claims this woman made which could have easily been confirmed or disproven, but weren't even checked out. It was a great PR story for ousting the devil Hussein.
Much gratitude to the Frieden brothers, one in the States and one in Thailand, for their continued encouragement for my blogging. And for their great gift recently of a movie pass to the Ragtag Cinema Cafe which shows many excellent documentaries and independent films.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara's journal of a trip he made from Buenos Aires to Caracas in his pre-revolutionary days is the subject of Motorcycle Diaries, a lovely film. I was unaware of a number of things about Che, but not that the CIA collaborated in his murder. If you get a chance to see this film, take it. (Check out that link to the website - very nice.)
And speaking of Caracas, when I was there last spring, I was surprised to see that Che's likeness is painted on buildings and walls all over the barrios. I tried to find a shirt with a picture of Venezuela's revolutionary president Hugo Chávez, but everywhere I went, the only picture to be found was that of Che Guevara.
Daily, in every American Airport, hundreds of people from the four corners of the world are falling into the claws of these arrogant, racist, brutes, barbarian Nazis, and I think every single citizen of the globe shall contribute in whichever way they can to end this grotesc stain from the face of the free world.
[...]
Having visited the US so many times, and knowing with reasonable depth the history of this Country, I must say that the attitudes and methods of the INS Officers do not reflect the way of being and thinking of the majority of the American People, and surely do not reflect the values and ideals I referred to above.
However, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of tourists that are going daily through this sad experience in American Airports do not have this perspective, and they are going back to their countries carrying in their hearts the seeds of hatred, violence and intolerance that end up germinating in tragedies such as Sep 11.
To Mr G. Bush one suggestion: in the attempt to erradicate the World of terrorism and it's Evil Axis, start at home - in the American Immigration and Naturalization Service - INS.
[...]
Sunday Feb 24 18:00 hrs - Due to my unceasing protests, they finally allow me to make a phone call. I contact a Lawyer in LA, in the hope he'd get me out of that hell, but the information I get from him is even more surprising, and disheartening:
- Ricardo, the INS grounds at the Airport are not legally considered American soil, so I cannot invoke any civil right to take you out of there.... he tells me. How about that ???
In other words: I realize I'm in a no-man's land, a lawless place, arrested by arbitrary Nazis in the guise of INS Officers, that, due to this legal technicality, have the power to do whatever they please with you - and what is worse - with your family. I start to dream of the moment of catching a plane back home to Brazil.....however, before that, I'd still go through the worst night of my life.....
When I returned from my trip to Caracas last April, arriving at the Miami airport, an arrogant jerk checking papers questioned me like I was a suspect of some crime. Why did I go to Venezuela? What was I planning to do now that I was back in the states? Luckily for me, I am caucasian and have a slight southern twang.
Stratfor is the creation of George Friedman, a sometime political science professor and consultant to the intelligence community, and the author of America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between America and Its Enemies (Doubleday, $24.95, 353 pages). As is true of many Americans, my feelings about the Iraq war — Was it necessary? Is it being waged properly? — have vacillated the past month.
Mr. Friedman does much to put my mind to rest. In his view, forget the debate over whether weapons of mass destruction ever existed, and whether they were a proper pretext for war. In his view, al Qaeda's goal was to create an uprising in the Islamic world and overthrow secular governments, Saudi Arabia in particular. The invasion ordered by President George W. Bush was intended to isolate and frighten the Saudi government into cracking down on the flow of money to al Qaeda. He succeeded. Further, the invasion created a climate in which it has proven too dangerous for Islamic governments to work with al Qaeda or remain neutral.
Which is not to say that Mr. Friedman gives Bush & Company high praise. He faults the administration for failing to put the military and intelligence communities on a wartime immediately after September 11, and charges that "lying about why we were invading Iraq was a massive error." Nonetheless, he feels that Iraq is "manageable, even though violence will continue for years. Like Northern Ireland, it will be a generation before it calms down." And he repeats a forecast first made by Stratfor in December 2003: that the American military eventually must invade northwestern Pakistan to root out the al Qaeda command structure.
Remember A.Q. Khan? The guy dealing in nuclear trade secrets that Pakistan pardoned, with our blessing? (Must keep Pakistan happy - they are poised to provide us with "high value targets" as the need arises. And, they actually have nukes, unlike the countries we tend to invade.)
The New York Times has a report on the frightening depth and pervasiveness of the nuclear black market led by the father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan: As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected.
If the opening paragraphs don’t send a little chill down your spine, you may need to cut down on your dosage.
A. Q. Khan may have been unknown to most Americans when he was revealed about a year ago as the mastermind of the largest illicit nuclear proliferation network in history. But for three decades Dr. Khan, a metallurgist, has been well known to British and American intelligence officials. Even so, the United States and its allies passed up opportunities to stop him - and apparently failed to detect that he had begun selling nuclear technology to Iran in the late 1980's. It was the opening transaction for an enterprise that eventually spread to North Korea, Libya and beyond.
[...]
President Bush boasts that the Khan network has been dismantled. But there is evidence that parts of it live on, as do investigations in Washington and Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based.
Cooperation between the United Nations atomic agency and the United States has trickled to a near halt, particularly as the Bush administration tries to unseat the I.A.E.A. director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, who did not support the White House's prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq.
The chill from the White House has blown through Vienna. "I can't remember the last time we saw anything of a classified nature from Washington," one of the agency's senior officials said. Experts see it as a missed opportunity because the two sides have complementary strengths - the United States with spy satellites and covert capabilities to intercept or disable nuclear equipment, and the I.A.E.A. with inspectors who have access to some of the world's most secretive atomic facilities that the United States cannot legally enter.
In the 11 months since Dr. Khan's partial confession, Pakistan has denied American investigators access to him. They have passed questions through the Pakistanis, but report that there is virtually no new information on critical questions like who else obtained the bomb design. Nor have American investigators been given access to Dr. Khan's chief operating officer, Buhari Sayed Abu Tahir, who is in a Malaysian jail.
Iran's air force has been ordered to shoot down any unknown or suspicious flying objects in Iran's airspace, an air force spokesman said yesterday, amid state-media reports of sightings of flying objects near Iran's nuclear installations.
[...]
"Flights of unknown objects in [Iran's] airspace have increased in recent weeks... [they] have been seen over Bushehr and Isfahan provinces," the Resalat daily reported yesterday. There are nuclear facilities in both provinces.
The timing of the reported increase in sightings, coming as the United States is urging allies to confront Iran over its nuclear program, has strengthened Iranian public perceptions that the objects are surveillance or hostile aircrafts monitoring Iran.
[...]
The daily Resalat had reported that "shining objects" in the sky were seen near Natanz, where Iran's uranium enrichment plant is located, noting that one had exploded, causing "panic in the region."
A suicide bomber detonated his car Monday at the gate to the home of the leader of Iraq's biggest political party, killing and wounding several of the guards but leaving the cleric unharmed, his spokesman said.
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq - the country's most powerful Shiite political group - was in his residence in Baghdad's Jadiriyah district when the attack occurred, said Haitham al-Husseini. He was unharmed.
The former head of SCIRI, Abdul's older brother, was assassinated last year.
I find this a little curious:
The residence, where Hakim has his home and offices, was previously the house of Tariq Aziz, a jailed former senior aide to Saddam Hussein who has been in prison since April last year.
Did Aziz put his home up for sale and Hakim bought it? Somehow I doubt that. Did somebody divvy up Sunni property as war proceeds? Are the U.S. military forces still camped out in Hussein's palace? Could any of these details be problematic?
Maybe I should be asking how Aziz came by the property in the first place. Perhaps he didn't acquire it legitimately. I don't know. It would be interesting information to have, I think.
I recently posted my dismay at the U.S. deciding it needs to set aside some seats for Sunnis in the Iraqi elections, because the Sunnis are going to boycott those elections. Juan Coleaddresses the issue, supporting it as the only way out now.
I disagree. The way out now is out now. We are refusing to postpone the elections until Iraq is calm, because we don't want a calm Iraq electing its own officials. We are calling all the shots through direct command and our puppet Allawi, all the while giving lip service to the idea of Iraqi self-governance.
Of course, Juan Cole is an expert on the Middle East, and I am not.
Update 9:30 am:
Iraq's election body has rejected a suggestion in Washington it adjust the results of next month's vote to benefit the Sunni minority if low turnout in Sunni areas means Shi'ites have an exaggerated majority in the new assembly.
Speaking of "unacceptable" interference, Electoral Commission spokesman Farid Ayar said: "Who wins, wins. That is the way it is. That is the way it will be in the election."
U.S. diplomats in Baghdad, at pains to keep their role in the election discreet, declined comment.
Sorry I don't have a picture of the first people in line receiving their sheep. Or the little kid who toppled into the razor wire. Or the teenager who punched a soldier in the jaw.
Jesus' General has a link to an article that you'll just have to read to get the full value. It seems the College Republicans are duping people into donating. Really. I know it's hard to believe. I like the part about telling people to send a flag pin along with their donation so that the president can wear them to Republican Headquarters. I hope they send little bitty ones, or they're not all going to fit anywhere. No. Wait. I think his head is big enough.
Anyway, you must read the fantastic report. I have a hard time feeling sorry for people who wipe out their life savings to donate to anything like a political group - or anything for that matter. Even if it is little old ladies with dementia. I would never personally dupe them into doing so, however.
But what's really funny is that the RNC wants to be distanced from the College Republicans because of their dirty tricks! It's a lie. There is no honor among theives.
What do you expect from the College Republicans? They're Republicans. Let's not expect them to be something else.
The General's post is a good read, too. It's responding to another fantastic claim from a Republican college student. These young 'uns are getting an early start on the New Amerikan way. "Liberal" academic professors are under attack from the righteous right and the Republican party. They're an endangered species. There is no room for independent or progressive thinkers in the New Amerika.
Well, let's shake off that final illusion right now.
The Bush administration is considering reserving a few high-level posts in the next Iraqi government for Sunni Muslims, regardless of how well they fare in next month's elections, for fear that their exclusion could prolong the country's military and political turmoil.
[...]
"There's some flexibility in approaching this problem," a White House official told the New York Times. "There's a willingness to play with the end result - not changing the numbers, but maybe guaranteeing that a certain number of seats go to Sunni areas even if their candidates did not receive a certain percentage of the vote."
Ah, democratic elections. Don't you just love them?
So much for speculation about how the Bush Administration was going to keep control over the Iraqi government.
Talk of guaranteeing Sunni representation has not been raised officially but, according to several sources within the state department, it is being seriously discussed both in the US and in Iraq.
[...]
Some Sunnis have called on the US and the Iraqi interim government to postpone the election while security improves - a request that has repeatedly been rejected by the Bush administration.
Instead, US officials have been mixing threats and promises to force the Sunnis to the polling station and on to the ballot papers.
I just can hardly bear to look any more.
Update 8:00 pm:
And not to put too fine a point on it...but, we get the booty.
The United States is helping the interim Iraqi government continue to make major economic changes, including cuts to social subsidies, full access for U.S. companies to the nation's oil reserves and reconsideration of oil deals that the previous regime signed with France and Russia.
During a visit here this week, officials of the U.S.-backed administration detailed some of the economic moves planned for Iraq, many of them appearing to give U.S. corporations greater reach into the occupied nation's economy.
[...]
to date all contracts let for "reconstruction" by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have gone to U.S. firms, which have then subcontracted some work to foreign companies.
[...]
Washington has installed hundreds of U.S. economic advisors in all Iraqi government ministries, who have a decisive say on most economic decisions. It has also sponsored the bulk of the nation's economic changes, based on a neo-liberal model that emphasises privatisation of government entities and cuts to social spending.
One major move the country is inching towards under U.S. guardianship, which was discussed this week, is a rollback of Iraq's huge subsidies system, which may have kept millions of Iraqis from starvation under U.S. and UK-backed sanctions imposed by the United Nations after the 1991 Gulf War.
More than 12,300 people were killed and tens of thousands left homeless after a powerful undersea earthquake unleashed giant tsunami waves that crashed into the coasts of south and southeast Asia.
[...]
In Los Angeles, the head of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said U.S. officials who detected the undersea quake tried frantically to get a warning out about the tsunami.
[...]
"It took an hour and a half for the wave to get from the earthquake to Sri Lanka and an hour for it to get ... to the west coast of Thailand and Malaysia," he said. "You can walk inland for 15 minutes to get to a safe area."
"We tried to do what we could," he said. "We don't have contacts in our address book for anybody in that part of the world."
It's called "the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center", and it doesn't have contacts in that part of the world?
The Geneva-based International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it was seeking 7.5 million Swiss francs ($6.5 million) for emergency aid funding.
The United States said it would offer "all appropriate assistance," while the European Union pledged an initial three million euros ($4 million).
I guess we'll have to wait and see what "appropriate assistance" is. You might have thought it would be a warning in that hour during which the "Warning Center" knew about the quake.
Update 8:00 am Dec 27: The latest figure for death toll is 22,000+. Thanks for checking in, Chuck.
James Wolcottanalyzes the only Christmas movie that I ever liked....
The only Christmas movie I can now abide is White Christmas [...] starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and the insectile Vera-Ellen, whose scissory legs could decapitate a man should the situation demand.
After watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, (perhaps the only good modern Christmas movie, sent to me this past week in a generous surprise package by a YWA reader - and thank you, I'll be sending a personal note), I can tell you that, if you haven't watched White Christmas, "insectile" is a good descriptor, which I hadn't thought of before, and which aptly describes Jack Skellington's legs, too. So, if you've seen Nightmare but not White Christmas, think of Jack's legs, and you'll be very close to a picture of Vera's. I always thought of her as resembling a prancing pony. The movie is worth watching just to see her dance. There really is something non-human, but utterly fascinatingly attractive about it. Like watching Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King, stroll up the hill silhouetted by the moon.
My favorite Christmas may always be the one I spent in San Francisco at the Cannery. Years ago when I lived on Fisherman's Wharf, I took a couple of nice bottles of wine and some plastic cups down to the Cannery where the wharf's homeless people gathered to celebrate Christmas eve. They gathered at some tables in the courtyard and shared whatever they had - cigarettes, mostly. Some beer. And one old woman had a coloring book and crayons. A couple of street artists were there. One, a musician, who played his guitar for the group, and one, a very good magician, who got drunk and gave away the secrets to his card tricks. Taking nothing away from the incredible skill required to seemingly pull cards out of thin air (and do it while drunk!), I was disappointed to learn how it's done, and I tried desperately to get him to keep the secret. Alas, the alcohol told him otherwise.
Anyway, it was a very peaceful, caring and sharing evening, the likes of which I have not seen elsewhere or when for a Christmas eve celebration. A great memory.
Okay, that's all out of the way, now on to the news. It hasn't gotten any better, of course. Hope you enjoyed your respite. Hope you had one.
I've been unable to log in to tblog today until just now, so here's a collection of post-Christmas items:
The government will no longer require that its managers prepare an environmental impact analysis with each forest's management plan, or use numerical counts to ensure there are "viable populations" of fish and wildlife. The changes will reduce the number of required scientific reports and ask federal officials to focus on a forest's overall health, rather than the fate of individual species, when evaluating how to protect local plants and animals.
I absolutely agree with looking at the bigger picture and evaluating the overall health of a forest. But, what I would like to know is how you can determine the overall health of an ecosystem without considering the environmental impact of your management practices or monitoring individual species population dynamics. Hm?
Oppose the Gonzales nomination
Democracy in Action makes it easy for you to voice opposition to the nomination of Alberto The-king-is-above-the-law -and-the-Geneva-Conventio ns-are-quaint-and-obsolet e Gonzales for U.S. Attorney General. Although no nomination by this president is going to be a good choice.
Step One: Assign musical notes to the ten single-digit integers. Step Two: Play the first 10,000 digits of pi. Step Three: Profit.
I listened to this for much longer than it probably deserved.
I don't know what it "deserves", but it captured my ear for a good long while. And, speaking of pi, did you ever watch the movie? If not...
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
The Mosul Mess
The deadly suicide attack on a US military base in Mosul this week was an "inside job" carried out by insurgents who are part of the Iraqi armed forces, Asia Times Online has been told.
Sources said a strong nexus between Iraqi forces and the resistance is what allowed them to carry out the most devastating attack on US troops since the beginning of the invasion. US forces have imposed a curfew in Mosul and have launched a military operation in the city, but, the sources say, this will have little effect on the problem, for the simple reason that the US-trained Iraqi military is heavily infected with people loyal to the resistance groups.
[...]
While various analysts ponder the insurgents' strategy in the lead up to next month's elections, and opine that their primary goal is to disrupt those elections, the resistance says it has a different agenda. In a message to Asia Times Online from the Netherlands, Nada al-Rubaiee, a member of the central committee of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, a group that is part of the Iraqi national resistance movement both inside and outside Iraq, said, "Everything in the resistance movement is clear ... There is agreement on one issue; that is, getting freedom from foreign occupying forces and their handymen."
No. No. I'm sure that's not it. They are evil people who don't want the Iraqis to be free.
Meanwhile, Nada claims that the number of casualties from the Mosul attack is far higher than what was admitted by the US, 22 people. "In the [dining tent] where the attack took place, there were at least 500 US soldiers. The number of casualties given by the occupation forces always excludes private contractors [non-official soldiers/unregistered soldiers-agents]. We expect the number [is] a lot higher than the announced one."
According to Nada, the attack was very organized - so much so that a video of the bombing was even prepared and will soon be released.
The Central Intelligence Agency has been unilaterally removing records from public collections in the National Archives, according to the minutes of a September 2004 meeting of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee that were approved for release this week.
The Advisory Committee oversees the production of the official State Department publication Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS).
• More than a half million troops serving overseas will have little holiday happiness, especially the 138,000 in Iraq.
My saddest Christmases came when I was ages 19, 20 and 21 serving in the Army in World War II. The 86th (Blackhawk) Infantry Division took me far from my South Dakota home, first to Texas and California for training, then to France, Germany and the Philippines.
[...]
Despite unhappy holidays, nearly all of us who served in WWII were proud, determined and properly armed and equipped to help defeat would-be world conquerors Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Hirohito in Japan.
At age 80, I'd gladly volunteer for such highly moral duty again. But if I were eligible for service in Iraq, I would do all I could to avoid it. I would have done the same during the Vietnam War, as many of the politically connected did.
"Support Our Troops" is a wonderful patriotic slogan. But the best way to support troops thrust by unwise commanders in chief into ill-advised adventures like Vietnam and Iraq is to bring them home. Sooner rather than later. That should be our New Year's resolution.
No, the goons are not being deported. We're keeping them in Washington high office for now. But Frogsdong has something to say about the privatization of Social Security:
My financial advisor, a nice fellow at Morgan Stanley, agrees with my analysis of SS privatization, by the way, but then it doesn't take a genius to see what will happen. The financial services sector makes an estimated $290 billion in commissions on all that new money, those who are ahead of the curve in the market make a fortune when all that new money starts chasing just so much equity, the smart players get in ahead of the SS money and out before the Big Adjustment (because all that new money chasing just so much stock will cause an over-valuation of the equities, which will adjust eventually). The end result will be many, many people losing their shirts and their retirement savings in the market. I will have my money in bonds, annuities, and other low-risk securities by then, but that won't help the massive increase in poverty, led by the oldest among us. Be prepared to see lots of 70+ year old people working in retail stores as perfume shpritzers.
What's really happening in Iraq?
If you want to know why public opinion in Western Europe has been so overwhelmingly against the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq, there’s one obvious answer: the difference in television news between theirs and ours.
[...]
An on-the-ground study of Iraqi casualties between April and September by Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder newspapers demonstrated that "Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents." But you’re not told this by U.S. TV’s "embedded" reporters, who’ve traded their reportorial independence for access to the boom-boom footage that drives what Time magazine has labeled the "militainment" proffered by American television. In fact, embedded reporters are enrolled in what the Pentagon calls "information operations" — a counterpart to military operations designed to exact the rosiest possible picture of the U.S. occupation from accredited reporters. Those who don’t toe the Pentagon line, and who report negatively on the occupation of Iraq and the indiscriminate effects of U.S. forces’ combat there, are simply blacklisted.
Iraqi Christian Alaa Alfonse spent his first Christmas abroad on Saturday, having quit the homeland where attacks on churches and increasing religious intimidation is making life tough for those of his faith.
"Many of the things that are happening in Iraq (news - web sites) now push us to leave, whether it be the bombing of churches or the threatening of Christians or pressuring our women to cover their heads," said Alfonse, 33, attending Christmas mass with his family at the Alliance Church in central Amman.
And, gee, I wonder what ever became of that grand idea that Christians here in the States had for embarking to Iraq, Bibles in hand. Perhaps I should ask the guy at work who signed up to go convert some Muslim. He's still here.
And....
Juan Cole has the Iraq war report summary for Christmas Day, plus a look at the happy Christmas we brought to Iraq's Christians:
The US Christian Right has been loudly complaining about the alleged exclusion of Christmas from the US public sphere. (There isn't really any evidence of it.)
But Iraq's approximately 700,000 Christians actually are having to hide their celebrations for fear of violence from radical Muslim extremists. Borzou Daragahi reports that most Iraqi Christians are declining to put out Christmas lights or symbols, and many are attending daytime masses or none at all for fear of car bombs. Many masses have even been cancelled by the churches. Christians had been relatively safe under the Baath regime.
I've been saving up some little bits and pieces for your Christmas Day enjoyment. For those of you visiting today, thanks for hanging around. Many blessings today and every day. May the fog of world clear up soon.
[T]he national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of the nation rests. It will offer protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press . . . in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past few years. -- Adolf Hitler
It's the Devil's Christmas, this year, as the wolves of war bay at the moon, and Lucifer's legions move on every front. Iraq, Iran, Russia, and the Caucasus – they're everywhere, looking for an opening. Christmas, the season of hope, is this year transmuted to the season of fear and ominous foreboding. Even as we celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace, the pagan acolytes of the war god plot in the shadows.
Why are Bill Kristol and Andrew Sullivan – a marriage made in hell if ever there was one – echoing Mad Dog McCain's barking for "more boots on the ground" if not to escalate and widen the fight? The dogs of war are baying up a storm as Christmas steals in with the night. So light a fire against the encroaching darkness, and cuddle up with whomever, while wolves howl in a distance that seems ominously closer. As we drift off to sleep, visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads, let's forget for a moment that the War Party never sleeps.
When Jesus was murdered by Rome as a political criminal -- crucifixion was the way such rebels were executed -- the story's beginning was fulfilled in its end. But for contingent historical reasons (the savage Roman war against the Jews in the late first century, the gradual domination of the Jesus movement by Gentiles, the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century) the Christian memory deemphasized the anti-Roman character of the Jesus story. Eventually, Roman imperialism would be sanctified by the church, with Jews replacing Romans as the main antagonists of Jesus, as if he were not Jewish himself. (Thus, Herod is remembered more for being part-Jewish than for being a Roman puppet.)
In modern times, religion and politics began to be understood as occupying separate spheres, and the nativity story became spiritualized and sentimentalized, losing its political edge altogether. "Peace" replaced resistance as the main motif. The baby Jesus was universalized, removed from his decidedly Jewish context, and the narrative's explicit critiques of imperial dominance and of wealth were blunted.
This is how it came to be that Christmas in America has turned the nativity of Jesus on its head. No surprise there, for if the story were told today with Roman imperialism at its center, questions might arise about America's new self-understanding as an imperial power. A story of Jesus born into a land oppressed by a hated military occupation might prompt an examination of the American occupation of Iraq. A story of Jesus come decidedly to the poor might cast a pall over the festival of consumption. A story of the Jewishness of Jesus might undercut the Christian theology of replacement.
For centuries Christians around the world have accepted the Nativity story at face value - that Jesus was born in a stable in the little town of Bethlehem.
But a growing number of Bible scholars and archaeologists are rocking the foundations of Christian faith by suggesting they have identified a different birthplace for Jesus.
They claim to have amassed a considerable body of evidence for their theory but say Church leaders are in no mood to listen.
Ed: No, and for good reason – the account has St. Matthew making a switcheroo for political purposes. Political!?! Jesus? Christ! What are you people suggesting?! Read the article.
Why, oh why, does Bush hate Christmas? There, right at the beginning of Bush's press conference, he used such hateful language I could hardly believe what I was hearing:
Good morning and happy holidays to you all.
Happy holidays? Why does Bush want to banish Christmas? I can't wait to tune in to O'Reilly and listen as he has the courage to stand up against those who wish to banish Christmas. I look forward to the press releases from James Dobson and the Christian Defense Coalition on Bush's attack on Christianity. And next weekend I'll get on my feet and cheer as Pat Robertson hits the Sunday talkies coming to the defense of Christmas everywhere.
Bill O'Reilly (who ought to be sodomized with a candy cane) is on to something when he belches forth, "This Christmas battle really stunned the secular forces," but it's not for the reasons he's thinking. It's not because we "secular forces" are taken aback at the ferocity of the defense of Christmas. If you tell a chimp not to throw its feces at you, the chimp is still gonna toss that shit. It's what chimps do. No, the "you gotta be fuckin' kidding me" response from the Left has more to do with the fact that, once again, the right has taken something insignificant, blown it up to something huge, and used it as a distraction from the shit that really matters. Social security "privatization"? Too complicated. Muslims and Jews who don't like Christmas? That's a Crusade we can have an Inquisition about. That speaks to the deep seated xenophobia of so many people, so flamed into rage by the right (like O'Reilly, who now has appointed himself the spokesman for the actions of Jesus when he proclaims that, because of the "attacks" on his birthday, "Somewhere Jesus is weeping." The Rude Pundit gets the feeling that if Jesus is weeping, it's probably watching the cars getting loaded with boxes at the valet parking at a Nordstrom's somewhere).
Okay, this whole "Happy Holidays" jihad is confusing me. As far as I can remember, people have been saying "HH" for many, many years now. Every time I've heard it, regardless of who's speaking it, I've always interpreted it as an act of kindness that's meant to imply "I know we may have different beliefs, but I hope your celebration is a happy one." Of course, with New Years in the mix, it's more than a pleasant inter-faith greeting. "Happy Holidays" is a nice, sincere expression of the whole season.
For a few humbugs out there, however, "Happy Holidays" has been stripped of its goodness and turned into a hideous attack on Christmas. Did you think you were being kind and inclusionary in your seasons greeting? Well, you were wrong! Little did you know that you were actually saying "Up yours, baby Jesus".
And, just in case that doesn't get the message across, there's.....
The chicken nativity set (available at Our American Heritage - there are others, if you're not a chicken fan - the moose nativity is nice)...
* A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear And so this is Christmas For weak and for strong For rich and the poor ones The world is so wrong And so happy Christmas For black and for white For yellow and red ones Let's stop all the fight A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear And so this is Christmas And what have we done Another year over And a new one just begun Ans so this is Christmas I hope you have fun The near and the dear one The old and the young A very merry Christmas And a happy New Year Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear War is over If you want it War is over Now...
In a sordid slime harmonious, Greed was born in yonder ditch; With a longing in his bosom - for other's goods an itch; Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich; Our God is marching on.
Insurgents have been able to "operate at will" in Mosul [...] because the US forces and the Iraqi authorities have failed to tackle them, an intelligence assessment by senior US officials in northern Iraq concludes.
[...]
The intelligence assessment suggests there was a lack of rigour in the vetting procedures for posts in the Iraqi security forces.
It says: "The US military and Iraqi government should have been aware of the history of persons they appointed to positions."
The lack of effective action by the interim Iraqi government "left the door open for the terrorist groups to work freely in secure areas", it says, adding that better vetting is essential."Each appointment must be seriously reviewed."
Members of a second National Guard unit that prepared for duty in Iraq at the Army's Fort Bliss compound have come forward with allegations that they were not adequately trained. The soldiers said in interviews, e-mails and official documents that they were sent to war earlier this year with chronic illness, broken guns and trucks with blown transmissions.
The unit's M-60 machine guns reportedly were in such bad condition when the soldiers deployed in February that one sergeant -- in a section of a post-training summary sent to his commanders that was titled "gun maintenance" -- wrote: "Perhaps we should throw stones?"
[...]
In the summary document obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the sergeant reported that some soldiers had arrived in Iraq without ever having fired some of the weapons they would use in war. Military commanders at the Fort Bliss complex, which straddles the Texas-New Mexico line, had misread mobilization orders, costing the soldiers a month of training, the sergeant wrote.
"We have been called away from our homes and families for hostile operations. We are owed a chance to be trained properly and given the tools to obtain that objective," the sergeant wrote.
The U.S. government-funded organization known as "Freedom House" has recently delivered a Christmas present to Russian President Vladimir Putin: his country has been downgraded, from "partially free" to "not free." Israel, of course, is deemed completely "free," in spite of treating its Arab subjects worse than Sparta ever treated its helots. Putin is no Jeffersonian democrat, but neither has he rounded up and imprisoned an entire people and sought to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland. Freedom House standards are elastic, bending to the dictates of American foreign policy.
In Tony Blair's England, an internal passport in the form of a national ID card has been instituted, you can be arrested for making politically incorrect remarks about officially protected minority groups, and spy cameras are on every corner, yet the Brits get off scot "free." Bollocks.
Oh, and by the way, following my post on China's negotiations with Canada, Venezuela and Iraq, Justin has this little tidbit:
Israel has lately been selling sensitive military technology to China. (Technology, one might add, that was either purchased – with our tax dollars – or stolen from the U.S.) Although, for some reason, we haven't been hearing much about that in the English-language media.
According to another Falluja resident who returned to the town for the first time since 8 November, charred and half-eaten corpses littered the streets.
[...]
"I entered my neigbour's house and found him, after identifying him from an identity card. His body was lying on the ground, nothing left of him but some bones.
"The scene was very shocking and I could not stay as the smell in the houses and the street was intolerable," he said explaining why he left Falluja.
"Before entering the city, they [US forces] told us that the town is suitable for living but we were shocked when we found no water, no electricity and no simple services."
You just have to return to the city that you have, and not the one that you might wish to have in the future.
And three more marines were reported killed in Falluja today. Sorry -- U.S. reports read "in al-Anbar province." Because, Falluja is officially all hunky dory now.
After the arrest of the al-Anbar province (think Falluja, Mosul, Ramadi) police chief a couple months ago for allegedly being too cozy with the insurgents, the newly appointed chief has just quit after a little prodding from said insurgents.
Well, maybe we won't need one. Americans shouldn't have any objection to paying for foreign mercenaries to replace U.S. GIs.
In recent months companies like Halliburton have launched ad campaigns and recruiting drives in several Latin American countries, promising huge salaries for fighting age men and women to serve in Iraq. Among the countries being targeted are El Salvador, Colombia and Nicaragua.
That's a good choice, as, if I'm not mistaken, they're already being trained by the School of the Americas. Oh, excuse me, the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.”
It was with great fanfare that the United States and 188 other countries signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a manifesto to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and disease among the one billion people in the world who subsist on barely anything. The project set a deadline of 2015 to achieve its goals. Chief among them was the goal for developed countries, like America, Britain and France, to work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries.
Almost a third of the way into the program, the latest available figures show that the percentage of United States income going to poor countries remains near rock bottom: 0.14 percent. Britain is at 0.34 percent, and France at 0.41 percent. (Norway and Sweden, to no one's surprise, are already exceeding the goal, at 0.92 percent and 0.79 percent.)
What a surprise. Not to mention the recent refusal to honor a commitment to global food aid charities.
Jeffrey Sachs, the economist appointed by Kofi Annan to direct the Millennium Project, puts the gap between what America is capable of doing and what it actually does into stark relief.
The government spends $450 billion annually on the military, and $15 billion on development help for poor countries, a 30-to-1 ratio that, as Mr. Sachs puts it, shows how the nation has become "all war and no peace in our foreign policy." Next month, he will present his report on how America and the world can actually cut global poverty in half by 2015. He says that if the Millennium Project has any chance of success, America must lead the donors.
I wouldn't suggest holding your breath for that one.
"America failed its exam as a superpower," says Lech Walesa, the former Solidarity trade-union leader who became Poland's first post-Communist president. "They are a military and economic superpower but not morally or politically anymore. This is a tragedy for us." Mr. Walesa laments what he sees as America's squandered leadership because he thinks the EU isn't ready for prime time.... [C]an Europe offer itself and the wider world a vision to match, and perhaps one day even supplant, America's role as "leader of the free world"?
[...]
Poland, America's other keen ally on the Continent, smarts over Washington's refusal to grant Poles visa-free access to the U.S., a privilege enjoyed by France and 26 other countries.... A state-owned arms company filed a formal protest earlier this year after it lost a bid to equip the Iraqi army. Polish officials also feel they got short shrift in Washington when they tried to influence U.S. decision-making in Iraq.
"We shed our blood for them but they don't treat us well," says Mr. Walesa, who visited the U.S. this fall to meet officials and politicians. He had no trouble getting a visa himself but made little headway in securing easy entry for his compatriots. "America doesn't like Poles; it only likes Walesa," he says.
Regardless of the reality, BushCo will not negotiate with itself - Fallujans are being returned.
There was anger, frustration and resentment among Iraqis who returned to Falluja on Friday as many discovered their homes in rubble and their livelihoods ruined following a U.S. offensive.
"I saw the city and al-Andalus destroyed," said Ali Mahmood, 35, referring to the district of the city he returned to briefly on Thursday but now plans to leave after seeing the destruction.
[...]
While those who fled were at pains to say they had nothing to do with the rebels who made Falluja their stronghold, many of them have since become angry and militant as a result of the offensive.
"Would Allah want us to return to a city that animals can't live in?" said Yasser Satar as he saw his destroyed home.
"Even animals who have no human sense and feelings can not live here," he said, crying.
"What do they want from Falluja? This is the crime of the century. They want to destroy Islam and Muslims. But our anger and resistance will increase."
[...]
Aid workers said 200,000 people fled Falluja before the assault and have spent the past seven weeks living in nearby towns and villages or in tented refugee camps nearby.
[...]
The Iraqi interim government and the U.S. military this week announced that around 2,000 heads of household would be allowed to return to the Andalus district of Falluja, considered one of the more secure, from Thursday.
Some 900 people, mostly men, made the journey, going through intense security checks before being allowed to enter, including the fingerprinting and iris scanning of "suspicious military-age men" by the U.S. military to ensure insurgents do not filter back in.
[...]
But they will be without water and electricity as basic services and communications were knocked out in the assault.
Families of US troops killed in the offensive on the Iraqi city of Fallujah are to travel to Jordan [December 26] with 600,000 dollars worth of humanitarian aid for refugees of the attack.
The November assault on Fallujah left 71 US military dead, according to the families, and the Iraqi government said more than 2,000 Iraqis were killed.
"This delegation is a way for me to express my sympathy and support for the Iraqi people," said Rosa Suarez of Escondido in California.
"The Iraq war took away my son's life, and it has taken away the lives of so many innocent Iraqis. It is time to stop the killing and to help the children of Iraq," she added in a statement released by the families.
The Army general in charge of northern Iraq took "personal responsibility" yesterday for the Mosul mess hall bombing that he said probably was carried out by a terrorist wearing an Iraqi military uniform.
"I failed to identify some shortcoming that allowed this to occur," Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of 8,500 troops in U.S. Task Force Olympia, told CNN.
"It is an enemy success," Ham said, adding that he feared "copycat" attacks by terror groups who "will use this as a recruiting tool."
Ham indirectly was criticized for permitting his troops to use the mess hall without wearing their body armor.
Army Col. Rhonda Cornum, chief doctor and commander of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, said the injuries she was treating from soldiers wounded in Mosul were "very different from what we've been seeing."
"Usually the trunk of the body is protected," and the hospital would treat mainly wounded extremities, Cornum said. "In this case, we have neck, chest and abdominal injuries." Thirty-five of the 69 wounded in Mosul were taken to Landstuhl.
As we continue to isolate ourselves from global cooperation, the rest of the world is negotiating around us. The world's next superpower - China - is working oil deals with Canada and Venezuela. Acutally, China is working a number of deals with Venezuela. That should make our antagonistic relationship with Hugo Chávez even more one of a paper tiger. And guess who else is in China this week to strengthen relations? The Iraqi foreign minister.
Here's a link to a list of the top six exporters of oil to the U.S. I guess we can always hold Mexico over an oil barrel as long as we can dam their access to water.
Three US marines were today killed in action in Iraq's volatile western Anbar province, a military spokesperson said.
The spokesperson would not say where the three had been killed, but their deaths were reported as US forces fought insurgents in Falluja, in the Anbar province. F-18 fighter jets dropped several bombs in the city, sending up plumes of smoke, while tank and machine gun fire could be heard to the south.
This is what allows General Myers to say the answer is simple - we just win. And what allows Derr Rumsfiend to say it's "crystal clear" and "unambiguous" that "Fallujah was a successful effort". (Source) We just quit saying where the soldiers were killed and refer to any deaths in Falluja as deaths in the Anbar province. See how easy that is? Simple.
I had been working on a post commenting on the DOD briefing I'm quoting there, but decided to forego posting it, as I'd posted a couple of things yesterday regarding other people quoting some of the assinine things Rumsfiend and Myers said. I'll change my mind again and put it here:
A few more choice quotes from yesterday's DOD briefing
SEC. RUMSFELD: Good afternoon, folks. (Coughs.) I've got a catch in my throat, so I apologize, but I swallowed something wrong.
As an old ex-con friend of mine always said, paybacks are a motherfucker. For all the stuff he's asking other people to swallow, it's only right. It's what he's spitting out that's the real problem.
The tragic attack in Mosul, Iraq demonstrates again that the coalition and the Iraqi people face a vicious and a determined enemy. Freedom is at stake in Iraq and it's achievable. The only alternative to success would be to turn back to darkness -- to those who kill and terrorize innocent men, women and children -- and that must not happen.
Now you know he doesn't believe that drivel. A catch in his throat isn't enough of a signal to him to stop puking up bullshit. Let's have another look at the directives and the methods for the capture of Iraq before we discuss killing and terrorizing innocents.
My thoughts and prayers are with those who have been killed and with the wounded and with their families and with all those military and civilian personnel who have volunteered to place themselves at risk in our country's behalf.
And the families of these dead soldiers are going to get my personally signed letter of condolence, unlike the dead before them whose families got letters forged by my signing machine.
Okay, I know. Usually I don't bother to post this crap, because I assume you've heard enough of it that you could write these little briefings yourself. Be sure to add that Afghanistan has been liberated and elected a mayor of Kabuhl president, and that the enemy has escaped Falluja and set up camp in Mosul been routed from Falluja. And keep repeating that Iraqis are being trained to keep Iraq secure. Don't leave out that we are fighting the enemy there so we don't have to fight him here. (And be sure to mention that the enemy chops off people's heads.) (Go check it out if you don't believe he's still saying all these things.)
And especially remember this quote when they hold elections at the end of January without Falluja, without Mosul, and without numerous other cities being able to vote:
As long as an important region of the world is condemned to tyranny and violence, with one-half of their population barred from full participation, with little hope for a better future, terrorists will have a deep pool from which to draw recruits and to attack free people across the globe.
Then we get General The-solution-is-simple-al l-we-have-to-do-is-win Myers
Efforts to defeat the insurgents in the anti-Iraqi, anti- coalition forces who are targeting innocent citizens and coalition forces remain a top priority. Intimidation, kidnappings and executions, especially those focused in Mosul, north Babil, Ramadi and al Qaim are particularly troubling, and these areas will be a focus of particularly increased security emphasis.
Directly contradicting Mr. Abdel-Mahdi at the National Press Club.
This attack, of course, is the responsibility of insurgents, the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11, the same type of insurgents who attacked in Beirut, the same insurgents who -- type of insurgents who attacked the Cole, Khobar Towers, and the list goes on.
Maybe General Myers actually said these were the same insurgents who attacked on 9/11. Maybe the transcriber left out "type of". Whichever way it went down, it was a flagrant deceptive statement continuing the administration's efforts to make the people we are killing, in your mind, responsible for the WTC attacks.
SEC. RUMSFELD: We have said all along that we expected the level of violence to increase as you got towards the election. That is not new. We have also said that Fallujah was a successful effort. It was. It seems to me that's crystal-clear, that it's unambiguous, and it was an important effort.
Q: Can I do a follow-up, Mr. Secretary, on that same issue? Do you and General Myers think it's unwise or was unwise to put 400- plus servicemen and civilians and others in a huge tent the size of a football field on a base in a combat zone, a base that had been hit by mortars and RPGs? And if you do think it's unwise, are either one of you or both going to sound off to Generals Casey and Ham, or take them to the woodshed?
[...]
[MYERS:]We have had a suicide bomber, apparently, strap something to his body -- apparently a him -- and go into a dining hall. We know how difficult this is, to prevent suicide -- people bent on suicide and stopping them. We understand how difficult that is. But I think -- this was the insurgents that did this. It's not General Ham that attacked his dining hall.
Oh, good lord. Thank God it wasn't General Ham who attacked his own men. Who lets this man speak? "Losses are not our fault, you dummies. Our enemies are trying to kill us."
This has the potential to get interesting. The USDA Forest Service (Morgantown Field Office) has a link on their website to one of my web pages. No big deal. It's about Missouri's conservation department (et al.) anti-topping (tree hackery) campaign. Only, it also has the (beam me up) link on all my pages to my home page...and from there.....well, let's just say, you forestry types might want to tighten the straps on your copper helmets before you start poking around Meemer's.
An unidentified Navy SEAL was acquitted of charges stemming from the beating death of a hooded, handcuffed terror suspect, The Associated Press reports. A second U.S. commando received probation for assaulting another prisoner. Both hearings, which were closed to the public, were held before SEAL Capt. James O'Connell outside San Diego.
A controversial Justice Department memo written in response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has been released to the public for the first time, MSNBC.com reported on Saturday. The September 25, 2001, memo argued that the president's constitutional powers permit him to order military attacks against any nation regardless of its involvement in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The article's author, Michael Isikoff, noted that just 11 days earlier, Congress passed a joint resolution with a much more limited view; that resolution only authorized the president to initiate military aggression against nations actually bearing responsibility for the September 11 attacks.
Az-Zaman: Schools, offices and shops were closed in Mosul, a city of over a million, on Wednesday as US troops conducted house to house searches in the southern and western areas of the city for the guerrillas who planned the bombing of the mess hall at the nearby US base on Tuesday.
It now appears that the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber who got inside the tent rather than by incoming mortar shells or rockets. Credit for the bombing was claimed by the radical Ansar al-Sunnah group, a small, largely Kurdish group based in northern Iraq.
[...]
[A] large explosion in the Najjar District of Mosul shook the whole city on Wednesday.
December 19, 2004 Meanwhile, while the red states home-school the next generation...
Last night I had an interesting conversation with a friend who works on Capitol Hill. He was recently part of a Congressional delegation that went to India. The delegation was mainly Republicans.
They spoke to a lot of Indian government people and the message from them was very clear, and in a nutshell it was this: We don't much care about America. He said they were very polite but almost indifferent. Maybe matter-of-fact is a better description. The conversation went something like this:
We consider ourselves as in competition with China for leadership in the new century. That's our focus and frankly, you have made it very difficult for us to deal with you. We find your approach to international affairs ridiculous. The invasion of Iraq was insane. You've encouraged the very things you say you were trying to fix - terrorism and instability. Your attitude to Iran is ridiculous. You need to engage with Iran. We are. We are bemused by your hypocrisy. You lecture the world about dealing with dictators and you deal with Pakistan. We are very sorry for your losses from the 9/11 terror attacks. Welcome to our world. You threaten us with sanctions for not signing the non-proliferation treaty, but you continue to be nuclear armed and to investigate new weapons. You expect us to neglect our own security because you want us to. We don't care about sanctions.
Important new developments in the Washington gubernatorial race. First the facts: The state Supreme Court ruled a little while ago that the 723 ballots discovered in King County during the manual recount can be included in its totals. This comes after reports early in the day that even without these ballots, Gregoire had gained enough votes in this final county to finish that she now leads Rossi by eight votes pending certification.
If you thought the Republicans would accept the wisdom of the Court, you are much too naive. Here is the word, according to the AP:
Republicans said they will now seek out Rossi voters whose ballots were disqualified because of election workers' errors and fight to have those ballots counted as well.
"We'll be taking them to canvassing boards in counties across the state and asking those canvassing boards to review their decisions and to consider these ballots," Rossi spokeswoman Mary Lane said.
I feel their pain, really I do. In the midst of a heated recount, a court steps in and issues a ruling that guarantees your candidate will lose. It sucks.
On the day of a deadly attack against U.S. troops, Iraq's finance minister said Tuesday he saw signs of improvement in his country's security.
Adil Abdel-Mahdi, a leading Shiite politician, said the provisional Iraqi government was trying to improve security for foreign investors and workers. He said conditions are "much better than before" as a result of the U.S.-led mission last month to drive insurgents out of Sunni-dominated city of Fallujah.
Not to mention, a major contractor just pulled out because the security has deteriorated to a point where they can't even pillage enough to make it worth staying.
In recent weeks, there have been "no kidnappings, no hostages, so this shows that there's a blow to the terrorists in this respect. I think they will try to continue their acts, but their operations, their profile is lower today than it was before," he said at a news conference in the National Press Club.
Bullshit for the Americans - it's what we demand.
Abdel-Mahdi did not specifically speak of Tuesday's attack at a military base in the northern Iraq city of Mosul, which a U.S. military spokesman said killed 22 people, including 15 U.S. service members.
U.S. Marines clashed with insurgents in the battered city of Fallujah on Thursday [December 23] with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions on a day when a first group of residents displaced by fighting were scheduled to return.
The Wasington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIC) said on Wednesday that the US is facing increasingly deadly attacks in Iraq because it has failed to honestly assess facts on the ground.
[...]
The CSIC report, prepared by senior fellow Anthony Cordesman, said administration spokesmen had appeared to live "in a fantasyland" when giving accounts of events in Iraq.
Cordesman said in the first year of the US occupation, Washington "failed to come to grips with the Iraqi insurgency ... in virtually every important dimension".
Under the heading "Denial as a method of counter-insurgency warfare", the report accused the US of minimising the anti-US and criminal threat in Iraq and of exaggerating popular support for US-led efforts.
Dude. Call a spade a spade. I say CSIC traitors should pack lightly - provisions are provided at Guantanamo.
He said that as late as July 2004, administration spokesmen still lived "in a fantasyland in terms of their public announcements", including putting the core anti-US fighting force at 5000 individuals when experts in Iraq knew the correct number to be 12,000 to 16,000.
Sympathisers within the Iraqi interim government and Iraqi forces, as well as Iraqis working for US-led forces, media and non-governmental organisations, "often provided excellent human intelligence [about US-led operations] without violently taking part in the insurgency", the report said.
Cordesman said US attempts to vet these Iraqis cannot solve the problem because "it seems likely that family, clan and ethnic loyalties have made many supposedly loyal Iraqis become at least part-time sources".
"Washington has to realise - you occupy the Iraq you have, not the Iraq you might wish to have later," said Robert Malley, director of the IGC's Middle East/North Africa Programme.
A group of Iraqi Kurds have presented UN officials with a petition signed by 1.7 million Iraqis seeking a referendum on whether northern Iraq should be made an independent Kurdish state.
"The Kurds under international protection have been exercising de facto independence in South Kurdistan [northern Iraq] for the last 13 years and they do not wish to be controlled by an Arab-dominated Iraq," the group said at the United Nations' New York headquaters on Wednesday.
[...]
Delegation members said a decision on a referendum probably would have to wait until after scheduled 30 January elections as the country is now run by an unelected interim government, which includes Kurds.
Iraq's current leaders have ruled out a separate Kurdish state.
So has the UN Security Council, which has adopted several resolutions calling for the preservation of Iraq's territorial integrity.
In the months since the end of the invasion-phase of the Iraq war, Bush administration officials have linked surges in violence to a series of benchmarks after which, presumably, the attacks would abate. First it was the capture of Saddam Hussein, then the drafting of a constitution, then the establishment of an interim government and now the January elections.
[...]
The implications of the audacious suicide attack in the center of a heavily guarded U.S. military base in Mosul go beyond a failure of base security.
The attack is the latest evidence that Iraqi insurgents have better intelligence about U.S. forces than U.S. forces have on the insurgents.
Send more Bobs candy canes; those kids know things, and they can be turned.
"This is very much an intelligence war," he said. "The insurgents seem to be getting better and better at intelligence."
How did insurgents know when and where three Iraqi election officials would be traveling last weekend in Baghdad before they were dragged from their vehicle in broad daylight and murdered by pistol-wielding insurgents? How have insurgents been able to penetrate the heavily fortified Green Zone — the political and diplomatic nerve center of Baghdad?
The questions bedevil Pentagon officials trying to plot a successful strategy for Iraq.
Never would it occur to them that the reason may be that the "insurgents" have the cooperation of the Iraqi populace. Nope, that couldn't be it.
"It's a very tough, complicated business," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon Wednesday. "The enemy's got a brain. The enemy alters its tactics. ... And intimidation is the kind of thing that can prevent people from providing intelligence."
The enemy's got a brain! Too bad we didn't think of that before we invaded. And intimidation apparently isn't preventing people from providing intelligence. Maybe they're providing intelligence to the people they want to prevail. Nope, that couldn't be it either. They're just too scared to help the Americans. No doubt that is a factor, but resting our whole approach on the belief that the people of an occupied country are longing to support their occupier, but are being intimidated out of it, is the kind of assumption that will keep us pouring troops and money into a disaster of cosmic proportions. I still wonder whether Derr Rumsfiend and the neocons really believe that nonsense or if they just know that the American people are gullible and arrogant enough to buy it.
"Very tough, complicated business." Feeding candy canes to kids to get them to rat out some "bad guys".
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the same Pentagon briefing that the solution is simple.
"The way we prevent this is we win. And that's what we're going to do," Myers said.
I swear, they all have Bushitis.
Rumsfeld and Myers confront difficult choices for coping with what they now acknowledge is an insurgency that will remain violent even beyond the scheduled Jan. 30 Iraqi elections.
Both see the recent U.S. sweep of Fallujah as a model tactic to be used elsewhere.
But the concentration of forces in Fallujah required shifting troops away from other areas, including Mosul, which helped spark violence in that northern Iraqi city. A block-by-block sweep of Mosul for insurgents involved in the attack began Wednesday, but the city is three to four times Fallujah's size.
The answer most often cited by outside experts — more troops — has its own risks, Rumsfeld warns. Sending more troops, he said, "has the counterproductive aspect of creating additional targets and creating a sense of occupation."
Okay, maybe he does believe himself.
Patrick Lang, an Iraq expert and former Army intelligence officer, calls armored Humvees and steel-reinforced dining halls — neither of which would have prevented this attack — "Band-Aids" that overlook the widespread hostility U.S. and allied forces face in Iraq.
"The idea that these are our allies, that's a lot of bunk. That's a really bad attitude," Lang said. "There has to be a much larger support group in the population which doesn't turn them in, which turns a blind eye, which cooperates with them."
Well, Pat you just hate America, don't you?
"Looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake," Rumsfeld said. "I think our expectations level ought to be realistic about that."
It's okay to be realistic about that. You heard it from the horse's mouth ass.
LaBelle sends a link to this scandalous piece of news portrayed as special American warmth.
Bobs Candies, which bills itself as the world's largest candy cane maker, gets regular feedback from customers who relish the sweet taste of its candies at Christmas and the rest of the year.
But company officials were surprised when they received a letter that said America's traditional holiday candy is also a big hit with U.S. soldiers and the children of Iraq.
Mary Helen Dykes, secretary-treasurer of the privately held company, said she didn't know how the soldiers got their first batch of Bobs' candy canes, but after receiving the letter the company sent 3,000 more.
"He told us how they enjoyed them and said they were great to pass out to the kids," she said.
To show their appreciation, some of the children provided the soldiers with information on "bad guys," she said.
Those who defend warfare tend to see it only as an abstraction, a game pitting strategists from opposing collectives against one another in furtherance of contrived objectives. The ugly details of orchestrated butchery and torture are to be suppressed, lest persons of humane sensitivities become upset and demand a cessation of the game. But facts have ways of insinuating themselves into the most carefully devised schemes, causing the sordid nature of warfare to move from the abstract to the concrete. When this occurs – as it did in the My Lai massacre or, more recently, at Abu Ghraib – the political establishment is quick to look for scapegoats or explanations that do not implicate war itself. To the state, the professed ends of any given war are both irrelevant and fungible: it is the war system that requires protection.
"When I saw the stumps, I thought, `Damn, both of them?' Then I looked at my leg and I was trying to figure how to put a tourniquet on it because I didn't have any hands."
The rocket-propelled grenade that ripped off James Eddie Wright's hands and tore into his left leg ended the war for him and changed his life forever.
In 1963, when asked for his thoughts about the death of President John F. Kennedy, civil rights activist Malcolm X replied that Kennedy’s assassination was simply an example of "the chickens coming home to roost."
Naturally, in a nation infected with terminal myopia, Malcolm X’s words generated both controversy and outrage. But more than a decade later, after hearings in the United States Congress revealed that governmental agencies, on both the local and national levels, had participated in or encouraged the assassinations of both foreign "enemies," and American citizens (the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] had even dubbed one of its assassination squads a "Health Alteration Committee"), the prophetic nature of Malcolm X’s words became evident: A nation that uses assassination as a political tool against others should not be surprised when the same tool is directed against it.
But in the wake of the Bush dictatorship’s coup of 2000 and the corruption-ridden "election" of 2004, the chickens have again come home to roost in America. A nation that has incessantly imposed and/or propped up fraudulent democracies throughout the world has finally become a fraudulent democracy itself, controlled by the machinations of a cabal of corrupt oligarchs who satiate Americans with the illusion of "voting," while ensuring their preordained puppets are installed into office.
While perusing the "Good Lord, NOOOO!" aisle of the supermarket, I came across the atrocity known as Dolores Brand Pickled Pork Rinds. These are not the crunchy pork rinds you'll often see over by the chips. These are their grosser, soggier, potentially botulism-ier cousins.
The label says "Ready to Eat." They left off "By Dumb-Asses."
ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process.
ChristianExodus.org is orchestrating the move of thousands of Christians to reacquire our Constitutional rights and, if necessary to attain these rights, dissolve our State's bond with the union. Click on our Plan of Action page to find out how we can experience God-honoring governance once again.
Hey, I'm all for it. Give them their own country. But I do think they should have to pay to relocate all the non-"Christians" in whatever locale they set up shop.
In one of the first signs of the effects of the ever tightening federal budget, in the past two months the Bush administration has reduced its contributions to global food aid programs aimed at helping millions of people climb out of poverty.
[...]
The cutbacks, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched.
As a result, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services and other charities have suspended or eliminated programs that were intended to help the poor feed themselves through improvements in farming, education and health.
With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it was unable to honor some earlier promises and would have money to pay for food only in emergency crises like that in Darfur, in western Sudan.
Promised it. The charities organized around it. Reneged.
The only way for the War Party to keep a lid on rising antiwar sentiment is to "spin" the poll numbers the "right" way: to manage the news, Soviet-style. We must be bathed in a continuous stream of propaganda masquerading as "news" – so that even accounts of our own dissatisfaction are "spun" to make it seem like we're really not all that opposed to the dangerous and pernicious foreign policy of this war-maddened administration. The pro-war media, including the aggressive and well-connected neocon wing of the blogosphere, has been touting the brothers Fadhil, who set up a "blog" with a moniker that manages to express the essence of the neocon program for the Middle East – Iraq the Model. At the climax of their triumphant American tour, sponsored by a "charitable" organization known as the "Spirit of America," two of the brothers were received at the White House by none other than the president. But there's a fly in this ointment, and that is the testimony of the third Fadhil brother, Ali. While his brothers were meeting with the commander-in-chief of the army that occupies their country, Ali was saying farewell to his readers:
"This is the last time I write in this blog and I just want to say, goodbye. It's not an easy thing to do for me, but I know I should do it. I haven't told my brothers with my decision, as they are not here yet, but it won't change anything and I just can't keep doing this anymore.
"My stand regarding America has never changed. I still love America and feel grateful to all those who helped us get our freedom and are still helping us establishing democracy in our country. But it's the act of some Americans that made me feel I'm on the wrong side here. I will expose these people in public very soon and I won't lack the mean to do this, but I won't do it here as this is not my blog.
"At any rate, it's been a great experience and a pleasure to know all the regular readers of this blog, as I do feel I know you, and I owe you a lot.
"Best wishes to all of you, those who supported us and those who criticized us as well."
The Middle East scholar and war critic Juan Cole has been pilloried by the pro-war bloggers because he dared question the bona fides of the two democratic dentists who are supposed to represent the wave of the Iraqi future – and now it seems Cole's suspicion that all was not as it appeared to be on the surface has been confirmed. Elsewhere on the "Iraq the Model" blog, Ali denounces certain "extreme conservatives" who are trying to use him and his brothers as a "propaganda tool." Imagine that!
You can't make this stuff up.
Read the rest at Justin Raimondo's site. Scroll down to Notes in the Margin. Reference links are embedded.
I mean, things are not going so well in this one. But hey...
The infamous "Clean Break" policy paper written for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, co-authored by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and a full coven of neocons now ensconced in the national security bureaucracy, is clear on this one point: Syria is the main problem. As the frontline state standing in the way of Zionist expansionism, Syria, according to Netanyahu's former American advisors, must be confronted, and humbled: in their view, the road to Damascus clearly runs through Baghdad.
As the prime architects of the second Iraq war, the Perle-Feith-neocon cabal took their own advice to heart, and now it is time for phase two of the plan to make the Middle East safe for Israel…. Oh wait, I mean: safe for democracy. Yeah, that's the ticket…. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah: time for phase two. Or, as Seymour Hersh calls it, "Plan B."
Having concluded that the war in Iraq is unwinnable – the war Israel wanted, and agitated for ceaselessly, not only directly but through surrogates in the U.S. – "Plan B" calls for Israeli infiltration of northern Iraq, otherwise known as Kurdistan. After all, the Israelis might as well make the best of a bad situation, and make their move while they can: the Kurdish adventure is a clear effort to stir up Syria's substantial Kurdish population, as well as to provide "intelligence" of Chalabi-like quality on Iran's nukes. What a coincidence that "pro-democracy" groups and Kurdish separatist elements are becoming more active in Syria at the same time as stepped-up charges of Syrian collaboration with the Iraqi insurgency hit the headlines. Meanwhile, the usual suspects have started up their chorus of complaints about Syrian policing of Lebanon, while the Israelis rampage through the occupied territories of Palestine and annex the best bits.
LaBelle called this morning rightly indignant about a group of local women who are getting publicity and all kinds of warm fuzzy radio highlights by making little gift bags of crayons, toothbrushes and soap for Iraqi children. Don't even get me started. Could we get them some water? LaBelle wants to know. How about some electricity?
Az-Zaman: A cold wave has gripped Baghdad, leaving 16 children dead from exposure. Electricity has been unreliable recently because of sabotage, and there are heating fuel shortages for the same reason.
Remember the art showing of a painting that recently got squelched?
Avenged times a thousand.
A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image that was banished from a New York art show last week amid charges of censorship was projected on a giant billboard in Manhattan on Tuesday.
[...]
Animal Magazine, a quarterly arts publication that had organized the month-long show, said anonymous donors had paid for the picture to be posted on a giant digital billboard over the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, used by thousands of commuters traveling between Manhattan and New Jersey.
The original picture will be auctioned on eBay, with part of the proceeds donated to parents of U.S. soldiers wishing to supply their sons and daughters with body armor in Iraq.
[...]
Organizers expect more than 400,000 drivers to see the billboard each day for the next month.
I love it. But I suspect many drivers will not see the chimps and only see the chump. Anyway, I still love it. Kudos to Animal Magazine, the artist and all the donors.
New evidence shows the bombing of a U.S. military mess tent in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on Tuesday — which killed 22 people and wounded 70 others — was a suicide attack, ABC News has learned.
Investigators at the base have found remnants of a torso and a suicide vest that was probably a backpack, sources told ABC News, indicating that the attack was a suicide bombing.
[...]
Early reports indicated that the massive explosion might have been the result of a rocket attack.
But a radical Sunni Muslim group, the Ansar al-Sunnah Army, later claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was a "martyrdom operation," a reference to a suicide bomber.
A day after the devastating attack, another message posted on a Web site, allegedly by Ansar al-Sunnah, provided details of the daring attack. According to the online message, the suicide bomber was a 24-year-old man from Mosul who worked at the base for two months and had provided information about the base to the group[... and who] had got married only about a month ago[...]
They got the FBI emails, but the CIA wasn't coughing up anything. Now a judge has ordered them (for the second time) to fork over documents concerning their internal investigation of prisoner "abuse". I could imagine that they might have been holding out to look good, but would be happy to offer up something that incriminates the White House. Of course, it's possible that all they have is self-incriminating documents.
How will it turn out? We'll just have to wait and see.
The U.S. government lost a bid Monday to block civil rights groups from obtaining CIA records of its internal investigation into abuse of detainees held by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a ruling from the bench, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied a government motion aimed at stopping an earlier order to turn over documents.
Justin is guest blogging for Zeynep over at Under the Same Sun. He has a good post on the information American journalists are offering regarding Haiti, and explains the real reason that there was a coup on Aristede.
This is all taking place in order to destroy Lavalas, the democratic and popular movement in Haiti that was the target - Aristide wasn't the target - of the coup in February. And Lavalas has to be destroyed for reasons of pure racist contempt for democracy, for the same reasons Haiti has never been given a chance to develop on its own in the 200 years since Haitians waged the first successful slave revolt in history.
There is no way in hell that American/European interests can allow the black descendents of slaves to successfully rule themselves in any country in the world. As long as there is a popular movement toward self-government in Haiti, it doesn't matter that they are "the poorest nation on earth" and no threat militarily or economically. The fear of a successful slave uprising is imprinted on the very soul of every European ruling class (and I include the American ruling class in that as descendents of the Europeans).
And check the first comment to Justin's post. It's a great example of how reporting is controlled.
Contrack International Inc has become the first major US contractor to pull out of the reconstruction effort in Iraq, citing security concerns, the Los Angeles Times said.
"We reached a point where our [security] costs were getting to be prohibitive," company president Karim Camel-Toueg said in the Wednesday edition of the paper.
Virginia-based Contrack had won a $325 million award to rebuild Iraq's shattered transport system.
US officials said Contrack's decision to terminate work in Iraq was reached with the US government in November, but had not been publicly disclosed.
[...]
Contrack, the leader of a partnership that won one of 12 major reconstruction contracts awarded in 2004, was the largest company to pull out of Iraq to date, the officials told the Times.
[...]
[...]
"It's a very bad sign," said Michael O'Hanlon, a scholar at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. "If this is how other private companies are thinking, it's a very bad potential warning." [Emphasis added]
The Contrack revelation comes fast on the heels of a potentially controversial legal dispute between a US-based firm accused of setting up sham companies in Iraq and the US government.
According to the 19 December edition of the LA Times, lawyers for Custer Battles security firm argued they could not be sued for a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme in Iraq because the allegedly stolen money belonged to Iraqis, not Americans.
U.S. forces sealed off entire districts of the Iraqi city of Mosul on Wednesday and raided homes in a hunt for suspects following a guerrilla attack that killed 18 Americans and four Iraqis.
Mosul's governor issued an order banning use of the five bridges that span the River Tigris in the city, and said anyone breaking the order would be shot. Residents said Iraq's third city was a virtual ghost town, with no one in the streets.
[...]
In Mosul, people were afraid: "Students went to school but were told to go home. People went to the shops, saw American troops in the streets, and went home," said Ahmad, 25, a car dealer who declined to give his surname.
"The place is shut down," said another resident, adding that mosques and markets were also virtually empty.
The U.S. military said a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew, imposed several weeks ago, remained in place and confirmed it had stepped up operations in the search for suspects.
[...]
U.S. officials initially said a number of rocket and mortar rounds were fired at a mess tent in southwest Mosul, but a militant group claimed a suicide bomber was behind the attack. A further 72 people were wounded.
[...]
Giving the latest in a series of casualty updates, the military in Baghdad said 14 U.S. soldiers, four American civilians and four Iraqi security force members were killed.
Fifty-one of the wounded were U.S. military personnel. Of the 72 hurt, 43 were still being treated.
What? An investigation? No immediate airstrike - only a house to house raid - in retaliation? Something's up. Did they learn something from Falluja?
I'm having a hard time believing that.
"It was a tragic event, but it will not deter us from our mission," said Sergeant Steve Valley, a U.S. spokesman in Baghdad. "We're all here with the same purpose of ridding this country of these armed thugs and building a democracy."
Still clueless. Or still spouting official rhetoric.
U.S. commanders say Jordanian al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi probably fled Falluja and moved his base to Mosul.
Wherever you find "insurgents" making headlines with successful attacks or defense against the mighty U.S. military, there you'll find....Super Zarqawi! How else could we be suffering losses and setbacks but due to some mastermind super villain? (And of course, he can't be an Iraqi - they want us there to liberate them.)
In an effort to get wanted criminals to turn themselves in, the government of Saudi Arabia is running TV spots that say prison life is better than living at home. "I swear to God, they (jailers) are nicer than our parents," says one of the prisoners featured. James Sturcke reports that "Saudi authorities have aired militant confessions and interviews with fathers of wanted men as part of a public relations campaign to rally the public against radicals who have carried out attacks inside the kingdom, killing Saudis, other Arabs and westerners."
Representative Billy Tauzin, "a principal author of the new Medicare drug law, will become president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the chief lobby for brand-name drug companies." The Medicare law is generous to industry, forbidding price controls, regulations, or even negotiations with drug manufacturers "to secure lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries." Tauzin isn't alone; Thomas A. Scully, "the administration's main negotiator with Congress on the drug bill," is now a registered lobbyist for Abbott and Aventis. Powell Moore, "the Pentagon's chief lobbyist," is joining the law and lobbying firm McKenna Long & Aldridge, which has an "extensive national security practice." Senator Zell Miller is also joining the firm, reports The Hill.
Remember this Ben Hur re-enactment the troops entertained themselves with just before they launched into Falluja (Operation Phantom Fury) after the election?
It would appear they aren't having so much fun now.
Nearly six weeks after US marines stormed the rebel enclave of Fallujah, military psychologists are still seeing a steady stream of service personnel traumatised by the long days and nights of ferocious street fighting.
[...]
"After the offensive began, we had a lot of patients, then there was this lull, and it has picked up again recently with people trying to sit on their symptoms."
[...]
The US-backed government put rebel losses at more than 2,000, although unit commanders later revealed their troops had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed.
Remember when Rome was the occupying force in a Middle Eastern country and had all the males of a certain age killed? Does the name Herod ring a bell?
What the images of Phantom Fury did not convey is that this assault is the largest concentration of heavy armor in one place, since the fall of Berlin. This was the first time since World War II that "an American armored task force" has been turned "loose in a city with no restrictions".
More to the point, the force of as much as 20,000 soldiers (12,000 to 17,000 American/coalition soldiers, about 2000 odd Iraqi "National guards" and perhaps 1000 odd peshmergas) were supported by an estimated 1100 to as much as 2000 armored vehicles and tanks. Air support was largely carrier based out of the gulf and B-52's from bases outside of Iraq.
The armor alone represents the heaviest ever concentration of armor since the fall of Berlin (1945) in one place against a single military objective.
Phantom Fury was officially underway on the 8th of November and declared to be a sweeping victory on or about the 15th of November.
[...]
There is no evidence of what has transpired save intermittent but very very regular losses attributed to "pockets of resistance" in the "Anbar Province". And, yes, reportage on the brand new movie on Fallujah starring Harrison Ford.
[...]
There are no satellite pictures of Fallujah available in the public domain after November 15th.
Or consider that the Red Cross/Red crescent has not been allowed to enter the city in any substantive manner. Today is the 20th of Dec and it has still not been allowed.
Or consider another break in the regular stream of consciousness. No reporter has set foot in the city or after the 22nd of November.
A "Great Victory" like this and no footage?
[...]
Fallujah has not been taken. Not only has Fallujah not been taken, but the coalition forces have staged several retreats and are now confined largely to the outside of the city.
The Iraqi resistance is currently in control of most of the city and have forced back at least three of the largest armored assaults in recent history.
Held off by a bunch of guys in tennis shoes and sandals with low-tech weaponry and remote controls taken from toys. Maybe this isn't true. But if not, then why don't we have embedded reporters cranking out hero stories and great photos like we got at the initial invasion of Iraq? Read more of this article: The End of Warfare
I've wanted to read the transcript, but frankly, I just cannot make myself do it.
[Bush] answered a question regarding the Bernard Kerik nomination in similar, pedantic man-child fashion: “We’ve vetted a lot of people in this administration. We’ve vetted a lot of people in the first term; and we’ve vetted a lot of people in the second term ... The lesson is to keep on vetting.”
[...]
Ah, it’s going to be a great four years. George W. Bush just wrapped up a rare, hour-long, real-deal press conference, without the usual backup from a visiting world leader that he usually relies on when facing the media. Bush’s answers were alternately petulant and philosophical, all delivered in that dependably incoherent manner the American people have come to know, love, and reward with reelection. We’ll have to wait for the official transcript for verbatim quotes, but here are some highlights...
At a Monday press conference, Bush "repeatedly told reporters that their questions would be better directed at someone else," refused to 'negotiate with himself' on social security, said Rumsfeld is "a caring fellow" doing a "fine job," and added that Bernard Kerik would have done a "fine job" as head of Homeland Security.
It is totally academic whether Rumsfiend resigns or is booted, either one. Seriously. With an administration that chooses Bernard Kerik for Department of the Fatherland director, what do you people who want to dump Derr Fiend expect to get as a replacement? Somebody who'll do the right things? Somebody who'll fix something? Somebody with some sense?
Yeah. Sure. Pipe me up another dream, oh ye optimistic noodles.
McClellan's tongue is a lump of coal black at this point.
The White House says it expects a full investigation of prisoner abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after new FBI memos described detainees facing beatings and having lit cigarettes placed in their ears.
"If there is abuse that occurs, we expect it to be investigated fully and people to be held accountable, and measures taken to make sure that it doesn't happen again," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
Pretty tricky when the evidence points to an executive order bypassing Geneva Conventions and outlining torture procedures. Of course this doesn't present a problem for the If-we-haven't-lied-at-lea st-ten-times-before-break fast-then-we're-not-out-o f-bed-yet administration.
Freed Haitian Priest Gerard Jean-Juste: Aristide Supporters “Are Not Only Targeted, We Are Being Chased”
Haitian priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste joins [Democracy Now! in their] firehouse studio to talk about his imprisonment, the continuing chaos in Haiti, the role of the U.S. and the international community and much more. Jean-Juste was released Nov. 29 after being imprisoned for seven weeks by the interim Haitian government. We also speak with human rights and immigration lawyer Tom Griffin, who recently traveled to Haiti to document human rights abuses.
Also, People's Organization for Progress sponsored an event with Stan Goff, about whom I have posted on numerous occasions (some links). The topic was Haiti, where ex-special forces Goff spent his last tour of duty with the U.S. military, and on which he is an expert. In the course of the talk and following questions and answers, he speaks of the situation in Iraq and our relationship with Venezuela and Cuba as well. The audio is available here, and Q&A here.
Update : Looks like TJ is on a Haiti roll today...besides several links to stories specifically linking the Maxine Waters political woes with her stance on Haiti, he shares one of his great graphics:
As Stan Goff says, Iraq is a war that is politically impossible to get out of and militarily impossible to win. So, it's only logical that we should be thinking about taking on Iran as well, right?
Over the past few months, US jet fighters have repeatedly violated Iran’s air space over Khuzestan province, testing Iran’s air defense system, according to Iranian military officials.
[...]
The United States and Israel may be contemplating military operations against Iran, as per recent media reports, yet Iran is not wasting any time in preparing its own counter-operations in the event an attack materializes.
A week-long combined air and ground maneuver has just concluded in five of the southern and western provinces of Iran, mesmerizing foreign observers, who have described as “spectacular” the massive display of high-tech, mobile operations, including rapid-deployment forces relying on squadrons of helicopters, air lifts, missiles, as well as hundreds of tanks and tens of thousands of well-coordinated personnel using live munition. Simultaneously, some 25,000 volunteers have so far signed up at newly established draft centers for “suicide attacks” against any potential intruders in what is commonly termed “asymmetrical warfare”.
I expect that Mosul is about to see some serious air action.
Update 10:30 am:
DUBAI, Dec 21 (AFP) - The Al-Qaeda linked Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for an attack on a US military base Tuesday in the Iraqi city of Mosul that reportedly killed about 22 people, in a statement attributed to the group on an Islamist website.
"One of the mujahedeen of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna carried out a martyrdom-seeking (suicide) operation in a restaurant of the infidel occupation forces at the Ghazlani camp in Mosul at 12:00 pm (0900 GMT) Tuesday," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed.
"Two air ambulances were seen moving bodies and wounded people. This heroic operation was filmed and (the video) will be released at a later date," it said.
"We will let you know the losses of the infidel enemy," the statement added, blasting the "American crusaders."
A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.
[...]
The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from “On Scene Commander—Baghdad” to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.
Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using “torture techniques” against a detainee. The e-mail concludes “If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the ‘FBI’ interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public.”
I have to wonder how the ACLU got these documents. FOIA does not permit the release of all documents. Somebody still has to approve the release of each piece of paper. In this case, it appears that the information was not forthcoming, and the ACLU filed a lawsuit to force the government to provide the documents, and won. Either somebody wanted these president-incriminating emails to get out, or the White House isn't concerned with the information any more. There was no great outcry against the information that Gonzales and the Justice Department have cleared His Highness the Bonehead to do anything he wants. There has been no great outcry against the still ongoing tortures. Maybe the White House simply considers this part of the Asshat's "mandate" from the people.
The CIA, on the other hand, is another matter.
The ACLU and its allies are scheduled to go to court again this afternoon, where they will seek an order compelling the CIA to turn over records related to an internal investigation into detainee abuse. Although the ACLU has received more than 9,000 documents from other agencies, the CIA refuses to confirm or deny even the existence of many of the records that the ACLU and other plaintiffs have requested. The CIA is reported to have been involved in abusing detainees in Iraq and at secret CIA detention facilities around the globe.
Update 9:30 am:
Flashback:
[June 10] Bush's strongest condemnation on the issue of prisoner treatment has come in regard to the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The president has said he shared "a deep disgust" over the conduct by U.S. soldiers involved in the abuse, declaring that is "not the way we do things in America."
Bush's comments follow disclosure of Justice Department memos to the White House advising the president that he could suspend international treaties prohibiting torture. The Justice Department also told the White House that U.S. laws against torture do not apply to the war on terror.
Bush said he doesn't recall seeing any of the Justice Department advice.
I am not having any luck finding what I thought were rumors of an executive order back when the Abu Ghraib tortures became public knowledge. I did find this comment from Louise over at Kos on June 13...
There's an executive order or a secret finding with Bush's signature on it that authorizes this behavior - otherwise, it wouldn't have happened. Because, according to their legal briefs, the behavior would not have been legal if the President hadn't signed the authorization.
And as Bush kept telling us, everything they did was legal, right?
I am waiting to see the Fox News/Limbaugh/right-wing spin that, yes, it was torture, and yes, it was more than a "few bad apples", and yes, the President authorized it, and yes, the President then lied about it, but it's all good because ...they were all bad.
And from Stevelu on the same day...
Bush deniable? Why the press conference evasions?
while we might not ever have direct evidence that Bush gave an explicit order to use torture, as I'm sure they're clever enough to ensure plausible deniability
I would have thought so too, but Bush was so cagey under direct questioning at his last press conference, it makes me think that some trail really may lead to him. Are there people he no longer trusts who can put him in a meeting where all this crap was approved?
He repeatedly fell back on the 'my orders were legal' defense, refusing to respond in any meaningful way to questions about the Justice Dept memo, which redefines 'legal' into meaninglessness.
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so. --Mark Twain
An explosion at a U.S. military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul caused "multiple casualties," the U.S. military said in an e-mailed statement.
The cause of the blast, which took place at noon local time, is under investigation, according to the statement, which didn't specify how many people have been killed or wounded.
Mosul was relatively peaceful in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year. But insurgent attacks have increased dramatically in the past year and particularly since the U.S.-led military operation in November to retake the restive city of Fallujah from guerrillas.
I need to find out whether the base attack came before the Hiyt airstrikes. My guess would be yes, since we are fond of collective punishment against people who are not responsible for attacking first. But, I also expect that Mosul is about to see some serious air action.
Update 10:30 am:
DUBAI, Dec 21 (AFP) - The Al-Qaeda linked Army of Ansar al-Sunna claimed responsibility for an attack on a US military base Tuesday in the Iraqi city of Mosul that reportedly killed about 22 people, in a statement attributed to the group on an Islamist website.
"One of the mujahedeen of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna carried out a martyrdom-seeking (suicide) operation in a restaurant of the infidel occupation forces at the Ghazlani camp in Mosul at 12:00 pm (0900 GMT) Tuesday," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently confirmed.
"Two air ambulances were seen moving bodies and wounded people. This heroic operation was filmed and (the video) will be released at a later date," it said.
"We will let you know the losses of the infidel enemy," the statement added, blasting the "American crusaders."
This is way over my head, and seems very strange to me. The outcome of the request to put a hold on the sale of a Russian oil company is that a Texas judge granted Yukos an injunction barring the Russian government from auctioning Yukos' Yuganskneftegaz unit. As you might imagine, the Russian government isn't exactly subjecting itself to Texas court rulings. Whatever eventually happens, the court ruling actually is creating a disturbance.
Many foreign companies wish they could flee to the US to escape their creditors. And more may try to do so after the Russian oil company Yukos stunned the legal world last week by successfully filing for bankruptcy protection in Texas.
Bankruptcy experts in the US said they were astonished at the ruling last Thursday by a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas, which claimed jurisdiction over the bankruptcy of Yukos based largely on the fact that the company paid a retainer to a US law firm to represent it in the proceedings.
Judge Clark said she took the action because "participants in international commerce, in Russia, in the United States, and elsewhere, need to have an expectation that when they invest in foreign enterprises they may do so without fear that their investments may be the subject of confiscatory action by agencies of the foreign government."
Legal experts said the ruling raised the prospect that any firm in financial distress, anywhere in the world, could open a small bank account in the US and use that to claim bankruptcy protection under US law.
"This is open sesame for foreign debtors," says Professor Jay Westbrook of the University of Texas law school. "This is not just a can of worms - it is a whole barrel of worms."
Meanwhile, a consortium of Western banks -- including Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein -- froze between $10 billion and $13 billion it had lent Gazprom for its bid, Russian and other news reports said.
Citing what it called high-ranking Western financial sources, the ITAR-Tass agency said the banking group had decided to freeze the deal at least until the U.S. court reaches a final decision.
With a big presence in the United States, the banks could face legal action if they violated the court order.
If Gazprom can't get the loans to buy out Yuganskneftegaz because of a Texas court ruling, then where does U.S. oil influence stop?
Representatives of Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas and Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein declined comment Friday. ABN Amro representatives could not be reached for comment.
Alexander Stepanenko, a spokesman for the Gazprom oil unit, said the company was committed to bidding on Sunday and the company had received no notification from the western banks that they would be canceling their funding.
"We've made an application, made the deposit and received permission from the anti-monopoly service," he said.
Even Yukos's lawyers agreed that the auction will go ahead.
"We remain realistic about the ruling's immediate effect," the company said in a written statement.
Boy, I don't know......but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Al-Zaman reports that on Saturday night into Sunday morning, clashes broke out again in the eastern Askari, Sina'i and Shuhada' districts of Fallujah between US troops and guerrillas, and that the US forces called in air strikes on those quarters; I couldn't find any mention of this report, coming from Iraqi eyewitnesses, in the US press.
December 9, I posted a link sent by Jay to an article about a computer programmer who said Republican Congressman Tom Feeney approached him to create a program that could "switch" votes in electronic voting machines in Florida (which he did create). At the time, Bev Harris of Black Box Voting was calling it disinformation. Last week, the story took a more serious turn. The programmer "Clint Curtis made the claim Monday in sworn testimony to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee investigating allegations of voter fraud" in Ohio.
I sure would like to see this bear fruit. Not that Bush's Red State minions wouldn't excuse His Hinee from the scandal, but maybe we could at least get some attention to the criminals running this show we pretend is democracy. It could be more likely, however, that the messenger, the computer programmer (who has proven himself to be willing to be a party to fraud - is vote tampering treasonous?), will be excoriated, Feeney drummed out of politics for a time (a la crook Nixon and the Watergate burglars), and then, their blood lust having been slaked, the American public will go right on with their willfully ignorant lives, suckered and manipulated by gangsters posing as civil servants.
Ziad Khasawneh, a Jordanian lawyer and spokesman for Saddam's defense team, told reporters: "President Saddam Hussein urged the unity of his Iraqi people, regardless of their religious and ethnic creed, to confront U.S. plans to divide their country on sectarian grounds."
Saddam relayed his messages through Khalil Dulaimi, an Iraqi lawyer and member of the defense counsel who met the ousted leader for more than four hours on Thursday -- Saddam's first access to lawyers since he was arrested a year ago.
Keep it up, and we'll have to put him back on no-lawyer visit status.
Dulaimi's identity was until Sunday kept secret by Saddam's Amman-based legal team for fears over his life after he escaped an assassination attempt two weeks ago, defense lawyers said.
A US national guardsman who pleaded guilty to killing a 17-year-old Iraqi soldier said he shot the young man after they had consensual sex in a guard tower, a newspaper reported today, citing court-martial records.
Private Federico Daniel Merida, 21, of the North Carolina National Guard, pleaded guilty to murder without premeditation and other charges during a court-martial in Iraq on September 25.
Merida was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Merida, who was born in Veracruz, Mexico, has a wife and toddler son.
[...]
Merida and the Iraqi were on guard duty on May 11 in a tower on the perimeter of an army camp near Tikrit in northern Iraq. At around 10.30pm, Merida shot the teenager 11 times with his carbine.
A former Reserve Specialist, diplomat's son, who speaks Arabic, talks to Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! about personally witnessing the torture and killing at Abu Ghraib (has photos). He says the incidents at Abu Ghraib were symptomatic of the atmosphere amongst American soldiers - of commonplace brutality and inhumanity.
The Social Security Administration is rejecting marriage documents issued for heterosexual couples in four communities that performed weddings for gay couples earlier this year.
The agency is rejecting all marriage certificates issued in New Paltz, N.Y., after Feb. 27, when the town's mayor began marrying gay couples, according to town officials.
Certificates issued during the brief periods when Asbury Park, N.J., Multnomah County, Ore., and Sandoval County, N.M., recognized gay marriages are also being rejected.
Susie Kilpatrick, 30, of New Paltz, said the local Social Security office told her that no marriage documents issued after Feb. 27 could be used to establish identity because of the gay marriages that took place there earlier this year. About 125 heterosexual couples have been married since then.
Here's something new I learned from this site: Less than a dozen states lack laws banning gay marriage, but only one state (Florida) bars gay couples from adopting children. How do the marriage banners sell that point? It's okay for you gay people to adopt children, but not to get married. I'm a little puzzled.
Most Americans who rely on just a full-time job earning the federal minimum wage cannot afford the rent and utilities on a one- or two-bedroom apartment, an advocacy group on low-income housing reported Monday.
For a two-bedroom rental alone, the typical worker must earn at least $15.37 an hour - nearly three times the federal minimum wage, the National Low Income Housing Coalition said in its annual "Out of Reach" report.
That figure assumes that a family spends no more than 30 percent of its gross income on rent and utilities - anything more is generally considered unaffordable by the government.
[...]
The median hourly wage in the United States is about $14, and more than one-quarter of the population earns less than $10 an hour, the report said.
[...]
The report quoted federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data that showed hourly wages rising about 2.6 percent over the past year, slower than the 2.9 percent rise in rents recorded in the Consumer Price Index.
[...]
In only four of the nation's 3,066 counties could a full-time worker making the federal minimum wage afford a typical one-bedroom apartment, the coalition said. Three were in Illinois: Clay, Crawford and Wayne counties; the other was Washington County, Fla.
[...]
States with more residents in rural areas were generally the most affordable, although no state's housing wage was lower than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, which has not changed since 1997.
West Virginia was the lowest at $9.31 an hour for a two-bedroom rental, followed by North Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama.
[...]
Overall...utility costs appear to be rising at a faster rate than rents, Pelletiere said. Add in stagnant wages and the housing situation for the nation's poor "has gotten worse over the last year," he said.
Christmas shoppers heading to Target stores to buy gifts may encounter a silent night this season — the retail giant has barred Salvation Army bell-ringers from soliciting donations at its stores’ entrances.
Target says that the dismissal is merely a hard-line interpretation of the company’s “no solicitation” policy, but others aren’t convinced. The lobby groups Christian Defense Coalition and the National Clergy Council have called for a boycott of Target stores this Christmas in response to what they see as discrimination against a charity group with Christian roots.
“As part of our boycott movement, we, along with a number of other groups and organizations, have begun urging affiliates, church members and supporters to boycott Target due to their eviction of Salvation Army bell-ringers,” said Dane Rose, program director at the National Clergy Council. “We feel that while Target’s CEO Bob Ulrich has said it was nothing to do with Christians in particular, we believe that’s precisely what it’s about.
The Jews no longer have a monopoly on the persecution complex, do they?
I have found that Target, which apparently donates money to environmental causes, is a decent replacement for Wal-Mart shopping. And the refusal of those bell-ringers, if I did any Christmas shopping, would be an added incentive to shop at Target. I understand that is probably a huge money-maker for the Salvation Army (and they wouldn't be nearly so objectionable if they didn't incessantly ring those damned bells), but I don't understand why lone beggars are not allowed to hold a tin cup outside a place of business when the Salvation Army can stand someone there day in and day out. I guess it's that small businessman overrun by the corporation thing we have going in this country.
Regarding Harrison Ford's willingness to be Hollywood's propaganda for Falluja
Yesterday I actually watched some TV. I skipped around from show to show as they got boring and as advertisements broke in. One show that I came back to from time to time was a focus on Hollywood director Phillip Noyce (an Australian), who directed a couple of movies with Harrison Ford portraying Jack Ryan, the CIA operative in Tom Clancy's novels.
I haven't liked Harrison Ford since the Star Wars movies back when. He is one of the most overrated, in my opinion, of Hollywood's stars - a one-dimensional character whom they say is just like the guy you see on the screen. Today's John Wayne (another terrible actor). Director Noyce was talking about how they decided to make Jack Ryan react differently to a viewing of murders than author Clancy had the character react in the book Patriot Games, which movie Noyce was directing. He said Clancy was very unhappy about the way they changed the character from someone who stonily appreciated the killing aspects that were a large part of his career. Noyce and Ford decided Ryan should be a sympathetic character for the audience. They looked on him as a hero, and they didn't believe a hero would be so cold-hearted. Obviously they understand very little about the CIA.
But, see how that works? It's the same mentality Americans have about all their war "heroes". Our guys have good hearts. Their killing is of a heroic, selfless nature. Harrison Ford is just portraying on screen the delusion that we wish to maintain about ourselves. Bringing you entertainment, not a portrayal of life. (There should be a different category for people who perform those roles - just call them entertainers, not actors - that insults the really fine actors out there.)
So anyway, it comes as no surprise to me this morning to see that Mr. Ford is considering another role guaranteed to entertain you and keep you divorced from reality.
Producers at Universal Pictures are developing what would be Hollywood's first feature film about the war in Iraq, with actor Harrison Ford ready to portray a U.S. general in the movie, the studio said on Friday.
The combat drama would be based on the upcoming book "No True Glory," an account of the battle for Falluja by Bing West, a Marine veteran and former U.S. assistant defense secretary now covering the war as a foreign correspondent, a studio spokesman said.
[...]
In "No True Glory" he would play Maj. Gen. James Mattis, the U.S. Marine commander ordered to lead an assault on the Iraqi city of Falluja, an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, after four Americans contractors were killed and mutilated there by a mob in March 2004.
The offensive was halted the following month, and the Marines were withdrawn until U.S. forces renewed their assault on the Sunni Muslim city following the American presidential election in November.
Here's the author Bing West (covering the war as a "foreign" correspondent??) on December 8 at MSNBC online:
The city's warlords, Janabi and Hadid, paid obeisance to the arch terrorist Zarqawi and competed for his favor by assassinations and bombings. They bragged their "martyr battalions" would cut to pieces any American force entering the city.
Deciding otherwise, the residents fled the city, leaving a few thousand jihadists to their fate. In a swift offensive, American soldiers and Marines swept in and hunted them down, destroying every house and mosque where Zarqawi's soldiers stood and fought. Seventeen-thousand buildings were searched, uncovering cache after cache of weapons. The numbers were staggering: Over 100,000 explosives found in just one section of the city.
Bulldozers and backhoes are now shoveling the debris from the streets. The few remaining insurgents emerging from the ruins have been quickly cut down. The other day, four of them fired from a cluttered alley at two passing Humvees. Half a minute later, they were dead. A Marine battalion commander, Lt. Col. Pat Malay, shot the last of the four.
"It's a good day when you get into it," Cpl. Michael Yerena, the vehicle commander in the second Humvee, said to me. "You feel you've earned your pay."
[...]
Politically, Fallujah was as infected as the air at the torture house at the corner of the park. Many of the residents were complicit in the reign of terror. Whether the city returns to its murderous ways depends on the resolve of the Iraqi security forces now moving into the city. Voter turnout in January will be an indictor of how the political winds are blowing.
Militarily, the battle of Fallujah was an unqualified success. Zarqawi has been deprived of his sanctuary. He will spend more time on the run and have less time to blow up and decapitate people.
And here's the reality of Falluja in today's news (which is very scantly reported; try changing your search to "al-Anbar", the province in which Falluja is located):
The US military has renewed its aerial assault of Falluja amid reports of fierce clashes with the city's resistance, an Iraqi journalist said.
According to independent Iraqi journalist Fadhil al-Badrani, US warplanes targeted Falluja's eastern and southern districts.
He said fierce clashes had broken out in the city centre between US forces who have been in the city since 8 November and Iraqi fighters who had infiltrated back in across the Euphrates river.
"There is no way to determine the number of casualties as US authorities have barred journalists and aid workers from entering Falluja," al-Badrani told Aljazeera.
U.S. forces, fighting what they now acknowledge as formidable foes in Iraq, are improvising along the road to an exit that Washington can call a success.
American-led forces face "a very, very sophisticated enemy," Major General Stephen Speakes said this week -- a change in tone from early postwar talk of a "dead-end" rabble of Saddam-era "thugs" which U.S. commanders said they were mopping up.
With troops taking hundreds of casualties a month, American commanders on Thursday tripled the bonus paid to reservists who re-enlist and almost doubled the initial recruitment bonus.
[...]
Falluja is a virtual ghost town, but Marines were still shelling guerrilla strongpoints on Friday, clouding hopes that most of the city's 300,000 residents can return home soon.
U.S. generals concede the Falluja attack did not quell the insurgency, but say it unsettled its Iraqi and foreign leaders.
Yet the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, Lieutenant General Lance Smith, also said this week the guerrillas were "becoming more effective", particularly at disrupting convoys.
"U.S. forces will allow families to return to the Andalous area starting Friday under a 10-day timetable," Mahmoud Ibrahim said, referring to a neighbourhood in the southwest of Falluja.
But there was no immediate evidence of anyone returning and witnesses said U.S. forces still battling pockets of die-hard insurgents shelled Falluja on Friday.
Reuters has the headline for this report as: "Falluja refugees to start returning". Always misleading.
There was no immediate evidence of anyone returning.
More than 200,000 people have yet to go home and many are in need of aid as night temperatures in Iraq sink toward freezing. U.S. forces have so far prevented refugees from returning, saying basic facilities must be restored first.
The city has been without power or water since the attack, which also destroyed hundreds of buildings and left power and communication lines severed and lying in the streets.
Iraq's interim government said on Thursday civilians would be allowed to start returning home next week.
Because they are going to have power and water by next week? Sure. Those "renewed" airstrikes should be a nice invitation to return, as well.
Aljazeera is reporting a little differently than Reuters (surprise!).
The US military had earlier said it could not recommend to the Iraqi interim government the return of residents to Falluja.
"At some point we will make a recommendation; we have not reached that point," Lieutenant Colonel Dan Wilson, a deputy commander of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters in a military base near Falluja late on Friday. Aljazeera article
And let's review the plan for when they do return, anyway.
Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least Dec. 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city.
With a few notable exceptions the media has accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Falluja.
[...]
Entry and exit from the city will be restricted.
[...]
Fallujans are to wear their universal identity cards in plain sight at all times.
[...]
No private automobiles will be allowed inside the city.
[...]
Only those Fallujans cleared through American intelligence vettings will be allowed to work on the reconstruction of the city.
[...]
Those engaged in reconstruction work – that is, work – in the city may be organized into "work brigades."
Yeah, but who? Call me crazy, but I'd say it's these people...
Nearly half of all Americans believe the US government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.
The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.
Researchers also found that respondents who paid more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.
According to today's Washington Post ("You Can Tell a Republican by His Stripes," 12/17/04) Viacom's Gail McKinnon sent an e-mail this week to offices in the U.S. House of Representatives regarding a job opening in Viacom's government relations department. The e-mail calls for a male, Republican to fill the open position and reads as follows: "Importance: High We need to hire a junior lobbyist/PAC manager. Attached is a job description. Salary is $85-90K. Must be a male with Republican stripes."
"This is a blatant violation of federal law prohibiting discrimination against women in hiring," Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW said today. "It is stunning that one of the largest corporations in America is so comfortable violating this 40 year-old prohibition that it has openly sent an e-mail advertising its discriminatory hiring practices to the very body that passed the anti-discrimination laws in the first place.
Just spending some of that political capital the Rethugs won. Honestly, I don't think they believe they are subject to any laws, and if they are, well I'd expect the prohibition against discrimination to be lifted some time soon.
Bob has the details. Monsanto has just put a huge chunk of money down at the University of Missouri for our new $60 million "Life Sciences" building - our bio-tech showcase for the future of gen science. We have this lovely, if misleading, display garden on the south of the building using agricultural crops as ornamentals. Oh, look. how earthy, how basic, how real.
Bob is reporting that Monsanto just pressured the University of California at Berkeley to dismiss a professor who published an article critical of genetic engineering of food crops. This goes to my constant complaint that research at public institutions should not be funded by private companies. (I know, I know - where will the money come from? Gee, I don't know, but we don't have any trouble funding sports arenas.) The first thing you see when you enter the new Life Sciences building at MU is a humongous sign on the wall behind the reception desk: M O N S A N T O A U D I T O R I U M. A couple million for research equipment was all it took. How many dollars in grant money for research they will be pouring through the institution, I couldn't say. But I feel quite certain it will make that look like pocket change. I wonder if they're going to be leaning on the research? Hmmmm? Whaddya think?
Glufosinate, widely used in the U.S. as a super herbicide for herbicide-resistant genetically modified crops, is like a "mock neurotransmitter" that has an aggressive effect on brains, he said.
If an embryo or a baby is exposed to the chemical, it can affect behavior, as it disturbs gene functions that regulate the developing brain, he said.
[...]
A decade ago, the late Toshiko Fujii, a one-time professor of medicine at Teikyo University, conducted research in which she found that the main component of this GMO-compatible herbicide had adverse effects on the brains of baby rats.
[...]
"The chemical industry has not been considering this kind of risk on the developing human brain, which is a fragile, fine chemical machine," he said.
It's true. The tests are all about carcinogens and teratogens.
Voters incensed over a superintendent's decision to remove a Nativity scene from an elementary school Christmas program took out their anger at the ballot box, helping to defeat bond measures worth nearly $11 million.
Tuesday's rejection of the two measures — one of which would have paid for construction of an elementary school — marked the first time in more than a decade that voters in this bedroom community west of Oklahoma City denied additional funds for their school district.
[...]
The day before the election, dozens of parents at a school board meeting expressed outrage at Superintendent Karl Springer's decision to end the school's tradition of closing the Christmas play with a manger scene.
[...]
"You've got to tell them you're not going to sit by and let them take away your rights," said Tim Pope, a former Republican legislator and leader of the campaign against the bond issues.
[...]
[School superintendent Springer said...] "I had two strong legal opinions that said something we had planned could be illegal. I wanted to make sure we protected our community from some kind of lawsuit."
About 100 people protested outside the auditorium where the play was performed Thursday night. The protesters staged their own live Nativity scene. Some carried signs reading, "No Christ. No Christmas. Know Christ. Know Christmas."
Protestors outside a school Christmas program. Well, there's a little civics lesson for the kiddies.
Some parents were angry that Santa Claus, a Christmas tree and symbols of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa were left in the production.
Ooooooh. Now we get to the details, huh? Somewhere down around paragraph whatever after you quit reading.
Indeed, Super Springer, how do you add that up? You thought it might be illegal to have a nativity, but not symbols of other religious ceremony? Good thinking. Give those rabid righteous folk the fuel they need to burn you at the stake.
"We have fairly good information that there are senior former Baathists, members of what they call the 'New Regional Command' operating out of Syria with impunity, and providing direction and financing to the insurgency in Iraq. That needs to stop," [General George] Casey told reporters here.
Cuba on Friday put up two huge billboards in front of the U.S. mission with pictures of abused Iraqi prisoners, a swastika and the word "fascists" in bold red letters.
The photos of hooded and bloodied Iraqis at the Abu Ghraib prison were apparently placed in retaliation for a U.S. Christmas display which includes the number 75, in reference to 75 pro-democracy activists imprisoned 20 months ago for long terms.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. and Cuban officials.
Cuba had demanded the display be taken down earlier this week.
[...]
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said on Wednesday the display and number 75 would remain until the holidays were over.
Ray McGovern picks up the story that American papers have been slow to grasp: China and Russia have agreed to conduct joint military activities, in China, in 2005.
A federal judge today threatened to hold a prosecutor in contempt if he failed to get a letter from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft by the end of the day stating his refusal to explain why the only death penalty ever sought in an immigrant smuggling case is against a black man.
U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore made the threat after Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Roberts told her that Ashcroft was refusing to release information on how the Justice Department determined it would seek the death penalty against Tyrone Williams and not the 11 other death-penalty eligible defendants in the case.
Until the moment he turns over the office, he's still going to be John Ashcroft. (Well, and beyond that, presumably. But, hopefully, that won't be our problem.)
Gilmore, who had ordered Roberts in several other hearings to produce the information, said she wanted a letter from Ashcroft by the end of the day saying that he was refusing to comply with her order because it violated the constitutional prerogatives of the executive branch.
Roberts said it was doubtful that he could obtain the letter.
Gilmore said, "They are taking the position that they can indict whoever they want to and charge the death penalty and not disclose the reason."
That is precisely their position on everything. Whatever the reason they are seeking the death penalty, the fact that they don't think they have to disclose it is a typical BushCo attitude.
In recent days, a coalition of human rights groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights has brought new cases of abuse to public attention. Using the Freedom of Information Act, they have pried thousands of pages of previously secret documents from the Defense Department and other agencies.
[...]
If justice has been done in a few cases, the ACLU documents show that abuses were more common -- and more extreme -- than the Bush administration had previously conceded. More important, however, the documents show that the impetus for abuse came from above, not below.
[...]
In the files released by the government, FBI officials with special expertise in counterterrorism and interrogation techniques recorded their ongoing debate with Army officers about the harsh, coercive techniques authorized by the Pentagon. They were as concerned about the efficacy of those methods -- which they believe often produce poor intelligence -- as with possible violations of law and regulations. But the commanders overseeing the military interrogations simply dismissed the sharp warnings of the law enforcement and intelligence officers.
The abuses continued, in some cases even after the initial furor over Abu Ghraib. What's more, an internal FBI memo indicates that the directive to discard traditional restraints came from the very highest civilian official in the Pentagon: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
The White House gave a new vote of confidence on Friday to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld amid growing criticism of him from members of President Bush's own Republican Party.
"Secretary Rumsfeld is doing a great job leading our efforts at the Department of Defense to win the war on terrorism and to help bring about a free and peaceful Iraq, and the president is focused on working closely with him on those matters," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The new Intelligence reform bill is a more stunning attack on the Bill of Rights than the Patriot Act. Most people have no idea how dramatically their "inalienable" rights have been savaged, or to what extent the Congress has sold them out. It's no exaggeration to say that the foundation of personal liberty, guaranteed in the law, is cracking at the base. It'll be a miracle if we can put it back together in time to pass it on to our children.
As usual, the role of the media has been pivotal in obfuscating the details of the bill. They've fed the hysteria over the establishment of a NID; (National Intelligence Director) a glamour position that has been represented as vital to stopping another 9-11. What rubbish. Teaching Condi Rice how to read a simple e-mail from bin Laden would be twice as effective.
[...]
Rumsfeld is conducting his own secret government, and has been for some time. That takes money, and lots of it.
[...]
The new bill creates a new national ID card ("Let me see your papers") by federalizing driver's licenses. The plan is to establish federal guidelines in the design of licenses that can be used as a means for tracking people. These standards are unnecessary unless the government is developing a social strategy that is so heinous that it's bound to generate more enemies. The increased repression and the greater disparity in personal wealth suggest that this is the case.
Democracy Now elaborates on the new national ID: "There's all sorts of new technologies that could be incorporated into the driver's license to link it to all sorts of public and private-sector databases. And you could also imagine putting an RFID chip in the license that would allow it to be tracked remotely. So, this is something the 9/11 commission had actually recommended be done, that the driver's license should be something like an internal passport of the sort that we've seen in the Soviet Union in the past, and although the Congress wasn't willing to explicitly go that far, they have laid the groundwork for that kind of checkpoint society in the future."
Of course, I'm sure Condi can read. It wasn't her ability to read it that was the problem, but...continue reading...
[Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader,] told Giovanni Minoli of Italian state television's investigative news program "We Are History" that he was still waiting for the United States to reward him for giving up prohibited weapons.
He said the move was responsible for Mr. Bush's election victory and said he now wanted the United States and other Western nations to provide Libya with nuclear technology for nonmilitary purposes. He said Iran and North Korea might follow his lead if they saw that Libya was compensated for its actions.
"It was Mr. Bush who promised to reward Libya if we got rid of this program," Colonel Qaddafi said, according to an English-language transcript. "We know that with this withdrawal, we contributed by 50 percent to his electoral campaign."
He said Libya was now a partner in the American-led campaign against terrorism, adding that one of his country's greatest contributions in the fight was to "present itself as a model of moderate Islam."
[...]
Colonel Qaddafi elaborated on his solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling for the creation of a single state called "Isratine."
[...]
Colonel Qaddafi also held to the conceit that he did not play an official role in governing the country.
"The power is now in the hands of the Libyan people," he said. "Every Libyan, man or woman, exercises the power, every Libyan over 18 of age, man or woman - they all participate in the popular congress and in the people's committees. I do not exercise any power."
I have no doubt that Bush-Blair-Co promised him something tangible in return for his timely agreement to play the part of the shocked and awed country that would be an example to the rest of the Arab world.
Qaddafi is absolutely one of the best world leaders for entertainment value, and he is the most nattily clad, bar none.
Judges who feel a need use their judicial office to promote the Ten Commandments should take a refresher course in constitutional law, focusing particularly on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It doesn't matter that Judge Ashley McKathan of Alabama has received nothing but supportive calls and messages since he wore a robe in his courtroom with the Ten Commandments embroidered on his chest. The Bill of Rights does not give way to popular opinion; it protects everyone from the government's endorsement of religion. Judges, of all people, should understand that simple concept.
Christian conservatives frustrated by court rulings that have found a school voucher program unconstitutional may have hit upon a possible solution: changing the constitution.
Sen. Daniel Webster, a former House speaker and now the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday he is exploring the possibility of a citizens initiative to repeal the 136-year-old wording that separates church and state in Florida.
[...]
Gov. Jeb Bush this week said he was not convinced that a constitutional amendment was necessary because the Supreme Court might still overturn the appeals court.
[...]
Meyer cautioned potential supporters, though, that opening state money to religion meant opening it to all religions, including fringe groups.
"The religious right needs to be careful what they wish for," he said.
No, they never think of that. They think their religion is the only one being shortchanged. Once they have the what they wish for, they'll figure out how to bypass the others.
Strippers in San Antonio will now be required to wear an "identification badge" while working. Requiring strip club employees to wear such badges will, according to the city council, "increase safety." Of course, displaying the real names of strippers will actually jeopardize their safety by exposing them to stalkers, but common sense often has little to do with legislation -- and the stated purpose often has little to do with the true purpose, which in this case is probably a desire to drive the clubs out of business.
On Monday, protest organizers from A.N.S.W.E.R. and their lawyers met with the National Park Service, which has been delaying meeting to discuss the permit requests. Despite the fact that A.N.S.W.E.R. applied nearly a year ago for areas along the inaugural route of Pennsylvania Avenue, law enforcement has stated that it will not yet tell the protest organizers whether and where they will grant inaugural route permits. Instead, they are asserting that they are waiting for the Bush-Cheney Presidential Inaugural Committee to decide how much space along the route it wants to consume and privatize. Those who reflect an antiwar view or a view in opposition to the Bush administration's domestic policies, according to the government, will come last, if at all. Law enforcement authorities refused to confirm that there would be equal access for those who are not paying Bush and Cheney for the privilege of standing along Pennsylvania Avenue and they also would not tell the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition what areas would be available to construct antiwar bleachers similar to those it permits the Bush/Cheney PIC to construct for each inauguration.
[...]
At the same time as we are continuing to secure permits along the parade route we want to make it clear to everyone you do not need a permit to come to Pennsylvania Avenue and to make your views known. Pennsylvania Avenue does not belong to Corporate America and the ultra-right. Everyone organizing buses, car caravans or individual transportation should be at Pennsylvania Ave. by 9:00 am on January 20.
[...]
If you are organizing transportation from your city, fill out the Transportation Form to list your information on the A.N.S.W.E.R. website and help spread the word.
ANSWER has more information and a way to donate to the protests here.
Whatever happens, protestors wont' be allowed within Bubbleboy's line of sight or camera angles. Bet.
The chilling reality of what Fallujah has become is only now seeping out, as the US military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups such as the Red Crescent Society. The date of access keeps being postponed, partly because of ongoing fighting - only this week more air strikes were called in and fighting "in pockets" remains fierce (despite US pronouncements of success weeks ago) - and partly because of the difficulties military commanders have faced in attempting to prettify their ugly handiwork. Residents will now officially be denied entry until at least December 24; and even then, only the heads of households will be allowed in, a few at a time, to assess damage to their residences in the largely destroyed city.
With a few notable exceptions, the media have accepted the recent virtual news blackout in Fallujah. The ongoing fighting in the city, especially in "cleared" neighborhoods, is proving an embarrassment and so, while military spokesmen continue to announce American casualties, they now come not from the city itself but, far more vaguely, from "al-Anbar province", of which the city is a part.
[...]
A report by Katarina Kratovac of the Associated Press (picked up by the Washington Post) about military plans for managing Fallujah once it is pacified (if it ever is) proved a notable exception to the arid coverage in the major media. Kratovac based her piece on briefings by the military leadership, notably Lieutenant-General John F Sattler, commander of the Marines in Iraq. By combining her evidence with some resourceful reporting by Dahr Jamail (and bits and pieces of information from reports printed up elsewhere), a reasonably sharp vision of the conditions the US is planning for Fallujah's "liberated" residents comes into focus. When they are finally allowed to return, if all goes as the Americans imagine, here's what the city's residents may face:
[...]
The name tags and the high-tech identity cards are meant to guard against both forgeries and unlawful movement within the city. The military-style work gangs are to ensure that everyone is under close supervision at all times. The restricted entry points are clearly meant to keep all weapons out. Assumedly kept out as well will be most or all reporters (they tend to inflame public opinion), most medical personnel (they tend to "exaggerate" civilian casualties), and most Sunni clerics (they oppose the occupation and support the insurgency). We can also expect close scrutiny of computers (which can be used for nefarious communications), ambulances (which have been used to smuggle weapons and guerrillas), medicines (which can be used to patch up wounded fighters who might still be hiding somewhere), and so on.
[...]
[T]he most revealing element of the plan may be the banning of all cars, the enforcement of which, all by itself, would make the city unlivable; and which therefore demonstrates both the impracticality of the US vision and a callous disregard for the needs and rights of the Fallujans.
[...]
It is not much of a reach to see that, at least in their fantasies, US planners would like to set up what sociologists call a "total institution". Like a mental hospital or a prison, Fallujah, at least as reimagined by the Americans, will be a place where constant surveillance equals daily life and the capacity to interdict "suspicious" behavior (however defined) is the norm. But "total institution" might be too sanitized a term to describe activities that so clearly violate international law as well as fundamental morality. Those looking for a descriptor with more emotional bite might consider one of those used by correspondent Pepe Escobar of Asia Times Online: either "American gulag" for those who enjoy Stalinist imagery or "concentration camp" for those who prefer the Nazi version of the same.
[...]
These dystopian plans are a direct consequence of the fact that the conquest of Fallujah, despite the destruction of the city, visibly did not accomplish its primary goal - "to wipe out militants and insurgents and break the back of guerrillas in Fallujah".
[...]
[T]he history of the Iraq war thus far, and the history of guerrilla wars in general, suggest that there will simply be a new round of struggle, and that carefully laid military plans will begin to disintegrate with the very first arrivals. There is no predicting what form the new struggle will take, but the US military is going to have a great deal of difficulty controlling a large number of rebellious, angry people inside the gates of America's new mini-police state.
"The interview lasted for more than four hours. The president seems in good health, much better compared to his first appearance before the court," the Amman-based legal team said in a statement emailed to news agencies on Thursday.
"The president appreciated his defence committee efforts," the statement said.
The ousted Iraqi president's lawyers said earlier this week they did not recognise the Iraqi interim government's efforts to try him or his deputies because they had been denied access to counsel.
[...]
Khasawneh, appointed by Saddam's wife Sajida, had threatened legal action against the US administration unless members of the team were allowed to see their client.
[...]
Lawyers were also not able to see documents on which to prepare their defences.
Opinion polling consistently shows that 70% of Iraqis support a religious state (IRI Sept. 2004), and even larger numbers think that clerics should have a central role in politics and constitution-making (Gallup, April 2004). Moreover, Iraqis are not going to have a choice of secular or religious parties, since they are voting on a list system and the lists are mixed. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, e.g., is running on the same list with Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But the upshot is that the INC will be swamped by the religious parties and by pro-Sistani notables.
Iyad Allawi has announced his own list, but I personally doubt it will do very well. His favorability numbers had fallen to only 47% in September, down from the 60s when he first came in, and my guess is that his standing has continued to fall because he has not done what he said he would do-- bring security.
Which makes the whole polling business academic. Or should.
In Samarra, where U.S. occupation forces launched a major offensive nearly two months ago to crush resistance there, Iraqi anti-occupation fighters overran a police station and seized weapons.
Several other bombing attacks saw another daily round of blood-letting across northern and western areas in Iraq.
Despite reinforcement of the U.S. troops in Iraq, the Pentagon acknowledged that anti-occupation rebels were getting better at disrupting U.S. forces.
Now, the American soldiers are relying more on air than road transport fearing possible attacks.
"They have had a growing understanding that where they can affect us is in the logistics flow," said Central Command deputy head Lieutenant General Lance Smith. "They have gotten more effective in using IEDs (improvised explosive devices)."
George W. Bush told reporters, "we will continue to make it clear to both Syria and Iran ... that meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their interest."
Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian dissident who is the first Muslim woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, “is being prevented from publishing her memoirs in the United States because of regulations that prohibit ‘trading with the enemy’." Her book is an effort to "help correct Western stereotypes of Islam, especially the image of Muslim women as docile, forlorn creatures."
But at the same time, the US State Department – which is allegedly in charge of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of people who live under repressive, authoritarian regimes -- posts on its website a Fact Sheet entitled, “Iran: Voices Struggling To Be Heard.”
And prominent among these ‘Voices’ is – you guessed it -- Shirin Ebadi, who is described as one of Iran’s ‘Voices of Hope’.
Makes perfect sense to me. This is a huge bureaucracy we have going here. It just can't turn on a dime, you know. We don't do nuance.
Update 2:20pm: Oops...already taken care of.
American publishers are free to engage in publishing activities with people in Cuba, Iran and Sudan without fear of violating U.S. economic penalties against those countries, the Bush administration said on Dec. 15.
President Bush is considering asking Congress to freeze domestic spending next year or cut it slightly, even as he prods lawmakers to allow younger workers to divert some of their Social Security taxes into personal investment accounts.
The two plans, which promise to be dominant issues next year, share a common thread: massive federal deficits that have set consecutive records, peaking at $413 billion last year. The shortfalls have prompted Bush to seek savings from non-defense, non-domestic security programs, and have limited his options for shoring up Social Security for the looming retirement of baby boomers.
"This is an issue on which I campaigned and I'm still standing," Bush said of revamping Social Security at a White House economic conference, words he hoped would prompt support from lawmakers loathe to meddle with the giant retirement system.
I recall your post-9/11 encouragement to get out there and shop to show the terrorists they couldn't scare us. Now you want to freeze domestic spending, but you also just recently said:
"People can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit."
Buy domestic corporate products, but don't spend on domestic programs. You want us to spend money on your interests, but you don't want to spend any (of our money) on us. So, I'm now imagining that trade deficit remark was dripping with sarcasm.
Two months after the government recommended that scarce flu shots be reserved for people most at risk, health officials are now worried that tens of thousands of doses could go to waste, and they are considering easing the restrictions.
The demand for flu shots has turned out to be lower than expected because the flu season has been mild so far. Also, it turns out that more than half of all elderly or chronically ill adults have not even tried to get vaccinated because they figured no shots would be available, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.
This week, the Death Penalty Information Center put out a press release about the continuing decline in the national rate of executions since 2001. In 1999, when he announced he was running for President, Bush had Texas execute 35 prisoners. In 2000, while in full campaign mode, Bush allowed 40 executions. So, with simple math, we can conclude that nearly half of his executions occurred while he was running for President. In 2001, with Bush safely esconced in the White House, Texas only executed 17 prisoners. It bounced back up to 33 in 2002, when Governor Rick Perry was up for re-election, but it has since dropped into the low 20s.
Conclusions? That Texas prisoners are safer because Bush left Texas? That they're fucked in election years? Either way, since Bush is no longer governor, executions have been on a downward slide. Come up with your own conclusion.
The Rude Pundit makes my point in The Rude Pundit's mince-no-words way.
It's not that Bush's vetting failed or that Alberto Gonzales is an incompetent piece of shit. The point here is that they just didn't care. The Bush administration thought it could do whatever it wanted in the wake of the election and that nobody would fucking care. And the other point is that it doesn't matter. Bush could have a cabinet made up of deaf-mute quadriplegics who shit themselves on a regular basis, and they'd be as effective as whoever Bush appoints. But the Kerik nomination, among so many other things, lays bare the arrogance and contempt the Bush administration feels for the American public. We just happened to catch this one. How many others get by us?
Only after public complaints, the Pentagon will find money to armor Humvees and Derr Rumsfiend is now forced to actually sign condolence letters.
Rumsfeld, perhaps in a last-ditch effort to make nice and keep his job, has reversed policy and will now personally sign KIA letters to the families of the deceased. It's about damn time. Sure, he's a busy man and there are far too many casualties, but as one principally responsible for getting us into this mess, signing the letters is a small way for him to assume some responsibility and do the right thing by the families of those who sacrificed their lives.
[...]
Stars and Stripes has the story about the change in policy, including Rummy's statement and several quotes from irate families who received "your son is dead" letters with a stamped signature at the bottom.
What on earth could there be use for a system that only works sporadically, and only under conditions of your of own choosing? Offense, of course, because you choose when to attack -- and, unlike defense, it's okay if only one out of your four offensive moves succeed.
You see, we are developing the capacity to threaten strikes from space. That way, less worries about armies, occupations, foreign bases, military recruiting, etc. All those headaches that may potentially limit the scope their imperial ambitions.
I think this is a great example of the success of the propaganda system. Journalists keep repeating a "defense shield" is being developed, tested and somehow not performing well when a four year old child can figure out that this is clearly an offensive system.
The progressive critique has usually concentrated on the corporate boondoggle nature of such projects but I think that's also missing the mark. Not to say the money being made isn't a factor in these decisions, but the real issue is something much more serious and much more dangerous for the very existence of the planet.
Yes, the reports just keep on coming out. And yes, the torture and inhumane treatment just keeps on going on. And yes, there is much more that has yet to be told. And some that will never. And they keep on calling it "abuse". Check this report:
Marines in Iraq conducted mock executions of juvenile prisoners last year, burned and tortured other detainees with electrical shocks, and warned a Navy corpsman they would kill him if he treated any injured Iraqis, according to military documents made public Tuesday.
The latest revelations of prisoner abuse cases, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against the government, involved previously unknown incidents in which 11 Marines were punished for abusing detainees.
[...]
The mistreatment occurred as early as May 2003, months before the first allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib were recorded. And the most recent case involving prisoner abuse by the Marines occurred in June, two months after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.
After the reporter has just said that the marines "burned and tortured" detainees, he follows it with the description "prisoner abuse". Where do these people learn to report?
And where do our Marines learn to be human? Or I should ask, when will they?
The Pentagon confirmed this week that four soldiers were accused of killing a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002, but charges against three of them were dropped.
In the case that drew the stiffest punishment, a one-year prison sentence for the Marine, a detainee at Mahmoudiya was shocked with an electric transformer. Wires were held against his shoulders, and "the detainee danced as he was shocked," the documents state.
[...]
In Karbala, a Marine held a 9-millimeter pistol to the back of a detainee's head while another Marine snapped a picture. A glass of water then was poured on the prisoner's head, and he was photographed with an American flag draped over his body.
A detainee in Mahmoudiya suffered second-degree burns and blisters on the back of his hands when "a Marine guard squirted alcohol-based sanitizer" on him. A match was lighted, igniting the prisoner.
[...]
Navy investigators also interviewed a group of corpsmen from Washington state who were dispatched to Iraq last year. Two of them spoke about being intimidated by Marines there.
One corpsman said he was cautioned not to talk to others about prisoner abuse. "There was a lot of peer pressure to keep one's mouth shut," he said.
Another corpsman said, "We were told not to exhaust our resources on the Iraqis. Several Marines told me that if I provided medical services to any Iraqi military or civilian personnel, that they [the Marines] would kill me."
As the illicit romance between former top cop Kerik and publishing titan Judith Regan went down the drain in late 2002, the jilted Kerik snapped, according to people who knew them both.
He not only followed his ex-lover around town — he seemed to be following her children, two business associates of Regan's told me yesterday.
One associate, who has not seen or spoken to Regan in a year and a half, said, "She had me in her office one day, raving about how he was stalking her." That was in late 2002, long before Kerik came this close to leading Homeland Security.
"He's insane!" Regan told the associate.
When Regan ate in a restaurant with another man, Kerik called her cellphone, or had the management page her, said the source. Once he got her on the phone, "He'd describe the man she was having dinner with. He seemed to be watching her through the window," the associate said. He kept a key to her apartment, said another pal, and showed up unexpectedly. On a business trip to Los Angeles, she said, he had her followed.
But what frightened Regan most was a call in which Kerik he claimed to be following her son as he drove back to college in Massachusetts.
"He said, 'I'm following Patrick. I'm at this exit at the turnpike. I want you to know this is where he is,' " the associate recalled.
While the married Kerik has all but acknowledged that he carried on affairs with not one, but two women in his Battery Park love nest — an apartment that had been originally donated to 9/11 rescue workers — he denied stalking.
Personally, I think this administration has gotten away with so much criminal activity and so much in-your-face unethical activity, and gotten their questionable nominations approved with amazing ease, so that they rightly assume they can do whatever they want and choose whomever they want to do it with them. Why not Bernard Kerik? Maybe they figure they'll just keep on until they're stopped. Why check themselves? Why not see just how far they can go? There is an unbelievable list of mob connections and fleecing the taxpayers and you-name-it on Kerik. Josh Marshall is covering it. You should read some of it. Talk about head-spinning. If they "vetted" this guy like they say they did, there is no other conclusion but that they wanted to try to fly him in our faces.
We're their abused co-dependent spouse. They'll hit us again.
“My list is now 32,” says Salam as he arrives at the hotel, “Now 32 of my friends have been killed.”
He still has tears in his eyes, even though he’s being stoic. Another of his friends has been shot and killed.
“You know I feel like shit every time I add someone to my list. Sometimes it feels like it is every day,” he says.
Welcome to Iraq. Where the news gets better with each passing day.
Heavy fighting is continuing in Fallujah. While the military claims to be in control of the situation, they are bombing areas of the city again with warplanes.
Sources in and around the city continue to state that the mujahideen are in control of large sections of the city as they’ve somehow managed to get more weapons in the city.
[...]
7 Marines have been killed in Al-Anbar province-read Fallujah. Does the military think it helps them to not announce that there has been ongoing heavy fighting in Fallujah for the last few days? How does this help the families of the soldiers there? What is this like for the loved ones back home who are living in an information blackout? When they know that the only hard news they will truly get from the military is when they are informed that their loved one is dead?
[A]pparently, Rumsfeld’s obsession with machines and their efficiency has translated into his using one to replace his own John Hancock on KIA (killed in action) letters to parents and spouses. Two Pentagon-based colonels, who’ve both insisted on anonymity to protect their careers, have indignantly reported that the SecDef has relinquished this sacred duty to a signature device rather than signing the sad documents himself. ...
I then went to about a dozen next-of-kin of American soldiers KIA in Iraq. Most agreed with the colonels’ accusations and said they’d noticed and been insulted by the machine-driven signature. One father bitterly commented that he thought it was a shame that the SecDef could keep his squash schedule but not find the time to sign his dead son’s letter. Several also felt compelled to tell me that the letter they received from George Bush also looked as though it was not signed personally by the president.
Dr. Ted Smith, whose son Eric was among the first 100 killed in Iraq, notes that the letter he received “from the commander in chief was signed with a thick, green marking pen. I thought it was stamped then and do even now. He had time for golf and the ranch but not enough to sign a decent signature with a pen for his beloved hero soldiers. I was going to send the letter back but did not. I am sorry I didn’t.”
Sometimes you just shake your head, hoping that what you're hearing and reading will right itself into something that makes more sense. Doesn't always work. Especially when what you are reading or hearing has come from the mouth of the Oaf of Office. The Rude Punditposts:
Hey! Who Ever Said That This Presidenting Stuff Is Hard Work?
Bush noted that in addition to the budget deficit, America suffers from a huge trade deficit.
"That's easy to resolve," Bush said. "People can buy more United States products if they're worried about the trade deficit."
Bush's comments came a day after the government reported that America's trade deficit hit a monthly record of $55.5 billion in October.
Also easy to resolve: homelessness (people can buy more homes), sickness (people can buy more medicines), shortage of seats to popular sporting events (people can just buy more tickets), and countless others.
And anyway, obviously from his quip, His Slowliness the Dope isn't worried about the trade deficit.
Britain's highest court dealt a blow to the government's anti-terrorism policies on Thursday by ruling that the detention of foreign terrorist suspects without trial is illegal.
A panel of Law Lords ruled in favor of nine Muslim men who were appealing against being held without charge under Britain's Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act on suspicion of being involved in terrorist attacks.
The legislation, introduced in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, allows British police to detain foreign terrorist suspects indefinitely without charge or trial if they are suspected of involvement in international terrorism and opt not to leave the country.
The Law Lords ruled that such detention on suspicion alone runs contrary to European human rights laws.
So how do you make a law that contravenes another law in the first place? And should the contravening law be abolished?
The ruling deals a severe blow to Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, coming just hours after Home Secretary David Blunkett -- the architect of the government's anti-terrorism policies -- resigned over allegations that he fast-tracked the visa application of his former lover's nanny.
Revenge of the nannies week.
It's not expected that those detained under the illegal law (that's funny) will be released, however. The Blair government is just as lawless as the Bush one.
The White House medal ceremony was really about George W. Bush. It had a slight touch of the absurd to it, as if facts do not matter and failure does not count.
As if?!?
No one is ever held accountable, because the president will not do as much for himself. He admits no mistakes because he is convinced that he has made none. The terrorist attacks themselves, for which Tenet should have been sacked, are no one's fault because they cannot be the president's fault. He was warned. Condi Rice was put on notice. But, still, who could have known?
To make these awards in the face of failure -- the mounting American death toll, the awful suffering of the Iraqis, the looming possibility of civil war, the nose-thumbing of the still-at-large Osama bin Laden and the madness of making war for a nonexistent reason -- has the creepy feel of the old communist states, where incompetents wore medals and harsh facts were denied.
1984 all over again. Actually, everything is really about George Bush. Extrapolate, citizens.
Perhaps the grand design(er) is simply trying its best to give us every sign that we are living in a pretend world. Oh. Oh. Shorting out. Circuits cannot handle the problem. Bzzzzzzzzphhtt.
Bob has a couple of good links and rants about the brouhaha in the Ukraine. Read them. All I'll say is that there's a claim that Yuschenko's medical problem is not dioxin poisoning, and a revelation that Dick Morris is his political consultant (!), claiming to have "orchestrated" the poisoning story (but not admitting it's a fake). Also, Dick is claiming that some Republican is negotiating behind-the-scene deals with Yanukovych. Go read the posts. And be sure to click the link to Justin Raimondo. Crazy stuff for a crazy world.
The Pentagon says it's punished a total of 130 troops for abusing prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan or Guantanamo Bay. Officials say the vast majority of the cases, about 100 of them, involve the Army. That branch has deployed the most troops and provides the guards at detention facilities.
The Army says 17 soldiers charged with abuse were dismissed from the military. Another 25 cases were referred to court martial. The rest received nonjudicial or administrative punishment or a letter of reprimand.
Finally got to make that missile defense test. (Remember? The bazillion dollar one that we'll use to defend ourselves if our enemies attack when the weather is clear?) The test, which was postponed twice because of bad weather, cost us $85 million.
After a rocket carrying a mock warhead as a target was launched from Kodiak, Alaska, the interceptor, which was intended to go aloft 16 minutes later and home in on the target 100 miles over the earth, automatically shut down because of "an unknown anomaly," according to the Missile Defense Agency of the Defense Department.
The launching had been planned as the first full test in two years of this element of the Bush administration's effort to deploy a multilayered missile defense shield.
"I was just in the editing room, working on the last piece," Bill Moyers says. "I thought: 'I've done this so many times, and each one is as difficult as the last one.' Maybe finally I've broken the habit."
It hasn't been so much a habit for Moyers as a truth-telling mission during his three decades as a TV journalist. But come next week, he will sign off from "Now," the weekly PBS newsmagazine he began in 2002, as, at age 70, he retires from television.
"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee," says Moyers. "We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."
For that, his absence after the Dec. 17 "Now" will be all the more keenly felt: Moyers' interest has always been the American people.
A humanist who's at home with subjects ranging from the power of myth to media consolidation, from drug addiction to modern dance, from religion to environmental abuse, Moyers has produced hundreds of hours of diverse programming on issues that others shortchange, sidestep or simply fail to notice. And through it all, he has looked upon his audience not as targeted consumers, or as voters split along a Red State-Blue State divide, but as his fellow citizens.
[...]
"I was just in the editing room, working on the last piece," Bill Moyers says. "I thought: 'I've done this so many times, and each one is as difficult as the last one.' Maybe finally I've broken the habit."
It hasn't been so much a habit for Moyers as a truth-telling mission during his three decades as a TV journalist. But come next week, he will sign off from "Now," the weekly PBS newsmagazine he began in 2002, as, at age 70, he retires from television.
"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee," says Moyers. "We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people."
For that, his absence after the Dec. 17 "Now" will be all the more keenly felt: Moyers' interest has always been the American people.
A humanist who's at home with subjects ranging from the power of myth to media consolidation, from drug addiction to modern dance, from religion to environmental abuse, Moyers has produced hundreds of hours of diverse programming on issues that others shortchange, sidestep or simply fail to notice. And through it all, he has looked upon his audience not as targeted consumers, or as voters split along a Red State-Blue State divide, but as his fellow citizens.
The Whatcom County Library System won a prestigious national library award for fighting the FBI over a subpoena this summer.
The library system will receive the University of Illinois' Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award in Boston on Jan. 15.
The award honors the library system for refusing to give the FBI loan records when someone found a written note inside of a book about Osama bin Laden.
As he leaves the Capitol after taking the oath of office Jan. 20, President Bush (news - web sites) is expected to exercise a familiar presidential prerogative — reviewing the troops.
Then the real embrace of the military begins.
Bush, who campaigned for reelection as a wartime president, will have more than the usual military flourishes at his second-term inaugural ceremonies.
With 138,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq and casualties reported nearly every day, the White House wanted to showcase the role of the armed services in the war against terrorism as well as in the nation's premier display of a peaceful transition of power.
If you keep 'em poor, you get your army without drafting. "Volunteers."
The Pentagon reports that for the year 2004, its 15,000 recruiters have already recruited over 212,000 people, surpassing its goal of 210,000, at a cost of $ 14,000 per recruit, and Marine Staff Sergeant Mark Ayalin at Quantico Recruiting Command confirms, “Recruitment figures haven't been affected by the situation in Iraq at all.”
[...]
A 1996 Navy Recruiting Command study admits “In our analysis, family incomes proved to be the most important economic variable … Enlistment rates are much higher when income is lowest and college enrollment rates are low.”
[...]
“Economic conscription is easier when the economy gets bad. Recruiters often amplify the bad economic conditions and present themselves as the only strategy," explained counter recruiter and former publisher of AWOL magazine Mario Hardy.
The No Child Left Behind Act, enacted in 2001, and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year of 2002 have made economic conscription much easier.
Not that you get the best recruits, but hey, they can still shoot (even thought they may shoot a few friendlies from time to time)...
But poverty often breeds higher crime rates and more acute medical problems and recruiters find themselves in a catch 22 situation. "Because of drug use, criminal offense, weight and other health problems, only about 3 of every 10 potential recruits are even technically eligible to join the Army on today's standards, but recruiters are pressured to recruit two or three "bodies" a month. Therefore they have to lie," said an Army recruiter on active duty wishing to remain anonymous. According to military lawyers and recruiters, the “lies” involve serious deception. "The system is structured using lies to get people in," explained director of the Washington-based Center of Conscience and War, J. E. McNeil.
"Recruiters don’t just lie about the money for college, their Military Occupational Specialty or tell them they won't go to combat. They tell the recruits to lie about their medical and drug histories and their criminal records. There's widespread deception and dishonesty," said military lawyer Luke Hiken. "Pretty much everybody I knew in the Marines had to lie about their medical history to get in," said former assistant recruiter Chris White. "One guy had previously attempted suicide; he went crazy, cut his neck, and had a big scar from it. I told him to say he fell off a truck into a barb-wired fence; he got in. Some guys would tell me they did coke or heroin; I'd tell them ‘it was weed,’" said the Army recruiter.
In the Vietnam era, Judges often offered enlistment as an alternative to prosecution and jail time. But after Vietnam, Congress passed legislation to prevent this practice. But former recruiters and military lawyers affirm that it is still taking place in a more covert form, with judges often working in concert with recruiters to drop charges.
Senate Democrats announced plans yesterday for wide-ranging hearings to examine Bush administration policies and conduct, saying the Republicans who control both houses of Congress have abdicated responsibility for oversight of the GOP administration.
"The congressional watchdog remains fast asleep, and we intend to wake him up," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (N.D.), who announced the party's plan at a Capitol Hill news conference.
Most Americans these days don't remember why (or when) we instituted a progressive income tax, or why taxes even matter in society beyond the obvious issue of paying the cost of government functions like police and fire departments. They don't realize that the Founders of our republic had a visceral and intense concern about multigenerational accumulated wealth and the power of great wealth to corrupt democracy itself. They know that none of the supposedly "rich" founders left great fortunes and no foundations bear their names, and that the foundations of today are only named after people who lived in the late 19th and 20th centuries -- but they don't know why.
Most Americans also don't realize that a middle class is not a normal thing, and is brought about by direct intervention in the marketplace by government, including laws protecting labor, defining minimum wages, and taxing great wealth.
Without these progressive foundations, America would revert to what it looked like during the era of the Robber Barons -- the average worker earning the equivalent of around $9,000 a year in today's dollars, and a wealthy elite so rich and powerful that every branch of government was under their direct or indirect control.
Wealth and Our Commonwealth has one of the very best (and certainly the most concise) explanations of why progressive economic policies are essential to maintain a middle class -- and why a middle class is necessary for a functioning democracy. It's summarized in fewer than 20 pages in the first chapter, "What Kind Of Nation Do We Want To Be?"
The second chapter -- "The Origins of America's Estate Tax" -- is an extraordinary overview of the history of wealth, power, and democracy in the United States. It's essential reading for every American, and particularly for progressives who want to understand the interplay of economics and democracy in this nation (and around the world -- the principles are universal).
[...]
Restoring a strong middle class and the vibrant democracy it makes possible will only happen if we wake up enough Americans to the conservative war against democracy and the middle class.
Maybe. But not yet. I have a feeling that this is the real reason Kerik was "let go" - not that nanny story. (Not to mention the other half-dozen or so nefarious events in his life.) And actually, it wasn't just one.
Yeah, they "vetted" him real good. But, hey - he's the prototype Bush man. Too bad they couldn't use him in a top spot.
Unknown attackers have attempted to overrun two police stations in the northern city of Mosul, in an operation that augurs badly for the approaching elections, according to a US commander.
Major General Carter Ham said on Wednesday that although the last four attacks on the city's stations had been repelled by Iraqi police and National Guards, he noted Mosul essentially remained without a working police force.
Four Iraqi police officers have been killed and 13 others injured in an attack on buses transporting them between Basra and Baghdad.
A senior police source said the ambush on Tuesday occurred near the town of Salman Pak, about 30km southeast of the Iraqi capital and left the highway "littered with bodies … fighting is still going on".
Yukos Oil Co., Russia's second- largest oil producer, said it sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. and requested an emergency court hearing to stop the Russian government's auction of its biggest unit.
Yukos wants the court to prevent the auction of OAO Yuganskneftegaz, which pumps 60 percent of the company's oil and is being sold in four days to help cover a $22 billion tax bill. The sale is the culmination of more than a year of government demands from Yukos that have wiped $30 billion from the company's value and raised concern of property rights in Russia.
The court ruling "is going to be unprecedented because you have the U.S. bankruptcy courts trying to be used to impede the activities of the Russian state," said Christopher Grierson, a partner in insolvency law at Lovells in London. "I cannot think of another case of this magnitude."
Democrat John Kerry is asking county elections officials to allow his witnesses to visually inspect the 92,000 ballots cast in Ohio in which no vote for president was recorded, a Kerry lawyer said Sunday night.
The request is one of 11 items that Kerry is asking for as part of the recount that Ohio's 88 county boards of election will begin this week, according to a letter sent to the boards over the weekend.
So quick to concede. Now that the American people are refusing to be "had" without a protest, he's forced to at least act like he has some interest in the process.
People of the world: These words come to you from those who up to the day of the invasion were struggling to survive under the sanctions imposed by the criminal regimes of the U.S. and Britain.
We are simple people who chose principles over fear.
We have suffered crimes and sanctions, which we consider the true weapons of mass destruction.
[...]
We thank all those, including those of Britain and the U.S. who took to the streets in protest against this war and against Globalism. We also thank France, Germany and other states for their position, which least to say are considered wise and balanced, till now.
Today, we call on you again.
We do not require arms or fighters, for we have plenty.
We ask you to form a world-wide front against war and sanctions. A front that is governed by the wise and knowing. A front that will bring reform and order. New institutions that would replace the now corrupt.
[...]
Know that by helping the Iraqi people you are helping yourselves, for tomorrow may bring the same destruction to you.
Helping the Iraqi people does not mean dealing with the Americans for a few contracts here and there. You must continue to isolate their strategy.
This conflict is no longer considered a localized war. Nor can the world remain hostage to the never-ending and regenerated fear that the American people suffer from in general.
We will pin them here in Iraq to drain their resources, manpower, and their will to fight. We will make them spend as much as they steal, if no more.
We will disrupt, then halt the flow of our stolen oil, thus rendering their plans useless.
[...]
And to the American soldiers we say, you can also choose to fight tyranny with us. Lay down your weapons and seek refuge in our mosques, churches and homes. We will protect you. And we will get you out of Iraq, as we have done with a few others before you.[...]This is not your war. Nor are you fighting for a true cause in Iraq.
And to George W. Bush, we say, “You have asked us to ‘Bring it on’, and so have we.[...]Have you another challenge?”
The full message is published by Information Clearinghouse, with the video (in English). I suggest you read/watch it.
That's the BushCo "retirement" equivalent of the gold watch. Medals of Freedom to be exact - even more ludicrous. Here's the story. Here's TJ's comment:
Bush awards Congressional medal of honor to Tenet for taking the blame for the lies that led us into Iraq, Paul Bremer for taking the blame for the poor planning of the pentagon in Iraq, and Tommy franks for keeping his mouth shut.
Really. Ask Robert E. Lee what kind of armor he supplied the Confederate hill boys with. Shoes even. Those boys in Kuwait are downright unpatriotic. Have they never heard of St. Crispin's Day?
Has there ever been a policy issue driven by so much disinformation? In which so many bogus scripts were recited so long, by so many? We refer to the debate about Social Security, which we plan to watch closely in the next year. Has there ever been a policy matter in which so many American citizens were so aggressively disinformed?
The evidence of class exclusion and westernization abound in the island called Kabul, the mayoralty of U.S.-anointed and DynCorp-protected Hamid Karzai. Liberation and civilization arrive through acts of westernized consumption and also participation in U.S.-modeled, organized and protected "elections," a topic explored elsewhere by others. The distinctive element of the Karzai reconstruction project – to use the memorable phrase of Ross Perot – involves a "giant sucking sound" meaning here transferring income upward in the social structure, e.g., trickle-up, well-lubricated by drug and foreign monies. The obscene, sickening spectacle of an import-dependent consumption boom in Kabul coexists with deep impoverishment and destitution, the whole sordid mess "protected" by close to 20,000 foreign troops.
Even as the White House decries the ominous prospect of Iranian influence on the upcoming Iraqi national elections, US-funded organizations with long records of manipulating foreign democracies in the direction of Washington’s interests are quietly but deeply involved in essentially every aspect of the process.
"As should be clear, the electoral process will be an Iraqi process conducted by Iraqis for Iraqis," declared United Nations special envoy, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, in a September 14 statement to the Security Council. "It cannot be anything else."
But in actuality, influential, US-financed agencies describing themselves as "pro-democracy" but viewed by critics as decidedly anti-democratic, have their hands all over Iraq’s transitional process, from the formation of political parties to monitoring the January 30 nationwide polls and possibly conducting exit polls that could be used to evaluate the fairness of the ballot-casting.
"USAID has learned that ‘legitimate’ leaders are not just found, they're made," wrote Herbert Docena, a research associate specializing in Iraq at the Bangkok-based activist think tank, Focus on the Global South. "Before the US withdraws from the scene, it first has to ensure that its Iraqis will know what to do."
According to Docena, USAID’s activity in Iraq, as carried out by non-governmental proxies, is drawn straight out of the Agency’s handbook, which advocates "capitalizing on national openings" and "[taking] advantage of national-level targets of opportunity" as they emerge, all while looking for a "strategic doorway" -- called an "entry point" -- that enables an Agency project to "anchor its program and optimize overall impact" in a target area.
"In Iraq, the ‘entry point’ was the invasion," Docena explained. "The ‘national opening’ was the collapsed state left in its wake."
[...]
Washington will provide "strategic advice, technical assistance, training, polling data, assistance, and other forms of support" to "moderate, democratically oriented political parties."
Hey, it's democracy as we practice it here, and if it's good enough for us....
The Army National Guard said Monday it had given USA TODAY an inaccurate count of the total number of Guard troops in Iraq since the beginning of the war in March 2003, but still could not provide a precise count.
[...]
Several other military branches told USA TODAY last week that they could not determine how many of their troops had served in Iraq since the war began.
The Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force could not provide troop numbers.
Well, who knows if they don't? How hard could that be? Don't they keep records? Don't they have computers?
The Guard said last week that 37,000 Guard troops had set foot in Iraq since the start of the war. On Monday, Guard spokesman Scott Woodham said 90,972 Guard troops had been ordered to Iraq, but he could not say how many had actually gotten there, and how many were in mobilization stations or on their way.
Woodham gave two explanations for the error. In a telephone interview with USA TODAY mid-afternoon Monday, Woodham said the National Guard Bureau made "an internal mistake" in compiling the numbers. He said that personnel at Guard headquarters had misread a series of numbers on a spreadsheet and that accounted for the lower figure.
In a second conversation about two hours later, Woodham said he "misunderstood the question" when asked how many Army Guard troops had deployed to Iraq since the beginning of the war.
Part-time troops now make up about 40% of the U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq.
Cripes.
Factoid:
Throughout the 12-year Vietnam War, for example, fewer than 100 Guard troops were killed, compared with the 145 who have died in less than two years in Iraq.
Why?
Army Guard and Army Reserve soldiers are assigned some of the most dangerous missions in Iraq, including convoy duty and guarding facilities.
Why?!?
CIA keeps its distance from military interrogations
Concerns about harsh techniques used by Special Operations forces prompted the Central Intelligence Agency last year to bar its officers in Iraq from taking part in military interrogations where prisoners were subjected to duress.
[...]
A classified directive issued by the agency's headquarters on Aug. 8, 2003, to all its personnel in Iraq advised that "if the military employed any type of techniques beyond questions and answers, we should not participate and should not be present," according to an account provided by a senior intelligence official.
NY Times articleKeeping its distance from military operations, but...
he C.I.A. guidelines imposed for Iraq did not affect interrogations of prisoners in C.I.A. custody, including leaders of Al Qaeda being detained in secret locations around the world, officials said. Legal rulings by the Bush administration have granted the C.I.A. greater flexibility in conducting interrogations of suspected terrorists, including the use of harsh methods.
“A representative from Triad Systems came into this county’s Board of Election’s office unannounced, that is on this Friday. He said he was just stopping by to see if they had any questions about the upcoming recount.
“He then headed into the back room where Triad supplies tabulators, that is the machine that counts the ballots, is kept. This Triad representative told them that there was problem with the system, that the system had a bad battery and it had ‘lost all its data.’
“He then took the computer apart and started swapping parts in and out of it. And in another [incomprehensible] in the room. And he had spare parts in his coat, as one of the people moved in [sic] remarked how very heavy it was.
“He finally reassembled everything and said it was working but not to turn it off. He then asked which precinct would be counted in the 3 percent recount test and that one which had been selected as if it had the right number of votes was relayed to him he then went back and did something else to the tabulator.
“The Triad Systems representative suggested that since the hand recount had to match the machine count exactly and since it would hard to memorize the several numbers which would be needed to get the count exactly right, that they should post this series of numbers on the wall where they would not be noticed by observers such as to make them look like employee information or something similar.
“The people doing the hand count could then he said just report those numbers no matter what the actually counted in the ballot. This would then ‘match’ the tabulator report for this precinct exactly.
In an effort to crack down on one of the world's most notorious international criminals, President George W. Bush last summer signed an order barring U.S. citizens from doing business with Russian arms trafficker Victor Bout. But not long afterward, U.S. officials discovered Bout's tentacles were wider than anticipated: for much of this year, NEWSWEEK has learned, a Texas charter firm allegedly controlled by Bout was making repeated flights to Iraq—courtesy of a Pentagon contract allowing it to refuel at U.S. military bases. One reason for the flights, sources say, was that the firm was flying on behalf of Kellogg Brown & Root, the division of Halliburton hired to rebuild Iraq's oilfields.
Tomorrow and Thursday the White House has its "Conference on the Economy" with all the circumspection and objectivity of a homecoming rally. The Washington Post has the agenda. The guest list is so one-sided you would think it was put together by CNN or CBS (what, you thought I was going to say Fox?).
The Social Security panel is especially interesting, not least because this is where the White House is making its biggest push. The panel is first thing in the morning on Thursday, the perfect time to maximize news coverage, and it is one of only two the president is scheduled to attend. [Correction: I had written it is the only one, but he is also scheduled to attend the one on lawsuit abuse, that scourge of the economy.]
This is a great post at Boffoblog, so go read the whole thing....or do what you want...you will anyway.
The once-secret location where ousted president Saddam Hussein is being detained is Camp Cropper, a US base near Baghdad's international airport, Iraq's Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin revealed.
"Yes it is Camp Cropper, " Amin told reporters, referring to the heavily fortified compound that forms part of a vast US army complex called Camp Victory, about 16 kilometres (10 miles) from the centre of the Iraqi capital.
"This is for security reasons and due to the detention environment," the minister told reporters, speaking in French.
Yes, the detention environment. Nor are his lawyers permitted to see him. How cool is that?
"He is eating very well and has gained five pounds," said the minister, who paid Saddam a visit in September.
In contrast, eight of 11 other detainees, who along with Saddam are awaiting trial for crimes against humanity, temporarily refused food from Friday in what a lawyer said was a protest against the denial of their prisoner rights.
But they had started eating again on Monday, the US army said.
Well, that story just keeps changing.
That's probably not something I'd make it a point to broadcast in Iraq.
History will record that the first Black U.S. Secretary of State personally engineered the theft of the national sovereignty of Haiti, the world’s first Black republic and the second nation in the western hemisphere to free itself from European rule. Such is Colin Powell’s horrific legacy – an historic shame and blight on the collective honor of Black America.
Powell returned to the scene of his crime last week to assure Gerard Latortue, the evilly buffoonish U.S.-installed interim Prime Minister, “We are with you all the way" – words of encouragement to a man who is said to have estimated it will be necessary to kill 25,000 people in the capital alone to stop calls for the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Three British soldiers, seriously hurt after claiming a US tank convoy ran them off a road in Iraq, have spoken for the first time about the incident.
Cpl Jane McLaughlan, Staff Sgt James Rogerson and Cpl Stephen Smith, were left with horrific injuries when their Land Rover crashed in May 2003.
They are suing the US Army for £1.2m in the first action of its kind involving coalition allies in the Iraq war.
The trio say they have been let down by US allies in the war-torn country.
The US Army claims no record of the incident, despite a British report naming the US unit and driver involved.
[...]
Solicitor Steve Horsely of Tilly, Bailey and Irvine, which is funding the legal action, criticised the US Army for "stonewalling" over the case.
He said: "This is a unique case and so far the Americans have made no effort to look at this properly, or even look at the information we have given them.
"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show that was scheduled to stay up for the next month.
The show featured art from the upcoming issue of Animal Magazine, a quarterly publication featuring emerging artists.
"We had tons of people, like more than 2,000 people show up for the opening on Thursday night," said show organizer Bucky Turco. "Then this manager saw the piece and the guy just kind of flipped out. 'The show is over. Get this work down or I'm gonna arrest you,' he said. It's been kind of wild."
[...]
Savido plans to auction the painting and donate proceeds to an organization dedicated to freedom of expression.
"This is much deeper than art. This is fundamental American rights, freedom of speech," Savido said. "To see that something like this can happen, especially in a place like New York City is mind boggling and scary."
A revolving-door turnover among the FBI's top staffers and highly trained specialists is causing the FBI problems in meeting its intelligence and counter-terrorism responsibilities.
Among those leaving the bureau are dozens of intelligence analysts responsible for preventing new terrorist attacks, along with members of the top management team, according to the Los Angeles Times.
[...]
All four members of the top management team named by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks have left their jobs. Moreover, every one of those named to replace them has also left the bureau.
Marupoints out that at Giuliani Partners, to where Mr. Kerik is supposed to slink back, a core principle is integrity. Quoted from GP's website:
Integrity requires carefully developing and upholding a set of inviolable beliefs. People of integrity are not inflexible, but their decisions are made in the context of strongly held values. Principled leaders must not only set a moral compass, but also effectively communicate a code of conduct to those they lead. They are obligated to remain faithful to their core convictions in order to demand and inspire the same in others.
Accountability means measuring results throughout an organization and holding people responsible for their performance. The ability to measure performance accurately is critical to any organization looking to improve efficiency and ensure success. A system of measurement motivates employees and decision-makers alike. Accountability enables leaders to identify problems more effectively and make solutions pervasive throughout an organization.
Twenty guardsmen were found lying dead on Tuesday in an area northwest of the Iraqi city of Mosul, Aljazeera has learned.
A Reuters correspondent in Iraq's third largest city on Tuesday said he saw the bodies of six young men, all shot in the head as if executed.
[...]
Mosul has witnessed intense clashes in recent days.
[...]
Meanwhile, caught in the crossfire, Mosul residents say schools and shops have closed as fighting continues.
"There is no government and people are afraid to leave their homes. We have nothing to do but stay at home," Muhammad Ahmad, 41, a teacher, told Aljazeera.net.
I think you can only have anti-Americanism if you first have Americanism, which is certainly not the same thing as simple love of country. Americanism is a cult centered on a belief in national exceptionalism. In modern times, there has been no better representative of the cult than George W. Bush, its current Imperial Wizard. Everywhere he goes, he projects the self-satisfied image of an America happy to dump its untreated effluent into the world's supply of drinking water so long as Americans themselves feel they are doing the right thing.
If you want to understand why George Bush is responsible for any increase in the world's stock of anti-Americanism, here is a brief summary of his recent visit to Canada. If you can believe it, the visit was intended to heal the rift over Canada's not signing on for the needless killing of 100,000 Iraqi civilians.
Michael Leavitt, President Bush's choice to be secretary of Health and Human Services, may have to cut billions of dollars from the government's mammoth health programs for the elderly, poor and disabled to pare the budget deficit.
The Medicare and Medicaid programs, consuming nearly $500 billion a year and growing quickly, could be vulnerable in the context of last year's $413 billion budget deficit, the ongoing war in Iraq, costly domestic security commitments and administration plans to revamp Social Security without raising taxes.
Bush selected Leavitt, the Environmental Protection Agency chief, on Monday, filling one of the last two openings in his second-term Cabinet. Bush praised Leavitt as a "fine executive" and "a man of great compassion ... an ideal choice to lead one of the largest departments of the United States government."
If you haven't caught on yet, this is the MO for BushCo. Use words that elecit positive beliefs while behaving in opposite ways. Spout compassion and act ruthlessly. And did I mention that Mr. Leavitt was once a CEO in an insurance company that picks up the slack from Medicare selling "Medigap" policies? No? He still has an investment in the company (somewhere between 5 and 25 million - speaking of gaps), and his brother is still there. In fact, the company's name is The Leavitt Group. But then, I don't see any conflict of interest there, do you? Dick Cheney wouldn't.
Cutting and gutting the social services of this country is one of the Bush administration's priorities. May have to cut isn't the way I'd have put it.
...but hey, put it any way you want...you will anyway.
A judge who wore blackface makeup, handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit at a Halloween party will be suspended for six months, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled Monday.
The justices voted 5-2 to suspend Judge Timothy Ellender for a year without pay for dishonoring his position, but to defer half of that penalty. Ellender will lose more than $50,000 in pay, one judge noted.
Ellender, who is white, testified the costumes worn by him and his wife - she was dressed as a policewoman - were meant only as a joke to show he was her prisoner. The party's host, Ellender's brother-in-law, was dressed as Buckwheat.
The justices agreed Ellender did not mean to insult blacks. Nevertheless, they ordered him to take a sociology course "which will assist him in achieving a greater understanding of racial sensitivity."
Oh yeah, that's gonna help. Best wishes and sympathy to the black people of Louisiana.
Remember Judge Ellender? I posted about him way back when...
...[Judge Timothy C.] Ellender has drawn criticism in the past for keeping a shotgun in his courtroom and giving out unusual sentences.
He sentenced a man convicted of accidentally killing his best friend to regularly place flowers at the victim's gravesite. He sentenced a youth with chronic speeding violations to clean up trash from a bayou using the judge's pirogue, a flat-bottom boat similar to a canoe.
Eight detainees have died in American military custody in Afghanistan, more than previously reported, the Pentagon said on Monday, while a human rights group assailed a U.S. "culture of impunity" on prisoner abuse.
New York-based Human Rights Watch complained in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that in most instances, the Pentagon has launched criminal probes into detainee deaths in Afghanistan only after cases get media attention, and that these probes have proceeded slowly and in excessive secrecy.
Yeah, what else is new? And Derr Rumsfiend is well aware of the situation. If he had his "druthers", Human Rights Watch would never know about those unfortunates.
"We investigate all deaths of detainees regardless of the circumstances," said Air Force Lt. Col. John Skinner, a Pentagon spokesman. "Deaths may have occurred as a result of injuries sustained prior to detention by U.S. forces, natural causes such as pre-existing medical conditions or other reasons."
"Our standard has always been and remains to treat detainees humanely. Anything less is not tolerated," Skinner said.
So we've noticed.
Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman, said yesterday that Army records showed the September 2002 death involved an Afghan known as "M. Sayari," but that she had no other information about what happened. The Army document blamed an Army captain and three other officers for the death, but their names were deleted from the copy released to the ACLU.
Hart said the decision not to prosecute was made by the U.S. Army's Special Forces Command. A spokesman there declined to comment, and passed the question to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa, whose spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Steven Mavica, said he had no information about the case.
The Army's Criminal Investigation Command is still probing four of the other deaths, including the alleged beating and torture of a 19-year-old Afghan recruit, Jamal Naseer, by U.S. Special Forces at the Gardez prison. The Army checked into reports that someone there had died and closed the case after finding no corroborating evidence, according to a spokesman; it then opened the investigation after investigators working for an independent American group called the Crimes of War Project published details from an official Afghanistan government inquiry the Army evidently did not seek to obtain.
Hey, don't ask, don't tell. It's the military way. We may not be Masters of the Universe, but we certainly are Masters of Unaccountability.
[Executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, Brad] Evans also said in his letter that his group's investigation indicates that the military detention system in Afghanistan "continues to operate outside the rule of law."
Hey Brad, maybe you should write a letter to Alberto Gonzales.
When you have a sensitive topic here, when so much political power is involved, there’s going to be a series of false reports, disinformation put forth to obscure the real story, red herrings to throw off the dogs. It happened in the JFK assassination, and it’s happening now.
My quick analysis on how this is happening right now would be to point out two red herrings: The Pentagon Theory and the accusations of anti-Semitism. Paul Thompson of the 9/11 Timeline was on the Morning Sedition show and host Mark Maron dismissed the entire 9/11 Truth website by saying, “Oh, it’s one of those sites that say no plane hit the Pentagon.” We’re being judged by our weakest link. And it is pretty weak.
You had rush hour traffic on I-395 that saw the plane hit, you have 100 eyewitnesses compiled in the pamphlet published by Penny Schoner. Where the hell did this theory come from? Thierry Meyssan’s book The Horrible Fraud was the original source. Meyssan wrote his book from Paris, he didn’t travel over here. The book is highly imaginative, and in the middle of a trauma, people are searching for answers. A lot of people in the 9/11 truth movement glommed onto this one and I think it’s hurt our credibility over all. You have to wonder if that was by design. For instance, all the right-wing magazines (e.g. National Review) have had a field day.
I do like this quote:
Reality is a construction. We’re told what to believe by the government and media. Most people play along, pay taxes, support the troops and the wars that are part and parcel of capitalism. But there are some who drop out and fall away from the death machine. God bless them.
We all saw the video on NBC of the mosque shootings of wounded and I can tell you it is a lot worse than that. We often killed the helpless, the wounded and many civilians. My own squad did. I did. And I will do whatever I am ordered to do, but it doesn’t stop me from not liking it. I didn’t join the service to kill women and children!
We do a lot worse than what you saw on the video. In Fallujah when we come to a apartment building, we shout for the people to come out. Most times because a lack of translators we couldn’t even say to come out in Arabic, and these people don’t know what an English “come out” sounds like anymore than you reading this would know it if I said it in Arabic.
A lot of people are too afraid to come out. But after we would warn them, we would go in. You know how? We would riddle the building and every window with high-caliber, armor piercing machine gun fire, then often we would throw in a grenade for good measure. If any civilians were in there they ended up either dead or wounded. (And I can tell you that over the duration of a week I myself saw at least a hundred bodies in the burned out and attacked apartments, and I only saw a little sliver of Fallujah) And what did we do with the wounded? I’ll tell you. We did nothing. We just moved on to the next building. We were fighters not medics, but there were no medics behind us. I believe the thinking is that it is better for the wounded enemy to die so they can’t fight us anymore.
I did what everyone else did, but it doesn’t mean I liked it. I am a fighting man in the tradition of my Dad and Grandfather and on back. I had a great, great, great grandfather who fought with Lee in Virginia. I am an American fighting man, not the murderer of civilians. It is true that we have to kill civilians if we are to survive because we can’t know who the enemy is, but how in the world can our leaders put us in this situation?
[...]
The people here on the streets have a name for us, they call us the Jews! At first I never understood this, but when I found out how Israeli agents in the American government like Perle and Wolfowitz were behind the war, all of it began to fall into place. You are right, it was never a war for America, it is one where thousands of Americans are being killed or maimed for life for Israel, not America.
Number one, good on you, soldier, for telling the truth. Number two, stop doing what you know is wrong. Unlike the people you are shooting, it won't kill you. And, son, you are personally responsible, whether you are following orders or not.
Last week there were CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS about voter fraud. Not one GOP Representative bothered to attend, desperately afraid of lending any legitimacy to the allegations. What was presented even made Congressman John Conyers object to the elections results. Where was the coverage??? Not one word from the NY Times??? I can understand FOX not covering an event potentially damaging to their boss, Bush, but the NY Times? This is the same paper that apologized to it's readers for it's horrific coverage in the lead up to the Iraq War, and now they give their readers another reason to not trust them as being objective. Even if you think the allegations are baseless, COVER the story!
[...]
Now, we have yet another blatant piece of evidence that the Ohio results are fraudulent, and it is greeted with more silence. On Friday, Ken "GOP Whore" Blackwell decided to stop the legal recount being conducted in Greene County Ohio, in mid-count. When the volunteers asked under what authority they were being stopped they were told that Ken Blackwell had determined that “all voter records for the state of Ohio were “locked-down,” and now they are not considered public records.” For those who may have been unaware due to the media lockdown, Ken Blackwell is not only the Ohio Secretary of State, but he was also the State Chair of the Bush reelection campaign. Conflict of interest anyone? Katherine Harris redux anyone?
Now, here is the kicker. Blackwell not only did not have the authority to take this action, he is actually in violation of the law.
[...]
Did you get that America ? The Secretary of State of Ohio, who has an obvious conflict of interest by being the State Chair for the reelection of George W. Bush, has now violated the law to stop a recount that could prove that Bush actually lost Ohio, and thus the entire presidential election. Where in the hell is the media? Where is the outrage? Why is this not the TOP story on every network? Why is this not the HEADLINE in every paper?
Locked-Down Ohio Poll Records Left in Unlocked Building
DAYTON Saturday December 11, 2004
Greene County election records that were the subject of Secretary of State Blackwell's personal lockdown order on Friday December 10 were left vulnerable in an unattended, unlocked Board of Elections office. According to Joan Quinn and Eve Roberson, two election observers researching voting records, revisited the office the next morning to find the building unlocked and unoccupied.
Descending dimly lit stairs, I saw some of the KGB's execution and torture cellars, and special "cold rooms" where naked prisoners were beaten, then doused with ice water and slowly frozen.
Other favoured Lubyanka tortures: Psychological terror, psychotropic drugs, prolonged sleep deprivation, dazzling lights, intense noise, days in pitch blackness, isolation, humiliation, constant threats, savage beatings, attacks by guard dogs, near drowning.
Nightmares from the past -- but the past has returned.
According to a report leaked to the New York Times, the Swiss-based International Red Cross has accused the Bush administration for a second time of employing systematic, medically supervised torture against suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay, and at U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[...]
According to the report's allegations, many tortures perfected by the Cheka (Soviet secret police) -- notably beating, freezing, sensory disorientation, and sleep deprivation -- are now routinely being used by U.S. interrogators.
The Chekisti, however, did not usually inflict sexual humiliation. That technique, and hooding, were developed by Israeli psychologists to break resistance of Palestinian prisoners. Photos of sexual humiliation were used by Israeli security, and then by U.S. interrogators at Abu Ghraib, to blackmail Muslim prisoners into becoming informers.
All of these practices flagrantly violate the Geneva Conventions, international, and American law. The Pentagon and CIA gulags in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan have become a sort of Enron-style, off-the-books operation, immune from American law or Congressional oversight.
[...]
Suspects reportedly disappear into a black hole, recalling Latin America's torture camps and "disappearings" of the 1970s and '80s, or the Arab world's sinister secret police prisons.
The U.S. has been sending high-level anti-American suspects to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and, reportedly, Pakistan, where it's alleged they are brutally tortured with violent electric shocks, savage beatings, drowning, acid baths, and blowtorching -- the same tortures, ironically, ascribed to Saddam Hussein.
[...]
The 20th century has shown repeatedly that when security forces use torture abroad, they soon begin using it at home, first on suspected "terrorists," then dissidents, then on ordinary suspects.
Beaming and claiming a great success in Afghanistan because of their elections, Bush and Karzai are asking you once again to pretend not to notice the truth.
In the U.S.-run Afghan election, all parties or individuals opposed to the American occupation of Afghanistan were excluded. So only ethnic minorities like Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks bought candidates -- and figures favouring collaboration with the occupation were represented.
Warlords, who control 80% of the nation, were bribed with tens of millions to give at least tacit support to Karzai. Afghanistan's majority, the Pushtun, were represented only by a few minor candidates without any political base. The most important Pushtun leader, Gulbadin Hekmatyar, declared a "terrorist" in 2002 for opposing the U.S. invasion, was, of course, excluded.
Afghans, it is true, turned out in large numbers to vote. Elections are still a novelty in Afghanistan, even fake ones. Only in developed democracies are citizens too lazy or indifferent to vote.
[...]
Afghanistan's new "democratic" president is the world's most expensive mayor. Karzai rules only downtown Kabul, protected by 200 U.S. bodyguards, 17,000 U.S. troops and a token NATO force that includes Canadians. It costs Washington $1.6 billion US monthly to keep Karzai in power. Without the foreign troops' bayonets, Karzai's little puppet regime would quickly be swept away.
The real power behind figurehead Karzai is the Northern Alliance, the rump of the old Afghan Communist Party, made up of Tajiks and Uzbeks.
Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers almost totally ended poppy/heroin production. Today, America's Northern Alliance communist allies have restored the multibillion-dollar drug trade and are now said to control 95% of the world heroin supply. As in Indochina, the U.S. again finds itself in bed with major drug dealers while espousing a platitudinous "war on drugs."
A 9-11 rescue worker recently came forward to say he was told by FBI agents to “keep my mouth shut” about one of the “black boxes” a fellow firefighter helped locate at ground zero, contradicting the official story that none of the flight and cockpit data recorders were ever recovered in the wreckage of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.
Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said.
[...]
...it was Mr. Webb's tenure at the Mercury News from 1988 to 1997 that made his name in the business and eventually drove him from daily newspapers.
Mr. Webb, who was based in the newspaper's Sacramento bureau, authored a three-part investigative series in 1996 that linked the CIA to Nicaraguan Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandin ista government and to drug sales of crack cocaine flooding south-central Los Angeles in the 1980s.
The series, "Dark Alliances: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion," was controversial almost from the start.
[...]
Mr. Webb later published a 548-page book based on his series, and in a 1998 interview with The Bee he said he still was befuddled over how he became notorious while the allegations in his stories were dismissed.
"That is an amazing phenomenon," he said. "I'm still not exactly sure how that happened."
Six reservists, including two veteran officers who had received Bronze Stars, were court-martialed for what soldiers have been doing as long as there have been wars--scrounging to get what their outfit needed to do its job in Iraq.
Okay. Stop right here for a minute. Let's contrast those sentences to the ones being meted out for prisoner torture - sentences that include demotion and transfers. Anybody been court martialed yet for torturing or murdering an Iraqi?
Darrell Birt, one of those court-martialed for theft, destruction of Army property and conspiracy to cover up the crimes, had been decorated for his "initiative and courage" for leading his unit's delivery of fuel over the perilous roads of Iraq in the war's first months.
Now, Birt, 45, who was a chief warrant officer with 656th Transportation Company, based in Springfield, Ohio, and his commanding officer find themselves felons, dishonorably discharged and stripped of all military benefits.
[...]
"We could have gone with what we had, but we would not have been able to complete our mission," said Birt, who was released from the brig on Oct. 17 and is petitioning for clemency in hope that he can return to the reserves.
"I admit that what we did was technically against the rules, but it wasn't for our own personal gain. It was so we could do our jobs."
I was talking with a friend today about this very thing - he said he had to wait in line about a minute and a half to vote and was coming unglued about it; that with his job, if he'd been in one of those places where people were waiting for several hours, he wouldn't have been able to vote.
Following up on my earlier posts here and here) about Venezuelans heading in the wrong direction, this comes from a Miami Herald article:
CARACAS-- A new penal code approved by Venezuela's Congress would stiffen prison sentences for slander and libel. It drew criticism from opponents of President Hugo Chávez, who said the new rules were an attempt to stifle dissent.
Under the old penal code, the maximum sentence for libel was 18 months in prison.
The new code increased the maximum to four years in prison.
Sentences for slander -- statements that impugn "the honor, the reputation, the respect" of a person -- were lengthened from eight days to up to one year. There are no exceptions when the speech is directed at public officials.
The new code also takes aim at a popular form of protest involving banging on pots and pans -- called a cacerolazo and often used by Chávez opponents. The code punishes the earsplitting protests with fines and one to two months in jail.
As I said the first time...
Christ on a cracker.
So, in an ironic concurrent incident...
Caracas, Venezuela. Dec 11, 2004 - Venezuela’s Information and Communications Minister Andres Izarra expressed the Venezuelan government’s concerns about recent legal actions and measures taken by the government of the United States against several journalists.
Izarra highlighted the case of Jim Taricani, a U.S. journalist who was recently sentenced for refusing to identify the source of information he used in some of his reports.
Of course, that falls into the category of throwing insults back and forth - something U.S. and Venezuelan officials have been doing ever sine Chávez came to power.
Izarra’s comments come after U.S. government criticisms of the law of Social Responsibility for Radio and Television, recently approved by the Venezuelan Legislature. Last Thursday, the U.S. State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said that the United States is "deeply troubled" by "the threats to freedom of expression" posed by the Venezuelan law. The new law, widely discussed for more than two years, is aimed at limiting violent content on TV, according to the Venezuelan government, but it has been criticized by the opposition and by groups such as the Inter American Press Association, which groups media executives throughout the continent.
I had tentatively dismissed the opposition's complaints about the "Social Responsibility" law, but in light of the law forbidding anyone to "insult" a public official....
David Ray Griffin is one of the most respected philosophers of religion in North America. He is the author or editor of more than 24 academic books, including works co-written with the deans of world religions, Huston Smith and Martin Marty. He has lectured around the world, including at UBC.
Griffin is one of those profiled in the prestigious volume, A Handbook of Christian Theologians. He's painstakingly probed countless philosophical challenges, from the question of why there is evil to the relationship between science and religion, for which he's won numerous awards.
So why did this soft-spoken professor from the high-ranking Methodist-rooted School of Theology at Claremont, Calif., feel it necessary to risk his hard-earned reputation as a religion scholar to write one of the most incredible -- in all senses of the word -- political books of 2004?
Because no one else in mainstream America seemed prepared to do it...
The result? Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Interlink Publishing, $22.50) has already sold an astonishing 80,000 copies.
Outsourcing torture? Torture as a policy? America the beautiful?
When the devil comes knocking on your front door, looking for a way to spread his evil inside, he won't be sporting horns and a tail. He's going to come dressed as your sweetest dream, clean as a whistle, pious, sincere. He's going to speak your lingo, ape your ways -- and when he opens up his little box of poison, it's going to look like the heaven your mama sang about when she rocked you to sleep in your cradle.
Then one day, when the mind-fog lifts, you see him sitting at the head of the table, the walls of the room smeared with filth, dead bodies swelling on the blood-mucked floor, the still-living victims hog-tied and naked, screaming for mercy as the whipcords strike. He beckons you forward with a welcoming smile. You pause for a moment. It seems so strange: All this horror -- it would have once made you sick, but now it just feels like ... home. You shrug, you grin, you take your place beside him at the feast.
An FBI investigation into alleged Israeli espionage against the United States and the possibility a pro-Israel lobby group was involved in passing classified U.S data to Tel Aviv has intensified because a confessed Pentagon spy has stopped cooperating with federal law enforcement officials, U.S. government sources said.
Larry Franklin, a Pentagon analyst in the Near East and South Asia office who worked for the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans confessed last August to federal agents he had held meetings with a contact from the Israeli government during which he passed a highly classified document on U.S. policy toward Iran, these sources said. The document advocated support for Iranian dissidents, covert actions to destabilize the Iranian government, arming opponents of the Islamic regime, propaganda broadcasts into Iran, and other prog
