I will post on and off for the next month because of traaveling. I will still try and post
adventures from my travels and any current events of interest via internet cafes when available.
I recommend seeing Blood Diamands, great movie that all Americans should have to watch.
JUST SAY NO TO DIAMONDS....defenitly DeBeers!
Have a great Winter and lets hope for the best!
Ty
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Sunday, December 17, 2006
"War is hell" (Leiter)
Some pretty shocking statistics here; an excerpt:
Out of 700,000 soldiers who served in the 1991 Gulf War, 118,000 are suffering from chronic fatigue, headaches, muscle spasms, joint pains, anxiety, memory loss, and balance problems, and 40% receive disability pay. Gulf vets are also twice as likely to develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and between two and three times more likely to have children with birth defects....
Modern battlefields are toxic nightmares, filled with depleted uranium ammunition, exotic explosives, and deadly cluster bomblets. The soldiers are shot up with experimental vaccines that can have dangerous side effects from additives like squalene. In short, soldiers are not only under fire, they are assaulted by their own weapons systems and medical procedures....
According to Fischer and Reiss, "A returning vet must wait an average of 165 days for a VA decision on initial disability benefits. An appeal can take up to three years...."
When Gulf War vets complained about the symptoms which have come to be called "Gulf War Syndrome," the Pentagon told them it was in their heads, in spite of studies by the British Medical Journal and the U.S. Center for Disease Control that showed the returnees were suffering illnesses at 12 times the rate of non-Gulf vets.
For five years after the Gulf War the Pentagon denied that any troops had been exposed to chemical weapons. It took pressure from veterans' organizations and Sen. Donald Riegle (D-MI) to get the Pentagon to admit finally that as many as 130,000 troops (the vets say the number is higher) were exposed to chemical weapons from the destruction of the Iraqi arms depot at Khamisiyah.
Veteran organizations are currently fighting the Pentagon over its refusal to screen returning soldiers for mild brain injuries. Figures indicate that up to 10% of the troops suffer from concussions during their tours, a figure that rises to 20% for those in the front lines. Research shows that concussions can cause memory loss, headaches, sleep disturbances, and behavior problems. The Pentagon, arguing that the long-term effect of brain injuries needs more research, is unwilling to fund a screening program.
Given the wide use of roadside bombs, "Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism," George Zitnay, co-founder of the Brain Injury Center, toldUSA Today. And according to researchers at Harvard and Colombia, the cost of treating those brain injuries will be $14 billion over the next 20 years....
Upwards of 20,000 Americans have been wounded in Iraq, some of those so grotesquely that medicine has invented a new term to describe them - polytrauma. An estimated 7,000 vets have severe brain and spinal injuries, and have required amputations. For the blind, brain damaged, and paralyzed, war is indeed hell....
But the hell we bring home is only a pale reflection of the hell we leave behind.
According to a recent estimate by the British medical journal, The Lancet, upwards of 650,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion. Most of the country's infrastructure - already damaged in the first Gulf War or degraded by a decade of sanctions - has essentially collapsed.
Iraq's experience is not unique.
The Vietnam War ended more than 30 years ago, but according to the recent book, Vietnam: A Natural History, Laotians, Vietnamese, and Cambodians are still dying from it.
From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped over 14 million tons of bombs on those three countries, including 90 million cluster munitions on tiny Laos alone. Somewhere between 30 to 40% of those fiendish devices never exploded, and, according to the British Mines Advisory Group, they have killed or maimed 12,000 Laotians since the end of the war. They continue to extract a yearly toll of 100 to 200 people, many of them children.
Traces of the 20 million gallons of Agent White, Agent Blue, and Agent Orange herbicides that the United States sprayed over Vietnam still poison the water, soil, vegetation, animals, and people of Southeast Asia, producing cancer and birth defect rates among the highest in the world.
So war is indeed hell - for those who fight it, those caught in the middle of it, and those who eventually pick up the pieces.
The Real Culprit: Corpocracy
By J.D. Suss
12/16/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The Democratic tide in the recent elections is, potentially at least, a force to be reckoned with. Now, citizens-who-care can watch to see if these new members of Congress will squander their mandate in hopelessly fruitless witch hunts on the so-called “issues,” while the real culprit continues to bedevil them. That real culprit? – corpocracy[i] (rhymes with “hypocrisy”). Corpocracy, also called “corporatocracy,” is de facto rule by mega-corporations in conjunction with international banking, corporate-owned media, and the enabling collusion of government and/or a network of governments. These Big Money[ii] plutocrats are the real enemies of our tattered democracy. Our elected representatives need to begin calling them to account and, quite simply, rein them in.
Railing against the corrosive influence corporations inflict upon democracy is often met with the same kind of mindset that would make Luddites out of those who clamor for sustainable technology. The charge of conspiracy theorist is the label immediately attached to anyone who has the audacity to offer a discourse on corpocracy. And before any intelligent discussion can ensue on the subject, the framing has already done its work; corpocracy is summarily dismissed as “extremist fringe-speak” for ideas too outlandish to merit serious attention. But, thanks to the courage of people like John Perkins,[iii] the word is slowly-but-surely emerging that democracy is being critically threatened, perhaps already “disabled,”[iv] by the interests of Big Money, whose mischief both at home and abroad seemingly knows no bounds. Besides having infiltrated all three branches of government, its corrupting influence extends into almost every think tank and major university in the U.S.[v] Be that as it may, the reader is invited to exercise the right to freely (re)assemble his or her mind and to continue reading.
To fully grasp the idea of corpocracy, one must see it as a crisis of consciousness. Fundamentally, we might ask ourselves: What is driving our everyday thoughts, feelings, and beliefs so as to produce a sense of reality about which we all can agree, more or less, is worth living in and fighting for? The answer? – It is our consciousness, a phenomenon steeped in this agreement or consensual reality that is further flavored by a particular, viz., “American,” culture trance.
From its earliest days, America was a nation built upon the advertising, buying and selling of commodities for the purpose of realizing ever-increasing profits. But with the maximization of profits as the overriding incentive, inevitably people and the world around them, become marginalized. This became especially evident as the corporate entity gained in prominence and the techno-industrial elite was more and more empowered. The greed of wealth accumulation continues to deplete scarce natural resources. The cumulative effect is a ravaging of both the environment and the social fabric of peoples unfortunate enough to be living amid such resources. And yet, to sustain a material comfort that is never quite sated, an ever-growing consumption must be constantly encouraged. Enter Big Money, which gladly encourages never-ending consumption patterns – so much so that corporate capitalism is now synonymous with democracy in the minds of most of the citizenry, including its representatives. The sad fact is that we have been turned into complacent consumeroids. We are now the beneficiaries of a material comfort that has succeeded in making us overwhelmingly passive with regard to what goes on in our government, not to mention what is going on in the rest of the world. As Harvard professor and unrepentant, status quo theorist, Samuel P. Huntington, tells us, “democratic societies ‘cannot work’ unless the citizenry is ‘passive.’ [vi]” Shockingly, in the United States less than 50% of voters vote in elections – elections that fail to meet the standards that Jimmy Carter uses to gauge free and fair elections abroad. Therein lies one telling measurement of our passivity.
Big Money’s overwhelming interest in profits over people is largely responsible for a kind of preservation of its base that is composed of a citizenry invested in the status quo. That broad swath of middle Americans buys into comfortable, complacent lifestyles as a kind of divine right to be enjoyed by the world’s foremost “bringer of democracy.”
Such is the subtle yet insidious effect of a consensual reality and culture trance in which Americans – and worse, their elected representatives – are swimming. Most of us have adapted early to a status quo consciousness that has fed us the noble myths of our nation. Indeed, intrusive commercialization such as TV helps to keep the minds of the masses programmed to stay in thrall to these myths (and whatever else those with money to buy advertising or to finance TV shows wish us to believe). However, the current state of the nation, a nation now often referred to as a national security state, belies those myths. And so, to the extent people still invest the U.S. with these myths of America as the “city upon the hill” – presumed to be benevolent and morally justified in its dealings around the world – there exists a faulty or deficient consciousness. Although steadily deteriorating, this deficient consciousness none-the-less remains potent in its ability to blind us to the real enemy within that silences the true will of the people.
LINK
By J.D. Suss
12/16/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- The Democratic tide in the recent elections is, potentially at least, a force to be reckoned with. Now, citizens-who-care can watch to see if these new members of Congress will squander their mandate in hopelessly fruitless witch hunts on the so-called “issues,” while the real culprit continues to bedevil them. That real culprit? – corpocracy[i] (rhymes with “hypocrisy”). Corpocracy, also called “corporatocracy,” is de facto rule by mega-corporations in conjunction with international banking, corporate-owned media, and the enabling collusion of government and/or a network of governments. These Big Money[ii] plutocrats are the real enemies of our tattered democracy. Our elected representatives need to begin calling them to account and, quite simply, rein them in.
Railing against the corrosive influence corporations inflict upon democracy is often met with the same kind of mindset that would make Luddites out of those who clamor for sustainable technology. The charge of conspiracy theorist is the label immediately attached to anyone who has the audacity to offer a discourse on corpocracy. And before any intelligent discussion can ensue on the subject, the framing has already done its work; corpocracy is summarily dismissed as “extremist fringe-speak” for ideas too outlandish to merit serious attention. But, thanks to the courage of people like John Perkins,[iii] the word is slowly-but-surely emerging that democracy is being critically threatened, perhaps already “disabled,”[iv] by the interests of Big Money, whose mischief both at home and abroad seemingly knows no bounds. Besides having infiltrated all three branches of government, its corrupting influence extends into almost every think tank and major university in the U.S.[v] Be that as it may, the reader is invited to exercise the right to freely (re)assemble his or her mind and to continue reading.
To fully grasp the idea of corpocracy, one must see it as a crisis of consciousness. Fundamentally, we might ask ourselves: What is driving our everyday thoughts, feelings, and beliefs so as to produce a sense of reality about which we all can agree, more or less, is worth living in and fighting for? The answer? – It is our consciousness, a phenomenon steeped in this agreement or consensual reality that is further flavored by a particular, viz., “American,” culture trance.
From its earliest days, America was a nation built upon the advertising, buying and selling of commodities for the purpose of realizing ever-increasing profits. But with the maximization of profits as the overriding incentive, inevitably people and the world around them, become marginalized. This became especially evident as the corporate entity gained in prominence and the techno-industrial elite was more and more empowered. The greed of wealth accumulation continues to deplete scarce natural resources. The cumulative effect is a ravaging of both the environment and the social fabric of peoples unfortunate enough to be living amid such resources. And yet, to sustain a material comfort that is never quite sated, an ever-growing consumption must be constantly encouraged. Enter Big Money, which gladly encourages never-ending consumption patterns – so much so that corporate capitalism is now synonymous with democracy in the minds of most of the citizenry, including its representatives. The sad fact is that we have been turned into complacent consumeroids. We are now the beneficiaries of a material comfort that has succeeded in making us overwhelmingly passive with regard to what goes on in our government, not to mention what is going on in the rest of the world. As Harvard professor and unrepentant, status quo theorist, Samuel P. Huntington, tells us, “democratic societies ‘cannot work’ unless the citizenry is ‘passive.’ [vi]” Shockingly, in the United States less than 50% of voters vote in elections – elections that fail to meet the standards that Jimmy Carter uses to gauge free and fair elections abroad. Therein lies one telling measurement of our passivity.
Big Money’s overwhelming interest in profits over people is largely responsible for a kind of preservation of its base that is composed of a citizenry invested in the status quo. That broad swath of middle Americans buys into comfortable, complacent lifestyles as a kind of divine right to be enjoyed by the world’s foremost “bringer of democracy.”
Such is the subtle yet insidious effect of a consensual reality and culture trance in which Americans – and worse, their elected representatives – are swimming. Most of us have adapted early to a status quo consciousness that has fed us the noble myths of our nation. Indeed, intrusive commercialization such as TV helps to keep the minds of the masses programmed to stay in thrall to these myths (and whatever else those with money to buy advertising or to finance TV shows wish us to believe). However, the current state of the nation, a nation now often referred to as a national security state, belies those myths. And so, to the extent people still invest the U.S. with these myths of America as the “city upon the hill” – presumed to be benevolent and morally justified in its dealings around the world – there exists a faulty or deficient consciousness. Although steadily deteriorating, this deficient consciousness none-the-less remains potent in its ability to blind us to the real enemy within that silences the true will of the people.
LINK
Thursday, December 14, 2006
The Great Wealth Transfer
Only a short summary of a great article, link below:It's the biggest untold economic story of our time: more of the nation's bounty held in fewer and fewer hands. And Bush's tax cuts are only making the problem worse
Are people just ungrateful? Is the administration failing to get its message out? Are the news media, as conservatives darkly suggest, deliberately failing to report the good news?
None of the above. The reason most Americans think the economy is fair to poor is simple: For most Americans, it really is fair to poor. Wages have failed to keep up with rising prices. Even in 2005, a year in which the economy grew quite fast, the income of most non-elderly families lagged behind inflation. The number of Americans in poverty has risen even in the face of an official economic recovery, as has the number of Americans without health insurance. Most Americans are little, if any, better off than they were last year and definitely worse off than they were in 2000.
But how is this possible? The economic pie is getting bigger -- how can it be true that most Americans are getting smaller slices? The answer, of course, is that a few people are getting much, much bigger slices. Although wages have stagnated since Bush took office, corporate profits have doubled. The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality is on the rise.
Rising inequality isn't new. The gap between rich and poor started growing before Ronald Reagan took office, and it continued to widen through the Clinton years. But what is happening under Bush is something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth -- and they know it.
LINK60 million Americans living on less than $7 a day
US income figures show staggering rise in social inequality
By Jerry White
12 December 2006
A recent analysis of Internal Revenue Service tax data sheds further light on the enormous gap that has grown between America’s wealthy elite and the masses of working people over the last quarter of a century. The examination of IRS figures was conducted by the New York Times and reported in its November 27 article, “’04 Income in U.S. Was Below 2000 Level” by David Cay Johnston. The article begins by noting that total US income in 2004—the latest year for which tax information is available—was $7.044 trillion, down from more than $7.143 trillion in 2000. The decline was attributed to two factors: the stagnation of median household income—which fell by 3 percent, or about $1,600, between 2000 and 2004—and the fact that the earnings of the richest Americans have not yet caught up with the peak reached before the Internet bubble on Wall Street burst in 2000.
Incomes in 2004 rose by an average 6.8 percent but the vast bulk of the increase went to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of all Americans—living in some 130,500 households with an average income of $4.9 million—who saw their incomes rise by 27.5 percent over the course of one year. During the same period the income of the poorest one-fifth of the population—some 60 million people—rose by only 1.8 percent.
The sharp rise in income for the wealthiest Americans—due in large measure to the Bush administration’s cuts in capital gains taxes, corporate profit rates not seen in nearly 40 years and the recovery of the stock market—has led to a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the super-rich. According to a separate study by University of California-Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans took in 9.5 percent of all pretax income, or about $679 billion in 2004, excluding unreported income.
Referring to this elite group, the New York Times article notes, “those very top households, which include about 300,000 Americans, reported significantly more pretax income combined than the poorest 120 million Americans earned in 2004, the data show. This is a sharp change from 1979, the oldest year examined by the I.R.S, when the thin slice at the top received about one-third of the total income of the big group at the bottom.”
LINK
May not agree with it 100%, but a interesting theory and approach not heard often:
Jefferson Davis
By Charley Reese
12/13/06 "LewRockwell" -- --- Jefferson Davis, one of America's greatest statesmen, said that a question settled by violence would inevitably arise again, though at a different time and in a different form.
And so it has. Lovers and sycophants of the great empire on the Potomac must be feeling uneasy that at least some Americans are again questioning the efficacy of a gargantuan central government.
Perhaps the recent shift of control of Congress to the Democrats has made them nervous, though God knows there are precious few Jeffersonian Democrats in the modern Democratic Party.
And what, you might well ask, is a Jeffersonian Democrat? He's a person who hasn't forgotten that the sovereign states created the federal government, not the reverse, as some today seem to assume. He believes that what the Constitution created was a republic of sovereign states, and that the carefully limited powers assigned to the federal government were all the powers it had, in peace or in war. He believes the Constitution is a binding contract, not a rubbery document that can mean anything a judge or a politician says it means. He believes in a system of checks and balances. In short, he believes in the Declaration of Independence.
That document, you might recall, says that the only purpose of government is to protect rights already granted by God, and that when a government fails to protect those rights and begins to abuse them, the people have the right to alter or overthrow it. "Sounds communistic to me," grumbles old Jack Jingoist. "That guy Jefferson must have been some kind of a pinko."
Why else would Lord Acton, the great British philosopher of liberty, have written to Robert E. Lee, America's greatest soldier, that, "I grieve more for what was lost at Appomattox than I rejoice at what was gained at Waterloo." Lord Acton saw clearly what many American professors of history do not – that the defeat of the South was the end of America's experiment in liberty and self-government and a conscious choice to emulate the central governments of Europe.
H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore journalist, in his usually blunt way said the only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for government "of the people, by the people and for the people."
Davis had said, "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."
On another occasion, he said: "We feel our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of our honor and independence. We ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms."
A newspaper in New Hampshire said: "The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? We must not let the South go."
So to add to the definition of Jeffersonian Democrats, they were a majority of the Founding Fathers, a majority who fought the American Revolution, a majority who wrote the Constitution, and a majority who fought for Southern independence. No wonder the precious few still extant make big-government lovers so nervous.
Jefferson Davis
By Charley Reese
12/13/06 "LewRockwell" -- --- Jefferson Davis, one of America's greatest statesmen, said that a question settled by violence would inevitably arise again, though at a different time and in a different form.
And so it has. Lovers and sycophants of the great empire on the Potomac must be feeling uneasy that at least some Americans are again questioning the efficacy of a gargantuan central government.
Perhaps the recent shift of control of Congress to the Democrats has made them nervous, though God knows there are precious few Jeffersonian Democrats in the modern Democratic Party.
And what, you might well ask, is a Jeffersonian Democrat? He's a person who hasn't forgotten that the sovereign states created the federal government, not the reverse, as some today seem to assume. He believes that what the Constitution created was a republic of sovereign states, and that the carefully limited powers assigned to the federal government were all the powers it had, in peace or in war. He believes the Constitution is a binding contract, not a rubbery document that can mean anything a judge or a politician says it means. He believes in a system of checks and balances. In short, he believes in the Declaration of Independence.
That document, you might recall, says that the only purpose of government is to protect rights already granted by God, and that when a government fails to protect those rights and begins to abuse them, the people have the right to alter or overthrow it. "Sounds communistic to me," grumbles old Jack Jingoist. "That guy Jefferson must have been some kind of a pinko."
Why else would Lord Acton, the great British philosopher of liberty, have written to Robert E. Lee, America's greatest soldier, that, "I grieve more for what was lost at Appomattox than I rejoice at what was gained at Waterloo." Lord Acton saw clearly what many American professors of history do not – that the defeat of the South was the end of America's experiment in liberty and self-government and a conscious choice to emulate the central governments of Europe.
H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore journalist, in his usually blunt way said the only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for government "of the people, by the people and for the people."
Davis had said, "I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it."
On another occasion, he said: "We feel our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of our honor and independence. We ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms."
A newspaper in New Hampshire said: "The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? We must not let the South go."
So to add to the definition of Jeffersonian Democrats, they were a majority of the Founding Fathers, a majority who fought the American Revolution, a majority who wrote the Constitution, and a majority who fought for Southern independence. No wonder the precious few still extant make big-government lovers so nervous.
The Solution to Iraq
By Sadiq H. Wasfi, Ph.D and Dahlia S. Wasfi, M.D.
12/13/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Four years ago, we were told by our government that American national security was in grave danger from Iraq. We were told that Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction and were close to achieving nuclear technology. The Bush administration linked “9/11” and “Iraq” so many times that at the time of our illegal invasion, 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We were told lies then, and we’re being told lies now.
The Problem
The main problem in Iraq today is not civil war but the brutal, illegal occupation by American forces. The divisions between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam are more than 1400 years old, and throughout that history, there has never been armed warfare between them until U.S. forces invaded. It is American forces who are directing and arming the Iraqi police and army, and it is American forces who by law are responsible for maintaining law and order. The Iraqi police are largely composed of militiamen from the private armies of former CIA operatives Ahmed Al-Chalabi (Iraqi National Congress), Iyad Allawi (Iraqi National Accord), and Nuri Al-Maliki (Hezb’Dawah). There are also Iraqi Police Commando Units—aka death squads—who are being trained by American Special Forces.
Who benefits from our soldiers staying in Iraq?
Is it the Iraqi people? By 2004, a report on Iraq issued by our own Government Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed that the majority of Iraqis had fewer basic services like electricity and water than before our invasion. In 2005, doctors were reporting that under the U.S.-controlled Ministry of Health, their supplies were significantly worse than during the period of economic sanctions! And the latest cluster-sample survey published in the British medical journal Lancet (a scientifically-sound study) estimates the Iraqi civilian death toll at 655,000 after 3.5 years of occupation. The highest estimates for the toll of Saddam Hussein’s killing sprees were around 300,000, and that was over 30 years. It should come as no surprise that a secret poll done by the UK Ministry of Defense in 2005 found that 82% of Iraqis want U.S. troops out. Another 2006 study showed that 60% of Iraqis support attacks against occupation forces—much like the sentiment here towards the Redcoats in the 1700’s. No, the occupation does not benefit Iraqis.
Is it American soldiers who benefit from staying? It doesn’t help the nearly 3000 who have died in an illegal war based on lies. It doesn’t help the over 30,000 mentally and physically disabled for the sake of war profiteers (www.iraqforsale.org). It doesn’t help those dying from exposure to depleted uranium, denied their benefits because the Veterans Healthcare Budget came up 1 billion dollars short last year. It doesn’t help those who suffer from the nightmares and flashbacks of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and it certainly doesn’t help those who found suicide a better option than continuing forward in emotional and sometimes physical agony.
Do the American people benefit? Citizens who have had their hard earned tax money stolen by greedy corporations? Defense contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman and war profiteers like Halliburton, its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, and Bechtel have our tax money to the tune of over $300 billion. But there isn’t enough money to buy armor for the soldiers’ vehicles, and American families are buying their kids Kevlar vests so they might not come home in flag-draped boxes.
We are not safer. Our own CIA has established that the new Iraq under U.S. direction is a “terror breeding ground.” Since 2005, American military officers have said that the war for hearts and minds is lost. And now Army and even Marine generals have made official statements that the “military war” is lost. What Americans have “won” is the reputation for being an arrogant bully, and a murderous and racist one at that. The seeds of hatred have been sown in our name.
LINK to The Solution
By Sadiq H. Wasfi, Ph.D and Dahlia S. Wasfi, M.D.
12/13/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Four years ago, we were told by our government that American national security was in grave danger from Iraq. We were told that Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction and were close to achieving nuclear technology. The Bush administration linked “9/11” and “Iraq” so many times that at the time of our illegal invasion, 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We were told lies then, and we’re being told lies now.
The Problem
The main problem in Iraq today is not civil war but the brutal, illegal occupation by American forces. The divisions between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam are more than 1400 years old, and throughout that history, there has never been armed warfare between them until U.S. forces invaded. It is American forces who are directing and arming the Iraqi police and army, and it is American forces who by law are responsible for maintaining law and order. The Iraqi police are largely composed of militiamen from the private armies of former CIA operatives Ahmed Al-Chalabi (Iraqi National Congress), Iyad Allawi (Iraqi National Accord), and Nuri Al-Maliki (Hezb’Dawah). There are also Iraqi Police Commando Units—aka death squads—who are being trained by American Special Forces.
Who benefits from our soldiers staying in Iraq?
Is it the Iraqi people? By 2004, a report on Iraq issued by our own Government Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed that the majority of Iraqis had fewer basic services like electricity and water than before our invasion. In 2005, doctors were reporting that under the U.S.-controlled Ministry of Health, their supplies were significantly worse than during the period of economic sanctions! And the latest cluster-sample survey published in the British medical journal Lancet (a scientifically-sound study) estimates the Iraqi civilian death toll at 655,000 after 3.5 years of occupation. The highest estimates for the toll of Saddam Hussein’s killing sprees were around 300,000, and that was over 30 years. It should come as no surprise that a secret poll done by the UK Ministry of Defense in 2005 found that 82% of Iraqis want U.S. troops out. Another 2006 study showed that 60% of Iraqis support attacks against occupation forces—much like the sentiment here towards the Redcoats in the 1700’s. No, the occupation does not benefit Iraqis.
Is it American soldiers who benefit from staying? It doesn’t help the nearly 3000 who have died in an illegal war based on lies. It doesn’t help the over 30,000 mentally and physically disabled for the sake of war profiteers (www.iraqforsale.org). It doesn’t help those dying from exposure to depleted uranium, denied their benefits because the Veterans Healthcare Budget came up 1 billion dollars short last year. It doesn’t help those who suffer from the nightmares and flashbacks of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and it certainly doesn’t help those who found suicide a better option than continuing forward in emotional and sometimes physical agony.
Do the American people benefit? Citizens who have had their hard earned tax money stolen by greedy corporations? Defense contractors like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman and war profiteers like Halliburton, its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, and Bechtel have our tax money to the tune of over $300 billion. But there isn’t enough money to buy armor for the soldiers’ vehicles, and American families are buying their kids Kevlar vests so they might not come home in flag-draped boxes.
We are not safer. Our own CIA has established that the new Iraq under U.S. direction is a “terror breeding ground.” Since 2005, American military officers have said that the war for hearts and minds is lost. And now Army and even Marine generals have made official statements that the “military war” is lost. What Americans have “won” is the reputation for being an arrogant bully, and a murderous and racist one at that. The seeds of hatred have been sown in our name.
LINK to The Solution
Interesting Book:
DELUSIONAL DEMOCRACY
Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government
Joel S. Hirschhorn
This book will disturb your equilibrum, no matter what your political beliefs are. Unlike any other book because it goes way beyond criticism of the current state of the American political system - it has solutions! This book will motivate millions of non-voters to get back into the citizenship game. It presents the best case ever why the current sorry state of American democracy creates an historic opportunity for a new third party candidate to become President of the United States.
Part 1 presents detailed analyses of the three branches of government and the "fourth estate" for a compelling message that American democracy has steadily gone downhill. American society is saddled with distractive consumerism, a culture of dishonesty, and rampant corporate corruption of government. Despite what false patriots tell us, we now have a delusional democracy, not one that citizens can trust to serve their interests. We clearly need a Second American Revolution.
Part 2 presents details about a number of practical solutions for fixing our republic peacefully - actions and techniques that have been proven to work in states or other countries. Are you willing to suffer some pain and see the truth? Or, like so many Americans, will you remain in a delusionary state? This book will convince you that there is no hope as long as the two-party duopoly remains in control. More importantly, it will convince you that a new third party is more than necessary for salvaging American democracy - it is increasingly seen by Americans as the only hope for our future. Eligible voters who do not vote are not to be condemned - they are to be respected and motivated to vote by being offered a new, trustworthy alternative.
LINK to read more about the book and author
DELUSIONAL DEMOCRACY
Fixing the Republic Without Overthrowing the Government
Joel S. Hirschhorn
This book will disturb your equilibrum, no matter what your political beliefs are. Unlike any other book because it goes way beyond criticism of the current state of the American political system - it has solutions! This book will motivate millions of non-voters to get back into the citizenship game. It presents the best case ever why the current sorry state of American democracy creates an historic opportunity for a new third party candidate to become President of the United States.
Part 1 presents detailed analyses of the three branches of government and the "fourth estate" for a compelling message that American democracy has steadily gone downhill. American society is saddled with distractive consumerism, a culture of dishonesty, and rampant corporate corruption of government. Despite what false patriots tell us, we now have a delusional democracy, not one that citizens can trust to serve their interests. We clearly need a Second American Revolution.
Part 2 presents details about a number of practical solutions for fixing our republic peacefully - actions and techniques that have been proven to work in states or other countries. Are you willing to suffer some pain and see the truth? Or, like so many Americans, will you remain in a delusionary state? This book will convince you that there is no hope as long as the two-party duopoly remains in control. More importantly, it will convince you that a new third party is more than necessary for salvaging American democracy - it is increasingly seen by Americans as the only hope for our future. Eligible voters who do not vote are not to be condemned - they are to be respected and motivated to vote by being offered a new, trustworthy alternative.
LINK to read more about the book and author
Talk about conspiracy theory, to weird for comfort:
After surgery, Senator Johnson in critical condition
by Joe in DC - 12/14/2006 07:21:00 AM
Latest news from the Washington Post on the condition of Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD):
After surgery, Senator Johnson in critical condition
by Joe in DC - 12/14/2006 07:21:00 AM
Latest news from the Washington Post on the condition of Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD):
Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) underwent emergency surgery overnight after falling ill at the Capitol and was in critical condition early this morning, introducing a note of uncertainty over control of the Senate just weeks before Democrats are to take over with a one-vote margin.Expecting a more in-depth statement later this morning.
Johnson, 59, was taken to George Washington University Hospital shortly after noon, after becoming disoriented during a conference call with news reporters. He underwent "a comprehensive evaluation by the stroke team," his office said. Aides later said he had not suffered a stroke or heart attack.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Blair Is A Coward
John Pilger: His most damning verdict on Tony Blair
By John Pilger
01/29/03 "The Mirror" --- -- William Russell, the great correspondent who reported the carnage of imperial wars, may have first used the expression "blood on his hands" to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance, order the mass killing of ordinary people.
In my experience "on his hands" applies especially to those modern political leaders who have had no personal experience of war, like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony Blair.
There is about them the essential cowardice of the man who causes death and suffering not by his own hand but through a chain of command that affirms his "authority".
In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity.
The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the "highest authority".
Blair is about to commit both these crimes, for which he is being denied even the flimsiest United Nations cover now that the weapons inspectors have found, as one put it, "zilch".
Like those in the dock at Nuremberg, he has no democratic cover.
Using the archaic "royal prerogative" he did not consult parliament or the people when he dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a foreign power, the Washington regime.
Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and ambitions of "endless war" and "full spectrum dominance" are a matter of record.
All the world knows their names: Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Perle, and Powell, the false liberal. Bush's State of the Union speech last night was reminiscent of that other great moment in 1938 when Hitler called his generals together and told them: "I must have war." He then had it.
To call Blair a mere "poodle" is to allow him distance from the killing of innocent Iraqi men, women and children for which he will share responsibility.
He is the embodiment of the most dangerous appeasement humanity has known since the 1930s. The current American elite is the Third Reich of our times, although this distinction ought not to let us forget that they have merely accelerated more than half a century of unrelenting American state terrorism: from the atomic bombs dropped cynically on Japan as a signal of their new power to the dozens of countries invaded, directly or by proxy, to destroy democracy wherever it collided with American "interests", such as a voracious appetite for the world's resources, like oil.
When you next hear Blair or Straw or Bush talk about "bringing democracy to the people of Iraq", remember that it was the CIA that installed the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad from which emerged Saddam Hussein.
YELLOW: Tony Blair and George Bush
"That was my favourite coup," said the CIA man responsible. When you next hear Blair and Bush talking about a "smoking gun" in Iraq, ask why the US government last December confiscated the 12,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration, saying they contained "sensitive information" which needed "a little editing".
Sensitive indeed. The original Iraqi documents listed 150 American, British and other foreign companies that supplied Iraq with its nuclear, chemical and missile technology, many of them in illegal transactions. In 2000 Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office Minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of lawbreaking British companies. He has never explained why.
LINK
John Pilger: His most damning verdict on Tony Blair
By John Pilger
01/29/03 "The Mirror" --- -- William Russell, the great correspondent who reported the carnage of imperial wars, may have first used the expression "blood on his hands" to describe impeccable politicians who, at a safe distance, order the mass killing of ordinary people.
In my experience "on his hands" applies especially to those modern political leaders who have had no personal experience of war, like George W Bush, who managed not to serve in Vietnam, and the effete Tony Blair.
There is about them the essential cowardice of the man who causes death and suffering not by his own hand but through a chain of command that affirms his "authority".
In 1946 the judges at Nuremberg who tried the Nazi leaders for war crimes left no doubt about what they regarded as the gravest crimes against humanity.
The most serious was unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state that offered no threat to one's homeland. Then there was the murder of civilians, for which responsibility rested with the "highest authority".
Blair is about to commit both these crimes, for which he is being denied even the flimsiest United Nations cover now that the weapons inspectors have found, as one put it, "zilch".
Like those in the dock at Nuremberg, he has no democratic cover.
Using the archaic "royal prerogative" he did not consult parliament or the people when he dispatched 35,000 troops and ships and aircraft to the Gulf; he consulted a foreign power, the Washington regime.
Unelected in 2000, the Washington regime of George W Bush is now totalitarian, captured by a clique whose fanaticism and ambitions of "endless war" and "full spectrum dominance" are a matter of record.
All the world knows their names: Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Cheney and Perle, and Powell, the false liberal. Bush's State of the Union speech last night was reminiscent of that other great moment in 1938 when Hitler called his generals together and told them: "I must have war." He then had it.
To call Blair a mere "poodle" is to allow him distance from the killing of innocent Iraqi men, women and children for which he will share responsibility.
He is the embodiment of the most dangerous appeasement humanity has known since the 1930s. The current American elite is the Third Reich of our times, although this distinction ought not to let us forget that they have merely accelerated more than half a century of unrelenting American state terrorism: from the atomic bombs dropped cynically on Japan as a signal of their new power to the dozens of countries invaded, directly or by proxy, to destroy democracy wherever it collided with American "interests", such as a voracious appetite for the world's resources, like oil.
When you next hear Blair or Straw or Bush talk about "bringing democracy to the people of Iraq", remember that it was the CIA that installed the Ba'ath Party in Baghdad from which emerged Saddam Hussein.
YELLOW: Tony Blair and George Bush
"That was my favourite coup," said the CIA man responsible. When you next hear Blair and Bush talking about a "smoking gun" in Iraq, ask why the US government last December confiscated the 12,000 pages of Iraq's weapons declaration, saying they contained "sensitive information" which needed "a little editing".
Sensitive indeed. The original Iraqi documents listed 150 American, British and other foreign companies that supplied Iraq with its nuclear, chemical and missile technology, many of them in illegal transactions. In 2000 Peter Hain, then a Foreign Office Minister, blocked a parliamentary request to publish the full list of lawbreaking British companies. He has never explained why.
LINK
Economic Apartheid Kills
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
12/12/06 "Information Clearing House" --- - To be successful in overturning our elitist plutocratic system we should add economic apartheid to our semantic arsenal. Better than economic inequality, economic injustice and class warfare, because apartheid is loaded with richly deserved negative emotions. Sadly, in South Africa, economic apartheid has taken over from racial apartheid.
How ironic that the Bush administration successfully talked up the global threat from terrorism while it pursued domestic and foreign policies promoting economic apartheid, a far greater and more pervasive threat to national and global stability.
The human race on planet Earth, taken as an aggregate mass abstraction, may be getting richer. But a new report from the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University shows that wealth creation is remarkably – one might say criminally – unequal. Follow this hierarchy at the top of the wealth pyramid: The richest 1 percent of adults alone owned 40 percent of global assets in the year 2000; the richest 2 percent owned more than half of global household wealth; and the richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85% of the world total. That leaves very little for the remaining 90 percent of the global population. Could it be any worse? Yes, the rich are still getting richer, more millionaires are becoming billionaires.
As to the world’s lower class: the bottom half of the world adult population owned barely 1 percent of global wealth, defined as net worth: the value of physical and financial assets less debts. Over a billion poor people subsist on less than one dollar a day. Every day, according to UNICEF, 30,000 children die due to poverty – that’s over 10 million children killed by poverty every year! Global economic apartheid is killing people.
Here are data showing some of the variations among nations. Average wealth amounted to $144,000 per person in the U.S. in 2000, not as good as the $181,000 in Japan, but better than most others: $127,000 for the U.K., $70,000 for Denmark, $37,000 for New Zealand, $1,400 in Indonesia and $1,100and in India. Averages, of course, are very deceiving.
As to wealth inequality, the richest 10 percent of people in the U.S. have 70 percent of the wealth, compared to 40 percent in China. In other words, China has much more economic equality, though that is changing quickly.
To be among the richest 10 percent of adults in the world required $61,000 in net wealth, and more than $500,000 was needed to belong to the richest 1 percent, a group with 37 million members worldwide according to the study. Recall, all these data are for 2000, and would be much higher now, because of the steady trend of the rich becoming richer.
The statistical measure of inequality is the Gini value, which measures inequality on a scale from zero (total equality) to one (complete inequality). For income, it ranges from .35 to .45 in most countries. Wealth inequality is usually much greater, typically between .65 and .75. This reflects the greater difficulty in accumulating wealth (capital) than increasing income. Two high wealth economies, Japan and the United States, show very different patterns of wealth inequality, with Japan having a low wealth Gini of .55 and the U.S. having around .80. The incomes of the top fifth of the Japanese population are only about three times that of the bottom fifth, compared to more than nine times in the U.S. Japan has little economic apartheid compared to the U.S. Yet both countries have a huge number of wealthy people. Of the wealthiest 10 percent in the world, 25 percent are Americans and 20 percent are Japanese. These two countries are even stronger among the richest 1 percent of individuals in the world, with 37 percent residing in the U.S. and 27 percent in Japan. The point is that despite high numbers of very wealthy people, economic apartheid is absent in Japan and abysmal in the U.S.
We can explain the difference between Japan and the U.S. People can save and accumulate wealth for future economic security, or can borrow and spend like mad to accumulate possessions. According to a 2006 report, only 41 percent of American families save regularly, making wealth creation difficult. America’s national savings rate -- which includes corporate savings and government budget deficits -- is only about 13.6% of gross domestic product, compared to 25 percent in Japan.
Rep. Kucinich: Why I’m Running for President
The six-term Ohio congressman and 2004 presidential candidate, who has been one of Congress’ most vocal and longstanding opponents of the Iraq war, tells Truthdig why he again has his sights set on the Oval Office:
Rep. Kucinch spoke with Truthdig research editor Joshua Scheer*.
TRUTHDIG: What made you decide to run?
KUCINICH: Someone has to rally the American people, to let them know that the money is there right now to bring our troops home. Democrats were put in power in November to chart a new direction in Iraq. It’s inconceivable that having been given the constitutional responsibility to guide the fortunes of America in a new direction, that Democratic leaders would respond by supporting the administration’s call for up to $160 billion in new funding for the war in Iraq.
For me this is a call of conscience to stand up and speak out about what’s going on—to let the American people know that the money is there to bring our troops home now, that we need to begin now to take a new direction in Iraq, and that to pass a supplemental in the spring for another $160 billion would keep the war going until the end of George Bush’s term. Someone needs to stand up and speak out, and I decided it was my responsibility as the person who has been consistently opposed to this war since its inception, who has been a leader in challenging this thinking that led to war, that I would stand up and rally Democrats to change the course that the party has embarked on with respect to continued funding of the war.
TRUTHDIG: This is obviously your major issue, but what other issues are you going to base your campaign on?
KUCINICH: We have to take these things in sequence. From now until the spring, this is the issue: $160 billion is more than three times what the federal education budget is. This is a huge amount of money, and all the other hopes we have as Democrats to create a new agenda for the American people in housing, in healthcare, in education, are going to be destroyed by the administration’s request for $160 billion.
So does that mean I’m a one-issue candidate? Of course not. I’m prepared to lead this country forward to create a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit healthcare system. I’m prepared to lead the way towards policies of environmental sustainability, to develop advanced technologies for alternative energy, for clean energy.
This campaign is about three imperatives: It’s about the imperative of human unity, of recognizing that this is one world, that we are all one, that people all around the world have an underlying connection, that we are interconnected and interdependent. And we need policies that act that interconnection. We need to affirm institutions which support the idea of human unity. And that means that we support the United Nations. It means we support treaties in working with other countries. It means we support the rule of law internationally.
The second imperative is human security, and that security has to deal with basic needs: Each person in the world has a right to survive, a right to food that is fit to eat, and water fit to drink, and air fit to breathe. Each person has a right to a roof over his or her own head. Each person has a right to have clothes on their back. Each person has a right to some means of being able to make a living. Each person has a right to be free of the fear of violence. We have a responsibility to work to secure the world from a nuclear nightmare. We need to look at what we can do to protect peoples everywhere by working for not just nonproliferation, not just disarmament, but nuclear abolition, which in fact was the promise of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The third imperative I’ll discuss in this campaign is the imperative of peace. There are those who believe that war is inevitable. A belief in the inevitability of war makes war a self-fulfilling prophecy. We need to be convinced in our innate capability to create structures for peace in our society. We need to be convinced of our potential as a nation to make nonviolence an operating principle in our society. This is the motivating reason behind a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, which addresses directly, in a practical way, the challenge of domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, violence in the school, racial violence, violence against gays, community relations disputes.
Very Scary Stuff, Big Brotherish via Wall Street Journal:
TSA Approves Scanner That Will Let
Fliers Who Pay Keep Their Shoes On
By LAURA MECKLER
December 13, 2006; Page B1
December 13, 2006; Page B1
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government approved new technology that will automatically scan shoes and boots for bombs, and promises that travelers will soon be spared the trouble of scurrying through security in their socks. But the new machines will be available only to travelers who pay to join a special program, at least at first.
The shoe-scanner approval will give a crucial boost to the Registered Traveler program, which is designed to provide faster airport security screening, via a special security line, to travelers who sign up in advance and undergo a background check. But the program, to be run by private companies under the supervision of the Transportation Security Administration, has languished for years, and currently is operating only in Orlando, Fla.
The shoe scanner is expected to draw customers to the program because not only will it speed up lines. It will also offer another perk -- remaining shod -- to attract customers willing to pay annual fees of about $100.
"We've always said that Registered Traveler has to be more than a front-of-the-line program," says Steven Brill, chief executive of Verified Identity Pass Inc., which operates the Registered Traveler program in Orlando. A handful of other companies also want to offer Registered Traveler programs at airports.
Travelers who join the programs will undergo background checks, and then get biometric cards designed to work at any airport's Registered Traveler kiosks, where iris scans or fingerprints would match the person with his or her ID card. Those kiosks are designed to be used in conjunction with existing carry-on baggage X-ray machines and metal detectors.
The speedy handling of known travelers is designed to free up the TSA to focus on other passengers, who may pose a greater risk. Private companies that take part in the program must be approved by the TSA and compete to win contracts from airports to provide the service. Interoperable technology will allow customers of any given company to use another company's security lines when traveling through various airports.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
History will not treat us kindly
By Tim Andersen
12/11/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Most Americans are hiding. We are like the good Germans of 1933 who knew an authoritarian regime was consolidating its power, but thought we could avoid personal consequences if we kept quiet. We remained silent as enemies of the State were rounded up, and everyones' liberties curtailed. It did not happen all at once. It was a process of conditioning.
The TSA cops at US airports were initially intended to create the perception of eminent threat: America under attack by evildoers! That perception has largely given way to weary travelers offended by the intrusive and slow inspections. I don’t fly that often, but last weekend at the airport it was clear TSA had adopted a new tact. Now they are the authoritarians. While we were trapped in the winding queue they yelled at us to listen up and follow their precise instructions. All liquids and gels (toothpaste!) must be in quantities of 3.4 ounces, or less, grouped together in a single, clear one liter bag. The yelling cop invited us to show our displeasure to any passenger who did not follow instructions, and held up the line. As I was inspected, the TSA cop took my shaving cream from the bag. The tube read 3.6 oz. She asked me what the maximum allowable size was. I told her that’s the only size it came in. She said she would allow it through this time only.
Who could have imagined ten years ago that Congress would permit the Bush regime to eliminate habeas corpus? Our founders understood this was the bedrock fundamental principle of a free people. No political opponents could be rounded up and jailed by a tyrant. No one could presume to be above the law. Yet there was hardly a peep from blasé American consumers. The mainstream press reassured us that good Americans had nothing to worry about.
Many people refuse to recognize the corruption and evil of our government, because the thought is simply intolerable. It undermines their fundamental beliefs and trust, and makes most of what occupies their days utterly trivial. The “solution” for these people is to tune-out any potentially upsetting epiphany. They welcome reassuring propaganda that reinforces our noble purposes in the Middle East and elsewhere. They do not care to investigate personally, or even listen to, the evidence of our considerable crimes.
So, it’s strange to realize we have no real representation in Congress or control over America’s future. Millions of Americans see the ship of state headed straight for an iceberg, and despite our protests the course will not change. It’s a classic nightmare.
History will not treat us kindly. We will be remembered as the Americans who insulated themselves from reality and remained self-absorbed, concerned with their own personal comfort and privilege while our government wrecked havoc on the world and destroyed our own culture. It will not be difficult for future generations to understand what happened and the sequence of events. The evidence is abundantly clear. The only question will be why Americans didn’t rise up and save themselves.
By Tim Andersen
12/11/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Most Americans are hiding. We are like the good Germans of 1933 who knew an authoritarian regime was consolidating its power, but thought we could avoid personal consequences if we kept quiet. We remained silent as enemies of the State were rounded up, and everyones' liberties curtailed. It did not happen all at once. It was a process of conditioning.
The TSA cops at US airports were initially intended to create the perception of eminent threat: America under attack by evildoers! That perception has largely given way to weary travelers offended by the intrusive and slow inspections. I don’t fly that often, but last weekend at the airport it was clear TSA had adopted a new tact. Now they are the authoritarians. While we were trapped in the winding queue they yelled at us to listen up and follow their precise instructions. All liquids and gels (toothpaste!) must be in quantities of 3.4 ounces, or less, grouped together in a single, clear one liter bag. The yelling cop invited us to show our displeasure to any passenger who did not follow instructions, and held up the line. As I was inspected, the TSA cop took my shaving cream from the bag. The tube read 3.6 oz. She asked me what the maximum allowable size was. I told her that’s the only size it came in. She said she would allow it through this time only.
Who could have imagined ten years ago that Congress would permit the Bush regime to eliminate habeas corpus? Our founders understood this was the bedrock fundamental principle of a free people. No political opponents could be rounded up and jailed by a tyrant. No one could presume to be above the law. Yet there was hardly a peep from blasé American consumers. The mainstream press reassured us that good Americans had nothing to worry about.
Many people refuse to recognize the corruption and evil of our government, because the thought is simply intolerable. It undermines their fundamental beliefs and trust, and makes most of what occupies their days utterly trivial. The “solution” for these people is to tune-out any potentially upsetting epiphany. They welcome reassuring propaganda that reinforces our noble purposes in the Middle East and elsewhere. They do not care to investigate personally, or even listen to, the evidence of our considerable crimes.
So, it’s strange to realize we have no real representation in Congress or control over America’s future. Millions of Americans see the ship of state headed straight for an iceberg, and despite our protests the course will not change. It’s a classic nightmare.
History will not treat us kindly. We will be remembered as the Americans who insulated themselves from reality and remained self-absorbed, concerned with their own personal comfort and privilege while our government wrecked havoc on the world and destroyed our own culture. It will not be difficult for future generations to understand what happened and the sequence of events. The evidence is abundantly clear. The only question will be why Americans didn’t rise up and save themselves.
The Americans don't see how unwelcome they are, or that Iraq is now beyond repair
The main purpose of Bush invading Iraq was to retain power at home
By Patrick Cockburn:
12/10/06 "The Independent" -- -- During the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win victories on all fronts.
For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused by the US administration of not reporting political and military progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture was ignored or suppressed.
Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. In reality, it added, "a careful review of the reports ... brought to light 1,100 acts of violence".
The 10-fold reduction in the number of acts of violence officially noted was achieved by not reporting the murder of an Iraqi, or roadside bomb, rocket or mortar attacks aimed at US troops that failed to inflict casualties. I remember visiting a unit of US combat engineers camped outside Fallujah in January 2004 who told me that they had stopped reporting insurgent attacks on themselves unless they suffered losses as commanders wanted to hear only that the number of attacks was going down. As I was drove away, a sergeant begged us not to attribute what he had said: "If you do I am in real trouble."
Few Chinese emperors can have been as impervious to bad news from the front as President George W Bush. His officials were as assiduous as those eunuchs in Beijing 170 years ago in shielding him from bad news. But even when officials familiar with the real situation in Iraq did break through the bureaucratic cordon sanitaire around the Oval Office they got short shrift from Mr Bush. In December 2004 the CIA station chief in Baghdad said that the insurgency was expanding and was "largely unchallenged" in Sunni provinces. Mr Bush's response was: "What is he, some kind of a defeatist?" A week later the station chief was reassigned.
A few days afterwards, Colonel Derek Harvey, the Defence Intelligence Agency's senior intelligence officer in Iraq, made much the same point to Mr Bush. He said of the insurgency: "It's robust, it's well led, it's diverse." According to the US political commentator Sidney Blumenthal, the President at this point turned to his aides and asked: "Is this guy a Democrat?"
The query is perhaps key to Mr Bush's priorities. The overriding political purpose of the US administration in invading Iraq was to retain power at home. It would do so by portraying Mr Bush as "the security president", manipulating and exaggerating the terrorist threat at home and purporting to combat it abroad. It would win cheap military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would hold "khaki" elections in which Democrats could be portrayed as unpatriotic poltroons.
The strategy worked - until November's mid-term elections. Mr Bush was victorious by presenting a false picture of Iraq. It is this that has been exposed as a fraud by the Iraq Study Group.
Long-maintained myths tumble. For instance, the standard stump speech by Mr Bush or Tony Blair since the start of the insurgency has been to emphasise the leading role of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and international terrorism. But the group's report declares "al-Qa'ida is responsible for a small portion of violence", adding that it is now largely Iraqi-run. Foreign fighters, their presence so often trumpeted by the White House and Downing Street, are estimated to number only 1,300 men in Iraq. As for building up the Iraqi army, the training of which is meant to be the centrepiece of US and British policy, the report says that half the 10 planned divisions are made up of soldiers who will serve only in areas dominated by their own community. And as for the army as a whole, it is uncertain "they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a sectarian agenda".
Given this realism it is sad that its authors, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, share one great misconception with Mr Bush and Mr Blair. This is about the acceptability of any foreign troops in Iraq. Supposedly US combat troops will be withdrawn and redeployed as a stiffening or reinforcement to Iraqi military units. They will form quick-reaction forces able to intervene in moments of crisis.
"This simply won't work," one former Iraqi Interior Ministry official told me. "Iraqis who work with Americans are regarded as tainted by their families. Often our soldiers have to deny their contact with Americans to their own wives. Sometimes they balance their American connections by making contact with the insurgents at the same time."
LINK
The main purpose of Bush invading Iraq was to retain power at home
By Patrick Cockburn:
12/10/06 "The Independent" -- -- During the Opium Wars between Britain and China in the 19th century, eunuchs at the court of the Chinese emperor had the problem of informing him of the repeated and humiliating defeat of his armies. They dealt with their delicate task by simply telling the emperor that his forces had already won or were about to win victories on all fronts.
For three and a half years White House officials have dealt with bad news from Iraq in similar fashion. Journalists were repeatedly accused by the US administration of not reporting political and military progress on the ground. Information about the failure of the US venture was ignored or suppressed.
Manipulation of facts was often very crude. As an example of the systematic distortion, the Iraq Study Group revealed last week that on one day last July US officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence. In reality, it added, "a careful review of the reports ... brought to light 1,100 acts of violence".
The 10-fold reduction in the number of acts of violence officially noted was achieved by not reporting the murder of an Iraqi, or roadside bomb, rocket or mortar attacks aimed at US troops that failed to inflict casualties. I remember visiting a unit of US combat engineers camped outside Fallujah in January 2004 who told me that they had stopped reporting insurgent attacks on themselves unless they suffered losses as commanders wanted to hear only that the number of attacks was going down. As I was drove away, a sergeant begged us not to attribute what he had said: "If you do I am in real trouble."
Few Chinese emperors can have been as impervious to bad news from the front as President George W Bush. His officials were as assiduous as those eunuchs in Beijing 170 years ago in shielding him from bad news. But even when officials familiar with the real situation in Iraq did break through the bureaucratic cordon sanitaire around the Oval Office they got short shrift from Mr Bush. In December 2004 the CIA station chief in Baghdad said that the insurgency was expanding and was "largely unchallenged" in Sunni provinces. Mr Bush's response was: "What is he, some kind of a defeatist?" A week later the station chief was reassigned.
A few days afterwards, Colonel Derek Harvey, the Defence Intelligence Agency's senior intelligence officer in Iraq, made much the same point to Mr Bush. He said of the insurgency: "It's robust, it's well led, it's diverse." According to the US political commentator Sidney Blumenthal, the President at this point turned to his aides and asked: "Is this guy a Democrat?"
The query is perhaps key to Mr Bush's priorities. The overriding political purpose of the US administration in invading Iraq was to retain power at home. It would do so by portraying Mr Bush as "the security president", manipulating and exaggerating the terrorist threat at home and purporting to combat it abroad. It would win cheap military victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would hold "khaki" elections in which Democrats could be portrayed as unpatriotic poltroons.
The strategy worked - until November's mid-term elections. Mr Bush was victorious by presenting a false picture of Iraq. It is this that has been exposed as a fraud by the Iraq Study Group.
Long-maintained myths tumble. For instance, the standard stump speech by Mr Bush or Tony Blair since the start of the insurgency has been to emphasise the leading role of al-Qa'ida in Iraq and international terrorism. But the group's report declares "al-Qa'ida is responsible for a small portion of violence", adding that it is now largely Iraqi-run. Foreign fighters, their presence so often trumpeted by the White House and Downing Street, are estimated to number only 1,300 men in Iraq. As for building up the Iraqi army, the training of which is meant to be the centrepiece of US and British policy, the report says that half the 10 planned divisions are made up of soldiers who will serve only in areas dominated by their own community. And as for the army as a whole, it is uncertain "they will carry out missions on behalf of national goals instead of a sectarian agenda".
Given this realism it is sad that its authors, chaired by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, share one great misconception with Mr Bush and Mr Blair. This is about the acceptability of any foreign troops in Iraq. Supposedly US combat troops will be withdrawn and redeployed as a stiffening or reinforcement to Iraqi military units. They will form quick-reaction forces able to intervene in moments of crisis.
"This simply won't work," one former Iraqi Interior Ministry official told me. "Iraqis who work with Americans are regarded as tainted by their families. Often our soldiers have to deny their contact with Americans to their own wives. Sometimes they balance their American connections by making contact with the insurgents at the same time."
LINK
Monday, December 11, 2006
Apple may be cool but it comes last on green list
NEW YORK: Apple Computer may be cool and hip with consumers, but it is anything but a trend-setter when it comes to good environmental policies, Greenpeace says.In its latest report on big electronics manufacturers, the environment activist group ranked Apple last on environmental issues because it still uses harmful chemicals in many of its products and because it does a poor job promoting recycling efforts for its iPods and other products.
Near the top of the list for best companies: Dell, ranked only behind Nokia in terms of environmental friendliness. Dell scored points with the group because of its computer recycling program, which has become among the best in the industry.
Motorola has made the most improvements, according to Greenpeace, in part because it now makes more than 30 mobile phones and other products that do not contain harmful chemicals.
Apple, however, relies heavily on toxic chemicals and plastics, Greenpeace said. In a study, Apple's MacBook Pro laptops contained more of one type of a toxic flame retardant chemical than any other top brand.
Such chemicals are thought to be potentially harmful to users, but also pollute the environment when they are disposed of, often in poor countries in Asia and Africa.
A spokesman for Apple, Steve Dowling, took issue with the findings and the criteria behind the group's report.
He said the company consistently scored high on other environmental rankings, including one created by a group called the Green Electronics Council that is based on Environmental Protection Agency standards.
It was a leader in eliminating the use of lead-containing cathode ray tube monitors, for example, and touts its promotion of wireless technology in helping eliminate cables and wires that can contain harmful polyvinyl chloride, or PVC.
It's still about oil in Iraq
A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields.
12/10/06 "Los Angeles Times" -- -- December 8, 2006 -- WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.
Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder: "It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and opened to foreign firms.
The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.
It's spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the U.S. to "assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise" and to "encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies." This recommendation would turn Iraq's nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.
This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.
The U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement. These agreements are preferred by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq's oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted in the study group's work.
For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply to all the country's oil fields, Iraq has to amend its constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by the central government.
This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law."
This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.
Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president) explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.
LINK
Blind Obedience to the Canons of Capitalism: Of Sick Societies, American Dalits, and a Nation of Lady Macbeths
by Jason Miller
"Tell me where do I belong in this sick society?
….Look at yourself instead of looking at me. With accusation in your eyes. Do you want me crucified for my profanity?
….Tell me the truth and I’ll admit to my guilt if you’ll try to understand. But is that blood that’s on your hand from your democracy?”
--Ozzy Osbourne, You’re no Different, 1983
Bow your heads and drop to your knees, brothers and sisters! Feel the power of the Holy Dollar coursing through your being as you humbly offer your prayers, exaltations and gratitude to Mighty Mammon!
Lay the perpetual argument to rest. There is no separation of church and state.
It is indisputable that the United States is one nation, under God. Our nation worships the unholy trinity of the Dollar, Acquisitiveness, and Opulence with the fanaticism of the Inquisitors.
‘Tis (officially) the season to be greedy….
Yesterday, most of us initiated the “Holidays” by performing the annual rite of gratitude. Millions gave thanks for living in a nation which has become obscenely corpulent by suckling at the teats of genocide, slavery, and imperialism.
Sandburg once christened Chicago “hog butcher for the world”. Accounting for a mere 5% of the world’s population while gluttonously devouring a quarter of the world’s resources easily qualifies the United States as “hog to the world”.
And meanwhile…
According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year (1).
While millions of children are starving to death, we in the United States grapple with afflictions born of over-indulgence. Obesity is reaching epidemic proportions as we wantonly indulge our edacity. As a result, the United States is facing an alarming rise in cases of Type-2 diabetes and a significant decline in life expectancy (2).
What collective behavior better symbolizes our gluttony than Thanksgiving? Gorging ourselves to the point of nausea (while millions were grappling with starvation) yielded at least one humane result yesterday. We relieved 265 million Earth-bound avian creatures of their misery (3). How rewarding to recognize the “good” that came from our disgusting act of over-indulgence.
The Sandman Cometh…
As we slept off the ill effects of our swinish binge, visions of sugar plums, MP3’s, PS3’s, Hummers, Escalades and all manner of goodies gamboled about in our dreams, fueling our lust for more, more, more…and as the new day dawned, tens of millions of true believers arose with renewed spirits, ready to adhere to the edicts of the high priests of Capitalism.
Into the Maelstrom…
Embracing the delusion of individualism in the midst of life’s undeniable web of interdependence, the unwavering disciples charged into the fray to avoid the unthinkably tragic fate of dying without having the most toys.
With the wild-eyed desperation of meth addicts pursuing their next fix, obedient consumers joined the hordes of shoppers assailing malls like Vikings plundering unsuspecting coastal villages. Armed with credit card spending limits exceeding their annual salaries, the loyal foot-soldiers buttressing the economic tyranny of US fascism stampeded to indenture themselves to Visa.
Corporate retailers reveled in the glory of the “biggest shopping day of the year”.
Acts of Heresy…
Delivering an invective that would awaken the most comatose conscience, the Grinch once admonished us of our dereliction of even a semblance of temperance:
That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's always been about. Gifts, gifts... gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts. You wanna know what happens to your gifts? They all come to me. In your garbage. You see what I'm saying? In your garbage. I could hang myself with all the bad Christmas neckties I found at the dump. And the avarice... The avarice never ends!
Yet his poignant reminder of our moral bankruptcy fell largely on ears deafened by the overwhelming din of Madison Avenue’s powerfully alluring appeals to our greed and narcissism.
While abstractions like Seuss’s Grinch had already penetrated the briery thicket of deeply inculcated narcissism densely entwined around my social conscience, my commitment to dwelling in a spiritual realm approaching the antithesis of our indoctrination reached new heights this Thanksgiving.
One way I have found to exercise my values and beliefs is to donate my time, energy and money to homeless shelters. And Thanksgiving 2006 was my first opportunity to serve meals to indigent human beings. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Kansas City Rescue Mission for the allowing me to participate.
Real People….Real Suffering….
At one point in my evening at the Mission, I had the distinct honor of breaking bread with human beings who were engaged in an epic struggle to avoid drowning in a sea of wretchedness.
LINK
by Jason Miller
"Tell me where do I belong in this sick society?
….Look at yourself instead of looking at me. With accusation in your eyes. Do you want me crucified for my profanity?
….Tell me the truth and I’ll admit to my guilt if you’ll try to understand. But is that blood that’s on your hand from your democracy?”
--Ozzy Osbourne, You’re no Different, 1983
Bow your heads and drop to your knees, brothers and sisters! Feel the power of the Holy Dollar coursing through your being as you humbly offer your prayers, exaltations and gratitude to Mighty Mammon!
Lay the perpetual argument to rest. There is no separation of church and state.
It is indisputable that the United States is one nation, under God. Our nation worships the unholy trinity of the Dollar, Acquisitiveness, and Opulence with the fanaticism of the Inquisitors.
‘Tis (officially) the season to be greedy….
Yesterday, most of us initiated the “Holidays” by performing the annual rite of gratitude. Millions gave thanks for living in a nation which has become obscenely corpulent by suckling at the teats of genocide, slavery, and imperialism.
Sandburg once christened Chicago “hog butcher for the world”. Accounting for a mere 5% of the world’s population while gluttonously devouring a quarter of the world’s resources easily qualifies the United States as “hog to the world”.
And meanwhile…
According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year (1).
While millions of children are starving to death, we in the United States grapple with afflictions born of over-indulgence. Obesity is reaching epidemic proportions as we wantonly indulge our edacity. As a result, the United States is facing an alarming rise in cases of Type-2 diabetes and a significant decline in life expectancy (2).
What collective behavior better symbolizes our gluttony than Thanksgiving? Gorging ourselves to the point of nausea (while millions were grappling with starvation) yielded at least one humane result yesterday. We relieved 265 million Earth-bound avian creatures of their misery (3). How rewarding to recognize the “good” that came from our disgusting act of over-indulgence.
The Sandman Cometh…
As we slept off the ill effects of our swinish binge, visions of sugar plums, MP3’s, PS3’s, Hummers, Escalades and all manner of goodies gamboled about in our dreams, fueling our lust for more, more, more…and as the new day dawned, tens of millions of true believers arose with renewed spirits, ready to adhere to the edicts of the high priests of Capitalism.
Into the Maelstrom…
Embracing the delusion of individualism in the midst of life’s undeniable web of interdependence, the unwavering disciples charged into the fray to avoid the unthinkably tragic fate of dying without having the most toys.
With the wild-eyed desperation of meth addicts pursuing their next fix, obedient consumers joined the hordes of shoppers assailing malls like Vikings plundering unsuspecting coastal villages. Armed with credit card spending limits exceeding their annual salaries, the loyal foot-soldiers buttressing the economic tyranny of US fascism stampeded to indenture themselves to Visa.
Corporate retailers reveled in the glory of the “biggest shopping day of the year”.
Acts of Heresy…
Delivering an invective that would awaken the most comatose conscience, the Grinch once admonished us of our dereliction of even a semblance of temperance:
That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's always been about. Gifts, gifts... gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts. You wanna know what happens to your gifts? They all come to me. In your garbage. You see what I'm saying? In your garbage. I could hang myself with all the bad Christmas neckties I found at the dump. And the avarice... The avarice never ends!
Yet his poignant reminder of our moral bankruptcy fell largely on ears deafened by the overwhelming din of Madison Avenue’s powerfully alluring appeals to our greed and narcissism.
While abstractions like Seuss’s Grinch had already penetrated the briery thicket of deeply inculcated narcissism densely entwined around my social conscience, my commitment to dwelling in a spiritual realm approaching the antithesis of our indoctrination reached new heights this Thanksgiving.
One way I have found to exercise my values and beliefs is to donate my time, energy and money to homeless shelters. And Thanksgiving 2006 was my first opportunity to serve meals to indigent human beings. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Kansas City Rescue Mission for the allowing me to participate.
Real People….Real Suffering….
At one point in my evening at the Mission, I had the distinct honor of breaking bread with human beings who were engaged in an epic struggle to avoid drowning in a sea of wretchedness.
LINK
Outsourcer in Chief
According to U.S. News & World Report, President Bush has told aides that he won’t respond in detail to the Iraq Study Group’s report because he doesn’t want to “outsource” the role of commander in chief.
That’s pretty ironic. You see, outsourcing of the government’s responsibilities — not to panels of supposed wise men, but to private companies with the right connections — has been one of the hallmarks of his administration. And privatization through outsourcing is one reason the administration has failed on so many fronts.
For example, an article in Saturday’s New York Times describes how the Coast Guard has run a $17 billion modernization program: “Instead of managing the project itself, the Coast Guard hired Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two of the nation’s largest military contractors, to plan, supervise and deliver the new vessels and helicopters.”
The result? Expensive ships that aren’t seaworthy. The Coast Guard ignored “repeated warnings from its own engineers that the boats and ships were poorly designed and perhaps unsafe,” while “the contractors failed to fulfill their obligation to make sure the government got the best price, frequently steering work to their subsidiaries or business partners instead of competitors.”
In Afghanistan, the job of training a new police force was outsourced to DynCorp International, a private contractor, under very loose supervision: when conducting a recent review, auditors couldn’t even find a copy of DynCorp’s contract to see what it called for. And $1.1 billion later, Afghanistan still doesn’t have an effective police training program.
In July 2004, Government Executive magazine published an article titled “Outsourcing Iraq,” documenting how the U.S. occupation authorities had transferred responsibility for reconstruction to private contractors, with hardly any oversight. “The only plan,” it said, “appears to have been to let the private sector manage nation-building, mostly on their own.” We all know how that turned out.
On the home front, the Bush administration outsourced many responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For example, the job of evacuating people from disaster areas was given to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America. When Hurricane Katrina struck, Landstar didn’t even know where to get buses. According to Carey Limousine, which was eventually hired, Landstar “found us on the Web site.”
It’s now clear that there’s a fundamental error in the antigovernment ideology embraced by today’s conservative movement. Conservatives look at the virtues of market competition and leap to the conclusion that private ownership, in itself, is some kind of magic elixir. But there’s no reason to assume that a private company hired to perform a public service will do better than people employed directly by the government.
In fact, the private company will almost surely do a worse job if its political connections insulate it from accountability — which has, of course, consistently been the case under Mr. Bush. The inspectors’ report on Afghanistan’s police conspicuously avoided assessing DynCorp’s performance; even as government auditors found fault with Landstar, the company received a plaque from the Department of Transportation honoring its hurricane relief efforts.
Underlying this lack of accountability are the real motives for turning government functions over to private companies, which have little to do with efficiency. To say the obvious: when you see a story about failed outsourcing, you can be sure that the company in question is a major contributor to the Republican Party, is run by people with strong G.O.P. connections, or both.
So what happens now? The failure of privatization under the Bush administration offers a target-rich environment to newly empowered Congressional Democrats — and I say, let the subpoenas fly. Bear in mind that we’re not talking just about wasted money: contracting failures in Iraq helped us lose one war, similar failures in Afghanistan may help us lose another, and FEMA’s failures helped us lose a great American city.
And maybe, just maybe, the abject failure of this administration’s efforts to outsource essential functions to the private sector will diminish the antigovernment prejudice created by decades of right-wing propaganda.
That’s important, because the presumption that the private sector can do no wrong and the government can do nothing right prevents us from coming to grips with some of America’s biggest problems — in particular, our wildly dysfunctional health care system. More on that in future columns.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Monday, December 04, 2006
Juan Cole's Daily Info:
Talabani, Hakim Reject Int'l Conference
9 GIs Killed
The US military announced that Sunni Arab guerrillas have killed 9 GIs in Baghdad and al-Anbar over the weekend.
AP says that 71 bodies were found in Baghdad and other cities on Sunday.
AP also reports that President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Barham Salih, and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have all rejected United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for an international conference on Iraq. Talabani said, "We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we who decide the fate of the nation . . ."
If Talabani can decide the fate of Iraq, he should please go ahead and do it. It looks pretty out of control to the rest of us, and we don't think he's in a position to turn down Annan's offer of help. In fact there is something sinister about the top Kurdish and Shiite leaders rejecting an international conference that might help stop the Night of the Living Dead. Basically, they seem to be saying that they've come out on top and are happy with the status quo, and aren't interested in compromise or negotiation.
Consider the first item in today's entry. It is the lives of those 9 American GI's that give Talabani and al-Hakim the option of rejecting the international conference.
Here is the exchange of the BBC interviewer with Annan::
Annan is right, of course. Historians think that between 80,000 and 100,000 Lebanese were killed in the Civil War of 1975-1989, 20,000 of them during Israel's 1982 invasion. The death toll in Iraq since March, 2003, has likely been at least 420,000. Even the recent figure announced by the Ministry of Health in Iraq, of 150,000 Iraqis killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas or "insurgents," is larger than that for Lebanon (and it does not count those killed by the US military and by the Shiite militias).
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that secular Sunni politician Salih Mutlak, leader of the National Dialogue Front (11 seats in parliament) supports Annan's proposal for an international conference. Al-Zaman reports that Mutlak has formed a new coalition in parliament that will include the Shiite Sadr Movement. It will stand for the unity of Iraq and a withdrawal of US troops. It excludes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Da`wa Party, the two mainstays of the current government. The bloc will be announced in the coming days. Gunmen had attempted to assassinate Mutlak on Saturday.
Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday. Major attacks include:
There were also significant battles in Baquba and Ramadi between US forces and Sunni Arab guerrillas.
Iraq's reconstituted Baath Party, led by Izzat Ibrahim Duri from the Mosul area, is rejecting pressure from Arab states to negotiate with the Americans. The Baath is probably a majority of the effective resistance in Sunni Arab Iraq. The foreign jihadis or "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," are a relatively minor part of it all, though they can be destructive. That is, the refusal of the Baathis to talk is bad news indeed.
Hamza Hendawi of AP reports on the way that Baghdad's neighborhoods are de facto being ethnically cleansed. Shiites are leaving majority-Sunni districts like Dora in droves. The Tigris, which runs through the capital, is becoming the de facto Sunni-Shiite border. (One big problem is that Shiite Kadhimiya and Sunni Adhamiya are on the wrong sides of the river and so are being left high and dry.)
My NPR interview on Sunni and Shiite Islam in history and in Iraq can be listened to at the Weekend Edition site.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Iraq has become a major smuggling route for drugs coming from Afghanistan and elsewhere in Asia. They go from there to the Gulf and thence to Europe. Iraqi officials say that they lack the capability of blocking the smuggling or controlling their borders. Being a smuggling route can be a hazard to a population. Pakistan ended up with over a million heroin addicts after it became a favored such route.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad pledged to support Iraq's national unity.
Talabani, Hakim Reject Int'l Conference
9 GIs Killed
The US military announced that Sunni Arab guerrillas have killed 9 GIs in Baghdad and al-Anbar over the weekend.
AP says that 71 bodies were found in Baghdad and other cities on Sunday.
AP also reports that President Jalal Talabani, Foreign Minister Barham Salih, and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have all rejected United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan's call for an international conference on Iraq. Talabani said, "We are an independent and a sovereign nation and it is we who decide the fate of the nation . . ."
If Talabani can decide the fate of Iraq, he should please go ahead and do it. It looks pretty out of control to the rest of us, and we don't think he's in a position to turn down Annan's offer of help. In fact there is something sinister about the top Kurdish and Shiite leaders rejecting an international conference that might help stop the Night of the Living Dead. Basically, they seem to be saying that they've come out on top and are happy with the status quo, and aren't interested in compromise or negotiation.
Consider the first item in today's entry. It is the lives of those 9 American GI's that give Talabani and al-Hakim the option of rejecting the international conference.
Here is the exchange of the BBC interviewer with Annan::
' BBC: Is it civil war?
Kofi Annan: I think, given the level of violence, the level of killing and bitterness and the way that forces are arranged against each other. A few years ago, when we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war. This is much worse. '
Annan is right, of course. Historians think that between 80,000 and 100,000 Lebanese were killed in the Civil War of 1975-1989, 20,000 of them during Israel's 1982 invasion. The death toll in Iraq since March, 2003, has likely been at least 420,000. Even the recent figure announced by the Ministry of Health in Iraq, of 150,000 Iraqis killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas or "insurgents," is larger than that for Lebanon (and it does not count those killed by the US military and by the Shiite militias).
Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that secular Sunni politician Salih Mutlak, leader of the National Dialogue Front (11 seats in parliament) supports Annan's proposal for an international conference. Al-Zaman reports that Mutlak has formed a new coalition in parliament that will include the Shiite Sadr Movement. It will stand for the unity of Iraq and a withdrawal of US troops. It excludes the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Da`wa Party, the two mainstays of the current government. The bloc will be announced in the coming days. Gunmen had attempted to assassinate Mutlak on Saturday.
Reuters reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday. Major attacks include:
' MOSUL - Six bodies were found in and around Mosul . . . All had gunshot wounds.
MOSUL - A suicide car bomb exploded near a police patrol in Mosul, killing two and wounding four . . .
BAGHDAD - A mortar round landed on a secondary school, wounding 10 students in Bab al-Muadham district in north-central Baghdad . . .
NEAR KIRKUK - A suicide bomber blew up a car near the convoy of a senior police officer, killing three of his guards and wounding two others near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, police said. The police officer was wounded in the incident. . . '
There were also significant battles in Baquba and Ramadi between US forces and Sunni Arab guerrillas.
Iraq's reconstituted Baath Party, led by Izzat Ibrahim Duri from the Mosul area, is rejecting pressure from Arab states to negotiate with the Americans. The Baath is probably a majority of the effective resistance in Sunni Arab Iraq. The foreign jihadis or "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia," are a relatively minor part of it all, though they can be destructive. That is, the refusal of the Baathis to talk is bad news indeed.
Hamza Hendawi of AP reports on the way that Baghdad's neighborhoods are de facto being ethnically cleansed. Shiites are leaving majority-Sunni districts like Dora in droves. The Tigris, which runs through the capital, is becoming the de facto Sunni-Shiite border. (One big problem is that Shiite Kadhimiya and Sunni Adhamiya are on the wrong sides of the river and so are being left high and dry.)
My NPR interview on Sunni and Shiite Islam in history and in Iraq can be listened to at the Weekend Edition site.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that Iraq has become a major smuggling route for drugs coming from Afghanistan and elsewhere in Asia. They go from there to the Gulf and thence to Europe. Iraqi officials say that they lack the capability of blocking the smuggling or controlling their borders. Being a smuggling route can be a hazard to a population. Pakistan ended up with over a million heroin addicts after it became a favored such route.
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad pledged to support Iraq's national unity.
The Christian Right Goes Back to Bible Boot Camp
After a study revealed that less than 10% of evangelicals were bible literate, James Dobson's Focus on the Family is desperately taking a two-day multi-media Bible boot camp on the road, selling "truth" for $179 a seat.It's been a rough season for the Christian right. Even for an eschatological movement, these are dark days. First came former Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives David Kuo's public admission that evangelicals were often derided as "nuts" and "goofy" within the inner sanctums of the Bush administration. Then, weeks before losing their shotgun seat in the 109th Congress, the booming voice of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, was silenced in a scandal involving a gay hooker, massage oils, methamphetamine, and a string of Denver hotel rooms booked under false names.
But even before all that hit the fundamentalist fan, the movement was contending with a quieter, more systemic crisis: functional Biblical illiteracy among the flock. That's right, religious conservatives aren't so religious, after all.
This alarm was sounded by George Barna, chief pollster and CEO of the Barna Group, a Ventura, CA-based Christian polling and communications outfit. In August of 2005, Barna reported that less than ten percent of born-again Christians held what he termed a "Biblical worldview." Based on his survey, very few grasped the nuances of scripture or believed in "Absolute Truth" any more than their secular counterparts; the "Body of Christ" had been infected with the virus of Relativism, a wasting disease.
"Although most people own a Bible and know some of its content," reported Barna, "our research found that most [professed evangelicals] have little idea how to integrate core biblical principles to form a unified and meaningful response to the challenges and opportunities of life."
The prolific Barna dashed off a book in response to this worrying discovery. Entitled Think Like Jesus -- and marketed as "one of those books that really ticks off Satan" -- it quickly sold out in Barna's online bookstore. A second edition of Think Like Jesus soon went to press to further aggravate the Lord of Darkness.
Barna's poll and subsequent call to think like Jesus caught the attention of Dr. James Dobson, patriarch of the two most important religious right groups, the $140-million-a-year Focus on the Family, and its more politically minded spin-off, the D.C.-based Family Research Council. Dobson called Barna's report on Christian America's disappearing Biblical worldview "very distressing news," and felt that it warranted a muscular response, one befitting the massive resources at his disposal. The result is Focus on the Family's "The Truth Project: An In-Depth Christian Worldview Experience," a slick and intensive two-day training conference that kicked-off a North American tour last month at a mega-church outside Atlanta. It has since visited sell-out audiences in six cities; there are already 10 events planned for 2007.
LINK
Chavez Wins Re-Election by Wide Margin
By IAN JAMES Associated Press Writer
President Hugo Chavez won re-election by a wide margin Sunday, giving the firebrand leftist six more years to redistribute Venezuela's vast oil wealth to the poor and press his campaign to counter U.S. influence in Latin America and beyond.
By IAN JAMES Associated Press Writer
President Hugo Chavez won re-election by a wide margin Sunday, giving the firebrand leftist six more years to redistribute Venezuela's vast oil wealth to the poor and press his campaign to counter U.S. influence in Latin America and beyond.
Challenger Manuel Rosales conceded defeat but vowed to remain in opposition. During the campaign, Rosales accused Chavez of edging Venezuela toward authoritarian rule and warned the president could undertake even more radical policies if re-elected.
Minutes after the results were announced, Chavez appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace singing the national anthem. He pledged to deepen his effort to transform Venezuela into a socialist society.
"Long live the socialist revolution! Destiny has been written," Chavez shouted to thousands of flag-waving supporters wearing red shirts and braving a pouring rain.
"That new era has begun," he said, raising a hand in the air. "We have shown that Venezuela is red!... No one should fear socialism... Socialism is human. Socialism is love," Chavez said. "Down with imperialism! We need a new world!"
Since he first won office in 1998, Chavez has increasingly dominated all branches of government and his allies now control congress, state offices and the judiciary. He has called President Bush the devil, allied himself with Iran and influenced elections across the region.
Chavez also has used Venezuela's oil wealth to his political advantage. He has channeled oil profits toward multibillion-dollar programs for the poor including subsidized food, free university education and cash benefits for single mothers. He has also helped allies from Cuba to Bolivia with oil and petrodollars.
He now promises to solidify his social program.
With 78 percent of voting stations reporting, Chavez had 61 percent to 38 percent for challenger Rosales, said Tibisay Lucena, head of the country's elections council. Chavez had nearly 6 million votes versus 3.7 million for Rosales, according to the partial tally.
Turnout among the 15.9 million eligible voters was 62 percent, according to an official bulletin of results, making Chavez's lead insurmountable.
"We will continue in this struggle," Rosales told cheering supporters as he conceded defeat.
Some supporters at his campaign headquarters wept, while others were clearly angry.
"We have to do something," said Dona Bavaro, a 36-year-old Rosales supporter. "My country is being stolen. This is the last chance we have. Communism is coming here."
Rosales, a cattle rancher and governor of western Zulia state who stepped down temporarily to run against Chavez, focused his campaign on issues such as rampant crime and corruption, widely seen as Chavez's main vulnerabilities.
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