By Eli Stephens
Oct 4, 2006
http://lefti.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_lefti_archive.html#115996811131949564
George Bush says about Rep. Mark Foley:
"I was dismayed and shocked to learn about Congressman Foley's unacceptable behavior. I was disgusted by the revelations."
In Iraq and Afghanistan, George Bush & Co. have committed the ultimate in child abuse, committing the outright murder of thousands of them and being directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands more. Is George Bush "dismayed, shocked, and digusted" by that behavior? No, he's proud of it.
Has he ever even mentioned the brutal, shocking (if one can be shocked by anything U.S. troops do in Iraq) rape and murder of 14-year-old Abir al-Janabi and the simultanous murder of several of her family members? A search of the White House website says the answer is no. I guess that event wasn't "dismaying, shocking, or disgusting" enough by George Bush's standards.
Phone sex with a 16-year-old minor, though, that's what gets George hot and bothered
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Bush Dynasty to continue
Jeb really has eye on presidency
• Don't be confused by his denials today that he is not interested in the job; his campaign for the highest office in this land has already begun.
by Gema Hernandez
July 23, 2006
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060723/OPINION/607230389/1015
We Floridians have a moral and ethical responsibility with the rest of the nation, and as such, we need to provide our fellow citizens with a complete assessment of Jeb Bush's legacy to our state.
There is a royal plan in place, and Jeb is making sure that his political resume includes all the necessary components so when he is ready to run in 2016 no questions will be asked.
The plan is to portray Jeb as the right Bush for the turbulent times his brother will leave behind.
This will eliminate the need to explain why Jeb is not part of the Bush Dynasty, separating him from his brother and at the same time reaffirming the Bush mantra of faith, family and friends.
This requires a very delicate balance that Jeb is beginning to maintain.
This propaganda, excuse me, this political campaign, is going to be so great and so well orchestrated that Jeb will be practically elected president by popular demand.
Don't be confused by his denials today that he is not interested in the job; his campaign for the highest office in this land has already begun for the 2016 election, but because he is an impatient person he may decide to do it sooner in 2012.
Explore his record
As Floridians we need to make sure the media explore all aspects of his accomplishments and not just the bullet points they are being fed by Jeb's machine.
We should explore the so- called success of his People First program.
While it is true that on paper the size of the official government work force has been reduced, what truly has taken place has been a reclassification of jobs from Career Services positions to Other Personnel Services (OPS) positions.
These are not "officially counted" as being part of the government work force.
OPS workers are supposed to be temporary workers as defined by Florida statute, but under Jeb's leadership they have become a permanent and growing part of a shadow government work force.
As we examine Jeb's legacy we need to remember that the much needed increases in funding for programs for individuals with disabilities were obtained not because of Jeb's sensitivity to the disabled but as a result of legal actions against the state and won by disabled people.
Let us remember the Lawton Chiles Tobacco Settlement, another legal action won by the previous administration but awarded during Jeb's term in office.
This financial windfall was to provide services to frail elders. Unfortunately, after the first few years, elder programs stopped receiving the funding in proportion to their needs.
Jeb's plans are so well orchestrated that when he named the tobacco trust fund in "honor" of Lawton Chiles everyone in Florida was impressed by his generosity and his willingness to honor his predecessor.
Now, eight years later we begin to discover that the naming of the program was not to honor his predecessor but as a way of distancing himself from an action that is against Big industry.
His alleged accomplishments in the educational arena should be examined.
Those accomplishments did little to move Florida's educational system from being at the bottom of the national ranking.
Part of his educational program included the Opportunity Scholarships Program, a program that was declared unconstitutional by the pre- Bush appointed Supreme Court because it uses taxpayer dollars to support religious schools.
Jeb as CEO
Jeb's legacy to our state includes the role of governor as a CEO.
As a CEO he began outsourcing traditional jobs to other corporations, such as human resources, eligibility determination, management of prisons and detention centers and the the leasing of government offices.
As a CEO, Jeb capped malpractice cases, opening the doors for doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities to be more relaxed in their handling of people.
As a CEO he failed to inspire his own people to follow his vision. His failure in this area forced him to settle many discrimination cases out of court and forced him to fire key staff members after the media exposed their abuse of power.
If Jeb was just another governor with no further political ambition and not a member of a royal political family, framing his legacy with less accuracy could be accepted.
We need to demand of our media to use their resources and talent to objectively and properly present all his accomplishments. They should not omit or bypass pieces of information that could critically skew his overall effectiveness as a governor.
After all, we Floridians do have a moral and ethical responsibility to the rest of the nation and that responsibility is to be witness to what is to come when our governor reaches his next political goal.
Gema G. Hernandez is the former Secretary of the Florida Department of Elder Affairs. She resides part-time on Fort Myers Beach.
• Don't be confused by his denials today that he is not interested in the job; his campaign for the highest office in this land has already begun.
by Gema Hernandez
July 23, 2006
http://www.news-press.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060723/OPINION/607230389/1015
We Floridians have a moral and ethical responsibility with the rest of the nation, and as such, we need to provide our fellow citizens with a complete assessment of Jeb Bush's legacy to our state.
There is a royal plan in place, and Jeb is making sure that his political resume includes all the necessary components so when he is ready to run in 2016 no questions will be asked.
The plan is to portray Jeb as the right Bush for the turbulent times his brother will leave behind.
This will eliminate the need to explain why Jeb is not part of the Bush Dynasty, separating him from his brother and at the same time reaffirming the Bush mantra of faith, family and friends.
This requires a very delicate balance that Jeb is beginning to maintain.
This propaganda, excuse me, this political campaign, is going to be so great and so well orchestrated that Jeb will be practically elected president by popular demand.
Don't be confused by his denials today that he is not interested in the job; his campaign for the highest office in this land has already begun for the 2016 election, but because he is an impatient person he may decide to do it sooner in 2012.
Explore his record
As Floridians we need to make sure the media explore all aspects of his accomplishments and not just the bullet points they are being fed by Jeb's machine.
We should explore the so- called success of his People First program.
While it is true that on paper the size of the official government work force has been reduced, what truly has taken place has been a reclassification of jobs from Career Services positions to Other Personnel Services (OPS) positions.
These are not "officially counted" as being part of the government work force.
OPS workers are supposed to be temporary workers as defined by Florida statute, but under Jeb's leadership they have become a permanent and growing part of a shadow government work force.
As we examine Jeb's legacy we need to remember that the much needed increases in funding for programs for individuals with disabilities were obtained not because of Jeb's sensitivity to the disabled but as a result of legal actions against the state and won by disabled people.
Let us remember the Lawton Chiles Tobacco Settlement, another legal action won by the previous administration but awarded during Jeb's term in office.
This financial windfall was to provide services to frail elders. Unfortunately, after the first few years, elder programs stopped receiving the funding in proportion to their needs.
Jeb's plans are so well orchestrated that when he named the tobacco trust fund in "honor" of Lawton Chiles everyone in Florida was impressed by his generosity and his willingness to honor his predecessor.
Now, eight years later we begin to discover that the naming of the program was not to honor his predecessor but as a way of distancing himself from an action that is against Big industry.
His alleged accomplishments in the educational arena should be examined.
Those accomplishments did little to move Florida's educational system from being at the bottom of the national ranking.
Part of his educational program included the Opportunity Scholarships Program, a program that was declared unconstitutional by the pre- Bush appointed Supreme Court because it uses taxpayer dollars to support religious schools.
Jeb as CEO
Jeb's legacy to our state includes the role of governor as a CEO.
As a CEO he began outsourcing traditional jobs to other corporations, such as human resources, eligibility determination, management of prisons and detention centers and the the leasing of government offices.
As a CEO, Jeb capped malpractice cases, opening the doors for doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and assisted living facilities to be more relaxed in their handling of people.
As a CEO he failed to inspire his own people to follow his vision. His failure in this area forced him to settle many discrimination cases out of court and forced him to fire key staff members after the media exposed their abuse of power.
If Jeb was just another governor with no further political ambition and not a member of a royal political family, framing his legacy with less accuracy could be accepted.
We need to demand of our media to use their resources and talent to objectively and properly present all his accomplishments. They should not omit or bypass pieces of information that could critically skew his overall effectiveness as a governor.
After all, we Floridians do have a moral and ethical responsibility to the rest of the nation and that responsibility is to be witness to what is to come when our governor reaches his next political goal.
Gema G. Hernandez is the former Secretary of the Florida Department of Elder Affairs. She resides part-time on Fort Myers Beach.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
to James Wolcott
re: Red State Babylon
If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity.
by James Wolcott
November 2006
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/11/wolcott200611
Jimmy,
I can call you Jimmy, right? After all, I do live in one of your "red states".
The number one reason the republicans have been winning those “red states”? They talk to the people, not at the people.
I’ve worked for 16 years to change attitudes in my local area, and I have had a decent amount of success. And looking at the polls for this state, and the south in general, I believe that there have been a whole lot of people doing the same. And I’m going to tell you, it would have been a whole shit-load easier if people here weren’t continually being talked down to by their “betters” in the “elite northeast and west coast”. Telling them they’re “dumb”, voting against their interests, religious nuts, and, in general, a lower class of people. Shit, Jimmy, who you gonna vote for? The guy who talks to you, or the one who talks at you?
Jimmy, when was the last time you had to pick up a shovel for a paycheck? When was the last time a medical emergency forced you to lose your home? And just a question. Ain’t the financial center right there in Manhatten, and serviced by “elite northeast power brokers”? I’m sure you’re aware of it. You know, the one that sucks the economic lifeblood from this area to give to the investment classes.
Kids can’t afford a house here, Jimmy. Speculation and investment have driven land and home prices far out of reach for the working person, even with a wife and husband working in a lot of cases. Not too many unions, so wages aren’t all that terrific. And the only low prices are at the Dollar General and the Wal-Mart. You know why all that extra cash was lying around? The bush tax cuts. The rich had a lot of money on hand, and the stock market was dead, so they parked the money in real estate. And the rest as they say, is history.
Yeah, we work hard all week to raise the family, and then knock back on the weekend. Mow the lawn (still growing here, what’s it like up there, Jimmy?), do an oil-change and tune-up on the pickup, knock back a few beers watching college football, and then off to the local track Saturday night to watch their hometown heroes race around in their gasoline chariots. Sunday’s for church and NASCAR, or pro-football. Or maybe fishing with the kids.
So, what do you want, Jimmy? We don’t have a lot of buses down here to ride in, even Greyhound’s gone.
Do you remember bush’s Social Security “reform” circus a couple of years ago? Well, it’s back. Just waiting in the wings for the election to be over. People here, for the most part, don’t have pensions. Their retirement is going to be Social Security. I make sure they notice that in all these proposals, that no one is calling to raise the ceiling on income subject to the SocSec tax to, say $150,000, instead of the $90,000 now current. A quick fix, I say, and let’s move on to more pressing matters, like Iraq, health care, employment, and housing.
Jimmy, did you know that the majority of military and contractor deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq came from the south? Around me, many families have members in the armed forces, reserves, and National Guard. The president bush policies affect them all. With just a constant lean on them, I’ve watched many of them become more and more dissatisified with the bush and his republican party. But I’ve also watched the democratic party give up on a lot of local races. The election is won in the republican party primary. How’s about squeezing out some of that extra cash you got, Jimmy, to help organization work down here? Maybe make it a bit more competitive.
Now, I’m not saying your article paints a false picture, Jimmy. It’s true. But your acid pen would work better if you were writing from the inside instead of the outside, as it were. Why don’t you come down for a visit? You only have the superficial picture that the media paints, focused as it is on the famous, the infamous, and the power brokers. And that’s not the reality being lived here below the scenes. Desperate families living from one crisis (natural or otherwise) to the next, and hoping that Johnny does come marching home. That’s the condition of the working class, when you boil away the platitudes and fancy rhetoric.
Ain’t none of us any better than the other. That’s the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. Working people have been turned from a primary asset to a corporate liability. They’ve become all too easily disposable. And that’s happening nation wide, not just in the “red states”. Just as in Hitler’s Germany, and Lenin’s Russia, when people are cast adrift, they become open targets for demagogues. It’s no different here, and the bushistas are no different in their absolutism. And neither are “intellectuals” in their disdain for the “lower classes”.
The cause you profess would be better served if you were to choose your targets, shall we say, a bit more carefully. The real enemies to your way of life are the republicans. They are running us to bankruptcy and ruin. Not that I think the democratic party is a whole lot better. We can deal with them after we’ve broken the republicans into their constituent parts. But that ain’t gonna happen if we continue to define the conversation along class lines.
If we treat people as our social and all-too human equals, we get results. Perhaps its time to think about shifting the paradigm from celebrity to reality.
Redneck City,
Florida
If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity.
by James Wolcott
November 2006
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/11/wolcott200611
Jimmy,
I can call you Jimmy, right? After all, I do live in one of your "red states".
The number one reason the republicans have been winning those “red states”? They talk to the people, not at the people.
I’ve worked for 16 years to change attitudes in my local area, and I have had a decent amount of success. And looking at the polls for this state, and the south in general, I believe that there have been a whole lot of people doing the same. And I’m going to tell you, it would have been a whole shit-load easier if people here weren’t continually being talked down to by their “betters” in the “elite northeast and west coast”. Telling them they’re “dumb”, voting against their interests, religious nuts, and, in general, a lower class of people. Shit, Jimmy, who you gonna vote for? The guy who talks to you, or the one who talks at you?
Jimmy, when was the last time you had to pick up a shovel for a paycheck? When was the last time a medical emergency forced you to lose your home? And just a question. Ain’t the financial center right there in Manhatten, and serviced by “elite northeast power brokers”? I’m sure you’re aware of it. You know, the one that sucks the economic lifeblood from this area to give to the investment classes.
Kids can’t afford a house here, Jimmy. Speculation and investment have driven land and home prices far out of reach for the working person, even with a wife and husband working in a lot of cases. Not too many unions, so wages aren’t all that terrific. And the only low prices are at the Dollar General and the Wal-Mart. You know why all that extra cash was lying around? The bush tax cuts. The rich had a lot of money on hand, and the stock market was dead, so they parked the money in real estate. And the rest as they say, is history.
Yeah, we work hard all week to raise the family, and then knock back on the weekend. Mow the lawn (still growing here, what’s it like up there, Jimmy?), do an oil-change and tune-up on the pickup, knock back a few beers watching college football, and then off to the local track Saturday night to watch their hometown heroes race around in their gasoline chariots. Sunday’s for church and NASCAR, or pro-football. Or maybe fishing with the kids.
So, what do you want, Jimmy? We don’t have a lot of buses down here to ride in, even Greyhound’s gone.
Do you remember bush’s Social Security “reform” circus a couple of years ago? Well, it’s back. Just waiting in the wings for the election to be over. People here, for the most part, don’t have pensions. Their retirement is going to be Social Security. I make sure they notice that in all these proposals, that no one is calling to raise the ceiling on income subject to the SocSec tax to, say $150,000, instead of the $90,000 now current. A quick fix, I say, and let’s move on to more pressing matters, like Iraq, health care, employment, and housing.
Jimmy, did you know that the majority of military and contractor deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq came from the south? Around me, many families have members in the armed forces, reserves, and National Guard. The president bush policies affect them all. With just a constant lean on them, I’ve watched many of them become more and more dissatisified with the bush and his republican party. But I’ve also watched the democratic party give up on a lot of local races. The election is won in the republican party primary. How’s about squeezing out some of that extra cash you got, Jimmy, to help organization work down here? Maybe make it a bit more competitive.
Now, I’m not saying your article paints a false picture, Jimmy. It’s true. But your acid pen would work better if you were writing from the inside instead of the outside, as it were. Why don’t you come down for a visit? You only have the superficial picture that the media paints, focused as it is on the famous, the infamous, and the power brokers. And that’s not the reality being lived here below the scenes. Desperate families living from one crisis (natural or otherwise) to the next, and hoping that Johnny does come marching home. That’s the condition of the working class, when you boil away the platitudes and fancy rhetoric.
Ain’t none of us any better than the other. That’s the thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. Working people have been turned from a primary asset to a corporate liability. They’ve become all too easily disposable. And that’s happening nation wide, not just in the “red states”. Just as in Hitler’s Germany, and Lenin’s Russia, when people are cast adrift, they become open targets for demagogues. It’s no different here, and the bushistas are no different in their absolutism. And neither are “intellectuals” in their disdain for the “lower classes”.
The cause you profess would be better served if you were to choose your targets, shall we say, a bit more carefully. The real enemies to your way of life are the republicans. They are running us to bankruptcy and ruin. Not that I think the democratic party is a whole lot better. We can deal with them after we’ve broken the republicans into their constituent parts. But that ain’t gonna happen if we continue to define the conversation along class lines.
If we treat people as our social and all-too human equals, we get results. Perhaps its time to think about shifting the paradigm from celebrity to reality.
Redneck City,
Florida
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Israel's nuclear war in Lebanon
What can I say? America and Israel. The only two countries to use nuclear weapons. This vista of endless wars, each one becoming more horrifying than the last, is what the bushistas promise us. The criminal bush has told us that future presidents will have to solve the Iraq problem. This push off of accountability is little georgie’s signature position throughout his life. He has NEVER had to face up to the consequences of his actions.
And now, daddy has to bail him out again. Most men, at least real men, by the time they’re in their fifties don’t have to go running to daddy. But our little georgie still does. What’s that tell you about us, that he’s still the president? You know, we need to look at ourselves, too. We are, after all, allowing this uranium poisoning of innocent victims. Do we really want it to continue for another 2 years, and then let the war criminals go retire in ease and comfort? Is that justice? Is that courage? Is that even wise?
The bush policies, foreign and domestic both, are condemning our children and grandchildren to a life of deprivation and fear. Fear of their own government, as well as those peoples we are inflaming by our actions now. We haven’t gotten over our own Civil War after 140 years. Why would we think these people are going to forget? Especially since they will still be living with the effects of our actions. He is bankrupting this nation with his wars and tax cuts for the rich.
These are the stakes in November. And this is why neither the republican party or the bushistas can afford to lose control of Congress. It shows their desperation as their ads crawl further into the gutter with each passing day. The question remains.
*****
Britain and US defy demand for immediate ceasefire
By Anne Penketh, Ben Russell, Colin Brown and Stephen Castle
Published: 21 July 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1188875.ece
Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Lebanon yesterday, defying a demand by Kofi Annan for an immediate end to fighting on the ninth day of a war that has led to the "collective punishment of the Lebanese people" .
Two countries, the US and Britain, defiantly refused to back the international clamour for an immediate ceasfire between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas. Their ambivalence about civilian deaths in Lebanon has given Israel a powerful signal that it can continue its attacks with impunity.
[…]
United States to Israel: you have one more week to blast Hizbullah
Bush 'gave green light' for limited attack, say Israeli and UK sources
Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Patrick Wintour
Wednesday July 19, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1823817,00.html
The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources.
The Bush administration, backed by Britain, has blocked efforts for an immediate halt to the fighting initiated at the UN security council, the G8 summit in St Petersburg and the European foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.
"It's clear the Americans have given the Israelis the green light. They [the Israeli attacks] will be allowed to go on longer, perhaps for another week," a senior European official said yesterday. Diplomatic sources said there was a clear time limit, partly dictated by fears that a prolonged conflict could spin out of control.
US strategy in allowing Israel this freedom for a limited period has several objectives, one of which is delivering a slap to Iran and Syria, who Washington claims are directing Hizbullah and Hamas militants from behind the scenes.
[…]
Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
Robert Fisk
28 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste product of the enrichment process is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium.
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas - until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.
[…]
Report: Israel used uranium-based warheads in Lebanon war
By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
28/10/2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/780516.html
Studies carried out by a European Union-affiliated organization suggest the Israel Air Force used experimental missiles employing uranium against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, the British newspaper The Independent reported on its website on Saturday.
According to the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, Doctor Chris Busby, tests carried out on soil taken from craters where Israeli missiles impacted showed 'elevated radiation signatures.'
Busby's report concluded that such results could be caused either by bunker-busting conventional bombs using uranium or a new kind of weapon bearing a "novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash."
An Italian television report aired last week made a similar claim, raising the possibility that Israel had used a weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.
The report claimed the weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.
The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.
[…]
Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview
By Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi
August 31, 2006
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/DU-Azzawi.htm
Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry has been used against Iraq for the first time in the history of recent wars. The magnitude of the complications and damage related to the use of such radioactive and toxic weapons on the environment and the human population mostly results from the intended concealment, denial and misleading information released by the Pentagon about the quantities, characteristics and the area’s in Iraq, in which these weapons have been used.
Revelation of information regarding what is called the Gulf War Syndrome among exposed American veterans helped Iraqi researchers and Medical Doctors to understand the nature of the effect of these weapons, and the means required to investigate further into this issue.
The synergetic impact on health due to the post Gulf War I economical sanctions and DU related radioactive contamination raised the number of casualties in contaminated areas as in southern Iraq.
Continual usage of DU after Gulf War I on other Iraqi territories through the illegal No-Fly Zones and the major DU loaded Cruise Missiles attack of year 1998, all contributed in making the problem increasingly complex.
During 2003, military operations conducted in Iraq by the invading forces used additional rounds of DU in heavily populated areas such as Baghdad, Samawa and other provinces. It is only fair to conclude that the environment in Iraq and its population have been exposed continuously to DU weaponry or its contaminating remains, since 1991.
[…]
And now, daddy has to bail him out again. Most men, at least real men, by the time they’re in their fifties don’t have to go running to daddy. But our little georgie still does. What’s that tell you about us, that he’s still the president? You know, we need to look at ourselves, too. We are, after all, allowing this uranium poisoning of innocent victims. Do we really want it to continue for another 2 years, and then let the war criminals go retire in ease and comfort? Is that justice? Is that courage? Is that even wise?
The bush policies, foreign and domestic both, are condemning our children and grandchildren to a life of deprivation and fear. Fear of their own government, as well as those peoples we are inflaming by our actions now. We haven’t gotten over our own Civil War after 140 years. Why would we think these people are going to forget? Especially since they will still be living with the effects of our actions. He is bankrupting this nation with his wars and tax cuts for the rich.
These are the stakes in November. And this is why neither the republican party or the bushistas can afford to lose control of Congress. It shows their desperation as their ads crawl further into the gutter with each passing day. The question remains.
*****
Britain and US defy demand for immediate ceasefire
By Anne Penketh, Ben Russell, Colin Brown and Stephen Castle
Published: 21 July 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1188875.ece
Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Lebanon yesterday, defying a demand by Kofi Annan for an immediate end to fighting on the ninth day of a war that has led to the "collective punishment of the Lebanese people" .
Two countries, the US and Britain, defiantly refused to back the international clamour for an immediate ceasfire between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas. Their ambivalence about civilian deaths in Lebanon has given Israel a powerful signal that it can continue its attacks with impunity.
[…]
United States to Israel: you have one more week to blast Hizbullah
Bush 'gave green light' for limited attack, say Israeli and UK sources
Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall and Patrick Wintour
Wednesday July 19, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1823817,00.html
The US is giving Israel a window of a week to inflict maximum damage on Hizbullah before weighing in behind international calls for a ceasefire in Lebanon, according to British, European and Israeli sources.
The Bush administration, backed by Britain, has blocked efforts for an immediate halt to the fighting initiated at the UN security council, the G8 summit in St Petersburg and the European foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.
"It's clear the Americans have given the Israelis the green light. They [the Israeli attacks] will be allowed to go on longer, perhaps for another week," a senior European official said yesterday. Diplomatic sources said there was a clear time limit, partly dictated by fears that a prolonged conflict could spin out of control.
US strategy in allowing Israel this freedom for a limited period has several objectives, one of which is delivering a slap to Iran and Syria, who Washington claims are directing Hizbullah and Hamas militants from behind the scenes.
[…]
Mystery of Israel's secret uranium bomb
Alarm over radioactive legacy left by attack on Lebanon
Robert Fisk
28 October 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1935945.ece
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians?
We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed.
But scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.
Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.
Enriched uranium is produced from natural uranium ore and is used as fuel for nuclear reactors. A waste product of the enrichment process is depleted uranium, it is an extremely hard metal used in anti-tank missiles for penetrating armour. Depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural uranium, which is less radioactive than enriched uranium.
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas - until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.
[…]
Report: Israel used uranium-based warheads in Lebanon war
By Meron Rapoport, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
28/10/2006
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/780516.html
Studies carried out by a European Union-affiliated organization suggest the Israel Air Force used experimental missiles employing uranium against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, the British newspaper The Independent reported on its website on Saturday.
According to the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, Doctor Chris Busby, tests carried out on soil taken from craters where Israeli missiles impacted showed 'elevated radiation signatures.'
Busby's report concluded that such results could be caused either by bunker-busting conventional bombs using uranium or a new kind of weapon bearing a "novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash."
An Italian television report aired last week made a similar claim, raising the possibility that Israel had used a weapon in the Gaza Strip in recent months, causing especially serious physical injuries, such as amputated limbs and severe burns.
The report claimed the weapon is similar to one developed by the U.S. military, known as DIME, which causes a powerful and lethal blast, but only within a relatively small radius.
The Italian report is based on the eyewitness accounts of medical doctors in the Strip, as well as tests carried out in an Italian laboratory. The investigative team is the same one that exposed, several months ago, the use by U.S. forces in Iraq of phosphorous bombs, against Iraqi rebels in Faluja.
[…]
Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq: An Overview
By Prof Souad N. Al-Azzawi
August 31, 2006
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/DU-Azzawi.htm
Depleted Uranium (DU) weaponry has been used against Iraq for the first time in the history of recent wars. The magnitude of the complications and damage related to the use of such radioactive and toxic weapons on the environment and the human population mostly results from the intended concealment, denial and misleading information released by the Pentagon about the quantities, characteristics and the area’s in Iraq, in which these weapons have been used.
Revelation of information regarding what is called the Gulf War Syndrome among exposed American veterans helped Iraqi researchers and Medical Doctors to understand the nature of the effect of these weapons, and the means required to investigate further into this issue.
The synergetic impact on health due to the post Gulf War I economical sanctions and DU related radioactive contamination raised the number of casualties in contaminated areas as in southern Iraq.
Continual usage of DU after Gulf War I on other Iraqi territories through the illegal No-Fly Zones and the major DU loaded Cruise Missiles attack of year 1998, all contributed in making the problem increasingly complex.
During 2003, military operations conducted in Iraq by the invading forces used additional rounds of DU in heavily populated areas such as Baghdad, Samawa and other provinces. It is only fair to conclude that the environment in Iraq and its population have been exposed continuously to DU weaponry or its contaminating remains, since 1991.
[…]
Friday, October 27, 2006
about the bin Laden tapes
By now, we've gotten used to the bushistas releasing video and audio tapes purported to be by Osama at politically opportune times. Before we get our shorts in a bunch when the next one comes out (it IS getting close to the mid-term elections, remember), here's a little something from the Guerrilla Campaign history vault to keep in mind.
MIT previews scary 'speech' tech
Software that puts words into your mouth
John Geralds in Silicon Valley, vnunet.com 24 May 2002
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118878/mit-previews-scary-speech-tech
A breakthrough in video technology has given researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the power to animate images of real people saying words they've never actually spoken.
Tomaso Poggio, an investigator with MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Tony Ezzat, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, have simulated mouth movements that look so real that they convince most viewers of their authenticity.
According to the researchers, given a few minutes of footage of any individual, the team can pair virtually any audio to any videotaped face, matching mouth movements to the words.
Poggio, who investigates learning theories that can be applied to understanding the brain and building intelligent machines, said: "This human animation technique is inevitable, it's just another step in progress that has happened over the last several years."
The MIT team's software records facial expressions while a person speaks into a camera, and learns to associate the images with sounds.
Using that database, a false image of the person can be synthesised to a soundtrack of new words.
According to Poggio, the work could improve the man-machine interface by putting a "real" face on computer avatars.
Instead of the unrealistic, cartoon-like images that now exist, computerised people could become much more lifelike.
He pointed out the technology has applications in the business, entertainment, speech therapy and education arenas.
The method could also be used for redubbing a film from one language to another and could be used in tasks such as eye-tracking, facial expression recognition and visual speech estimation.
Even so, the researchers recognise that the technology could be misused - to discredit political activists on television or to illegally use trusted figures to endorse products, for example.
"The work is still in its infancy, but it proves the point that we can take existing video footage and re-animate it in interesting ways," Ezzat said.
The team still needed to work on re-animating emotions, he said. "We cannot handle footage with profile views of a person, but we are making progress toward addressing these issues."
The researchers have already begun testing the technology on videos of Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC's Nightline, with the aim of dubbing a show in Spanish, Ezzat explained.
The work, which will be presented as a research paper in July at the Siggraph conference, is funded by the National Science Foundation and the New Technology Telescope (NTT) through the NTT-MIT Research Collaboration.
MIT previews scary 'speech' tech
Software that puts words into your mouth
John Geralds in Silicon Valley, vnunet.com 24 May 2002
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2118878/mit-previews-scary-speech-tech
A breakthrough in video technology has given researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the power to animate images of real people saying words they've never actually spoken.
Tomaso Poggio, an investigator with MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and Tony Ezzat, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, have simulated mouth movements that look so real that they convince most viewers of their authenticity.
According to the researchers, given a few minutes of footage of any individual, the team can pair virtually any audio to any videotaped face, matching mouth movements to the words.
Poggio, who investigates learning theories that can be applied to understanding the brain and building intelligent machines, said: "This human animation technique is inevitable, it's just another step in progress that has happened over the last several years."
The MIT team's software records facial expressions while a person speaks into a camera, and learns to associate the images with sounds.
Using that database, a false image of the person can be synthesised to a soundtrack of new words.
According to Poggio, the work could improve the man-machine interface by putting a "real" face on computer avatars.
Instead of the unrealistic, cartoon-like images that now exist, computerised people could become much more lifelike.
He pointed out the technology has applications in the business, entertainment, speech therapy and education arenas.
The method could also be used for redubbing a film from one language to another and could be used in tasks such as eye-tracking, facial expression recognition and visual speech estimation.
Even so, the researchers recognise that the technology could be misused - to discredit political activists on television or to illegally use trusted figures to endorse products, for example.
"The work is still in its infancy, but it proves the point that we can take existing video footage and re-animate it in interesting ways," Ezzat said.
The team still needed to work on re-animating emotions, he said. "We cannot handle footage with profile views of a person, but we are making progress toward addressing these issues."
The researchers have already begun testing the technology on videos of Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC's Nightline, with the aim of dubbing a show in Spanish, Ezzat explained.
The work, which will be presented as a research paper in July at the Siggraph conference, is funded by the National Science Foundation and the New Technology Telescope (NTT) through the NTT-MIT Research Collaboration.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Hip Deep In The Trickle Down
by Mary Pitt
HUZZAH! The old folks are getting a raise in their monthly pittance next year. We are to be eternally grateful that we are allowed to be blessed by the trickle-down that has finally reached us, Compassionate Conservatism at its best. With this Cost Of Living Allowance, their lives will be so much easier.
But wait! Surely they will not be allowed to luxuriate for long with this untold wealth. As with the paychecks over the years, we must count the "deducts". While the news reports that the average retiree recieves the grand amount of $1,049 per month currently and will gain $33.00 per month, the average couple now receives $1,658, since the "dependent" wife receives a much smaller amount than does the wage earner, and that will increase to $1713 in 2007, a whopping $20,556 per year. However, the amounts deducted from these checks will be reduced by the insurance premium for Medicare Part B. This insurance, which pays for doctors' office visits will also increase to $93.50 each, or a total deduction of $2,244 per year. In addition, the people at Social Security tell us that the average charge of Medicare Part D is another deduction of $20. In fact, this deduction will normally be closer to $40 per month for those who receive no State assistance with the cost, another deduction of $960 per year per couple. This leaves a net income of $17,352 per year per couple, a whopping $723 per person per month with which to pay housing expenses, food and clothing.
That is not the end of the primary drain on this glorious windfall. Each of these Medicare benefits carries "deductible and co-payments", amounts that must be paid by each person before any benefits accrue. Each year, the medical bills must be paid in full by the patient before any doctor's visits or hospitalization are covered until the deductible figure is met, just as with the health insurance that working people carry. Once those amounts are paid, each illness carries a co-payment that must be paid by the patient. Of course, these co-payments will vary with the cost of the hospital stay but it would be safe to say that, after each hospitalization, the patients will find that they will owe a minimum of $1000 more which will need to paid from the Social Security check.
Under Part D, after the deductible is met, each medication requires a co-payment which varies according to which medication is prescribed and some of the newer, more effective medications are not covered at all. Then the patient has the option of buying a generic and, probably, less effective medication which is covered, in effect placing their health further at risk due to possible side effects or dosage instability. And then there is the dread "donut hole"! When Medicare Part D was intitiated we were told that "when you have spent $2500 on medications in a year", you will be required to pay the full amount until you have paid a similar amount out-of-pocket when coverage will again kick in. According to the way the program was presented to the public, the elderly and their local pharmacists assumed that it meant the amount that THEY were required to pay as counting toward the $2500 limit. Foolish old people! It counted the TOTAL cost of the medications, a combination of the amounts paid by the patients AND the insurance, and left them being required to also pay from the monthly checks for medications that cost tens of dollars PER TABLET. With the fine print in the law which prohibits Medicare from bargaining for lower prices with the pharmaceutical companies, the elderly are faced with the choice of buying their medicine or eating and heating their homes; in some cases losing their homes or their lives as the result. The major improvement created by the plan is that all the old folks will die at the end of the year, mostly after election day.
Do we suggest that they appeal to their middle-class Baby Boomer children for financial assistance? Those "children" are also up to their buns in trickle-down, with their own children paying ever-increasing college tuition and, despite the family help, will graduate with thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. In additiion, they are trying like mad to prepare for their own approaching retirement while paying their own mortgage and the rapidly-growing property taxes and insurance, as well as fighting the roller-coaster of gas prices for their daily commute. With the advent of the Bush tax cuts and the resultant cuts in Federal sharing with the states, the states have had to increase the taxes on property, income, and sales to compensate, making the tax burden even heavier on the shoulders of those who live in the less prosperous states. But these elderly people, who were born during the 'thirties and early 'forties,. are accustomed to sacrifice. They are a part of the "Greatest Generation", who suffered the privation of the Great Depression, lived with the shortages and rationing during World War II, and put their lives on the line in order to "make the world safe for democracy". They will die quietly rather than to "become a burden on their children".
George W. Bush was elected on his promise to be a "compassionate conservative", but we have seen little of either. The profligate spending on the illegal war in Iraq has alienated even the most dogmatic conservatives and the compassion is nowhere to be found. Now, all he asks is two more years of a Republican Congressional majority so that he can have another try at "reforming", (translation: destroying). Social Security, Medicare, and all the other "compassionate" programs for the benefit of the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. He lauds the "great and prosperous" economy which would indicate that there is a lot of money out there.......somewhere. But, somehow the matter that is trickling down is definitely not money. And, if the Democrats are not able to regain Congressional control, we will all be drowning in it!
HUZZAH! The old folks are getting a raise in their monthly pittance next year. We are to be eternally grateful that we are allowed to be blessed by the trickle-down that has finally reached us, Compassionate Conservatism at its best. With this Cost Of Living Allowance, their lives will be so much easier.
But wait! Surely they will not be allowed to luxuriate for long with this untold wealth. As with the paychecks over the years, we must count the "deducts". While the news reports that the average retiree recieves the grand amount of $1,049 per month currently and will gain $33.00 per month, the average couple now receives $1,658, since the "dependent" wife receives a much smaller amount than does the wage earner, and that will increase to $1713 in 2007, a whopping $20,556 per year. However, the amounts deducted from these checks will be reduced by the insurance premium for Medicare Part B. This insurance, which pays for doctors' office visits will also increase to $93.50 each, or a total deduction of $2,244 per year. In addition, the people at Social Security tell us that the average charge of Medicare Part D is another deduction of $20. In fact, this deduction will normally be closer to $40 per month for those who receive no State assistance with the cost, another deduction of $960 per year per couple. This leaves a net income of $17,352 per year per couple, a whopping $723 per person per month with which to pay housing expenses, food and clothing.
That is not the end of the primary drain on this glorious windfall. Each of these Medicare benefits carries "deductible and co-payments", amounts that must be paid by each person before any benefits accrue. Each year, the medical bills must be paid in full by the patient before any doctor's visits or hospitalization are covered until the deductible figure is met, just as with the health insurance that working people carry. Once those amounts are paid, each illness carries a co-payment that must be paid by the patient. Of course, these co-payments will vary with the cost of the hospital stay but it would be safe to say that, after each hospitalization, the patients will find that they will owe a minimum of $1000 more which will need to paid from the Social Security check.
Under Part D, after the deductible is met, each medication requires a co-payment which varies according to which medication is prescribed and some of the newer, more effective medications are not covered at all. Then the patient has the option of buying a generic and, probably, less effective medication which is covered, in effect placing their health further at risk due to possible side effects or dosage instability. And then there is the dread "donut hole"! When Medicare Part D was intitiated we were told that "when you have spent $2500 on medications in a year", you will be required to pay the full amount until you have paid a similar amount out-of-pocket when coverage will again kick in. According to the way the program was presented to the public, the elderly and their local pharmacists assumed that it meant the amount that THEY were required to pay as counting toward the $2500 limit. Foolish old people! It counted the TOTAL cost of the medications, a combination of the amounts paid by the patients AND the insurance, and left them being required to also pay from the monthly checks for medications that cost tens of dollars PER TABLET. With the fine print in the law which prohibits Medicare from bargaining for lower prices with the pharmaceutical companies, the elderly are faced with the choice of buying their medicine or eating and heating their homes; in some cases losing their homes or their lives as the result. The major improvement created by the plan is that all the old folks will die at the end of the year, mostly after election day.
Do we suggest that they appeal to their middle-class Baby Boomer children for financial assistance? Those "children" are also up to their buns in trickle-down, with their own children paying ever-increasing college tuition and, despite the family help, will graduate with thousands of dollars in student-loan debt. In additiion, they are trying like mad to prepare for their own approaching retirement while paying their own mortgage and the rapidly-growing property taxes and insurance, as well as fighting the roller-coaster of gas prices for their daily commute. With the advent of the Bush tax cuts and the resultant cuts in Federal sharing with the states, the states have had to increase the taxes on property, income, and sales to compensate, making the tax burden even heavier on the shoulders of those who live in the less prosperous states. But these elderly people, who were born during the 'thirties and early 'forties,. are accustomed to sacrifice. They are a part of the "Greatest Generation", who suffered the privation of the Great Depression, lived with the shortages and rationing during World War II, and put their lives on the line in order to "make the world safe for democracy". They will die quietly rather than to "become a burden on their children".
George W. Bush was elected on his promise to be a "compassionate conservative", but we have seen little of either. The profligate spending on the illegal war in Iraq has alienated even the most dogmatic conservatives and the compassion is nowhere to be found. Now, all he asks is two more years of a Republican Congressional majority so that he can have another try at "reforming", (translation: destroying). Social Security, Medicare, and all the other "compassionate" programs for the benefit of the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. He lauds the "great and prosperous" economy which would indicate that there is a lot of money out there.......somewhere. But, somehow the matter that is trickling down is definitely not money. And, if the Democrats are not able to regain Congressional control, we will all be drowning in it!
Selling Satan:
Iraqi War Dead and the Collateral Damage to America's Soul
by Phil Rockstroh
Headline (Reuters): "United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts" http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061020/ts_nm/iraq_media_usa_dc
"O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
All human beings have a talent for the denial of the more unpalatable aspects of ourselves, but we Americans have turned denial into a form of collective genius. There is no need to burn books, if the public is too ignorant to know they exist -- or too benumbed to resonate with their content.
Regarding the death of well over half-a-million Iraqis, the majority of the citizenry of The Corporatists States of America have experienced a comparable degree of regret and remorse that their oligarchic overlords experience when topping-off the tanks of their corporate jets with fuel purchased with money plundered from their employee's retirement accounts ... Sans conscience above -- sans conscience below.
Dante posited Limbo (that quiet suburban community ringing Hell) was a place reserved for those who evinced indifference to the world around them. It would seem our corporate/consumer version of Damnation (which now includes Casual Fridays in Hell itself) requires prescriptions for anti-depressants, urine tests, and Reality Television competitions to enter its inner most circles.
As stated, human beings have always possessed an immense capacity for self-deception -- but, at present, we Americans can no longer afford stupid, naked monkey business as usual: The stakes are too damn high. When we, as a people, cannot or will not connect the needless deaths of well over half-a-million Iraqis with the oversized motor vehicles in our driveways, the situation has grown dire indeed.
How can we go on this way? At this point, a guilt-induced, collective nervous breakdown in the middle of our morning commute would seem to be in order.
By existing in this degree of denial, what have we conjured? What sort of a society do we call forth when our lives are as isolated, benumbed, inauthentic and devoid of conscience as they are at present? The answer is: We're living in the midst of it -- this hideous era of pervasive flimflam and permanent war. Call it: The Haliburtonization of everyday life. Again, as above -- so below.
We live in a nation dominated by salesmanship (commercial, political, religious). Accordingly, the salesman's credo is: a facile mendacity trumps a stubborn truth -- because an honest mode of being would cause the buyer to become wary of the giddy lie of the pitch. Hence, complicity in its duplicity is what the corporate/consumer state demands of us.
The salesman's counterfeit smile is, of course, camouflage. Beneath it is hidden a face more closely resembling that quintessential corporatist and Haliburton-alumni-in-good-standing: Dick Cheney; his joyless, thin-lipped, psychopath's half grin is the true countenance of our death-enamored empire.
A salesman's repertoire of manipulative enthusiasm and sham amiability fronts the whole criminal enterprise. Is it any coincidence that Las Vegas and prisons are the fastest growing population centers in the United States? -- We've become a country comprised of clip-joints and jails -- a land of suckers and criminals -- with a cultural landscape peopled by corporate scam artists, congressional bagmen, and war criminals (hiding in plain sight in the highest offices of the land). It's a natural progression, due to the fact that capitalism has always depended on a predatory class of sociopaths, has always relied upon thievery and murder, and, therefore, needs an endless supply of suckers and victims.
Yet, most of us Americans are no one's victims. Any con artist worth his smarmy smile is aware of this fact: As a rule, a mark is made the victim of his own greed. Moreover -- by means of our complicity in allowing our identities to be molded by a culture dominated by proliferate propaganda, empty salesmanship, and our own lies of omission -- the fate of a hapless mark, bamboozled by self-inflicted selfishness, is the criteria we live out daily. Apropos, we're now condemned to shuffle through our lives as somnambulating ciphers, dim denizens of a world made manifest by mountebanks.
We should be cautioned. History reveals: What a nation inflicts upon the world -- its own people will, sooner or later, inflict upon each other. There is no need to warily scan the horizon line for its arrival, because we're already living in the midst of the angst and emptiness we have wrought. Ergo, when dreams mean nothing -- when words and images are rendered meaningless -- our lives reflect these dismal states.
Words, images, and dreams are our internal analog of the vast, manifold, and incomprehensible sublime of the cosmos. When we dream: We are spiraling supernovas and spindling stalks of slime mold. We are schools of silent fish and we are the fulmination of thunder. We are uniquely ourselves; yet, we also contain all of existence. To lose our dreams is to lose our soul. Hence: To have the verities of our inner selves twisted and distorted towards the selfish ends of corporate capitalism and the dishonest agendas of mass media-driven political discourse is to become estranged from passion, empathy, and imagination; thereby, we grow inured to phrases such as preemptive war, collateral damage and acceptable losses -- expressions that we should find repellent, if not, flat-out mortifying.
If not, then it should follow: We should change the names of the civilian casualties of war, inscribed upon their respective tombstones, to simply read "Collateral Damage." Moreover, narratives of bereavement should sound something like this: "You see, when the bombs of the Preemptive Warriors fell on our home -- our child, now named, 'Collateral Damage,' was asleep in her crib, and she became 'our little Acceptable Loss.'" Now try this: See how the statement above sounds when you substitute the names of your loved-ones -- or even the names of your pets.
In opposition to empathy, the corporatist mode of being instructs us that human life, like material objects, exists merely to be used, used-up, then discarded; nature is to be subdued, exploited, and decimated; trees -- toppled; rivers -- dammed up; mountains -- ground down to silt; words -- degraded, attenuated, and stripped of meaning. Finally, they will come for us.
Instead, what if we were seized and shook by shamanic visions sent to us from an ensouled earth that had grown enraged by our ignorance and indifference towards its plight? What if these fantastic and terrifying narratives warned of dire events and augured destruction, in which, oceans rose, hurricanes churned, glaciers melted, the very young and the very old perished from extreme heat and cold, as clouds of pestilence descended upon the land?
Are these visions crackpot ravings -- or last summer's news and weather reports? What difference would it make whether these dire and dreadful circumstances are wrought by wrathful gods or Global Warming? The structure, plot, theme, and dénouement are essentially the same: Hubris and ignorance transform nature (human and otherwise) into a force of blind destruction, thereby rendering arrogant folly rending tragedy. Whether engendered by gods, or memes, or molecules -- suffering is suffering; untimely death is untimely death, regardless of the cause.
We Americans have numbed ourselves in order to be able to live with our complicity in the crimes of empire. We have carpet bombed our rational minds into oblivion by the belief in chimeras such as "smart bombs." Reason tells us: a truly smart bomb would be able to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. Therefore, for a smart bomb to exist, it would have to be a Frankenstein Monster Bomb, because, in order to exterminate the truly guilty, it would first have to kill its creators. Then it would go after the soulless bastards who ordered its use. Accordingly, smart bombs would be flying into Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's front doors as thick and fast as moths toward a glowing porch light on a warm summer night.
Only a society of numbed-out, reality-adverse imbeciles could believe in the existence of smart bombs. In a related matter, recent public opinion surveys have revealed close to seventy percent of the population of the United States does not believe in the Theory of Evolution, yet believes that a mythological character called Satan is a literal entity.
How did this epic ignorance come to be? How did we leave the 21st Century and blunder back to the 14th? Maybe this type of hocus-pocus, hoodoo, and religious legerdemain is necessary to keep an increasingly angst-ridden, over-worked populace from rising from our enclosures in Hell (also known as cubicles and work stations) and demanding a system that offers greater depth, meaning and resonance than the one presently afforded under corporate hegemony.
Is this how we became so passive and benumbed -- because the life we're offered and have accepted within the corporate/consumer paradigm is so limiting in its possibilities: it being a system that occludes and eventually destroys the natural world (both external and internal)? Is this the reason we have grown so dim -- because our imaginations have been so deeply suppressed that its imaginings now rise as a living nightmare of literalization? Perhaps, Americans don't believe in evolution -- due to the fact we no longer believe that meaningful change can occur. And, perhaps, we believe in the literal existence of a soul-collecting Devil -- because we know that we have lost our essential selves to a mysterious force that seems beyond our control. Having been seduced by the illusions of corporate capitalism (a false mythos that tantalizes us with promises of freedom but instead shackles us to exploitive labor and mind-numbing consumerism) we know we have made an ill-advised bargain with some dark force that has robbed us of our humanity. We know (maybe ineffably) that, here within the empire, our lives have lost an essential, soul-enhancing element.
It is possible we fear our souls are imperiled by the Devil, because, on some level of awareness, we grasp we have forsaken our ability to experience a life imbued by meaning, depth and resonance, due to our systematic suppression of those vital aspects of our character that are capable of imagining then creating a future containing greater possibilities than the shriveled pickings of the present.
We fear the licking flames of hell, I suspect, because we realize we have sold our souls at fire sale prices.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
by Phil Rockstroh
Headline (Reuters): "United States numb to Iraq troop deaths: experts" http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061020/ts_nm/iraq_media_usa_dc
"O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick
All human beings have a talent for the denial of the more unpalatable aspects of ourselves, but we Americans have turned denial into a form of collective genius. There is no need to burn books, if the public is too ignorant to know they exist -- or too benumbed to resonate with their content.
Regarding the death of well over half-a-million Iraqis, the majority of the citizenry of The Corporatists States of America have experienced a comparable degree of regret and remorse that their oligarchic overlords experience when topping-off the tanks of their corporate jets with fuel purchased with money plundered from their employee's retirement accounts ... Sans conscience above -- sans conscience below.
Dante posited Limbo (that quiet suburban community ringing Hell) was a place reserved for those who evinced indifference to the world around them. It would seem our corporate/consumer version of Damnation (which now includes Casual Fridays in Hell itself) requires prescriptions for anti-depressants, urine tests, and Reality Television competitions to enter its inner most circles.
As stated, human beings have always possessed an immense capacity for self-deception -- but, at present, we Americans can no longer afford stupid, naked monkey business as usual: The stakes are too damn high. When we, as a people, cannot or will not connect the needless deaths of well over half-a-million Iraqis with the oversized motor vehicles in our driveways, the situation has grown dire indeed.
How can we go on this way? At this point, a guilt-induced, collective nervous breakdown in the middle of our morning commute would seem to be in order.
By existing in this degree of denial, what have we conjured? What sort of a society do we call forth when our lives are as isolated, benumbed, inauthentic and devoid of conscience as they are at present? The answer is: We're living in the midst of it -- this hideous era of pervasive flimflam and permanent war. Call it: The Haliburtonization of everyday life. Again, as above -- so below.
We live in a nation dominated by salesmanship (commercial, political, religious). Accordingly, the salesman's credo is: a facile mendacity trumps a stubborn truth -- because an honest mode of being would cause the buyer to become wary of the giddy lie of the pitch. Hence, complicity in its duplicity is what the corporate/consumer state demands of us.
The salesman's counterfeit smile is, of course, camouflage. Beneath it is hidden a face more closely resembling that quintessential corporatist and Haliburton-alumni-in-good-standing: Dick Cheney; his joyless, thin-lipped, psychopath's half grin is the true countenance of our death-enamored empire.
A salesman's repertoire of manipulative enthusiasm and sham amiability fronts the whole criminal enterprise. Is it any coincidence that Las Vegas and prisons are the fastest growing population centers in the United States? -- We've become a country comprised of clip-joints and jails -- a land of suckers and criminals -- with a cultural landscape peopled by corporate scam artists, congressional bagmen, and war criminals (hiding in plain sight in the highest offices of the land). It's a natural progression, due to the fact that capitalism has always depended on a predatory class of sociopaths, has always relied upon thievery and murder, and, therefore, needs an endless supply of suckers and victims.
Yet, most of us Americans are no one's victims. Any con artist worth his smarmy smile is aware of this fact: As a rule, a mark is made the victim of his own greed. Moreover -- by means of our complicity in allowing our identities to be molded by a culture dominated by proliferate propaganda, empty salesmanship, and our own lies of omission -- the fate of a hapless mark, bamboozled by self-inflicted selfishness, is the criteria we live out daily. Apropos, we're now condemned to shuffle through our lives as somnambulating ciphers, dim denizens of a world made manifest by mountebanks.
We should be cautioned. History reveals: What a nation inflicts upon the world -- its own people will, sooner or later, inflict upon each other. There is no need to warily scan the horizon line for its arrival, because we're already living in the midst of the angst and emptiness we have wrought. Ergo, when dreams mean nothing -- when words and images are rendered meaningless -- our lives reflect these dismal states.
Words, images, and dreams are our internal analog of the vast, manifold, and incomprehensible sublime of the cosmos. When we dream: We are spiraling supernovas and spindling stalks of slime mold. We are schools of silent fish and we are the fulmination of thunder. We are uniquely ourselves; yet, we also contain all of existence. To lose our dreams is to lose our soul. Hence: To have the verities of our inner selves twisted and distorted towards the selfish ends of corporate capitalism and the dishonest agendas of mass media-driven political discourse is to become estranged from passion, empathy, and imagination; thereby, we grow inured to phrases such as preemptive war, collateral damage and acceptable losses -- expressions that we should find repellent, if not, flat-out mortifying.
If not, then it should follow: We should change the names of the civilian casualties of war, inscribed upon their respective tombstones, to simply read "Collateral Damage." Moreover, narratives of bereavement should sound something like this: "You see, when the bombs of the Preemptive Warriors fell on our home -- our child, now named, 'Collateral Damage,' was asleep in her crib, and she became 'our little Acceptable Loss.'" Now try this: See how the statement above sounds when you substitute the names of your loved-ones -- or even the names of your pets.
In opposition to empathy, the corporatist mode of being instructs us that human life, like material objects, exists merely to be used, used-up, then discarded; nature is to be subdued, exploited, and decimated; trees -- toppled; rivers -- dammed up; mountains -- ground down to silt; words -- degraded, attenuated, and stripped of meaning. Finally, they will come for us.
Instead, what if we were seized and shook by shamanic visions sent to us from an ensouled earth that had grown enraged by our ignorance and indifference towards its plight? What if these fantastic and terrifying narratives warned of dire events and augured destruction, in which, oceans rose, hurricanes churned, glaciers melted, the very young and the very old perished from extreme heat and cold, as clouds of pestilence descended upon the land?
Are these visions crackpot ravings -- or last summer's news and weather reports? What difference would it make whether these dire and dreadful circumstances are wrought by wrathful gods or Global Warming? The structure, plot, theme, and dénouement are essentially the same: Hubris and ignorance transform nature (human and otherwise) into a force of blind destruction, thereby rendering arrogant folly rending tragedy. Whether engendered by gods, or memes, or molecules -- suffering is suffering; untimely death is untimely death, regardless of the cause.
We Americans have numbed ourselves in order to be able to live with our complicity in the crimes of empire. We have carpet bombed our rational minds into oblivion by the belief in chimeras such as "smart bombs." Reason tells us: a truly smart bomb would be able to distinguish the innocent from the guilty. Therefore, for a smart bomb to exist, it would have to be a Frankenstein Monster Bomb, because, in order to exterminate the truly guilty, it would first have to kill its creators. Then it would go after the soulless bastards who ordered its use. Accordingly, smart bombs would be flying into Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's front doors as thick and fast as moths toward a glowing porch light on a warm summer night.
Only a society of numbed-out, reality-adverse imbeciles could believe in the existence of smart bombs. In a related matter, recent public opinion surveys have revealed close to seventy percent of the population of the United States does not believe in the Theory of Evolution, yet believes that a mythological character called Satan is a literal entity.
How did this epic ignorance come to be? How did we leave the 21st Century and blunder back to the 14th? Maybe this type of hocus-pocus, hoodoo, and religious legerdemain is necessary to keep an increasingly angst-ridden, over-worked populace from rising from our enclosures in Hell (also known as cubicles and work stations) and demanding a system that offers greater depth, meaning and resonance than the one presently afforded under corporate hegemony.
Is this how we became so passive and benumbed -- because the life we're offered and have accepted within the corporate/consumer paradigm is so limiting in its possibilities: it being a system that occludes and eventually destroys the natural world (both external and internal)? Is this the reason we have grown so dim -- because our imaginations have been so deeply suppressed that its imaginings now rise as a living nightmare of literalization? Perhaps, Americans don't believe in evolution -- due to the fact we no longer believe that meaningful change can occur. And, perhaps, we believe in the literal existence of a soul-collecting Devil -- because we know that we have lost our essential selves to a mysterious force that seems beyond our control. Having been seduced by the illusions of corporate capitalism (a false mythos that tantalizes us with promises of freedom but instead shackles us to exploitive labor and mind-numbing consumerism) we know we have made an ill-advised bargain with some dark force that has robbed us of our humanity. We know (maybe ineffably) that, here within the empire, our lives have lost an essential, soul-enhancing element.
It is possible we fear our souls are imperiled by the Devil, because, on some level of awareness, we grasp we have forsaken our ability to experience a life imbued by meaning, depth and resonance, due to our systematic suppression of those vital aspects of our character that are capable of imagining then creating a future containing greater possibilities than the shriveled pickings of the present.
We fear the licking flames of hell, I suspect, because we realize we have sold our souls at fire sale prices.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
a bright spot
Amidst the tawdry and the carnage, a bright spot from New Jersey.
Even if the democratic party does take control, I don’t really expect a lot to change. Pelosi, the woman who would become Speaker of the House has already said that impeachment of the president bush is just not on her agenda. The tawdry and the carnage will continue, and we’ll all just sort of bumble along to the sad denouement for the US.
When Clinton was elected President, he chose not to push a full investigation into the crimes of Iran-Contra, in order to try to restore a semblence of bi-partisanship to the US political scene. Well, we all know how that worked out. Abrams, Negroponti, Otto Reich, those guys. Guess where they are today? Yep. Working for the little georgie, and doing the same sort of things they used to.
So, besides leaving the precedents, policies, and laws of the bushistas in place, we also run the danger of seeing them back in government.
And meanwhile, we’ll all be left holding the bag while the little shrubbie dances away to Paraguay.
So. Here’s a flower for the Jersey judges.
NJ court grants gay couples equal marriage rights
Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:00 PM ET
By Jon Hurdle
http://today.reuters.com/news/home.aspx
TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - Saying times have changed, New Jersey's highest court on Wednesday guaranteed gay couples the same rights as married heterosexuals but left it to state lawmakers to decide if such unions can be called marriage.
"Times and attitudes have changed," the New Jersey Supreme Court said in a nuance 90-page ruling that was neither a clear victory nor a defeat for gay marriage, which is currently legal in the United States only in Massachusetts.
"Despite the rich diversity of this state, the tolerance and goodness of its people, and the many recent advances made by gays and lesbians toward achieving social acceptance and equality under the law, the court cannot find that the right to same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our constitution," the ruling said.
Stating that gay couples must have the same rights as other couples, the court said gay advocates must now "appeal to their fellow citizens whose voices are heard through their popularly elected representatives."
With that in mind, the court gave the legislature six months to either amend the state's marriage statutes to include gay people, or write a new law in which same-sex couples "would enjoy the rights of civil marriage."
New Jersey's marriage statutes define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The ruling leaves state lawmakers with two options -- allow gays to marry in the same way as others, or develop a parallel system of unions for same-sex couples. That second option would leave New Jersey with civil unions akin to those in Vermont.
Same-sex marriage has faced legal and political roadblocks in much of the United States and has been a hot-button issue since 2003 when Massachusetts' highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage, paving the way for America's first same-sex marriages in May 2004.
In the 2004 election, many states had ballot initiatives against gay marriage -- a factor which was credited with boosting the vote for President George W. Bush.
And much is at stake on the issue again in the upcoming elections on November 7. The gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign says voters in eight states will decide on constitutional amendments limiting gay marriage or unions.
SIGNIFICANT ADVANCE
"Our decision today significantly advances the civil rights of gays and lesbians," the New Jersey court wrote.
"We have decided that our state constitution guarantees that every statutory right and benefit conferred to heterosexual couples through civil marriage must be made available to committed same-sex couples."
"Now the legislature must determine whether to alter the long accepted definition of marriage. The great engine for social change in this country has always been the democratic process," the court said.
Both advocates and critics of gay marriage called the ruling a partial victory for their cause.
Matt Coles, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It may not be a complete win, but it is a very substantial win."
"This is an enormous step forward -- what the ruling means is that under the state laws of New Jersey same-sex couple have to be treated just the same as heterosexual married couples," he said. "It is up to the legislature to decide what it is called, but the rights and protections must be the same."
He said that within six months, New Jersey will either be like Massachusetts with full marriage for gays or like Connecticut, California, and Vermont, which have civil unions.
Michael Behrens, an attorney for the Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage and an opponent of gay marriage, called the ruling a partial victory but which also boosted gay rights.
"Same-sex couples do not have the right to marry," he told reporters at the Trenton court. "However, the legislature must develop a statutory scheme granting homosexual couples the right to the benefits of marriage."
Another opponent of gay marriage applauded the decision and predicted New Jersey legislators would not change state law to allow homosexuals to marry.
"We feel that the legislature is going to vote in favor of defining marriage as an act between a man and a woman," said Michele Combs, director of communications for the conservative lobby group Christian Coalition.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta, Christine Kearney and Ellen Wulfhorst in New York)
Even if the democratic party does take control, I don’t really expect a lot to change. Pelosi, the woman who would become Speaker of the House has already said that impeachment of the president bush is just not on her agenda. The tawdry and the carnage will continue, and we’ll all just sort of bumble along to the sad denouement for the US.
When Clinton was elected President, he chose not to push a full investigation into the crimes of Iran-Contra, in order to try to restore a semblence of bi-partisanship to the US political scene. Well, we all know how that worked out. Abrams, Negroponti, Otto Reich, those guys. Guess where they are today? Yep. Working for the little georgie, and doing the same sort of things they used to.
So, besides leaving the precedents, policies, and laws of the bushistas in place, we also run the danger of seeing them back in government.
And meanwhile, we’ll all be left holding the bag while the little shrubbie dances away to Paraguay.
So. Here’s a flower for the Jersey judges.
NJ court grants gay couples equal marriage rights
Wed Oct 25, 2006 5:00 PM ET
By Jon Hurdle
http://today.reuters.com/news/home.aspx
TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - Saying times have changed, New Jersey's highest court on Wednesday guaranteed gay couples the same rights as married heterosexuals but left it to state lawmakers to decide if such unions can be called marriage.
"Times and attitudes have changed," the New Jersey Supreme Court said in a nuance 90-page ruling that was neither a clear victory nor a defeat for gay marriage, which is currently legal in the United States only in Massachusetts.
"Despite the rich diversity of this state, the tolerance and goodness of its people, and the many recent advances made by gays and lesbians toward achieving social acceptance and equality under the law, the court cannot find that the right to same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our constitution," the ruling said.
Stating that gay couples must have the same rights as other couples, the court said gay advocates must now "appeal to their fellow citizens whose voices are heard through their popularly elected representatives."
With that in mind, the court gave the legislature six months to either amend the state's marriage statutes to include gay people, or write a new law in which same-sex couples "would enjoy the rights of civil marriage."
New Jersey's marriage statutes define marriage as being between a man and a woman.
The ruling leaves state lawmakers with two options -- allow gays to marry in the same way as others, or develop a parallel system of unions for same-sex couples. That second option would leave New Jersey with civil unions akin to those in Vermont.
Same-sex marriage has faced legal and political roadblocks in much of the United States and has been a hot-button issue since 2003 when Massachusetts' highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to ban gay marriage, paving the way for America's first same-sex marriages in May 2004.
In the 2004 election, many states had ballot initiatives against gay marriage -- a factor which was credited with boosting the vote for President George W. Bush.
And much is at stake on the issue again in the upcoming elections on November 7. The gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign says voters in eight states will decide on constitutional amendments limiting gay marriage or unions.
SIGNIFICANT ADVANCE
"Our decision today significantly advances the civil rights of gays and lesbians," the New Jersey court wrote.
"We have decided that our state constitution guarantees that every statutory right and benefit conferred to heterosexual couples through civil marriage must be made available to committed same-sex couples."
"Now the legislature must determine whether to alter the long accepted definition of marriage. The great engine for social change in this country has always been the democratic process," the court said.
Both advocates and critics of gay marriage called the ruling a partial victory for their cause.
Matt Coles, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, "It may not be a complete win, but it is a very substantial win."
"This is an enormous step forward -- what the ruling means is that under the state laws of New Jersey same-sex couple have to be treated just the same as heterosexual married couples," he said. "It is up to the legislature to decide what it is called, but the rights and protections must be the same."
He said that within six months, New Jersey will either be like Massachusetts with full marriage for gays or like Connecticut, California, and Vermont, which have civil unions.
Michael Behrens, an attorney for the Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage and an opponent of gay marriage, called the ruling a partial victory but which also boosted gay rights.
"Same-sex couples do not have the right to marry," he told reporters at the Trenton court. "However, the legislature must develop a statutory scheme granting homosexual couples the right to the benefits of marriage."
Another opponent of gay marriage applauded the decision and predicted New Jersey legislators would not change state law to allow homosexuals to marry.
"We feel that the legislature is going to vote in favor of defining marriage as an act between a man and a woman," said Michele Combs, director of communications for the conservative lobby group Christian Coalition.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta, Christine Kearney and Ellen Wulfhorst in New York)
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The Shame of the Nation
A Collective Perversion
by Stephen Lendman; October 24, 2006
The daily headlines about a single congressman's online pedophiliac behavior obscure the greater issue of a nation off its moorings and afflicted by the collective perversion of defiling the foundational equity and justice-for-all letter and spirit of what the nation long-claimed to stand for but no longer does if it ever did. Nearly everyone in the administration, Congress and courts share the collective guilt and shame and by their actions destroyed Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "resolve....that this nation....shall have a new birth of freedom (in a) "government of the people, by the people, for the people (that) shall not perish from the earth."
They conspiratorially participated in the crimes of a nation that go against Lincoln's hope that the dead he spoke of hadn't "died in vain" on "the great battle-field" where he stood and all the other civil war ones he referred to. They also defiled what the Founders stood for and gave us in 1787 when 55 of them met in the Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, and framed an historic foundational document for the new federal republic they hoped would last into "remote futurity." Benjamin Franklin was there but wasn't so sure and openly and presciently warned we might not be able to keep it. Even at our nation's birth, he understood the risk.
Where are the leaders now with the kind of wisdom, foresight, character, courage and honor our Founders and Lincoln had. A modern-day Diogenes would search in vain for them. We've come a long way in the last 220 years and since the time Lincoln spoke of a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Today democracy and freedom are somewhere between life support and the crematorium, and Ben Franklin would have said I warned you. The only speculation now is whether we've already gone over the edge, sunk too low, and it's too late to save the republic. It's visibly sinking fast into the dustbin of a worthy experiment gone sour because those with the power to nurture it spurned the chance. They sacrificed it on the alter of power corrupting and absolute power doing it absolutely.
[read the rest]
by Stephen Lendman; October 24, 2006
The daily headlines about a single congressman's online pedophiliac behavior obscure the greater issue of a nation off its moorings and afflicted by the collective perversion of defiling the foundational equity and justice-for-all letter and spirit of what the nation long-claimed to stand for but no longer does if it ever did. Nearly everyone in the administration, Congress and courts share the collective guilt and shame and by their actions destroyed Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "resolve....that this nation....shall have a new birth of freedom (in a) "government of the people, by the people, for the people (that) shall not perish from the earth."
They conspiratorially participated in the crimes of a nation that go against Lincoln's hope that the dead he spoke of hadn't "died in vain" on "the great battle-field" where he stood and all the other civil war ones he referred to. They also defiled what the Founders stood for and gave us in 1787 when 55 of them met in the Philadelphia State House, where the Declaration of Independence was signed 11 years earlier, and framed an historic foundational document for the new federal republic they hoped would last into "remote futurity." Benjamin Franklin was there but wasn't so sure and openly and presciently warned we might not be able to keep it. Even at our nation's birth, he understood the risk.
Where are the leaders now with the kind of wisdom, foresight, character, courage and honor our Founders and Lincoln had. A modern-day Diogenes would search in vain for them. We've come a long way in the last 220 years and since the time Lincoln spoke of a nation "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Today democracy and freedom are somewhere between life support and the crematorium, and Ben Franklin would have said I warned you. The only speculation now is whether we've already gone over the edge, sunk too low, and it's too late to save the republic. It's visibly sinking fast into the dustbin of a worthy experiment gone sour because those with the power to nurture it spurned the chance. They sacrificed it on the alter of power corrupting and absolute power doing it absolutely.
[read the rest]
Monday, October 23, 2006
The Amway Rhetoric of an Administration of Salesmen
The Rude Pundit
10/23/2006
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/amway-rhetoric-of-administration-of.html
The Rude Pundit was once friends with a guy whose father was an Amway salesman. In case you've never confronted Amway, the company gets people to sell their products, calling each salesperson an Individual Business Owner. Even though Amway sells online now, the real cash money used to be, at least, in suckering others to give up real jobs to waste a portion of their short lives trying to convince people that what they're selling is better than what you could get at the mall. Then, once you have minions who sell, you merely skim from their profits and, lo and behold, Amway says you could be rich. It requires a certain profligacy with bullshit for one to be remotely successful. It requires that one put aside any notions of soul or morality. And it requires one to be upbeat to an unreal point.
On the refrigerator of the friend's big house, the father had pictures of his life goals: a villa in Tuscany, a pool, a convertible Jaguar. Written on each magazine cut-out picture were phrases like, "You, George Dumbfuck, can own a house in Italy!" It was sad, really, the way the delusional nature of such dreams forced the Dumbfuck family to behave as if they actually had that kind of money. But it was part of their creepy, capitalistic, Christian-influenced optimism, the kind that'd make the Partridge Family think they themselves were suicidal mopes, and it led them, eventually, straight to financial catastrophe. Villa in Tuscany? Fuck, how about a small apartment in Alabama?
The relentless happy talk from the Bush administration has all the hallmarks of trying to convince people that they, too, can get rich if they sell Amway. Here's Bush on This Week With George Stephanopoulos's Hair: "I define success or failure as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether the unity government's making difficult — the difficult decisions necessary to unite the country. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built, or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we're seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East." See, not being able to afford your mortgage is just a short-term problem - you shouldn't define your personal success in such base monetary terms. Selling those vitamins, though, that's a success.
The delusions continue to the point where you're not even allowed to speculate on failure. See, Daddy Dumbfuck couldn't allow himself to think that one day he might not have that Jag, that he might have to settle for the used Ford Focus. Because to admit that failure is a possibility is to give in to weakness that'll ensure your failure. So when Daddy Dumbfuck and Mommy Dumbfuck would sit around the kitchen counter, they'd only talk about how nice that pool's gonna look in the backyard.
It's like Bush's response to his father actually saying that he's thought about Democrats winning the Congress: "He shouldn't be speculating like this, because — he should have called me ahead of time and I'd tell him they're not going to." He hasn't thought about it, Bush, Jr. says, because it's not going to happen. We can parse that disturbing joviality against polls in lots of ways - the diabolical Diebold fear, the October Surprise, Saddam's verdict, Iran attack - but it's actually just an obstinate refusal to admit that they're not getting the good people of America to sell or buy Amway anymore.
The house may burn down around you, but it's just more important to make that next sale, to get your product loved, to draw others into the scheme. The Dumbfucks failed. Hell, everyone the Rude Pundit ever knew that sold Amway eventually failed. But they never blamed themselves for being stupid enough to do it in the first place.
10/23/2006
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/amway-rhetoric-of-administration-of.html
The Rude Pundit was once friends with a guy whose father was an Amway salesman. In case you've never confronted Amway, the company gets people to sell their products, calling each salesperson an Individual Business Owner. Even though Amway sells online now, the real cash money used to be, at least, in suckering others to give up real jobs to waste a portion of their short lives trying to convince people that what they're selling is better than what you could get at the mall. Then, once you have minions who sell, you merely skim from their profits and, lo and behold, Amway says you could be rich. It requires a certain profligacy with bullshit for one to be remotely successful. It requires that one put aside any notions of soul or morality. And it requires one to be upbeat to an unreal point.
On the refrigerator of the friend's big house, the father had pictures of his life goals: a villa in Tuscany, a pool, a convertible Jaguar. Written on each magazine cut-out picture were phrases like, "You, George Dumbfuck, can own a house in Italy!" It was sad, really, the way the delusional nature of such dreams forced the Dumbfuck family to behave as if they actually had that kind of money. But it was part of their creepy, capitalistic, Christian-influenced optimism, the kind that'd make the Partridge Family think they themselves were suicidal mopes, and it led them, eventually, straight to financial catastrophe. Villa in Tuscany? Fuck, how about a small apartment in Alabama?
The relentless happy talk from the Bush administration has all the hallmarks of trying to convince people that they, too, can get rich if they sell Amway. Here's Bush on This Week With George Stephanopoulos's Hair: "I define success or failure as to whether or not the Iraqis will be able to defend themselves. I define success or failure as whether the unity government's making difficult — the difficult decisions necessary to unite the country. I define success or failure as whether schools are being built, or hospitals are being opened. I define success or failure as whether we're seeing a democracy grow in the heart of the Middle East." See, not being able to afford your mortgage is just a short-term problem - you shouldn't define your personal success in such base monetary terms. Selling those vitamins, though, that's a success.
The delusions continue to the point where you're not even allowed to speculate on failure. See, Daddy Dumbfuck couldn't allow himself to think that one day he might not have that Jag, that he might have to settle for the used Ford Focus. Because to admit that failure is a possibility is to give in to weakness that'll ensure your failure. So when Daddy Dumbfuck and Mommy Dumbfuck would sit around the kitchen counter, they'd only talk about how nice that pool's gonna look in the backyard.
It's like Bush's response to his father actually saying that he's thought about Democrats winning the Congress: "He shouldn't be speculating like this, because — he should have called me ahead of time and I'd tell him they're not going to." He hasn't thought about it, Bush, Jr. says, because it's not going to happen. We can parse that disturbing joviality against polls in lots of ways - the diabolical Diebold fear, the October Surprise, Saddam's verdict, Iran attack - but it's actually just an obstinate refusal to admit that they're not getting the good people of America to sell or buy Amway anymore.
The house may burn down around you, but it's just more important to make that next sale, to get your product loved, to draw others into the scheme. The Dumbfucks failed. Hell, everyone the Rude Pundit ever knew that sold Amway eventually failed. But they never blamed themselves for being stupid enough to do it in the first place.
a failed business venture
Talking Points memo - Josh Marshall
October 23, 2006
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010512.php
Stay the course. We never said 'stay the course'. Our Iraq policy is stupid. No, sorry, I didn't mean that. I don't know what I was thinking. As we watch what, in the Star Trek universe, they might refer to as the 'synaptic breakdown' of the president's Iraq policy, it's worth remembering why President Bush, short of being forced kicking and screaming, will never and can never withdraw American forces from Iraq.
Fundamentally, it doesn't have to do with military strategy or ideology. It has to do with coming to grips with the monumental failure he has wrought, which of course he can never do.
Setting aside the vast costs in human life, national treasure and regional stability, I see President Bush's adventure as a failed business venture, a start-up that went bad -- an analogy that, come to think of it, he could probably relate to.
A failed company can lose money for a very long time before it makes money and becomes a success. It only really fails when the investors decide that the problems aren't transient but terminal. They decide to stop throwing good money after bad. And then that's it.
If we look at the matter in those icy terms, that moment of reckoning came at least two years ago, certainly before the 2004 election. By then it was depressingly clear the whole matter was never going to come to a good end. But President Bush got the country to reinvest and the country has kept on doing so since then with some factor of lives, money and time.
As long as that's the case President Bush and his supporters can keep up the increasingly ludicrous pretense that Iraq isn't a horrendous failure but simply a work in progress that hasn't been given the necessary time to work.
In fact, I think if you look back over the last two years, President Bush has been engaged in what amounts to a cynical game of chicken with his fellow Americans.
Think of the president as a failed or deadbeat entrepreneur (again, not such a stretch) who's already lost his investors a ton of money. He goes back to them and says, 'Okay, fine. You think I'm a moron and a screw-up who lost you guys a ton of money. Fine. But do you really want to finally, totally, conclusively kiss that $300 billion goodbye. You wanna just totally call it quits? Admit it's a total loss? What about giving me just another $10 billion and maybe somehow I'll actually pull this off? Or, since that's just not gonna happen, a mere $10 billion to put off for six months having to write the whole thing off as a loss, having to come to grips once and for all with the fact that all the money's gone and the whole thing's a bust?'
That's really what this is about. And I think we all know it pretty much across the political spectrum. In this way, paradoxically, the very magnitude of the president's failure has become his tacit ally. It's just such a big thing to come to grips with. And reinvesting in the president's folly, even after any hope of recouping the money is gone, carries the critical fringe benefit of sustaining our own collective and increasingly threadbare denial.
But President Bush's interests are not the same as the country's. He's maxed out, in for 100%. If Iraq is a failure, a mistake, then the same words will be written right after his name in the history books. A country, though, can take missteps and mistakes, course corrections and dead ends, and move on. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
But President Bush can't and won't withdraw from Iraq because when he does, under the current conditions, he'll sign the epitaph, the historical death warrant for his presidency. Unlike in the past there are no family friends to pawn the failure off on and let them take the loss. It's all his. So he'll keep kicking the can down the road forever.
October 23, 2006
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010512.php
Stay the course. We never said 'stay the course'. Our Iraq policy is stupid. No, sorry, I didn't mean that. I don't know what I was thinking. As we watch what, in the Star Trek universe, they might refer to as the 'synaptic breakdown' of the president's Iraq policy, it's worth remembering why President Bush, short of being forced kicking and screaming, will never and can never withdraw American forces from Iraq.
Fundamentally, it doesn't have to do with military strategy or ideology. It has to do with coming to grips with the monumental failure he has wrought, which of course he can never do.
Setting aside the vast costs in human life, national treasure and regional stability, I see President Bush's adventure as a failed business venture, a start-up that went bad -- an analogy that, come to think of it, he could probably relate to.
A failed company can lose money for a very long time before it makes money and becomes a success. It only really fails when the investors decide that the problems aren't transient but terminal. They decide to stop throwing good money after bad. And then that's it.
If we look at the matter in those icy terms, that moment of reckoning came at least two years ago, certainly before the 2004 election. By then it was depressingly clear the whole matter was never going to come to a good end. But President Bush got the country to reinvest and the country has kept on doing so since then with some factor of lives, money and time.
As long as that's the case President Bush and his supporters can keep up the increasingly ludicrous pretense that Iraq isn't a horrendous failure but simply a work in progress that hasn't been given the necessary time to work.
In fact, I think if you look back over the last two years, President Bush has been engaged in what amounts to a cynical game of chicken with his fellow Americans.
Think of the president as a failed or deadbeat entrepreneur (again, not such a stretch) who's already lost his investors a ton of money. He goes back to them and says, 'Okay, fine. You think I'm a moron and a screw-up who lost you guys a ton of money. Fine. But do you really want to finally, totally, conclusively kiss that $300 billion goodbye. You wanna just totally call it quits? Admit it's a total loss? What about giving me just another $10 billion and maybe somehow I'll actually pull this off? Or, since that's just not gonna happen, a mere $10 billion to put off for six months having to write the whole thing off as a loss, having to come to grips once and for all with the fact that all the money's gone and the whole thing's a bust?'
That's really what this is about. And I think we all know it pretty much across the political spectrum. In this way, paradoxically, the very magnitude of the president's failure has become his tacit ally. It's just such a big thing to come to grips with. And reinvesting in the president's folly, even after any hope of recouping the money is gone, carries the critical fringe benefit of sustaining our own collective and increasingly threadbare denial.
But President Bush's interests are not the same as the country's. He's maxed out, in for 100%. If Iraq is a failure, a mistake, then the same words will be written right after his name in the history books. A country, though, can take missteps and mistakes, course corrections and dead ends, and move on. We've done it before and we'll do it again.
But President Bush can't and won't withdraw from Iraq because when he does, under the current conditions, he'll sign the epitaph, the historical death warrant for his presidency. Unlike in the past there are no family friends to pawn the failure off on and let them take the loss. It's all his. So he'll keep kicking the can down the road forever.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
HE'S B-A-A-A-A-C-K...
By Sheila Samples
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughtson the unthinking."~~John M. Keyne
Much to the dismay of the Bush Crime Family and the Flying Monkey Right, their most fervent nemesis, talk-show host Mike Malloy, will return to progressive airwaves on Monday, Oct. 30 -- a whole week-and-one-day before the mid-term elections. When you consider the corruption and scandals oozing like slime from the right over just the past week-and-one-day, Malloy's return is not a moment too soon.
Mike Newcomb, a Pheonix physician and award-winning radio host, has joined Sheldon and Anita Drobny, the original co-founders of Air America Radio, to form the progressive Nova M Radio,Inc. Network, which will feature the popular Malloy nightly from 9 p.m. - midnight ET on 1480-AM KPHX Phoenix, the nation's 5th largest city and 15th largest radio market; and on 1380 KDXE-AM Little Rock, Ark. More information on podcasting, Internet streaming and archives will be posted in the interim on the Nova M site and on Malloy's website.
Earlier this week, Malloy said, "We're starting out on two stations, but we're already getting requests from affilliates over a wide spectrum, such as Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Madison, Ann Arbor...This is for real," Malloy said. "We're in it for the long haul. We just sat down together and said 'Okay, dammit -- We've had enough of this. We're gonna fight back!'"
Newcomb, Nova M CEO and Chairman, couldn't agree more. He and the Drobnys plan to lease or to own and operate radio stations across America. In his Introductory Letter to "We the People," Newcomb announced that Joe Trippi, of Trippi and Associates, has joined the Nova M team. Newcomb said Trippi, who changed electoral politics forever by his revolutionary use of Internet fund-raising and campaigning during the Howard Dean presidential run, will help Nova M Radio to "reach out to millions of us who share common values and common goals."
Internationally renowned pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International, will co-host a weekly one hour show, “The Pulse of the Nation.” Newcomb said Zogby will poll particular hot-button political issues and cultural issues, and each program will include expert guests and audience participation. At the end of each show Zogby will reveal the poll's secret results so listeners will know if they have their fingers on “The Pulse of the Nation.”
Nova M on-air talent will be liberals who share the goal of "promoting freedom, social justice, economic justice and peace worldwide," according to Newcomb who, in addition to his own 9 a.m. - Noon show and that of Malloy, snapped up Peter B. Collins, a well-known broadcaster and media consultant from San Francisco who will hold down the 6 - 9 p.m. slot.
But Truthseekers know that Malloy, whom they see as one of the last true patriots in this country who dares to speak truth to power, will set the Nova M agenda. There, Malloy will be -- as Jon Sinton, co-founder of Air America and former president of programming, said upon Malloy's AAR firing -- "the heart and soul" of the network.
Speculation -- even a conspiracy theory or two -- continues to swirl around Malloy's abrupt dismissal at Air America. It came just one day after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that those who dared to speak out against his war were "terrorist appeasers" and "Hitler supporters," and needed to be silenced. Some believe that pulling the plug on Malloy was a shot across the bow of all liberal media outlets -- a warning to progressive radio and TV hosts to "watch what they say..."
Others are convinced that Malloy's "Katrina Anniversary" special -- incisive, stripped of all spin, a stark look at the total ineptness of the administration's response to the tragedy and continued cruelty toward this nation's poor and displaced -- is to blame. Or maybe it was his Aug. 3 two-and-a-half-hour interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author of the 1992 "Unauthorized Biography of George W. Bush," and a meticulous historian who presented an iron-clad case that 9-11 is the handiwork of the Bush cartel.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reacted immediately to the Malloy firing by announcing his site would no longer link to Air America.
"We will not provide portals to those who claim they are liberals and progressives but serve as information gatekeepers and censors for the global media elites and neo-con types," Madsen wrote. "The sacking of Malloy and the party purge of (Rep Cynthia) McKinney are all part of the censorship in this country -- censorship that is aided and abetted from the ranks of so-called Democrats. This country will not return to an even keel until we not only cleanse the neo-cons and fanatic right-wingers from our midst, but also those who claim "progressive: credentials but are, in fact, lickspittles for the corporate elites."
Madson told me that he believes Air America's "major problem is spelled D-L-C." He said the healthiest thing the Democrats could do is "conduct an old-fashioned proletariat-style purge of the Fifth Columnists in their midst."
However, as Rumsfeld says, "who knows?" With Malloy, it almost comes down to "pick a subject." Malloy has been around the block more than once -- his credentials are rock solid. He is a former writer for CNN and CNN International, a newspaper editor and publisher, and rock concert producer, among other endeavors. In addition to AAR, Malloy's radio gigs include WSB in Atlanta, WLS in Chicago and the now defunct I.E. America Radio Network. Malloy is passionate -- outraged by what is happening to his country, He is concerned not so much with right or left, but with right or wrong. He literally speaks for all progressives in this nation -- even those who have not heard him -- and relentlessly follows the truth wherever it leads. Sometimes his words are a little wild, as they ought to be because, like Madsen, Malloy seeks neither to please nor entertain; but to shock the sleeping masses with the raw truth before it is too late.
Whatever the reason, it was brutal -- an unexpected, crippling blow to the midsection, and tens of thousands of late-night AAR listeners reeled from the shock of having Malloy ripped unceremoniously from their midst. And it was just as sudden for Malloy, who was fired at mid-day on Aug. 30 while he and his producer-wife Kathy Bay were en route to the WGST studio to substitute for the vacationing Randi Rhodes. Malloy said Sinton, himself in shock, called and said, "They terminated you -- effective immediately."
"I couldn't believe it," Malloy said. "I was driving on the freeway and I pulled over to the side of the road so I could concentrate on what Sinton was saying. But all he had been told," Malloy continued, "was that it was a budget cut."
According to Malloy, who was the lowest paid on-air talent, that's just so much "batsqueeze." He says his AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) representative, Peter Fuster, and AAR attorney Bill Schapp had worked out a settlement agreement that had resulted in a two-year contract approved by Air America CEO Jim Wiggett.
"It was a relief to me," Malloy said. "I had been working for the past 10 months without a contract. They had totally underpaid me -- far less per year than the agreed amount -- and had violated their agreement with AFTRA. I was just glad it was over, and we could get on with the business at hand." However, Malloy said that, upon returning from vacation, CFO Bob Ennis, formerly with Rupert Murdoch's right-wing NewsCorp, allegedly tossed the contract aside and said, in effect, "No deal. We're firing him."
That proved to be a futile gesture because Malloy says, "They can't get rid of me. I'm like a cork -- I just keep popping up." His past shows are archived at The White Rose Society, and immediately upon his firing, Head On Radio began streaming his shows from 10 p.m.- 1 a.m. nightly, with material going back as far his early I.E. America radio days. Also, an in-depth interview with Malloy is available on the Protean Media site.
Malloy is quick to point out that Air America's current problems do not stem from its sterling, progressive on-air talent such as Randi Rhodes, Sam Seder, Rachel Maddow, et al, but rather with mismanagement in the head shed where it sometimes appears that nobody is in charge. According to an Associated Press release, Air America has been plagued with financial woes since it launched two years ago. After months of denial and reports that problems had been solved, the station filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 13. The list of its debtors runs for a whopping 26 pages.
Or perhaps the problem is that everybody's in charge, which would explain why one guy would give Malloy a new two-year contract on Aug. 11, and another would pull the plug on him a scant two weeks later with no advance warning.
That old Army adage, "don't s**t in your mess gear," is elementary, and I suspect AAR honchos will be mighty hungry by the time they realize that people flocked to their electronic table seeking only the Truth. With Mike Malloy, that's what they got.
And, beginning on Oct. 30, that's what they'll get at Nova M Radio. Night after night. A veritible feast.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.
"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughtson the unthinking."~~John M. Keyne
Much to the dismay of the Bush Crime Family and the Flying Monkey Right, their most fervent nemesis, talk-show host Mike Malloy, will return to progressive airwaves on Monday, Oct. 30 -- a whole week-and-one-day before the mid-term elections. When you consider the corruption and scandals oozing like slime from the right over just the past week-and-one-day, Malloy's return is not a moment too soon.
Mike Newcomb, a Pheonix physician and award-winning radio host, has joined Sheldon and Anita Drobny, the original co-founders of Air America Radio, to form the progressive Nova M Radio,Inc. Network, which will feature the popular Malloy nightly from 9 p.m. - midnight ET on 1480-AM KPHX Phoenix, the nation's 5th largest city and 15th largest radio market; and on 1380 KDXE-AM Little Rock, Ark. More information on podcasting, Internet streaming and archives will be posted in the interim on the Nova M site and on Malloy's website.
Earlier this week, Malloy said, "We're starting out on two stations, but we're already getting requests from affilliates over a wide spectrum, such as Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Madison, Ann Arbor...This is for real," Malloy said. "We're in it for the long haul. We just sat down together and said 'Okay, dammit -- We've had enough of this. We're gonna fight back!'"
Newcomb, Nova M CEO and Chairman, couldn't agree more. He and the Drobnys plan to lease or to own and operate radio stations across America. In his Introductory Letter to "We the People," Newcomb announced that Joe Trippi, of Trippi and Associates, has joined the Nova M team. Newcomb said Trippi, who changed electoral politics forever by his revolutionary use of Internet fund-raising and campaigning during the Howard Dean presidential run, will help Nova M Radio to "reach out to millions of us who share common values and common goals."
Internationally renowned pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International, will co-host a weekly one hour show, “The Pulse of the Nation.” Newcomb said Zogby will poll particular hot-button political issues and cultural issues, and each program will include expert guests and audience participation. At the end of each show Zogby will reveal the poll's secret results so listeners will know if they have their fingers on “The Pulse of the Nation.”
Nova M on-air talent will be liberals who share the goal of "promoting freedom, social justice, economic justice and peace worldwide," according to Newcomb who, in addition to his own 9 a.m. - Noon show and that of Malloy, snapped up Peter B. Collins, a well-known broadcaster and media consultant from San Francisco who will hold down the 6 - 9 p.m. slot.
But Truthseekers know that Malloy, whom they see as one of the last true patriots in this country who dares to speak truth to power, will set the Nova M agenda. There, Malloy will be -- as Jon Sinton, co-founder of Air America and former president of programming, said upon Malloy's AAR firing -- "the heart and soul" of the network.
Speculation -- even a conspiracy theory or two -- continues to swirl around Malloy's abrupt dismissal at Air America. It came just one day after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that those who dared to speak out against his war were "terrorist appeasers" and "Hitler supporters," and needed to be silenced. Some believe that pulling the plug on Malloy was a shot across the bow of all liberal media outlets -- a warning to progressive radio and TV hosts to "watch what they say..."
Others are convinced that Malloy's "Katrina Anniversary" special -- incisive, stripped of all spin, a stark look at the total ineptness of the administration's response to the tragedy and continued cruelty toward this nation's poor and displaced -- is to blame. Or maybe it was his Aug. 3 two-and-a-half-hour interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author of the 1992 "Unauthorized Biography of George W. Bush," and a meticulous historian who presented an iron-clad case that 9-11 is the handiwork of the Bush cartel.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reacted immediately to the Malloy firing by announcing his site would no longer link to Air America.
"We will not provide portals to those who claim they are liberals and progressives but serve as information gatekeepers and censors for the global media elites and neo-con types," Madsen wrote. "The sacking of Malloy and the party purge of (Rep Cynthia) McKinney are all part of the censorship in this country -- censorship that is aided and abetted from the ranks of so-called Democrats. This country will not return to an even keel until we not only cleanse the neo-cons and fanatic right-wingers from our midst, but also those who claim "progressive: credentials but are, in fact, lickspittles for the corporate elites."
Madson told me that he believes Air America's "major problem is spelled D-L-C." He said the healthiest thing the Democrats could do is "conduct an old-fashioned proletariat-style purge of the Fifth Columnists in their midst."
However, as Rumsfeld says, "who knows?" With Malloy, it almost comes down to "pick a subject." Malloy has been around the block more than once -- his credentials are rock solid. He is a former writer for CNN and CNN International, a newspaper editor and publisher, and rock concert producer, among other endeavors. In addition to AAR, Malloy's radio gigs include WSB in Atlanta, WLS in Chicago and the now defunct I.E. America Radio Network. Malloy is passionate -- outraged by what is happening to his country, He is concerned not so much with right or left, but with right or wrong. He literally speaks for all progressives in this nation -- even those who have not heard him -- and relentlessly follows the truth wherever it leads. Sometimes his words are a little wild, as they ought to be because, like Madsen, Malloy seeks neither to please nor entertain; but to shock the sleeping masses with the raw truth before it is too late.
Whatever the reason, it was brutal -- an unexpected, crippling blow to the midsection, and tens of thousands of late-night AAR listeners reeled from the shock of having Malloy ripped unceremoniously from their midst. And it was just as sudden for Malloy, who was fired at mid-day on Aug. 30 while he and his producer-wife Kathy Bay were en route to the WGST studio to substitute for the vacationing Randi Rhodes. Malloy said Sinton, himself in shock, called and said, "They terminated you -- effective immediately."
"I couldn't believe it," Malloy said. "I was driving on the freeway and I pulled over to the side of the road so I could concentrate on what Sinton was saying. But all he had been told," Malloy continued, "was that it was a budget cut."
According to Malloy, who was the lowest paid on-air talent, that's just so much "batsqueeze." He says his AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) representative, Peter Fuster, and AAR attorney Bill Schapp had worked out a settlement agreement that had resulted in a two-year contract approved by Air America CEO Jim Wiggett.
"It was a relief to me," Malloy said. "I had been working for the past 10 months without a contract. They had totally underpaid me -- far less per year than the agreed amount -- and had violated their agreement with AFTRA. I was just glad it was over, and we could get on with the business at hand." However, Malloy said that, upon returning from vacation, CFO Bob Ennis, formerly with Rupert Murdoch's right-wing NewsCorp, allegedly tossed the contract aside and said, in effect, "No deal. We're firing him."
That proved to be a futile gesture because Malloy says, "They can't get rid of me. I'm like a cork -- I just keep popping up." His past shows are archived at The White Rose Society, and immediately upon his firing, Head On Radio began streaming his shows from 10 p.m.- 1 a.m. nightly, with material going back as far his early I.E. America radio days. Also, an in-depth interview with Malloy is available on the Protean Media site.
Malloy is quick to point out that Air America's current problems do not stem from its sterling, progressive on-air talent such as Randi Rhodes, Sam Seder, Rachel Maddow, et al, but rather with mismanagement in the head shed where it sometimes appears that nobody is in charge. According to an Associated Press release, Air America has been plagued with financial woes since it launched two years ago. After months of denial and reports that problems had been solved, the station filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 13. The list of its debtors runs for a whopping 26 pages.
Or perhaps the problem is that everybody's in charge, which would explain why one guy would give Malloy a new two-year contract on Aug. 11, and another would pull the plug on him a scant two weeks later with no advance warning.
That old Army adage, "don't s**t in your mess gear," is elementary, and I suspect AAR honchos will be mighty hungry by the time they realize that people flocked to their electronic table seeking only the Truth. With Mike Malloy, that's what they got.
And, beginning on Oct. 30, that's what they'll get at Nova M Radio. Night after night. A veritible feast.
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma writer and a former civilian US Army Public Information Officer. She is a regular contributor for a variety of Internet sites. Contact her at: rsamples@sirinet.net.
so long, suckers
Bush Buys Land in Northern Paraguay10/13/06
http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7bEBA55617-2676-4091-ABBC-20650EB6FEE1%7d&language=EN
Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina) An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region.
Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia.
The news circulated Thursday in non-official sources in Asuncion, Paraguay.
D Elia considered this Bush step counterproductive for the regional power expressed by Presidents Nestor Kirchner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
He said that "it is a bad signal that the Bush family is doing business with natural resources linked to the future of MERCOSUR."
The official pointed out that this situation could cause a hypothetical conflict of all the armies in the region, and called attention to the Bush family habit of associating business and politics.
Jenna Bush joins UNICEF program in Paraguay
The Associated Press
Published: October 9, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/09/america/LA_GEN_Paraguay_UN_Jenna_Bush.php
ASUNCION, Paraguay Jenna Bush came to this poor, landlocked South American country to take part in a UNICEF program for young professionals who volunteer in its activities here, the U.N. organization announced Monday.
UNICEF released few details about the program involving the 24-year-old daughter of U.S. President George W. Bush, citing security concerns.
"The visit is strictly private in nature," UNICEF announced in a one-page statement released by spokeswoman Natalie Echague. "She will get to know the UNICEF activities in Paraguay and some of the programs it cooperates in."
Local news media reported said Jenna Bush arrived Saturday in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion on a commercial flight, then dined Sunday evening with Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte and his family at their official residence and met with U.S. Ambassador James Cason. Officials did not confirm those accounts.
Jenna Bush planned no news conferences and no interviews, according to UNICEF. She and sister Barbara are the twin daughters of the U.S. president and his wife, Laura.
Paraguay, one of the poorest countries in South America, is home to 17 indigenous groups. A large portion of Paraguay's population is dedicated to subsistence farming and Indians in the rural Chaco regionhave endured a devastating drought.
The United Nations Children's Fund and other aid groups have sought to extend basic services such as potable water, health care, education and better housing to the least developed parts of this nation of more than 6 million.
Paraguay's economy is struggling to emerge from years of recession and slow growth as it battles corruption.
Baker's Panel Rules Out Iraq Victory
BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
October 12, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/article/41371
WASHINGTON — A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials….
What Are They Dying For?
The White House and the Congress are Equally Guilty
By Brian Cloughley
October 20, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughly10202006.html
I was a soldier for 36 years. And when soldiers of NATO (including the US) and Commonwealth countries are killed, nowadays, I feel that "there but for the Grace of God go I" because during my military service I was preparing to fight (or was actually fighting) against people who were enemies of my country.
But when I examine the wars going on at the moment I wonder whether NATO and Commonwealth soldiers (and others, too) who are suffering so many casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan should feel morally comfortable with fighting against the people who are resisting their presence and attacking them. What are they fighting for?
In September, 74 US soldiers were killed in Iraq. In the first 19 days of October, 70 US troops died. Of the 370 US soldiers wounded in September, 295 are seriously incapacitated. In Afghanistan the picture is equally grim. Day by day the number of dead soldiers increases--British, American, Canadian and French, mainly. And of course there are hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and police who have been killed, in addition to countless thousands of civilians in both countries whose deaths matter not one jot to the Washington warfighters.
Why have they died?
Why are so many people being killed? What vital Cause have these soldiers died for? What message do their gravestones have for us? And why have hundreds of thousands of civilians been killed in countries since they were invaded by foreigners in order, we are told by the Bush people, to "bring democracy" to them. What's going on in Washington?
Forget the sexual peccadilloes of a hypocritical little Congressman and the lies of Republican leaders who protected him until the game was up and their contemptible conduct was exposed. These people are but tiny morsels of stinking dross in the stove of history. They are slimy maggots who are as worthless as they are self-important, and their posturing and pompousness deserve nothing but scorn. They have forgotten they have a higher duty to the American people than simply being re-elected, which, to the whole lot of them (and to all politicians, everywhere in the world) is the most important thing in their squalid little lives. There isn't a politician alive (or dead , or yet to come) who wouldn't sacrifice his or her dearest principle if they realized that by sticking to it they would fail to be elected.
Members of both Houses in Washington forget or ignore the fact that they are just as responsible as Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice for the deaths of American (and other) soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. These legislators are just as guilty as the White House barbarians, too, for the deaths of all the women and children who have been killed by berserk militias that didn't exist in Iraq until after the US invaded. And they are equally responsible for the deaths of all the ordinary citizens who have died in screaming agony after being subjected to "precision" bombing by US aircraft or the midnight guns, grenades and fists of door-smashing soldiery.
On October 17, Cheney, on a brief trip to Planet Earth, announced that "If you look at the general overall situation, they [the Iraqi government] are doing remarkably well", which is absolute nonsense, as over 100 people had been slaughtered in Baghdad the previous day.
And here's Bush on October 11 : "We're on the move. We're taking action. We're helping this young democracy succeed . . . Our troops have increased their presence on the streets of Baghdad. Together with Iraqi forces, they're working to ensure that terrorists and death squads cannot intimidate the local population and operate murder rings . . ." Is the man insane? Can this really be the President of the United States of America speaking? Bush must know that since the his forces' attempts to control Baghdad began in August there has been an amazing and terrible increase in deaths in the city, and that over 400 Iraqi civilians have died horribly since he made his absurd pronouncement.
Why did they die? And what are his soldiers are dying for?
Bush must know that in September there were at least (according to verifiable morgue figures) 2,660 civilians killed in Baghdad ; 400 more than in the previous month. They were killed by "death squads" and "murder rings", but the armed forces of the occupying power, the United States of America, were unable to do anything to bring to an end or even reduce the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis whose only crime was to belong to a different faction to the people who killed them.
In response to a question about a report that over 300,000 Iraqis had been killed since he went to war on Iraq Bush could only stumblebum that "I do -- I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."
George W Bush has the temerity, the grotesque insolence, to state that Iraqis are actually willing to "tolerate" , to accept willingly, the hideous violence that has been caused by his invasion and occupation of a country that presented no threat whatever to the United States.
And after his disastrous war developed into the bloody quagmire that is killing scores of American soldiers every week, Bush had the impudence to declare that " . . . it's now time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods so people can feel -- can feel, you know, at peace."
When did you last hear such rubbish from a president? Cheney and Bush have brought war, devastation and death to Iraq. It is entirely the fault of the Washington warfighters that hundreds of thousands of people have died since their invasion only a few years ago. The "Iraqi government" is a sham. It governs the green lawns outside its premises in the US-owned Green Area which is full of swimming pools, electricity generators and coffee bars. It is ridiculous for Bush to demand that the "Iraqi government" should "bring security" to anywhere in the country. 140,000 US troops can't do it. How can a raggle-taggle Iraqi army possibly do any better?
On October 17 McClatchy News reported that "U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad [. . .] also sounded that alarm, saying the government must tackle such broad issues as de-Baathification, needed changes to the constitution, distribution of oil and strengthening the security forces. But when pressed on how he expects the government to respond, he couldn't offer an answer."
Of course he couldn't offer an answer. The man is out of his depth and incompetent. And the day after he made his idiot pronouncement the bombs and bullets of the Iraqi resistance killed ten American soldiers. Why?
What did these soldiers die for?
Bush said on October 11 that "We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West".
Have 2,800 American soldiers (and thousands of Iraqis) been killed for the sake of LARGE OIL RESERVES? How many more will have to die in the Cheney-Bush war for oil? When you look at the casualty lists on such sites as http://icasualties.org/oif/ you can't help being emotional after reading descriptions of how young soldiers met their unnecessary deaths. And we all know that these lists will become longer for so long as the War Party is supreme in Washington.
It is probable that American soldiers are dying at least in part for the sake of US oil companies, but the main reason for their slaughter is that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld do not want to change course because that would entail admitting they are wrong. For so long as they wield power in Washington there will be chaos and death in Iraq. US soldiers, and others, are dying because of mighty egos in Washington.
It's as simple as that.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
By Brian Cloughley
October 20, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughly10202006.html
I was a soldier for 36 years. And when soldiers of NATO (including the US) and Commonwealth countries are killed, nowadays, I feel that "there but for the Grace of God go I" because during my military service I was preparing to fight (or was actually fighting) against people who were enemies of my country.
But when I examine the wars going on at the moment I wonder whether NATO and Commonwealth soldiers (and others, too) who are suffering so many casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan should feel morally comfortable with fighting against the people who are resisting their presence and attacking them. What are they fighting for?
In September, 74 US soldiers were killed in Iraq. In the first 19 days of October, 70 US troops died. Of the 370 US soldiers wounded in September, 295 are seriously incapacitated. In Afghanistan the picture is equally grim. Day by day the number of dead soldiers increases--British, American, Canadian and French, mainly. And of course there are hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and police who have been killed, in addition to countless thousands of civilians in both countries whose deaths matter not one jot to the Washington warfighters.
Why have they died?
Why are so many people being killed? What vital Cause have these soldiers died for? What message do their gravestones have for us? And why have hundreds of thousands of civilians been killed in countries since they were invaded by foreigners in order, we are told by the Bush people, to "bring democracy" to them. What's going on in Washington?
Forget the sexual peccadilloes of a hypocritical little Congressman and the lies of Republican leaders who protected him until the game was up and their contemptible conduct was exposed. These people are but tiny morsels of stinking dross in the stove of history. They are slimy maggots who are as worthless as they are self-important, and their posturing and pompousness deserve nothing but scorn. They have forgotten they have a higher duty to the American people than simply being re-elected, which, to the whole lot of them (and to all politicians, everywhere in the world) is the most important thing in their squalid little lives. There isn't a politician alive (or dead , or yet to come) who wouldn't sacrifice his or her dearest principle if they realized that by sticking to it they would fail to be elected.
Members of both Houses in Washington forget or ignore the fact that they are just as responsible as Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice for the deaths of American (and other) soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. These legislators are just as guilty as the White House barbarians, too, for the deaths of all the women and children who have been killed by berserk militias that didn't exist in Iraq until after the US invaded. And they are equally responsible for the deaths of all the ordinary citizens who have died in screaming agony after being subjected to "precision" bombing by US aircraft or the midnight guns, grenades and fists of door-smashing soldiery.
On October 17, Cheney, on a brief trip to Planet Earth, announced that "If you look at the general overall situation, they [the Iraqi government] are doing remarkably well", which is absolute nonsense, as over 100 people had been slaughtered in Baghdad the previous day.
And here's Bush on October 11 : "We're on the move. We're taking action. We're helping this young democracy succeed . . . Our troops have increased their presence on the streets of Baghdad. Together with Iraqi forces, they're working to ensure that terrorists and death squads cannot intimidate the local population and operate murder rings . . ." Is the man insane? Can this really be the President of the United States of America speaking? Bush must know that since the his forces' attempts to control Baghdad began in August there has been an amazing and terrible increase in deaths in the city, and that over 400 Iraqi civilians have died horribly since he made his absurd pronouncement.
Why did they die? And what are his soldiers are dying for?
Bush must know that in September there were at least (according to verifiable morgue figures) 2,660 civilians killed in Baghdad ; 400 more than in the previous month. They were killed by "death squads" and "murder rings", but the armed forces of the occupying power, the United States of America, were unable to do anything to bring to an end or even reduce the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis whose only crime was to belong to a different faction to the people who killed them.
In response to a question about a report that over 300,000 Iraqis had been killed since he went to war on Iraq Bush could only stumblebum that "I do -- I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."
George W Bush has the temerity, the grotesque insolence, to state that Iraqis are actually willing to "tolerate" , to accept willingly, the hideous violence that has been caused by his invasion and occupation of a country that presented no threat whatever to the United States.
And after his disastrous war developed into the bloody quagmire that is killing scores of American soldiers every week, Bush had the impudence to declare that " . . . it's now time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods so people can feel -- can feel, you know, at peace."
When did you last hear such rubbish from a president? Cheney and Bush have brought war, devastation and death to Iraq. It is entirely the fault of the Washington warfighters that hundreds of thousands of people have died since their invasion only a few years ago. The "Iraqi government" is a sham. It governs the green lawns outside its premises in the US-owned Green Area which is full of swimming pools, electricity generators and coffee bars. It is ridiculous for Bush to demand that the "Iraqi government" should "bring security" to anywhere in the country. 140,000 US troops can't do it. How can a raggle-taggle Iraqi army possibly do any better?
On October 17 McClatchy News reported that "U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad [. . .] also sounded that alarm, saying the government must tackle such broad issues as de-Baathification, needed changes to the constitution, distribution of oil and strengthening the security forces. But when pressed on how he expects the government to respond, he couldn't offer an answer."
Of course he couldn't offer an answer. The man is out of his depth and incompetent. And the day after he made his idiot pronouncement the bombs and bullets of the Iraqi resistance killed ten American soldiers. Why?
What did these soldiers die for?
Bush said on October 11 that "We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West".
Have 2,800 American soldiers (and thousands of Iraqis) been killed for the sake of LARGE OIL RESERVES? How many more will have to die in the Cheney-Bush war for oil? When you look at the casualty lists on such sites as http://icasualties.org/oif/ you can't help being emotional after reading descriptions of how young soldiers met their unnecessary deaths. And we all know that these lists will become longer for so long as the War Party is supreme in Washington.
It is probable that American soldiers are dying at least in part for the sake of US oil companies, but the main reason for their slaughter is that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld do not want to change course because that would entail admitting they are wrong. For so long as they wield power in Washington there will be chaos and death in Iraq. US soldiers, and others, are dying because of mighty egos in Washington.
It's as simple as that.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
What Are They Dying For?
The White House and the Congress are Equally Guilty
By Brian Cloughley
October 20, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughly10202006.html
I was a soldier for 36 years. And when soldiers of NATO (including the US) and Commonwealth countries are killed, nowadays, I feel that "there but for the Grace of God go I" because during my military service I was preparing to fight (or was actually fighting) against people who were enemies of my country.
But when I examine the wars going on at the moment I wonder whether NATO and Commonwealth soldiers (and others, too) who are suffering so many casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan should feel morally comfortable with fighting against the people who are resisting their presence and attacking them. What are they fighting for?
In September, 74 US soldiers were killed in Iraq. In the first 19 days of October, 70 US troops died. Of the 370 US soldiers wounded in September, 295 are seriously incapacitated. In Afghanistan the picture is equally grim. Day by day the number of dead soldiers increases--British, American, Canadian and French, mainly. And of course there are hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and police who have been killed, in addition to countless thousands of civilians in both countries whose deaths matter not one jot to the Washington warfighters.
Why have they died?
Why are so many people being killed? What vital Cause have these soldiers died for? What message do their gravestones have for us? And why have hundreds of thousands of civilians been killed in countries since they were invaded by foreigners in order, we are told by the Bush people, to "bring democracy" to them. What's going on in Washington?
Forget the sexual peccadilloes of a hypocritical little Congressman and the lies of Republican leaders who protected him until the game was up and their contemptible conduct was exposed. These people are but tiny morsels of stinking dross in the stove of history. They are slimy maggots who are as worthless as they are self-important, and their posturing and pompousness deserve nothing but scorn. They have forgotten they have a higher duty to the American people than simply being re-elected, which, to the whole lot of them (and to all politicians, everywhere in the world) is the most important thing in their squalid little lives. There isn't a politician alive (or dead , or yet to come) who wouldn't sacrifice his or her dearest principle if they realized that by sticking to it they would fail to be elected.
Members of both Houses in Washington forget or ignore the fact that they are just as responsible as Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice for the deaths of American (and other) soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. These legislators are just as guilty as the White House barbarians, too, for the deaths of all the women and children who have been killed by berserk militias that didn't exist in Iraq until after the US invaded. And they are equally responsible for the deaths of all the ordinary citizens who have died in screaming agony after being subjected to "precision" bombing by US aircraft or the midnight guns, grenades and fists of door-smashing soldiery.
On October 17, Cheney, on a brief trip to Planet Earth, announced that "If you look at the general overall situation, they [the Iraqi government] are doing remarkably well", which is absolute nonsense, as over 100 people had been slaughtered in Baghdad the previous day.
And here's Bush on October 11 : "We're on the move. We're taking action. We're helping this young democracy succeed . . . Our troops have increased their presence on the streets of Baghdad. Together with Iraqi forces, they're working to ensure that terrorists and death squads cannot intimidate the local population and operate murder rings . . ." Is the man insane? Can this really be the President of the United States of America speaking? Bush must know that since the his forces' attempts to control Baghdad began in August there has been an amazing and terrible increase in deaths in the city, and that over 400 Iraqi civilians have died horribly since he made his absurd pronouncement.
Why did they die? And what are his soldiers are dying for?
Bush must know that in September there were at least (according to verifiable morgue figures) 2,660 civilians killed in Baghdad ; 400 more than in the previous month. They were killed by "death squads" and "murder rings", but the armed forces of the occupying power, the United States of America, were unable to do anything to bring to an end or even reduce the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis whose only crime was to belong to a different faction to the people who killed them.
In response to a question about a report that over 300,000 Iraqis had been killed since he went to war on Iraq Bush could only stumblebum that "I do -- I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."
George W Bush has the temerity, the grotesque insolence, to state that Iraqis are actually willing to "tolerate" , to accept willingly, the hideous violence that has been caused by his invasion and occupation of a country that presented no threat whatever to the United States.
And after his disastrous war developed into the bloody quagmire that is killing scores of American soldiers every week, Bush had the impudence to declare that " . . . it's now time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods so people can feel -- can feel, you know, at peace."
When did you last hear such rubbish from a president? Cheney and Bush have brought war, devastation and death to Iraq. It is entirely the fault of the Washington warfighters that hundreds of thousands of people have died since their invasion only a few years ago. The "Iraqi government" is a sham. It governs the green lawns outside its premises in the US-owned Green Area which is full of swimming pools, electricity generators and coffee bars. It is ridiculous for Bush to demand that the "Iraqi government" should "bring security" to anywhere in the country. 140,000 US troops can't do it. How can a raggle-taggle Iraqi army possibly do any better?
On October 17 McClatchy News reported that "U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad [. . .] also sounded that alarm, saying the government must tackle such broad issues as de-Baathification, needed changes to the constitution, distribution of oil and strengthening the security forces. But when pressed on how he expects the government to respond, he couldn't offer an answer."
Of course he couldn't offer an answer. The man is out of his depth and incompetent. And the day after he made his idiot pronouncement the bombs and bullets of the Iraqi resistance killed ten American soldiers. Why?
What did these soldiers die for?
Bush said on October 11 that "We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West".
Have 2,800 American soldiers (and thousands of Iraqis) been killed for the sake of LARGE OIL RESERVES? How many more will have to die in the Cheney-Bush war for oil? When you look at the casualty lists on such sites as http://icasualties.org/oif/ you can't help being emotional after reading descriptions of how young soldiers met their unnecessary deaths. And we all know that these lists will become longer for so long as the War Party is supreme in Washington.
It is probable that American soldiers are dying at least in part for the sake of US oil companies, but the main reason for their slaughter is that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld do not want to change course because that would entail admitting they are wrong. For so long as they wield power in Washington there will be chaos and death in Iraq. US soldiers, and others, are dying because of mighty egos in Washington.
It's as simple as that.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
By Brian Cloughley
October 20, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/cloughly10202006.html
I was a soldier for 36 years. And when soldiers of NATO (including the US) and Commonwealth countries are killed, nowadays, I feel that "there but for the Grace of God go I" because during my military service I was preparing to fight (or was actually fighting) against people who were enemies of my country.
But when I examine the wars going on at the moment I wonder whether NATO and Commonwealth soldiers (and others, too) who are suffering so many casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan should feel morally comfortable with fighting against the people who are resisting their presence and attacking them. What are they fighting for?
In September, 74 US soldiers were killed in Iraq. In the first 19 days of October, 70 US troops died. Of the 370 US soldiers wounded in September, 295 are seriously incapacitated. In Afghanistan the picture is equally grim. Day by day the number of dead soldiers increases--British, American, Canadian and French, mainly. And of course there are hundreds of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers and police who have been killed, in addition to countless thousands of civilians in both countries whose deaths matter not one jot to the Washington warfighters.
Why have they died?
Why are so many people being killed? What vital Cause have these soldiers died for? What message do their gravestones have for us? And why have hundreds of thousands of civilians been killed in countries since they were invaded by foreigners in order, we are told by the Bush people, to "bring democracy" to them. What's going on in Washington?
Forget the sexual peccadilloes of a hypocritical little Congressman and the lies of Republican leaders who protected him until the game was up and their contemptible conduct was exposed. These people are but tiny morsels of stinking dross in the stove of history. They are slimy maggots who are as worthless as they are self-important, and their posturing and pompousness deserve nothing but scorn. They have forgotten they have a higher duty to the American people than simply being re-elected, which, to the whole lot of them (and to all politicians, everywhere in the world) is the most important thing in their squalid little lives. There isn't a politician alive (or dead , or yet to come) who wouldn't sacrifice his or her dearest principle if they realized that by sticking to it they would fail to be elected.
Members of both Houses in Washington forget or ignore the fact that they are just as responsible as Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice for the deaths of American (and other) soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. These legislators are just as guilty as the White House barbarians, too, for the deaths of all the women and children who have been killed by berserk militias that didn't exist in Iraq until after the US invaded. And they are equally responsible for the deaths of all the ordinary citizens who have died in screaming agony after being subjected to "precision" bombing by US aircraft or the midnight guns, grenades and fists of door-smashing soldiery.
On October 17, Cheney, on a brief trip to Planet Earth, announced that "If you look at the general overall situation, they [the Iraqi government] are doing remarkably well", which is absolute nonsense, as over 100 people had been slaughtered in Baghdad the previous day.
And here's Bush on October 11 : "We're on the move. We're taking action. We're helping this young democracy succeed . . . Our troops have increased their presence on the streets of Baghdad. Together with Iraqi forces, they're working to ensure that terrorists and death squads cannot intimidate the local population and operate murder rings . . ." Is the man insane? Can this really be the President of the United States of America speaking? Bush must know that since the his forces' attempts to control Baghdad began in August there has been an amazing and terrible increase in deaths in the city, and that over 400 Iraqi civilians have died horribly since he made his absurd pronouncement.
Why did they die? And what are his soldiers are dying for?
Bush must know that in September there were at least (according to verifiable morgue figures) 2,660 civilians killed in Baghdad ; 400 more than in the previous month. They were killed by "death squads" and "murder rings", but the armed forces of the occupying power, the United States of America, were unable to do anything to bring to an end or even reduce the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis whose only crime was to belong to a different faction to the people who killed them.
In response to a question about a report that over 300,000 Iraqis had been killed since he went to war on Iraq Bush could only stumblebum that "I do -- I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me. And it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence. I am, you know, amazed that this is a society which so wants to be free that they're willing to -- you know, that there's a level of violence that they tolerate."
George W Bush has the temerity, the grotesque insolence, to state that Iraqis are actually willing to "tolerate" , to accept willingly, the hideous violence that has been caused by his invasion and occupation of a country that presented no threat whatever to the United States.
And after his disastrous war developed into the bloody quagmire that is killing scores of American soldiers every week, Bush had the impudence to declare that " . . . it's now time for the Iraqi government to work hard to bring security in neighborhoods so people can feel -- can feel, you know, at peace."
When did you last hear such rubbish from a president? Cheney and Bush have brought war, devastation and death to Iraq. It is entirely the fault of the Washington warfighters that hundreds of thousands of people have died since their invasion only a few years ago. The "Iraqi government" is a sham. It governs the green lawns outside its premises in the US-owned Green Area which is full of swimming pools, electricity generators and coffee bars. It is ridiculous for Bush to demand that the "Iraqi government" should "bring security" to anywhere in the country. 140,000 US troops can't do it. How can a raggle-taggle Iraqi army possibly do any better?
On October 17 McClatchy News reported that "U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad [. . .] also sounded that alarm, saying the government must tackle such broad issues as de-Baathification, needed changes to the constitution, distribution of oil and strengthening the security forces. But when pressed on how he expects the government to respond, he couldn't offer an answer."
Of course he couldn't offer an answer. The man is out of his depth and incompetent. And the day after he made his idiot pronouncement the bombs and bullets of the Iraqi resistance killed ten American soldiers. Why?
What did these soldiers die for?
Bush said on October 11 that "We can't tolerate a new terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East with large oil reserves that could be used to fund its radical ambitions or used to inflict economic damage on the West".
Have 2,800 American soldiers (and thousands of Iraqis) been killed for the sake of LARGE OIL RESERVES? How many more will have to die in the Cheney-Bush war for oil? When you look at the casualty lists on such sites as http://icasualties.org/oif/ you can't help being emotional after reading descriptions of how young soldiers met their unnecessary deaths. And we all know that these lists will become longer for so long as the War Party is supreme in Washington.
It is probable that American soldiers are dying at least in part for the sake of US oil companies, but the main reason for their slaughter is that Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld do not want to change course because that would entail admitting they are wrong. For so long as they wield power in Washington there will be chaos and death in Iraq. US soldiers, and others, are dying because of mighty egos in Washington.
It's as simple as that.
Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com
Saturday, October 21, 2006
A Few Corpses Past 'Whatever'
Lancet study says Iraq war has killed 650,000;
Bush calls it Hoboken
By Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services
October 19, 2006
http://www.commonwonders.com/
The judgment of history is closing in on us. A new study in a respected British medical journal has put the “excess death” toll in post-invasion Iraq at a soul-numbing 650,000, which, of course, can’t be true.
No way. Can’t be.
Those who have wedded themselves to this war, beginning with President Bush, prefer the figure 30,000 — a nice, safe number, apparently, which won’t gum up the media. What’s 30,000 dead? It’s a few corpses past “whatever.” It’s Kankakee, Ill., Paducah, Ky., Hoboken, N.J. It is, in short — among the dwindling ranks of the gung-ho — a small price to pay for a war as important as this one.
So let’s pause and absorb the number Bush and his apologizers are willing to concede: 30,000. Let it stand naked in the spotlight for a moment, out of the shadow of those six-figure estimates that make it seem trivial, and listen to the silent heartbeats:
“Ahmad Walid al-Bath, 33, a Jordanian taxi driver, became the first casualty of the war on March 20 (2003). He had stopped to make a phone call at a public telephone office when a missile hit it, killing him. He (left) a wife and a 10-month-old child. . . .
“Khalid Ali Saleh, 72. My dad was shot by an American tank on April 7 as he was being driven to his house. He died instantly, and my cousin who was driving was injured. My cousin dragged herself out to get help but the car was shot at again by a 20mm tank gun and set ablaze with my dad still inside. . . .
“Ali Nasaf, 6, was killed in a missile attack on the Bab al Muadan telephone exchange in Baghdad on March 31. His mother, Lamia, 31, (said): ‘Even the doctors and nurses cried when he died. They remember him as the boy who played football in the streets and always laughed.’”
Amazingly, each of the 30,000 has a name. The above names are courtesy of the Guardian Unlimited Web memorial, which was put up in the pre-quagmire, “Mission Accomplished” glory days, when the neocon fiction that we could bomb a country into democracy was still getting rave reviews. Back then, we didn’t do body counts. Think how far we’ve come.
But few Americans — certainly none of those who still support this cynical, criminal war — are ready to hear the results of the study a team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University, in conjunction with Iraqi public-health scientists, conducted between May and July of this year.
These researchers risked their lives to visit 1,849 randomly selected households in 47 areas throughout Iraq, gathering data on household members who died since January 2002 (obtaining death certificates verifying more than 80 percent of the reported deaths). When the post-invasion death toll was compared against the pre-invasion death rate, the findings, extrapolated for the whole country, disclosed “excess” deaths — above the pre-invasion death rate — of between 400,000 and 900,000, with the likely total of excess, or war-related, deaths put at 650,000. The results were published last week in The Lancet.
And, of course, the study was dismissed — as “politics, not science,” as “total crap” — by every stay-the-course zealot with a media forum.
Well, OK. Maybe they’re right. Maybe the war we unleashed on Iraq has only wiped out Hoboken, not Boston or Milwaukee or San Francisco. Either way, it’s an incalculable disaster. But if the researchers are right — and their methodology is standard, having been used without controversy to estimate deaths in war zones no one here cares about, e.g., Darfur, the Congo — the word for what we’re facilitating in Iraq requires an upgrade, to “genocide” or “holocaust.”
At the very least, it makes us “worse than Saddam,” which is like being worse than Satan. I can see why supporters of this debacle are pedaling so furiously to rebut the study, but I’m not inclined to trust the objectivity of their criticisms.
In any case, something bigger is at stake in this struggle over numbers than passing blame. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, wrote in a courageous editorial following publication of the study:
“And finally, we can truthfully say that our foreign policy — based as it is on 19th-century notions of the nation-state — is long past its sell-by date. We need a new set of principles to govern our diplomacy and military strategy — principles that are based on the idea of human security and not national security, health and well-being and not economic self-interest and territorial ambition. The best hope we can have from our terrible misadventure in Iraq is that a new political and social movement will grow to overturn this politics of humiliation. We are one human family. Let’s act like it.”
This is not a marginal viewpoint. I’m positive it’s a hope that most of us, from Hoboken to San Francisco, embrace, and I urge all those who do to stop embracing it in private.
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bob@commonwonders.com
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