The Terrorists Who Aren't in the News

By Jennifer L. Pozner, AlterNet. Posted November 11, 2006.

Anti-abortion fanatics spread fear by bombings, murders and assaults, but the media take little notice.

This piece was originally published by Newsday.

On Sept. 11, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the terror attacks that devastated our nation, a man crashed his car into a building in Davenport, Iowa, hoping to blow it up and kill himself in the fire.

No national newspaper, magazine or network newscast reported this attempted suicide bombing, though an AP wire story was available. Cable news (save for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann) was silent about this latest act of terrorism in America.

Had the criminal, David McMenemy, been Arab or Muslim, this would have been headline news for weeks. But since his target was the Edgerton Women's Health Center, rather than, say, a bank or a police station, media have not called this terrorism -- even after three decades of extreme violence by anti-abortion fanatics, mostly fundamentalist Christians who believe they're fighting a holy war.

Since 1977, casualties from this war include seven murders, 17 attempted murders, three kidnappings, 152 assaults, 305 completed or attempted bombings and arsons, 375 invasions, 482 stalking incidents, 380 death threats, 618 bomb threats, 100 acid attacks, and 1,254 acts of vandalism, according to the National Abortion Federation.

Abortion providers and activists received 77 letters threatening anthrax attacks before 9/11, yet the media never considered anthrax threats as terrorism until after 9/11, when such letters were delivered to journalists and members of Congress.

After 9/11, Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups received 554 envelopes containing white powder and messages like: "You have been exposed to anthrax. ... We are going to kill all of you." They were signed by the Army of God, a group that hosts Scripture-filled web pages for "Anti-Abortion Heroes of the Faith," including minister Paul Hill, Michael Griffin and James Kopp, all convicted of murdering abortion providers, and a convicted clinic bomber, the Rev. Michael Bray. Another of their "martyrs," Clayton Waagner, mailed anthrax letters while a fugitive on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for anti-abortion related crimes.

"I am a terrorist," Waagner declared on the Army of God's web site. Boasting that God "freed me to make war on his enemy," he claimed he knew where 42 Planned Parenthood workers lived. "It doesn't matter to me if you're a nurse, receptionist, bookkeeper, or janitor, if you work for the murderous abortionist, I'm going to kill you."

That's textbook terrorism, defined by the USA Patriot Act as dangerous criminal acts that "appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population" or "to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion."

LINK to article

11 states 'fuelling civil war in Somalia'

By David Blair, Africa Correspondent

Last Updated: 2:10am GMT 11/11/2006

Eleven countries are fuelling Somalia's civil war by supplying arms to either the Islamist movement in control of Mogadishu, the capital, or their bitter rivals in the country's official government, according to the United Nations.

A massive inflow of weapons and supplies threatens to turn Somalia into the battleground for a new regional war in the Horn of Africa.

Eight countries, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Egypt, are supplying the Islamists.

Three are backing Somalia's internationally recognised government based in the ruined town of Baidoa.

The UN report – which has yet to be released — has been seen by experts interviewed by Reuters news agency.

Its key findings are that the Islamists, who seized Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia in June, have benefited from huge outside support, largely from the Muslim world.

Iran has given them 250 anti-aircraft missiles and some 1,000 foreign "jihadists" have arrived in Somalia, including experts in bomb-making and assassination.

The Mogadishu Islamists have forged links with Hizbollah in Lebanon and received practical support from Syria, Libya, Sudan, Egypt, Djibouti and Saudi Arabia.

Eritrea, a non-Muslim country, has also sent about 2,500 soldiers to Somalia in support of the Islamists, who style themselves the Supreme Council of Islamic Courts.

The main enemy of Somalia's Islamists is neighbouring Ethiopia, with whom Somalia has a longstanding border dispute.

Eritrea also accuses Ethiopia of occupying its territory and the two countries fought a war between 1998 and 2000.

Eritrea appears to be supplying the Islamists on the principle of "my enemy's enemy is my friend".

Ethiopia, for its part, has sent between 5,000 and 10,000 troops to Somalia in order to back the official administration in Baidoa.

A Big Step in Nation's March to Left

by Paul Waldman

The last time a midterm election brought this kind of change to the Washington power structure, reporters and pundits explained that it was more than the product of clever election strategy, a couple of scandals or a failed policy. Instead, we were told in 1994 that the results at the ballot box signaled something deeper and more fundamental: a shift in Americans' beliefs. "The country has unmistakably moved to the right," wrote The New York Times the day after Republicans took both houses of Congress. "The huge Republican gains also marked a clear shift to the right in the country," said The Washington Post. Similar notes were sounded after Republican wins in 2002 and 2004. Yet, for some reason, we have yet to hear the opinion-makers tell us that Tuesday's election means that the country has "moved to the left." But if 1994 was a move to the right, then 2006 would certainly qualify as a move to the left. After all, Republicans have owned all three branches of government for most of the last six years. They lowered taxes on the wealthy, increased spending on defense, cut or ignored regulation in areas such as environmental protection and worker safety, and pursued a bellicose foreign policy - the very program conservatives have been advocating for decades. The problem was that Americans weren't happy with the results. Yet if recent experience is a guide, we shouldn't be too surprised that pundits haven't spotted a shift to the left in the rejection Republicans suffered Tuesday. This has been the pattern in recent years: When Democrats win, we're told it was a matter of circumstance or an unusually skillful candidate. When Republicans win, we're told it was because Americans are becoming more conservative. Why? Because many members of the media have internalized the attacks conservatives have made on them for decades and come to adopt the complimentary conservative picture of what America is all about. Journalists have accepted the idea that they are an urban elite disconnected from the "real America." They live in places such as Washington and New York, where liberal ideas dominate. The rest of the country, therefore, must be filled with conservatives. So when Democrats win, it can only be an accident of history - but when Republicans win, it must be a pure expression of popular will. But the fact is that nearly all the movement in American public opinion in recent decades has been in one direction: to the left. This evolution is precisely why conservatives have grown so angry about the "culture wars" - because they're losing. In 1977, the General Social Survey found 66 percent of Americans agreeing with the statement, "It is much better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family." By 2004, that figure had fallen to 36 percent. To take another example, a 1987 Pew poll found that only 48 percent of Americans agreed with the statement, "It's all right for blacks and whites to date each other." By 2003, the number agreeing had risen to 77 percent, and it will no doubt keep rising in our ever-more-diverse society. Conservatives might protest that opposition to interracial dating isn't a "conservative" position - but that's only because all sides have now accepted what was once the liberal position. In other words, we've moved to the left. Our ideas about race, gender roles, child rearing and a host of other matters have grown increasingly progressive over time. And that isn't even mentioning issues such as health care, the minimum wage or Social Security, where the liberal position has long been the more popular one. Yet, through smart politicking, Republicans managed to hold on to power. By keeping their base energized and organized, they ensured that they wouldn't be beaten on turnout alone. Combined with ruthless redistricting to increase the number of safe Republican seats, and relentless exploitation of 9/11 - not to mention some key Democratic missteps - it was enough to get more than 50 percent on Election Day. But it could only work for so long, particularly when their positions on issues don't command majority support. In fact, looking at public opinion over the last few decades, issues seem to come in two types: those on which the public is steadily moving to the left, and those, such as abortion and gun control, on which opinions barely budge no matter what happens in the political arena. Although Americans may be more conservative than our friends in Western Europe, it is virtually impossible to find a fundamental issue on which the public is moving steadily to the right. When Republicans took over both houses in Congress in 1994, commentators told President Bill Clinton that his policies had been repudiated. The country had moved to the right, they said, so if Mr. Clinton wanted to salvage his presidency, he should do the same. In many ways, he followed their advice. In the wake of resounding Democratic wins, will we hear the same voices advising President Bush to move to the left? Knowing what we do about Mr. Bush, the idea that he would listen to such a suggestion seems fanciful. But unless they want to see more defeats in the coming years, his fellow Republicans might want to think about it. Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog group, and the author of "Being Right Is Not Enough." His e-mail is pwaldman@mediamatters.org.

The Democracy Circus Came to Town

Did You Enjoy the Illusion?

The corporate financing of political campaigns

is a capital investment in the status quo

to benefit the wealthy and marginalizes those

with neither wealth nor property

That's why substantive change is rarely achieved

through the vote in America

Too many Americans harbor the illusion that we live in a democracy simply because we have the right to vote. But let us be clear about something: voting matters only where real choices are allowed.

The system is purposely designed to require enormous expense from its participants. According to the very mainstream USA Today, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics predicts that $2.6 billion was spent on Congressional races this year alone, which thus precludes any third party candidate, as well as ordinary people, from all but token participation.

It requires big money to win political office and big money comes from the deep pockets of corporate America.

In effect, special interest money has rendered the political process as we know it null and void by restricting our choices to candidates that have been pre-chosen for us by corporate America.

The choice is more illusory than real. Plutocrats and workers have nothing in common. People of ordinary means can no longer ascend to the presidency or even Congress.

The composition of both the state and federal governments are very different from the socio-economic demographics of the populations they are supposed to represent, and it is no accident. Regardless where you look the rich are represented and the great majority is excluded.

So if the Democrats wrest control of the government from the hands of the Republicans, it will be because conservative Democrats won some important races, precluding any progressive mandate from coming into play.

On the whole the nation will remain well to the right of center, and certainly will not progress toward the left. The bulk of the corporate money will reverse direction and flow from the Republicans into the coffers of the Democrats. The corporations will retain control.

One can cast protest votes, as I often do, for candidates who do not accept special interest money, but they are rarely, if ever, contenders.

It requires huge sums of money to get media exposure, and to get on state ballots, yet alone contend for the prize.

The system is designed to preclude challenges to the status quo, which leaves us to choose between Republicrats fielded by corporate backers.

Corporate money so owns the political process that voters are left to choose only between the finer nuances of the capital system, and between degrees of corruption.

Ultimately the choice is between lesser evils, which speak volumes about the state of decay of American politics. Good never springs from evil, so we witness the steady moral decline of a nation mired in corruption and confusion.

There is nothing benign about corporate financiers who hedge their bets by supporting candidates of the major parties.

Corporate CEOs are not philanthropists interested in the well being of America. They are motivated by greed and profits, and when they finance political campaigns, make no mistake about it; they are renting or buying politicians who will help them achieve their objectives.

Special interest money is a malignancy that grows in the bowels of government, and it must be removed lest it kill the host.

A system in which the high rollers and fat cats feed upon the bloated corpses of the tax payers and is accountable to no one should be an affront to all decent people of every political stripe. Let us see the political system in America for what it is, and for the cruel hoax that it has always been.

The corporate financing of political campaigns is, in fact, a capital investment in the status quo that benefits the wealthy and marginalizes those with neither wealth nor property.

That explains why substantive change is rarely accomplished through the vote in America.

It also explains the remarkable consistency and homogeneity of governmental policy through the decades; domestic and foreign, regardless of which party is in power.

Those policies have consistently accrued wealth and influence to the rich by exploiting the working class, and with disastrous results for the world.

It has resulted in war after war, occupation after occupation; and the systematic overthrow of democracies everywhere.

The corporations and their puppets in government are realizing enormous profits from the system, and they will not allow significant or radical change from within the existing order.

The system cannot and will not be reformed; the money changers will not allow it.

Now the great majority of the population is disenfranchised and left out of the equation.

Only those with wealth are allowed to play. Money talks and those who do not have an abundance of wealth are without voice in a political system awash in cash and corruption.

If working class people were running the government, rather than wealthy Plutocrats, we would not be in the current predicament that threatens to engulf us, and we would have avoided many of the pitfalls that have trapped us in the past.

We would never have experienced a Viet Nam War, there would have been no invasion and occupation of Iraq; and we would have socialized health care and decent schools like other industrialized nations, rather than tax cuts for the rich and massive corporate welfare.

There is a huge difference between a government of the people and corporate ‘for profit’ governance. America would be a much better place without corporate rule, and unquestionably the world would be better off and much safer.

I am not sure what the solution is to the dilemma we have created for ourselves through detachment, indifference and apathy.

I do know, however, that doing the same thing over and over will assure a similar result to what we have gotten in the past.

At some point we must acknowledge the illegitimacy of the political process, and see it for the prostitution and the sham that it is. It is incapable of producing just results or the change we need in order to become a Democracy.

There are no easy ways out of the morass we have created. It may be that another tea party similar to the one enacted at Boston Harbor over two hundred years ago is the only cure for what ails us.

I survive on the hope that eventually enough good people will arrive at a similar conclusion, and that we will effect change directly in the streets of America. That is what I would call participatory Democracy, and it would be a thing of beauty to behold.

Charles Sullivan/ICH

The Great Revulsion

By PAUL KRUGMAN

I’m not feeling giddy as much as greatly relieved. O.K., maybe a little giddy. Give ’em hell, Harry and Nancy!

Here’s what I wrote more than three years ago, in the introduction to my column collection “The Great Unraveling”: “I have a vision — maybe just a hope — of a great revulsion: a moment in which the American people look at what is happening, realize how their good will and patriotism have been abused, and put a stop to this drive to destroy much of what is best in our country.”

At the time, the right was still celebrating the illusion of victory in Iraq, and the bizarre Bush personality cult was still in full flower. But now the great revulsion has arrived.

Tuesday’s election was a truly stunning victory for the Democrats. Candidates planning to caucus with the Democrats took 24 of the 33 Senate seats at stake this year, winning seven million more votes than Republicans. In House races, Democrats received about 53 percent of the two-party vote, giving them a margin more than twice as large as the 2.5-percentage-point lead that Mr. Bush claimed as a “mandate” two years ago — and the margin would have been even bigger if many Democrats hadn’t been running unopposed.

The election wasn’t just the end of the road for Mr. Bush’s reign of error. It was also the end of the 12-year Republican dominance of Congress. The Democrats will now hold a majority in the House that is about as big as the Republicans ever achieved during that era of dominance.

Moreover, the new Democratic majority may well be much more effective than the majority the party lost in 1994. Thanks to a great regional realignment, in which a solid Northeast has replaced the solid South, Democratic control no longer depends on a bloc of Dixiecrats whose ideological sympathies were often with the other side of the aisle.

Now, I don’t expect or want a permanent Democratic lock on power. But I do hope and believe that this election marks the beginning of the end for the conservative movement that has taken over the Republican Party.

In saying that, I’m not calling for or predicting the end of conservatism. There always have been and always will be conservatives on the American political scene. And that’s as it should be: a diversity of views is part of what makes democracy vital.

But we may be seeing the downfall of movement conservatism — the potent alliance of wealthy individuals, corporate interests and the religious right that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. This alliance may once have had something to do with ideas, but it has become mainly a corrupt political machine, and America will be a better place if that machine breaks down.

Why do I want to see movement conservatism crushed? Partly because the movement is fundamentally undemocratic; its leaders don’t accept the legitimacy of opposition. Democrats will only become acceptable, declared Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, once they “are comfortable in their minority status.” He added, “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they’ve been fixed, then they are happy and sedate.”

And the determination of the movement to hold on to power at any cost has poisoned our political culture. Just think about the campaign that just ended, with its coded racism, deceptive robo-calls, personal smears, homeless men bused in to hand out deceptive fliers, and more. Not to mention the constant implication that anyone who questions the Bush administration or its policies is very nearly a traitor.

When movement conservatism took it over, the Republican Party ceased to be the party of Dwight Eisenhower and became the party of Karl Rove. The good news is that Karl Rove and the political tendency he represents may both have just self-destructed.

Two years ago, people were talking about permanent right-wing dominance of American politics. But since then the American people have gotten a clearer sense of what rule by movement conservatives means. They’ve seen the movement take us into an unnecessary war, and botch every aspect of that war. They’ve seen a great American city left to drown; they’ve seen corruption reach deep into our political process; they’ve seen the hypocrisy of those who lecture us on morality.

And they just said no.

As I stood in line for coffee on the morning after election night, a Democratic Party supporter ahead of me in line said, “Thank God this country is finally switching trains.”

If only that were true.

On Election Day 2006, the U.S. public didn’t switch trains but simply ratified a different group of conductors.

It’s the same old train, on the same tracks, heading in the same direction.

This isn’t an argument that there are never any meaningful differences between politicians; sometimes it does matter who is giving the orders on the train.

But on this day after the morning-after, it’s crucial for those with a critical perspective to highlight that this train -- contemporary U.S. society -- is barreling forward toward disaster, no matter who’s punching tickets.

Here’s the unavoidable reality: Our train is on an unsustainable course in cultural, political, economic, and ecological terms.

In a predatory corporate capitalist economy in an imperial state -- a system that values the concentration of wealth and power, and devalues people -- certain things are inevitable:

--Our deepest values concerning justice and solidarity will be undermined by the anti-human values of capitalism and empire.

--Truly democratic politics, in which ordinary people have a meaningful role, will be subverted the concentration of wealth.

--An increasingly fragile economy mired in self-indulgent deficit and debt, with an artificially inflated currency, will start to collapse when our military and political power are unable to keep the rest of the world in line.

--The ability of a finite planet to sustain life as we know it will diminish dramatically in a system based on fantasies of unlimited growth marked by the glorification of domination.

The train moves forward, as the vast majority of Democrats and virtually all Republicans avoid these realities. Where can such a train take us? Pick your metaphor.

--It could be that the train tracks end at a cliff, or

--it might be that the train is heading for a brick wall, or

--perhaps the train will derail along the way, or

--maybe the tracks will simply end abruptly and the train will run into the ground.

If we don’t take radical action relatively soon, every ending we can imagine is likely to be brutal and violent, deadly not only for most of the world’s population but also for the non-human world.

This isn’t irrational apocalypticism but a rational approach to the evidence in front of us. No one can predict how this will play out, but it will most certainly play out ugly unless we change the trajectory.

Many who would agree in some fashion with such an assessment will say, “Yes, but at least electing Democrats might slow down the train.”

With a reactionary right-wing Republican Party in total control, the train is hurtling forward at 100 miles per hour, according to this position, but with Democrats in charge the train might slow down to 90 miles per hour.

Theoretically they could, though I hear little coming from Democratic Party leaders that suggests they will pursue policies that will significantly turn from an unsustainable capitalism or a profoundly immoral empire. Instead, they talk of different strategies and tactics for managing those systems.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Democratic Party rule could slow down the train and buy us more time.

If nothing is done to change the direction of the train, the end remains the same. So, the important question is, what can we do with that time -- not off in an abstract future, but now?

The small amount of time we might gain will be meaningful only if we confront the harsh reality that the systems that shape our world -- capitalism and empire, rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy -- are fundamentally bankrupt and indefensible, yet deeply rooted in our culture.

When I make this point, I’m often told by liberals and progressives that I’m not being realistic, that ordinary people won’t listen to such analysis.

That’s not my experience. When I have tried to articulate this worldview in plain language in recent political talks, I have found that a growing number of people not only will listen but are hungry for such honesty.

Of course not everyone agrees -- not anywhere near the number needed for a mass movement right now, and certainly not a majority -- but one wouldn’t expect that in this affluent society in which many people are still insulated from the consequences of these systems.

But more and more people, from many sectors of society, are facing these realities, and we are searching for a community in which to confront this together.

Our political work should focus on connecting with people on common ground, and then working to shape a radically new vision of justice and sustainability.

The time for that is now; the direction and speed of the train dictate that we not put it off any longer. It’s time to dig in for what one writer has dubbed “the long emergency.”

I think that in the two years to come before the presidential election, pressing this kind of analysis is the crucial political work for those committed to left/feminist/antiracist values and progressive politics.

Rather than fussing about how to persuade Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean of the need for radical action, let’s take that message to ordinary people, who are more likely to listen.

This isn’t about who can be most radical for the sake of being radical -- it’s about whether we can be realistic. Such an approach cannot promise political transformation in the short-term, but I believe it is the only hope for our future.

Robert Jensen/ZNet

The Current Struggle of Oaxaca

by Nancy Romer

I have been in Mexico City for the last week observing and participating in the struggle that has captured the dreams and fears of the Mexican people—the struggle for workers rights and democracy in Oaxaca, a poor state with a mostly indigenous population. Reeling from the movement of international capital and the concomitant movement of people from the Mexican country side to the cities, the people of Oaxaca have created a struggle that has wide implications. Beginning in May, the teachers of the “democratic” wing of the national teachers union (section 22 of the SNTE), began a strike and encampment in the zocalo (main square) of Oaxaca, fully supported by parents and students, demanding higher salaries and support for buildings, supplies and money for students so they won’t have to work. Teachers in Oaxaca as teachers everywhere are civic and political activists who participate effectively in their communities; particularly in Oaxaca, their relationships to their communities are part of their everyday lives. The dynamic coalition of parents, teachers, and students is a model for all of us who want to see the schools be transformed into institutions that serve the needs of the people, especially the poor, instead of creating testing factories that sort people for the corporate economy. It also presents a model of how unions can engage in societal demands greater than the narrow confines of their contracts. Met with violent repression from the Mexican government, the teachers’ struggle expanded into a mass-based coalition, APPO (Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca), that includes people from over 935 groups of unions, civic organizations, neighborhoods, churches, universities, and beyond. Their demands have expanded to include the removal of the hated conservative governor Ulises Ruiz, who has given rich state contracts to construction companies of his friends and relatives to the detriment of the people’s basic services and has sold off historically significant publicly-owned works of art for his own aggrandizement. Oaxaquenos report that the city has become much more difficult to transverse with Ulises’ expensive and hated construction projects. His administration is considered so corrupt that the people of Oaxaca have developed an alternate government structure to provide basic services. APPO has also demanded a new state constitution that would use traditionally indigenous decision-making processes that they view as more truly democratic than the present state constitution. In Mexico, a parallel struggle has ensued calling for the recount of the federal election vote for president, charging vote fraud (sound familiar?) in the (s)election of Felipe Calderon who has the support of the US government and the International Monetary Fund . While some APPO activists support the progressive candidacy of Manuel Lopez Obrador over Calderon, most are skeptical about any electoral candidates and see their struggle as distinct from some of their supporters outside of Oaxaca who are more likely to conflate these parallel struggles; some Oaxaquenos fear that their struggle is being used by the electoralists. APPO has formal meetings in which important decisions are made, representing a bottom-up participatory structure; implementation of decisions is decentralized. When state and local police were sent in to tear down the encampment in Oaxaca’s zocalo last June, the battle began and continued throughout the summer, with an intense crescendo last week with a massive incursion of federal “preventive” troops, many in plain clothes, in Oaxaca. APPO estimates that nearly 30 people have been killed in Oaxaca since June, at least 8 in the last week, including teachers, students, parents, and at least one American, Brad Will, an Indymedia journalist. Many more have been wounded and more yet detained by the local police. Early on in the struggle, APPO activists erected barricades throughout the city as protection from attacks from armed thugs. Later they were appropriated by the people to create spaces of resistance—for kids to play soccer, for families to share meals and make music together; this in a culture with a tradition of “tequio” which requires every adult to perform some kind of ongoing community service as a contribution to the society. The zocalo was transformed into a performance space, featuring new videos of the recent events and struggles with the police and federal troops, music of the struggle, and people testifying about their lives and the troubles. These events were marked by a great outpouring of creativity and expression often by ordinary people, expressing joy, fear, and hope. The city of Oaxaca has been an intense dialectic of liberated zone and battleground. Each neighborhood, each union, each group of people engaged in the struggle runs their own process, controls their own barricades, creates their own ways of being. The central APPO represents and reflects the desires of these participating groups but the people themselves carry out the plan and create the details on the ground. The people are empowered by their own actions, communities and ideas.

LINK to rest of article

Voters have sent George Bush a strong message. But will he listen to what they have said?

THE American people have spoken. Loud and clear. They have dished out a stinging rebuff to President George Bush, and a potentially crippling blow to the remaining two years of his presidency. It is possible that Mr Bush has gone from emperor to lame duck.

In mid-term elections for Congress, voters have delivered the House of Representatives to the Democrats (for the first time in 12 years) and, quite possibly, the Senate. With the Democrats holding some if not all of the reins of power, Mr Bush will face his opponents not in the media or on the hustings but in the chamber. For the first time, his Administration's conduct will be put under the microscope. Legislation will no longer be rubber-stamped through Congress. He and

his cabinet's record can and more than likely will be examined: for example, on the war in Iraq and the response to hurricane Katrina. Court nominations will now come under scrutiny.

When George Bush won the White House in 2000, he pledged in his inaugural address that he would "work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity". A few months later, however, the world turned on its axis. In essence, the events of September 11, 2001, have defined the Bush presidency. Since the deaths of almost 3000 people in the World Trade Centre and plane attacks, Mr Bush and his Administration have been on a war footing. At first it was not against another country, but an abstract noun: terror. But it was an abstraction that became real. Within months of the 9/11 attacks, the emphasis swung to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Saddam was a sponsor of world terrorism, his

country an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. There is persuasive evidence now that Saddam had been in Mr Bush's sights since the early days of his presidency. The weapons of mass destruction, which predicated the invasion of Iraq, was a lie — a lie that other countries, such as Australia, accepted too easily.

VIA: http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial

For six years, Mr Bush has had unfettered reign over the direction of his country's foreign policy and, concomitant to that, the direction of global politics, particularly in the Middle East. With the Republicans having control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, there have been few, if any, obstacles put in the path of the Administration. Nor has been there accountability. The Republicans, in their trammelling of opposition and impatient disregard for other points of view, have acted in a manner more akin to the hubris of empire than as an exemplar of democracy at work.

Hamas urges attacks on U.S. targets

By Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press Writer | November 8, 2006

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip --Hamas' military wing called Wednesday on Muslims around the world to attack American targets following reports that an Israeli tank strike killed 18 people in the Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun.

The Hamas-led Palestinian government distanced itself from the call, saying its fight was with Israel.

Hamas militants have historically directed their suicide bombings and rocket attacks only against Israeli targets.

"America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes, and it is responsible for the Beit Hanoun massacre. Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons," Hamas' military wing said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

But Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, said the group had no intention of attacking American targets.

Hamas' political wing, led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, tries to distinguish itself from the military wing. But the two entities both report to the group's exiled leadership, based in Syria, and frequently coordinate with each other.

Palestinian witnesses and officials said earlier Wednesday that Israeli tank shells had crashed into a residential neighborhood, killing at least 18 people, including eight children, in their sleep.

Haniyeh said efforts to form a national unity government with moderate President Mahmoud Abbas were suspended because of the attack. Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the army to halt artillery attacks in Gaza.

But an Israeli government spokesman said Israel will continue its operations in Gaza aimed at halting Palestinian rocket attacks.

"Our battle is against the occupation on the Palestinian land. We have no interest to transfer the battle," Hamad said, though he called America indirectly responsible for Wednesday's bloodshed because of its support for Israel.

"We urge the Arab nation and the governments of the Arab countries to protest the world's silence and the American bias," he said.

The U.S., like Israel, considers Hamas a terrorist group.

What does it Mean for Iraq? By Juan Cole

The fourth popular revolution of the twenty-first century (after the Ukraine, Lebanon and Kyrgyzstan) swept America on Tuesday, as voters engaged in the moral equivalent of storming the Bastille. The United States of America has roundly repudiated the Bush Administration and Republican Party dominance of all three branches of the Federal government and its dominance of many state offices, as well. Corruption and war drove this slap in the face to the Old Regime crafted by Newt Gingrich and Traitor Rove.

The Democrats have control of the House of Representatives as I write early Wednesday morning, with a gain of perhaps as much as 30 seats. They don't appear to have lost any seats. Indeed, Democratic incumbents won in other sorts of contests, as well-- governors, state legislators, etc. The mood of the electorate was not to punish incumbents. It was to throw out the rascals.

I think the Democrats will take the Senate. CNN is calling 2 Senate races too close to call, but Webb announced that he had won in Virginia, and his margin later that night went on up to 11,000. That might be enough to forestall a recount. Montana will determine the outcome.

Bill Bennett opined that the Democrats had actually not done that well, since the party out of power often picks up 35 seats in the second midterm of a two-term president. Bennett, as usual, is being dishonest. In fact, this was not an ordinary election but rather came at the end of 14 years of low blows and dirty tricks. The Republicans had tried very hard to have a permanent majority, using ruses such as state gerrymandering (e.g. Texas) and convincing Republican House members who were thinking of retiring to serve one more term so as not to risk having the open seat go to the Dems. Tom Delay's K-Street Project even envisioned depriving the Democrats forever of big lobbying money. The impeachment of Clinton was a cynical misuse of the Republican majority aimed at permanently wounding the Democrats. The Dems did not impeach Reagan for stealing Pentagon weapons, selling them to Khomeini, and using the black money to fund death squads in Central America! The deployment of a Republican Supreme Court to gain the White House in 2000 was typical of the new end run around popular sovereignty perfected by the party hacks in Washington. Given the giant berms the Republicans had built against any Democratic rebound, and the viciousness with which raptors like Delay, Weldon, Rove and Abramoff went for the soft underbelly of the democratic system, it is an irridescent miracle that the Democrats have taken the House.

LINK to rest of Article

Retabulation Underway in Montana

Tester Maintains Slight Lead Over Incumbent Republican Senator

By Howard Schneider

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; 9:06 AM

Montana elections officials worked through the night sorting out a closely fought race that could determine control of the U.S. Senate, with software problems forcing a retabulation in one key county and equipment problems prompting a hand analysis of several hundred ballots.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Democratic challenger Jon Tester maintained a slight lead of about 1,500 votes over incumbent Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, the Associated Press reported.

In Yellowstone County, which includes Burns's hometown of Billings, software problems led officials -- with the consent of both parties -- to retabulate the vote, said Brock Lowrance, communications director for the state Republican Party.

Election officials in Flathead County, meanwhile, decided to do a manual count and analysis of up to 500 ballots that had been damaged by voting machines, Lowrance said. An election panel is scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. Mountain Standard Time (3 p.m. EST) to begin that process.

Results from Silverbow County and its county seat of Butte -- another major population center, this one considered to lean Democratic -- and two other locations were also late in reporting.

The outcomes in Montana and Virginia will determine with Republicans retain control of the Senate, or whether Democrats take control of the upper chamber as well.

The count in both states will be closely watched.

"We need to make sure that every vote is counted. We've typically done well with absentee ballots -- let's see what happens," said Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman.

Both parties in Montana, analyzing the votes outstanding and those yet to be counted, felt well positioned to win.

"I think we are in really good shape," Tester said in an interview aired on CNN.

"There is a lot out there and it is still very close," said Lowrance. "We are still feeling pretty good."

Turkey May Relax Free Speech Limits

By DAN BILEFSKY

International Herald Tribune

Published: November 7, 2006

ISTANBUL Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signaled that he is prepared to amend a law limiting free speech, in an apparent 11th-hour attempt to prevent a crisis with the European Union.

The surprise move Sunday by Erdogan came just three days before the European Commission is expected to publish a report criticizing Turkey for sluggishness on reforms necessary if it wants to join the 25-member bloc.

"The move looks desperate," said Ilker Domac, a Turkish economist. "It shows how badly things are going with Turkey's EU membership prospects."

Talks with the EU have reached an impasse that could result in the suspension of the country's EU membership talks, some Turks fear. Such a move would hobble a key European and American ally in an unstable region and would risk slowing the pace of its political and economic reforms.

The commission, the EU executive branch, has been particularly concerned by Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes insulting Turkishness a crime. The law attracted global criticism earlier this year when the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, was put on trial for telling a Swiss newspaper that more than a million Armenians were massacred by Ottoman Turks during World War I. The case was later dismissed.

(AP) -- South Dakotans rejected a toughest-in-the-nation law that would have banned virtually all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest -- defeating one of the most high-profile state measures facing voters Tuesday.

The outcome was a blow to conservatives, although they prevailed in five other states where voters approved constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. Among them was Wisconsin, where gay-rights activists had nursed hopes of engineering the first defeat of such a ban.

Five states approved increases in their minimum wage, while Arizona passed four measures targeting illegal immigrants, including one making English the state's official language.

Voters weren't keen about another, more quirky Arizona measure: They defeated a proposal that would have awarded $1 million to a randomly selected voter in each general election.

Nationwide, a total of 205 measures were on the ballots in 37 states, but none had riveted political activists across the country like the South Dakota abortion measure. Passed overwhelmingly by the legislature earlier this year, it would have allowed abortion only to save a pregnant woman's life.

Lawmakers had hoped the ban would be challenged in court, provoking litigation that might eventually lead to a U.S. Supreme Court reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

"This is a wake-up call to lawmakers in other states that America's pro-choice majority will not allow an assault on Roe v. Wade to go unanswered," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Eight states had ban-same-sex-marriage amendments on their ballots. Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia joined Wisconsin in approving them, according to projections. Results were pending in Arizona, Colorado and South Dakota.

Similar amendments have passed previously in all 20 states to consider them.

Colorado voters had an extra option -- a measure that would grant domestic-partnership rights to same-sex couples.

Conservatives hoped the same-sex marriage bans might increase turnout for Republicans. Democrats looked for a boost from low-income voters turning out on behalf of measures to raise the state minimum wage in six states.

The wage hike passed in Arizona, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and Ohio, according to CNN projections. Results were pending in Colorado.

In Missouri, a proposed amendment allowing stem cell research was a factor in the crucial Senate race there; incumbent Republican Jim Talent opposed the measure, while Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill supported it.

Missouri -- along with Arizona, South Dakota and California -- had a sharp increase in tobacco taxes on its ballot. In California alone, big tobacco companies spent more than $56 million fighting a tax increase that would boost the average price of a pack of cigarettes to $6.55.

In Ohio, anti-smoking activists won a showdown with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Voters approved a tough ban on smoking in public places and rejected a Reynolds-backed measure that would have exempted bars, bowling alleys and racetracks.

The costliest ballot campaign -- a state record of $133 million -- was raised in the fight over California's Proposition 87, which would tax companies drilling for oil in the state. The proposal sought to raise $4 billion to promote alternative fuels and energy-efficient vehicles.

Nevada and Colorado both offered measures -- trailing badly in the pre-Election Day polls -- that would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by anyone 21 and older. A measure in Rhode Island would restore voting rights to felons on probation and parole.

In Michigan, CNN projects that voters will approve a proposition to bar the state government from using race and gender to determine who gets into college, who gets hired and who receives contracts.

Elsewhere, land use was a hot issue, part of a backlash against a 2005 Supreme Court ruling allowing the city of New London, Connecticut, to buy up homes to make way for a private commercial development.

Eleven states considered eminent-domain measures barring the government from taking private property for a private use; Florida, Georgia and South Carolina approved them overwhelmingly. In four states -- Arizona, California, Idaho and Washington -- voters could require state and local authorities to compensate property owners if land-use regulations lowered the value of their property.

South Dakota voters could make their state the first to strip immunity from judges, exposing them to the possibility of lawsuits, fines and even jail for their actions on the bench. Opponents, including leaders of both major parties, said it would create chaos in the judicial system.

In Maine, Nebraska and Oregon, voters considered measures that would cap increases in state spending -- similar to a controversial measure approved in Colorado in 1992.

Pennsylvania voters gave the state the go-ahead to borrow $20 million so that nearly 33,000 veterans in the state who participated in the Persian Gulf War could collect one-time payments up to $525.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Minnesota sends first Muslim to Congress:

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - Voters elected a black Democrat as the first Muslim in Congress on
uesday after a race in which he advocated quick U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and made little mention of his faith.

Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old lawyer and state representative, defeated two rivals, television networks said, to succeed retiring Democrat Martin Sabo in a seat that has been held by Democrats since 1963.

Ellison, who converted to Islam as a 19-year-old college student in his native Detroit, won with the help of Muslims among a coalition of liberal, anti-war voters.

He advocates an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq along with strongly liberal views. While Ellison did not often speak of his faith during the campaign, awareness of his candidacy drew interest from Muslims well beyond the district centered in Minneapolis.

A significant community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis cast their first votes for him in the crowded September primary. Ellison also was the surprise choice of party regulars.

While Muslim-Americans make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and have largely been a non-factor in terms of political power, get-out-the-vote efforts in several Muslim communities could indicate they may become an emerging force.

Roughly 2 million Muslims are registered U.S. voters, and their ranks increased by tens of thousands in the weeks prior to Tuesday's mid-term elections, Muslim groups have said.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic militants, Muslim-Americans have become sensitized to what many feel is an erosion of their civil rights. U.S. foreign policy that targets Muslim countries also has generated a sense of urgency, experts said.

Bush Has Gone Unchecked For Too Long

By Keith Olbermann

TRANSCRIPT

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time.

Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.

But even accounting for our myopia, it’s hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in non-presidential years.

And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, and, with the very phrase “October, or November, Surprise” now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.

But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt—let’s say it’s just “happened” that way—and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope.

Let’s perceive instead the bigger picture:

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the weapons of mass destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and al-Qaida that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there, while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody, anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this “nonsense.”

There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas -- suddenly turning this ‘unpatriotic idea’ into a platform plank.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," you told us. "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following.'"

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and rewritten the Constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you’ve stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks," you’ve now resorted, sir, to this?

We must stay in Iraq to save the $2 gallon of gas?

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir, you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

Those vaunted Founding Fathers of ours have been so quoted up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore. But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most was a government of men and not laws.

They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit -- unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes.

A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.

An executive would do the work, and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.

A Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did that go, Mr. Bush?

And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have and thousands more.

He’ll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say we are out of Iraq.

And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.

But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq to oust Saddam or find non-existant weapons or avenge 9/11 or fight terrorists who only got there after we did or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution or for lower prices at The Texaco or…?

There are still a few hours left before the polls open, sir. There are many rationalizations still untried.

And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice (of which you have shown you know nothing), we have let you go on making it up as you went along.

Unchecked and unbalanced.

Vote.

© 2006 MSNBC.com

Periodico Amigo, Colombia
Get Out of Iraq Now, Before it Gets Worse
“The idea that withdrawing from Iraq will cause the Sunni insurgency, Shiite militias and al-Qaeda to travel by sea and air to fight on American territory is nonsense.”
By José María Rodríguez González
Translated By Halszka Czarnocka

Bogota: The United States has become a mere witness to the intent of Iraqi Sunnis to seize power by force. As an ethnic minority in a nation where political power and ethnicity go hand-in-hand, the Sunnis know they will never manage to take power democratically – as they are and will continue to be in the minority. The U.S. has also lost a chance to collaborate with the Sunnis - who are distinguished by their secularist tendencies - and their supporters in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other [Arab] countries. For their part, the Shiites are supported by their religious brethren in Iran and are furiously defending democracy, since under the new system their majority status has been legalized.

The Shiites want the U.S. to stay in Iraq to crush the insurgency of their enemies, the Sunnis. The Sunnis want the U.S. to stay in Iraq to crush the militias of their enemies, the Shiites. Like a pawn in this political-military game, the U.S. is fighting both of these groups. But whoever wins, they don't want the Americans to remain on Iraqi soil. Since they are defending their own land, the Sunnis and Shiites have an advantage. The U.S. can now only expect to be kicked out in humiliation or leave gradually with its tail between its legs.

Before Bush's Iraqi victory party completely collapses, the best thing to do now would be to depart, and from the outside, assume the honorable role of helpers and mediators. The U.S. is enduring a slow but steady loss of troops in unnecessary and counterproductive operations. The U.S. is hemorrhaging money, blood and resources amidst unfinished projects that cannot be properly completed.

A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq could be declared a victory for al-Qaeda. Would such a victory harm the United States more than to continue its presence there, which according to most security experts - including the 16 intelligence agencies participating in a recent NIE (National Intelligence Estimate ) - has created a bonanza in recruitment for al-Qaeda and provided terrorists with a training ground? If the answer to this question is yes, then the U.S. should reinvade.

The insurgents, the militias and the terrorists will all declare victory if American troops leave, but this is preferable to the continuing loss of blood, money and global prestige that the policies of Bush, the neocons and conservative Republicans have visited upon their nation. These blind policies are pushing the U.S. toward a future as a power that is distrusted because of its belligerence and whose influence is met with isolation. Every day it becomes clearer that the policies of Bush increase the danger to the U.S. and to world. The moment to put an end to these policies is now.

LINK to rest of Article

Perry believes non-Christians doomed

Governor shares views following sermon; rivals pounce

08:45 AM CST on Monday, November 6, 2006

By CHRISTY HOPPE / The Dallas Morning News

SAN ANTONIO – Gov. Rick Perry, after a God and country sermon attended by dozens of political candidates Sunday, said that he agreed with the minister that non-Christians will be condemned to hell.

"In my faith, that's what it says, and I'm a believer of that," the governor said.

Throughout much of the 90-minute service at Cornerstone Church, Mr. Perry sat on the red-carpeted stage next to the Rev. John Hagee. Mr. Perry was among about 60 mostly Republican candidates who accepted the invitation to be introduced to the megachurch's congregation of about 1,500, plus a radio and TV audience.

"If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God almighty through the authority of Christ and his blood, I'm going to say this very plainly, you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket," Mr. Hagee said during a service interspersed with religious and patriotic videos.

Asked afterward at a political rally whether he agreed with Mr. Hagee, the governor said he didn't hear anything that he would take exception to.

He said that he believes in the inerrancy of the Bible and that those who don't accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell.

A little later at another stop, the Republican incumbent clarified his beliefs.

"I don't know that there's any human being that has the ability to interpret what God and his final decision-making is going to be," Mr. Perry said. "That's what the faith says. I understand, and my caveat there is that an all-knowing God certainly transcends my personal ability to make that judgment black and white."

He added: "Before we get into Buddha and all the others, I get a little confused there. But the fact is that we live in a pluralistic world but our faith is real personal. And my Christian faith teaches that the way is through Jesus Christ."

LINK to article

The Worst Congress Ever
How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts -- in five easy steps

MATT TAIBBI for Rolling Stones

There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.

But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

LINK to article

Canadians believe Bush is a threat to peace: Poll

Many fear U.S. will launch strikes on Iran, N. Korea
Bin Laden still perceived as greatest danger

Nov. 3, 2006. 01:00 AM

TIM HARPER

WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON—Canadians believe the world has become a more dangerous place since George W. Bush was elected U.S. president and a majority believe he will launch military strikes in Iran or North Korea before his term ends in 2008, according to a new Toronto Star poll.Canadians also consider Bush more dangerous to world peace than Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.The EKOS poll was done in Canada for the Star and Montreal's La Presse ahead of Tuesday's U.S. mid-term elections, expected to be decided on the issue of the Iraq war. The same questions were posed to respondents by pollsters in Britain, Israel and Mexico. Canadians — like Americans — have soured on the U.S. invasion of Iraq with 73 per cent now telling EKOS that Washington had no justification for it. When the same question was asked of Canadians in April 2003, right after the Bush invasion, EKOS found 53 per cent thought it unjustified.Also like Americans, Canadians are split on whether the U.S. should stay and finish the job or come home as soon as possible.Canadians told EKOS they believed Osama bin Laden posed the greatest danger to the world, followed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, then Bush, Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah.Mexicans ranked Bush the second-most dangerous of the five, behind Al Qaeda's bin Laden.Views in Israel were radically different, where only 9 per cent ranked Bush a "great danger," compared to 34 per cent of Canadians, 41 per cent of Britons and 58 per cent of Mexicans.
More at LINK

---

British believe Bush is more dangerous than Kim Jong-il

· US allies think Washington threat to world peace
· Only Bin Laden feared more in United Kingdom

America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country's reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

Carried out as US voters prepare to go to the polls next week in an election dominated by the war, the research also shows that British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.

More at LINK

As Bechtel Goes

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Bechtel, the giant engineering company, is leaving Iraq. Its mission — to rebuild power, water and sewage plants — wasn’t accomplished: Baghdad received less than six hours a day of electricity last month, and much of Iraq’s population lives with untreated sewage and without clean water. But Bechtel, having received $2.3 billion of taxpayers’ money and having lost the lives of 52 employees, has come to the end of its last government contract.

As Bechtel goes, so goes the whole reconstruction effort. Whatever our leaders may say about their determination to stay the course complete the mission, when it comes to rebuilding Iraq they’ve already cut and run. The $21 billion allocated for reconstruction over the last three years has been spent, much of it on security rather than its intended purpose, and there’s no more money in the pipeline.

The failure of reconstruction in Iraq raises three questions. First, how much did that failure contribute to the overall failure of the war? Second, how was it that America, the great can-do nation, in this case couldn’t and didn’t? Finally, if we’ve given up on rebuilding Iraq, what are our troops dying for?

There’s no definitive way to answer the first question. You can make a good case that the invasion of Iraq was doomed no matter what, because we never had enough military manpower to provide security. But the lack of electricity and clean water did a lot to dissipate any initial good will the Iraqis may have felt toward the occupation. And Iraqis are well aware that the billions squandered by American contractors included a lot of Iraqi oil revenue as well as U.S. taxpayers’ dollars.

Consider the symbolism of Iraq’s new police academy, which Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, has called “the most essential civil security project in the country.” It was built at a cost of $75 million by Parsons Corporation, which received a total of about $1 billion for Iraq reconstruction projects. But the academy was so badly built that feces and urine leak from the ceilings in the student barracks.

Think about it. We want the Iraqis to stand up so we can stand down. But if they do stand up, we’ll dump excrement on their heads.

As for how this could have happened, that’s easy: major contractors believed, correctly, that their political connections insulated them from accountability. Halliburton and other companies with huge Iraq contracts were basically in the same position as Donald Rumsfeld: they were so closely identified with President Bush and, especially, Vice President Cheney that firing or even disciplining them would have been seen as an admission of personal failure on the part of top elected officials.

As a result, the administration and its allies in Congress fought accountability all the way. Administration officials have made repeated backdoor efforts to close the office of Mr. Bowen, whose job is to oversee the use of reconstruction money. Just this past May, with the failed reconstruction already winding down, the White House arranged for the last $1.5 billion of reconstruction money to be placed outside Mr. Bowen’s jurisdiction. And now, finally, Congress has passed a bill whose provisions include the complete elimination of his agency next October.

The bottom line is that those charged with rebuilding Iraq had no incentive to do the job right, so they didn’t.

You can see, by the way, why a Democratic takeover of the House, if it happens next week, would be such a pivotal event: suddenly, committee chairmen with subpoena power would be in a position to investigate where all the Iraq money went.

But that’s all in the past. What about the future?

Back in June, after a photo-op trip to Iraq, Mr. Bush said something I agree with. “You can measure progress in megawatts of electricity delivered,” he declared. “You can measure progress in terms of oil sold on the market on behalf of the Iraqi people.” But what those measures actually show is the absence of progress. By any material measure, Iraqis are worse off than they were under Saddam.

And we’re not planning to do anything about it: the U.S.-led reconstruction effort in Iraq is basically over. I don’t know whether the administration is afraid to ask U.S. voters for more money, or simply considers the situation hopeless. Either way, the United States has accepted defeat on reconstruction.

Yet Americans are still fighting and dying in Iraq. For what?

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. Yes, they do.

They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.

Every time you hear Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney lash out against Mr. Kerry, I hope you will say to yourself, “They must think I’m stupid.” Because they surely do.

They think that they can get you to overlook all of the Bush team’s real and deadly insults to the U.S. military over the past six years by hyping and exaggerating Mr. Kerry’s mangled gibe at the president.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to the U.S. military than to send it into combat in Iraq without enough men — to launch an invasion of a foreign country not by the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force, but by the Rumsfeld Doctrine of just enough troops to lose? What could be a bigger insult than that?

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than sending them off to war without the proper equipment, so that some soldiers in the field were left to buy their own body armor and to retrofit their own jeeps with scrap metal so that roadside bombs in Iraq would only maim them for life and not kill them? And what could be more injurious and insulting than Don Rumsfeld’s response to criticism that he sent our troops off in haste and unprepared: Hey, you go to war with the army you’ve got — get over it.

What could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in uniform than to send them off to war in Iraq without any coherent postwar plan for political reconstruction there, so that the U.S. military has had to assume not only security responsibilities for all of Iraq but the political rebuilding as well? The Bush team has created a veritable library of military histories — from “Cobra II” to “Fiasco” to “State of Denial” — all of which contain the same damning conclusion offered by the very soldiers and officers who fought this war: This administration never had a plan for the morning after, and we’ve been making it up — and paying the price — ever since.

And what could possibly be more injurious and insulting to our men and women in Iraq than to send them off to war and then go out and finance the very people they’re fighting against with our gluttonous consumption of oil? Sure, George Bush told us we’re addicted to oil, but he has not done one single significant thing — demanded higher mileage standards from Detroit, imposed a gasoline tax or even used the bully pulpit of the White House to drive conservation — to end that addiction. So we continue to finance the U.S. military with our tax dollars, while we finance Iran, Syria, Wahhabi mosques and Al Qaeda madrassas with our energy purchases.

Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. Yeah, right. So are cigarette companies. They get you to buy cigarettes even though we know they cause cancer. That is the kind of genius Karl Rove is. He is not a man who has designed a strategy to reunite our country around an agenda of renewal for the 21st century — to bring out the best in us. His “genius” is taking some irrelevant aside by John Kerry and twisting it to bring out the worst in us, so you will ignore the mess that the Bush team has visited on this country.

And Karl Rove has succeeded at that in the past because he was sure that he could sell just enough Bush cigarettes, even though people knew they caused cancer. Please, please, for our country’s health, prove him wrong this time.

Let Karl know that you’re not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.

Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.

It means we’re as stupid as Karl thinks we are.

I, for one, don’t think we’re that stupid. Next Tuesday we’ll see.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Vermont poised to elect America's first socialist senator

Amid the furious debate over Iraq and the speculation that George Bush may be a lame duck after next Tuesday's mid-term elections, an extraordinary political milestone is approaching: a cantankerous 65-year-old called Bernie looks set to become the first socialist senator in US history.

Bernie Sanders is so far ahead in the contest for Vermont's vacant seat for the US Senate that it seems only sudden illness or accident could derail his rendezvous with destiny, after eight terms as the state's only congressman. His success flies in the face of all the conventional wisdom about American politics.

He is an unapologetic socialist and proud of it. Even his admirers admit that he lacks social skills, and he tends to speak in tirades. Yet that has not stopped him winning eight consecutive elections to the US House of Representatives.

"Twenty years ago when people here thought about socialism they were thinking about the Soviet Union, about Albania," Mr Sanders told the Guardian in a telephone interview from the campaign trail. "Now they think about Scandinavia. In Vermont people understand I'm talking about democratic socialism."

Democratic socialism, however, has hardly proved to be a vote-winning formula in a country where even the word "liberal" is generally treated as an insult. Until now the best showing in a Senate race by a socialist of any stripe was in 1930 by Emil Seidel, who won 6% of the vote.

John McLaughry, the head of a free-market Vermont thinktank, the Ethan Allen Institute, said Mr Sanders is a throwback to that era. "Bernie Sanders is an unreconstructed 1930s socialist and proud of it. He's a skilful demagogue who casts every issue in that framework, a master practitioner of class warfare."

When Mr Sanders, a penniless but eloquent import from New York, got himself elected mayor of Burlington in 1981, at the height of the cold war, it rang some alarm bells. "I had to persuade the air force base across the lake that Bernie's rise didn't mean there was a communist takeover of Burlington," recalled Garrison Nelson, a politics professor at the University of Vermont who has known him since the 1970s.

"He used to sleep on the couch of a friend of mine, walking about town with no work," Prof Nelson said. "Bernie really is a subject for political anthropology. He has no political party. He has never been called charming. He has no money, and none of the resources we normally associate with success. However, he learned how to speak to a significant part of the disaffected population of Vermont."

Click here to Link to Article:

Southern Iraq approaches the tipping point

By Thomas Harding

Last Updated: 9:03am GMT 02/11/2006

Audio: "We've just driven over a landmine." Thomas Harding on patrol in the Iraqi desert.

Sheltering under a table on the dining room floor of Basra Palace with 200 soldiers, seconds after a mortar round had been 10ft away from penetrating the roof and causing carnage, it would have been difficult to argue that the British Army was making progress in Iraq.

As I lay flat on the floor in my body armour, the infantry officer with whom I had been dining seconds earlier said he felt mightily sorry for the battalion that had just arrived to replace his unit.

From dawn till dusk we had been rocketed or mortared 15 times in Basra Palace — one of the two main British barracks in the southern Iraq capital. There was the usual fear and thrill of coming under enemy fire but that was just for 12 hours and by the evening the novelty was beginning to tire.

It was the start of a six- month tour for the Royal Green Jackets and even in the first week their faces were beginning to look strained.

But by the end of their tour next April it should become clear where Basra is going and whether the British investment of 120 lives and £4 billion has been worth it.

We are now approaching the tipping point in southern Iraq. The area will either sink into the grasp of insurgents and Iranian-sponsored militias or become a beacon of hope for the rest of the country.

The Iraqi soldiers, terrorists, politicians and population are all uncertain which way up the penny will fall.

But the 7,200 British troops are making a final effort to secure the area to allow for the multi-billion dollar investment that Basra desperately needs to fulfil its potential of becoming the next Dubai. All is being gambled on the success of Operation Sinbad.

At its conclusion next February or March the insurgents might be beaten and the local police purged of all rogue elements. The Iraqi army could evolve into a steady, well-armed force and the politicians could be more willing to shoulder problems they have neglected during three years of having everyone else to blame for them.

That scenario is the Army's ticket for its way out of Iraq and would justify the expenditure of blood and treasure.

Already Basra air station is being developed to accommodate most of the 3,500 soldiers who will be left behind to garrison the area as a potent reserve for the Iraqi security forces. They will be there until at least 2010, military sources have indicated.

But in the meantime they are coming under increasing attack and there appear to be two reasons why.

One is that Operation Sinbad has forced the insurgents on to the back foot. In response to losing their grip on the local population they have increased shelling on British barracks. They are reduced to this form of indirect attack because every time they have used RPGs, gunmen or fixed ambushes they have suffered numerous dead.

But the second answer to the increased violence is that the insurgents are in control. The co-ordinated attacks on British troops demonstrate this and if the Army leaves early next year the Iranian-backed insurgent stooges in the police and local government will take over.

Southern Iraq could then vote to secede from the rest of the country and use its massive oil wealth to become a major pro-Iranian Shia state in the Middle East. The Sunni minority in southern Iraq would become vulnerable to a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign.

But there are a number of obstacles that stand in the way of what would be a disastrous scenario for the coalition forces and Iraq's future.

The British-trained Iraqi army's 10th Division is finally about to receive the hardware that will make it a formidable force when its first Humvees and armoured personnel carriers arrive this month.

There is also a template for what might happen when the British leave.

In the volatile town of Amarah a few weeks after the last British soldier vacated the town eight of its police stations were attacked by Mahdi army militias loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But the Iraqi army stood firm and, with help from senior Iraqi politicians, was able to restore order.

The withdrawal of troops from Amarah also meant there was no target for insurgents, and their propaganda campaign against the "foreign invaders" lost its focus.

While the military is doing all it can to stabilise Basra there is considerable worry among commanders over the planning for the post Operation Sinbad phase. The British consulate has evacuated its well-protected premises down to a skeleton staff. The offices of its provincial reconstruction team are a sea of empty desks and blank computers. Without the funding and planning that needs to happen now, the three-year British struggle in southern Iraq will have been for nothing.

The Army will lose increasing numbers of troops unwilling to return for a fifth or sixth tour, it will struggle to find enough troops for Afghanistan and the mortar attacks will continue with the likelihood that one day a round will find its devastating mark.

Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or e-mail syndication@telegraph.co.uk

Video: Olbermann 'special comment' on White House campaign tactics

Mike Sheehan and David Edwards
Published: Thursday November 2, 2006

Print This Email This

On MSNBC's Countdown, Keith Olbermann remarks in his trademark "Special Comment" on the absurdity of the Bush administration's attacks on Sen. John Kerry, under fire for remarks construed by Republicans as an insult to American troops.

Olbermann recalls the violent 1856 caning by Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina on the vociferous, anti-slavery Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts which disabled the senator for three years and was one of the memorable events leading up to the Civil War. In support, Brooks' constituents sent him new canes; drawing a parallel, Olbermann remarks, "We almost wonder to whom President Bush will send the next 'new cane.'"

Click HERE to watch

Statement of John Kerry Responding to Republican Distortions, Pathetic Tony Snow Diversions and Distractions

Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:

“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.

I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.

The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.

Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”