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Mind-Altering National Charade To Keep Patients From The Joint ...

11.30.04 (6:00 am) [edit]

Both my parents are retired, scoping 70, in poorer health than they deserve and living in so-called assisted-living facilities. Their room, board, supervised pill-popping and shepherded time-killing add up to a $300-a-day raid on their life savings. It's remarkable that they've eluded the bills' side effects so far (strokes, heart attacks, monthly bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder). It's just as remarkable that they somehow manage to live with the pains of their illnesses, day after day, agony on top of anguish.

If it were up to me, and if they so wished, and if I could get past my case of boy-scout respect for the law (for them, I could), I wouldn't hesitate to find a way to provide them with any drug they wished to ease their days -- pot, hashish, cocaine or whatever. I wouldn't do it on medicinal grounds. That would be patronizing, as if relief from physical pain was acceptable, but pleasure for its own sake wasn't. I'd do it on moral grounds, and as a matter of choice -- their choice. They're past the age when anybody has the right to tell them what is and what isn't morally responsible so far as their personal, private indulgences are concerned, least of all the government they've gorged with taxes all their life or the care facilities they're gorging with dollars now.

As it is, my mother isn't the crack-pipe type and my father has never smoked a day in his life. He's not about to develop a yen for reefers now. They're both sticking to their regimen of "legal" drugs. These differ from the illegal kind in addictive characteristics and mind-altering content only in so far as they're approved by the Food and Drug Administration, they're advertised on TV and their sales profit shareholders instead of pushers.

It's all part of the greatest truth-altering charade since Prohibition. A drug like marijuana, which has never killed anybody and probably never will (you'd need to smoke 900 joints in one sitting for it to be lethal) is the Ahab-like obsession of a government that spends more money chasing after its dealers and punishing its users than it does on anti-terrorism. Drug peddlers push performance-enhancing opiates and amphetamines on children with one hand while wagging at them to stay off drugs with the other. Millions of Americans inhale anti-depressants as they would orange juice even though the anti-depressants are more mind-altering, and usually more dangerous, than marijuana. Some anti-depressants' side effects include a tendency to go homicidal on others or oneself. Meanwhile the desperately sick who use a joint once in a while to improve their appetite or counter the nauseating effects of chemotherapy are branded criminals.

Unlike my parents, Angel Raich is in the prime of her life, but also ravaged by diseases and pains that include tumors, seizures, spasms and nausea. Prescription drugs don't help. Marijuana does. Raich lives in California, where it is legal to use marijuana for medical purposes, as it is in 10 other states. So she uses. She is married and has two children. The marijuana eases her pains and makes life easier for everyone. The freedom-preaching Bush administration wants to stop her. Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose moral code mimics mullahs' more than Solomon's, has been on a tear against marijuana users and suppliers in those states despite local laws that made them legal. Federal prohibition, he claims, trumps local choice. Raich and others sued. On Monday, their case went before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Three years ago the court banned "marijuana clubs" from serving patients. But it didn't address the issue of state laws legalizing medical marijuana use. The case puts the court in a squirm. This is the court that has codified the war on drugs' dopiest rules and repressions. This is the court that has legitimized the longest, most deceitful war the United States has been involved in, the most damaging to the Constitution and the costliest to the nation, bar none, a war that has cost the nation upwards of half a trillion dollars since it was declared by Richard Nixon in 1969. This is also the court that considers states' rights sacred -- up to the point where those rights clash with the court's political prejudices. Halting a state's electoral recount is OK, for example, for the same reason that overturning blatant discriminatory laws like same-sex bans isn't: Politics speak louder than constitutional principle.

And much louder than compassion and dignity. Angel Raich is no criminal, and a marijuana joint is no more a threat to America's morals and safety than a can of beer. But the war on drugs is a $40-billion-a-year industry. Government isn't about to let compassion and dignity, let alone individual liberty, get in the way of such a popular and expedient addiction. - http://www.news-journalonline...

Mind-Altering National Charade To Keep Patients From The Joint ...

11.30.04 (5:58 am) [edit]

Mind-Altering National Charade To Keep Patients From The Joint ...

11.30.04 (5:58 am) [edit]

Mind-Altering National Charade To Keep Patients From The Joint ...

11.30.04 (5:56 am) [edit]

Mind-Altering National Charade To Keep Patients From The Joint ...

11.30.04 (5:55 am) [edit]

Bush's Bloodbath: The Real Fury of Fallujah

11.30.04 (5:46 am) [edit]

"[i]The Romans create a desolation and call it peace[/i]."
- Tacitus

"[i]The enemy has a face. It is Satan's. He is in Fallujah, and we are going to destroy him[/i]."
- Colonel Gary Brandl, US Marines

President George W Bush is "reaching out" to Fallujah - the first major foreign policy initiative of the second Bush administration. The name: Operation Phantom Fury. The strategy: precision-strike democracy. The message: kill them all, and let God sort them out.

Former US intelligence asset turned prime minister without a parliament Iyad Allawi - widely known in Baghdad as "Saddam without a moustache" - has got himself another title: the Butcher of Fallujah. On Sunday, before co-launching with the Pentagon the biggest urban war since the storming of Hue in 1968 Vietnam, Allawi installed de facto martial law in Iraq for 60 days. Historians and political scientists are breathlessly trying to explain to the world that no democratic election can possibly be preceded by a state of siege.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Bush's Bloodbath: The Real Fury of Fallujah

11.30.04 (5:46 am) [edit]

Bush's Bloodbath: The Real Fury of Fallujah

11.30.04 (5:43 am) [edit]

Bush's Bloodbath: The Real Fury of Fallujah

11.30.04 (5:42 am) [edit]

Herr Fuhrer Bush's Crimes Against Humanity: Red Cross Reports Torture at Guantmo Bay

11.30.04 (5:19 am) [edit]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, [i]The New York Times [/i]reported http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... on Tuesday.

An ICRC inspection team that spent most of June at Guantanamo Bay reported the use of psychological and sometimes physical coercion on the prisoners, the newspaper said.

It said it had recently obtained a memorandum that quoted the report in detail and listed its major findings.

In Geneva, the ICRC said it would neither confirm nor deny the New York Times report -- in which allegations of treatment tantamount to torture go further than what the neutral intermediary has publicly stated before about inmates held at Guantanamo.

But, in a statement, the Geneva-based ICRC said it remained concerned that "significant problems regarding conditions and treatment at Guantanamo Bay have not yet been adequately addressed," and it was pursuing talks with U.S. authorities.

More than 500 people are being held at the U.S. base in Cuba, detained during the 2001 U.S. war to oust al Qaeda and the ruling Taliban from Afghanistan and in other operations in the U.S. war against terror. The ICRC began visits in early 2002.

The Times said the U.S. government and military officials received the ICRC report in July and rejected its findings.

Asked by the Times about the report, a Pentagon spokesman said in a statement: "The United States operates a safe, humane and professional detention operation at Guantanamo that is providing valuable information in the war on terrorism."

The Times said the Red Cross investigators had found a system devised to break the will of prisoners through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the Times quoted the report as saying.

Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, the committee's delegate-general for Europe and the Americas, told the newspaper the ICRC could not comment on the report submitted to the U.S. government.

The ICRC has agreed to keep its findings confidential.

Human rights groups and lawyers have criticized the United States for holding prisoners at the base indefinitely and most without charges or legal representation.

The U.S. government has taken the position that the detainees are "enemy combatants" and not entitled to the protections normally given to prisoners of war.

It has begun a process of holding individual trials, called tribunals, for each prisoner to determine their status. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Herr Fuhrer Bush's Crimes Against Humanity: Red Cross Reports Torture at Guantmo Bay

11.30.04 (5:18 am) [edit]

Herr Fuhrer Bush's Crimes Against Humanity: Red Cross Reports Torture at Guantmo Bay

11.30.04 (5:13 am) [edit]

Herr Fuhrer Bush's Crimes Against Humanity: Red Cross Reports Torture at Guantmo Bay

11.30.04 (5:09 am) [edit]

Pro-Bush Corporate Think-Tank Claims Greenhouse Effect 'May Benefit Man'

11.28.04 (8:11 am) [edit]

Climate change is 'a myth', sea levels are not rising and Britain's chief scientist is 'an embarrassment' for believing catastrophe is inevitable. These are the controversial views of a new London-based think-tank that will publish a report tomorrow attacking the apocalyptic view that man-made greenhouse gases will destroy the planet.

The International Policy Network will publish its long-awaited study, claiming that the science warning of an environmental disaster caused by climate change is 'fatally flawed'. It will state that previous predictions of changes in sea level of a metre over the next 100 years were overestimates.

Instead, the report will say that sea level rises will reach a maximum of just 20cms during the next century, adding that global warming could, in fact, benefit mankind by increasing fish stocks.

The report's views closely mirror those held by many of President George Bush's senior advisers, who have been accused of derailing attempts to reach international agreement over how to prevent climate change.

The report is set to cause controversy. The network, which has links with some of the President's advisers, has received cash donations from the US oil giant ExxonMobil, which has long lobbied against the climate change agenda. Exxon lists the donation as part of its 'climate change outreach' programme.

Environmentalists yesterday said the network report was an attempt by American neo-conservatives to sabotage the Prime Minister's attempts to lead the world in tackling climate change.

Last week, the network's director Julian Morris attacked Britain's highly respected chief scientist. 'David King is an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to his country.' He criticised preparations by Tony Blair to use his presidency of the world's most powerful nations next year to lead attempts in tackling climate change.

Morris described Blair's plans to use his G8 tenure to halt global warming as 'offensive'. Bush is understood to have objected to Blair placing the issue at the top of the agenda and to the robust tone of his recent speeches on climate change.

Blair, however, has garnered considerable international support for describing the issue as 'the single, biggest long-term issue' facing the world. According to the network, however, his passion on the matter is not shared by the British public. A poll it commissioned claims six out of 10 Britons believe Blair should not implement the Kyoto protocol if it will harm the economy.

The executive director of the environment group Greenpeace, Stephen Tindale, said: 'We've been watching how the network employs the same tactics as Washington neo-cons, now we know they employ some of the same people as well.

'For years, the tobacco companies blocked action on smoking by sowing doubt about the science. Esso and its friends have done the same thing in the US on climate change and now they're busy in Britain. Global warming is the biggest threat we face, the science is certain.'

Environmentalists believe this week's report will provoke a similar storm to that inspired by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who maintains climate change is not the greatest threat facing mankind and resources should be spent on more pressing issues, such as tackling HIV.

Tomorrow's findings echo a number of Lomborg's themes, as well as maintaining that 'extreme weather' is more likely caused by a natural cycle rather than man-made. It also challenges assumptions that climate change will lead to a rise in malaria along with more positive effects, such as increasing fish stocks in the north Atlantic and reducing the incidence of temperature-related deaths among vulnerable people.

Morris admitted receiving money from a number of companies, including $50,000 from Exxon, but denied the organisation was a front for neo-conservative opinion. 'I have written about these issues for many years. If a company wants to provide money, then I'd be happy to accept it.'

He added that his $1 million budget is small compared to those of international groups, such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. - http://observer.guardian.co.u...,6903,1361276,00.html

Pro-Bush Corporate Think-Tank Claims Greenhouse Effect 'May Benefit Man'

11.28.04 (8:09 am) [edit]

Pro-Bush Corporate Think-Tank Claims Greenhouse Effect 'May Benefit Man'

11.28.04 (8:08 am) [edit]

To Hell With Values

11.28.04 (8:05 am) [edit]

It's been less than a month since the gods decreed that, due to the election results, American political life henceforth must be all about something called "values." And I gave it my best. Honest. But I'm sick of talking about values, sick of pretending I have them or care more about them than I really do. Sick of bending and twisting the political causes I do care about to make them qualify as "values." News stories about values-mongers caught with their values down used to make my day. Now, the tale of Bill O'Reilly and phone sex induces barely a flicker of schadenfreude.

Why does an ideological position become sacrosanct just because it gets labeled as a "value"? There are serious arguments and sincere passions on both sides of the gay marriage debate. For some reason, the views of those who feel that marriage requires a man and a woman are considered to be a "value," while the views of those who believe that gay relationships deserve the same legal standing as straight ones barely qualifies as an opinion.

Those labels don't confer any logical advantage. But they confer two big advantages in the propaganda war. First, a value just seems inherently more compelling than a mere opinion. That's a big head start. Second, the holder of a value is automatically more sensitive to slights than the holder of an opinion. An opinion can't just slug away at a value. It must be solicitous and understanding. A value may tackle an opinion, meanwhile, with no such constraint.

No doubt there are strategists all over Washington busily reconfiguring their issues to look like values. Highway construction funds? Needed to help people get to Grandma's house for Christmas. You got something against family values, buddy? Or Christmas?

Especially humiliating are efforts by liberals to reposition the issues they care about as conservative and therefore, we hope, transform them into values. Welfare? It (like nearly everything else) is about families, of course. And affirmative action is about work and opportunity. Liberals' actual motivation — the instinct that a prosperous society ought to mitigate the unfairness of life to some reasonable extent — isn't considered a value. So let's keep that one among ourselves.

Why should anyone care, or care so much, whether the people running the government have good values? Shouldn't we prefer a bit of competence, if forced to choose? For example, suppose we had a government that was capable of assuring enough flu vaccine to go around, like the governments of every other developed country in the world. Wouldn't that be nice? And if we could have that kind of government, would anyone really mind if a few more of its leaders secretly enjoyed Janet Jackson's halftime show at the Super Bowl?

The Republican congressional leadership says a clause giving congressional committee chairmen the power to examine anybody's tax returns just slipped into a big spending bill by accident. Whoops! OK, it's the holiday season: I'll buy that. Maybe. But if so — and call me a valueless heathen, if you must — I would like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist from now on to read the laws he intends to impose on the nation, even if he does it on Sunday mornings and has to miss church as a result.

It's not just a question of values getting in the way of more pressing or relevant matters. It's also a question of how much you want the government to be worrying about your values. My answer: not very much. My values are my own business. True, they are influenced by private and public institutions and by the culture at large — no doubt in unhealthy ways, very often. But I don't relish the idea of government getting involved to rectify that. And I thought most conservatives would agree. But politicians elected because of their values will probably see values as part of their mandate. That's ominous.

Values have a wonderful quality not shared by other political issues that are more reality-based, such as the war in Iraq or the growing national debt: They can be nearly cost-free. This is often true in the simple economic sense that practical problems cost money whereas spiritual problems, even if real, usually don't. It's also true in the political sense that value-based issues usually don't require much of a trade-off on the part of voters. You can be as pro-family as you want, without concern that you're giving up valuable anti-family values.

A country whose political dialogue is all about values is either a country with no serious problems or a country hiding from its serious problems. When I want values, I go to Wal-Mart. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,1,1212204.column

To Hell With Values

11.28.04 (8:05 am) [edit]

To Hell With Values

11.28.04 (8:03 am) [edit]

To Hell With Values

11.28.04 (8:02 am) [edit]

When The State Gets Churched

11.28.04 (7:59 am) [edit]

Jesus of Nazareth, who said his kingdom was beyond this Earth, was not the sort of guy you'd expect to see winning an election for the regime of wealth and war.

Indeed, it seems downright contradictory for a pacifist rebel leader who shamed an empire by submitting to execution at its hands to be vested with temporal power.

And to announce to his beloved enemies that it's hereby time to put the boot to their other cheek.

Ah, but that's the Jesus we're getting, at least from one robust body of Christ, in the early stages of what Democrats ruefully refer to as the Post-11/2 Era.

"Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil," fundamentalist university president Bob Jones III thundered in a letter to President Bush. "You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."

His Christ must not have despised violence, disproportionate wealth or self-righteousness.

Fallujah? Crank it up and clean 'em out. They're all insurgents, aren't they? Insurgents and infidels of all ages. No sense bringing the world's mightiest military halfway across the world, even if you don't remember why you did so, if you're not going to use it.

High-end tax cuts? He amassed some capital in this election, the president reminds us, and he intends to spend it on capitalists, with the blessing of that Christian faction that came out on top.

The courts? Arlen Specter, the beleaguered moderate who's in line for chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been advised he'd better consent. The religious right wants anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-secular judges, and the Republican Senate is in no mood for heresy.

"We're going to strike out and demand a conservative agenda," says Richard Viguerie, the evangelist of political direct mail. "If we don't do it now, when do we do it?"

Good question. Different strains of Christianity, not to mention different religions, have different answers. A case can be made that God has no interest in running governments, his followers of various stripes having spent meaningful stretches of time in exile and in prison. It's no small irony that a Protestant segment is gloating over the latest American election, when the original church's corruption into a secular power is what led to the Reformation.

That same suspect Catholic Church has joined the anti-papist conservatives in taking credit for the Bush triumph (over a Catholic, yet), noting the strong resonance of the "marriage" issue. This brings the church full circle, from persecuted minority to arbitrary guardian of the gates.

Many Catholics, of course, don't share the Vatican agenda; as many other Christians, including evangelicals, don't share Pat Robertson's. Some would say Jesus wanted John Kerry in the White House; many would simply say Jesus has been too busy at the soup kitchens down the street from the White House to notice who occupies it.

Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker said the true Christian path in an unjust society leads downward, to jail. History tells us there is enormous power in such powerlessness. Gandhi didn't get invited to croquet with the governor and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't pulling the traditional values vote for congressman from Alabama. They lost a lot before they won; and from a strict moral values standpoint, their losing was winning. Jesus, of course, was way ahead of them. - http://www.indystar.com/artic...

When The State Gets Churched

11.28.04 (7:57 am) [edit]

When The State Gets Churched

11.28.04 (7:56 am) [edit]

A 21st Century American Revolution

11.28.04 (7:54 am) [edit]

If there were any doubts remaining that the United States of America is no longer a functioning democracy, those doubts disappeared in the presidential election of 2004. The uncomfortably open-ended question we are left with is: where do we go from here?

Those among us who have managed to weave our way through the minefields of media disinformation, to a commonsense understanding of reality—some people call us the "reality-based community"—find ourselves in a situation that is unprecedented in American history. That is, we are the first generation of Americans since the nation's founding who do not have the fundamental tools of democracy—a free press, and a fair vote—to effect policy change.

The dangers we face now cannot be overstated. At the risk of repeating myself, let me amplify on a point I made in a previous column:

A number of commentators have noticed the disturbing parallels between the regimes of George W. Bush and Adolph Hitler. (Wayne Madsen, in particular, has done some excellent analysis on this point.) But it is more critical at this time, given the historical trends, to focus on the constituencies that elevated both of these two men to power.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

A 21st Century American Revolution

11.28.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

A 21st Century American Revolution

11.28.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

Canadians Ask: Why Pull Welcome Mat Out For 'War Criminal' Bush?

11.28.04 (7:03 am) [edit]

[b]Vancouver legal experts join movement to rule Bush a violator of Geneva and U.N. conventions.[/b]

When George W. Bush visits Canada this week, he's sure to get an earful from demonstrators who see him more as a "war crimes president" than a "war president."

While activists prepare to put down their unwelcome mats, lawyers have been sharpening arguments to hold the president accountable for his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. But amid the flurry of legal briefs flying across the country, the police, the immigration authorities, and the Minister of Justice seem to be unprepared for a brewing collision between Canadian law and political expediency.

Gail Davidson, a Vancouver lawyer and co-chair of Lawyers Against the War, says the prime minister should rescind his invitation to Bush, because the president is a "major war criminal." Her arguments are familiar. The extent of civilian deaths during the American conquest of Iraq—currently estimated at 100,000 —are chief among them.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Canadians Ask: Why Pull Welcome Mat Out For 'War Criminal' Bush?

11.28.04 (7:02 am) [edit]

PRESIDENT BUSH 'OUT OF TOUCH' WITH REALITY, HERSH SAYS

11.28.04 (6:48 am) [edit]

As the election recedes, there's good news and bad news. And we're not going to like any of it.

Welcome to the world of investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, whose remarkable career has been bookended by two of the most shameful events in America's military history: My Lai in Vietnam, a story he broke as a free-lance reporter, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, a story he broke for The New Yorker.

During his 38-year career, Hersh has written eight books, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Pulitzer and a host of other prizes. His sources serve at the highest levels of many governments, including our own.

In person, Hersh is tall, stooped, rumpled, gray-haired and bespectacled. He speaks rapidly and intensely in a deep voice. Currently touring to "pimp," as he put it, his newest book, "Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib," he spoke last week at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., to a rapt audience of about 900 people. They greeted him with applause; he said, "Thank you, but you'll be less happy once I'm done."

Hersh's message is simple and frightening: "(George W.) Bush is an ideologue, a Utopian," Hersh said. "He wants to clean out the Middle East and install democracy. He doesn't care how many body bags come back home. There's nothing more dangerous than an ideologue who is completely bonkers and no one is going to tell him."

President Bush is committed to perpetual war, Hersh said.

"He risked his presidency on this war," Hersh said. "He could have gotten more votes if he backed off. But he insisted he hasn't made any mistakes."

Hersh has talked privately with many in the military and CIA, including some who have recently resigned. All told him that if the Iraq war had gone "right" - say, if the Americans had been greeted as liberators - our military would have marched "right and left" - to Syria and Iran.

Oil is a big factor in this war, Hersh said, and so is Israel, but to the President it's about ideology: "Whether this man communicates with God, or is on a crusade, or really is a neo-con, or if he thought that his father's not taking Baghdad was a mistake - in any case, I think he is absolutely committed to staying in Iraq to the end."

After 9/11, Hersh said, America had some good choices.

"Early in 2002, the Taliban was split," Hersh said. "About 50 percent of the Taliban leadership hated Osama bin Laden and wanted him out. We could have worked with them. But we went ahead and treated the Taliban as one entity. The Taliban has survived. Al Queda has survived. We wanted to eliminate crazy people who want to fly planes into buildings. But instead we dehumanized everyone in Afghanistan and Iraq."

After March 2002, the question about Iraq was not if, but when.

"They started moving secret units, the commandos, the Delta Force, secret British elite forces, into the Middle East staging areas," Hersh said. "They were pulling people away from a war which was much more important - against al-Qaida - and putting them in a staging area for Iraq."

How could the administration have made such a mistake?

"Inside, if you agreed that the road to ending international terrorism ended in Baghdad, you were a hero," Hersh said. "You were promoted. Bush didn't have to ask for information to be slanted his way. If you wanted promotions, or to sit in on the conferences with the big boys, you told him what he wanted to hear. If you disagreed, then your career stalled. Totally wacky."

This sorry state of affairs continues today. President Bush is told only what he wants to hear, and since he doesn't read newspapers, he has become completely divorced from reality. For example, the people we're fighting in Iraq are not insurgents, Hersh said.

"They're the same people we fought in the beginning," he said. "It's not like we had a war, and then installed a government, and then gradually people rebelled and an insurgency sprung up and we have guerrilla operations. These are the people we went to war against. According to my sources, there are remarkably few foreign fighters in Iraq. And when has an occupying force ever won a war?"

Hersh pointed out that Fallujah was once famous for resisting British imperialism; it is also the ancient center of Sunni Wahaabism - the state religion of Saudi Arabia.

"Now Bush has guaranteed that the Saudi princes, no matter what they say, will be giving money to the insurgents," Hersh said. "We've basically committed ourselves to Saudi opposition."

We cannot win in Iraq, Hersh said. "We have no intel. We can't find the insurgents. When they bomb something, we only know about it afterward. We can't figure them out. Someone said, 'We play chess, they play Go.' All we can do is lose. All we can do is bomb."

The United States cannot afford this endless war, Hersh said. The dollar is already falling against the Euro, and the Chinese and Japanese hold trillions of dollars of U.S. debt.

"Soon China and Russia will start buying oil in Euros," Hersh said. "They'll stop buying American in Europe because they hate us so much - Disney in Paris is already going down. Large American corporations doing business abroad are going down. We could see more anti-American violence abroad. The dollar will fall. Billionaires are now telling other billionaires to get out of the stock market and buy foreign currency and stocks."

Then what could the good news be?

"The good side - and I promise you I'm not selling uppers - is that there will be direct attacks on the Supreme Court, a change in the filibuster rules, it's going to be down and dirty, a complete hoe-down, but there won't be anything subtle," Hersh said. "It's all going to be out in the open."

We must let events take over, Hersh said.

"We have put ourselves in an enormous hole," he said. "There's no magic story to get us out. The market will crash. Maybe people will come to their senses. Maybe some Democrat will step forward to do the right thing. And maybe the Easter bunny will turn out to be real."

[b]Joyce Marcel is a free-lance journalist who writes about culture, politics, economics and travel[/b]. - http://www.american-reporter....,525/2.html

PRESIDENT BUSH 'OUT OF TOUCH' WITH REALITY, HERSH SAYS

11.28.04 (6:48 am) [edit]

PRESIDENT BUSH 'OUT OF TOUCH' WITH REALITY, HERSH SAYS

11.28.04 (6:45 am) [edit]

PRESIDENT BUSH 'OUT OF TOUCH' WITH REALITY, HERSH SAYS

11.28.04 (6:44 am) [edit]

Faith-Based Parks? ... Creationist Loonies meet the Grand Canyon ...

11.20.04 (5:23 am) [edit]

At a park called Dinosaur Adventure Land, http://www.dinosauradventurel... run by creationists near Pensacola, Florida, visitors are informed that man coexisted with dinosaurs. This fantasy accommodates the creationists’ view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that Darwin’s theory of evolution is false. Among the park exhibits is one that illustrates another creationist article of faith. It consists of a long trough filled with sand and fitted at one end with a water spigot. Above the trough is a sign reading “That River Didn’t Make That Canyon.” When visitors open the spigot, the water quickly cuts a gully through the sand, supposedly demonstrating how the Grand Canyon was created, practically overnight, by Noah’s flood. That’s nonsense, of course, but what else would you expect at a creationist park? Certainly, one might think, this couldn’t be acceptable at, say, a National Park, right? Think again.

Two-thirds of the way across the continent, some four million people annually visit Grand Canyon National Park, marveling at the awesome view. In National Park Service (NPS) affiliated bookstores, they can find literature informing them that the great chasm runs for 277 miles along the bed of the Colorado River. It descends more than a mile into the earth, and along one stretch, is some 18 miles wide, its walls displaying impressive layers of limestone, sandstone, shale, schist and granite.

And, oh yes, it was formed about 4,500 years ago, a direct consequence of Noah’s Flood. How’s that? Yes, this is the ill-informed premise of “Grand Canyon, a Different View,” a handsomely-illustrated volume also on sale at the bookstores. It includes the writings of creationists and creation scientists and was compiled by Tom Vail, who with his wife operates Canyon Ministries, conducting creationist-view tours of the canyon. “For years,” Vail explains, “as a Colorado River guide, I told people how the Grand Canyon was formed over the evolutionary time span of millions of years. (Most geologists place the canyon’s age at some six million years). Then I met the Lord. Now I have a different view of the Canyon, which according to a biblical time scale, can’t possibly be more than a few thousand years old.”

Vail’s book attracted little notice when it first appeared in the NPS stores in 2003, until a critical review by Wilfred Elders, a respected University of California geologist, brought it to light and took apart its pseudoscientific claims. That led David Shaver, who heads the Geologic Resources Division of the Park Service, to send a memo to headquarters urging that the book be removed from the NPS stores. “It is not based on science,” he wrote, “ but on a specific religious doctrine…and should not have been approved for in NPS affiliated book stores.”

The presidents of The American Geological Institute and six of its member societies also weighed in, expressing their dismay to the Park Service. Noting that the Grand Canyon “provides a remarkable and unique opportunity to educate the public about Earth science,” the scientists urged that, “in fairness to the millions of park visitors, we must clearly distinguish religious from scientific knowledge.”

But when Grand Canyon National Park superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale of Vail’s book at canyon bookstores, he was overruled by NPS headquarters, which announced that a high-level policy review of the matter would be launched and a decision made by February, 2004. So far, no official decision has been announced.

Even worse, according to the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility http://www.peer.org/ (PEER), an organization that includes many Park employees, papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that no review has ever taken place. Indeed, PEER claims that the Bush Administration has already decided it will stand by its approval for the book and that hundreds more have been ordered. “Now that the book has become quite popular,” explained an NPS flack to a Baptist news agency, “we don’t want to remove it.”

Even more troubling, PEER charges that Grand Canyon National Park no longer offers an official estimate of the age of the canyon, and that the NPS has blocked publication of guidance intended for park rangers that reminds them there is no scientific basis for creationism. The group has been increasingly concerned about what it calls the Park Service’s “Faith-Based Parks” and the agency’s seeming indifference to the separation of church and state Among other moves, for example, NPS has allowed the placing of bronze plaques bearing Psalm verses at Grand Canyon overlooks. PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch is indignant, “If the Bush Administration is using public resources for pandering to Christian fundamentalists, it should at least have the decency to tell the truth about it.”

Is this religious bias, as some creationists charge? Hardly. It’s more than likely that the majority of scientists, environmentalists and others protesting the NPS stand are themselves intelligent, rational Christians who are convinced by overwhelming evidence that the Grand Canyon is no Johnny-Come-Lately. The creationists have demonstrated again that they are scientifically illiterate, and out of step with the 21st century.

[b]Leon Jaroff was the founding managing editor of DISCOVER, the newsmagazine of science, and was a longtime correspondent, writer and editor for TIME and LIFE. [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Faith-Based Parks? ... Creationist Loonies meet the Grand Canyon ...

11.20.04 (5:22 am) [edit]

Faith-Based Parks? ... Creationist Loonies meet the Grand Canyon ...

11.20.04 (5:17 am) [edit]

Faith-Based Parks? ... Creationist Loonies meet the Grand Canyon ...

11.20.04 (5:17 am) [edit]

Faith-Based Parks? ... Creationist Loonies meet the Grand Canyon ...

11.20.04 (5:17 am) [edit]

Bush's Bloodbath: U.S. Forces Raided A Mosque & Shot Worshippers ...

11.20.04 (5:13 am) [edit]

BAGHDAD - An eyewitness commentary to IPS through a U.S. raid on a Baghdad mosque Friday gives a vivid picture of what a 'successful raid' can be like.

U.S. soldiers raided the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad during Friday prayers, killing at least four and wounding up to 20 worshippers.

At 12:30 pm local time, just after Imam Shaikh Muayid al-Adhami concluded his talk, about 50 U.S. soldiers with 20 Iraqi National Guardsmen (ING) entered the mosque, a witness reported.

”Everyone was there for Friday prayers, when five Humvees and several trucks carrying INGs entered,” Abu Talat told IPS on phone from within the mosque while the raid was in progress. ”Everyone starting yelling 'Allahu Akbar' (God is the greatest) because they were frightened. Then the soldiers started shooting the people praying!”

Talat said he was among a crowd of worshippers being held back at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers. Loud chanting of 'Allahu Akbar' could be heard in the background during his call. Women and children were sobbing, he said.

”They have just shot and killed at least four of the people praying,” he said in a panicked voice. ”At least 10 other people are wounded now. We are on our bellies and in a very bad situation.”

Talat gave his account over short phone calls. He said he was witnessing a horrific scene.

”We were here praying and now there are 50 here with their guns on us,” he said. ”They are holding our heads to the ground, and everyone is in chaos. This is the worst situation possible. They cannot see me talking to you. They are roughing up a blind man now.” He evidently could talk no further then.

The soldiers later released women and children along with men who were related to them. Abu Talat was released because a boy told him to pretend to be his father.

Other witnesses gave similar accounts outside the mosque. ”People were praying and the Americans invaded the mosque,” Abdulla Ra'ad Aziz from the al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad told IPS. He had been released along with his wife and children. ”Why are they killing people for praying?” He said that after the forces entered ”they went to the back doors and we heard so many bullets of the guns -- it was a gun bigger than a Kalashnikov. There were wounded and dead, I saw them myself.”

Some of the people who had been at prayer were ordered by soldiers to carry the dead and wounded out of the mosque, he said.

”One Iraqi National Guardsmen held his gun on people and yelled, 'I will kill you if you don't shut up',” said Rana Aziz, a mother who had been trapped in the mosque.. ”So they made everyone lie down, then people got quiet, and they took the women and children out.”

She said someone asked the soldiers if they would be made hostages. A soldier used foul language and asked everyone to shut up, she said. Suddenly, she laughed amid her tears. ”The Americans have learnt how to say shut up in Arabic, 'Inchev'.”

Soldiers denied Iraqi Red Crescent ambulances and medical teams access to the mosque. As doctors negotiated with U.S. soldiers outside, more gunfire was heard from inside.

About 30 men were led out with hoods over their heads and their hands tied behind them. Soldiers loaded them into a military vehicle and took them away around 3.15 pm.

A doctor with the Iraqi Red Crescent confirmed four dead and nine wounded worshippers. Pieces of brain were splattered on one of the walls inside the mosque while large blood stains covered carpets at several places.

A U.S. military spokesperson in Baghdad did not respond to requests for information on the raid. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush's Bloodbath: U.S. Forces Raided A Mosque & Shot Worshippers ...

11.20.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

Bush's Bloodbath: U.S. Forces Raided A Mosque & Shot Worshippers ...

11.20.04 (5:09 am) [edit]

Bush's Bloodbath: U.S. Forces Raided A Mosque & Shot Worshippers ...

11.20.04 (5:09 am) [edit]

Red Cross Says All Sides in Iraq Show 'Utter Contempt for Humanity' ...

11.20.04 (5:05 am) [edit]

[b]ICRC criticises civilian deaths in Iraq[/b]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has strongly criticised what it calls the utter contempt for humanity shown by all sides in the fighting in Iraq.

The unusually pointed statement from the Geneva-based organisation reminds the warring parties that the killing of people not taking part in the fighting is prohibited under international humanitarian law.

The ICRC says complying with international law is not an option, it is an obligation.

Referring to the recent siege of the city of Fallujah, the committee also says events in Iraq have shown how difficult it has become for neutral aid organisations to bring help to those who are suffering. - http://www.abc.net.au/news/ne...

Red Cross Says All Sides in Iraq Show 'Utter Contempt for Humanity' ...

11.20.04 (5:03 am) [edit]

Red Cross Says All Sides in Iraq Show 'Utter Contempt for Humanity' ...

11.20.04 (5:02 am) [edit]

Red Cross Says All Sides in Iraq Show 'Utter Contempt for Humanity' ...

11.20.04 (5:02 am) [edit]

IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY: Raising the Debt Limit: A Disgrace

11.20.04 (4:58 am) [edit]

[b]IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY who have run-up the largest deficit spending in our nation's history and have demanded their toady GOPs in Congerss to raise the debt limit (But, there's NO limit on the tax cuts for the filthy rich and corporations). This is a disgrace[/b].

Congress is once again engaging in fiscal irresponsibility and endangering the American economy by raising the debt ceiling, http://www.boston.com/news/na... this time by $800 billion dollars. One particularly troubling aspect of today's debate is how many members who won their seats in part by pledging never to raise taxes, will now vote for this tax increase on future generations without so much as a second thought. Congress has become like the drunk who promises to sober up tomorrow, if only he can keep drinking today. Does anyone really believe this will be the last time, that Congress will tighten its belt if we just grant it one last loan? What a joke! There is only one approach to dealing with an incorrigible spendthrift: cut him off.

The term "national debt" really is a misnomer. It is not the nation's debt. Instead, it is the federal government's debt. The American people did not spend the money, but they will have to pay it back.

Most Americans do not spend much time worrying about the national debt, which now totals more than $8 trillion. The number is so staggering that it hardly seems real, even when economists issue bleak warnings about how much every American owes– currently about $25,000. Of course, Congress never hands each taxpayer a bill for that amount. Instead, the federal government uses your hard-earned money to pay interest on this debt, which is like making minimum payments on a credit card. Notice that the principal never goes down. In fact, it is rising steadily.

The problem is very simple: Congress almost always spends more each year than the IRS collects in revenues. Federal spending always goes up, but revenues are not so dependable, especially since raising income taxes to sufficiently fund the government would be highly unpopular. So long as Congress spends more than the government takes via taxes, the federal government must raise taxes, print more dollars, or borrow money.

Over the last three years, we have witnessed an unprecedented explosion in federal spending. The national debt has actually increased an average of $16 billion a day since Sept. 30, 2003!

Federal law limits the total amount of debt the Treasury can carry. Despite a historic increase in the debt limit in 2002 and another increase in 2003, the current limit of $7.38 trillion was reached last month. So Congress must once again vote to raise the limit. Hard as it may be for the American people to believe, many experts expect government spending will exceed this new limit next year!

Increasing the national debt sends a signal to investors that the government is not serious about reining in spending. This increases the risks that investors will be reluctant to buy government debt instruments. The effects on the American economy could be devastating. The only reason why we have been able to endure such large deficits without skyrocketing interest rates is the willingness of foreign nations to buy the federal government's debt instruments. However, the recent fall in the value of the dollar and rise in the price of gold indicate that investors may be unwilling to continue to prop up our debt-ridden economy. Furthermore, increasing the national debt will provide more incentive for foreign investors to stop buying federal debt instruments at the current interest rates. Mr. Speaker, what will happen to our already fragile economy if the Federal Reserve must raise interest rates to levels unseen since the '70s to persuade foreigners to buy government debt instruments?

The whole point of the debt ceiling law was to limit borrowing by forcing Congress into an open and presumably somewhat shameful vote when it wants to borrow more than a preset amount of money. Yet, since there have been no political consequences for members who vote to raise the debt limit and support the outrageous spending bills in the first place, the debt limit has become merely another technicality on the road to bankruptcy.

The only way to control federal spending is to take away the government's credit card. Therefore, I call upon my colleagues to reject S. 2986 and, instead, to reduce government spending. It is time Congress forces the federal government to live within its constitutional means. Congress should end the immoral practice of excessive spending and passing the bill to the next generation. - http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?...

IMPEACH BUSH/CHENEY: Raising the Debt Limit: A Disgrace

11.20.04 (4:54 am) [edit]

The Bush Regime: A Plague of Immoral Toadies with Immoral "Values" ...

11.18.04 (6:33 am) [edit]

I went to see the magical "Pericles" at the Shakespeare Theater the other night.

In ancient Greece, the prince of Tyre tires of all the yes men around him. He chooses to trust the one courtier who intrepidly tells him: "They do abuse the king that flatter him. ... Whereas reproof, obedient and in order, fits kings, as they are men, for they may err."

Not flatter the king? Listen to dissenting viewpoints? Rulers who admit they've erred?

It's all so B.C. (Before Cheney).

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Twenty percent inflation? Well, maybe not that high but the recent announcement that the Producer Price Index (PPI) reached 1.7 percent in October would calculate to over 20 percent annually if this rate continued. A contributing factor in the jump in the PPI is the volatile oil market which saw oil exceed $55 per barrel just a few weeks ago. But consumers so far have shrugged off the higher resulting gasoline prices at the pump, continuing to purchase inefficient, gas-guzzling SUVs, though at a slower pace. The single largest jump in the PPI since 1990, however, doesn't augur well for the average working American as inflation, higher home loan interest rates, especially on adjusted mortgages and credit card balances, will result in escalating consumer debt and bankruptcies.

But with G. W. Bush's "moral values" vote which handed him his November 2 victory, the message is clear: "Stay the course." And staying the course means that his politics of division worked well for four years so there is no reason to change direction. More tax breaks for the wealthiest 5% of the population will sail through the compliant, rubber stamp Republican-controlled US Congress, virtually guaranteeing record budget deficits and exploding national debt.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

The Bush Regime: A Plague of Immoral Toadies with Immoral "Values" ...

11.18.04 (6:32 am) [edit]

The Bush Regime: A Plague of Immoral Toadies with Immoral "Values" ...

11.18.04 (6:31 am) [edit]

Immoral Conservative Legal Group Challenges Endangered Species Protection

11.18.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

A conservative legal group is threatening to sue the federal government over its plans to protect four dozen endangered species ranging from Peninsular bighorn sheep to the tiny robust spineflower.

The Pacific Legal Foundation on Monday notified the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service that it would file suit in 60 days, claiming the agencies failed to meet federal requirements when they set out to protect 16 animal and 32 plant species. Advance notice is required before filing endangered species lawsuits.

Based on a favorable ruling in U.S. District Court in Fresno that overturned habitat protection for the Alameda whipsnake last year, the foundation said the agencies underestimated the economic impact of protection and did not properly follow the rules to protect habitat.

"They speculated instead of determining what areas are essential to the conservation of the species," attorney Reed Hopper said.

The legal foundation -- representing business groups, farmers and developers in the case -- said its lawsuit would ultimately bring back jeopardized plants and animals, a claim dismissed by environmentalists.

"Only the Pacific Legal Foundation is cynical enough to argue that taking away habitat protection will help endangered species," said Kieran Suckling, of the Center for Biological Diversity, which has appealed. "This lawsuit is all about paving California and clearing the way for massive development."

Under the Endangered Species Act, the federal government is required to map out land that is essential to a plant or animal's survival and recovery.

Environmentalists have sued to force the government to identify habitat to protect species while developers and farmers have sued to remove or alter the designation, which can crimp logging, mining and large-scale development projects.

The government, meanwhile, has said habitat designation pales in comparison to the protection afforded once a species is listed as endangered or threatened. The Fish and Wildlife Service has blamed litigation for creating a backlog of petitions to protect other species and for diverting funds that could be used for other protection efforts. - http://www.enn.com/today.html...

Immoral Conservative Legal Group Challenges Endangered Species Protection

11.18.04 (6:21 am) [edit]

Immoral Conservative Legal Group Challenges Endangered Species Protection

11.18.04 (6:11 am) [edit]

How Much Fraud Does The GOP Fascist Party Need?

11.18.04 (6:03 am) [edit]

Give the Republicans their due. If they ever let all the African-Americans, university students, and other heavily Democratic constituencies vote without restraint, and counted all those ballots, George W. Bush would never be president. Nor would GOP fat cats get the lion's share of government give-aways. And, Lord help us, we would all go to hell without the "moral values" that right wing Christians want to shove down our throats, onto our genitals, and into women's wombs.

Whether for ego, greed, or God - or an intoxicating brew of the three - winning is all that counts, winning by any means necessary. "We are the champions. No time for losers."

For decades, big-city Democrats ruled by manipulating the vote. They even helped John F. Kennedy win the presidency in 1960, when Chicago's mayor Richard J. Daley organized votes from the dead. That was Democratic politics in the Windy City: Vote early and often. And if you happen to die, don't worry, the Daley Machine will pay someone to vote in your name. Think of it as a form of immortality.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Highly-charged, jam-packed hearings held here in Columbus have cast serious doubt on the true outcome of the presidential election.

On Saturday, November 13, and Monday, November 15, the Ohio Election Protection Coalition's public hearings in Columbus solicited extensive sworn first-person testimony from 32 of Ohio voters, precinct judges, poll workers, legal observers, party challengers. An additional 66 people provided written affidavits of election irregularities. The unavoidable conclusion is that this year's election in Ohio was deeply flawed, that thousands of Ohioans were denied their right to vote, and that the ultimate vote count is very much in doubt.

Most importantly, the testimony has revealed a widespread and concerted effort on the part of Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time. By depriving precincts of adequate numbers of functioning voting machines, Blackwell created waits of three to eleven hours, driving tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters away from the polls and very likely affecting the outcome of the Ohio vote count, which in turn decided the national election.

[b]Read article[/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Jacques Chirac is RIGHT: The World IS More Dangerous (Only Neo-Con Fools Say Otherwise!)

11.18.04 (5:59 am) [edit]

The French president, Jacques Chirac, expressed fresh doubts about the invasion of Iraq on the eve of his visit today to Britain, saying it had left "the world more dangerous".

Mr Chirac's comment, in an interview broadcast last night, came only 48 hours after he undercut Tony Blair by suggesting the prime minister had failed to secure any concessions from George Bush in spite of supporting the war.

The French president will be in Britain for two days to mark the end of months of events marking the 100th anniversary of the entente cordiale, the alliance agreed after centuries of warfare.

After reviewing a guard of honour of British and French soldiers, he is to have talks with Mr Blair at Downing Street, make a speech on transatlantic relations to an audience of diplomats and defence specialists, and join the Queen in the evening at Windsor Castle.

The president, who on Monday described relations between the two countries as un amour violent (a stormy love affair), has the potential to make life awkward for Mr Blair at a joint press conference today if asked about Iraq or relations with Mr Bush.

A Downing Street official acknowledged this: "He may say things tomorrow that will be seen to be at variance. But there are clearly areas of variance."

The official said Downing Street had not been discomfited by any remarks made by Mr Chirac so far this week, insisting he had not said anything he had not said already many times to the French press. "Chirac is being totally consistent and we are totally relaxed about it," the official said. "People know Chirac has a different view from us. People do not need reminding of it. It is not in any sense problematic."

Questioned on Newsnight last night about whether the Iraq war had made the world safer, Mr Chirac said: "To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing but it also provoked reactions, such as the mobilisation in a number of countries, of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous. There is no doubt that there has been an increase in terrorism and one of the origins of that has been the situation in Iraq."

Nothing he said suggested a rapprochement with the US was imminent. Asked whether President Bush in a second term would continue to pursue an aggressive foreign policy, Mr Chirac said: "America has her own stance in this situation. The US president says he'll not change, which I understand perfectly. France has hers and she won't change either."

Mr Chirac said despite policy differences he and Mr Blair enjoyed a good personal relationship. Briefing British journalists on Monday he said: "When I go to London, I am very happy. I arrive and he gives me news of Leo, or Leo comes up and says 'bonjour monsieur Chirac' in French."

Tonight, the cast of Les Misérables will set up in Windsor Castle to perform for him in the Waterloo Chamber, which is to be referred to for one night only as the music room. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_...,3604,1353830,00.html

Jacques Chirac is RIGHT: The World IS More Dangerous (Only Neo-Con Fools Say Otherwise!)

11.18.04 (5:55 am) [edit]

Colin and the "Fucking Crazies" ...

11.18.04 (5:50 am) [edit]

Colin Powell's final scene was a poignant but harsh exposure of his self-delusion and humiliation. The former general held in his head an idea of himself as sacrificing and disciplined. But the good soldier was dismissed at last by his commander-in-chief as a bad egg. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld regarded him either as a useful tool or a vain obstructionist. They deployed his reputation as the most popular man and the most credible face in the US for their own ends, and when he contributed an independent view he was isolated and undermined.

As secretary of state has been a peripheral figure, even a fig leaf, ever since his climactic moment before the UN security council on which he staked his credibility. There he presented the case that WMD in Iraq required war, a case consisting of 26 falsehoods, and about which he later claimed to have been "deceived". When the statue of Saddam was toppled, he offered President Bush 17 volumes of his Future of Iraq project, but it was rejected. Predicting everything from the looting to the insurgency, and suggesting how it might be avoided, the project was politically incorrect.

Powell had wanted to stay on for the first six months of Bush's second term to help shepherd a new Middle East peace process, but the president insisted on his resignation. Condoleezza Rice was named in his place. She had failed at every important task as national security adviser, pointedly neglecting terrorism before September 11, enthusiastically parroting the false claim that Saddam had a nuclear weapons programme, while suppressing contrary intelligence, mismanaging her part of postwar policy so completely that she had to cede it to a deputy, and eviscerating the Middle East road map.

As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was agile at bureaucratic positioning. Early on, she figured out how to align with the neo-conservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson to him in blind ambition and loyalty.

Powell's sacking and Rice's promotion are more than examples of behaviour punished and rewarded. His fall and her rise signal the purge of the CIA and the state department, a neocon night of the long knives. Bush's attitude is that of the intimidating loyalty enforcer that he was in his father's political campaigns.

The CIA has not been forgiven for failing to support Cheney's phantasmagorical case linking Saddam to al-Qaida. And the release in September of the outline of the most recent National Intelligence Estimate, laying out dark scenarios for Iraq, was considered an act of insubordination intended to help oust Bush in the election. The new CIA director, Porter Goss, has installed partisan aides at the top, and senior officials have been fired. He has issued a party line diktat that the CIA's mission is to "support the administration and its policies".

At the state department, senior career officers, especially those who were close to Powell, believe they are next on the chopping block. Indeed, Bush has charged Rice with bringing the department under control. Its bureau of intelligence and research, which has provided the most accurate analysis of Iraq, is a special target for purging. Cheney is heavily involved in the planning, and he intends to fill key slots with neocons and fellow-travellers. "By the time she takes over, Rice will have been manoeuvred into a prestructured department staff," one state department source, who has been close to Powell, told me.

The dictation of a political line has conquered policy-making. Since the US emerged as a world power, the executive, because of immense responsibilities and powers, has relied upon impartial information and analysis from its departments and agencies. But vindictiveness against the institutions of government based on expertise, evidence and experience is clearing the way for the intellectual standards and cooked conclusions of rightwing think-tanks and those appointees who emerge from them.

A system of bureaucratic fear and one-party allegiance is being created in this strange soviet Washington. Only loyalists are rewarded. Rice stands as the model. One can never be too loyal. And the loyalists compete to outdo each other. Dissonant information is seen as motivated to injure the president, disloyalty bordering on treason. Success is defined as support for the political line; failure perceived as departure from the line. An atmosphere of personal vendetta and an incentive system for suppressing realities prevails. This is not an administration; it does not administer - it is a regime.

On one of Powell's futile diplomatic trips, his informal conversation with reporters turned to a new book, The Accidental American: Tony Blair and the Presidency, by James Naughtie. In it, Powell is quoted as describing the neocons to British foreign minister, Jack Straw, as "fucking crazies". That, the reporters suggested, might be an apt title for his next volume of memoirs. Powell laughed uncontrollably.

[b]Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is Washington bureau chief of salon.com [/b] - http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa...,12271,1353796,00.html

Colin and the "Fucking Crazies" ...

11.18.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

Bush's Fallujah Disaster: The Battle for Minds (Forget the Hearts)

11.18.04 (5:41 am) [edit]

[b]Reality TV votes with its feet on Bush foreign policy:[/b]

"[Bernard van Munster, the Dutch-born co-creator and executive producer of the reality TV show, The Amazing Race] continues to scout locations for the seventh season, more than ever convinced that the world is a far less dangerous place than it sometimes seems. 'Everybody everywhere has been helpful to us from the beginning,' he said, 'because I tell them: "I'm not here to criticize your country or your culture. I'm here to bring Americans to learn from you and to have a good time." Right now, the only places I wouldn't consider going are Iraq and Afghanistan. Everything else is on the board.'"

- [i]Joe Rhodes, "An Audience Finally Catches Up to The Amazing Race," the New York Times[/i]

[b]The Carthaginian Solution [/b]

What follows is a collage put together from the eyewitness accounts of reporters with major newspapers and news services, most of them embedded with U.S. troops. It is meant to be a portrait of Fallujah… well, you can't quite say "after the battle" since – as in the Chechen capital Grozny after the Russians flattened it in 1999 – the fighting goes on and on. I'm sorry to say that I suspect the following only begins to catch the scale of the destruction in Fallujah:

"Even the dogs have started to die, their corpses strewn among twisted metal and shattered concrete in a city that looks like it forgot to breathe. The aluminum shutters of shops on the main highway through town have been transformed by the force of war into mangled accordion shapes, flat, sharp, jarring slices of metal that no longer obscure the stacks of silver pots, the plastic-wrapped office furniture, the rolls of carpet… [T]he insurgents were putting up their most tenacious resistance as U.S. and Iraqi forces pursued them through a bleak landscape of bombed-out cinder block factories and houses reminiscent of the movie Blade Runner… It is still far from clear when civilian residents will be allowed back in [to Fallujah] – or what they will think of this post-apocalyptic wasteland when they are… Driving down Highway 10, the main street running east to west through the heart of Fallujah, is like entering a film that is set sometime on the other side of Armageddon. Cars sit on the roofs of buildings. Lamp posts lie at odd angles on the street. Just south of the highway, a minaret has been snapped off near the base like a pretzel stick, and another minaret is missing a huge chunk. Fire has blackened the facade of building after building… As he trudged through the desolate, rubble-filled streets, [Marine Sgt. Aristotel] Barbosa said he remembered thinking how bad the city looked, worse than he had imagined. 'Basically every house has a hole through it,' he said…

"A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets. The northwest Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks… Restaurant signs were covered in soot. Pavements were crushed by 70-ton Abrams tanks, and rows of crumbling buildings stood on both sides of deserted streets. Upmarket homes with garages looked as if they had been abandoned for years. Cars lay crushed in the middle of streets… The reaction of U.S. troops to attacks, say residents, have been out of all proportion; shots by snipers have been answered by rounds from Abrams tanks, devastating buildings and, it is claimed, injuring and killing civilians. This is firmly denied by the American military. About 200,000 refugees fled the fighting, and there have been outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases… The city's Haj Hussein mosque was destroyed in one overnight air raid, [residents] said. The U.S. military says it considers mosques legitimate targets if insurgents use them for military purposes…

"Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Fallujah on foot on Thursday morning and arrived with his wife and children in Habbaniya, about 12 miles to the west, at night. He said families left in the city were in desperate need. 'There's no water. People are drinking dirty water. Children are dying. People are eating flour because there's no proper food,' he told aid workers in Habbaniya, which has become a refugee camp, with around 2,000 families sheltering there… Cowering in their house with nothing to eat or drink as bombardments and firefights shook their neighborhood, Iyad al-Mashadani and his family dug a 3-foot hole in their yard and drank the brackish water. 'We were sure that we would die,' said Mashadani, 32, a car mechanic…

"The brutal assault has crushed homes and mosques and ground much of the southern neighborhoods into rubble. Survivors are hungry and aid convoys have been unable to reach them. Reports of civilian suffering, expected to spread after the Americans loosen [their] grip on the city, could transform Fallujah into a shrine to Muslim warriors killed in the fighting… The town's main east-west drag, a key objective of U.S. troops, is a tangle of rubble-filled lots and shot-up storefronts. Shattered water and sewage pipes have left pools of sewage-filled water, sometimes knee-deep. Scorched and potholed streets are filled with debris; power lines droop in tangles or lie on the ground. Many mosques, the city's pride and joy, are a shambles after insurgents used them as shelter and firing positions, drawing return fire from the Marines… The entire municipal government complex must be rebuilt and secured. The police station, City Hall, and other government buildings have been seriously damaged, heavily looted and are occupied by Marines… Despite the clear military gains, the city remains insecure enough that major civil affairs units that will oversee reconstruction have yet to arrive. But more than $50 million in contracts has already been let, and people are standing by, ready to start work as soon as it is safe enough… In the works is some kind of 'Welcome Back to Fallujah' campaign, directing residents to military civil affairs offices where people can find reconstruction help… Though a week-long American offensive smashed the insurgents' haven of Fallujah, snipers continued Tuesday to shoot at American troops roaming the debris-covered streets. Residents began to warily step out of their homes, emerging into a wasteland devastated by American bombs and bullets."

[The sources for the quotes above are in order: the Washington Post's Jackie Spinner, "Fallujah Battered And Mostly Quiet After the Battle"; the Boston Globe's Anne Barnard, "In hidden spots, a tenacious foe"; the New York Times' Robert F. Worth, "Battleground: As Fire Crackles in Fallujah, GIs Look to Rebuild a Wasteland"; Spinner, "In Fallujah, Marines Feel Shock of War"; the British Independent's Michael Georgy in Fallujah and Kim Sengupta, "A city lies in ruins, along with the lives of the wretched survivors"; Reuters' Michael Georgy and Fadel al-Badrani, "U.S. Forces Say Rebels Trapped in Southern Fallujah"; Barnard, "Fallujah refugees describe ordeal of life in crossfire"; the Associated Press's Jim Krane, "U.S. racing insurgents for influence in Fallujah as battle winds down"; the Los Angeles Times' Patrick J. McDonnell, "Iraqi City Lies in Ruins"; the New York Times' Edward Wong, "U.S. Troops Move to Rein In Rebels in North of Iraq."]

And the latest reports indicate that American troops are still mortaring parts of Fallujah, that insurgents are attempting to slip back into the city, and that at least one of the leaders of the homegrown Fallujan rebels remains there, and defiantly so. ("'The Americans have opened the gates of hell,' Abdullah Janabi said Monday in Fallujah. … The battle of Fallujah is the beginning of other battles.' Iraqi officials had said they believed Janabi, a 53-year-old Sunni cleric, had fled the city before U.S. troops pushed into the insurgent stronghold. But he spoke from the city's southern section, at times boasting of losses inflicted on U.S. troops and at other times insisting that other insurgent leaders remained in Fallujah with him.")

All of this provides a context for Jonathan Schell's discussion below of the battle for "hearts and minds" in Iraq (which the editors of the Nation magazine have kindly allowed TomDispatch to publish online). From his experience covering the Vietnam War long ago for the New Yorker Magazine (see his classic book The Real War), Schell knows a good deal about that "battle" and the escalating levels of destruction that tend to go with it. His most recent book, The Unconquerable World, offers an unparalleled three-century-long perspective on imperial attempts to nail down hearts and conquer minds, almost invariably in the long run without success but at a horrific cost in life and limb. Tom

[b]What Happened to Hearts?[/b]
[b]by Jonathan Schell [/b]

For some time now, American political discussion has seemed to revolve around little stock phrases, such as "defining moment" (at the time of the first Gulf War), "the end of history" (at the end of the Cold War), "the economy, stupid" (in the early Clinton years), "shock and awe" (as the second Gulf War began). Sometimes there's a revival of one or another. One of these is "winning hearts and minds." It became popular during the Vietnam War and is enjoying a vogue in the context of the war in Iraq.

However, the phrase has undergone an interesting evolution. This is reflected in two recent columns, one by Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post, the other by Mark Bowden in the Los Angeles Times. You might suppose that any reflection on hearts and minds would revolve around the elections that are planned for January in Iraq. How, someone might ask, can the United States, now hugely disliked in Iraq, make itself so appealing that Iraqis would vote for a government cut to our specifications? Yet the principal occasion for the two writers' reflections is instead the military campaign – specifically, the Marines' assault on Fallujah.

Back in the days of Vietnam, the phrase acquired a definite meaning: In a war of pacification, winning battles was not enough; you also had to win the population's hearts and minds. If you did not, each victory in battle would only be the prelude to further battles, and at the end, when you left, all your work would be washed away by the contrary will of the local people, as happened in Vietnam. It was possible to rule by the sword, as empires have done through the ages, but then you had to be ready to occupy the country indefinitely. Winning hearts and minds, therefore, was not a frill of policy but its foundation, the sine qua non of victory.

In his discussion of the invasion of Fallujah, Hoagland begins with a seeming acknowledgment of the Vietnam lesson. He recognizes that the measurements of success cannot merely be the "numbers of insurgents killed or captured, or bomb factories seized or obliterated." For "as Americans learned to their grief in Vietnam," such measurements are "elusive and illusory." We expect to hear at this point that winning hearts and minds is necessary, and Hoagland does not disappoint. But he introduces a variant of the old phrase. Fallujah, he says "is part of a battle for minds rather than 'hearts and minds.'" (The title of the article is "Fighting for Minds in Fallujah.") What can he mean? What happened to hearts?

The answer is that the "immediate objective is to dissuade Sunni townspeople from joining, supporting or tolerating the insurrection," and "the price they will pay for doing so is being illustrated graphically in the streets of Fallujah." This isn't a lesson for the heart – the organ of love, enthusiasm, positive approval. The reaction of the heart – whether Iraqi or American – could only be pity, disgust, and indignation. Thus, only the "minds" of "the townspeople" could draw the necessary conclusions, as they survey the corpse-strewn wreckage of their city. In short, the people of Iraq will be stricken with fear, or, to use another word that's very popular these days, terror. Then they'll be ready to vote.

Bowden takes up the same theme. "Guerrilla war is always about hearts and minds," he notes. He acknowledges that most of the guerrillas would have escaped in the long buildup to the attack. Still, he argues, the attack was important. True, it will not influence the "boldest" souls, who are motivated by "nationalism, religion, kinship, or ideology." (All these things were applauded in the recent American election, but they apparently are to have no place in the life of Iraqis.) But "ordinary people" can still be won over. How? He arrives at the same conclusion as Hoagland. "I suspect fear has more to do with influencing them than anything else." Most Iraqis, "like sensible people everywhere, are looking to see which side is most likely to prevail." The stake for them is "survival" – depending on which side is more likely to kill them. Bowden wants it to be the United States. The payoff is not any concrete achievement of the attack; it is the spectacle of the subjugated city, which "works as a demonstration of will and power."

Certainly, the assault on Fallujah has given the Iraqi people a lot to look at, and a lot to think about. Some 200,000 people – the great majority of Fallujah's population of some 300,000 – were driven out of their city by news of the imminent attack and the U.S. bombardment. No agency of government, U.S. or Iraqi, which turned off the city's water and electricity in preparation for the assault, offered assistance. Nor did the United Nations Refugee Agency or any other representative of the international community appear. And where are the people now? And what stories are the expelled 200,000 telling the millions of Iraqis among whom they are now mixing? We don't know. No one seems to be interested.

When the attack came, the first target was Fallujah General Hospital. The New York Times explained why: "The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Fallujah General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties." If there were no hospital, there would be no visible casualties; if there were no visible casualties, there would be no international outrage, and all would be well. What of those civilians who remained? No men of military age were permitted to leave during the attack. Remaining civilians were trapped in their apartments with no electricity or water. No one knows how many of them have been killed, and no official group has any plans to find out. The city itself is a ruin. "A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction," the Independent of Britain reports, "with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack, and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets."

Both columnists do mention the elections. Bowden says the best hope for Iraq is "for elections to take place," and Hoagland believes the attack on Fallujah will "clear the way" for them. Ballot boxes are to spring up in the tracks of the tanks. Some commentators even refer to "the Sunni heartland." (As far as I can tell, no one has yet asked how Iraqi "security moms" will vote.) Meanwhile, the insurgency, failing so far to learn its lesson, has opened fronts in other cities, which may soon get the same treatment as Fallujah. "They made a wasteland and called it peace," Tacitus famously said. It was left to the United States, champion of freedom, to update the formula: They made a wasteland and called it democracy.

[b]Jonathan Schell is the Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute. His most recent book is The Unconquerable World[/b]. - http://www.antiwar.com/engelh...

Bush's Fallujah Disaster: The Battle for Minds (Forget the Hearts)

11.18.04 (5:30 am) [edit]

Bush's Fallujah Disaster: The Battle for Minds (Forget the Hearts)

11.18.04 (5:27 am) [edit]

Bush's Fallujah Disaster: The Battle for Minds (Forget the Hearts)

11.18.04 (5:23 am) [edit]

The Record: Slut Condi Rice Failed to Warn Bush, Did Little to Find Facts, Was 'Yes' Woman

11.16.04 (5:33 am) [edit]

For four years as national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice deliberately declined in public to resolve the Bush administration's sometimes tempestuous disputes over foreign policy, defining her role instead as ensuring that President Bush could hear the clashing views, then decide himself.

As secretary of state, the woman who has long been Mr. Bush's single closest foreign policy adviser and confidante would be charged with resolving the clashing views of the world itself - on behalf of a boss whose sentences she can finish, and who trusts her totally to carry out his wishes.

Ms. Rice has been a constant, private counselor to Mr. Bush through the tumult of a first term dominated by a devastating terrorist attack at home and two wars abroad, in which diplomacy often took second place to military action. On the world stage, her challenge now would be to bring renewed attention to daunting diplomatic problems from the Middle East to North Korea.

Ms. Rice would almost certainly face questions in confirmation hearings about her own role in the period leading up to war with Iraq, and what appeared to be her failures either to warn Mr. Bush about flawed prewar intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons programs or, as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell did, to make dogged efforts of her own to ascertain its accuracy. In September 2002, she said that high-strength aluminum tubes seized en route to Iraq were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," though almost a year earlier, her staff had been told that the nation's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were intended for nuclear weapons.

Ms. Rice has told friends that she sees Mr. Bush's second term as a time when American diplomacy can return to the forefront after three years of international turbulence following the Sept. 11 attacks. But her own skills in the hot glare of public diplomacy have yet to be fully tested.

She would start with one big advantage: unlike Mr. Powell, who often struggled to bend Mr. Bush to a more multilateral approach to the world, Ms. Rice seems unlikely to have any agenda but Mr. Bush's. She would be closer to her president than any secretary of state since Henry A. Kissinger served Richard M. Nixon, and probably than any cabinet officer since Robert F. Kennedy served as his brother's attorney general.

Like Alberto R. Gonzales, Mr. Bush's choice to replace John Ashcroft as attorney general, she is a longtime member of the president's official family, and has grown even closer to him through weekends of workouts and watching televised sports at Camp David.

"Her appointment means that the president wants to surround himself with the people he's most comfortable with, and who are most loyal to his view of what foreign policy's all about," said Ivo H. Daalder, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution. "That wasn't the case with Powell. The president sees himself as vindicated by re-election, and therefore he's going to implement a foreign policy that is closely tied to the one he has been wanting to run all along."

Perhaps. But during the past four years, Ms. Rice's own deepest views on foreign policy have often been more assumed than stated aloud. She sometimes sided with Mr. Powell in policy disputes, and sometimes with the more hawkish faction represented by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and it is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to say that the side she chose was usually where Mr. Bush himself wound up.

As secretary of state, Ms. Rice herself would perforce become a player, atop a stubborn if beleaguered global organization with its own traditions, priorities and byways, and not just a behind-the-scenes referee. The big question is how she would wield that power.

Barring health problems, Mr. Cheney will be around for the next four years, and Mr. Rumsfeld, with whom Ms. Rice has often tangled, has made it clear he wants to stay on for at least a time. Both have far more experience running big bureaucracies and navigating the political rapids of Capitol Hill than Ms. Rice, who has testified in public just once in her current tenure, to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ms. Rice's critics have complained that she failed to adequately manage the competing feuds of the Pentagon and State Department, or even the comparatively small staff of the National Security Council itself. But her deputy there, Stephen J. Hadley, seems likely to succeed her, and thus presumably be an ally in the White House inner circle.

Ms. Rice, a former competitive figure skater and concert pianist who radiates self-confidence, has built a career marked by willingness to go her own way. Just where that might lead her in a second Bush term is anyone's guess. She began her relationship with the president as his foreign policy tutor while he was still governor of Texas, and while her appointment as secretary of state would be a clear signal that Mr. Bush long ago grew confident of his own skills without her by his side, she has his ear in ways few others do.

Together with Mr. Powell, she has taken the lead in pressing for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. While she and the White House have generally been seen as more uncritically supportive of Israel than Mr. Powell and the State Department have been, one European diplomat said that she went to Camp David the weekend after the election to present Mr. Bush with a memo outlining steps that needed to be taken to improve relations with Europe and the Middle East, including renewed efforts on the Palestinian question.

The death of Yasir Arafat, and the emergence of the new Palestinian leadership that Mr. Bush has long described as necessary for progress, may offer Ms. Rice an opening. But she would face other huge challenges, chief among them the continuing insurgency that has kept American troops fighting in Iraq.

On Iran, Ms. Rice persuaded the president to back Mr. Powell's desire to work with Europe in negotiating a deal with Iran to curtail its uranium enrichment efforts, despite skepticism and even hostility from the vice president's office and other administration hawks. On North Korea, Ms. Rice has backed Mr. Powell's desire to take part in multiparty regional talks aimed at halting its nuclear program, but has more or less sided with administration hawks in resisting entreaties from South Korea and Japan to make concessions that might break an impasse.

"Power matters," Ms. Rice wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs in 2000, "both the exercise of power by the United States and the ability of others to exercise it." She dismissed "the belief that the United States is exercising power legitimately only when it is doing so on behalf of someone or something else."

Ms. Rice has often spoken of her desire to return to the comparative peace of academic life at Stanford, and associates have said her first choice of a cabinet post would be defense, not state. But she is first and foremost a loyalist, and Mr. Bush's call to exercise power on his behalf may well have been irresistible.

So, too, might the chance to become only the second woman, and the first black woman, to hold the job first held by the man who wrote that "all men are created equal," Thomas Jefferson himself. - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1...

The Record: Slut Condi Rice Failed to Warn Bush, Did Little to Find Facts, Was 'Yes' Woman

11.16.04 (5:31 am) [edit]

''Night of the Long Knives' at the CIA'

11.16.04 (5:27 am) [edit]

Porter Goss has unleashed a "blood purge" at the CIA to rid the agency of its subversive elements. This comes as no surprise. Bush's problems with the agency go back to 9-11 and peaked just prior to the Iraq war. Leaks were sprouting everywhere and "cold feet" threatened to derail his Middle East crusade. The spooks were clearly edgy about fabricating the reasons for war, and their reluctance was slowing down the process. Now, its pay-back time for those nervous Nellie's in the form of freshly minted pink slips from the Oval Office. CIA chief Porter Goss has been appointed to wield the hatchet and cleanse "the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources."

Disloyalty is tantamount to treason in the Bush administration. The remedy is termination.

True, some of the unlucky agents believed they were doing the right thing. Perhaps their skepticism slowed the rush to war. They put their futures at risk by exposing information that they thought was in the public interest. In the case of the Iraq war or 9-11 it's clear that some of the embarrassing information might have saved American lives. No matter. The message from the top is simple; "Loyalty first."

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

''Night of the Long Knives' at the CIA'

11.16.04 (5:25 am) [edit]

'Welcome to Ripley's Believe It or Not of Christianity'

11.16.04 (5:20 am) [edit]

[i]God Bless America

By John Chuckman

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America."

-- Alexis de Tocqueville [/i]

The international view of Bush's election was nicely summed up by the reaction of a group of my students from China. I teach economics at university part-time, and many of my students are from China. Lest you think their judgment clouded by communist ideology, please note the many Chinese students studying in Canada come from that country's bright, hardworking business class in the so-called New Economic Zone. American visions of rabid communists in China are as uninformed as American visions of realities in most places. These are practical, sensible people.

The topic of the election came up during a break, and the genuinely puzzled looks on the students' faces were remarkable. How could America elect such an ignorant man? was asked by several. To reassure them, I explained that America, like a frightened puppy, was still clinging to the first human leg it had grabbed in the darkness.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

'Welcome to Ripley's Believe It or Not of Christianity'

11.16.04 (5:19 am) [edit]

'Welcome to Ripley's Believe It or Not of Christianity'

11.16.04 (5:18 am) [edit]

Bush's Immoral Bloodbath: A City Lies in Ruins, Along with the Lives of the Wretched Survivors

11.16.04 (5:15 am) [edit]

After six days of intense combat against the Fallujah insurgents, US warplanes, tanks and mortars have left a shattered landscape of gutted buildings, crushed cars and charred bodies.

A drive through the city revealed a picture of utter destruction, with concrete houses flattened, mosques in ruins, telegraph poles down, power and phone lines hanging slack and rubble and human remains littering the empty streets. The north-west Jolan district, once an insurgent stronghold, looked like a ghost town, the only sound the rumbling of tank tracks.

US Marines pointed their assault rifles down abandoned streets, past Fallujah's simple amusement park, now deserted. Four bloated and burnt bodies lay on the main street, not far from US tanks and soldiers. The stench of the remains hung heavy in the air, mixing with the dust.

Another body lay stretched out on the next block, its head blown off, perhaps in one of the countless explosions which rent the city day and night for nearly a week. Some bodies were so mutilated it was impossible to tell if they were civilians or militants, male or female.

Fallujah, regarded as a place with an independent streak where citizens even defied the former leader Saddam Hussein at times, seemed lifeless. The minarets of the city's dozens of mosques stood silent, no longer broadcasting the call to holy war that so often echoed across the rooftops, inspiring fighters to join the insurgency.

Restaurant signs were covered in soot. Pavements were crushed by 70-ton Abrams tanks, and rows of crumbling buildings stood on both sides of deserted streets. Upmarket homes with garages looked as if they had been abandoned for years. Cars lay crushed in the middle of streets. Two Iraqis in one street desperately trying to salvage some of their smashed belongings were the only signs of life.

As US soldiers walked through neighbourhoods, their allies in the Iraqi forces casually moved along dusty streets past wires hanging down from gutted buildings. They carried boxes of bottled water to the rooftops of the upmarket villas they now occupy. The soldiers sat on the roofs staring at the ruins.

As a small convoy of Humvees moved back to position on the edge of the Jolan district, a rocket landed in the sand about 100ft away, a reminder that militants were still out there somewhere, even if the city that harboured them has fallen. The few civilians left in Fallujah talked of a city left in ruins not just by the six days of the ground assault, but the weeks of bombing that preceded the attack.

Residents have long been without electricity or water, abandoning their homes and congregating in the centre of the city as the US forces advanced from all sides. They had cowered in buildings as the battle unfolded past the windows.

The reaction of US troops to attacks, say residents, have been out of all proportion; shots by snipers have been answered by rounds from Abrams tanks, devastating buildings and, it is claimed, injuring and killing civilians. This is firmly denied by the American military.

About 200,000 refugees fled the fighting, and there have been outbreaks of typhoid and other diseases.

People leaving the city described rotting corpses being piled up and thousands still trapped inside their homes, many of them wounded and without access to food, water or medical aid. US commanders insist civilian casualties in Fallujah have been low, but the Pentagon famously claims it does not keep figures.

Escaping residents described incidents in which non-combatants, including women and children, were killed by shrapnel or hit by bombs. In one case last week, a nine-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by shrapnel. Unable to reach a hospital, he died hours later from blood loss. His father had to bury his body in their garden.

Those trapped inside the city say they are reaching a point of desperation. "Our situation is very hard," said Abu Mustafa, contacted by telephone in the central Hay al-Dubat neighbourhood. "We don't have food or water," he told Reuters. "My seven children all have severe diarrhoea. One of my sons was wounded by shrapnel last night and he's bleeding, but I can't do anything to help him."

Aamir Haidar Yusouf, a 39-year-old trader, sent his family out of Fallujah, but stayed behind to look after his home, not just during the fighting, but the looting which will follow. "The Americans have been firing at buildings if they see even small movements," he said.

As the fighting died down yesterday he said: "They are also destroying cars, because they think every car has a bomb in it. People have moved from the edges of the city into the centre, and they are staying on the ground floors of buildings. There will be nothing left of Fallujah by the time they finish. They have already destroyed so many homes with their bombings from the air, and now we are having this from tanks and big guns."

There was no sign of the guerrillas who scribbled graffiti along the walls of the park, encouraging Fallujah's 300,000 residents to join a holy war against US-led troops. "Long live the mujahedin," read the graffiti.

Mohammed Younis, a former policeman, said: "The Americans and [Iyad] Allawi [Iraq's interim Prime Minister] have been saying that Fallujah is full of foreign fighters. That is not true; they left a long time ago. You will find them in other places, in Baghdad. We have been saying to Allawi and the Americans that they are not here, but they do not believe us."

[b]THE CIVILIAN DEATH TOLL[/b]

US military officials were last night counting the cost of their week long assault on Fallujah in which they claim to have killed some 1,200 insurgents and some 44 servicemen lost their lives.

But in the city which was once home to 300,000 people there were few reports of the number of civilians killed.

Many are thought to have fled the fighting, but reports from the city say it is impossible to tell how many of the bodies that litter its rubble-strewn streets are those of ordinary citizens.

Last week a report collated by the UN said 20 doctors had died during a US air strike on a clinic and there have been numerous reports of the US dropping huge bombs.

The US Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed last week that Iraqi civilians had been warned how to avoid injury. "Innocent civilians in that city have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble. There aren't going to be large numbers of civilians killed and certainly not by US forces," he said.

In addition to the 38 Americans and six Iraqis killed in the assault, more than 200 US soldiers were injured. About 400 suspected insurgents have been arrested in Fallujah including "some" foreigners, interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said.

The Iraq Coalition Casualties website reported that, as of Saturday, 1,181 US troops had been killed in Iraq. One Iraq-based report estimates civilian casualties to be 37,000. A report in the British medical journal The Lancet put the figure as high as 100,000.

Prime minister Iyad Allawi said there had been no civilian casualties during the battle for Fallujah, contradicting accounts from residents inside the city. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush's Immoral Bloodbath: A City Lies in Ruins, Along with the Lives of the Wretched Survivors

11.16.04 (5:14 am) [edit]

Bush's Immoral Bloodbath: A City Lies in Ruins, Along with the Lives of the Wretched Survivors

11.16.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

Bush's Immoral Bloodbath: A City Lies in Ruins, Along with the Lives of the Wretched Survivors

11.16.04 (5:08 am) [edit]

Bush's Fascist Reign: As Powell Leaves, Hardliners Make Their Move

11.16.04 (5:03 am) [edit]

Monday's announcement that Secretary of State Colin Powell, by far the most popular of U.S. President George W. Bush's war cabinet, has submitted his resignation marks the formal launch of a new scramble for top national-security posts that could bring an even more hardline configuration to power.

Powell's disappearance will remove the most influential foreign-policy moderate – and the greatest skeptic about the use of military force – from the administration's top ranks, thus strengthening the hardline coalition – led by Vice President Dick Cheney – of aggressive nationalists, neoconservatives, and the Christian Right that dominated policy-making after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

Powell's resignation, which will take effect only when a successor is confirmed by the Senate, will almost certainly be followed by that of his deputy and best friend, Richard Armitage, thus opening up another powerful slot in the foreign-policy bureaucracy.

The two most prominently mentioned possible nominees to succeed Powell have been current national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Washington's United Nations ambassador, former Senator John Danforth, a patrician Republican and ordained Anglican priest with little foreign-policy experience.

Both are considered relatively easy marks for hardliners, whose gusto and talent for bureaucratic infighting are well established. Neither has anything close to Powell's political standing or public credibility; nor does either one have the connections to the military brass that sometimes enabled Powell, a former chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, to circumvent the Pentagon's civilian leadership.

Rice, who does have the advantage of a close personal relationship with Bush that Powell never established, was widely criticized during the first term for failing to enforce discipline on the various agencies, while Danforth, whose tenure as Bush's special envoy to Sudan was described as almost entirely "ornamental" by one insider, is considered a hands-off manager of the "old school," who has little patience for the nitty-gritty of policy, let alone policy-making.

Although Rice has talked frequently about returning to academic life, she is widely believed to want the job currently held by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who, however, reportedly wants to hang on for at least another year. Some observers believe Rice might be willing to go to the State Department if she had first shot at the Defense Department when Rumsfeld retires.

A Soviet military specialist by training and experience, Rice was first recommended to Bush by his father's national security adviser, retired General Brent Scowcroft.

But Scowcroft, who also helped mentor Powell, quickly became disillusioned with his protégé when she sided more with the hardliners after 9/11 than with Powell, tilting the balance of power within the administration strongly in Cheney's favor.

Scowcroft and other "realists" have also been deeply disappointed by Rice's failure to effectively coordinate the policy-making process and then enforce discipline on all agencies to ensure that policy is being followed. In several instances, for example, the Pentagon is known to have deliberately stymied or ignored policy decisions with respect to China, Iran, and Iraq, with impunity.

The administration's realist critics have held out hope that Bush may yet appoint one of their own to take Powell's place – either the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, or Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. Both men, however, voiced strong public criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq during the election campaign, angering Cheney, in particular.

"Cheney looks to be at least as powerful in this term as in the last," a Republican congressional aide told IPS on Monday. "He thinks that dissent is disloyalty."

While Powell's resignation was long anticipated, the context of Monday's announcement – particularly recent turmoil at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – makes it more charged.

On Friday, CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin announced his retirement, which he insisted was "a purely personal decision."

But on Monday, the agency's two top clandestine service officers also announced their retirements, after a weekend filled with charges and counter-charges regarding tensions between the career staff and the management team brought in by new CIA director and former Republican Representative Porter Goss, who took over in July from George Tenet.

Their departure followed that of Michael Scheuer, a clandestine officer who ran the CIA's office that tracked terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the late 1990s. In a best-selling book published last summer, Scheuer had strongly criticized the U.S. invasion in Iraq as a diversion from the larger "war on terrorism."

Tenet, widely seen as a Powell ally in inter-agency debates, left the agency after a series of congressional committee reports that found serious failures in the agency's performance, particularly as it related to Iraq, and Goss was reportedly given a mandate to institute major reforms.

While the resignations were depicted by some as the result of personal and professional vendettas carried out by Goss' staff, including several who formerly served in mid-level positions at the CIA, other reports indicated it was part of a much broader political housecleaning.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," one "former senior CIA official" told Newsday on Sunday. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda," the official was quoted as saying.

That interpretation was bolstered by two blasts from prominent neoconservative writers, who charged that high-ranking CIA officials were responsible for a series of leaks damaging to both the administration and Goss.

"It is time to reassert harsh authority so CIA employees know they must defer to the people who win elections, so they do not feel free at meetings to spout off about their contempt of the White House, so they do not go around to their counterparts from other nations and tell them to ignore American policy," wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Neoconservatives in particular have long sought thoroughgoing purges of both the State Department, particularly its Near East bureau, and the CIA, arguing both have been too optimistic about the intentions of Washington's foreign enemies, especially Arabs.

In a book, An End to Evil, published almost one year ago, arch-hawk and former Defense Policy Board (DPB) Chairman Richard Perle called on Bush to replace career officers in the State Department, the CIA, and even the National Security Council (NSC) with political appointees.

Thus, neoconservatives are currently promoting Perle protégé Danielle Pletka, a vice-president of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and outspoken and unapologetic supporter of the Likud-led government in Israel, for the post of assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs to replace career diplomat William Burns when he moves on early next year.

Depending on who takes Powell's place, Pletka's appointment would clearly suggest a purge was underway. Observers note that it was Rice who appointed Elliott Abrams, another strong Likud supporter, to the top Mideast spot on the NSC in December 2002.

If Rice does indeed take Powell's place, she is likely to be succeeded by one of four possible candidates: her current deputy, Stephen Hadley; Cheney's powerful neoconservative national security adviser, I. Lewis Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; or the ultra-unilateralist Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, who is also being touted as a possible deputy secretary of state.

If Danforth were moved to State, on the other hand, Bolton, who served briefly as assistant secretary for international organizations under Bush's father, may be sent to the United Nations. Bolton is best known in Washington for his hostility to multilateral institutions, especially the UN. - http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?...

Bush's Fascist Reign: As Powell Leaves, Hardliners Make Their Move

11.16.04 (5:00 am) [edit]

U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror

11.13.04 (5:00 am) [edit]

[b]"Bush is thumbing his nose at the international community and all those who respect human rights by nominating Gonzales. You cannot simply up and bolt from the Geneva Conventions and the Anti-Torture Convention. Gonzales is Ashcroft without the edges and the delirium and the baritone. But the policy will remain the same." - Matt Rothschild, editor of 'The Progressive' magazine[/b]

UNITED NATIONS - No country can justify torture, the humiliation of prisoners or violation of international conventions in the guise of fighting terrorism, says a U.N. report released here.

The 19-page study, which is likely to go before the current session of the U.N. General Assembly in December, does not identify the United States by name but catalogues the widely publicized torture and humiliation of prisoners and detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by U.S. troops waging the so-called ”war on terrorism.”

The hard line taken by the United Nations comes amidst the controversial appointment of a new U.S. attorney general, who has implicitly defended the use of torture against ''terrorists'' and ''terror suspects''.

On Wednesday, U.S. President George W Bush named White House legal counsel Alberto Gonzales as attorney general to succeed John Ashcroft, who announced his resignation last week.

In a now-infamous memo to the White House in January 2002, Gonzales argued that captured members of the former ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan were not protected under the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). The United States has signed the Geneva Conventions.

The same policy was applied to prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad who were tortured and humiliated by U.S. troops following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, raising outrage among human rights activists and other people worldwide.

The U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command is now prosecuting several U.S. soldiers on criminal charges, including involuntary manslaughter, for their treatment of prisoners.

Gonzales has also described international conventions governing prisoners of war, including the Geneva Conventions, as ''obsolete.''

According to the author of the 19-page U.N. report, [i]'Torture, and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment'[/i], http://www.un.org/Docs/journa... ''The condoning of torture is, per se, a violation of the prohibition of torture.”

The study, by U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Theo van Boven, points out that ''legal argument of necessity and self-defense, invoking domestic law, have recently been put forward, aimed at providing a justification to exempt officials suspected of having committed or instigated acts of torture against suspected terrorists from criminal liability.''

But, Van Boven says, ''the absolute nature of the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment means that no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as justification for torture.''

Von Boven said he has received information ''on certain methods that have been condoned and used to secure information from suspected terrorists.''

He says these include, ''holding detainees in painful and-or stressful positions, depriving them of sleep and light for prolonged periods, exposing them to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light, hooding, depriving them of clothing, stripping detainees naked and threatening them with dogs.''

''The jurisprudence of both international and regional human rights mechanisms is unanimous in stating that such methods violate the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment,'' Von Boven adds.

In the aftermath of the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, he says, ''thousands of persons suspected of terrorism, including children, have been detained, denied the opportunity to have legal status determined and prevented from having access to lawyers.''

Some of them, he adds, are said to be still held in solitary confinement, ''which in itself may constitute a violation of the right to be free from torture.''

Asked if he supports a call by Amnesty International for an independent commission to probe U.S. detention policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, Van Boven told reporters in October that such a probe is imperative.

''Whenever there are serious allegations of torture, investigations are absolutely necessary. And the results of these investigations should be made public because it's absolutely a public affair,'' said the special rapporteur.

In view of the U.N. position, the appointment of Gonzales as the new U.S. attorney general is a slap in the face of the international community, says Matt Rothschild, editor of 'The Progressive' magazine.

''Bush is thumbing his nose at the international community and all those who respect human rights by nominating Gonzales,'' Rothschild told IPS.

''You cannot simply up and bolt from the Geneva Conventions and the Anti-Torture Convention. Gonzales is Ashcroft without the edges and the delirium and the baritone. But the policy will remain the same,'' he added.

''It was Gonzales, along with Ashcroft and (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and (Vice President Dick) Cheney, who signed off on tougher interrogation methods and on the hiding of prisoners from the International Red Cross,'' said Rothschild.

According to Francis A Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois, ''As White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales originated, authorized, approved and aided and abetted grave breaches of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, which are serious war crimes.”

''In other words, Gonzales is a prima facie war criminal. He must be prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. War Crimes Act,'' Boyle told IPS.

In any event, the U.S. Senate must reject his nomination, because, as a presumptive war criminal, Gonzales is not fit to be attorney general of the United States, he continued.

''Should Gonzales travel around the world in that capacity, human rights lawyers such as myself will attempt to get him prosecuted along the lines of what happened to (former Chilean dictator) General (Pinochet,'' said Boyle, author of '[i]Destroying World Order'[/i] http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... .

Jordan J Paust, law foundation professor at the University of Houston, agrees with Boyle's thesis.

''The denial of protections under the Geneva Conventions is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and every violation of the laws of war is a war crime. Complicity in connection with war crimes (such as aiding and abetting the denial of protections) is also criminally sanctionable,'' Paust told IPS.

Thus, it appears Gonzales is reasonably accused of international criminal activity, he added, although he has the human right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law that provides basic human rights to due process protections, ”that he chose to deny others with respect to the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay” (where Washington detains terror suspects).

''Whether or not Gonzales is guilty, the taint in this instance is surely enough to require that he not be confirmed in any U.S. governmental position, especially since the Bush administration has stated that it is still the policy of the United States to have a government under law and to promote the rule of law and human rights -- rights that are reflected also in the Geneva Conventions,'' Paust added.

''Making Alberto Gonzales the attorney general of the United States would be a travesty,'' says Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

''It would mean taking one of the legal architects of an illegal and immoral policy and installing him as the official who is charged with protecting our constitutional rights. The Gonzales memo paved the way for Abu Ghraib,'' Ratner said in a statement issued Thursday. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror

11.13.04 (4:58 am) [edit]

U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror

11.13.04 (4:52 am) [edit]

U.N. Report Slams Use of Torture to Beat Terror

11.13.04 (4:51 am) [edit]

U.S. States Defy Bush Over Greenhouse Gases

11.13.04 (4:45 am) [edit]

Individual American states are putting together a system to cap and trade greenhouse gas emissions, despite the Bush administration's opposition to the Kyoto protocol on global warming. Such a measure was backed by John Kerry during the recent election campaign.

The regional-level initiative, led by the Republican governor of New York, George Pataki, aims to be able to announce the details of a scheme by April next year. Nine north-eastern and mid-Atlantic states are taking part, with several other states and some Canadian provinces involved as "observers" in the process.

The scheme could even link up with the emissions controls and trading system being established by the EU next year, allowing emission allowances to be traded across the Atlantic. It is understood that informal talks have already taken place between environmental officials of the US states and their European Commission counterparts.

The development will prove a major embarrassment to the Bush government, which provoked an international outcry in 2001 by pulling out of the 1997 Kyoto climate control treaty. Many believe that the Bush administration had hoped to kill off Kyoto by opposing it. However the recent decision by Russia to sign up has meant that the treaty has been saved.

Some insiders even believe that unilateral action by US states will eventually force Bush to join Kyoto, by showing that it can work in the US.

Mr Bush has allowed companies to get away with a lowering of emissions standards at the same time as America remains responsible for 25 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases.

Peter Vaborowsky, a managing director at Evolution Markets, a brokerage that specializes in the environmental markets, said: "There's no question that this turns up pressure on the federal government - in the past when individual states have taken action on other pollutants, the federal government has then taken action."

The nine states in the project, which is known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. In addition, Maryland, the District of Columbia and Pennsylvania are "observers" in the process, as are some eastern Canadian provinces.

Environmental officials from the states will meet in New York today to try to thrash out some of the remaining technical issues yet to be resolved. It is hoped that the cap and trade scheme can be operational by 2007 or 2008.

Like the European Union, the US states are taking a market-based approach to curbing emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas blamed most for global warming.

Industries covered by the schemes will be given allocations of allowed emissions, in units of one ton of carbon dioxide produced. Polluters can either take a step to reduce their emissions or buy the allocations on a market from others which have done this.

It is thought that as the US is outside Kyoto, Europeans will be able to sell US industries their allocations but the US allocations are unlikely to be recognized as a Kyoto-currency and so cannot be bought by the Europeans.

In the US, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, which cause acid rain and smog, are federally regulated and traded. However, there is no federal regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

U.S. States Defy Bush Over Greenhouse Gases

11.13.04 (4:44 am) [edit]

U.S. States Defy Bush Over Greenhouse Gases

11.13.04 (4:42 am) [edit]

Is the Scott Peterson Trial More Important than Fallujah?

11.13.04 (4:40 am) [edit]

Unless you're a soldier or the loved one of a soldier, being a citizen of the empire is a remote occupation.

As Bush and Rumsfeld launched their offensive into Fallujah, the biggest urban assault conducted by the U.S. military in almost four decades, the morning shows focused instead on the Scott Peterson murder trial.

Then throughout the week, the Peterson trial continued to compete with the Fallujah assault, as though both were of equal import.

Katie Couric and Matt Lauer should be ashamed of themselves. By what standard is the Scott Peterson trial news?

Only by the standard of bread and circuses.

Rumsfeld himself was back into his entertaining mode when he showed up at the Pentagon's press conference on Monday, joking about how he had bit his tongue during the whole Presidential campaign.

And he was blasé about the possibility of mass civilian casualties in Fallujah, a city that used to have 300,000 people and may still have as many as 50,000 to 100,000, with only 3,000 or 4,000 insurgents.

Rumsfeld said they're certainly wouldn't be a lot of civilians killed, and then he added, "certainly not by U.S. forces."

So, are the Iraqi troops going to do the slaughtering?

And anyway, how can Rumsfeld be so sure when the U.S. military is bringing in the heavy artillery?

Already, innocent people are dying in Fallujah.

Already, U.S. soldiers are dying, at least 18, with dozens more wounded.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon, back to counting scalps as it did in Vietnam, claims to have killed 500 insurgents, according to CNN.

But U.S. tanks can patrol every street of Fallujah and still the United States will not win this war. Most of the insurgents had fled the city before the assault, and resistance is by no means localized to the city limits of Fallujah.

The news is that the Iraq occupation is falling apart.

There is violent resistance across much of the country.

And any lingering hope that the U.S. is installing democracy should be put to rest. Bush's puppet Iyad Allawi has already invoked emergency powers, and the Sunni clerics are calling for a boycott of January's elections.

And the Today show wants us to focus on the Scott Peterson trial? - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Is the Scott Peterson Trial More Important than Fallujah?

11.13.04 (4:34 am) [edit]

JESUS CHRIST 'SHOCKED-BUT-NOT-AWED' BY DUBYA'S PROFANE RELIGIOSITY

11.06.04 (5:53 am) [edit]

JESUS CHRIST 'SHOCKED-BUT-NOT-AWED' BY DUBYA'S PROFANE RELIGIOSITY

11.06.04 (5:51 am) [edit]

JESUS CHRIST 'SHOCKED-BUT-NOT-AWED' BY DUBYA'S PROFANE RELIGIOSITY

11.06.04 (5:49 am) [edit]

MORALITY, AMERICAN-STYLE ...

11.06.04 (5:46 am) [edit]

MORALITY, AMERICAN-STYLE ...

11.06.04 (5:44 am) [edit]

MORALITY, AMERICAN-STYLE ...

11.06.04 (5:44 am) [edit]

THE ENEMY WITHIN

11.06.04 (5:42 am) [edit]

[b]'Let the rumpus begin! An oppositional strategy'[/b]

Let the rumpus begin! We liberals are much better carving each other up than in going after our opponents, and the stilettos are being sharpened for just such in-house butchery as the blame game begins.

We do have things, not always pleasant things, to say to and about each other, but may I remind us all that the enemy is not within. The true enemy resides in the White House, and unless we concentrate on those, rather than on each other, we'll be doing Bush&Co.'s nasty work for them. (Also, consider a moment: if we hadn't had to face vote suppression, dirty tricks, machine-voting problems and the like, we wouldn't be having this conversation. We'd all be united, throwing plaudits at Kerry for his great campaign.)

So, yes, this election may have been stolen by trickery and fraud (co-editor Ernest Partridge addresses America's disgracefully unregulated way of voting), but our candidate has conceded -- for all intents and purposes, the election of 2004 is over. Unless some demonstrable proof can be found of electoral fraud -- or if enough angry citizens demand that the suspicious circumstances cry out for an independent investigation -- it is likely that the College of Electors will certify George W. Bush as the next President on December 12, and that he will be inaugurated on January 20. We don't have a lot of time to play with, but we have time.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

THE ENEMY WITHIN

11.06.04 (5:42 am) [edit]

NO SURRENDER!!!

11.05.04 (5:24 am) [edit]

"[i]I've got a question for you. How many of you are going to be here for a second term, please raise your hand. (Laughter.) Gosh, we're going to have a lot of fun then. (Laughter.) Thank you all[/i]." - Herr Fuhrer Bush

In his first post-election press conference, sparring nonchalantly with the toothless White House press corps, George W. Bush was relaxed, expansive, coherent, and condescending.

He expects that his election victory gives him the opportunity to set the media and political agenda, not react to it as he did so frantically and ineptly during the last days of his campaign.

Sorry, George.

No honeymoon.

No mandate.

No surrender.

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

NO SURRENDER!!!

11.05.04 (5:21 am) [edit]

NO SURRENDER!!!

11.05.04 (5:20 am) [edit]

Get Ready For A Bumpy Ride, Poor Dumb Suckers: INFLATION Starts, As DOLLAR Falls!!!

11.05.04 (5:17 am) [edit]

[b]Dollar Falls On Fears of U.S. Deficits[/b]

The dollar continued its decline in global currency markets yesterday, intensifying worries among some economists that mounting U.S. budget and trade deficits could send the U.S. currency into a tailspin.

But John B. Taylor, the Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, defended the Bush administration view that the deficits pose no danger of a dollar collapse. He issued a detailed rebuttal of what he called "scare stories."

The dollar fell yesterday to within a fraction of a cent of its all-time low against the euro of $1.2930 , trading as low as $1.2898 before rallying slightly to close at $1.2867. It fell modestly against the Japanese yen, and continued a sharp slide against the Canadian dollar, which rose to 83 U.S. cents yesterday for the first time in 12 years.

It was the second straight day that the dollar has fallen despite a surge in the stock market, continuing a trend that began in early October when it started slipping against the currencies of major U.S. trading partners. The declined rekindled the fears of some analysts that the dollar could be headed for a severe sell-off unless the White House and Congress make a major effort to shrink the budget gap.

"As the dust settles after the U.S. elections, the one theme that is developing is the growing recognition [in the markets] of the need for more dollar depreciation," economists at J.P. Morgan told clients yesterday, citing as one major reason the likelihood that "there will be no serious new policies to trim the U.S. budget deficit."

Behind such sentiments is the belief that the U.S. economy is too dependent on foreign investors, and that they may balk at pouring money into U.S. securities if the country's debt continues to soar. Foreigners have provided much of the money the government borrows to cover its deficit, which was $413 billion in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

"One of the big drivers in the whole big picture the markets are looking at now is our being dependent on foreign sources of funds," said David Solin, managing partner at Foreign Exchange Analytics in Essex, Conn. "Obviously, if the foreigners step back [from investing in U.S. bonds and stocks], there are going to be serious problems, not only for the dollar, but for all financial markets."

The trade deficit also creates a dependence on money from abroad because many foreigners supplying goods to the United States take the dollars they receive and effectively lend them to the United States. The simplest example of such lending is their purchase of U.S. government bonds.

Because of concerns that the United States is too much in debt, the rise in the trade gap, which is running at an anual rate of about $600 billion, also raises the specter that foreigners might dump U.S. holdings.

Those scenarios were dismissed as fanciful by Taylor, who spoke yesterday at an American Enterprise Institute seminar on the current account deficit, the broadest measure of the trade gap.

The large influx of foreign money shows that "sound, growth enhancing economic policies are continuing to make the U.S. an attractive place to invest," he said.

Taylor said administration policies already in place will help shrink the trade deficit. One is President Bush's pledge to cut the budget deficit in half, as a percentage of the U.S. gross domestic product, by 2009. That would decrease the trade deficit because lower government spending or higher taxes would reduce the amount of money consumers spend on imported goods.

Taylor pointed out that the Treasury is also prodding foreign governments to achieve faster economic growth, which should increase demand for U.S. exports, and it is trying to persuade China to change its fixed-exchange rate policy by allowing its currency, the yuan, to rise. A higher yuan would be likely to slow the flood of Chinese goods into the U.S. market because those products would become more expensive for U.S. consumers.

"Even if those policies take some time" to reduce the trade deficit, Taylor said, "there is no reason to think there will be problems in the meantime" in continuing to obtain enough money to cover the gap.

Taking issue with analysts who have voiced concern about a recent drop in investment by foreigners in U.S. Treasury bonds, Taylor said: "It is important to put the current account in the perspective of the total amount of financial flows crossing U.S. borders in large, open and flexible markets."

He cited the fact that the current account deficit increased by $19 billion in the second quarter even though government data showed a decline of about $180 billion in purchases of U.S. assets by both foreign central banks and private investors. The U.S. economy experienced no turbulence because U.S. buyers in effect replaced the foreigners.

Taylor's views were seconded by some of the other speakers at the seminar, including Allan H. Meltzer, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. But others maintained that the current account gap is certain to drive the dollar down one way or another -- either gently and gradually, or suddenly and sharply. Although a gradual move downward would help the economy by boosting exports, it would erode U.S. living standards below what they would be by making imported goods more expensive.

President Bush's news conference yesterday did little to lessen concerns over the deficits, Wall Street analysts and currency traders said. Bush simultaneously promised not to raise taxes under the guise of tax simplification, to pursue a costly restructuring of Social Security and to cut the budget deficit in half by 2009.

The currency markets aren't buying it, said William G. Gale, an economist at the Brookings Institution.

White House officials "have Alan Greenspan to help keep interest rates down, but they can't control the foreign exchange markets," Gale said. "I think investors are acting appropriately." - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

Get Ready For A Bumpy Ride, Poor Dumb Suckers: INFLATION Starts, As DOLLAR Falls!!!

11.05.04 (5:15 am) [edit]

U.S. Military Afraid to Tell Bush & Cheney the Truth ...

11.05.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

[b]Military Is Afraid to Tell Bush, Cheney the Truth, Says Sy Hersh in 'WP' Online Chat [/b]

[b]NEW YORK[/b] Seymour Hersh, the famed reporter known for breaking stories from My Lai to Abu Ghraib, said in a Washingtonpost.com chat today that "the major media have been part of the problem since 9-11, merely because they have far too often taken the president's public utterances at face value."

He added: "There also is a terrific unwillingness, perhaps understandable (though not by me), to make a moral judgment about a president's policies. There are plenty of people on the inside who are worried about the policies, especially among military guys, and I'm sure their views will increasingly become known."

Hersh, who has rarely sat for such chats, was asked about voters' lack of information on certain key issues, as revealed by non-partisan polls. "The most distressing issue, for me, in the election was the lack of information and the lack of interest in information about far too many of the electorate -- obviously, I'm referring to many of the religious factions who voted for Bush," he said. "The reality is that far too many Americans are not interested in the facts, or in reality." He added, however , that this just might be "a loser's lament." (He backed Kerry.)

Some of the other exchanges:

Asked how the Republicans can refer to the narrow Bush victory as a mandate, Hersh said, "You would be right in a rational world. Welcome to the Bush White House."

Will Bush now strive for unity? "In my view, he's got his mandate and he's going to carry on with his mantra -- bringing democracy to the Middle East…. Bush will consider many scary options [there]. What he can do, as opposed to what he wants to do, is the issue. Not much intelligence for some of his desires. ... I worry about the inability to the men running the U.S. government to accept information that challenges their assumptions and their belief. It's very frightening and the fact is that our senior military are very reluctant to give Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld any bad news. Sounds insane, doesn't it?"

On Iraq: "The military are scared of telling Cheney and Bush the truth and that will have to end within the next six months. They cannot deliver in Iraq what the president wants, and we'll have to start getting out. So I believe anyway."

Asked if the blue states should secede from the union, now dominated by the south, he said: "The other side tried that once and it didn't work." - http://www.mediainfo.com/eand...

U.S. Military Afraid to Tell Herr Fuhrer Bush/Reich Marshall Cheney the Truth ...

11.05.04 (5:06 am) [edit]

Bush Refuses to Estimate the Costs of "Staying the Course" in Iraq

11.05.04 (5:02 am) [edit]

President Bush vowed yesterday to use the "political capital" gained from his victory on Tuesday to push an aggressive domestic agenda in a second term, beginning with limiting medical malpractice lawsuits and continuing with revamping the tax code and adding private accounts to Social Security.

At a news conference a day after Sen. John F. Kerry conceded, Bush spoke repeatedly about his desire to unify the country, including Democrats who did their best to evict him from power. But he also made it clear that he views the election returns -- especially a 3 percent margin of victory in the popular vote that he said reflected "the will of the people" -- as a mandate to pursue conservative priorities and to continue a governing style that has rarely accommodated the opposition.

"I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style," he said. "I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror."

In both words and tone, Bush conveyed exceptional self-assurance as he jauntily parried with reporters and served notice that he expects Congress to move with dispatch on his agenda. The message was unmistakable: that Bush intends to be the capital's dominant political and policy force, and that the election returns mean that other players should move to accommodate his priorities, not simply meet in the middle.

"I really didn't come here to hold the office just to say, 'Gosh, it was fun to serve,' " he said. "I came here to get some things done, and we are doing it."

Bush, whose domestic agenda has been largely overshadowed by war and terrorism, said he will "start on Social Security now" by beginning to work with lawmakers who support allowing workers to put some of their payroll taxes into stocks and bonds. "We must lead on Social Security because the system is not going to be whole for our children and our grandchildren," he said.

But several officials said a detailed proposal on Social Security is likely to be held until 2006, ensuring that it looms large before the congressional midterm election. Democrats contend Bush's plan is a way to weaken the federal retirement system. Bush said he will "readily concede I've laid out some very difficult issues for people to deal with."

"Reforming the Social Security system for generations to come is a difficult issue; otherwise, it would have already been done," he said. "But it is necessary to confront it. And I would hope to be able to work with Democrats to get this done."

Bush said the "groundwork has been laid" on Capitol Hill for his longtime interest in limiting lawsuits, and administration officials said they are ready to move quickly with a legislative package on curbing the amount of damages that can be won with lawsuits against doctors. The idea was among his biggest applause lines this year when speaking to GOP donors at campaign fundraisers.

As another top priority, Bush said he will work to make the tax code simpler and more fair. He said he believes certain incentives should be built into a rewritten code -- for example, provisions to encourage charitable giving and homeownership. He said the changes would be "revenue-neutral" -- not a hidden way of raising taxes and reducing the deficit, as some of his critics have charged.

"If there was a need to raise taxes, I'd say, 'Let's have a tax bill that raises taxes,' as opposed to 'Let's simply the tax code and sneak a tax increase on the people.' It's just not my style. I don't believe we need to raise taxes. I've said that to the American people. And so the simplification would be the goal."

Facing a huge federal deficit and his promise to cut it in half over five years, Bush made no mention of a tax cut, and administration officials said none is in the offing.

Bush also said he plans to move quickly on his education proposals, including a plan to add accountability for high schools.

On foreign policy, Bush listed the fight against terrorism first when he was citing his priorities. [b]He declined to estimate the cost of continuing operations in Iraq[/b], saying that the United States would work with the government of Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to "achieve our objective, which is elections, on the path to stability, and we'll continue to train the troops."

"Our commanders will have that which they need to complete their missions," he said.

Bush asserted that democracy is still possible in Iraq and throughout the Middle East: "If we are interested in protecting our country for the long term, the best way to do so is to promote freedom and democracy."

He said he will continue to work for a Palestinian state coexisting peacefully with Israel, saying that when he laid out that vision in the Rose Garden in 2002, he "meant it when I said it, and I mean it now."

Other administration officials said they expect relations with Iran to dominate the foreign policy agenda. The administration has accused Iran of harboring terrorists and running a nuclear weapons program.

Bush made no effort to hide his high spirits, teasing reporters and calling on them by last name only, in the fashion of a football coach. He has always chafed at reporters' tendency to ask follow-ups and to string multiple questions into one, and yesterday he announced that he will no longer permit it. "Now that I've got the will of the people at my back, I'm going to start enforcing the one-question rule," he said.

The news conference's most reflective moments concerned the reaction of former president George H.W. Bush to his son's achievement of the reelection he was denied. The president recalled that his father, who spent election night in the White House, was still sitting upstairs at 3:30 a.m. as returns came in. Kerry did not concede until later that day.

"I finally said, 'Go to bed,' " Bush recalled. "He was awaiting the outcome and was hopeful that we would go over and be able to talk to our supporters, and it just didn't happen that way."

Bush said that when his father woke up, he asked him to come by the Oval Office before heading home to Houston.

"We had a good talk," the president said. "There was some uncertainty about that morning as to when the election would actually end. And it wasn't clear at that point in time, so I never got to see him face to face to watch his, I guess, pride in his tired eyes as his son got a second term. I did talk to him, and he was relieved. I told him to get a nap. I was worried about him staying up too late."

Presidential advisers said Bush is relishing the prospect of a freer hand with Congress, as the expanded margin of GOP control will give him more flexibility to pursue his policies.

"After hundreds of speeches and three debates and interviews and the whole process, where you keep basically saying the same thing over and over again, that when you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that's what I intend to tell the Congress," he said.

Bush hedged when asked about changes in his Cabinet, and declined to speculate about possible nominees to the Supreme Court.

For the second day in a row, Bush said he plans to reach out to his opponents, joking at the start of the 40-minute session, "I pledged to reach out to the whole nation, and today I'm proving that I'm willing to reach out to everybody by including the White House press corps."

But one key adviser said the White House has calculated there is little to be gained from courting Democrats, since the expected fights over Supreme Court nominations would just undo the goodwill.

"This isn't a guy who pivots," said a presidential adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity so White House officials will continue to talk candidly to him. "There's no point in a lot of outreach in the next 90 days that would be rendered moot by the first retirement from the court, and he's not going to do it."

Another adviser said after speaking to Bush's top aides, "They feel the Bush brand is strong, and they feel no need to re-brand him."

Bush has held the fewest news conferences of any president since records have been kept. This was Bush's 16th solo news conference. At this point in their presidencies, Bill Clinton had held 42 news conferences and Bush's father had held 83, according to figures compiled by Martha Joynt Kumar of Towson University.

The meeting was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House -- a setting that is more formal than the briefing room but less imposing than the East Room, the traditional site of prime-time news conferences.

Bush said he feels refreshed, both by the outcome and by the sleep he got after a marathon night that some of his aides in what is ordinarily an early-to-bed White House were calling "the Republican Woodstock." - http://www.washingtonpost.com...

NOTHING CHANGES: Herr Fuhrer Bush Treats Americans With Contempt, Disrespect ...

11.05.04 (4:59 am) [edit]

Traitors Bush/Cheney Inc. Bankrupting U.S.A. ... (But They're "Moral"? HA HA HA!)

11.04.04 (12:04 pm) [edit]

[b]The day after the election, the administration reveals it needs to raise the federal debt ceiling http://abcnews.go.com/Politic... . So it's more debt, debt, debt!!! But hey, that's okay if you don't have a[i] pot-to-piss-in[/i], 'cause you'll be really "moral"... HA HA HA! You poor dumb slobs![/b]

[i]Also [/i]...

[b]Euro hits highest level since mid-February against the U.S. dollar[/b]

The dollar hit its lowest level in more than eight months against the euro Thursday, falling sharply on worries about the economic effects of rising oil prices and expectations of continued trade and budget deficits in President Bush's second term.

The shared European currency neared its all-time high of $1.2927 of Feb. 18, trading at $1.2867 in late dealings in New York versus $1.2821 late Wednesday.

Higher oil prices have raised doubts about the strength of the U.S. economy, adding new concerns on top of high U.S. trade and budget deficits, factors that have weighed on the dollar for months.

"The dollar is under pressure from various points of view," said Commerzbank economist Michael Schubert. Recent U.S. jobs figures have disappointed, he said.

"Sentiment on the sustainability of the U.S. recovery is rather negative," he said, with the market seizing on negative news about the dollar and ignoring positive data. Some of the movement, he said, was "herd instinct," with traders selling because they feared it would go down further.

In late New York trading, the dollar bought 1.1876 Swiss francs, down from 1.1938 late Wednesday; 1.2072 Canadian dollars, down from 1.2084; and 106.08 Japanese yen, down from 106.15.

Meanwhile, British pound slipped to $1.8437, down from $1.8474 Wednesday.

The dollar recovered some early losses sustained in the European session during afternoon trading, easing off of intraday highs as oil prices plunged. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil for December delivery fell $2.06 to settle at $48.82 -- the first time prices settled below $49 a barrel since Sept. 24.

Some economists have said that Bush, re-elected Tuesday, is a long-term downward factor for the dollar. Bush's administration has talked the dollar down in an effort to save jobs by boosting U.S. exports, which benefit from a weaker currency. The administration has also presided over budget and trade deficits that are one factor weighing on the dollar.

"The election results will be favorable for stocks but negative for bonds and the dollar," Roger Kubarych of HVB Group wrote in a research note. "Bush will almost certainly not alter his economic policies very much."

"Continuing fiscal stimulus, more toughness in trade negotiations, and the promotion of a weaker U.S. dollar are the likely ingredients of U.S. economic policy for the next four years."

On Thursday, the government reported that productivity of America's workers grew at a 1.9 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the smallest gain since late 2002.

The increase in productivity -- the amount an employee produces for every hour of work -- followed a brisk 3.9 percent pace registered in the second quarter, the Labor Department said. The figure for the July-to-September period was better than the 1.7 percent growth rate some economists were forecasting.

On Friday, the government will report on the nation's employment climate for October. Analysts are forecasting payrolls to grow by a net 175,000 for the month, up from a lackluster 96,000 in September. The jobless rate is expected to hold steady at 5.4 percent. - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin...

Sour Grapes OR Voter Fraud??? ( Visit http://www.BlackBoxVoting.com )

11.04.04 (5:35 am) [edit]

If you believe that George Bush won last night's election "fair and square" then forget about reading this article. If you know however that tens of thousands of people who lined up for up to four hours at a time in Ohio and Florida to have their vote counted, were not standing there to endorse the aggression and suicidal policies of the current administration then read on.

The unprecedented high turnout coupled with new registrations ( that were overwhelmingly in favor of John Kerry) suggest that there was foul play at the voting booths. As a result, consumer investigator and activist Bev Harris (founder of Black Box Voting) "is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. On election night, Black Box Voting blanketed the US with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships."

If the Bush people are so confident in their victory let them "put up or shut up."

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Sour Grapes OR Voter Fraud??? ( Visit http://www.BlackBoxVoting.com )

11.04.04 (5:33 am) [edit]

STAND AND FIGHT!!!

11.04.04 (5:30 am) [edit]

One thing we can say for certain at this point, after the grieving, the anger, is that the country is still bitterly divided.

We saw two turnouts and Two Nations last night. Both sides of the chasm saw a major turnout of its voting base. Karl Rove talked about creating a permanent Republican majority. But the truth is, he has a divide-and-rule strategy. And the electoral college amplifies the rural, socially conservative vote. (Twenty percent of voters considered "moral values"--eleven states had anti-gay marriage ballots http://msnbc.msn.com/id/63833... --more important than the economy or Iraq in this election.)

Perhaps more astonishing than the polling on the murky issue of morality (why aren't poverty and unjust war considered immoral?) are the figures reported http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... in the[i] New York Times[/i]: "Voters who cited honesty as the most important quality in a candidate broke 2 to 1 in Mr. Bush's favor..." The most mendacious Administration in American history won the honesty vote?

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

MOURNING IN AMERICA: The Terrorists Have Won ...

11.04.04 (5:25 am) [edit]

The terrorists have won. How could they lose? They had everything on their side - fear, greed, superstition, ignorance. They even had Osama Bin Ladin. Yes, after the administration warned us for months that 'terrists' were going to try to disrupt the election, Osama appears, just like they said, just in the nick of time to scare the hell out of people, scare them enough to vote for a war that has already killed 100,000 innocent women and children, [remember the Culture of Life?] that has made the world more dangerous, that may not end in our lifetime. How convenient. How well cared for Osama looked, how well rested and fit.

And of course, they own the voting machines, don't they? Who cares if the exit polls in Florida and Ohio were wildly out of sync with the 'results'? So what if the chief executive of Diebold, the Ohio corporation that makes most of the voting machines, promised publicly to deliver Ohio for Bush? Will anyone investigate?

[b]Read article [/b] http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

10 Reasons NOT To Move To Canada ... Let's Stop the Fascists in White House!!!

11.04.04 (5:18 am) [edit]

Ready to say screw this country and buy a one-way ticket north? Here are some reasons to stay in the belly of the beast.

[b]1. The Rest of the World. [/b]After the February 2003 antiwar protests, the New York Times described the global peace movement as the world's second superpower. Their actions didn't prevent the war, but protestors in nine countries have succeeded in pressuring their governments to pull their troops from Iraq and/or withdraw from the so-called coalition of the willing. Antiwar Americans owe it to themajority of the people on this planet who agree with them to stay and do what they can to end the suffering in Iraq and prevent future pre-emptive wars.

[b]2. People Power Can Trump Presidential Power.[/b] The strength of social movements can be more important than whoever is in the White House. Example: In 1970, President Nixon supported the Occupational Safety and Health Act, widely considered the most important pro-worker legislation of the last 50 years. It didn't happen because Nixon loved labor unions, but because union power was strong. Stay and help build the peace, economic justice, environmental and other social movements that can make change.

[b]3. The great strides made in voter registration and youth mobilization must be built on rather than abandoned[/b].

[b]4. Like Nicaraguans in the 1980s, Iraqis Need U.S. Allies.[/b] After Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984, progressives resisted the urge to flee northwards and instead stayed to fight the U.S. governments secret war of arming the contras in Nicaragua and supporting human rights atrocities throughout Central America. Iraq is a different scenario, but we can still learn from the U.S.-Central America solidarity work that exposed illegal U.S. activities and their brutal consequences and ultimately prevailed by forcing a change in policy.

[b]5. We Can't Let up on the Free Trade Front Activists have held the Bush administration at bay on some issues.[/b] On trade, opposition in the United States and in developing countries has largely blocked the Bush administrations corporate-driven trade agenda for four years. The President is expected to soon appoint a new top trade negotiator to break the impasse. Whoever he picks would love to see a progressive exodus to Canada.

[b]6. Barak Obama.[/b] His victory to become the only African-American in the U.S. Senate was one of the few bright spots of the election. An early opponent of the Iraq war, Obama trounced his primary and general election opponents, even in white rural districts, showing he could teach other progressives a few things about broadening their base. As David Moberg of In These Times puts it, Obama demonstrates how a progressive politician can redefine mainstream political symbols to expand support for liberal policies and politicians rather than engage in creeping capitulation to the right.

[b]7. Say so long to the DLC.[/b] Barry Goldwater suffered a resounding defeat when he ran for president against Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but his campaign spawned a conservative movement that eventually gained control of the Republican Party and elected Ronald Reagan in 1980. Progressives should see the excitement surrounding Dean, Kucinich, Moseley Braun, and Sharpton during the primary season as the foundation for a similar takeover of the Democratic Party.

[b]8. 2008. [/b]President Bush is entering his second term facing an escalating casualty rate in Iraq, a record trade deficit, a staggering budget deficit, sky-high oil prices, and a deeply divided nation. As the Republicans face likely failure, progressives need to start preparing for regime change in 2008 or sooner. Remember that Nixon was re-elected with a bigger margin than Bush, but faced impeachment within a year.

[b]9. Americans are Not All Yahoos. [/b]Although I wouldn't attempt to convince a Frenchman of it right now, many surveys indicate that Americans are more internationalist than the election results suggest. In a September poll by the University of Maryland, majorities of Bush supporters expressed support for multilateral approaches to security, including the United States being part of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (68%), the International Criminal Court (75%), the treaty banning land mines (66%), and the Kyoto Treaty on climate change (54%). The problem is that most of these Bush supporters weren't aware that Bush opposed these positions. Stay and help turn progressive instincts into political power.

[b]10. Winter.[/b] Average January temperature in Ottawa: 12.2°F.

Starting the Fight AGAINST Fascism In America ...

11.04.04 (5:10 am) [edit]

Americans did not [knowingly] vote for fascism -- but fascists now control all three branches of our government: the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court.

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis warned against the rise of American Fascism in "It Can't Happen Here" http://www.amazon.com/exec/ob... . Well it [b]can[/b]-- and, it will unless we stop it [b]now[/b].

In 2000, the fascist-controlled media ordered us to "get over it" - the theft of the Presidency, that is. In 2004, the same media http://blog.democrats.com/nod... is ordering us to bow down [like dumb sheep] before Bush's so-called "mandate".

[b]Like hell we will[/b]. Here at Democrats.com , we recognize America in 2004 is like Germany in 1933, and Fascism is on the rise. In public, Bush lied once again, telling Democrats "I will need your support, and I will work to earn it". But in private, he revealed the truth as soon as he woke up http://www.nytimes.com/2004/1... , long before John Kerry conceded.

[b]Read more [/b]... http://blog.democrats.com/nod...

Starting the Fight AGAINST Fascism In America ...

11.04.04 (5:09 am) [edit]

Starting the Fight AGAINST Fascism In Ame