Saturday, January 31, 2004
Ms Rice, George Bush's national security adviser, last night said the US may never learn the whole truth about Iraq's weapons capabilities because of looting.
Mr Cook said today: "Now that even the White House has admitted they may have got it wrong, it's getting embarrassing to watch our government still trying to deny reality.
"It seems that Tony Blair is the only person still certain that weapons of mass destruction will definitely be found."
In the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private profit-making companies. Brown & Root came up with myriad ideas in a classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to implement its own plan.
Mr. Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, and the defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.
A proposed set of guidelines for middle and high school science classes in Georgia has caused a furor after state education officials removed the word "evolution" and scaled back ideas about the age of Earth and the natural selection of species.
A handful of states already omit the word "evolution" from their teaching guidelines, and Ms. Cox called it "a buzz word that causes a lot of negative reaction." She added that people often associate it with "that monkeys-to-man sort of thing."
In Alabama, the state board of education voted in 2001 to place disclaimers on biology textbooks to describe evolution as a controversial theory.
Mr Cook said today: "Now that even the White House has admitted they may have got it wrong, it's getting embarrassing to watch our government still trying to deny reality.
"It seems that Tony Blair is the only person still certain that weapons of mass destruction will definitely be found."
In the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was defense secretary under the first President Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private profit-making companies. Brown & Root came up with myriad ideas in a classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to implement its own plan.
Mr. Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995, and the defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.
A proposed set of guidelines for middle and high school science classes in Georgia has caused a furor after state education officials removed the word "evolution" and scaled back ideas about the age of Earth and the natural selection of species.
A handful of states already omit the word "evolution" from their teaching guidelines, and Ms. Cox called it "a buzz word that causes a lot of negative reaction." She added that people often associate it with "that monkeys-to-man sort of thing."
In Alabama, the state board of education voted in 2001 to place disclaimers on biology textbooks to describe evolution as a controversial theory.
His letter noted that there were 15 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases a year in the United States, nearly 4 million of them in teenagers, and that 65 million Americans had incurable sexually transmitted diseases.
The grovelling, nauseating apology offered by the new acting chairman of the Board of Governors was what governments want from the BBC: abject obedience. Thankfully, the man whose mea culpa made us all cringe does not want the job full time (and this may be a clever way of giving Blair his pound of flesh without tainting whoever takes on Gavyn Davies's old role).
The Bush administration said on Thursday that the new Medicare law offering prescription drug benefits and private health plans to the elderly would cost at least $530 billion over 10 years, or one-third more than the price tag used when Congress passed the legislation two months ago. The bill passed narrowly in the House after Republican leaders gave assurances that the cost would not exceed $400 billion.
At the same time, the officials said that the overall budget deficit for the current fiscal year would exceed $500 billion. The deficit for fiscal 2003 was $375 billion, a record amount.
William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said: "The Medicare bill had lots of moving parts. We could not make a final analysis of the cost until it became law."
Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office, has estimated that the drug benefit could cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion in its second decade.
Some Democrats suggested that Mr. Bush was predicting a big deficit for 2004 so it would be easier to halve the deficit in five years.
The audit office identified a staggering $575 million worth of errors in seven of 19 accounts it examined in detail - mainly because agencies had under-reported the amount of money they had in the accounts.
In one of the worst cases, $250 million from the sale of the second tranche of Telstra was mistakenly paid twice into the Natural Heritage Trust account, as was $235 million in interest.
THE Howard Government has failed to reduce the tax burden of the poor, despite holding hard evidence for more than a year that low-income earners face marginal tax rates of more than 60 per cent.
The grovelling, nauseating apology offered by the new acting chairman of the Board of Governors was what governments want from the BBC: abject obedience. Thankfully, the man whose mea culpa made us all cringe does not want the job full time (and this may be a clever way of giving Blair his pound of flesh without tainting whoever takes on Gavyn Davies's old role).
The Bush administration said on Thursday that the new Medicare law offering prescription drug benefits and private health plans to the elderly would cost at least $530 billion over 10 years, or one-third more than the price tag used when Congress passed the legislation two months ago. The bill passed narrowly in the House after Republican leaders gave assurances that the cost would not exceed $400 billion.
At the same time, the officials said that the overall budget deficit for the current fiscal year would exceed $500 billion. The deficit for fiscal 2003 was $375 billion, a record amount.
William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said: "The Medicare bill had lots of moving parts. We could not make a final analysis of the cost until it became law."
Douglas J. Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office, has estimated that the drug benefit could cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion in its second decade.
Some Democrats suggested that Mr. Bush was predicting a big deficit for 2004 so it would be easier to halve the deficit in five years.
The audit office identified a staggering $575 million worth of errors in seven of 19 accounts it examined in detail - mainly because agencies had under-reported the amount of money they had in the accounts.
In one of the worst cases, $250 million from the sale of the second tranche of Telstra was mistakenly paid twice into the Natural Heritage Trust account, as was $235 million in interest.
THE Howard Government has failed to reduce the tax burden of the poor, despite holding hard evidence for more than a year that low-income earners face marginal tax rates of more than 60 per cent.
Not only does Hutton thus effectively end freedom of the press in Britain, his report also forms part of the ongoing plan of the Powers That Be to weaken and destroy the BBC, so that its functions can be taken up by thugs more in tune with the establishment, like, say, Rupert Murdoch. Hutton's report is a direct attack on the very structure of democracy in Britain, and is practically a fascist document.
Cisco chief John Chambers explained in Davos that productivity improvements could continue for 10 years ? one reason why technology stocks are back in favour.
On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified ? under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less ? because Saddam "did not let us in.")
In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged ? and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.
Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.
And the independence of the Pentagon's own inspector general's office is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the office's chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan.
Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?
A Gallup survey - commissioned by the World Economic Forum - shows that in most countries if you are prosperous you are much less concerned about security than if your country is depressed. Australia is the exception, ranking high in both prosperity and in concern for security.
It was a measure of Mr. Bush's problem, and Mr. Tenet's, that Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that his committee's draft report of what went wrong, to be issued soon, would be very specific, and very critical.
"We'll have to get Cheney the new memo," one White House official said after Mr. Cheney's comments. "As soon as we write it."
mred - on the beeb, gwb called Kay "Mr Kay" - i thought he was a doctor? i remember the nyt switching to "Dr"
mred - and Blair has started with the ricin thing
mred - a couple of curious things abuot the hutton report (apart from all the obvious ones, as usual)... firstly, it has been wiped off the front pages (and deeper) already (outside the uk) - mostly in favour of the german cannibal - ok, fine. secondly, we must remember that the hutton report was *primarily* about gilligans 6.07am claim that the govt knew that the 45 min claim was wrong *before* it went into the dodgy dossier (it was added immediately prior to the final draft). this fact is getting lost amongst the beeb and kelly noise. but heres the rub - there is a direct parallel in the US - the shitehouse categorically *knew* that the niger claims were wrong *before* those claims were written into SOTU03.
the Mutton report is widely regarded as a whitewash - so much so that some spundits are suggesting that Mutton was actually sending the signal 'this is so obviously wrong that u can see it was political. given that the outcome was inevitable, i wanted to make that completely clear. any apparent balance would have actually been more misleading'.
imagine if a similar inquiry was held in the US about the niger claim - which should of course include the dastardly plame affair - altho given the clintonesque ability to slice and dice terms of reference, that shouldnt be a given. of course, if gilligans calim that 'they knew' was found to be accurate - then the findings necessarily flip 180 degrees - with the beeb exonerated, and the blurgh govt getting beeb'd - everything hinged on the accuracy of that one statement. in the gwb badministration sotu analogy, there could only be one legitimate finding. *they knew*.
Cisco chief John Chambers explained in Davos that productivity improvements could continue for 10 years ? one reason why technology stocks are back in favour.
On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified ? under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less ? because Saddam "did not let us in.")
In any case, the point is that a grave mistake was made, and America's credibility has been badly damaged ? and nobody is being held accountable. But that's standard operating procedure. As far as I can tell, nobody in the Bush administration has ever paid a price for being wrong. Instead, people are severely punished for telling inconvenient truths. And administration officials have consistently sought to freeze out, undermine or intimidate anyone who might try to check up on their performance.
Finally, an important story that has largely evaded public attention: the effort to prevent oversight of Iraq spending. Government agencies normally have independent, strictly nonpartisan inspectors general, with broad powers to investigate questionable spending. But the new inspector general's office in Iraq operates under unique rules that greatly limit both its powers and its independence.
And the independence of the Pentagon's own inspector general's office is also in question. Last September, in a move that should have caused shock waves, the administration appointed L. Jean Lewis as the office's chief of staff. Ms. Lewis played a central role in the Whitewater witch hunt (seven years, $70 million, no evidence of Clinton wrongdoing); nobody could call her nonpartisan.
Still, the big story isn't about Mr. Bush; it's about what's happening to America. Other presidents would have liked to bully the C.I.A., stonewall investigations and give huge contracts to their friends without oversight. They knew, however, that they couldn't. What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?
A Gallup survey - commissioned by the World Economic Forum - shows that in most countries if you are prosperous you are much less concerned about security than if your country is depressed. Australia is the exception, ranking high in both prosperity and in concern for security.
It was a measure of Mr. Bush's problem, and Mr. Tenet's, that Senator Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said this week that his committee's draft report of what went wrong, to be issued soon, would be very specific, and very critical.
"We'll have to get Cheney the new memo," one White House official said after Mr. Cheney's comments. "As soon as we write it."
mred - on the beeb, gwb called Kay "Mr Kay" - i thought he was a doctor? i remember the nyt switching to "Dr"
mred - and Blair has started with the ricin thing
mred - a couple of curious things abuot the hutton report (apart from all the obvious ones, as usual)... firstly, it has been wiped off the front pages (and deeper) already (outside the uk) - mostly in favour of the german cannibal - ok, fine. secondly, we must remember that the hutton report was *primarily* about gilligans 6.07am claim that the govt knew that the 45 min claim was wrong *before* it went into the dodgy dossier (it was added immediately prior to the final draft). this fact is getting lost amongst the beeb and kelly noise. but heres the rub - there is a direct parallel in the US - the shitehouse categorically *knew* that the niger claims were wrong *before* those claims were written into SOTU03.
the Mutton report is widely regarded as a whitewash - so much so that some spundits are suggesting that Mutton was actually sending the signal 'this is so obviously wrong that u can see it was political. given that the outcome was inevitable, i wanted to make that completely clear. any apparent balance would have actually been more misleading'.
imagine if a similar inquiry was held in the US about the niger claim - which should of course include the dastardly plame affair - altho given the clintonesque ability to slice and dice terms of reference, that shouldnt be a given. of course, if gilligans calim that 'they knew' was found to be accurate - then the findings necessarily flip 180 degrees - with the beeb exonerated, and the blurgh govt getting beeb'd - everything hinged on the accuracy of that one statement. in the gwb badministration sotu analogy, there could only be one legitimate finding. *they knew*.
Jan 21 - Britain is facing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the use of cluster bombs by its troops in Iraq. Peacerights, a UK-based human rights group, yesterday issued an executive summary of a report on alleged war crimes committed by the British government and armed forces during the recent invasion of the Middle Eastern country.
Friday, January 30, 2004
CAIRO (AFP) -- The head of the investigation into the crash of an Egyptian charter plane said he was puzzled why its flight data recorders showed one thing when the aircraft was doing something different.
CBS News reported, meanwhile, that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers, Satam al-Sugami, was found on the street minutes after the plane he was aboard crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center and before the New York landmark collapsed.
mr ed - hmmmm - another passport
"With Adolf Hitler's ascendancy to the chancellorship, the Nazi Party quickly consolidated its power. Hitler managed to maintain a posture of legality throughout the Nazification process."
When one is comparing then and now, I think the most interesting factor is that most German Jews remained in Germany until it was too late. They just couldn't believe Hitler was as dangerous as some people said he was. The more prescient Jews (most often those who could afford to do so) got out, however.
Hitler came to power in 1933, but the killing of Jews (and others) didn't begin until five years later, in 1938
'Downers' are cows that can't walk.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says the sick cow was a downer.
The people who were there say it wasn't.
It's important, because the USDA focuses its 'mad cow' testing on downers.
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests. Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred.
LONDON (PTI) -- In a forthright view that is likely to embarrass her husband, Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, is reported to have observed that George W Bush "stole" the US presidential election from Al Gore.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish organization that combats anti-Semitism, condemned the results, and said Israel should "draw the only conclusion possible" and exclude the E.U. from having a role in any peace process.
Rush Limbaugh's attorney mounted an offensive Monday, accusing Palm Beach County prosecutors of smear tactics and likening his client to any ordinary American with chronic pain.
A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.
In a ruling handed down late Friday and made available Monday, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said the ban on providing "expert advice or assistance" is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.
The Humanitarian Law Project, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were threatened with 15 years in prison if they advised groups on seeking a peaceful resolution of the Kurds' campaign for self-determination in Turkey.
Among unexamined facts about the administration?s determination to go to war is that, in the weeks leading up to
the invasion of Iraq, US oil companies doubled their imports of Iraqi oil. According to government figures, US imports of Iraqi oil, which increased steadily following the November 2002 elections, almost tripled from November 2002 (9.57 million barrels) to February 2003 (25.78 million barrels). Iraqi oil imports almost doubled in the weeks following December 2002. Indeed, even in March 2003, the month US troops invaded Iraq, US petroleum companies imported 22.9 million barrels of Iraqi oil.
There is another sad point: in April 2003, US imports of Iraqi oil totaled at least 18.8 million barrels, and some estimates give 21 million barrels. Yes, that?s right: immediately after the invasion of Iraq, with US troops given the mission of controlling Iraq, somebody was pumping millions of gallons of Iraqi crude out of the country. Evidently somebody felt that to the victors belong the spoils. It was following this successful transition, on May 1, that Bush made his flight-suit appearance on an aircraft carrier, to proclaim major combat over.
CBS News reported, meanwhile, that a passport belonging to one of the hijackers, Satam al-Sugami, was found on the street minutes after the plane he was aboard crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center and before the New York landmark collapsed.
mr ed - hmmmm - another passport
"With Adolf Hitler's ascendancy to the chancellorship, the Nazi Party quickly consolidated its power. Hitler managed to maintain a posture of legality throughout the Nazification process."
When one is comparing then and now, I think the most interesting factor is that most German Jews remained in Germany until it was too late. They just couldn't believe Hitler was as dangerous as some people said he was. The more prescient Jews (most often those who could afford to do so) got out, however.
Hitler came to power in 1933, but the killing of Jews (and others) didn't begin until five years later, in 1938
'Downers' are cows that can't walk.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says the sick cow was a downer.
The people who were there say it wasn't.
It's important, because the USDA focuses its 'mad cow' testing on downers.
Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests. Ominously, the trend has accelerated since 1990, during which time the 10 hottest years on record have occurred.
LONDON (PTI) -- In a forthright view that is likely to embarrass her husband, Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, is reported to have observed that George W Bush "stole" the US presidential election from Al Gore.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish organization that combats anti-Semitism, condemned the results, and said Israel should "draw the only conclusion possible" and exclude the E.U. from having a role in any peace process.
Rush Limbaugh's attorney mounted an offensive Monday, accusing Palm Beach County prosecutors of smear tactics and likening his client to any ordinary American with chronic pain.
A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.
In a ruling handed down late Friday and made available Monday, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins said the ban on providing "expert advice or assistance" is impermissibly vague, in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.
The Humanitarian Law Project, which brought the lawsuit, said the plaintiffs were threatened with 15 years in prison if they advised groups on seeking a peaceful resolution of the Kurds' campaign for self-determination in Turkey.
Among unexamined facts about the administration?s determination to go to war is that, in the weeks leading up to
the invasion of Iraq, US oil companies doubled their imports of Iraqi oil. According to government figures, US imports of Iraqi oil, which increased steadily following the November 2002 elections, almost tripled from November 2002 (9.57 million barrels) to February 2003 (25.78 million barrels). Iraqi oil imports almost doubled in the weeks following December 2002. Indeed, even in March 2003, the month US troops invaded Iraq, US petroleum companies imported 22.9 million barrels of Iraqi oil.
There is another sad point: in April 2003, US imports of Iraqi oil totaled at least 18.8 million barrels, and some estimates give 21 million barrels. Yes, that?s right: immediately after the invasion of Iraq, with US troops given the mission of controlling Iraq, somebody was pumping millions of gallons of Iraqi crude out of the country. Evidently somebody felt that to the victors belong the spoils. It was following this successful transition, on May 1, that Bush made his flight-suit appearance on an aircraft carrier, to proclaim major combat over.
Venezuela is now the third largest supplier of oil to the United States, after Canada and Saudi Arabia; Mexico is the fourth largest, and Columbia is the seventh. As indicated by Secretary of Energy Abraham, ?President Bush recognizes not only the need for an increased supply of energy, but also the critical role the hemisphere will play in the administration?s energy policy.?
Eight months after Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the government's partial victory in a trial against an accused terror cell based in Detroit, the convictions of three men are in doubt amid growing turmoil within the offices of the federal prosecutor and the F.B.I. here.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, responding to unusual criticism from a three-star general that the Army is too small to meet its global commitments, has authorized an emergency increase of 30,000 troops, Congress was told yesterday.
The testimony appeared to surprise committee members.
"General Schoomaker, I want to make sure I understand some of your comments here today," said Rep. John McHugh, a New York Republican. "The secretary has given you the option of going to 30,000 additional troops, saying that he has waived under the emergency declaration provisions the statutory cap on end-strength. How long does the secretary intend to declare that emergency to waive that limit?
"Well, sir, I'm not sure we can see into the future as far as we need to.
There are about 120,000 Army soldiers in Iraq, a figure expected to drop to105,000 by May, according to the Pentagon. About 330,000 active and reserveArmy troops are deployed to 120 countries, Riggs said. Another 10,000 soldiers are in Afghanistan.
"Without question, the Washington media descended unfairly on Dean -- both because he was the front-runner and because he's leading a movement that's hostile to their insider culture," said Yale historian David Greenberg, author of the book "Nixon's Shadow." "They turned the 'scream' from an amusing if slightly weird sidelight into a four-day front-page story that may seriously damage his chances."
"The Washington press corps can do the most amazing imitation of a clique of snotty high school kids," wrote Texas columnist Molly Ivins, "and they were determined to find that Dean was not good enough for their clique from the beginning."
These two would-be world-class tough guys were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to show that they couldn't be pushed around. Their trusted underlings misled them with fanciful information on advanced Iraqi weapons programs that they credulously believed because it fit what they wanted to hear.
The two men both had copies of "Crime and Punishment" ? Condi Rice gave Mr. Bush the novel on his trip to Russia in 2002, and Saddam had Dostoyevsky down in the spider hole ? but neither absorbed its lesson: that you can't put yourself above rules just because you think you're superior.
Eight months after Attorney General John Ashcroft hailed the government's partial victory in a trial against an accused terror cell based in Detroit, the convictions of three men are in doubt amid growing turmoil within the offices of the federal prosecutor and the F.B.I. here.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, responding to unusual criticism from a three-star general that the Army is too small to meet its global commitments, has authorized an emergency increase of 30,000 troops, Congress was told yesterday.
The testimony appeared to surprise committee members.
"General Schoomaker, I want to make sure I understand some of your comments here today," said Rep. John McHugh, a New York Republican. "The secretary has given you the option of going to 30,000 additional troops, saying that he has waived under the emergency declaration provisions the statutory cap on end-strength. How long does the secretary intend to declare that emergency to waive that limit?
"Well, sir, I'm not sure we can see into the future as far as we need to.
There are about 120,000 Army soldiers in Iraq, a figure expected to drop to105,000 by May, according to the Pentagon. About 330,000 active and reserveArmy troops are deployed to 120 countries, Riggs said. Another 10,000 soldiers are in Afghanistan.
"Without question, the Washington media descended unfairly on Dean -- both because he was the front-runner and because he's leading a movement that's hostile to their insider culture," said Yale historian David Greenberg, author of the book "Nixon's Shadow." "They turned the 'scream' from an amusing if slightly weird sidelight into a four-day front-page story that may seriously damage his chances."
"The Washington press corps can do the most amazing imitation of a clique of snotty high school kids," wrote Texas columnist Molly Ivins, "and they were determined to find that Dean was not good enough for their clique from the beginning."
These two would-be world-class tough guys were willing to go to extraordinary lengths to show that they couldn't be pushed around. Their trusted underlings misled them with fanciful information on advanced Iraqi weapons programs that they credulously believed because it fit what they wanted to hear.
The two men both had copies of "Crime and Punishment" ? Condi Rice gave Mr. Bush the novel on his trip to Russia in 2002, and Saddam had Dostoyevsky down in the spider hole ? but neither absorbed its lesson: that you can't put yourself above rules just because you think you're superior.
It is time to set the record straight. The United States Congress never voted for the Iraq war. Rather, Congress voted for a resolution in October 2002 which unlawfully transferred to the president the decision-making power of whether to launch a first-strike invasion of Iraq. The United States Constitution vests the awesome power of deciding whether to send the nation into war solely in the United States Congress.
Claims that dozens of politicians, including some from prominent anti-war countries such as France, had taken bribes to support Saddam Hussein are to be investigated by the Iraqi authorities. The US-backed Iraqi Governing Council decided to check after an independent Baghdad newspaper, al-Mada, published a list which it said was based on oil ministry documents.
But the war over the war in Iraq isn't really about the facts, or 45 minutes, or what went wrong with the intelligence, or who believed what when. It's a titanic clash of beliefs, between those who think the war was generally a good thing, and those who think it was rash, or dangerous, or opportunistic, or colonialist, or downright evil. It is not, mainly, about Iraq at all. It is a giant referendum on George Bush and the United States, and on those who chose to stand with them. And of one thing you can be sure: That war won't end any time soon.
Lord Hutton has flung the whitewash around with a copiousness, a completeness, which must have surprised even the inhabitants of Downing Street.
We might direct his lordship?s attention to the way in which the very title of the document was changed. Originally it was entitled ?Iraq?s Programmes for Weapons of Mass Destruction?, which had the whiff of accuracy about it. Later it became ?Iraq?s Weapons of Mass Destruction?
And, similarly, at every juncture, Lord Hutton stuck the boot into the BBC and, while he was about it, Dr David Kelly. For Hutton, Kelly?s previous eminence and chance of a knighthood were destroyed by his regrettable decision to talk to journalists, and ? the implication is ? he got what he deserved. Which is a strong message to be sent out to any other public servants who feel appalled at the way politicians use or abuse their services.
A third said they were now less likely to vote for Blair, compared to three percent who said it was more likely.
John Howard said yesterday that the British report clearing the Blair Government of claims it "sexed up" its intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons also exonerated him. "Those who have accused us of taking Australia to war on a lie owe me as much an apology as those who made equal accusations against Tony Blair owe him an apology," the Prime Minister said.
Asked if he was concerned that intelligence warnings that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction appeared to have been incorrect, Mr Howard said: "It's still too early to make a final judgment. If you wait for proof beyond all reasonable doubt, as I said more than a year ago, you face a potential Pearl Harbour situation."
Claims that dozens of politicians, including some from prominent anti-war countries such as France, had taken bribes to support Saddam Hussein are to be investigated by the Iraqi authorities. The US-backed Iraqi Governing Council decided to check after an independent Baghdad newspaper, al-Mada, published a list which it said was based on oil ministry documents.
But the war over the war in Iraq isn't really about the facts, or 45 minutes, or what went wrong with the intelligence, or who believed what when. It's a titanic clash of beliefs, between those who think the war was generally a good thing, and those who think it was rash, or dangerous, or opportunistic, or colonialist, or downright evil. It is not, mainly, about Iraq at all. It is a giant referendum on George Bush and the United States, and on those who chose to stand with them. And of one thing you can be sure: That war won't end any time soon.
Lord Hutton has flung the whitewash around with a copiousness, a completeness, which must have surprised even the inhabitants of Downing Street.
We might direct his lordship?s attention to the way in which the very title of the document was changed. Originally it was entitled ?Iraq?s Programmes for Weapons of Mass Destruction?, which had the whiff of accuracy about it. Later it became ?Iraq?s Weapons of Mass Destruction?
And, similarly, at every juncture, Lord Hutton stuck the boot into the BBC and, while he was about it, Dr David Kelly. For Hutton, Kelly?s previous eminence and chance of a knighthood were destroyed by his regrettable decision to talk to journalists, and ? the implication is ? he got what he deserved. Which is a strong message to be sent out to any other public servants who feel appalled at the way politicians use or abuse their services.
A third said they were now less likely to vote for Blair, compared to three percent who said it was more likely.
John Howard said yesterday that the British report clearing the Blair Government of claims it "sexed up" its intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons also exonerated him. "Those who have accused us of taking Australia to war on a lie owe me as much an apology as those who made equal accusations against Tony Blair owe him an apology," the Prime Minister said.
Asked if he was concerned that intelligence warnings that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction appeared to have been incorrect, Mr Howard said: "It's still too early to make a final judgment. If you wait for proof beyond all reasonable doubt, as I said more than a year ago, you face a potential Pearl Harbour situation."
Our Prime Minister is the elected servant of the people and his behaviour reflects on all of us.
When the National Guard Review asked Bush during 2000 what he'd learned in the Guard, he responded, "[T]he responsibility to show up and do your job."
Why has the White House accepted intelligence reports to initiate an unprovoked, first-strike declaration of war, a declaration of war that is a first time occurrence in the entire history of our republic, yet failed to accept as valid these very same intelligence reports when it came time to take action to protect the American people from the possibility of the 9-11 attacks?
There is a serious lack of consistency with regard to when the Bush administration reacts to intelligence, irrespective of whether or not that intelligence is good or bad, and the way it cavalierly and selectively dismisses them.
O'Neill's revelations were decried as really no biggie - this was a mere extension of the Clinton administration's priorities. But then, why wasn't "global warming" a continuing policy as well? Why weren't environmental issues a continuation as well?
"I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used. We used 'grave and gathering' threat," spokesman Scott McClellan said.
But if US President George W. Bush never called Saddam's Iraq an "imminent threat" in so many words, he said it was "urgent".
Vice President Dick Cheney called it "mortal" and it was "immediate" to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Other senior Bush aides shied away from using the word "imminent" but agreed with that characterisation in exchanges with reporters.
On January 26, 2003, CNN television asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett "is he (Saddam) an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?"
"Well, of course he is," Bartlett replied.
When the National Guard Review asked Bush during 2000 what he'd learned in the Guard, he responded, "[T]he responsibility to show up and do your job."
Why has the White House accepted intelligence reports to initiate an unprovoked, first-strike declaration of war, a declaration of war that is a first time occurrence in the entire history of our republic, yet failed to accept as valid these very same intelligence reports when it came time to take action to protect the American people from the possibility of the 9-11 attacks?
There is a serious lack of consistency with regard to when the Bush administration reacts to intelligence, irrespective of whether or not that intelligence is good or bad, and the way it cavalierly and selectively dismisses them.
O'Neill's revelations were decried as really no biggie - this was a mere extension of the Clinton administration's priorities. But then, why wasn't "global warming" a continuing policy as well? Why weren't environmental issues a continuation as well?
"I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used. We used 'grave and gathering' threat," spokesman Scott McClellan said.
But if US President George W. Bush never called Saddam's Iraq an "imminent threat" in so many words, he said it was "urgent".
Vice President Dick Cheney called it "mortal" and it was "immediate" to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Other senior Bush aides shied away from using the word "imminent" but agreed with that characterisation in exchanges with reporters.
On January 26, 2003, CNN television asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett "is he (Saddam) an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?"
"Well, of course he is," Bartlett replied.
Thursday, January 29, 2004
I understand what the politician meant who said of the Texas House of Representatives, "If you think these guys are bad, you should see their constituents."
" What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?"
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1950
"If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.'
Samuel Johnson
"Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent."
James Madison
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
mred: i dunno if u saw the whole moveon/hitler fiasco? basically moveon.org ran a competition where people could submit antiwar/antibush 30sec vid/flash movies and then users could vote on their faves. they got a thousand submissions or sumthink and 2 of them made the bush/hitler analogy.
the shrill media made a big deal about it - presumably to discredit moveon - who coincidently were the lucky recipient of 2.5m of soros money. one somewhat interesting thing is that the attacks on moveon often didnt mention soros (altho there were soros articles that mentioned moveon). soros is obviously a target, but the opportunity to tar moveon with the soros brush seemed to often stay in the pocket. (this is a mere curiousity at the mo). the more interesting thing if one has a tendency to draw long bows, is that its a golden rule in pr that u dont use negative words in association with yuor brand - even to deny something. think nixon's "im not a crook". ad campaigns sh/would never say something like "some people say our product sux, but 100% of scientists prove them wrong" - the brain often doesnt absorb the literal message, but remembers the 'our product sux' bit. nothing new here, so far. but if one assumes for a minute that rove et al are really good at this sort of thing (or more accurately, just if they follow the basics), then one could easily assume that the attention lasered on the bush/hitler thing was actually a form of 'innoculation', rather than a 'legitimate' (ie as it appears) attack on moveon, or (indirectly) on soros.
does that idea/approach sound reasonable? heres the logic again: 1. shrillmedia went outta their way to highlight an issue which suggested a bush/hitler link 2. it was a non-story without the attention (the ads didnt make the 'cut' for the competition) 3. professional pr people know that every time a scribe says bush slash hitler, that the link is reinforced, even in a denial. 4. professional pr people also know that 'innoculating' an audience is the best way to introduce an idea to an audience.
the logic suggests that shrillmedia is actually promoting the bush/hitler link - bush as a strong leader (oops about the oratory ability), defending the homeland (didja ever hear that term before 43?) etc etc. thats one of the scariest ideas ive had in a long time.
of course, it could be that they ran the moveon story for other reasons, or cos theyre bad at executing (media) - but we've seen from the *increased* saddam/911 beliefs that they realy are very fukking good.
" What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?"
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience ... Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."
Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, 1950
"If we'd been born where they were born and taught what they were taught, we would believe what they believe.'
Samuel Johnson
"Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent."
James Madison
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
mred: i dunno if u saw the whole moveon/hitler fiasco? basically moveon.org ran a competition where people could submit antiwar/antibush 30sec vid/flash movies and then users could vote on their faves. they got a thousand submissions or sumthink and 2 of them made the bush/hitler analogy.
the shrill media made a big deal about it - presumably to discredit moveon - who coincidently were the lucky recipient of 2.5m of soros money. one somewhat interesting thing is that the attacks on moveon often didnt mention soros (altho there were soros articles that mentioned moveon). soros is obviously a target, but the opportunity to tar moveon with the soros brush seemed to often stay in the pocket. (this is a mere curiousity at the mo). the more interesting thing if one has a tendency to draw long bows, is that its a golden rule in pr that u dont use negative words in association with yuor brand - even to deny something. think nixon's "im not a crook". ad campaigns sh/would never say something like "some people say our product sux, but 100% of scientists prove them wrong" - the brain often doesnt absorb the literal message, but remembers the 'our product sux' bit. nothing new here, so far. but if one assumes for a minute that rove et al are really good at this sort of thing (or more accurately, just if they follow the basics), then one could easily assume that the attention lasered on the bush/hitler thing was actually a form of 'innoculation', rather than a 'legitimate' (ie as it appears) attack on moveon, or (indirectly) on soros.
does that idea/approach sound reasonable? heres the logic again: 1. shrillmedia went outta their way to highlight an issue which suggested a bush/hitler link 2. it was a non-story without the attention (the ads didnt make the 'cut' for the competition) 3. professional pr people know that every time a scribe says bush slash hitler, that the link is reinforced, even in a denial. 4. professional pr people also know that 'innoculating' an audience is the best way to introduce an idea to an audience.
the logic suggests that shrillmedia is actually promoting the bush/hitler link - bush as a strong leader (oops about the oratory ability), defending the homeland (didja ever hear that term before 43?) etc etc. thats one of the scariest ideas ive had in a long time.
of course, it could be that they ran the moveon story for other reasons, or cos theyre bad at executing (media) - but we've seen from the *increased* saddam/911 beliefs that they realy are very fukking good.
The largest contributor to the AEI is Irving Moskowitz, a bingo hall operator from Florida. He is a militant supporter of the Jewish settlement movement in Israel and the occupied territories. Going down the list of Bush Administration foreign policy gurus, one encounters dozens of graduates of the AEI, a pro-Israeli lobby group that camouflages itself in the garb of a pseudo-academic ?research? establishment. In fact, the only thing they research at the AEI is the best marketing strategies for selling Sharon?s real estate fantasies with a ?made in America? label.
After placing so many of their operatives in such sensitive second tier positions; the next step for this bingo hall subsidized cabal was to project their presence on the national stage. For this task, they recruited mass media operatives like William Safire, who boasts about writing Sharon?s speeches and Charles Krauthammer, a designated OSP leaker. Some of the other neo-con media personalities are Judith ?WMD? Miller, Wolf ?War Room? Blitzer, Aaron ?arson? Brown, Andrea Mitchell (a centerfold on AEI?s web site) and Ted Koppel, a family friend of Netenyahu. By far, the most formidable part of their media arsenal is Rupert Murdoch?s neo-con gang at FOX. The Weekly Standard and the New York POST.
While projecting themselves as a political movement, the neo-cons went shopping for a ?real? constituency. They found willing allies among the millions of Americans on the Christian Right who believe Armageddon is around the corner. All it took to convince them was the promise that the neo-con agenda would speed up the end of times.
Veteran New York money manager Arnold Schmeidler - who did not invest in dot.com IPOs - warns, "We are in a period unlike anything since the 1930s when the world is confronting deflationary forces."
Schmeidler concludes, "The single greatest force for deflation is when you have open trade between nations that have the ability to import the most efficient manufacturing expertise into a low-wage-base society, and so can produce products of the same quality as the high wage economy. The price pressure on the product allows consumers to get more for their money and they benefit. But it is disinflationary, if not deflationary."
Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans.
One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment.
mred - btw, the hutton thing looks like a murdoch attack on the beeb license fee.
After placing so many of their operatives in such sensitive second tier positions; the next step for this bingo hall subsidized cabal was to project their presence on the national stage. For this task, they recruited mass media operatives like William Safire, who boasts about writing Sharon?s speeches and Charles Krauthammer, a designated OSP leaker. Some of the other neo-con media personalities are Judith ?WMD? Miller, Wolf ?War Room? Blitzer, Aaron ?arson? Brown, Andrea Mitchell (a centerfold on AEI?s web site) and Ted Koppel, a family friend of Netenyahu. By far, the most formidable part of their media arsenal is Rupert Murdoch?s neo-con gang at FOX. The Weekly Standard and the New York POST.
While projecting themselves as a political movement, the neo-cons went shopping for a ?real? constituency. They found willing allies among the millions of Americans on the Christian Right who believe Armageddon is around the corner. All it took to convince them was the promise that the neo-con agenda would speed up the end of times.
Veteran New York money manager Arnold Schmeidler - who did not invest in dot.com IPOs - warns, "We are in a period unlike anything since the 1930s when the world is confronting deflationary forces."
Schmeidler concludes, "The single greatest force for deflation is when you have open trade between nations that have the ability to import the most efficient manufacturing expertise into a low-wage-base society, and so can produce products of the same quality as the high wage economy. The price pressure on the product allows consumers to get more for their money and they benefit. But it is disinflationary, if not deflationary."
Almost half of the US Treasury bonds are now owned in Asia. So China is financing Bush's bold economic experiment: running two or more wars simultaneously with a huge budget and trade deficit, and equally huge tax handouts for the richest Americans.
One has to question the long-term economic rationale for China of putting its long-term assets into very low-interest bonds in a currency that has already dropped recently by a third - and is going to drop even more. It certainly makes strategic sense: if push came to shove over, for example, the Taiwan Strait, all Beijing has to do is to mention the possibility of a sell order going down the wires. It would devastate the US economy more than any nuclear strike the Chinese could manage at the moment.
mred - btw, the hutton thing looks like a murdoch attack on the beeb license fee.
As specialist medical professionals, we do not consider the evidence given at the Hutton inquiry has demonstrated that Dr David Kelly committed suicide.
Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
Although previous news accounts have reported Douglas was thrown from the car and broke his neck, those details were not in the report. The speed of Laura Bush's car was illegible on the report.
mred - we can add this to the 500 soldiers in iraq, and the 20k or wotever dead iraqis, plus the executed texans, and the dead babysitter, and the 'suicide' of the woman gwb raped.
The UN has passed more than 350 Resolutions against Israel, though it failed on some 850 more, vetoed by the USA.
By the time I released to the press in 1971 what became known as the Pentagon Papers - 7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating that virtually everything four American presidents had told the public about our involvement in Vietnam was false - I had known that pattern as an insider for years, and I knew that a fifth president, Richard Nixon, was following in their footsteps.
Cheney's remarks about the Weekly Standard article, particularly in light of the Pentagon's firm and public denunciation, angered former intelligence experts. "I just can't find words to describe how horrible it is," says Cannistraro. "For the vice president to undercut the head of intelligence at the Pentagon is unparalleled. It just illustrates the peculiar worldview Cheney has and how distorted it is. And it shows there's a real contempt for the professional intelligence community."
"The problem with raw intelligence is you can cherry-pick it," he says. "It's like having the Bible in your hand; you can pick and choose individual passages to prove almost any point."
Cannistraro is stunned that Feith's office, out to prove linkage between Saddam and bin Laden, relied on raw intelligence summaries and not evaluated intelligence. "It's just amazing, because it's the antithesis of the intelligence process," he said.
President Bush and Republican Congressional leaders, who have backed both huge tax cuts and huge spending increases with little regard for the consequences, will be tempted to disregard the agency's report, as they have brushed off similar credible warnings. That is one reason Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, must insert himself into the debate. The Fed chairman is said to be extremely worried about Mr. Bush's deficits, and his ostensible independence is no excuse for remaining silent about one of the biggest looming threats to the American economy.
Cheney continued to insist last week that Iraq had been trying to make weapons of mass destruction, apparently oblivious to the findings of the administration's own chief weapons inspector that Iraq had possessed only rudimentary capabilities and unrealized intentions. The vice president's myopia suggests a breathtaking unwillingness to accept a reality that conflicts with the administration's preconceived notions. This kind of rigid thinking helped propel us into an invasion without broad international support and, if Mr. Cheney is as influential as many say, could propel us into further misadventures down the road.
Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense, made headlines last year suggesting that Allah is not "a real God" and that Muslims worship an idol. Last month in Israel, Pat Robertson said that today's world conflicts concern "whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is supreme."
Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered the amount ingested of Co-Proxamol insufficient to have caused death. Allan could not show that Dr Kelly had ingested the 29 tablets said to be missing from the packets found. Only a fifth of one tablet was found in his stomach. Allan conceded that the blood level of each of the drug's two components was less than a third of what would normally be found in a fatal overdose.
Although previous news accounts have reported Douglas was thrown from the car and broke his neck, those details were not in the report. The speed of Laura Bush's car was illegible on the report.
mred - we can add this to the 500 soldiers in iraq, and the 20k or wotever dead iraqis, plus the executed texans, and the dead babysitter, and the 'suicide' of the woman gwb raped.
The UN has passed more than 350 Resolutions against Israel, though it failed on some 850 more, vetoed by the USA.
By the time I released to the press in 1971 what became known as the Pentagon Papers - 7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating that virtually everything four American presidents had told the public about our involvement in Vietnam was false - I had known that pattern as an insider for years, and I knew that a fifth president, Richard Nixon, was following in their footsteps.
Cheney's remarks about the Weekly Standard article, particularly in light of the Pentagon's firm and public denunciation, angered former intelligence experts. "I just can't find words to describe how horrible it is," says Cannistraro. "For the vice president to undercut the head of intelligence at the Pentagon is unparalleled. It just illustrates the peculiar worldview Cheney has and how distorted it is. And it shows there's a real contempt for the professional intelligence community."
"The problem with raw intelligence is you can cherry-pick it," he says. "It's like having the Bible in your hand; you can pick and choose individual passages to prove almost any point."
Cannistraro is stunned that Feith's office, out to prove linkage between Saddam and bin Laden, relied on raw intelligence summaries and not evaluated intelligence. "It's just amazing, because it's the antithesis of the intelligence process," he said.
President Bush and Republican Congressional leaders, who have backed both huge tax cuts and huge spending increases with little regard for the consequences, will be tempted to disregard the agency's report, as they have brushed off similar credible warnings. That is one reason Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, must insert himself into the debate. The Fed chairman is said to be extremely worried about Mr. Bush's deficits, and his ostensible independence is no excuse for remaining silent about one of the biggest looming threats to the American economy.
Cheney continued to insist last week that Iraq had been trying to make weapons of mass destruction, apparently oblivious to the findings of the administration's own chief weapons inspector that Iraq had possessed only rudimentary capabilities and unrealized intentions. The vice president's myopia suggests a breathtaking unwillingness to accept a reality that conflicts with the administration's preconceived notions. This kind of rigid thinking helped propel us into an invasion without broad international support and, if Mr. Cheney is as influential as many say, could propel us into further misadventures down the road.
Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense, made headlines last year suggesting that Allah is not "a real God" and that Muslims worship an idol. Last month in Israel, Pat Robertson said that today's world conflicts concern "whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca known as Allah, is supreme, or whether the Judeo-Christian Jehovah, God of the Bible, is supreme."
The "womb of history" metaphor used so vigorously by Marx tends to suggest that a little fascism is like a little pregnancy.
For others, perhaps, the judgment of inevitability heightens whatever masochistic pleasure people may get from premonitions of doom, or provides justification for personal escapism from any form of political activism or commitment.
(1980):Indeed the possible convergence of neofascist state-supported capitalism and high-technology state socialism tends to give the impression that there are few alternatives to some form of repressive collectivism as the profile of man's fate by the end of this century.
I have already suggested how Skinnerian reinforcements could be used to help economize on terror and develop what Stephen Spender once called "fascism without tears."
When a few of my students argued a decade ago that fascism would shake Americans from torpor and prepare the way for a more humanist society, I countered one irrationality with another by arguing that the "improbability of any effective internal resistance" to neofascism would doom all hopes of a humanist future.
I drew an exaggerated parallel with the past by pointing out that after all serious internal resistance had been liquidated by the German, Japanese, and Italian fascists, "the only effective anti-fascism was defeat by external powers." Since the "only war that could defeat a neofascist America would be a nuclear war, a holocaust from which no anti-fascist victors would emerge," I concluded with the prophecy: "Once neofascism arrives, the only choice would be fascist or dead." 6
William H. Hastie: "Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can easily be lost, but is never fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle."
"Sure, we'll have fascism, but it will come disguised as Americanism." This famous statement has been attributed in many forms to Senator Huey P. Long, the Louisiana populist with an affinity for the demagogues of classic European fascism. If he were alive today, I am positive he would add the words "and democracy."
Mahatma Ghandhi
"For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India . . . My patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill-will."
George Washington, Farewell Address
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
Colonel James A. Donovan identifies the dangerous patriot: "the one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism . . . which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory."
another pungent description of false patriots:
"People who wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim the sanctity of the nation are usually racists, contemptuous of the poor and dedicated to keeping the community of 'ins' small and pure of blood, spirit and mind."
In a (virtually unimaginable) fair trial for Saddam, a defence attorney could quite rightly call to the stand Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush I and other high officials who provided significant support for the dictator, even through his worst atrocities.
A fair trial would at least accept the elementary moral principle of universality: The accusers and the accused must be subject to the same standards.
For others, perhaps, the judgment of inevitability heightens whatever masochistic pleasure people may get from premonitions of doom, or provides justification for personal escapism from any form of political activism or commitment.
(1980):Indeed the possible convergence of neofascist state-supported capitalism and high-technology state socialism tends to give the impression that there are few alternatives to some form of repressive collectivism as the profile of man's fate by the end of this century.
I have already suggested how Skinnerian reinforcements could be used to help economize on terror and develop what Stephen Spender once called "fascism without tears."
When a few of my students argued a decade ago that fascism would shake Americans from torpor and prepare the way for a more humanist society, I countered one irrationality with another by arguing that the "improbability of any effective internal resistance" to neofascism would doom all hopes of a humanist future.
I drew an exaggerated parallel with the past by pointing out that after all serious internal resistance had been liquidated by the German, Japanese, and Italian fascists, "the only effective anti-fascism was defeat by external powers." Since the "only war that could defeat a neofascist America would be a nuclear war, a holocaust from which no anti-fascist victors would emerge," I concluded with the prophecy: "Once neofascism arrives, the only choice would be fascist or dead." 6
William H. Hastie: "Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming rather than being. It can easily be lost, but is never fully won. Its essence is eternal struggle."
"Sure, we'll have fascism, but it will come disguised as Americanism." This famous statement has been attributed in many forms to Senator Huey P. Long, the Louisiana populist with an affinity for the demagogues of classic European fascism. If he were alive today, I am positive he would add the words "and democracy."
Mahatma Ghandhi
"For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India . . . My patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill-will."
George Washington, Farewell Address
"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."
Colonel James A. Donovan identifies the dangerous patriot: "the one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism . . . which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory."
another pungent description of false patriots:
"People who wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim the sanctity of the nation are usually racists, contemptuous of the poor and dedicated to keeping the community of 'ins' small and pure of blood, spirit and mind."
In a (virtually unimaginable) fair trial for Saddam, a defence attorney could quite rightly call to the stand Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush I and other high officials who provided significant support for the dictator, even through his worst atrocities.
A fair trial would at least accept the elementary moral principle of universality: The accusers and the accused must be subject to the same standards.
The Bush administration, deeply concerned about recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan , is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden 's Al Qaeda network, military sources said.
An offensive into Pakistan to pursue Al Qaeda would be in keeping with President Bush 's vow to strike wherever and whenever the United States feels threatened and to pursue terrorist elements to the end.
Musharraf's vulnerability is of deep concern to U.S. officials. If he were killed, Bush administration officials say, it is unlikely that any successor would be as willing to work toward U.S. goals to eliminate Islamic extremists.
Pentagon and administration officials, buoyed by that success, believe a similar determined effort could work in Pakistan and lead to the capture or killing of bin Laden, said sources familiar with the planning.
Thousands of U.S. forces would be involved, as well as Pakistani troops, planners said. Some of the 10,600 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan would be shifted to the border region as part of regular troop movements; some would be deployed within Pakistan.
"Before we were constrained by the border. Musharraf did not want that. Now we are told we're going into Pakistan with Musharraf's help," a well-placed military source said.
"We don't have enough forces but we can rely on proxy forces in that area," said a military source, referring to Pakistani troops. "This is designed to go after the Taliban and everybody connected with it."
WASHINGTON - Aiming to increase Internet security, the government is now offering Americans free cyber alerts and computer advice from the Homeland Security Department.Yoran said the government will aggressively warn consumers about vulnerabilities, in some cases revealing threats "above and beyond what specific commercial vendors may not wish to disclose."
An offensive into Pakistan to pursue Al Qaeda would be in keeping with President Bush 's vow to strike wherever and whenever the United States feels threatened and to pursue terrorist elements to the end.
Musharraf's vulnerability is of deep concern to U.S. officials. If he were killed, Bush administration officials say, it is unlikely that any successor would be as willing to work toward U.S. goals to eliminate Islamic extremists.
Pentagon and administration officials, buoyed by that success, believe a similar determined effort could work in Pakistan and lead to the capture or killing of bin Laden, said sources familiar with the planning.
Thousands of U.S. forces would be involved, as well as Pakistani troops, planners said. Some of the 10,600 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan would be shifted to the border region as part of regular troop movements; some would be deployed within Pakistan.
"Before we were constrained by the border. Musharraf did not want that. Now we are told we're going into Pakistan with Musharraf's help," a well-placed military source said.
"We don't have enough forces but we can rely on proxy forces in that area," said a military source, referring to Pakistani troops. "This is designed to go after the Taliban and everybody connected with it."
WASHINGTON - Aiming to increase Internet security, the government is now offering Americans free cyber alerts and computer advice from the Homeland Security Department.Yoran said the government will aggressively warn consumers about vulnerabilities, in some cases revealing threats "above and beyond what specific commercial vendors may not wish to disclose."
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
The U.S. has urged Russia to accelerate its removal of two former Soviet military bases in Georgia, but Russia now says it will require at least 11 years to dismantle them. Powell told Russian reporters that the U.S. is ready to help pay for closing the bases, an offer some Russians see as interference.
Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?
Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to Empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value--oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal--must do as they're told or become military targets.
It's important to understand that the corporate media don't just support the neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a moral position they have chosen to take; it's structural. It's intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media work.
We all know the sordid story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed a power purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60 percent of India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development for about 500 million people!
Think about it: If we had been collecting millions of fingerprints and photos before Sept. 11, 2001, would that attack have been foiled? Probably not. We already had all sorts of specific and relevant information about the 9/11 hijackers; we had the raw data at our fingertips; we just didn't analyze it well.
Former Vice President Al Gore, in making this very point, recently listed all of the information we had in hand, weeks before the attacks, about the 9/11 hijackers:
? In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon. They bought the tickets under their real names -- names that were also on a State Department/INS watch list (spelled correctly, and not at all Welsh-sounding).
? The CIA and FBI were looking for Alhamzi and Al-Midhar as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a "terrorist meeting" in Malaysia. The whole time, they were in San Diego -- where they'd rented an apartment under their own names and were listed in the phone book.
? Using the Internet to search for common addresses, analysts would have discovered that other hijackers shared an address with Alhamzi and Al-Midhar -- including Mohamed Atta (who was on American Airlines flight 11, which flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (on United flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower).
? Similar searches of common addresses, phone numbers and even, believe it or not, frequent flier numbers -- coupled with an INS watch list of expired visas -- would have led to all of the other hijackers, including those who boarded United flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
The Bush Administration wants to widen the definition of "professional" so that it denies overtime pay not just to those with four-year degrees -- but also those who have accumulated work experience "equivalent" to college.
"I think it should be your job to tell our military men and women in Iraq that when they come home, their service of their country will be used as a way to cut their overtime pay."
This is a wonky one, but worth watching. You've got credible, documented allegations that the attorney general committed a federal crime -- and then conspired to cover it up.
"State of the World 2004" is the latest in an annual study put out by the Worldwatch Institute. The authors tell us that in the past 30-odd years, refrigerators have gotten 10 percent bigger, new American homes have gotten 38 percent bigger, and those homes are more likely than ever to house multiple refrigerators.
Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?
Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to Empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value--oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal--must do as they're told or become military targets.
It's important to understand that the corporate media don't just support the neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a moral position they have chosen to take; it's structural. It's intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media work.
We all know the sordid story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed a power purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60 percent of India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development for about 500 million people!
Think about it: If we had been collecting millions of fingerprints and photos before Sept. 11, 2001, would that attack have been foiled? Probably not. We already had all sorts of specific and relevant information about the 9/11 hijackers; we had the raw data at our fingertips; we just didn't analyze it well.
Former Vice President Al Gore, in making this very point, recently listed all of the information we had in hand, weeks before the attacks, about the 9/11 hijackers:
? In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon. They bought the tickets under their real names -- names that were also on a State Department/INS watch list (spelled correctly, and not at all Welsh-sounding).
? The CIA and FBI were looking for Alhamzi and Al-Midhar as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a "terrorist meeting" in Malaysia. The whole time, they were in San Diego -- where they'd rented an apartment under their own names and were listed in the phone book.
? Using the Internet to search for common addresses, analysts would have discovered that other hijackers shared an address with Alhamzi and Al-Midhar -- including Mohamed Atta (who was on American Airlines flight 11, which flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (on United flight 175, which crashed into the South Tower).
? Similar searches of common addresses, phone numbers and even, believe it or not, frequent flier numbers -- coupled with an INS watch list of expired visas -- would have led to all of the other hijackers, including those who boarded United flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania.
The Bush Administration wants to widen the definition of "professional" so that it denies overtime pay not just to those with four-year degrees -- but also those who have accumulated work experience "equivalent" to college.
"I think it should be your job to tell our military men and women in Iraq that when they come home, their service of their country will be used as a way to cut their overtime pay."
This is a wonky one, but worth watching. You've got credible, documented allegations that the attorney general committed a federal crime -- and then conspired to cover it up.
"State of the World 2004" is the latest in an annual study put out by the Worldwatch Institute. The authors tell us that in the past 30-odd years, refrigerators have gotten 10 percent bigger, new American homes have gotten 38 percent bigger, and those homes are more likely than ever to house multiple refrigerators.
It's true that Dean yelled at his Monday night rally in Iowa. And so what? Basically, at a pep rally, he yelled like a football coach. This is described as being "unpresidential." But says who? Besides, what's the definition of 'presidential?' Isn't giving insulting nicknames to world leaders unpresidential? Isn't sending hundreds of American soldiers to die for uncertain and misrepresented ends in Iraq unpresidential?or worth considering as such? Isn't having an incredibly poor grasp of essential world facts and an aversion to detail and active decision making unpresidential?
Once the howl of the pack gets loud enough, questioning the seriousness of Dean's so-called 'problems' becomes tantamount to downplaying allegations against Michael Jackson.
And overnight, if you combine voting and non-voting shares, Liberty has become the largest holder of equity in News Corp.
Maybe he was motivated by more mundane concerns than disrupting the Murdoch succession. For one, he seems to have got a great deal on the voting shares, buying them at $29 each, when, at close of play on Wednesday, they were valued at $38 apiece. And there is another possible explanation. That by increasing his weight at News Corp, he will be able to ensure that DirecTV has little choice but to carry his various content-producing properties such as QVC and CourtTV.
Some analysts were speculating that Mr Malone might be positioning himself for the moment when the holding is split up among all these heirs - and control of the company really is up for grabs.
Once the howl of the pack gets loud enough, questioning the seriousness of Dean's so-called 'problems' becomes tantamount to downplaying allegations against Michael Jackson.
And overnight, if you combine voting and non-voting shares, Liberty has become the largest holder of equity in News Corp.
Maybe he was motivated by more mundane concerns than disrupting the Murdoch succession. For one, he seems to have got a great deal on the voting shares, buying them at $29 each, when, at close of play on Wednesday, they were valued at $38 apiece. And there is another possible explanation. That by increasing his weight at News Corp, he will be able to ensure that DirecTV has little choice but to carry his various content-producing properties such as QVC and CourtTV.
Some analysts were speculating that Mr Malone might be positioning himself for the moment when the holding is split up among all these heirs - and control of the company really is up for grabs.
"You can't have 4% to 5% (GDP ) growth with real interest rates so low, because eventually if you don't do something about rates then you'll have to catch up by reacting to inflation," Ryding said last week.
"Russian Political power is not yet fully tethered to law," Mr Powell wrote. "Key aspects of civil society - free media and political party development, for example - have not yet sustained an independent presence."
At best ? to borrow the already classic language of the State of the Union address ? his administration is engaged in deficit reduction-related program activities.
According to cleverly misleading reports from the Heritage Foundation and other like-minded sources, the deficit is growing because Mr. Bush isn't sufficiently conservative: he's allowing runaway growth in domestic spending. This myth is intended to divert attention from the real culprit: sharply reduced tax collections, mainly from corporations and the wealthy.
? ?The massive Harvard University Civil Rights Project study released last year found that it was 50% more likely for a black vote to be ?spoiled? than a white vote. In Florida, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that a black vote was nearly 10 times as likely as a white vote to be rejected.?-- Greg Palast and Ina Howard, YES! Magazine,8/22/03
? ?Two Republican dominated corporations, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Diebold Voting Systems, now control 80% of the vote count in the United States?--Lynn Landes, Portland Independent Media Center, 8/24/03
? ?People complain that they can't find an honest car mechanic and that their lawyer is ripping them off and their butcher has his thumb on the scale, but they somehow put their faith in politicians, who are the biggest crooks in America, thinking 'Oh no, these big Washington power brokers would never rig an election.??-- Jim Collier, the author of Votescam, on WXYT's Mark Scott show
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke state law last year when he used a loophole to loan his campaign committee $4 million, a move that prevented voters from knowing before Election Day who would end up paying the governor's campaign bills, a judge ruled late Monday.
Trosper said one theory is that Spirit's random-access memory, or RAM, has too little capacity to manage the file buildup in the flash memory.
"Russian Political power is not yet fully tethered to law," Mr Powell wrote. "Key aspects of civil society - free media and political party development, for example - have not yet sustained an independent presence."
At best ? to borrow the already classic language of the State of the Union address ? his administration is engaged in deficit reduction-related program activities.
According to cleverly misleading reports from the Heritage Foundation and other like-minded sources, the deficit is growing because Mr. Bush isn't sufficiently conservative: he's allowing runaway growth in domestic spending. This myth is intended to divert attention from the real culprit: sharply reduced tax collections, mainly from corporations and the wealthy.
? ?The massive Harvard University Civil Rights Project study released last year found that it was 50% more likely for a black vote to be ?spoiled? than a white vote. In Florida, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found that a black vote was nearly 10 times as likely as a white vote to be rejected.?-- Greg Palast and Ina Howard, YES! Magazine,8/22/03
? ?Two Republican dominated corporations, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), and Diebold Voting Systems, now control 80% of the vote count in the United States?--Lynn Landes, Portland Independent Media Center, 8/24/03
? ?People complain that they can't find an honest car mechanic and that their lawyer is ripping them off and their butcher has his thumb on the scale, but they somehow put their faith in politicians, who are the biggest crooks in America, thinking 'Oh no, these big Washington power brokers would never rig an election.??-- Jim Collier, the author of Votescam, on WXYT's Mark Scott show
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger broke state law last year when he used a loophole to loan his campaign committee $4 million, a move that prevented voters from knowing before Election Day who would end up paying the governor's campaign bills, a judge ruled late Monday.
Trosper said one theory is that Spirit's random-access memory, or RAM, has too little capacity to manage the file buildup in the flash memory.
2. Kay's first story was that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Immediately, in a story in the Telegraph (Conrad Black, temporary prop.), it turns out that "part of Saddam Hussein's secret weapons programme was hidden in Syria." Kay said: "We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons." The Bush bootlickers and Zionists immediately jumped on this to claim that the danger of Syria was the real story ('Let's bomb Syria'). Almost immediately, Kay went back on this story, saving there was no conclusive evidence that weapons had been moved to Syria, but the damage to the truth had been done.
4. The argument, such as it is (and it is close to incoherent), is that since the scientists fooled Saddam, it is okay for the Bush Administration to be fooled. Of course, there is not one shred of evidence for this theory
There is a consistent pattern in all the neocon excuses for the absence of weapons of mass destruction, in that in each case they use a particularly egregious example of Bush Administration wrongdoing in order to attempt to explain themselves. It is never their fault, but Syria's fault, Clinton's fault, the CIA's fault, or even Saddam's fault for not turning over the information the Bush Administration stole from the U. N.
The Bush people are running scared, and that's dangerous, because it turns their attention to what saved them during this presidential term -- 9/11. They're capable of the Mother of all October Surprises -- bombing Iranian and/or North Korean reactors a la Osirik? invading Venezuela/Colombia/Bolivia in desperate defense against "terrorism in our own backyard"?
kay said U.S. intelligence services owe President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had wmd.
"I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people," he said.
"There is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war -- satellite photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved," Kay said.
"We have 24 major U.S. companies listed in the report who gave very substantial support especially to the biological weapons program but also to the missile and nuclear weapons program," Zumach said. "Pretty much everything was illegal in the case of nuclear and biological weapons. Every form of cooperation and supplies was outlawed in the 1970s."
The Associated Press reported, Bush announced that his request for federal spending in the 2005 budget year, which he is due to submit to Congress next month, would propose increasing funding for homeland security across all government agencies by 9.7 percent.
"We're misusing our influence," McNamara said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."
But to read Mr. McNamara's 1995 list today (see sidebar) is to read an uncanny analysis of the missteps of the Iraq campaign. He told me that this list has come to haunt him as he watches the Mesopotamian misadventure unfold.
"And if we can't persuade other nations with comparable values and comparable interests of the merit of our course, we should reconsider the course, and very likely change it. And if we'd followed that rule, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam, because there wasn't one single major ally, not France or Britain or Germany or Japan, that agreed with our course or stood beside us there. And we wouldn't be in Iraq."
4. The argument, such as it is (and it is close to incoherent), is that since the scientists fooled Saddam, it is okay for the Bush Administration to be fooled. Of course, there is not one shred of evidence for this theory
There is a consistent pattern in all the neocon excuses for the absence of weapons of mass destruction, in that in each case they use a particularly egregious example of Bush Administration wrongdoing in order to attempt to explain themselves. It is never their fault, but Syria's fault, Clinton's fault, the CIA's fault, or even Saddam's fault for not turning over the information the Bush Administration stole from the U. N.
The Bush people are running scared, and that's dangerous, because it turns their attention to what saved them during this presidential term -- 9/11. They're capable of the Mother of all October Surprises -- bombing Iranian and/or North Korean reactors a la Osirik? invading Venezuela/Colombia/Bolivia in desperate defense against "terrorism in our own backyard"?
kay said U.S. intelligence services owe President Bush an explanation for having concluded that Iraq had wmd.
"I actually think the intelligence community owes the president rather than the president owing the American people," he said.
"There is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war -- satellite photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don't know what was moved," Kay said.
"We have 24 major U.S. companies listed in the report who gave very substantial support especially to the biological weapons program but also to the missile and nuclear weapons program," Zumach said. "Pretty much everything was illegal in the case of nuclear and biological weapons. Every form of cooperation and supplies was outlawed in the 1970s."
The Associated Press reported, Bush announced that his request for federal spending in the 2005 budget year, which he is due to submit to Congress next month, would propose increasing funding for homeland security across all government agencies by 9.7 percent.
"We're misusing our influence," McNamara said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."
But to read Mr. McNamara's 1995 list today (see sidebar) is to read an uncanny analysis of the missteps of the Iraq campaign. He told me that this list has come to haunt him as he watches the Mesopotamian misadventure unfold.
"And if we can't persuade other nations with comparable values and comparable interests of the merit of our course, we should reconsider the course, and very likely change it. And if we'd followed that rule, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam, because there wasn't one single major ally, not France or Britain or Germany or Japan, that agreed with our course or stood beside us there. And we wouldn't be in Iraq."
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq , the U.S.-led war was justified because it eliminated the threat that Saddam Hussein might again resort to "evil chemistry and evil biology," Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) said Monday.
"The engine of the global economy, the U.S., is running not on gas but on fumes, on little more than tax cuts and borrowing," Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen S. Roach warned last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In the first 10 months of 2003, wine imports from France dipped by 703,000 cases, or 7 percent, according to the Wine Institute in San Francisco. California's wine exports to France, although still relatively limited, rose 78 percent in that period, to 898,000 cases.
In the November issue of Fortune, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren E. Buffett confessed that he had bet against the dollar for the first time in his life by purchasing foreign currencies.
We say we're so upset about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism--yet we stand by while rich Saudis set up Wahhabi madrassahs all over the Muslim world and invite poor parents to send their kids for free. These youngsters could be learning astronomy instead of memorizing the Koran. We could put our Mars money where our mouth is.
Some evangelical Christian and "family values" pressure groups, plus Senator Trent Lott, are urging Frist to use the "nuclear option" to abolish judicial filibusters. One such option involves having whichever GOP senator is presiding over the Senate at the time rule a filibuster against a nominee out of order and then rule that his position needs only fifty-one votes to be sustained, not the sixty needed to end debate. Some scholars, however, believe the "nuclear option" is unconstitutional and would end up in the courts. Democrats say it will shut down the Senate if used.
Last year Japan's central bank shelled out $187bn propping up the sagging dollar. The pace is quickening. Earlier this month it spent $38bn in one week alone.
Just to add a little icing to the cake, all those dollars that Japan is buying on the foreign exchange market are being spent on US government bonds - keeping US interest rates down and helping to finance Mr Bush's spending plans.
As a junior German economics minister noted earlier this week, an exchange rate of $1.25 is cause for concern, anything above $1.30 means real problems. France's trade minister, Fran?ois Loos, is already complaining that French firms are having to slash their margins to offset the impact of the greenback's fall from grace. "It is obvious this situation cannot last forever."
As long as China refuses to abandon the yuan's peg against the greenback and allow it to appreciate, Japan has little choice but to keep the lid on the yen, leaving the euro badly exposed.
A Church of England boarding school for girls has protested to the American ambassador after five members of its choir were branded potential illegal immigrants and banned from entering the US. "The sad comment made by the girls was, 'It's just because we are Chinese',"
Vice President Cheney, administration man of mystery, is suddenly everywhere.
Mary Matalin, Cheney's former counselor, said he is not raising his profile because of the campaign but is "just doing what he does best, which is presenting the long view and the rationale of any given policy."
It quoted FBI (news - web sites) director Robert Mueller as testifying that "(e)ach of the hijackers ... came easily and lawfully from abroad" and CIA (news - web sites) chief George Tenet as describing 17 of the 19 hijackers as "clean," and said: "We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to re-evaluate those statements."
"The engine of the global economy, the U.S., is running not on gas but on fumes, on little more than tax cuts and borrowing," Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen S. Roach warned last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In the first 10 months of 2003, wine imports from France dipped by 703,000 cases, or 7 percent, according to the Wine Institute in San Francisco. California's wine exports to France, although still relatively limited, rose 78 percent in that period, to 898,000 cases.
In the November issue of Fortune, Berkshire Hathaway chief executive Warren E. Buffett confessed that he had bet against the dollar for the first time in his life by purchasing foreign currencies.
We say we're so upset about the spread of Islamic fundamentalism--yet we stand by while rich Saudis set up Wahhabi madrassahs all over the Muslim world and invite poor parents to send their kids for free. These youngsters could be learning astronomy instead of memorizing the Koran. We could put our Mars money where our mouth is.
Some evangelical Christian and "family values" pressure groups, plus Senator Trent Lott, are urging Frist to use the "nuclear option" to abolish judicial filibusters. One such option involves having whichever GOP senator is presiding over the Senate at the time rule a filibuster against a nominee out of order and then rule that his position needs only fifty-one votes to be sustained, not the sixty needed to end debate. Some scholars, however, believe the "nuclear option" is unconstitutional and would end up in the courts. Democrats say it will shut down the Senate if used.
Last year Japan's central bank shelled out $187bn propping up the sagging dollar. The pace is quickening. Earlier this month it spent $38bn in one week alone.
Just to add a little icing to the cake, all those dollars that Japan is buying on the foreign exchange market are being spent on US government bonds - keeping US interest rates down and helping to finance Mr Bush's spending plans.
As a junior German economics minister noted earlier this week, an exchange rate of $1.25 is cause for concern, anything above $1.30 means real problems. France's trade minister, Fran?ois Loos, is already complaining that French firms are having to slash their margins to offset the impact of the greenback's fall from grace. "It is obvious this situation cannot last forever."
As long as China refuses to abandon the yuan's peg against the greenback and allow it to appreciate, Japan has little choice but to keep the lid on the yen, leaving the euro badly exposed.
A Church of England boarding school for girls has protested to the American ambassador after five members of its choir were branded potential illegal immigrants and banned from entering the US. "The sad comment made by the girls was, 'It's just because we are Chinese',"
Vice President Cheney, administration man of mystery, is suddenly everywhere.
Mary Matalin, Cheney's former counselor, said he is not raising his profile because of the campaign but is "just doing what he does best, which is presenting the long view and the rationale of any given policy."
It quoted FBI (news - web sites) director Robert Mueller as testifying that "(e)ach of the hijackers ... came easily and lawfully from abroad" and CIA (news - web sites) chief George Tenet as describing 17 of the 19 hijackers as "clean," and said: "We believe the information we have provided today gives the commission the opportunity to re-evaluate those statements."
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer today said he did not accept chief US weapons inspector David Kay's opinion that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The structure of the transaction is enormously complex. To acquire the voting shares, Malone swapped 21.2 million nonvoting American depositary receipts and $693 million in cash for 48 million voting ADR's. After the transaction, Liberty will own 210.8 million nonvoting ADR's and 48 million voting ADR's. The company said in its filing that it bought 9.3 million voting ADR's over the past 60 days and 22 million voting shares on Tuesday, but it did not explain how or when it had acquired the remaining 17 million shares.
But there are reasons to believe that Malone may not be quite so bullish on News Corp as the company lets on. For a start, Liberty has agreed to sell the bulk of its recent purchase in five years time for $1.2 billion in cash to Citigroup.
The structure of the transaction is enormously complex. To acquire the voting shares, Malone swapped 21.2 million nonvoting American depositary receipts and $693 million in cash for 48 million voting ADR's. After the transaction, Liberty will own 210.8 million nonvoting ADR's and 48 million voting ADR's. The company said in its filing that it bought 9.3 million voting ADR's over the past 60 days and 22 million voting shares on Tuesday, but it did not explain how or when it had acquired the remaining 17 million shares.
But there are reasons to believe that Malone may not be quite so bullish on News Corp as the company lets on. For a start, Liberty has agreed to sell the bulk of its recent purchase in five years time for $1.2 billion in cash to Citigroup.
Monday, January 26, 2004
She converted Kelly to Bah?'?, and the conversion took place near the Defence Language Institute in Monterey, California, a Pentagon foreign language and espionage school. It was completely unnecessary for Kelly to go to California for the conversion. Pederson's husband describes her:
"Part of her military training was to cultivate anyone who might be able to help her in her intelligence work. It may well have been why she zeroed in on Dr Kelly. She undoubtedly viewed him as a potential intelligence source. The two things that obsessed her were the military and the Bahai faith.
"Trouble with this jigsaw puzzle is, once you put it together, you realise it's just a part of a much bigger puzzle."
*the bottom line is that David Kelly is dead because he somehow fouled up or threatened to foul up the secret line of communications between American military intelligence to the British government whereby lies, not just those involving Iraq, are fed to the British government to influence British actions along lines favorable to the Pentagon.
"Part of her military training was to cultivate anyone who might be able to help her in her intelligence work. It may well have been why she zeroed in on Dr Kelly. She undoubtedly viewed him as a potential intelligence source. The two things that obsessed her were the military and the Bahai faith.
"Trouble with this jigsaw puzzle is, once you put it together, you realise it's just a part of a much bigger puzzle."
*the bottom line is that David Kelly is dead because he somehow fouled up or threatened to foul up the secret line of communications between American military intelligence to the British government whereby lies, not just those involving Iraq, are fed to the British government to influence British actions along lines favorable to the Pentagon.
ALEXANDRA ROBBINS: George W. said in the 1980's, that -- to a woman who was a graduate of Yale -- that women would be the downfall of Yale.
One other thing interesting about Kerry that I wanted to mention is that both of his wives have been directly related to members of Skull and Bones. A sister and daughter which is another connection to Skull and Bones that people don't usually know about.
Dennis Miller (news) has usually been happy to spray his acerbic wit across the political spectrum, but things will be different on his new CNBC talk program. President Bush (news - web sites) is in a mock-free zone.
"I like him," Miller explained. "I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends."
The liberal media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting accused CNBC of a conflict of interest in hiring GOP consultant Mike Murphy, an adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger , as a producer for Miller's show.
He's been having fun putting the show together, posing with a chain saw in promos and promising to obliterate the line between news and entertainment.
Many marriage-based benefits, for instance, are seen as proxies for helping families with children. Yet marriage is no longer a good indicator of parenthood. As of 2000, one in three children were born to unmarried parents. Distributing benefits intended to support child rearing on the basis of marital status gives a windfall to childless married couples while leaving empty handed single parents and their children ? who as a group already face harsher realities.
And what's clear to us now is that clearly the President is worried about the status of the Patriot Act. If he wasn?t worried it wouldn't be in his Presidential State of the Union Address.
Lines which, when spoken, lead Bush to stare directly into the camera13 instances, i.e. 13 discrete messages conveyed to his supporters, i.e. 13 soundbites created for the news recaps
1. "We ended the rule of Saddam Hussein and...the people of Iraq are free"...
2"The United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins"...
3 "America will never seek a permissions slip to defend the security of our country"...
4"We will finish the historic work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq so those nations can light the way for others and help transform a troubled part of the world"...
5"We understand our special calling...this great republic will lead the cause of freedom"...
6"This economy is strong, and growing stronger"...
7"Unless you act, Americans face a tax increase"...
8 "I urge you to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy"...
9 "Any attempt to limit the choices of seniors or to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto"...
10 "Drug use in high school has declined by 11 percent over the last two years. 400,000 fewer young people are using drugs than in the year 2001"...
11 "Tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches and players, to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now"...
12 "Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases"...
13 "Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives...Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage."
Lines which, when spoken, lead CNN's cameras to focus on Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) and his various scowls
3 instances in which this occurred, conveying liberals' disgust with Bush's statements
1. "The bill you passed gave prescription drug benefits to seniors"...
2. "Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day"...
3. "Starting this year, millions of Americans will be able to save money, tax-free, for their medical expenses in a health savings account."
According to the comprehensive survey conducted with state-of-the-art equipment, The Falklands Shelf conservatively contained slightly more than ten times the total oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Some of the data were photocopied out of interest amid loud ?Oohs? and Ahhs? generated by the mind-numbing figures, but the photocopying turned out to be a serious mistake. By 1989 all but two of the British people who had access to this extraordinary information met with fatal accidents. Of the two survivors, one changed names and moved to a different industry, while I chose exile in a sleepy Australian backwater.
In essence, the entire American continent, from Inuvik in northern Canada to the southern tip of Tierra Del Fuego, is to be invaded and captured for Zionist use, with the cabal exercising central command and control from New York City, currently located in the much smaller United States of America. Within this new massive fortress, the USA will be the focal point of all significant economic activities, with Canada and the former countries of Latin and South America providing the bulk of natural resources and cheap labor.
At the same time, a further smaller block of 10,000 Yisraelim terrorists will enter Australia in order to capture and hold strategic mineral reserves, though this is an entirely separate operation that will not impact directly on the Americas.
The Zionist cabal was delighted because it knew full well that the Argentine Government could later be bought off or exterminated, with the massive Falklands oil reserves subsequently being added to Fortress Americas energy assets. But the cabal's delight was to be short-lived, because the Zionists were still unaware that copies of the real report had been accidentally circulated to a small number of people at British Petroleum in London. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had therefore been watching Argentina like a hawk for five months, and responded to the expected invasion within three days of the capture of Stanley, dispatching a large battle fleet from Britain on 5 April 1982.
Intelligence received in 2003 indicates that Dimona has so far manufactured in excess of 600 of these exotic weapons. Most micro nukes remain in Palestine, though 220 have allegedly been pre-positioned in North and South America, with a further six deployed to Western Australia.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair contend that the war in Colombia isn't about drugs. It's about the annihilation of popular uprisings by Indian peasants fending off the ravages of oil companies, cattle barons and mining firms. It is a counter-insurgency war, designed to clear the way for American corporations to set up shop in Colombia.
Another problem resulting from the Colombian "drug war" has been the health consequences of the U.S. -sponsored aerial fumigation. Since January 2001, Colombian aircraft have been spraying toxic herbicides over Colombian fields in order to kill opium poppy and coca plants. These sprayings are killing food crops that indigenous Colombians depend on for survival, as well as harming their health. The sprayings have killed fish, livestock, and have contaminated water supplies.
The release of previously classified documents makes it clear that former President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a face-to-face meeting in Jakarta, gave then President Suharto a green light for the 1975 invasion of East Timor.
A quiet war against abortion rights is being conducted by many local governments in the United States. Cities and counties are placing repressive legal restrictions on abortion providers under the guise of women's health laws. These restrictions can include: width of hallways, jet and angle type of drinking fountains, the heights of ceilings, and how long one must wait between initially seeing the doctor and when the procedure can be performed.
These legal ordinances are known as TRAP laws. TRAP stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.
Louisiana's newest anti-abortion law, known as the civil-liability law, would allow any woman who has had the procedure to sue the doctor for up to 10 years -- not just for her own injuries, but also for "damages occasioned by the unborn child."
One other thing interesting about Kerry that I wanted to mention is that both of his wives have been directly related to members of Skull and Bones. A sister and daughter which is another connection to Skull and Bones that people don't usually know about.
Dennis Miller (news) has usually been happy to spray his acerbic wit across the political spectrum, but things will be different on his new CNBC talk program. President Bush (news - web sites) is in a mock-free zone.
"I like him," Miller explained. "I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends."
The liberal media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting accused CNBC of a conflict of interest in hiring GOP consultant Mike Murphy, an adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger , as a producer for Miller's show.
He's been having fun putting the show together, posing with a chain saw in promos and promising to obliterate the line between news and entertainment.
Many marriage-based benefits, for instance, are seen as proxies for helping families with children. Yet marriage is no longer a good indicator of parenthood. As of 2000, one in three children were born to unmarried parents. Distributing benefits intended to support child rearing on the basis of marital status gives a windfall to childless married couples while leaving empty handed single parents and their children ? who as a group already face harsher realities.
And what's clear to us now is that clearly the President is worried about the status of the Patriot Act. If he wasn?t worried it wouldn't be in his Presidential State of the Union Address.
Lines which, when spoken, lead Bush to stare directly into the camera13 instances, i.e. 13 discrete messages conveyed to his supporters, i.e. 13 soundbites created for the news recaps
1. "We ended the rule of Saddam Hussein and...the people of Iraq are free"...
2"The United States of America will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins"...
3 "America will never seek a permissions slip to defend the security of our country"...
4"We will finish the historic work of democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq so those nations can light the way for others and help transform a troubled part of the world"...
5"We understand our special calling...this great republic will lead the cause of freedom"...
6"This economy is strong, and growing stronger"...
7"Unless you act, Americans face a tax increase"...
8 "I urge you to pass legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy"...
9 "Any attempt to limit the choices of seniors or to take away their prescription drug coverage under Medicare will meet my veto"...
10 "Drug use in high school has declined by 11 percent over the last two years. 400,000 fewer young people are using drugs than in the year 2001"...
11 "Tonight I call on team owners, union representatives, coaches and players, to take the lead, to send the right signal, to get tough, and to get rid of steroids now"...
12 "Abstinence for young people is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases"...
13 "Activist judges, however, have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives...Our nation must defend the sanctity of marriage."
Lines which, when spoken, lead CNN's cameras to focus on Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) and his various scowls
3 instances in which this occurred, conveying liberals' disgust with Bush's statements
1. "The bill you passed gave prescription drug benefits to seniors"...
2. "Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day"...
3. "Starting this year, millions of Americans will be able to save money, tax-free, for their medical expenses in a health savings account."
According to the comprehensive survey conducted with state-of-the-art equipment, The Falklands Shelf conservatively contained slightly more than ten times the total oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.
Some of the data were photocopied out of interest amid loud ?Oohs? and Ahhs? generated by the mind-numbing figures, but the photocopying turned out to be a serious mistake. By 1989 all but two of the British people who had access to this extraordinary information met with fatal accidents. Of the two survivors, one changed names and moved to a different industry, while I chose exile in a sleepy Australian backwater.
In essence, the entire American continent, from Inuvik in northern Canada to the southern tip of Tierra Del Fuego, is to be invaded and captured for Zionist use, with the cabal exercising central command and control from New York City, currently located in the much smaller United States of America. Within this new massive fortress, the USA will be the focal point of all significant economic activities, with Canada and the former countries of Latin and South America providing the bulk of natural resources and cheap labor.
At the same time, a further smaller block of 10,000 Yisraelim terrorists will enter Australia in order to capture and hold strategic mineral reserves, though this is an entirely separate operation that will not impact directly on the Americas.
The Zionist cabal was delighted because it knew full well that the Argentine Government could later be bought off or exterminated, with the massive Falklands oil reserves subsequently being added to Fortress Americas energy assets. But the cabal's delight was to be short-lived, because the Zionists were still unaware that copies of the real report had been accidentally circulated to a small number of people at British Petroleum in London. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had therefore been watching Argentina like a hawk for five months, and responded to the expected invasion within three days of the capture of Stanley, dispatching a large battle fleet from Britain on 5 April 1982.
Intelligence received in 2003 indicates that Dimona has so far manufactured in excess of 600 of these exotic weapons. Most micro nukes remain in Palestine, though 220 have allegedly been pre-positioned in North and South America, with a further six deployed to Western Australia.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair contend that the war in Colombia isn't about drugs. It's about the annihilation of popular uprisings by Indian peasants fending off the ravages of oil companies, cattle barons and mining firms. It is a counter-insurgency war, designed to clear the way for American corporations to set up shop in Colombia.
Another problem resulting from the Colombian "drug war" has been the health consequences of the U.S. -sponsored aerial fumigation. Since January 2001, Colombian aircraft have been spraying toxic herbicides over Colombian fields in order to kill opium poppy and coca plants. These sprayings are killing food crops that indigenous Colombians depend on for survival, as well as harming their health. The sprayings have killed fish, livestock, and have contaminated water supplies.
The release of previously classified documents makes it clear that former President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a face-to-face meeting in Jakarta, gave then President Suharto a green light for the 1975 invasion of East Timor.
A quiet war against abortion rights is being conducted by many local governments in the United States. Cities and counties are placing repressive legal restrictions on abortion providers under the guise of women's health laws. These restrictions can include: width of hallways, jet and angle type of drinking fountains, the heights of ceilings, and how long one must wait between initially seeing the doctor and when the procedure can be performed.
These legal ordinances are known as TRAP laws. TRAP stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.
Louisiana's newest anti-abortion law, known as the civil-liability law, would allow any woman who has had the procedure to sue the doctor for up to 10 years -- not just for her own injuries, but also for "damages occasioned by the unborn child."
Whatever the case, I find it hard to believe that Bush purposely lied to the nation.
After last year's State of the Union, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal whom conservatives most like to hate, said he was unconvinced. He said he wanted Bush to "come back to Congress and present convincing evidence of an imminent threat before we send troops to war in Iraq." For that remark, both courageous and prescient, Kennedy was ruthlessly Murdoched by right-wing media.
But within the Bush White House lies an ugly beast that never gets acknowledged: The administration misled the American people, either purposely or out of incompetence. This is not a minor matter, because war, with all its unforeseen consequences, is not itself a minor matter.
On August 5, in the liberal paper Frankfurter Rundschau, Brumlik published an open letter to the publisher Suhrkamp denouncing the book and Honderich as anti-Semitic, and demanding that it be taken off the market.
In Japan --where the yen has tumbled to new lows-- "the Korean scenario" is viewed (according to economist Michael Hudson), as a "dress rehearsal" for the take over of Japan's financial sector by a handful of Western investment banks. The big players are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Morgan Gruenfell among others who are buying up Japan's bad bank loans at less than ten percent of their face value. In recent months both US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright have exerted political pressure on Tokyo insisting "on nothing less than an immediate disposal of Japan's bad bank loans--preferably to US and other foreign "vulture investors" at distress prices.
To achieve their objectives they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system...
To achieve their objectives they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system...
After last year's State of the Union, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the liberal whom conservatives most like to hate, said he was unconvinced. He said he wanted Bush to "come back to Congress and present convincing evidence of an imminent threat before we send troops to war in Iraq." For that remark, both courageous and prescient, Kennedy was ruthlessly Murdoched by right-wing media.
But within the Bush White House lies an ugly beast that never gets acknowledged: The administration misled the American people, either purposely or out of incompetence. This is not a minor matter, because war, with all its unforeseen consequences, is not itself a minor matter.
On August 5, in the liberal paper Frankfurter Rundschau, Brumlik published an open letter to the publisher Suhrkamp denouncing the book and Honderich as anti-Semitic, and demanding that it be taken off the market.
In Japan --where the yen has tumbled to new lows-- "the Korean scenario" is viewed (according to economist Michael Hudson), as a "dress rehearsal" for the take over of Japan's financial sector by a handful of Western investment banks. The big players are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Morgan Gruenfell among others who are buying up Japan's bad bank loans at less than ten percent of their face value. In recent months both US Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright have exerted political pressure on Tokyo insisting "on nothing less than an immediate disposal of Japan's bad bank loans--preferably to US and other foreign "vulture investors" at distress prices.
To achieve their objectives they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system...
To achieve their objectives they are even pressuring Japan to rewrite its constitution, restructure its political system and cabinet and redesign its financial system...
Syria brushed aside Sunday U.S. accusations that it has Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a cover story for what it called U.S. failure in Iraq
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts said Wednesday there was some concern Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had gone to Syria.
mred - some guy on the beeb was reporting on gates' davos claim that msoft will solve the spam problem - the guy logs on and says 'ive just received 66 spam emails' - its odd how often these numbers are cited when talking about evil. gitmo has 660 prisoners. it wouldnt be the first time that mikeroesoft and the shitehouse seemed 'devilish'. saddam was 'captured' on dec 13, gwb stated unnecessarily/explicitly.
"The United States is the most phantasmagoric propaganda machine in history."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, speaking at a conference on "U.S. imperialism in the 21st century" at Columbia University, December 5, 2003.
Evans had worked for the Herald for seven years, during which time he was the paper?s chief political cartoonist. He was president of the New Zealand Cartoonists Association and twice named cartoonist of the year. Evans? sacking followed his refusal to accept an edict by the paper?s editor-in-chief, Gavin Ellis, that he stop submitting items on Israel. after a cartoon was rejected on grounds that it was ?not original and not funny?.
U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts said Wednesday there was some concern Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had gone to Syria.
mred - some guy on the beeb was reporting on gates' davos claim that msoft will solve the spam problem - the guy logs on and says 'ive just received 66 spam emails' - its odd how often these numbers are cited when talking about evil. gitmo has 660 prisoners. it wouldnt be the first time that mikeroesoft and the shitehouse seemed 'devilish'. saddam was 'captured' on dec 13, gwb stated unnecessarily/explicitly.
"The United States is the most phantasmagoric propaganda machine in history."
Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies and Director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, speaking at a conference on "U.S. imperialism in the 21st century" at Columbia University, December 5, 2003.
Evans had worked for the Herald for seven years, during which time he was the paper?s chief political cartoonist. He was president of the New Zealand Cartoonists Association and twice named cartoonist of the year. Evans? sacking followed his refusal to accept an edict by the paper?s editor-in-chief, Gavin Ellis, that he stop submitting items on Israel. after a cartoon was rejected on grounds that it was ?not original and not funny?.
HOUSTON - Sections of a diary belonging to one of the seven astronauts killed last year when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas were found a few months ago and returned to his family, according to a published report.
The Jerusalem Post reported that sections of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon's diary were found in a Texas field with other debris."
mred - this is obviously a lie. i wonder why it is being told. and of course in the JPost (thnx, richard, henry). sounds like the 911 passport thingy... curious also that it was found a few months ago but the story is coming out now. one suspects that there mite be more than '9am. had breakfast, 10am. did dishes'
('other debris' is mostly chunks of heat-resistant tiles and chunks of metal i guess)
"The diary was submitted to the Israel Police for help in deciphering what was written, since the pages were written in Hebrew and some of the pages were full of holes"
mr ed: so there's no-one in america who can read hebrew? or are the israeli police more experienced with reading stuff with holes in it?
"A woman who answered the phone Friday at the Houston home of Ramon's widow said Rona Ramon didn't want to comment."
mred - fancy that. thou shalt not verify.
JERUSALEM ? Disintegrating pages of a diary that an Israeli astronaut wrote during the doomed Columbia space shuttle mission were miraculously found in Texas, it was disclosed yesterday.
Ilan Ramon, an Israeli air force combat pilot, recorded his thoughts about the mission, starting from takeoff, in the handwritten journal
Only the first of the eight diary pages was legible, he told The Post. The others had been apparently bleached white during the shuttle's plunge and 1,800-degree heat."
"Along with the diary was a ninth page on which Ramon had written a Sabbath prayer so he could recite it properly in space."
the sections of Ramon's personal diary ? handwritten in Hebrew ? during his last days on the ill-fated space shuttle
mred - i thought it was the first pages that were recovered...
"...were recovered in Texas by a Native American tracker."
mr ed - please make it stop
god bless native america. fucking hell - in our country, the trackers, talented as they are, can usually only track things that actually have a terrestial track, as far as i know. i dont know of the oz FAA ever calling in trackers - even if a plane crashes in the outback - apparently they dont add much value in finding stuff that have fallen from the sky, unless it was falling really fast and bounced once or twice before it came to a stop - if u can tell the trackers where it first hit the ground, then they can use their native skills and say 'it should be around here somewhere then'
as an aside, there are a number of space related stories in the media at the moment - robots on mars, gwbs 'lets go to the solar system', cancel hubble, gas leaks at ISS, titanium diaries, the very odd steven hawking stories, china to the moon (there was some odd reprt that a US senator (?) said something like 'we cant let the chinese beat us to the moon') - its starting to look like there mite be a pattern. i dunno what it means. yet.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering provoking a military confrontation with Syria by attacking Hizbullah bases near the Syrian border in Lebanon, according to the authoritative London-based Jane's Intelligence Digest.
In an article to be published on Friday, the journal said multi-faceted US attacks, which would be conducted within the framework of the global war on terrorism, are likely to focus on Hizbullah bases in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon.
It noted that the deployment of US special forces in the Bekaa Valley, where most of Syria's occupation forces in Lebanon are based, would be highly inflammatory and would "almost certainly involve a confrontation with Syrian troops."
Her sin was saying what no one is allowed to say, that the actions of the state of Israel against the Palestinians have created such intolerable conditions that it is completely understandable that a human being might find becoming a suicide bomber a rational choice. Has anyone noticed that we are currently in a position of a complete Orwellian freeze on speech about Israel.
The Zionist attempts to repress the awful truth of what the state of Israel is doing confirms the justice of supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.
"I did expect comeback, but to say that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic is doing Israel a disservice. This is an important story that should be told. It shows a child under military occupation. It's terrible for the occupiers, and terrible for the occupied. I hope I have shown how awful it is for the soldiers too," said Laird, who has lived in Beirut and Iraq.
The Jerusalem Post reported that sections of Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon's diary were found in a Texas field with other debris."
mred - this is obviously a lie. i wonder why it is being told. and of course in the JPost (thnx, richard, henry). sounds like the 911 passport thingy... curious also that it was found a few months ago but the story is coming out now. one suspects that there mite be more than '9am. had breakfast, 10am. did dishes'
('other debris' is mostly chunks of heat-resistant tiles and chunks of metal i guess)
"The diary was submitted to the Israel Police for help in deciphering what was written, since the pages were written in Hebrew and some of the pages were full of holes"
mr ed: so there's no-one in america who can read hebrew? or are the israeli police more experienced with reading stuff with holes in it?
"A woman who answered the phone Friday at the Houston home of Ramon's widow said Rona Ramon didn't want to comment."
mred - fancy that. thou shalt not verify.
JERUSALEM ? Disintegrating pages of a diary that an Israeli astronaut wrote during the doomed Columbia space shuttle mission were miraculously found in Texas, it was disclosed yesterday.
Ilan Ramon, an Israeli air force combat pilot, recorded his thoughts about the mission, starting from takeoff, in the handwritten journal
Only the first of the eight diary pages was legible, he told The Post. The others had been apparently bleached white during the shuttle's plunge and 1,800-degree heat."
"Along with the diary was a ninth page on which Ramon had written a Sabbath prayer so he could recite it properly in space."
the sections of Ramon's personal diary ? handwritten in Hebrew ? during his last days on the ill-fated space shuttle
mred - i thought it was the first pages that were recovered...
"...were recovered in Texas by a Native American tracker."
mr ed - please make it stop
god bless native america. fucking hell - in our country, the trackers, talented as they are, can usually only track things that actually have a terrestial track, as far as i know. i dont know of the oz FAA ever calling in trackers - even if a plane crashes in the outback - apparently they dont add much value in finding stuff that have fallen from the sky, unless it was falling really fast and bounced once or twice before it came to a stop - if u can tell the trackers where it first hit the ground, then they can use their native skills and say 'it should be around here somewhere then'
as an aside, there are a number of space related stories in the media at the moment - robots on mars, gwbs 'lets go to the solar system', cancel hubble, gas leaks at ISS, titanium diaries, the very odd steven hawking stories, china to the moon (there was some odd reprt that a US senator (?) said something like 'we cant let the chinese beat us to the moon') - its starting to look like there mite be a pattern. i dunno what it means. yet.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is considering provoking a military confrontation with Syria by attacking Hizbullah bases near the Syrian border in Lebanon, according to the authoritative London-based Jane's Intelligence Digest.
In an article to be published on Friday, the journal said multi-faceted US attacks, which would be conducted within the framework of the global war on terrorism, are likely to focus on Hizbullah bases in the Bekaa Valley of eastern Lebanon.
It noted that the deployment of US special forces in the Bekaa Valley, where most of Syria's occupation forces in Lebanon are based, would be highly inflammatory and would "almost certainly involve a confrontation with Syrian troops."
Her sin was saying what no one is allowed to say, that the actions of the state of Israel against the Palestinians have created such intolerable conditions that it is completely understandable that a human being might find becoming a suicide bomber a rational choice. Has anyone noticed that we are currently in a position of a complete Orwellian freeze on speech about Israel.
The Zionist attempts to repress the awful truth of what the state of Israel is doing confirms the justice of supporting the cause of the Palestinian people.
"I did expect comeback, but to say that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic is doing Israel a disservice. This is an important story that should be told. It shows a child under military occupation. It's terrible for the occupiers, and terrible for the occupied. I hope I have shown how awful it is for the soldiers too," said Laird, who has lived in Beirut and Iraq.
?Juliet O'Neill was doing everything right,? Mr. Anderson told CBC Newsworld angrily. ?Who knew about this? Who condoned a police raid on a journalist's home??
The race remains Kerry leading, Clark in second, Dean down in third, Edwards fourth. Why are our numbers so different from the rest of the media?
Because they use the untrustworthy, right-wing puppet polls, like the Zogby polls. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, "ABC's polling department has reviewed (Zogby's) methodology and rated his polls "not airworthy." This admission came directly from John Zogby himself.
"Zogby is not a reputable pollster," said Warren Mitofsky, who is co-directing the media exit polls this year for the major television networks and the Associated Press."
according to the Post, "Zogby also adjusts his sample based on... his judgment of "what is happening on the ground" in a particular race."
And just to make the point clear, the Post writers who wrote the article point out that the fact that Zogby's work is bunk doesn't stop them form being, "featured in newspaper and broadcast news stories, at least in part on the theory that good or bad, his polls are news."
It didn't matter, and we knew it wouldn't. No matter how big a lie the President told, everyone who bears the label Republican - and so sits on one side of the auditorium - rose in unison. Not a single soul was able to muster a conscience. Not a single soul was able to stand up (or, in this case, sit down) for what is best for America.
And certainly, the cheaper dollar has improved the fortunes of firms with sizable foreign markets: Technology and energy companies in the S&P 500 posted earnings gains of about 88 percent and 59 percent respectively last year. Still, says Rubin, now a top Citigroup executive, "If you walk around Wall Street, there is enormous concern."
"There's no doubt that the falling dollar is inflationary," says Keith Karlawish, chief investment officer for BB&T Asset Management. Already some prices have been rising. Last week's consumer price reading was still tame, but the wholesale price index jumped in December to register a 4 percent gain for 2003, its fastest rise in 13 years.
The President chuckled. "Well, you got a pretty face," he told the surprised Mr. Reid. He wasn't done. "You got a pretty face," he said again. "You're a good-looking guy. Better looking than my Scott anyway."
The race remains Kerry leading, Clark in second, Dean down in third, Edwards fourth. Why are our numbers so different from the rest of the media?
Because they use the untrustworthy, right-wing puppet polls, like the Zogby polls. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, "ABC's polling department has reviewed (Zogby's) methodology and rated his polls "not airworthy." This admission came directly from John Zogby himself.
"Zogby is not a reputable pollster," said Warren Mitofsky, who is co-directing the media exit polls this year for the major television networks and the Associated Press."
according to the Post, "Zogby also adjusts his sample based on... his judgment of "what is happening on the ground" in a particular race."
And just to make the point clear, the Post writers who wrote the article point out that the fact that Zogby's work is bunk doesn't stop them form being, "featured in newspaper and broadcast news stories, at least in part on the theory that good or bad, his polls are news."
It didn't matter, and we knew it wouldn't. No matter how big a lie the President told, everyone who bears the label Republican - and so sits on one side of the auditorium - rose in unison. Not a single soul was able to muster a conscience. Not a single soul was able to stand up (or, in this case, sit down) for what is best for America.
And certainly, the cheaper dollar has improved the fortunes of firms with sizable foreign markets: Technology and energy companies in the S&P 500 posted earnings gains of about 88 percent and 59 percent respectively last year. Still, says Rubin, now a top Citigroup executive, "If you walk around Wall Street, there is enormous concern."
"There's no doubt that the falling dollar is inflationary," says Keith Karlawish, chief investment officer for BB&T Asset Management. Already some prices have been rising. Last week's consumer price reading was still tame, but the wholesale price index jumped in December to register a 4 percent gain for 2003, its fastest rise in 13 years.
The President chuckled. "Well, you got a pretty face," he told the surprised Mr. Reid. He wasn't done. "You got a pretty face," he said again. "You're a good-looking guy. Better looking than my Scott anyway."
Sunday, January 25, 2004
DAVOS, Switzerland - Free nations, working together, must not shy from using force if diplomacy cannot deter terrorism and check the spread of the world's most dangerous weapons, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) told Europe on Saturday.
"Direct threats require decisive action," Cheney said in a speech to the World Economic Forum (In his second foreign trip since taking office,) and he urged European allies to "act with all the urgency that this danger demands."
Cheney said the world is becoming safer, but alliances and international partnerships must remain strong in fighting terror because "We are not safe yet." "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are," Cheney said.
After his speech, Cheney flew to Italy, where he is visiting until Tuesday. He will meet with Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a major backer of the Iraq invasion, and Pope John Paul
"One of the most meaningful things that's happened to me since I've been the governor ? the president ? governor ? president. Oops. Ex-governor."?George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 9, 2004
"People who hate America tend to love Michael Moore - and that's all you need to know." Bill O'Reilly
For anyone to dare to suggest that Israel is the cause of the climate of hatred in Muslim countries, the attitude that generates, encourages, and supports the groups who are adversaries in the War on terrorism; is going to the greatest thing that stifles questioning the correctness of allowing 3 million Israelis to hold 300 million Americans hostage; namely, the worst barrier to free speech and objective inquiry - the epithet of being Anti-Semitic.
How many more terrorist attacks can our poorly defended country suffer; how many thousands, if not millions of casualties can we absorb: before public opinion will balk at further support for Israel?
85 % of the Republicans think the War on Iraq was right but 54 % of the Democrats think it was a big mistake. 72 % of the Democrats demand more help for the needy in their own country and are supported by only 39% of the Republicans. With other issues the gap is similarly wide.
Every week the New York Times List of best-selling Books give proof of this theory. Since months this list is topped by conservative stirrers like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter or trouble-makers like Michael Moore and Al Franken.
It is hard to conceive that a varied country with a 300 million population can split in two camps of the same size, so thousand voters or a single judge can decide the nation's destiny. How did this nation with its huge powers of integration fell apart into two halves?
Four years ago the majority of the singles voted for Gore while the married voted for Bush. 61 % of weapon owners have voted republican while 70 % of those who have claimed themselves to be homosexual voted democratic. 90 % of the black population voted for Gore.
"The pictures of Texas on the wall, to me, remind me of who I am, just little old Barbara Bush's son."
"The Oval Office is the kind of place," bush said, "where people stand outside the door and say, `I can't wait to get inside; I'm going to tell him what for.' They walk in this place, the first words out of their mouth are, `Mr. President, man, you're looking good.' "
mred - (im not sure whether its scarier that this line was part of a script, or if it actually came from inside his addled head.)
NOVAK: Worse yet was Clarks refusal to condemn leftist propagandist Michael Moore for libeling President Bush as a deserter.
NOVAK: Ms. Steenburgen, I'm just dying to know if you agree with your candidate, General Clark, that the president of the United States is a deserter? Desertion is one of the most heinous crimes. It's a felony. You put people in prison. Do you think -- do you think -- do you agree with that?
NOVAK: And get off Dick Cheney's back. It's really getting sickening.
NOVAK: I wondered, Ms. Steenburgen, if it's a matter of actors, such as you and your husband, feeling that General Clark is a kindred soul, because he's obviously reading lines that somebody else prepares for him, just as you do when you go before the cameras.
NOVAK: It's never been -- that's never been proved on the AWOL. AWOL, of course, is a crime and could be brought before a court-martial. That's never been the case. But he is not a deserter. And for General Clark, who knows what a deserter is... to sit there and not say that's wrong is disgraceful.
Chossudovsky discusses how the Washington Post marginalized the story about an unusual breakfast meeting that took place between top-ranking members of Congress and the Pakistani Lieutenant General named Mahmoud Ahmed, who was the head of the ISI on 9/11/01. (Ahmed is also said to have been the money man who wired $100,000 to alleged hijacker Mohamed Atta.)
"Those going into teaching have the lowest SAT and ACT scores of any profession in the United States," Kerry observed.
He asked how was it that the percentage of black children living with both parents through the age of 17 had gone to 6 percent from 50 percent?
It was 9/11, Daalder and Lindsay write, that provided the catalyst for Bush to blend what could be called the assertive nationalism of Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice; the neoconservative vision of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle; and his own view, formed long before 9/11, that success requires a clear resolve and the will to use power, into a vision and a mission. That the mission could be perceived as a pernicious new form of imperialism was totally alien to Bush.
''When President Bush says, as he does frequently, that 'freedom' will prevail, in fact he means that America will prevail,'' Soros writes, adding: ''I am rather sensitive to Orwellian doublespeak because I grew up with it in Hungary, first under Nazi and later Communist rule.''
Surmising, for example, why American generals did nothing to protect the cultural treasures of Baghdad, Ali writes: ''Having stirred their soldiers to fight and destroy the 'ragheads,' portrayed in briefings as uncivilized barbarians responsible for 9/11, perhaps they were now fearful of admitting that the 'ragheads' were a people with a culture.''
Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist and writer, perceives an ideologically driven administration locked in an apocalyptic death-dance with Islamic radicals.
Todd says he used to see the United States as a model, as his ''subconscious safety net.'' Now, he declares, it is solely a ''predator,'' living way beyond its means, racking up video-game victories over defenseless nations and undermining human rights.
I confess I was taken aback to have my country depicted, page after page, book after book, as a dangerous empire in its last throes, as a failure of democracy, as militaristic, violent, hegemonic, evil, callous, arrogant, imperial and cruel.
The more moving judgment comes from Soros, a Jew from Hungary who lived through both German and Soviet occupation: ''This is not the America I chose as my home.''
"I don't think there's any question that (comprehensive testing of all students) is preferable."
?U.S. "Drug Czar" John Walters
Pewaukee High School is developing a proposal to test students in the drama club, jazz band and other activities. The cost -- around $30 per student -- "is something that we've taken into account,"
Legal observers say constitutional barriers to suspicionless searches probably bar random drug testing of entire student bodies, given the presumption that all American children are entitled to attend public school.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in dissenting to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld testing students in extracurricular activities, argued that the policy "targets for testing a student population least likely to be at risk from illicit drugs."
Herro cited a study by University of Michigan researchers who last year looked at survey data from 1998 through 2001 drawn from 772 high schools and middle schools. They found virtually identical rates of usage in schools that test and schools that do not.
kagan:
As the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, put it, the struggle was not so much about Iraq as it was about "two visions of the world." The differences were not only about policy. They were also about first principles.
Opinion polls taken before, during and after the war have shown two peoples living on separate strategic and ideological planets.
In her essay, Ms. Rice derided "the belief that the United States is exercising power legitimately only when it is doing so on behalf of someone or something else." But for the rest of the world, what other source of legitimacy can there be? When the United States acts in its own interests, Ms. Rice claimed, as would many Americans, it necessarily serves the interests of everyone.
"To be sure," condi argued, "there is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect."
But can the United States cede some power to Europe without putting American security, and indeed Europe's and the entire liberal democratic world's security, at risk in the process?
Europeans thus may succeed in debilitating the United States, but since they have no intention of supplementing American power with their own, the net result will be a diminution of the total amount of power that the liberal democratic world can bring to bear in its defense ? and in defense of liberalism itself.
The small Cessna Citation was just over Grand Rapids, Mich., when the secure phone rang. Attorney General John Ashcroft listened intently, interrupting the caller repeatedly. After hanging up, he turned to his small staff. "The world," he said, "has changed forever."
Ashcroft, as the nation's top law enforcement officer, would have to turn more than a century's worth of jurisprudence on its head and begin enforcing the nation's laws in a fundamentally new way. Traditionally, the Justice Department's role was to punish miscreants after the fact. That, as President Bush told Ashcroft bluntly after the attacks, was no longer good enough. "John," Bush said, "don't let this happen again."
"I may be the person more responsible for trying to shape the national consciousness in saying that prosecution is not enough for the Justice Department anymore," he said. "It has to be actively involved in prevention."
Ashcroft's name alone is a guaranteed applause line for the Democratic hopefuls.
Party politics largely serves as a smokescreen. It is, therefore, unlikely that the Democrats would undo either the war agenda or, for that matter, the dreaded Patriot Act.
"But, in fact, I DON'T accept that Old Adolf offed the 'Six Million'...and for several reasons. For one thing, the Jewish population statistics barely changed over the entire interwar period. For another, no 'Hitler order' has ever been found. For another, the nazis were desperate for labor, so why should they eliminate those useful to them? For another, the official death books of Auschwitz -- supposedly the prime 'death camp' -- show nothing about 'exterminations', in spite of the fact that Germans were meticulous-to-a-fault record keepers (In fact, the Auschwitz administration was sent a written order that every effort was to be taken to REDUCE THE DEATH RATE!). For another, the primary testimony of the Auschwitz camp commandant, which is the source of most of the 'Six Million' number, was obtained by torture and is completely bogus. For another, the work of Fred Leuchter, Germar Rudolf and others has completely disproved the existence of 'gas chambers' at Auschwitz -- the supposed primary means of execution -- the evidence for which was characterized by well-known Jewish historian Arno Mayer as 'at once rare and unreliable'. For another, the extermination of 'Six Million' was ALSO claimed by Jews in WW1, and, in fact, the 'Six Million' is a mystical cabalistic number pertaining to the number of Jews who must be 'cleansed' before Israel can be re-established. "
New York Times story of a few years ago recognized that the original Auschwitz number was bogus by reporting the changing of the plaques at the Aushwitz gates - to DOWNSIZE the original claim of 4 million killed to 1.1 million.
It was very predictable that the Bush slime administration would do everything they could to shut Saddam up. Categorizing him as a prisoner of war allows them to say that he has the right to remain silent. And that's exactly how they want him.
Now, it's interesting, that Saddam, who basically laid down for the US military and hardly put up a fight, is called a prisoner of war, while the Taliban prisoners who fought aggressively, are held in gitmo and are classified instead as enemy combatants who are eligible for torture and who have very limited rights. Very handy. If you're going to get in the habit of routine lying and fraud, little details like this don't bother you.
My guess is that with the proper friendly incentives, meaning, without torture, Saddam would be thrilled to spill the beans. This is what Bush and his gang will attempt to thwart at all costs. I wouldn't be surprised to find Saddam dead pretty soon. He's a very serious threat and liability to Bush now. At least, now that the rest of the world knows that the Kurds caught him, the Republicans aren't touting his capture so boastfully.
Securities regulators are examining a surge in options trading just before Wednesday's announcement that J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to buy Bank One for $58 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.
"How can you be certain they mean it?" I asked him. "What if it was just a smartass speechwriter?" Kristol politely quashed my speculation. "In any other speech, at any other time, I'd be concerned," he explained. "But not the State of the Union. It's too important. Every sentence is fully vetted and deeply considered. Nothing gets in there that they are not sure they mean."
In his memoir The Right Man, Frum admitted that he originally came up with the idea because his boss, chief speechwriter Michael Gerson told him to find a way to justify a war against Iraq and he thought it would be really cool to make up one of those axis-things we had to fight against in World War II. I swear I?m not making this up. His original term, ?axis of hatred," was later transmuted into ?evil? to take advantage of "the theological language that Bush had made his own since September 11."
As O?Neill tells it, he woke up on the day of the address to read on the front page of the New York Times that the president was planning on using some cockamamie calculation?provided by a mistaken midlevel OMB employee?to justify nearly $700 billion in tax cuts. Furious and nearly shaking with disbelief, O?Neill tried to head it off but was informed that since the document had already been leaked to the media by the White House political staff, it was too late to correct it. How in the world, he wondered, could Rove and company ?decide to do things like this and no even consult with the people in government who know what?s true or not? Who was in charge here? This is complete bull****.??
Of course, the past was mere prelude to the big lie of the 2003 State of the Union when the president told the nation the phony story of Iraq?s alleged purchase of uranium from an unnamed African nation - a story many people in government knew to be untrue.
Michael Kinsley ruminated on the modus operandi that distinguished this White House from previous ones: ?Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven't bothered. If telling the truth was less bother, they'd try that too. The characteristic Bush II form of dishonesty is to construct an alternative reality on some topic and to regard anyone who objects to it as a sniveling dweeb obsessed with ?nuance,? which the president of this class, I mean of the United States, has more important things to do than worry about.?
In his third State of the Union, Bush moved from nuance to nonsense. The president pretended that his original invasion had been inspired by something he termed ?weapons of mass destruction program-related activities? instead of the weapons themselves.
How much else of what Bush and his representatives claim would crumble to dust with only a little journalistic investigation?
A senior US diplomat in London has ruffled feathers in Britain's foreign policy establishment by publicly implying that a reference to the "Jewish lobby" in the United States is an anti-Semitic remark.
...the incoming chief inspector indicated that he will shift the focus of the hunt from finding weapons to learning what became of Hussein's weapons programs.
"Direct threats require decisive action," Cheney said in a speech to the World Economic Forum (In his second foreign trip since taking office,) and he urged European allies to "act with all the urgency that this danger demands."
Cheney said the world is becoming safer, but alliances and international partnerships must remain strong in fighting terror because "We are not safe yet." "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are," Cheney said.
After his speech, Cheney flew to Italy, where he is visiting until Tuesday. He will meet with Premier Silvio Berlusconi, a major backer of the Iraq invasion, and Pope John Paul
"One of the most meaningful things that's happened to me since I've been the governor ? the president ? governor ? president. Oops. Ex-governor."?George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 9, 2004
"People who hate America tend to love Michael Moore - and that's all you need to know." Bill O'Reilly
For anyone to dare to suggest that Israel is the cause of the climate of hatred in Muslim countries, the attitude that generates, encourages, and supports the groups who are adversaries in the War on terrorism; is going to the greatest thing that stifles questioning the correctness of allowing 3 million Israelis to hold 300 million Americans hostage; namely, the worst barrier to free speech and objective inquiry - the epithet of being Anti-Semitic.
How many more terrorist attacks can our poorly defended country suffer; how many thousands, if not millions of casualties can we absorb: before public opinion will balk at further support for Israel?
85 % of the Republicans think the War on Iraq was right but 54 % of the Democrats think it was a big mistake. 72 % of the Democrats demand more help for the needy in their own country and are supported by only 39% of the Republicans. With other issues the gap is similarly wide.
Every week the New York Times List of best-selling Books give proof of this theory. Since months this list is topped by conservative stirrers like Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter or trouble-makers like Michael Moore and Al Franken.
It is hard to conceive that a varied country with a 300 million population can split in two camps of the same size, so thousand voters or a single judge can decide the nation's destiny. How did this nation with its huge powers of integration fell apart into two halves?
Four years ago the majority of the singles voted for Gore while the married voted for Bush. 61 % of weapon owners have voted republican while 70 % of those who have claimed themselves to be homosexual voted democratic. 90 % of the black population voted for Gore.
"The pictures of Texas on the wall, to me, remind me of who I am, just little old Barbara Bush's son."
"The Oval Office is the kind of place," bush said, "where people stand outside the door and say, `I can't wait to get inside; I'm going to tell him what for.' They walk in this place, the first words out of their mouth are, `Mr. President, man, you're looking good.' "
mred - (im not sure whether its scarier that this line was part of a script, or if it actually came from inside his addled head.)
NOVAK: Worse yet was Clarks refusal to condemn leftist propagandist Michael Moore for libeling President Bush as a deserter.
NOVAK: Ms. Steenburgen, I'm just dying to know if you agree with your candidate, General Clark, that the president of the United States is a deserter? Desertion is one of the most heinous crimes. It's a felony. You put people in prison. Do you think -- do you think -- do you agree with that?
NOVAK: And get off Dick Cheney's back. It's really getting sickening.
NOVAK: I wondered, Ms. Steenburgen, if it's a matter of actors, such as you and your husband, feeling that General Clark is a kindred soul, because he's obviously reading lines that somebody else prepares for him, just as you do when you go before the cameras.
NOVAK: It's never been -- that's never been proved on the AWOL. AWOL, of course, is a crime and could be brought before a court-martial. That's never been the case. But he is not a deserter. And for General Clark, who knows what a deserter is... to sit there and not say that's wrong is disgraceful.
Chossudovsky discusses how the Washington Post marginalized the story about an unusual breakfast meeting that took place between top-ranking members of Congress and the Pakistani Lieutenant General named Mahmoud Ahmed, who was the head of the ISI on 9/11/01. (Ahmed is also said to have been the money man who wired $100,000 to alleged hijacker Mohamed Atta.)
"Those going into teaching have the lowest SAT and ACT scores of any profession in the United States," Kerry observed.
He asked how was it that the percentage of black children living with both parents through the age of 17 had gone to 6 percent from 50 percent?
It was 9/11, Daalder and Lindsay write, that provided the catalyst for Bush to blend what could be called the assertive nationalism of Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice; the neoconservative vision of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle; and his own view, formed long before 9/11, that success requires a clear resolve and the will to use power, into a vision and a mission. That the mission could be perceived as a pernicious new form of imperialism was totally alien to Bush.
''When President Bush says, as he does frequently, that 'freedom' will prevail, in fact he means that America will prevail,'' Soros writes, adding: ''I am rather sensitive to Orwellian doublespeak because I grew up with it in Hungary, first under Nazi and later Communist rule.''
Surmising, for example, why American generals did nothing to protect the cultural treasures of Baghdad, Ali writes: ''Having stirred their soldiers to fight and destroy the 'ragheads,' portrayed in briefings as uncivilized barbarians responsible for 9/11, perhaps they were now fearful of admitting that the 'ragheads' were a people with a culture.''
Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist and writer, perceives an ideologically driven administration locked in an apocalyptic death-dance with Islamic radicals.
Todd says he used to see the United States as a model, as his ''subconscious safety net.'' Now, he declares, it is solely a ''predator,'' living way beyond its means, racking up video-game victories over defenseless nations and undermining human rights.
I confess I was taken aback to have my country depicted, page after page, book after book, as a dangerous empire in its last throes, as a failure of democracy, as militaristic, violent, hegemonic, evil, callous, arrogant, imperial and cruel.
The more moving judgment comes from Soros, a Jew from Hungary who lived through both German and Soviet occupation: ''This is not the America I chose as my home.''
"I don't think there's any question that (comprehensive testing of all students) is preferable."
?U.S. "Drug Czar" John Walters
Pewaukee High School is developing a proposal to test students in the drama club, jazz band and other activities. The cost -- around $30 per student -- "is something that we've taken into account,"
Legal observers say constitutional barriers to suspicionless searches probably bar random drug testing of entire student bodies, given the presumption that all American children are entitled to attend public school.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in dissenting to a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld testing students in extracurricular activities, argued that the policy "targets for testing a student population least likely to be at risk from illicit drugs."
Herro cited a study by University of Michigan researchers who last year looked at survey data from 1998 through 2001 drawn from 772 high schools and middle schools. They found virtually identical rates of usage in schools that test and schools that do not.
kagan:
As the French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, put it, the struggle was not so much about Iraq as it was about "two visions of the world." The differences were not only about policy. They were also about first principles.
Opinion polls taken before, during and after the war have shown two peoples living on separate strategic and ideological planets.
In her essay, Ms. Rice derided "the belief that the United States is exercising power legitimately only when it is doing so on behalf of someone or something else." But for the rest of the world, what other source of legitimacy can there be? When the United States acts in its own interests, Ms. Rice claimed, as would many Americans, it necessarily serves the interests of everyone.
"To be sure," condi argued, "there is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in a sense, a second-order effect."
But can the United States cede some power to Europe without putting American security, and indeed Europe's and the entire liberal democratic world's security, at risk in the process?
Europeans thus may succeed in debilitating the United States, but since they have no intention of supplementing American power with their own, the net result will be a diminution of the total amount of power that the liberal democratic world can bring to bear in its defense ? and in defense of liberalism itself.
The small Cessna Citation was just over Grand Rapids, Mich., when the secure phone rang. Attorney General John Ashcroft listened intently, interrupting the caller repeatedly. After hanging up, he turned to his small staff. "The world," he said, "has changed forever."
Ashcroft, as the nation's top law enforcement officer, would have to turn more than a century's worth of jurisprudence on its head and begin enforcing the nation's laws in a fundamentally new way. Traditionally, the Justice Department's role was to punish miscreants after the fact. That, as President Bush told Ashcroft bluntly after the attacks, was no longer good enough. "John," Bush said, "don't let this happen again."
"I may be the person more responsible for trying to shape the national consciousness in saying that prosecution is not enough for the Justice Department anymore," he said. "It has to be actively involved in prevention."
Ashcroft's name alone is a guaranteed applause line for the Democratic hopefuls.
Party politics largely serves as a smokescreen. It is, therefore, unlikely that the Democrats would undo either the war agenda or, for that matter, the dreaded Patriot Act.
"But, in fact, I DON'T accept that Old Adolf offed the 'Six Million'...and for several reasons. For one thing, the Jewish population statistics barely changed over the entire interwar period. For another, no 'Hitler order' has ever been found. For another, the nazis were desperate for labor, so why should they eliminate those useful to them? For another, the official death books of Auschwitz -- supposedly the prime 'death camp' -- show nothing about 'exterminations', in spite of the fact that Germans were meticulous-to-a-fault record keepers (In fact, the Auschwitz administration was sent a written order that every effort was to be taken to REDUCE THE DEATH RATE!). For another, the primary testimony of the Auschwitz camp commandant, which is the source of most of the 'Six Million' number, was obtained by torture and is completely bogus. For another, the work of Fred Leuchter, Germar Rudolf and others has completely disproved the existence of 'gas chambers' at Auschwitz -- the supposed primary means of execution -- the evidence for which was characterized by well-known Jewish historian Arno Mayer as 'at once rare and unreliable'. For another, the extermination of 'Six Million' was ALSO claimed by Jews in WW1, and, in fact, the 'Six Million' is a mystical cabalistic number pertaining to the number of Jews who must be 'cleansed' before Israel can be re-established. "
New York Times story of a few years ago recognized that the original Auschwitz number was bogus by reporting the changing of the plaques at the Aushwitz gates - to DOWNSIZE the original claim of 4 million killed to 1.1 million.
It was very predictable that the Bush slime administration would do everything they could to shut Saddam up. Categorizing him as a prisoner of war allows them to say that he has the right to remain silent. And that's exactly how they want him.
Now, it's interesting, that Saddam, who basically laid down for the US military and hardly put up a fight, is called a prisoner of war, while the Taliban prisoners who fought aggressively, are held in gitmo and are classified instead as enemy combatants who are eligible for torture and who have very limited rights. Very handy. If you're going to get in the habit of routine lying and fraud, little details like this don't bother you.
My guess is that with the proper friendly incentives, meaning, without torture, Saddam would be thrilled to spill the beans. This is what Bush and his gang will attempt to thwart at all costs. I wouldn't be surprised to find Saddam dead pretty soon. He's a very serious threat and liability to Bush now. At least, now that the rest of the world knows that the Kurds caught him, the Republicans aren't touting his capture so boastfully.
Securities regulators are examining a surge in options trading just before Wednesday's announcement that J.P. Morgan Chase agreed to buy Bank One for $58 billion, according to people familiar with the situation.
"How can you be certain they mean it?" I asked him. "What if it was just a smartass speechwriter?" Kristol politely quashed my speculation. "In any other speech, at any other time, I'd be concerned," he explained. "But not the State of the Union. It's too important. Every sentence is fully vetted and deeply considered. Nothing gets in there that they are not sure they mean."
In his memoir The Right Man, Frum admitted that he originally came up with the idea because his boss, chief speechwriter Michael Gerson told him to find a way to justify a war against Iraq and he thought it would be really cool to make up one of those axis-things we had to fight against in World War II. I swear I?m not making this up. His original term, ?axis of hatred," was later transmuted into ?evil? to take advantage of "the theological language that Bush had made his own since September 11."
As O?Neill tells it, he woke up on the day of the address to read on the front page of the New York Times that the president was planning on using some cockamamie calculation?provided by a mistaken midlevel OMB employee?to justify nearly $700 billion in tax cuts. Furious and nearly shaking with disbelief, O?Neill tried to head it off but was informed that since the document had already been leaked to the media by the White House political staff, it was too late to correct it. How in the world, he wondered, could Rove and company ?decide to do things like this and no even consult with the people in government who know what?s true or not? Who was in charge here? This is complete bull****.??
Of course, the past was mere prelude to the big lie of the 2003 State of the Union when the president told the nation the phony story of Iraq?s alleged purchase of uranium from an unnamed African nation - a story many people in government knew to be untrue.
Michael Kinsley ruminated on the modus operandi that distinguished this White House from previous ones: ?Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven't bothered. If telling the truth was less bother, they'd try that too. The characteristic Bush II form of dishonesty is to construct an alternative reality on some topic and to regard anyone who objects to it as a sniveling dweeb obsessed with ?nuance,? which the president of this class, I mean of the United States, has more important things to do than worry about.?
In his third State of the Union, Bush moved from nuance to nonsense. The president pretended that his original invasion had been inspired by something he termed ?weapons of mass destruction program-related activities? instead of the weapons themselves.
How much else of what Bush and his representatives claim would crumble to dust with only a little journalistic investigation?
A senior US diplomat in London has ruffled feathers in Britain's foreign policy establishment by publicly implying that a reference to the "Jewish lobby" in the United States is an anti-Semitic remark.
...the incoming chief inspector indicated that he will shift the focus of the hunt from finding weapons to learning what became of Hussein's weapons programs.
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