So I think it's been almost a month since I was on here last, and with all that has been going on I’ve certainly been missing reading you all and writing about the currents – that is for SURE! Work has been very, very busy; and good too. So I can’t really complain about much. I came back from my fourth trip in four months almost a week ago, and I’m happy to be here (for once). I’m not really a big fan of LA, but it was enjoyable like never before after coming back from freezing New York!!!
I’m sure you‘re all on top of things as usual, and I doubt that there is much more I could contribute at the moment anyway. I have only heard (in what precious little time I’ve been able to listen to my beloved talk radio) a couple of things that I think have been overlooked.
Again, as we are dwindled down to one candidate on each side, I would like everybody to take notice of it – but REALLY take notice. Notice how there are some states that have finally become viable in the primaries, their vote has actually mattered lately (and even Pennsylvania was thought to be given some say for the first time that I can ever remember). Why must it be in the US that some states get a choice and others have none? Why shouldn’t everybody have a say in whom the Democratic or Republican candidate should be? Why is it that Americans are quite OK with this voting system, which is so obviously UN-democratic? "Hi, I'd like to place an order for Instant Run-Off Voting please...and while you're at it, can you END primaries all together? Thanks."
I just have to ask too, since it was a topic that I have put my two cents in before on…Can anybody tell me why Hillary is still running or hasn’t yet announced she is done when mathematically it’s impossible for her to garner enough elected delegates to win? Even if she won every last one that was left to obtain, it would be enough for her to catch Obama now, so why hasn’t she stepped aside? Unless…she thinks she could still steal the nomination by pandering to the Super Delegates.
I think her out and out lies about Obama “choosing to withdraw” from Michigan were totally disgusting! What it really showed was that she was desperate, and that she was willing to break her own party’s rules in order to get whatever she wants – and why aren’t people talking about how that would translate in a presidential position? Then there was the fear-mongering commercial she ran in Ohio. It just reaffirmed my thoughts on her actually being the establishment candidate, the one that is really just a Republican in disguise. I can’t believe that Democrats didn’t completely wash their hands of her after that stunt. The most disturbing thing to me is, the more she exposes the poisons inside of her, the more support she seems to get! There is yet ANOTHER lie she has been telling completely exposed in the video posted at the end of this blog, and yet nobody seems to really want to call her on it. Hmmmm…let’s see, who else seems to be getting a “free pass” from the press? Oh yeah, McBush…uh, I mean McCain, yeah.
McBush slips right on by with his uneducated statements about Iran and Al Qaeda – even though he said it more than once. Then the press turned the other way as he’s been railing against the lobbyists, even though the ones that are some of the highest officials seated on his campaign board have been exposed as being involved in various scandals. The one that gets to me the most has been talked about the least, and hasn’t even been brought up since, as far as I know – as usual I suppose.
His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways. Black's current clients include General Motors, United Technologies, JPMorgan and AT&T.
United Technologies has put a “hostile bid” on Diebold (voting machines) – meaning that an unsolicited bid was placed on Diebold may actually be forced by the market to sell their voting machines to this company, like it or not! The $3 billion dollar bid they placed on it was the equivalent of $40 a share when placed; when the actual market value was just over $24. Gee, I wonder, why would this company think the voting machines are actually worth almost twice as much as the market says they are, hmmmm….
Hello? Has everybody forgotten the term, “conflict of interest”? Can anybody out there say HYPOCRITE!??!?! How about STOLEN ELECTION - remember what we get when that happens? How about a little screaming, give with some protest people – COME ON!!!
This story broke early this month, and now with the corporate bailouts being handed out for the mortgage companies going on, it sure is interesting to look back on this story now and see JP Morgan on the list of McBush’s campaign-manager’s/lobbyist’s client list. That’s the company that bought Bear Stearns Mortgage Company for pennies on the dollar. JP Morgan got a hell of a deal too! The GIANT discount price of just $2 a share was 93% off of Bear Stearns’ last closing stock price. When was the last time you’ve seen a sale sign that read, “93% OFF”? Seeing as how Bear Stearns also received a corporate bail-out subsidy, don’t you think we should have been offered an option to buy into that too? Hell, I’d go hog-wild at that price! I’d buy myself fifty shares of that for $100!!!!!!! Wouldn’t you at least want to put your lunch money down on that action? Well, yeah…except, those kinds of sales are reserved for the richest – those that don’t even need the bargain price. Don’t despair though; you really did help buy it after all - with your tax dollars! Not that you will getting anything back on that investment you were forced to make. That was perfectly fair, made all the sense in the world, right? Why should we pay for socialized medicine when we can pay for socialized corporate bailouts instead? They need the money more than we do anyway, those poor, poor corporate billionaires, awwww….a little sympathy please, they need your hard-earned dollar to keep their pockets full of million-dollar retirement plans, hedge-fund bonuses, and their mouths full of caviar – have a little compassion, please. And if you don’t like it, then you can pay them to take your job and ship it overseas, OK? Just face it already: Even when it doesn’t work, deregulation is totally awesome – for THEM.
"Hello, I'm calling to add onto my order? Ummm, yeah...I'd like some publicly funded campaigns to go with that Instant Run-off Voting, so I can have a real election please. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!"
This round-up wouldn’t be complete without mention of our fifth year in Iraq. Nealry 4,000 Americans and more than likely over a million Iraqis - are dead. Best estimates say that there are over 3 million Iraqis displaced outside as well as within Iraq, and about a third of them continue to go without clean drinking water or electricity. We have well over 40,000 Iraq vets that aren’t getting the care they have needed for the injuries they’ve acquired in the Middle East, and somewhere between a fourth and a third of America’s homeless population are vets (even more if you include vets from all wars). And the administration has the audacity to celebrate the “successes” and claim it has all been worth it. “Um, Mr. president, and Mr. vice? Get our troops and your private corp-whores the hell OUT of the Middle East NOW - and then, GET BENT!!!”
Just so I can end this on a positive note, I have to say that Obama really came through like I always knew he could – good for him. If you’ve been reading me for more than a year, you would know that I have been listening to him for over two years now. Long before he was ever a presidential contender, I somehow discovered him (I forget how exactly) and had been subscribing to a podcast he used to have. I was just listening because I loved to listen to him speak. It was for various engagements at universities and the like, but I always found him inspirational and encouraging to listen to. When he first announced his candidacy, I was really excited – but then I went to see him live here in LA, and watched a few other campaign speeches he gave. I was really disappointed to say the least, but I figured he was tired of repeating the same thing over and over in different cities, one right after the other… That speech he gave after all the hub-bub about his preacher was truly extraordinary, and I was thrilled to see his true talents return. Not only did he respectfully dismiss the absurd allegations that his preacher’s opinions were his own by association, but he also addressed some very important issues in a way that was incredibly intelligent, and in terms easily understood by all Americans – all races & ages. Simply brilliant Obama. Just listening to you made me proud to be an American again, and to have you as president would be an honor. Thank you.
I think this particular edition of GoLeft.tv below, summed up quite a few things very well. Enjoy
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Bush Stands Alone on Iran
Just a couple weeks ago the IAEA report on Iran was released, and it essentially gave Iran a clean bill...but you wouldn't know it by the way it was reported in the US! The tides turned just a little today in media land, when our own National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)on Iran was released though.
As was well explained in the video below, the US' latest NIE on Iran's nuclear program was released today...ONE YEAR after it was completed!
In this video you will also hear about something that is getting little to no attention whatsoever, but I personally find it VERY disturbing: Wolfowitz may be BACK, as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB). The ISAB is the board that advises the president on international proliferation matters, and that would certainly include Iran. Who better to decide whether Iran has weapons than the man that falsely accused Iraq, right? Could the rotten pattern be any more apparent people?!?!? I mean REALLY!!!
When Bush finally came to the press room today (video here), he still asserts that Iran is a threat. I must commend some of the reporters in this clip that kept at Bush too, asking about his credibility in regards to accusing Iran of having WMD. I sincerely hope this means that the media will not allow Bush get away with using the media as his war-tool again! However, Bush answered that line of questioning with praise for the improvements in the Intelligence community - almost taking credit for it too. Since most of the world now knows that the attack on Iraq was based on some very selective cherry picking of Intel info, and NOT due to bad Intel itself, then I would think this praise wasn't taken so kindly by the Intelligence community.
Another interesting point that is being asked about is what Hadley had initially said for Bush (and he reiterated in the press conference); that Bush was not briefed on the NIE until last week. As seen in the video above, Bush had said that Iran had weapons capabilities as recently as six weeks ago, and even used the words "World War Three." What I find fascinating is that if the president of the US doesn't have the benefit of being briefed on Intel reports when completed, then WHO DOES? Why did the Intel community purportedly wait an entire year to brief the president on their findings? Bush also said when asked about it, that he was not ever advised to "tone it down" in light of their findings either. These two things I find incredibly difficult to believe! In fact, it is most unlikely to be the case. I suspect that it was the administration that denied the Intelligence community their release of the report, and that we should be thankful to them for releasing it no matter how late. Perhaps the Intel community felt it was necessary in order to prevent another unnecessary war? THAT seems far more likely to be the case to me!!!
Another frightening thing about the White House press conference today was that Bush uses the same terminology that Hillary has, about "sticks and carrots" having a positive effect in regards to "diplomatic measures." Now if that was meant to harm Hillary or not, nobody really knows I suppose. I tend to think that it's more of a sign that Hillary is VERY like-minded to Bush policies, and there is plenty of evidence prior in my mind. The Democratic debate in Iowa today was just another example of how like-minded she really IS too. She also used the same language as Bush did in his conference today in regards to Iran, about how pressure on Iran has shown results. Since the NIE reported that Iran halted its program in 2003; I would argue that it may have been the attack on Iraq that year, and not the pressure that was applied to Iran long after we invaded Iraq that may have actually influenced their decision to halt their nuclear program.
What do you think?
As was well explained in the video below, the US' latest NIE on Iran's nuclear program was released today...ONE YEAR after it was completed!
In this video you will also hear about something that is getting little to no attention whatsoever, but I personally find it VERY disturbing: Wolfowitz may be BACK, as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB). The ISAB is the board that advises the president on international proliferation matters, and that would certainly include Iran. Who better to decide whether Iran has weapons than the man that falsely accused Iraq, right? Could the rotten pattern be any more apparent people?!?!? I mean REALLY!!!
When Bush finally came to the press room today (video here), he still asserts that Iran is a threat. I must commend some of the reporters in this clip that kept at Bush too, asking about his credibility in regards to accusing Iran of having WMD. I sincerely hope this means that the media will not allow Bush get away with using the media as his war-tool again! However, Bush answered that line of questioning with praise for the improvements in the Intelligence community - almost taking credit for it too. Since most of the world now knows that the attack on Iraq was based on some very selective cherry picking of Intel info, and NOT due to bad Intel itself, then I would think this praise wasn't taken so kindly by the Intelligence community.
Another interesting point that is being asked about is what Hadley had initially said for Bush (and he reiterated in the press conference); that Bush was not briefed on the NIE until last week. As seen in the video above, Bush had said that Iran had weapons capabilities as recently as six weeks ago, and even used the words "World War Three." What I find fascinating is that if the president of the US doesn't have the benefit of being briefed on Intel reports when completed, then WHO DOES? Why did the Intel community purportedly wait an entire year to brief the president on their findings? Bush also said when asked about it, that he was not ever advised to "tone it down" in light of their findings either. These two things I find incredibly difficult to believe! In fact, it is most unlikely to be the case. I suspect that it was the administration that denied the Intelligence community their release of the report, and that we should be thankful to them for releasing it no matter how late. Perhaps the Intel community felt it was necessary in order to prevent another unnecessary war? THAT seems far more likely to be the case to me!!!
Another frightening thing about the White House press conference today was that Bush uses the same terminology that Hillary has, about "sticks and carrots" having a positive effect in regards to "diplomatic measures." Now if that was meant to harm Hillary or not, nobody really knows I suppose. I tend to think that it's more of a sign that Hillary is VERY like-minded to Bush policies, and there is plenty of evidence prior in my mind. The Democratic debate in Iowa today was just another example of how like-minded she really IS too. She also used the same language as Bush did in his conference today in regards to Iran, about how pressure on Iran has shown results. Since the NIE reported that Iran halted its program in 2003; I would argue that it may have been the attack on Iraq that year, and not the pressure that was applied to Iran long after we invaded Iraq that may have actually influenced their decision to halt their nuclear program.
What do you think?
Monday, October 8, 2007
Accountability for Contractors - And YOU?
So something finally happened, there's a chance at some accountability for private contractors' actions in Iraq - at last. We still have to wait and see if it actually isn't abolished with a veto, but I'm hopeful that Congress will be insistent nonetheless. It's important to note that this bill, commonly known as the "Blackwater Bill" actually applies to ALL contractors. Which is great since apparently some of the contractors have even been firing at US troops!!!
Another way we could stop the war profiteering is to remove the members of Congress that are appropriating unethically in their OWN FAVOR! Take Senator Dianne Feinstein for example. Not only has she voted in favor of no-bid contracts for her husband's company (working in Iraq & Afghanistan, just to name a few places), but she is also sitting on the Ethics Committee now, where she can legally ensure her immoral deeds remain "ethical" in the eyes of Congress. She may have quit the appropriations committee that gave the contracts, but...come on southern California, are you seriously going to continue to allow that war-profiteering criminal to also be her OWN police enforcement too? GET HER OUTA THERE! As well as the many, many others in Congress that have clearly chosen profiteering over precious life. I'm a giant advocate for contacting Congress for any reason; whether it be to express dismay over lack of support or bad vote, as well as congratulating on a good vote (the latter is not as often done, but just as important!). We cannot depend on the next president alone to fix this giant mess, and I implore you to keep an eye on Congress before casting congressional votes in '08 for this reason too.
What has happened with the contractors in Iraq is just one of MANY things that happens in unfettered and radically free markets. In fact, Iraq was a dream guinea pig for the radical free market yea-sayers, implemented by Paul Bremer, and based upon an economic plan that was originally born out of a desire to put an end to The New Deal. Naomi Klein has dubbed it: THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, but it's more commonly known as "Economic Shock Treatment" or as the "Chicago School of Economics." It has been followed by people such as Rumsfeld, and the economic puppets for Pinochet - who were trained to do their part by the same (and probably most notorious) economist who had created this theory, Milton Friedman. The premise stems from the CIA's use of shock, as a means of reducing prisoners to a child-like state so they may wield power over them. Friedman wanted free markets in a time that they were very unpopular, and he realized the same practice the CIA was using could be applied to the masses in cases of natural disaster, war, or any other shocking event. Today we see the Shock Doctrine in play here in the US, after the attacks on 9/11 where Bush manipulated our shock to get all kinds of policies we would otherwise be opposed to into law, as he promised to protect us. There is a short film about the whole concept that is very well done on Naomi's website as well.
i think they are perpetuating the fear and shock with the endless war, and the supposed "threats" from Iran. In order for the Shock Doctrine to keep its grip, people must remain paralyzed by fear, and Iran is just the next tool for these means. A reminder that Iran poses NO THREAT (a short, narrated by Arron Russo):
Since there is so little real understanding in the US of the Iranian people, I think it's important that we make an effort to go beyond what we are force-fed or limited to by our media. I don't think it is any accident that the media has made this war faceless and that we have not heard reports on any individual Iraqis since the war began; because if we do not feel connected to the human lives there, then it's easier for us to support their deaths - so I want to put a face and real people in the place we have labeled "our enemies." In this video below you will see what everyday life is like for Iranians; it's produced by the BBC. I think most will be surprised and even intrigued, as I was. It's beautifully done and focuses solely on their culture, different areas of Tehran, various lifestyles there, and simply based on the people overall - no politicians were interviewed for this piece.
Now, every time somebody ventures into a discussion on Iran in the US, it invariably leads to Israel, and then to accusations of Antisemitism. So I want to remind everybody (as I so frequently do), that the cabal seeking to squash Iran are the Zionists, NOT Jews. Sure, some Zionists are Jews (but certainly not all), there are also Christian Zionists, and other organizations that work in concert with them; but the fact remains that it's so far from just being Jewish people behind the Zionist movement.
It's of vast importance to differentiate between the two in order to understand what is behind, and truly motivates this verbal attack on Iran. We must not allow the Zionists hide behind their accusations of prejudice! I recently discovered this great website via the picture above on another website, the website I'm speaking of is on the sign the Rabbis are holding in the picture above. Within that site you'll find this insightful article about their visit with the Iranian president, and the following counter-protests they held in response to the ones against Ahmadinejad's visit to the US. The press release at the bottom of this article includes a speech given the night before that meeting, and it explains extremely well why Jews are opposed to Zionism. I will gladly give numerous resources to anybody that wants to read more about this too, just ask. To accept this vicious rhetoric about antisemitism, is to allow these immoral wars to continue. For those of you that still think it's a good idea to attack Iran, I ask you to please seriously consider this:
Also, this is just one tragedy that awaits our attack. Another (in brief) is that Iran could simply chose to shut-down the Straights of Hormuz by whatever means necessary; and that would seriously and so easily crush America. Not only by way of our troops, but also because it's the passage that MUCH of our energy resources travel though - amongst other things. Honestly, Iran is NOT a war the US has ANY chance of "winning."
It's not my intention to condone any beliefs held by Iranians here that are considered controversial; but I think it's important to recognize that judging another country's religion, beliefs, or lifestyle is no place for a democracy! To consider ourselves the world's "cultural police" or the ones on some sort of "moral high-ground" is a very dangerous position to take; and it's in fact, quite the opposite action of said intentions behind this stance. Please consider how long it took for you to understand your own faith, and that most devout followers of any religion believe that they may never fully understand their God or It's divine intent. So how can people be so comfortable judging another's faith with so little understanding? Almost all faiths preach that it is only for God to judge, and teach love and respect for all life. Sadly it seems that many faithful have forgotten, or chosen to ignore these very valuable principles. Most faiths believe that if you life by good example, there will be no reason to seek converting anybody because they will desire what you have and ask of you what led you there; and I suggest that to developing a desire for democracy, will work in like fashion. We as Americans are for the most part, not setting a good example in either arena.
On our side of the border, we can continue to blame the administration, and that wouldn't be so far off base, however...When are we the people going to stand up against what we know is wrong, and have known has gone on for so long?
This is a democracy after all, meaning that everything this administration does is ultimately on our hands. It's sad to hear anybody say that they still believe Bush actually intends to protect Americans from harm, especially when there seems to be evidence to the contrary popping up almost everyday! Bush's promises of protection are empty, and he's not listening to commanders on the ground, or anybody else but himself. It's time we forgive those that were blinded by shock, and time for all of us to come out of our shock so we can make way for some badly needed change! I'm thinking that perhaps what I've thought up until now was just apathy, was really just a result of shock; and I have The Shock Doctrine to thank for opening my eyes to that possibility. I really want to forgive too, so we can move on from that stand-still. As Naomi Klein surmised from her research, it's only when we are aware of what is happening to us, and when we have access to knowledge that we can resist the power that shock has over us. Part of informing ourselves involves taking responsibility for all that has passed, and actually doing something to change it.
In this New York Times OP-ED piece that was published yesterday, it so precisely lays out as to how we the people are now equally responsible for the atrocities that have followed the criminality and negligence that the administration, the media, and the Congress were initially responsible for. I was glad to see such an accurate account of so many of the things we've been told about listed in one place and yet, not resolved even one of those things - it should shame the best of us to recall it. I recommend you "get it while it's hot" too (this OP-ED article), since this publication archives fairly quick and then you have to be a member to access it. That is why I have posted it in full below. However, there are several great links within the original article, so PLEASE go read it now.
I wonder when Americans are going to stop allowing these entities to hold the power of shock over us, to let the press turn the page for us so that we forget without resolving anything, and to accept their reasoning for turning a blind eye to profiteering and violations of our rights and freedoms, and all in the name of hate?
I know now, that it will only happen, and we will only be able to have some peace, when we decide not to allow ourselves to remain in a state of shock.
PS - I'd like to thank numerous friends that are also dedicated to spreading information and offering truth. There are truly too many to name here but I think you know who you are, and I wanted to let you know that I cannot do this sort of thing without you. You also work very hard to shake-off the shock! Thank you.
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OP-ED COLUMNIST
The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us
By FRANK RICH
Published: October 14, 2007
“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.
There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.
The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.
We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.
I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.
We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts.
Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.
We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.
Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.
Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.
Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.
“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Another way we could stop the war profiteering is to remove the members of Congress that are appropriating unethically in their OWN FAVOR! Take Senator Dianne Feinstein for example. Not only has she voted in favor of no-bid contracts for her husband's company (working in Iraq & Afghanistan, just to name a few places), but she is also sitting on the Ethics Committee now, where she can legally ensure her immoral deeds remain "ethical" in the eyes of Congress. She may have quit the appropriations committee that gave the contracts, but...come on southern California, are you seriously going to continue to allow that war-profiteering criminal to also be her OWN police enforcement too? GET HER OUTA THERE! As well as the many, many others in Congress that have clearly chosen profiteering over precious life. I'm a giant advocate for contacting Congress for any reason; whether it be to express dismay over lack of support or bad vote, as well as congratulating on a good vote (the latter is not as often done, but just as important!). We cannot depend on the next president alone to fix this giant mess, and I implore you to keep an eye on Congress before casting congressional votes in '08 for this reason too.
What has happened with the contractors in Iraq is just one of MANY things that happens in unfettered and radically free markets. In fact, Iraq was a dream guinea pig for the radical free market yea-sayers, implemented by Paul Bremer, and based upon an economic plan that was originally born out of a desire to put an end to The New Deal. Naomi Klein has dubbed it: THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, but it's more commonly known as "Economic Shock Treatment" or as the "Chicago School of Economics." It has been followed by people such as Rumsfeld, and the economic puppets for Pinochet - who were trained to do their part by the same (and probably most notorious) economist who had created this theory, Milton Friedman. The premise stems from the CIA's use of shock, as a means of reducing prisoners to a child-like state so they may wield power over them. Friedman wanted free markets in a time that they were very unpopular, and he realized the same practice the CIA was using could be applied to the masses in cases of natural disaster, war, or any other shocking event. Today we see the Shock Doctrine in play here in the US, after the attacks on 9/11 where Bush manipulated our shock to get all kinds of policies we would otherwise be opposed to into law, as he promised to protect us. There is a short film about the whole concept that is very well done on Naomi's website as well.
i think they are perpetuating the fear and shock with the endless war, and the supposed "threats" from Iran. In order for the Shock Doctrine to keep its grip, people must remain paralyzed by fear, and Iran is just the next tool for these means. A reminder that Iran poses NO THREAT (a short, narrated by Arron Russo):
Since there is so little real understanding in the US of the Iranian people, I think it's important that we make an effort to go beyond what we are force-fed or limited to by our media. I don't think it is any accident that the media has made this war faceless and that we have not heard reports on any individual Iraqis since the war began; because if we do not feel connected to the human lives there, then it's easier for us to support their deaths - so I want to put a face and real people in the place we have labeled "our enemies." In this video below you will see what everyday life is like for Iranians; it's produced by the BBC. I think most will be surprised and even intrigued, as I was. It's beautifully done and focuses solely on their culture, different areas of Tehran, various lifestyles there, and simply based on the people overall - no politicians were interviewed for this piece.
Now, every time somebody ventures into a discussion on Iran in the US, it invariably leads to Israel, and then to accusations of Antisemitism. So I want to remind everybody (as I so frequently do), that the cabal seeking to squash Iran are the Zionists, NOT Jews. Sure, some Zionists are Jews (but certainly not all), there are also Christian Zionists, and other organizations that work in concert with them; but the fact remains that it's so far from just being Jewish people behind the Zionist movement.
It's of vast importance to differentiate between the two in order to understand what is behind, and truly motivates this verbal attack on Iran. We must not allow the Zionists hide behind their accusations of prejudice! I recently discovered this great website via the picture above on another website, the website I'm speaking of is on the sign the Rabbis are holding in the picture above. Within that site you'll find this insightful article about their visit with the Iranian president, and the following counter-protests they held in response to the ones against Ahmadinejad's visit to the US. The press release at the bottom of this article includes a speech given the night before that meeting, and it explains extremely well why Jews are opposed to Zionism. I will gladly give numerous resources to anybody that wants to read more about this too, just ask. To accept this vicious rhetoric about antisemitism, is to allow these immoral wars to continue. For those of you that still think it's a good idea to attack Iran, I ask you to please seriously consider this:
Also, this is just one tragedy that awaits our attack. Another (in brief) is that Iran could simply chose to shut-down the Straights of Hormuz by whatever means necessary; and that would seriously and so easily crush America. Not only by way of our troops, but also because it's the passage that MUCH of our energy resources travel though - amongst other things. Honestly, Iran is NOT a war the US has ANY chance of "winning."
It's not my intention to condone any beliefs held by Iranians here that are considered controversial; but I think it's important to recognize that judging another country's religion, beliefs, or lifestyle is no place for a democracy! To consider ourselves the world's "cultural police" or the ones on some sort of "moral high-ground" is a very dangerous position to take; and it's in fact, quite the opposite action of said intentions behind this stance. Please consider how long it took for you to understand your own faith, and that most devout followers of any religion believe that they may never fully understand their God or It's divine intent. So how can people be so comfortable judging another's faith with so little understanding? Almost all faiths preach that it is only for God to judge, and teach love and respect for all life. Sadly it seems that many faithful have forgotten, or chosen to ignore these very valuable principles. Most faiths believe that if you life by good example, there will be no reason to seek converting anybody because they will desire what you have and ask of you what led you there; and I suggest that to developing a desire for democracy, will work in like fashion. We as Americans are for the most part, not setting a good example in either arena.
On our side of the border, we can continue to blame the administration, and that wouldn't be so far off base, however...When are we the people going to stand up against what we know is wrong, and have known has gone on for so long?
This is a democracy after all, meaning that everything this administration does is ultimately on our hands. It's sad to hear anybody say that they still believe Bush actually intends to protect Americans from harm, especially when there seems to be evidence to the contrary popping up almost everyday! Bush's promises of protection are empty, and he's not listening to commanders on the ground, or anybody else but himself. It's time we forgive those that were blinded by shock, and time for all of us to come out of our shock so we can make way for some badly needed change! I'm thinking that perhaps what I've thought up until now was just apathy, was really just a result of shock; and I have The Shock Doctrine to thank for opening my eyes to that possibility. I really want to forgive too, so we can move on from that stand-still. As Naomi Klein surmised from her research, it's only when we are aware of what is happening to us, and when we have access to knowledge that we can resist the power that shock has over us. Part of informing ourselves involves taking responsibility for all that has passed, and actually doing something to change it.
In this New York Times OP-ED piece that was published yesterday, it so precisely lays out as to how we the people are now equally responsible for the atrocities that have followed the criminality and negligence that the administration, the media, and the Congress were initially responsible for. I was glad to see such an accurate account of so many of the things we've been told about listed in one place and yet, not resolved even one of those things - it should shame the best of us to recall it. I recommend you "get it while it's hot" too (this OP-ED article), since this publication archives fairly quick and then you have to be a member to access it. That is why I have posted it in full below. However, there are several great links within the original article, so PLEASE go read it now.
I wonder when Americans are going to stop allowing these entities to hold the power of shock over us, to let the press turn the page for us so that we forget without resolving anything, and to accept their reasoning for turning a blind eye to profiteering and violations of our rights and freedoms, and all in the name of hate?
I know now, that it will only happen, and we will only be able to have some peace, when we decide not to allow ourselves to remain in a state of shock.
PS - I'd like to thank numerous friends that are also dedicated to spreading information and offering truth. There are truly too many to name here but I think you know who you are, and I wanted to let you know that I cannot do this sort of thing without you. You also work very hard to shake-off the shock! Thank you.
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OP-ED COLUMNIST
The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us
By FRANK RICH
Published: October 14, 2007
“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.
Ten days ago The Times unearthed yet another round of secret Department of Justice memos countenancing torture. President Bush gave his standard response: “This government does not torture people.” Of course, it all depends on what the meaning of “torture” is. The whole point of these memos is to repeatedly recalibrate the definition so Mr. Bush can keep pleading innocent.
By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”
Still, the drill remains the same. The administration gives its alibi (Abu Ghraib was just a few bad apples). A few members of Congress squawk. The debate is labeled “politics.” We turn the page.
There has been scarcely more response to the similarly recurrent story of apparent war crimes committed by our contractors in Iraq. Call me cynical, but when Laura Bush spoke up last week about the human rights atrocities in Burma, it seemed less an act of selfless humanitarianism than another administration maneuver to change the subject from its own abuses.
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.
The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina. This is a plot out of “Syriana” by way of “Chinatown.” There will be no trial. We will never find out what happened. A new bill passed by the House to regulate contractor behavior will have little effect, even if it becomes law in its current form.
We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.
I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top.
As the war has dragged on, it is hard to give Americans en masse a pass. We are too slow to notice, let alone protest, the calamities that have followed the original sin.
In April 2004, Stars and Stripes first reported that our troops were using makeshift vehicle armor fashioned out of sandbags, yet when a soldier complained to Donald Rumsfeld at a town meeting in Kuwait eight months later, he was successfully pilloried by the right. Proper armor procurement lagged for months more to come. Not until early this year, four years after the war’s first casualties, did a Washington Post investigation finally focus the country’s attention on the shoddy treatment of veterans, many of them victims of inadequate armor, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals.
We first learned of the use of contractors as mercenaries when four Blackwater employees were strung up in Falluja in March 2004, just weeks before the first torture photos emerged from Abu Ghraib. We asked few questions. When reports surfaced early this summer that our contractors in Iraq (180,000, of whom some 48,000 are believed to be security personnel) now outnumber our postsurge troop strength, we yawned. Contractor casualties and contractor-inflicted casualties are kept off the books.
It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war. Part of this was achieved with the usual Bush-Cheney secretiveness, from the torture memos to the prohibition of photos of military coffins. But the administration also invited our passive complicity by requiring no shared sacrifice. A country that knows there’s no such thing as a free lunch was all too easily persuaded there could be a free war.
Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts.
Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq.
We ignored the contractor scandal to our own peril. Ever since Falluja this auxiliary army has been a leading indicator of every element of the war’s failure: not only our inadequate troop strength but also our alienation of Iraqi hearts and minds and our rampant outsourcing to contractors rife with Bush-Cheney cronies and campaign contributors. Contractors remain a bellwether of the war’s progress today. When Blackwater was briefly suspended after the Nisour Square catastrophe, American diplomats were flatly forbidden from leaving the fortified Green Zone. So much for the surge’s great “success” in bringing security to Baghdad.
Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”
This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay. Yet it took mass death in Nisour Square to fix even our fleeting attention on this long-metastasizing cancer in our battle plan.
Similarly, it took until December 2005, two and a half years after “Mission Accomplished,” for Mr. Bush to feel sufficient public pressure to acknowledge the large number of Iraqi casualties in the war. Even now, despite his repeated declaration that “America will not abandon the Iraqi people,” he has yet to address or intervene decisively in the tragedy of four million-plus Iraqi refugees, a disproportionate number of them children. He feels no pressure from the American public to do so, but hey, he pays lip service to Darfur.
Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.
“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”
Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Will the US be Duped into Another War?
Sign the open letter for media intervention.
As far as the media goes, I firmly believe that when it comes to every single thing we suffer, struggle against and try to overcome as Americans; there are TWO sole causes that lead us to those problems: Corporate Interests & the Media - they are the poisonous partners that make it all possible. The press is the ONLY corporation protected by the Constitution - and for good reason. They have a constitutional duty to serve the people's educational interests, not other corporations' interests. That media thing, is OURS - and I want it back!
Thursday, July 19, 2007
New Classified Cover-ups by Our Rogue Exec. Office
What do you do when you're a nation at war, several of your officials are about to be busted on a variety of felonies, and the secrecy-card is about to expire?
When is doubt...VACATION-IT-OUT!!!
va-ca-tion...all I ever wanted...va-ca-tion, GOT to get away...
Yep, since everything is going soooo well in Iraq, it's time to put it on the back burner and let it simmer. Our entire Congress and the Rogue Executive branch are going to do exactly what the Iraqi Parliament is going to do about the war - go on vacation for the entire month of August! It's beyond me how our government has the nerve to scold the Iraqi Parliament for not meeting benchmarks and going on vacation, when our Congress intends to do the very same thing! Not that the move is shocking, or strays at all from the hypocritical M.O. of this administration or anything...
Packing everything up over the last week, to try to take it with them and possibly disappear-it all with public forgetfulness?...
Here are just some of the things they have in their classified suitcase:
---1) Despite Cheney's assertion that his office doesn't require oversight in the handling of classified documents, a second person has been convicted of passing classified info (originally pleaded guilty). He sent strategic information to the Philippines, to a group that was planning a political-coup to over-throw their president. The classified documents were sent by one of Dick's former aides, via Dick's office phone/fax. He worked as a military aide for both Gore and Cheney, then was an intelligence analyst for the FBI - he was just sentenced to prison for ten years.
---2) Not only has Cheney refused oversight from the Intelligence Security Office since 2002 and suggested having it abolished. but now the Justice Department admitted that the oversight board responsible for identifying intelligence abuses didn't report a single thing for the first five and a half years of this administration! They literally ignored hundreds of claims from the FBI, determining nothing about the validity of the alleged abuses. Their first report was filed last year and I haven't looked to see if they covered anything more than 2005, but I doubt it.
---3) Cheney's Energy Task Force: There was finally some coverage of the notorious meetings; however, it was severely played-down by the negligent press. The press has generally taken the position that there was nothing to be so secretive about. The press made the release trivial, reporting; Cheney met with the environmental agencies for consultation (that he said he had) after the policy-making meetings. Instead, he consulted in at least 40 meetings with energy producers' special interest groups. I don't think the public is as concerned with the environmental groups (that Cheney didn't even bother to show up for), at least not as concerned as we are with having information as to who his consulting team consisted of, and what was said in those 40 other meetings. The press pretended that the people involved were pretty non-sequential, burying the names way in the back of articles - when it should have been front-page, screaming headline, NEWS!
As it turns out, Cheney's Energy Task Force was made-up of some lobbyists, and oil baron-types, some who later cashed-out as environmental agency workers (Dept. of the Interior), and they all helped author the US energy policy. Three of them have already been convicted in the Abramoff case, and this is the detail that Cheney is REALLY hiding. Three convicted officials that Cheney consulted with to legislate national energy policies, now convicted felons serving time for taking bribes.
PRESS: "There you go, secret revealed, strange that they fought so hard to cover this up...Move along! Nothing to see here!"
---4) While the Democrats in the Senate were holding an all-night session to get some sort of benchmark for troops withdrawal into the Iraq plan, the Republicans and pundits were busy misconstruing it as "political theater" and a "stunt." The fact that people are actually believing this, just goes to show how invested Americans are in this war/occupation; not at all. An all-night Senate session is the very least of which can be sacrificed for our troops! To call an attempt to do the will of the growing-majority of the people, and to get the business of wartime dealt with in a timely manner (as should be)...to call this a "stunt" shows absolutely no understanding of how Congress works (or is at least, a show of the belief that viewers don't understand). The press was also reporting that "Democrats couldn't achieve a simple majority"; an out-right LIE. The Republicans' filibuster required MORE than a simple majority to have it passed, and had there not been the filibuster the closure vote would have passed. The vote that didn't pass was to blocked an "up or down" VOTE, it was just a vote to end the debate; not an actual vote on the measure itself. We obviously need more action in Congress in order to get anything done thee days, and I can't understand why anybody would be so reluctant to support Congress. that amendment was far from spectacular, but it would have been the first real legislation for an exit-strategy!
Let the records show: Republican Senators have absolutely no intentions whatsoever to even allow a vote on a plan to bring the troops home.
---5) Harriet Miers (former council to Bush) is currently in contempt of Congress' subpoena in regards to the US Attorney purge scandal - on Bush's dime. Bush has not officially asserted his executive privilege - yet - nor have the documents been specified as to what may or may not be released (according to Bush). Regardless, her required testimony is being contested by Bush on this basis. Miers will be cited in contempt if things don't change soon. Chairman Conyers of the Judiciary Committee sent/released a letter today addressed to Bush's attorney to inform them that their claims of executive privilege have been deemed invalid and the committee insists upon Miers appearing - as well as the requested documents.
---6) The same judge that ruled Cheney could keep his Energy Task Force meetings secret, has now dismissed a civil suit against Cheney, filed by former covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame's attorney is going to appeal the judgment of course, and I hope she looks to recuse the judge that dismissed the case on a prejudicial basis!
It seems to me that the ruling that has kept those energy meetings classified was the precedent that created the path to secrecy in which this administration has depended upon so heavily.
---7) The Executive branch found yet another opportunity to use its executive privilege, in the "friendly-fire" case of Corporal Pat Tillman; the story of how fratricide was first showcased by the government as a great American hero's sacrifice for his country, only to discover that the Pentagon knew what happened all along and had attempted to completely bury the story.
If you are unfamiliar with Tillman's story, there is a really great 7-part expose that is authored by a military man that has done several interviews with Tillman's mother. There has been some speculation that the Pentagon had decided to capitalize on Tillman's service and death, to encourage enlistments and bolster American support for the war. Some say it may have even been the purpose for his murder in the first place. That is the only thing that could possibly explain why the rest of his records are being held secret under executive privilege now. In response to a committee's request for all documents and records concerning Tillman, they received "10,000 pages" - of newspaper clippings. Upon reasserting the request for military records etc...they were refused on the basis of executive privilege, and told, "We already gave you ten thousands pages worth of documents!" Seriously, what other possible reason could Bush have for covering-up and obstructing the investigation into Corporal Tillman's tragic death?
---8) Cheney will most likely claim executive privilege AGAIN for his involvement in the illegal wiretapping program (despite his recent claims not to actually be part of the Executive Branch). Cheney's legal advisers asked for the same extension given to Bush for complying to subpoenas for documentation, and it was granted. The only real problem with the extension was that there was no rescheduled mandatory date for compliance.
WOOO HOOO! Only this administration gets ALL of the powers with NONE of the responsibilities! Well, and the next one will too, and the next...but only if we let them get away with it this time.
In the words of Lt. Col. Bob Bowman:
"If the government has nothing to hide, why is it hiding everything?"
When is doubt...VACATION-IT-OUT!!!
va-ca-tion...all I ever wanted...va-ca-tion, GOT to get away...
Yep, since everything is going soooo well in Iraq, it's time to put it on the back burner and let it simmer. Our entire Congress and the Rogue Executive branch are going to do exactly what the Iraqi Parliament is going to do about the war - go on vacation for the entire month of August! It's beyond me how our government has the nerve to scold the Iraqi Parliament for not meeting benchmarks and going on vacation, when our Congress intends to do the very same thing! Not that the move is shocking, or strays at all from the hypocritical M.O. of this administration or anything...
Packing everything up over the last week, to try to take it with them and possibly disappear-it all with public forgetfulness?...
Here are just some of the things they have in their classified suitcase:
---1) Despite Cheney's assertion that his office doesn't require oversight in the handling of classified documents, a second person has been convicted of passing classified info (originally pleaded guilty). He sent strategic information to the Philippines, to a group that was planning a political-coup to over-throw their president. The classified documents were sent by one of Dick's former aides, via Dick's office phone/fax. He worked as a military aide for both Gore and Cheney, then was an intelligence analyst for the FBI - he was just sentenced to prison for ten years.
---2) Not only has Cheney refused oversight from the Intelligence Security Office since 2002 and suggested having it abolished. but now the Justice Department admitted that the oversight board responsible for identifying intelligence abuses didn't report a single thing for the first five and a half years of this administration! They literally ignored hundreds of claims from the FBI, determining nothing about the validity of the alleged abuses. Their first report was filed last year and I haven't looked to see if they covered anything more than 2005, but I doubt it.
---3) Cheney's Energy Task Force: There was finally some coverage of the notorious meetings; however, it was severely played-down by the negligent press. The press has generally taken the position that there was nothing to be so secretive about. The press made the release trivial, reporting; Cheney met with the environmental agencies for consultation (that he said he had) after the policy-making meetings. Instead, he consulted in at least 40 meetings with energy producers' special interest groups. I don't think the public is as concerned with the environmental groups (that Cheney didn't even bother to show up for), at least not as concerned as we are with having information as to who his consulting team consisted of, and what was said in those 40 other meetings. The press pretended that the people involved were pretty non-sequential, burying the names way in the back of articles - when it should have been front-page, screaming headline, NEWS!
As it turns out, Cheney's Energy Task Force was made-up of some lobbyists, and oil baron-types, some who later cashed-out as environmental agency workers (Dept. of the Interior), and they all helped author the US energy policy. Three of them have already been convicted in the Abramoff case, and this is the detail that Cheney is REALLY hiding. Three convicted officials that Cheney consulted with to legislate national energy policies, now convicted felons serving time for taking bribes.
PRESS: "There you go, secret revealed, strange that they fought so hard to cover this up...Move along! Nothing to see here!"
---4) While the Democrats in the Senate were holding an all-night session to get some sort of benchmark for troops withdrawal into the Iraq plan, the Republicans and pundits were busy misconstruing it as "political theater" and a "stunt." The fact that people are actually believing this, just goes to show how invested Americans are in this war/occupation; not at all. An all-night Senate session is the very least of which can be sacrificed for our troops! To call an attempt to do the will of the growing-majority of the people, and to get the business of wartime dealt with in a timely manner (as should be)...to call this a "stunt" shows absolutely no understanding of how Congress works (or is at least, a show of the belief that viewers don't understand). The press was also reporting that "Democrats couldn't achieve a simple majority"; an out-right LIE. The Republicans' filibuster required MORE than a simple majority to have it passed, and had there not been the filibuster the closure vote would have passed. The vote that didn't pass was to blocked an "up or down" VOTE, it was just a vote to end the debate; not an actual vote on the measure itself. We obviously need more action in Congress in order to get anything done thee days, and I can't understand why anybody would be so reluctant to support Congress. that amendment was far from spectacular, but it would have been the first real legislation for an exit-strategy!
Let the records show: Republican Senators have absolutely no intentions whatsoever to even allow a vote on a plan to bring the troops home.
---5) Harriet Miers (former council to Bush) is currently in contempt of Congress' subpoena in regards to the US Attorney purge scandal - on Bush's dime. Bush has not officially asserted his executive privilege - yet - nor have the documents been specified as to what may or may not be released (according to Bush). Regardless, her required testimony is being contested by Bush on this basis. Miers will be cited in contempt if things don't change soon. Chairman Conyers of the Judiciary Committee sent/released a letter today addressed to Bush's attorney to inform them that their claims of executive privilege have been deemed invalid and the committee insists upon Miers appearing - as well as the requested documents.
---6) The same judge that ruled Cheney could keep his Energy Task Force meetings secret, has now dismissed a civil suit against Cheney, filed by former covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame's attorney is going to appeal the judgment of course, and I hope she looks to recuse the judge that dismissed the case on a prejudicial basis!
It seems to me that the ruling that has kept those energy meetings classified was the precedent that created the path to secrecy in which this administration has depended upon so heavily.
---7) The Executive branch found yet another opportunity to use its executive privilege, in the "friendly-fire" case of Corporal Pat Tillman; the story of how fratricide was first showcased by the government as a great American hero's sacrifice for his country, only to discover that the Pentagon knew what happened all along and had attempted to completely bury the story.
If you are unfamiliar with Tillman's story, there is a really great 7-part expose that is authored by a military man that has done several interviews with Tillman's mother. There has been some speculation that the Pentagon had decided to capitalize on Tillman's service and death, to encourage enlistments and bolster American support for the war. Some say it may have even been the purpose for his murder in the first place. That is the only thing that could possibly explain why the rest of his records are being held secret under executive privilege now. In response to a committee's request for all documents and records concerning Tillman, they received "10,000 pages" - of newspaper clippings. Upon reasserting the request for military records etc...they were refused on the basis of executive privilege, and told, "We already gave you ten thousands pages worth of documents!" Seriously, what other possible reason could Bush have for covering-up and obstructing the investigation into Corporal Tillman's tragic death?
---8) Cheney will most likely claim executive privilege AGAIN for his involvement in the illegal wiretapping program (despite his recent claims not to actually be part of the Executive Branch). Cheney's legal advisers asked for the same extension given to Bush for complying to subpoenas for documentation, and it was granted. The only real problem with the extension was that there was no rescheduled mandatory date for compliance.
WOOO HOOO! Only this administration gets ALL of the powers with NONE of the responsibilities! Well, and the next one will too, and the next...but only if we let them get away with it this time.
In the words of Lt. Col. Bob Bowman:
"If the government has nothing to hide, why is it hiding everything?"
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Last Week's Edition, Published Here
Due to a publishing glitch, last week's article wasn't posted, so I'm posting it here. The current edition will be published on Monday as usual, and the subject of it is FEAR. But take heart...because, in part...
The Jig is UP!
June 2, 2007
There have been some truly incredible developments in the US Attorney purge scandal, and if you haven’t been keeping up you can read all about it in my last two most recent articles:
Gonzo-Wolf Gate; A Neocon Nightmare
There is also more information in last weeks article:
Patriots and Pragmatists
Again I ask; what was the purpose of the scandal? Voter disenfranchisement - that’s it, plain and simple. Remember all the missing emails that the Judiciary Committee had sequestered? Of what was received, much of it was redacted, and much was suspected of missing because one of the emails coming from Rove appeared to have come from an external server (external to the White House, and from the RNC server to be exact). Anyway, the RNC claimed that they were "mistakenly" erased. Then they admitted that in order to be in keeping with the Presidential Records Act, they disabled the ability to erase emails. Rove however, had found a way around that, and he had to be given a talking to about it. Hmmm...what kind of nefarious things do you suppose he was up to? Well, you don't have to guess, because now we KNOW.
Like I'd mentioned it was all about voter disenfranchisement, and more specifically, the "caging lists" that were used to do so. Palast has an article all about caging, so I will save my breath explaining it. This isn't what's NEW though, he has been on this case for several years now...
What's new is that there has finally been some notice taken of the situation by the House Judiciary Committee! Chairman Conyers met with Palast on Thursday night and he turned over all the emails that he had intercepted straight over to Conyers. Most humorous was that these caging lists were accidentally sent to a friends of Palast's that host a site called "GeorgeWBush.org" (the official is .com), so they sent out their evil plan to deny tens of thousands of Democratic voters their right to vote.
Best of all, there was an immediate reaction to that meeting that points to certain guilt. One of the US Attorneys (Tim Griffin) was put in office to replace one of those that wouldn't comply with the evil plan, and had been fingered in Goodling's testimony last week. Griffin resigned the very next day after Palast met with Conyers. Better than that, Griffin was one of Rove's protégés and I expect we will soon hear him squealing like a little piggy before we know it!!! Let's just hope that this new and incredibly consistent Republican-policy of resigning before being successfully prosecuted before the public, doesn't deny us a proper investigation into why we really need to repeal the provision in the latest version of the Patriot Act that allowed Griffin to be seated without congressional approval in the first place. I’m also quite excited about the prospects of resolving these fraudulent election practices with plenty of time to spare (if they move on it NOW) before the 2008 elections!
There was also some nefarious behavior (or MORE I should say) on behalf of Cheney last week too. Apparently Cheney is anticipating the need to cover his ass, as he asked for his records to be destroyed. But just in case that doesn’t do the trick, he also has his lawyer arguing that revealing Plame's identity is included in his immunity as an official. Really? Do officials get immunity from treason too? Anybody want to place bets on a date for Cheney’s resignation?
There was another interesting resignation turned in on Friday as well, that of Bush’s longest serving personal aides. Dan Bartlett has been with Bush since his gubernatorial race in Texas, and had even worked for Rove before that. Bartlett merely announced his departure, but isn’t planning to leave until next month. There was no reason really given as to why he has decided to leave. He’s only 36; yet he vows not to write any books, take another government job, nor even back a candidate for the 2008 election.
Speaking of presidential candidates, there was an interesting development last week as well. Without really examining why there was a need to do it, Edwards retracted his statement that he had read the NIE before voting to authorize the war. Then Clinton Hillary did exactly the same thing. I’m assuming it’s because now that the public has now been able to take a look at those NIEs that were released the week before, that it doesn’t look right to Americans. If you actually read them it’s hard to believe that anybody in their right mind would vote in favor of that! Just as the NIEs were released at the end of the day on the Friday leading into the Memorial Day weekend, so were these statements made. Why did they wait a week? So as not to attract attention to the connection between the reports and their decision? To bury this correction in yet another weekend report, when most Americans aren’t paying attention? Yes, and yes. They were both on the Intelligence Committee, so they both had access to those reports – which means the rhetoric about how “If I knew then what I know now…”-crap doesn’t hold water. What I really think this retraction or “correction” was about actually goes much further than the media would lead you to believe. You see, there is one Democratic presidential candidate that has dealt with exactly the same scenario but had gone an entirely different direction…
Senator Mike Gravel is famous for reading the Pentagon papers in 1971' aloud on the floor of Congress, so they would be entered into the record and revealed to the public. That led Nixon to take Gravel all the way to the Supreme Court; but Gravel won his case, and therefore, the right to have done so. So what excuse does Hillary and Edwards have since Gravel had set precedent 30 years prior, for not telling the public that they knew the administration was lying to America? NONE. Senator Gravel is right, any presidential candidate that had voted for the war isn’t fit to be president – but especially those that had access to this kind of information beforehand!
What kind of reaction can we expect from Bush in such trying times? Well, if his last press conference in the Rose Garden is any indication, then I say we shouldn’t expect the fear-mongering to stop. We could also expect him to continue to lie to Americans since he went on to say that we were in Iraq “at the invitation of their government officials”; who incidentally, have already voted that we should set timetables to LEAVE, and as soon as possible! Bush added that if Iraqis had requested we leave, we would – but that’s a blatant lie. I’d say that continued crony loyalist practices are a given (even if his pals are proving to be the criminals many of us have suspected them to be), considering he is still determined to express his “total confidence” in Gonzales. Although, what I see coming down the pike as his buddies are resigning left and right is a total breakdown and there has been evidence of it happening. Two times within the last month, Bush has lashed out in idiocy at two different people that were questioning his handling of the occupation of Iraq. The most recent was a fabulous display that could only be compared to a spoiled brat that isn’t getting his way. While meeting with friends in Texas, a wild-eyed Bush thumped his chest and repeated over and over, “I am the president!” So now the Texans (and everybody) that took offense to the Dixie Chics saying they were ashamed of Bush being from Texas (their home state) should own up to feeling the same way about him being president, or get on the megaphone to try and defend that! Don’t attempt to tell me that’s something we shouldn’t be ashamed of.
Lastly, a word about Cindy Sheehan quitting the peace movement: Honestly, I don’t think she will ever completely stop, it just isn’t in here nature. I think she meant exactly what she said, that she realized that once she held the Democrats up to the same standards as the Republicans in regards to Iraq, she received the same sort of slander from the left. As a growing percentage of Americans are, she is disenchanted with the system – and frankly worn out. I know that thousands of her supporters are sad about http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/05/sheehan_steps_o.html”>her announcement, but truth be told, she has done more than her fair share. I had the excellent fortune as to have crossed paths with her several times, and I can honestly say that her heart is squarely in the right place. The first thought I ever had about her upon discovering what she was doing was that no matter what comes of it, she has set an excellent example for us all. She had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that one person CAN make a difference. For that reason alone, I have to disagree with Cindy on one thing; her son did not die for nothing because she empowered thousands of Americans to stand up against the war and occupation of Iraq. It’s a painful price to pay in order to mobilize the nation, but I have to say that I can’t thank her enough for everything that she and her son had done for us all. She is exactly right to say that it’s up to us now…but then, it always has been. The war is over, and the jig is up – if you want it to be.
The Jig is UP!
June 2, 2007
There have been some truly incredible developments in the US Attorney purge scandal, and if you haven’t been keeping up you can read all about it in my last two most recent articles:
Gonzo-Wolf Gate; A Neocon Nightmare
There is also more information in last weeks article:
Patriots and Pragmatists
Again I ask; what was the purpose of the scandal? Voter disenfranchisement - that’s it, plain and simple. Remember all the missing emails that the Judiciary Committee had sequestered? Of what was received, much of it was redacted, and much was suspected of missing because one of the emails coming from Rove appeared to have come from an external server (external to the White House, and from the RNC server to be exact). Anyway, the RNC claimed that they were "mistakenly" erased. Then they admitted that in order to be in keeping with the Presidential Records Act, they disabled the ability to erase emails. Rove however, had found a way around that, and he had to be given a talking to about it. Hmmm...what kind of nefarious things do you suppose he was up to? Well, you don't have to guess, because now we KNOW.
Like I'd mentioned it was all about voter disenfranchisement, and more specifically, the "caging lists" that were used to do so. Palast has an article all about caging, so I will save my breath explaining it. This isn't what's NEW though, he has been on this case for several years now...
What's new is that there has finally been some notice taken of the situation by the House Judiciary Committee! Chairman Conyers met with Palast on Thursday night and he turned over all the emails that he had intercepted straight over to Conyers. Most humorous was that these caging lists were accidentally sent to a friends of Palast's that host a site called "GeorgeWBush.org" (the official is .com), so they sent out their evil plan to deny tens of thousands of Democratic voters their right to vote.
Best of all, there was an immediate reaction to that meeting that points to certain guilt. One of the US Attorneys (Tim Griffin) was put in office to replace one of those that wouldn't comply with the evil plan, and had been fingered in Goodling's testimony last week. Griffin resigned the very next day after Palast met with Conyers. Better than that, Griffin was one of Rove's protégés and I expect we will soon hear him squealing like a little piggy before we know it!!! Let's just hope that this new and incredibly consistent Republican-policy of resigning before being successfully prosecuted before the public, doesn't deny us a proper investigation into why we really need to repeal the provision in the latest version of the Patriot Act that allowed Griffin to be seated without congressional approval in the first place. I’m also quite excited about the prospects of resolving these fraudulent election practices with plenty of time to spare (if they move on it NOW) before the 2008 elections!
There was also some nefarious behavior (or MORE I should say) on behalf of Cheney last week too. Apparently Cheney is anticipating the need to cover his ass, as he asked for his records to be destroyed. But just in case that doesn’t do the trick, he also has his lawyer arguing that revealing Plame's identity is included in his immunity as an official. Really? Do officials get immunity from treason too? Anybody want to place bets on a date for Cheney’s resignation?
There was another interesting resignation turned in on Friday as well, that of Bush’s longest serving personal aides. Dan Bartlett has been with Bush since his gubernatorial race in Texas, and had even worked for Rove before that. Bartlett merely announced his departure, but isn’t planning to leave until next month. There was no reason really given as to why he has decided to leave. He’s only 36; yet he vows not to write any books, take another government job, nor even back a candidate for the 2008 election.
Speaking of presidential candidates, there was an interesting development last week as well. Without really examining why there was a need to do it, Edwards retracted his statement that he had read the NIE before voting to authorize the war. Then Clinton Hillary did exactly the same thing. I’m assuming it’s because now that the public has now been able to take a look at those NIEs that were released the week before, that it doesn’t look right to Americans. If you actually read them it’s hard to believe that anybody in their right mind would vote in favor of that! Just as the NIEs were released at the end of the day on the Friday leading into the Memorial Day weekend, so were these statements made. Why did they wait a week? So as not to attract attention to the connection between the reports and their decision? To bury this correction in yet another weekend report, when most Americans aren’t paying attention? Yes, and yes. They were both on the Intelligence Committee, so they both had access to those reports – which means the rhetoric about how “If I knew then what I know now…”-crap doesn’t hold water. What I really think this retraction or “correction” was about actually goes much further than the media would lead you to believe. You see, there is one Democratic presidential candidate that has dealt with exactly the same scenario but had gone an entirely different direction…
Senator Mike Gravel is famous for reading the Pentagon papers in 1971' aloud on the floor of Congress, so they would be entered into the record and revealed to the public. That led Nixon to take Gravel all the way to the Supreme Court; but Gravel won his case, and therefore, the right to have done so. So what excuse does Hillary and Edwards have since Gravel had set precedent 30 years prior, for not telling the public that they knew the administration was lying to America? NONE. Senator Gravel is right, any presidential candidate that had voted for the war isn’t fit to be president – but especially those that had access to this kind of information beforehand!
What kind of reaction can we expect from Bush in such trying times? Well, if his last press conference in the Rose Garden is any indication, then I say we shouldn’t expect the fear-mongering to stop. We could also expect him to continue to lie to Americans since he went on to say that we were in Iraq “at the invitation of their government officials”; who incidentally, have already voted that we should set timetables to LEAVE, and as soon as possible! Bush added that if Iraqis had requested we leave, we would – but that’s a blatant lie. I’d say that continued crony loyalist practices are a given (even if his pals are proving to be the criminals many of us have suspected them to be), considering he is still determined to express his “total confidence” in Gonzales. Although, what I see coming down the pike as his buddies are resigning left and right is a total breakdown and there has been evidence of it happening. Two times within the last month, Bush has lashed out in idiocy at two different people that were questioning his handling of the occupation of Iraq. The most recent was a fabulous display that could only be compared to a spoiled brat that isn’t getting his way. While meeting with friends in Texas, a wild-eyed Bush thumped his chest and repeated over and over, “I am the president!” So now the Texans (and everybody) that took offense to the Dixie Chics saying they were ashamed of Bush being from Texas (their home state) should own up to feeling the same way about him being president, or get on the megaphone to try and defend that! Don’t attempt to tell me that’s something we shouldn’t be ashamed of.
Lastly, a word about Cindy Sheehan quitting the peace movement: Honestly, I don’t think she will ever completely stop, it just isn’t in here nature. I think she meant exactly what she said, that she realized that once she held the Democrats up to the same standards as the Republicans in regards to Iraq, she received the same sort of slander from the left. As a growing percentage of Americans are, she is disenchanted with the system – and frankly worn out. I know that thousands of her supporters are sad about http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/05/sheehan_steps_o.html”>her announcement, but truth be told, she has done more than her fair share. I had the excellent fortune as to have crossed paths with her several times, and I can honestly say that her heart is squarely in the right place. The first thought I ever had about her upon discovering what she was doing was that no matter what comes of it, she has set an excellent example for us all. She had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that one person CAN make a difference. For that reason alone, I have to disagree with Cindy on one thing; her son did not die for nothing because she empowered thousands of Americans to stand up against the war and occupation of Iraq. It’s a painful price to pay in order to mobilize the nation, but I have to say that I can’t thank her enough for everything that she and her son had done for us all. She is exactly right to say that it’s up to us now…but then, it always has been. The war is over, and the jig is up – if you want it to be.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Our "Fair and Balanced" media coverage...
HA!
(Originally generated by Dodd's campaign: http://chrisdodd.com/node/1377)
(Originally generated by Dodd's campaign: http://chrisdodd.com/node/1377)
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About Me
- the Left Paw
- I had been writing a News & Politics column for an online magazine for a little over three years, and just last fall opened this blog to continue publication. I also had the pleasure of being the associate producer for a progressive talk radio host for about a year. Alittle of everything... I've advised small businesses, and I paint all kinds of things (boxes, figurines, greeting cards, personalized children's and other dish-wares, decor...). I still paint when I can, but mainly I'm manage a wholesale company for a Fair Trade, eco-friendly Jewelry & Homewares designer/producer out of Bali called, Verlu. You can see a full catalog of our line on the website, and there is now a list of our retailers for you to visit too. "Wear in everybody's Good Health!"
The political opinions expressed in this blog are in no way related to Verlu. The proud Progressive in me is thrilled to say I'm working with a company that operates in a manner respectful to both Mother Earth & Humanity; however, Progressive Mews is not meant to reflect any opinion - aside from my very own.