I wonder how long it will take before we really get to see anything on the Poison Pill Presidency: our Feckless Fuhrer, Bushbob Dirtypants.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestne...
Dallas police found more than the drugs they expected during a raid on an East Mockingbird Lane apartment. They uncovered evidence from one of the most famous murder cases in U.S. history.
Inside Michael Roppolo's apartment was a trove of Kennedy assassination memorabilia, including an authentic Dallas police fingerprint card bearing the infamous name Jack Ruby.
One of the fingerprint boxes is blank, reflecting Mr. Ruby's missing left index finger, which he lost when a guitarist bit it off in a fight. "Amp. 1st Joint," it says.
Police say the JFK items appear to be authentic: items marked as trial evidence including pictures of Mr. Ruby shooting Oswald and what appears to be a drawing of a map containing important assassination-related locations, such as Dealey Plaza and the street in Oak Cliff where Officer J.D. Tippit was shot.
Claudia D. Dikinishttp://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Sent ot me by Claudia:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/12/16/imperial_presidency/
Honoring failure
How to run an imperial presidency: Reward those who have failed. Otherwise, the whole charade will be exposed.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal
Dec. 16, 2004 How President Bush will handle the vexing difficulties of imperial management has already become apparent in the early days since his reelection.
For months the United Nations' oil-for-food program for Iraq has been a target of conservative media. The U.N. itself has appointed a commission headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to investigate past abuses. With the election over, the administration began its finger-pointing with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had called the invasion of Iraq "illegal." News was leaked that Annan's son had been a consultant to a company involved with the oil-for-food program, though Annan said he knew nothing about it. The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, was sent out to declare that Annan's resignation was a live issue.
The relevant facts about the program were pushed to the side. James Dobbins, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, wrote in the Washington Post: "American outrage over the diversion of U.N.-supervised Iraqi oil-for-food money seems to miss three salient points. First, no American funds were stolen. Second, no U.N. funds were stolen. Third, the oil-for-food program achieved its two objectives: providing food to the Iraqi people and preventing Saddam Hussein from rebuilding his military threat to the region -- and in particular from reconstituting his programs for weapons of mass destruction." But these calm points were far removed from the administration's objective.
Then the Post reported that the United States was wiretapping Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, in an operation to discover whether he was secretly helping Iran hide its nuclear weapons program. In fact, ElBaradei was successfully working with the Europeans to negotiate a resolution with the Iranians. It was this diplomacy that neoconservatives within the administration were seeking to discredit. Compliance by Iran with internationally monitored nuclear development isn't the objective of the neocons; they want regime change, an Iraq redux. The Europeans can't be frontally attacked, so ElBaradei was put in the cross hairs. The techniques of the permanent campaign, especially negative attacks, recently applied in the reelection contest, are being transferred seamlessly and shamelessly to international relations.
In part, the slash-and-smear campaign against Annan and ElBaradei is the Bush administration's effort to subjugate international civil servants and organizations to its central command. But this episode also reflects the rolling coup of the neocons as they struggle for power, position and policy in a second Bush term. Behind the scenes, they are scraping for new appointments in the national security apparatus. And in the wake of the catastrophe in Iraq, they are trying to foster a new conflict with Iran. Even Karl Rove, Bush's political strategist, plays in this arena, with his very own Iran advisor -- Michael Ledeen, a sleazy operator on the fringes who was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal (in which even Oliver North suspected him of skimming money).
At the least, the attacks on the United Nations serve as a political distraction from Iraq, where 178 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Bush's reelection. (The indispensability of the U.N. in arranging the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq goes unmentioned.) But America's front-line troops have not been distracted from the reality of carnage. On Dec. 8, they greeted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with blunt questions about the failure to provide sufficient armor for their vehicles. Rumsfeld replied: "As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They're not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." He added that the soldiers who were rigging their own armor might be killed anyway. "It's interesting ... if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."
Never before has a U.S. defense secretary been rebuked by the troops; never has a defense secretary insulted them. Two Republican mavericks, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Chuck Hagel, called for Rumsfeld's resignation, but they might as well have been whistling in the dark. Rumsfeld's disasters are Bush's. They are of such monumental dimensions that to lose Rumsfeld is to admit failure. Rumsfeld cannot be thrown overboard. It's better to blame the troops.
On Tuesday, Bush gave out honors for failure with his bestowal of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tommy Franks, the former CentCom commander, who allowed Osama bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora by not deploying U.S. troops to entrap him; George Tenet, the former CIA director, who jumped on the bandwagon for the Iraq war, enthusiastically informing Bush that the claims about weapons of mass destruction were "a slam-dunk"; and L. Paul Bremer, former chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, who, among other blunders, disbanded the Iraqi army, clearing the path for chaos and violence. These awards are signs that failure will be celebrated as success.
The farcical unraveling of the nomination of former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security further illuminates the administration's methods. The fact that Kerik neglected to pay taxes on a nanny who was an illegal immigrant was a most convenient alibi. Beyond his multiple extramarital affairs, secret marriage and love nests, Kerik appears also to be married to the mob -- involved with members of the Gambino crime family. Yet Bush had been attracted to Kerik's Rambo-like aggression in the first place; the White House vetting process seems to be as credulous as the Mickey Mouse Club, and the impulse to cover up instant. The fall guy in this scenario is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Kerik's patron and partner. Inadvertently, Giuliani's tainting eliminates him as a moderate Republican pretender to the throne in the future. If only Kerik's foibles had passed beneath the radar, he might have been honored for any calamity. Thus the risks and rewards in Bush's imperial capital.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/12/16/imperial_presidency/
Honoring failure
How to run an imperial presidency: Reward those who have failed. Otherwise, the whole charade will be exposed.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Sidney Blumenthal
Dec. 16, 2004 How President Bush will handle the vexing difficulties of imperial management has already become apparent in the early days since his reelection.
For months the United Nations' oil-for-food program for Iraq has been a target of conservative media. The U.N. itself has appointed a commission headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker to investigate past abuses. With the election over, the administration began its finger-pointing with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who had called the invasion of Iraq "illegal." News was leaked that Annan's son had been a consultant to a company involved with the oil-for-food program, though Annan said he knew nothing about it. The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, was sent out to declare that Annan's resignation was a live issue.
The relevant facts about the program were pushed to the side. James Dobbins, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, wrote in the Washington Post: "American outrage over the diversion of U.N.-supervised Iraqi oil-for-food money seems to miss three salient points. First, no American funds were stolen. Second, no U.N. funds were stolen. Third, the oil-for-food program achieved its two objectives: providing food to the Iraqi people and preventing Saddam Hussein from rebuilding his military threat to the region -- and in particular from reconstituting his programs for weapons of mass destruction." But these calm points were far removed from the administration's objective.
Then the Post reported that the United States was wiretapping Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, in an operation to discover whether he was secretly helping Iran hide its nuclear weapons program. In fact, ElBaradei was successfully working with the Europeans to negotiate a resolution with the Iranians. It was this diplomacy that neoconservatives within the administration were seeking to discredit. Compliance by Iran with internationally monitored nuclear development isn't the objective of the neocons; they want regime change, an Iraq redux. The Europeans can't be frontally attacked, so ElBaradei was put in the cross hairs. The techniques of the permanent campaign, especially negative attacks, recently applied in the reelection contest, are being transferred seamlessly and shamelessly to international relations.
In part, the slash-and-smear campaign against Annan and ElBaradei is the Bush administration's effort to subjugate international civil servants and organizations to its central command. But this episode also reflects the rolling coup of the neocons as they struggle for power, position and policy in a second Bush term. Behind the scenes, they are scraping for new appointments in the national security apparatus. And in the wake of the catastrophe in Iraq, they are trying to foster a new conflict with Iran. Even Karl Rove, Bush's political strategist, plays in this arena, with his very own Iran advisor -- Michael Ledeen, a sleazy operator on the fringes who was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal (in which even Oliver North suspected him of skimming money).
At the least, the attacks on the United Nations serve as a political distraction from Iraq, where 178 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Bush's reelection. (The indispensability of the U.N. in arranging the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq goes unmentioned.) But America's front-line troops have not been distracted from the reality of carnage. On Dec. 8, they greeted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with blunt questions about the failure to provide sufficient armor for their vehicles. Rumsfeld replied: "As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They're not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time." He added that the soldiers who were rigging their own armor might be killed anyway. "It's interesting ... if you think about it, you can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up. And you can have an up-armored Humvee and it can be blown up."
Never before has a U.S. defense secretary been rebuked by the troops; never has a defense secretary insulted them. Two Republican mavericks, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Chuck Hagel, called for Rumsfeld's resignation, but they might as well have been whistling in the dark. Rumsfeld's disasters are Bush's. They are of such monumental dimensions that to lose Rumsfeld is to admit failure. Rumsfeld cannot be thrown overboard. It's better to blame the troops.
On Tuesday, Bush gave out honors for failure with his bestowal of the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tommy Franks, the former CentCom commander, who allowed Osama bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora by not deploying U.S. troops to entrap him; George Tenet, the former CIA director, who jumped on the bandwagon for the Iraq war, enthusiastically informing Bush that the claims about weapons of mass destruction were "a slam-dunk"; and L. Paul Bremer, former chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, who, among other blunders, disbanded the Iraqi army, clearing the path for chaos and violence. These awards are signs that failure will be celebrated as success.
The farcical unraveling of the nomination of former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security further illuminates the administration's methods. The fact that Kerik neglected to pay taxes on a nanny who was an illegal immigrant was a most convenient alibi. Beyond his multiple extramarital affairs, secret marriage and love nests, Kerik appears also to be married to the mob -- involved with members of the Gambino crime family. Yet Bush had been attracted to Kerik's Rambo-like aggression in the first place; the White House vetting process seems to be as credulous as the Mickey Mouse Club, and the impulse to cover up instant. The fall guy in this scenario is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Kerik's patron and partner. Inadvertently, Giuliani's tainting eliminates him as a moderate Republican pretender to the throne in the future. If only Kerik's foibles had passed beneath the radar, he might have been honored for any calamity. Thus the risks and rewards in Bush's imperial capital.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
From: http://rising-hegemon.blogspot.com/2004/12/batting-practice.html
From Holden at First Draft via Portal Pulpit comes this picture that for lack of a better expression (those are wasted on the pictures themselves) is to captioning, what an 80 mile an hour fastball down the middle of the plate is to "flaxseed-oiled" Barry Bonds:
Let's see, 90 Seconds what I can come up with:
GO!
"Ambidextrous George, able to be pitcher and catcher simultaneously"
"Mission Accomplished, I'll SAY!"
"Triple Sexpresso"
"It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of that giant-assed ship behind me"
"Now THIS is a Man-Date!"
"When I said I wanted blow, that is not what I meant"
"Now this is the kind of Mr. Salty YOU can choke on"
"The Insurgents...are in my pants"
Whew, feel the burn.
Go ahead and add your own.
Claudia D. Dikinishttp://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
From Holden at First Draft via Portal Pulpit comes this picture that for lack of a better expression (those are wasted on the pictures themselves) is to captioning, what an 80 mile an hour fastball down the middle of the plate is to "flaxseed-oiled" Barry Bonds:
Let's see, 90 Seconds what I can come up with:
GO!
"Ambidextrous George, able to be pitcher and catcher simultaneously"
"Mission Accomplished, I'll SAY!"
"Triple Sexpresso"
"It's not the size of the boat, it's the motion of that giant-assed ship behind me"
"Now THIS is a Man-Date!"
"When I said I wanted blow, that is not what I meant"
"Now this is the kind of Mr. Salty YOU can choke on"
"The Insurgents...are in my pants"
Whew, feel the burn.
Go ahead and add your own.
Claudia D. Dikinishttp://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
Sunday, December 12, 2004
MoveOn to Democratic Party: 'We own it'
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/12/09/moveon_to_democratic_party_we_own_it/
By Sam Hananel, Associated Press Writer December 9, 2004
WASHINGTON --Liberal powerhouse MoveOn has a message for the "professional election losers" who run the Democratic Party: "We bought it, we own it, we're going to take it back."
A scathing e-mail from the head of MoveOn's political action committee to the group's supporters on Thursday targets outgoing Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe as a tool of corporate donors who alienated both traditional and progressive Democrats.
"For years, the party has been led by elite Washington insiders who are closer to corporate lobbyists than they are to the Democratic base," said the e-mail from MoveOn PAC's Eli Pariser. "But we can't afford four more years of leadership by a consulting class of professional election losers."
Under McAuliffe's leadership, the message said, the party coddled the same corporate donors that fund Republicans to bring in money at the expense of vision and integrity.
"In the last year, grass-roots contributors like us gave more than $300 million to the Kerry campaign and the DNC, and proved that the party doesn't need corporate cash to be competitive," the message continued. "Now it's our party: we bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back."
Pariser urged MoveOn supporters to help support a DNC chair with a bold vision to represent Democrats outside Washington. Democrats will vote at their February meeting in Washington on a successor to McAuliffe.
DNC spokesman Jano Cabrera declined to engage in a tit-for-tat with MoveOn, but praised McAuliffe's efforts.
"Call me crazy, but I think the fact that for the first time in party history we outraised the Republicans, and did so primarily through grass-roots fund raising is something to be proud of," Cabrera said.
Among those vying for the party chairmanship is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, an early darling of MoveOn's cybernetwork of activists when he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination.
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Claudia D. Dikinishttp://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
Monday, November 29, 2004
The Politics of Victimization
http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html
[Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election.-- Mathew Gross]
Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.
As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.
Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).
And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.
How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.
First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.
We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.
Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.
Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.
Mel Gilles at 07:31 PM on November 07, 2004
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html
[Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election.-- Mathew Gross]
Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.
As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.
Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will never be worthy).
And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.
How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.
First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken, and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.
We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.
Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.
Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don’t even know they are being hit.
Mel Gilles at 07:31 PM on November 07, 2004
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Some things to Do Before the presidential inaugural in January:
1. Get that abortion you've always wanted
2. Drink a nice clean glass of water
3. Cash your social security check
4. See a doctor of your own choosing
5. Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild
6. Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying
7. Hoard gasoline
8. Borrow books from library before they're banned -- Constitutional law books, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Tropic of Cancer, etc.
9. If you have an idea for an art piece involving a crucifix, do it NOW
10. Come out of the closet then -- QUICK! GO BACK IN!
11. Jam in all the stem cell research your can
12. Stay out late before the curfews start
13. Go see Bruce Springsteen before he has his "accident"
14. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition
15. Use the phrase: "You can't do that! This is America!"
16. If you're white, marry a black person. If you're black, marry a white person
17. Take a walk in Yosemite without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper
18. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class
19. Start your shcool day WITHOUT a prayer
20. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations
21. Learn French
22. Attend a commitment ceremony of your gay friends
23. Take a factory tour anywhere in the USA
24. Take a photograph of animals on the endangered species list
25. Visit Florida before the polar ice cap melts
26. Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive
27. Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill"
28. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a state
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
1. Get that abortion you've always wanted
2. Drink a nice clean glass of water
3. Cash your social security check
4. See a doctor of your own choosing
5. Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild
6. Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying
7. Hoard gasoline
8. Borrow books from library before they're banned -- Constitutional law books, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Tropic of Cancer, etc.
9. If you have an idea for an art piece involving a crucifix, do it NOW
10. Come out of the closet then -- QUICK! GO BACK IN!
11. Jam in all the stem cell research your can
12. Stay out late before the curfews start
13. Go see Bruce Springsteen before he has his "accident"
14. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition
15. Use the phrase: "You can't do that! This is America!"
16. If you're white, marry a black person. If you're black, marry a white person
17. Take a walk in Yosemite without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper
18. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class
19. Start your shcool day WITHOUT a prayer
20. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations
21. Learn French
22. Attend a commitment ceremony of your gay friends
23. Take a factory tour anywhere in the USA
24. Take a photograph of animals on the endangered species list
25. Visit Florida before the polar ice cap melts
26. Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive
27. Visit Alaska before "The Big Spill"
28. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a state
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/112504Goya/112504goya.html
Is America heading toward fascism?
By Susan Goya
Online Journal Contributing Writer
November 25, 2004—Tom Sine, wrote a book in 1981, "The Mustard Seed Conspiracy," encouraging Christians to take an active role in working for the betterment of all in the world. In what may turn out to be words of prophecy, he said:
The hot-button word in this quote is "fascism," a word guaranteed to evoke an emotional response. What is fascism, and is America headed toward fascism? It turns out that a lot of people are wondering the same thing. It's hard to find a definition acceptable to both the right and the left. Fascism falls somewhere on the conservative side of the political continuum. It is reactive, nationalist, militaristic, unilateralist and often racist. It comes in many forms. Fascism is hawkish and tends to rely on a leader who projects a charismatic and authoritarian style. Fascism in a nation seeks to modify the basis of international relationships. The belief that the group has an historic destiny trumps thoughtful reason. It is pretty clear what a mature fascism looks like; it is not so clear what picture an emerging fascism would present.
The possibility of a constructive debate on whether fascism is emerging in America is further hindered by the fact that conservatives are likely to take it personally, and lash out at their "attackers" as "unpatriotic," while these same "attackers" defend the debate as necessary and, ultimately, a very patriotic attempt to protect traditional American ideals and freedoms. So both sides believe themselves to be the true patriots.
What scares some Americans is that the basis for waging war unilaterally seems to be a belief that the American way is superior, that the rest of the world acknowledges that superiority, and that Americans and the rest of the world should therefore blindly follow America's leader. Thoughtful Americans found Bush's statement in the second debate that he "just knows how the world works" incredibly revealing, while the rest of the world finds such a statement from the leader of the most militarily powerful country in the world downright frightening.
According to the most authoritative writer on the subject, Robert Paxton:
sic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson - Thomas Jefferson
Is America heading toward fascism?
By Susan Goya
Online Journal Contributing Writer
November 25, 2004—Tom Sine, wrote a book in 1981, "The Mustard Seed Conspiracy," encouraging Christians to take an active role in working for the betterment of all in the world. In what may turn out to be words of prophecy, he said:
"Perhaps the most serious threat of 'galloping conservatism' is that in a time
of crisis it could easily be transformed into full-blown fascism. When people
are afraid, they are susceptible to trading away their civil liberties to
protect their 'things'. One of the archapostles of conservative economics,
Milton Friedman, has already said that, given the choice between preserving
American constitutional freedoms and the economic freedom to make a dollar
without interference, he would choose economic freedom hands down (Friedman,
1980, Free to Choose, Avon Books, p. xvi). How tragically ironic it would be if
conservative Americans bartered away their constitutional liberties to preserve
their affluent lifestyles!" (Sine, 1981, 56).
The hot-button word in this quote is "fascism," a word guaranteed to evoke an emotional response. What is fascism, and is America headed toward fascism? It turns out that a lot of people are wondering the same thing. It's hard to find a definition acceptable to both the right and the left. Fascism falls somewhere on the conservative side of the political continuum. It is reactive, nationalist, militaristic, unilateralist and often racist. It comes in many forms. Fascism is hawkish and tends to rely on a leader who projects a charismatic and authoritarian style. Fascism in a nation seeks to modify the basis of international relationships. The belief that the group has an historic destiny trumps thoughtful reason. It is pretty clear what a mature fascism looks like; it is not so clear what picture an emerging fascism would present.
The possibility of a constructive debate on whether fascism is emerging in America is further hindered by the fact that conservatives are likely to take it personally, and lash out at their "attackers" as "unpatriotic," while these same "attackers" defend the debate as necessary and, ultimately, a very patriotic attempt to protect traditional American ideals and freedoms. So both sides believe themselves to be the true patriots.
What scares some Americans is that the basis for waging war unilaterally seems to be a belief that the American way is superior, that the rest of the world acknowledges that superiority, and that Americans and the rest of the world should therefore blindly follow America's leader. Thoughtful Americans found Bush's statement in the second debate that he "just knows how the world works" incredibly revealing, while the rest of the world finds such a statement from the leader of the most militarily powerful country in the world downright frightening.
According to the most authoritative writer on the subject, Robert Paxton:
- The following mobilizing passions are present in fascisms, though they may sometimes be articulated only implicitly (parentheses are mine, not Paxton's and contain recent examples of each characteristic):
The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual (the shutting down of the freedom of speech such as when friends tell friends that criticizing Bush is unpatriotic, or that no true Christian would vote for Kerry). - The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group's enemies, internal as well as external (like when Bush, in one debate, justified the war in Iraq with, "They attacked us.")
- Dread of the group's decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism (accusing people of treason for having reasonable misgivings about the war).
- Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary (by demonizing anyone who disagrees with them, by a lack of willingness to provide reasoned evidenced for their positions, by a belief that their views are synonymous with God's views).
- An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem (the idea that Bush supporters are the only Americans who cherish American freedoms).
- Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny (exactly how Bush supporters feel about him, even to the point of denying incontrovertible evidence).
- The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group's success in a Darwinian [dominance of the most powerful] struggle (the idea that protesting the conduct of the war "denigrates our brave soldiers").
As one observer has noted, "This is extremely dangerous talk, and not merely because it is divisive. It actually threatens to simultaneously harden the growing alliance between extremist and mainstream conservatives, and create a milieu in which violence against dissenters becomes acceptable. It is when we see this kind of coalescence that we are in real danger of seeing fascism blossom in America" (
David Neiwert,www.cursor.org).
In a review of Paxton's latest book, "The Anatomy of Fascism," published by Knopf in 2004, Amazon.com reviewer N. Ravitch wrote:
This book admirably summarizes a vast literature on Fascism and highlights a few
key points which can be kept in mind when the threat of Fascism is imagined or
raised.
Fascism cannot be understood only from its ideologues, it needs to be
looked at in practice.
The practice of Fascism, as indeed the rise to power of Fascism, requires collaboration and support from the much older, stronger, and more respectable conservative and establishmentarian foundations of any society.
Because Fascism is designed to prevent leftist revolution it is profoundly conservative, but because its means are radical it cannot really remain conservative in practice.
Because Fascism is conservative it does not require much in the way of terror, intimidation, or violence to capture the acquiescence and cooperation of large segments of society, particularly of "respectable" society. It does its evil under the cover of the good and the conventional.
Therefore Fascism's evil can be hard to discover until it is too late.
The Fascist label can be used indiscriminately and falsely, but it is possible that at the present time it ought to be used more insightfully.
In 1998, Paxton advised asking of today's neo- or protofascisms: "Are they becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene? Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities? Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge? It is by answering those kinds of questions . . . that we may be able to recognize our day's functional equivalents of fascism"
Back in1981, Tom Sine perceived that while several mainline denominations sympathize with the political left, "it is often impossible to get even a piece of tissue paper between the views of the political right and the new fundamentalist religious right . . . their agendas are the same" (Sine, 1981, 58). People self-identified as committed Christians should develop viewpoints informed more by "the mind of Christ" than a political party. The trite WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) never applied more than it does in today's American political scene. The Golden Rule is still one of the best statements of moral values ever formulated.
Source of Paxton quotes: (Paxton, "The Five Stages of Fascism," The Journal of Modern History 70 (March 1998) p. 6,7, 22, 23).
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com/ >^..^< Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millenniumsic transit gloria mundi [so passes the glory of this world.]
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea in this world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which, fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its will against all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Nazi party, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson - Thomas Jefferson
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Report: US discussing strikes on Iran
Douglas Davis,
THE JERUSALEM POST
Nov. 21, 2004
LONDON - Pentagon officials are said to be discussing possible militaryaction to neutralize Iran's nuclear weapons threat, according to areport inLondon's Observer. US administration sources are quoted assaying that airstrikes - "either by the US or Israel" - to wipe outIran's fledgling nuclearprogram would be difficult because of a lack of clear intelligence aboutwhere key components are located.
Instead, sources quoted by the paper said the Pentagon is consideringstrikesin support of regime change, including attacks on theleadership, as well ason political and security targets.
The new "modeling" at the Pentagon, with its shift in emphasis fromsuspectednuclear sites to political target lists, is said to be causingdeep anxietyamong officials in Britain, France, and Germany, who lastweek appeared tohave negotiated a deal with Teheran to cease work thatcould contribute to anuclear weapons program. But Washington is said tobe skeptical about thedeal.
This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1101010793582&p=1078113566627
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea inthis world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which,fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its willagainst all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Naziparty, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
Douglas Davis,
THE JERUSALEM POST
Nov. 21, 2004
LONDON - Pentagon officials are said to be discussing possible militaryaction to neutralize Iran's nuclear weapons threat, according to areport inLondon's Observer. US administration sources are quoted assaying that airstrikes - "either by the US or Israel" - to wipe outIran's fledgling nuclearprogram would be difficult because of a lack of clear intelligence aboutwhere key components are located.
Instead, sources quoted by the paper said the Pentagon is consideringstrikesin support of regime change, including attacks on theleadership, as well ason political and security targets.
The new "modeling" at the Pentagon, with its shift in emphasis fromsuspectednuclear sites to political target lists, is said to be causingdeep anxietyamong officials in Britain, France, and Germany, who lastweek appeared tohave negotiated a deal with Teheran to cease work thatcould contribute to anuclear weapons program. But Washington is said tobe skeptical about thedeal.
This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1101010793582&p=1078113566627
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
HEADS UP: The greatness of every mighty organization embodying an idea inthis world lies in the religious fanaticism and intolerance with which,fanatically convinced of its own right, it intolerantly imposes its willagainst all others: Adolf Hitler (German chancellor, leader of the Naziparty, 1889-1945)
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" -- Thomas Jefferson
Saturday, November 13, 2004
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111304.html
You might think that the major media that got suckered by George W. Bush’s Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction claims just last year would show some humility about its own fallibility.
But, no, the elite U.S. news media is now criticizing common citizens who have raised questions about voter fraud in the Nov. 2 election. The New York Times has joined the Washington Post and other major news outlets in scouring the Internet to find and discredit Americans who have expressed suspicions that Bush’s victory might not have been entirely legitimate. The New York Times' front-page story was entitled, “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried.” [Nov. 12, 2004.]
As odd as these attacks might seem to some, this pattern of protecting the Bush family has a history. It actually dates back a couple of decades, as the major media has either averted its eyes or rallied to the Bushes’ defense when the family has faced suspicions of lying or corruption. [This pattern is detailed in my new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
That was the case in the 1980s when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was implicated in a string of scandals, starting with the clandestine supplying of Nicaraguan contra rebels.
When one of Oliver North’s secret supply planes was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, correctly named Vice President Bush's office and the CIA as participants in the illegal operations. But for years, the big media accepted Bush’s denials and dismissed Hasenfus’s claims.
After the Nicaraguan contras were implicated in cocaine trafficking – when Vice President Bush was in charge of drug interdiction – again the New York Times and other leading publications pooh-poohed the stories. They even put down then-freshman Sen. John Kerry when he investigated. However, the charges again turned out to be true, as CIA inspector general Frederick Hitz concluded in a little-noticed report a decade later. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s Contra-Cocaine Chapter.”]
Arming Saddam
When George H.W. Bush was linked to the misguided strategy of covertly arming Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, again major U.S. news outlets – with the exception of the Los Angeles Times – did little to dig out the truth. Even today, after the junior George Bush has sent more than 1,100 U.S. troops to their deaths to clear Iraq of non-existent WMD stockpiles in 2003-04, the U.S. news media won’t tell the American people about the senior George Bush’s role in helping Hussein build a real WMD arsenal in the 1980s.
During the eight-year Clinton-Gore administration, shoddy reporting from the New York Times and the Washington Post – about President Clinton’s Whitewater “scandal” and about Al Gore’s supposed exaggerations in Campaign 2000 – helped pave the way for the Bush Family’s restoration. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Al Gore vs. the Media” or “Protecting Bush-Cheney.”]
The big news organizations couldn’t even get the stories straight about their own Florida recount in 2001. After examining all legally cast votes in Florida and finding that Al Gore should have won that crucial state – regardless of what chad standard was used – the New York Times and other news outlets buried the lead that Gore – not Bush – deserved to be president.
Since these unofficial recount results were released in November 2001 – after the Sept. 11 attacks – the news organizations apparently thought it was best not to clue in the American people to the fact that the sitting president had really lost the election. So the news organizations spun their stories to Bush’s advantage by focusing on a hypothetical partial recount that excluded so-called “overvotes,” where voters both checked a box and wrote in the candidate’s name, legal votes under Florida law.
After reading those slanted “Bush Won” stories, I wrote an article for Consortiumnews.com noting that the obvious lead should have been that Gore won. I suggested that the news judgments of senior editors may have been influenced by a desire to appear patriotic at a time of national crisis. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Gore’s Victory.”]
The article had been on the Internet for only an hour or two when I received an angry phone call from New York Times media writer Felicity Barringer, who accused me of impugning the journalistic integrity of then Times executive editor Howell Raines. I was surprised that the mighty New York Times would be so sensitive about an Internet article that had questioned its judgment.
Professional Pressures
Having worked in mainstream Washington journalism for much of the last quarter century, however, I certainly understood – and even sympathized – with the pressures that reporters and editors face.
Especially when challenging Republicans and conservatives, journalists can expect to be accused of lacking patriotism, undermining national unity or having a “liberal bias.” Beyond those ideological assaults, there's also the formidable pressure that the Bush family’s gold-plated connections can bring down on a journalist’s head.
Yet, while it may be understandable for national journalists to go easy on the Bushes, that pattern over the years has eroded public confidence in the media’s fairness and integrity. Millions of Americans now flatly don’t trust the national news media to tell the truth when the Bushes are involved.
That perception, in turn, has led rank-and-file Americans to step forward via Web sites to lend whatever knowledge and expertise they have to investigate this powerful family. As amateurs, these Americans are sure to make mistakes or jump to conclusions that aren’t well supported by facts.
But the big media has no moral foundation upon which to criticize these shortcomings by common citizens. If the professional journalists focused more on doing their jobs, rather than protecting their careers, the American people would be far better served.
Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, has written a new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
It's time to overthrow the Tali-Baptist insurgency in America, reinstall a democratic government and hold free and honest elections. -- Claudia D. Dikinis
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
You might think that the major media that got suckered by George W. Bush’s Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction claims just last year would show some humility about its own fallibility.
But, no, the elite U.S. news media is now criticizing common citizens who have raised questions about voter fraud in the Nov. 2 election. The New York Times has joined the Washington Post and other major news outlets in scouring the Internet to find and discredit Americans who have expressed suspicions that Bush’s victory might not have been entirely legitimate. The New York Times' front-page story was entitled, “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried.” [Nov. 12, 2004.]
As odd as these attacks might seem to some, this pattern of protecting the Bush family has a history. It actually dates back a couple of decades, as the major media has either averted its eyes or rallied to the Bushes’ defense when the family has faced suspicions of lying or corruption. [This pattern is detailed in my new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
That was the case in the 1980s when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was implicated in a string of scandals, starting with the clandestine supplying of Nicaraguan contra rebels.
When one of Oliver North’s secret supply planes was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, the surviving crew member, Eugene Hasenfus, correctly named Vice President Bush's office and the CIA as participants in the illegal operations. But for years, the big media accepted Bush’s denials and dismissed Hasenfus’s claims.
After the Nicaraguan contras were implicated in cocaine trafficking – when Vice President Bush was in charge of drug interdiction – again the New York Times and other leading publications pooh-poohed the stories. They even put down then-freshman Sen. John Kerry when he investigated. However, the charges again turned out to be true, as CIA inspector general Frederick Hitz concluded in a little-noticed report a decade later. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Kerry’s Contra-Cocaine Chapter.”]
Arming Saddam
When George H.W. Bush was linked to the misguided strategy of covertly arming Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, again major U.S. news outlets – with the exception of the Los Angeles Times – did little to dig out the truth. Even today, after the junior George Bush has sent more than 1,100 U.S. troops to their deaths to clear Iraq of non-existent WMD stockpiles in 2003-04, the U.S. news media won’t tell the American people about the senior George Bush’s role in helping Hussein build a real WMD arsenal in the 1980s.
During the eight-year Clinton-Gore administration, shoddy reporting from the New York Times and the Washington Post – about President Clinton’s Whitewater “scandal” and about Al Gore’s supposed exaggerations in Campaign 2000 – helped pave the way for the Bush Family’s restoration. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Al Gore vs. the Media” or “Protecting Bush-Cheney.”]
The big news organizations couldn’t even get the stories straight about their own Florida recount in 2001. After examining all legally cast votes in Florida and finding that Al Gore should have won that crucial state – regardless of what chad standard was used – the New York Times and other news outlets buried the lead that Gore – not Bush – deserved to be president.
Since these unofficial recount results were released in November 2001 – after the Sept. 11 attacks – the news organizations apparently thought it was best not to clue in the American people to the fact that the sitting president had really lost the election. So the news organizations spun their stories to Bush’s advantage by focusing on a hypothetical partial recount that excluded so-called “overvotes,” where voters both checked a box and wrote in the candidate’s name, legal votes under Florida law.
After reading those slanted “Bush Won” stories, I wrote an article for Consortiumnews.com noting that the obvious lead should have been that Gore won. I suggested that the news judgments of senior editors may have been influenced by a desire to appear patriotic at a time of national crisis. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Gore’s Victory.”]
The article had been on the Internet for only an hour or two when I received an angry phone call from New York Times media writer Felicity Barringer, who accused me of impugning the journalistic integrity of then Times executive editor Howell Raines. I was surprised that the mighty New York Times would be so sensitive about an Internet article that had questioned its judgment.
Professional Pressures
Having worked in mainstream Washington journalism for much of the last quarter century, however, I certainly understood – and even sympathized – with the pressures that reporters and editors face.
Especially when challenging Republicans and conservatives, journalists can expect to be accused of lacking patriotism, undermining national unity or having a “liberal bias.” Beyond those ideological assaults, there's also the formidable pressure that the Bush family’s gold-plated connections can bring down on a journalist’s head.
Yet, while it may be understandable for national journalists to go easy on the Bushes, that pattern over the years has eroded public confidence in the media’s fairness and integrity. Millions of Americans now flatly don’t trust the national news media to tell the truth when the Bushes are involved.
That perception, in turn, has led rank-and-file Americans to step forward via Web sites to lend whatever knowledge and expertise they have to investigate this powerful family. As amateurs, these Americans are sure to make mistakes or jump to conclusions that aren’t well supported by facts.
But the big media has no moral foundation upon which to criticize these shortcomings by common citizens. If the professional journalists focused more on doing their jobs, rather than protecting their careers, the American people would be far better served.
Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, has written a new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com.
Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com >^..^<
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium
It's time to overthrow the Tali-Baptist insurgency in America, reinstall a democratic government and hold free and honest elections. -- Claudia D. Dikinis
"By words the mind is winged." - Aristophanes
Monday, November 08, 2004
This just sent in by Claudia:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/colo-n06.shtml
Colorado students occupy high school to protest war, Bush policies
By David Walsh
6 November 2004
Some 85 students opposed to the war and disturbed by the general direction of American life occupied Boulder High School in Colorado November 4, before leaving peacefully the next morning.
The students told reporters they were disgusted with the Bush administration’s policies, in particular, the war in Iraq, the national debt, the environment, military recruitment in the schools and the possible return of the draft.
The students, who belong to the “Student Worker” group at the school, asked to see representatives of Congressman Mark Udall and Senator-Elect Ken Salazar, both Democrats. They also insisted on seeing Republican Party representatives.
The protesters told the media the action had been planned before the election. They had brought sleeping bags and food to last through the weekend. Clearly, however, the election results deepened their anger and anxiety.
Brian Martens, a high school senior, told reporters, “We want them to reassure us that our fears are misguided and that the government is doing everything in its power to prevent our futures from being destroyed.”
Another senior, Travis Moe, commented, “We’re protesting our futures, or lack thereof.” Stephen Rostovsky said the protest was meant to get adults to listen to the students’ opinions. He continued, “This is going to hopefully change that by letting people know that adolescents are there and by saying, ‘We’re not going to take this. We want a voice, too. We want a place in this democracy ... We should have a say.’”
The students’ list of grievances cited the war in Iraq, which they termed “unjust and misguided.” The group also opposes federal regulations requiring schools to admit military recruiters or lose funding. The students hung a message on the wall: “We are the generation that will have to take on and suffer from the burden.”
Senior Cameron Ely-Murdock told the Associated Press, “We’re worried that in four years we’re going to be at war with five countries and we’re going to have no trees. I know that’s an extreme position, but I’m really worried about the draft.”
Teacher James Vacca, the faculty advisor for “Student Worker,” remarked, “In an age where narcissistic college students riot in inarticulate drunken stupor, you have students here at Boulder High School, principled, thoughtful and yet scared of four more years of preemptive war, the Patriot Act and an increase in militarism at school through the No Child Left Behind Act.”
Protests occurred in a number of US cities and college campuses in response to the Bush election victory. Some 2,000 protesters gathered in San Francisco Thursday to denounce Bush and demand an end to the Iraq war. The initial protest was peaceful, but police arrested 56 people when a group of about 150 broke off and marched through Civic Center and the Tenderloin. They chanted, “We’re going to beat back the Bush attack, get the troops out of Iraq.”
In Portland, Oregon, several hundred protesters took to the streets, shouting, “Not our president, not our war.” One demonstrator held up a placard: “Let’s do what Kerry didn’t. Revolt.”
Eric Blickenstaff came to the Portland protest wearing his dead brother’s combat boots and dog tags. His brother was killed in Iraq last December when his combat vehicle drove off a dirt road. Blickenstaff held an upside-down American flag, explaining, “This is the international sign for distress. Our country is in distress. The religious right won the election.”
In Bellingham, Washington, some 300 protesters, starting out on the campus of Western Washington University, blocked traffic at one intersection. A 17-year-old senior at Ferndale High School told the press, “We need to get out of Iraq before we kill more people. Even with Kerry in there, it wouldn’t be much better.”
Some 250 students at Bard College protested in the streets of Red Hook, New York, November 3, claiming Bush was not the legitimate winner. The students staged an impromptu sit-in at the intersection of routes 9 and 199. Twelve students were arrested.
Bard student Gabe Rey-Goodlatt told the media, “George Bush is not our president, and we reject him as our president.” Another student commented, “We’re demonstrating to show our discontent with the electoral system in the US and our discontent with George W. Bush, whether or not he was legitimately elected.”
Several hundred people marched through downtown Denver Wednesday evening to protest Bush’s election and the Iraq war. Alex Talley, 21, explained, “We are out here saying we do not support Bush. He is not our president.”
Protests took place at other colleges and universities around the country, including the University of Vermont in Burlington, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
At Syracuse, Yusuf Abdul-Qadir told the student-run newspaper, the Daily Orange, “We’re just independent people who don’t like Bush and want to live. Love freedom, love something, just don’t love Bush.”
Jason Tschantre, a senior film major, commented, “If there’s a voice that says, ‘We’re the youth and we hate what’s going on,’ someone will have to listen.” He voiced frustration not only about Bush’s election, but about the Kerry campaign. “Forget the Democratic Party,” Tschantre said, “Kerry failed me.” The university’s Democrats had nothing to do with the protest, remarked freshman retail management major Ryan O’Leary. “They’re just standing by and doing nothing.”
See Also:
The SEP's 2004 campaign: a preparation for coming battles[5 November 2004]
After the 2004 elections: the political and social crisis will intensify[3 November 2004]
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/colo-n06.shtml
Colorado students occupy high school to protest war, Bush policies
By David Walsh
6 November 2004
Some 85 students opposed to the war and disturbed by the general direction of American life occupied Boulder High School in Colorado November 4, before leaving peacefully the next morning.
The students told reporters they were disgusted with the Bush administration’s policies, in particular, the war in Iraq, the national debt, the environment, military recruitment in the schools and the possible return of the draft.
The students, who belong to the “Student Worker” group at the school, asked to see representatives of Congressman Mark Udall and Senator-Elect Ken Salazar, both Democrats. They also insisted on seeing Republican Party representatives.
The protesters told the media the action had been planned before the election. They had brought sleeping bags and food to last through the weekend. Clearly, however, the election results deepened their anger and anxiety.
Brian Martens, a high school senior, told reporters, “We want them to reassure us that our fears are misguided and that the government is doing everything in its power to prevent our futures from being destroyed.”
Another senior, Travis Moe, commented, “We’re protesting our futures, or lack thereof.” Stephen Rostovsky said the protest was meant to get adults to listen to the students’ opinions. He continued, “This is going to hopefully change that by letting people know that adolescents are there and by saying, ‘We’re not going to take this. We want a voice, too. We want a place in this democracy ... We should have a say.’”
The students’ list of grievances cited the war in Iraq, which they termed “unjust and misguided.” The group also opposes federal regulations requiring schools to admit military recruiters or lose funding. The students hung a message on the wall: “We are the generation that will have to take on and suffer from the burden.”
Senior Cameron Ely-Murdock told the Associated Press, “We’re worried that in four years we’re going to be at war with five countries and we’re going to have no trees. I know that’s an extreme position, but I’m really worried about the draft.”
Teacher James Vacca, the faculty advisor for “Student Worker,” remarked, “In an age where narcissistic college students riot in inarticulate drunken stupor, you have students here at Boulder High School, principled, thoughtful and yet scared of four more years of preemptive war, the Patriot Act and an increase in militarism at school through the No Child Left Behind Act.”
Protests occurred in a number of US cities and college campuses in response to the Bush election victory. Some 2,000 protesters gathered in San Francisco Thursday to denounce Bush and demand an end to the Iraq war. The initial protest was peaceful, but police arrested 56 people when a group of about 150 broke off and marched through Civic Center and the Tenderloin. They chanted, “We’re going to beat back the Bush attack, get the troops out of Iraq.”
In Portland, Oregon, several hundred protesters took to the streets, shouting, “Not our president, not our war.” One demonstrator held up a placard: “Let’s do what Kerry didn’t. Revolt.”
Eric Blickenstaff came to the Portland protest wearing his dead brother’s combat boots and dog tags. His brother was killed in Iraq last December when his combat vehicle drove off a dirt road. Blickenstaff held an upside-down American flag, explaining, “This is the international sign for distress. Our country is in distress. The religious right won the election.”
In Bellingham, Washington, some 300 protesters, starting out on the campus of Western Washington University, blocked traffic at one intersection. A 17-year-old senior at Ferndale High School told the press, “We need to get out of Iraq before we kill more people. Even with Kerry in there, it wouldn’t be much better.”
Some 250 students at Bard College protested in the streets of Red Hook, New York, November 3, claiming Bush was not the legitimate winner. The students staged an impromptu sit-in at the intersection of routes 9 and 199. Twelve students were arrested.
Bard student Gabe Rey-Goodlatt told the media, “George Bush is not our president, and we reject him as our president.” Another student commented, “We’re demonstrating to show our discontent with the electoral system in the US and our discontent with George W. Bush, whether or not he was legitimately elected.”
Several hundred people marched through downtown Denver Wednesday evening to protest Bush’s election and the Iraq war. Alex Talley, 21, explained, “We are out here saying we do not support Bush. He is not our president.”
Protests took place at other colleges and universities around the country, including the University of Vermont in Burlington, the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
At Syracuse, Yusuf Abdul-Qadir told the student-run newspaper, the Daily Orange, “We’re just independent people who don’t like Bush and want to live. Love freedom, love something, just don’t love Bush.”
Jason Tschantre, a senior film major, commented, “If there’s a voice that says, ‘We’re the youth and we hate what’s going on,’ someone will have to listen.” He voiced frustration not only about Bush’s election, but about the Kerry campaign. “Forget the Democratic Party,” Tschantre said, “Kerry failed me.” The university’s Democrats had nothing to do with the protest, remarked freshman retail management major Ryan O’Leary. “They’re just standing by and doing nothing.”
See Also:
The SEP's 2004 campaign: a preparation for coming battles[5 November 2004]
After the 2004 elections: the political and social crisis will intensify[3 November 2004]
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=5&u=/ap/20041107/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_financing
Well . . .Bush has piled the debts up already, lol. What next?
Terror Financing Fines Fall After 9/11
Sun Nov 7, 6:18 PM ET
Politics - AP
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.
The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq (news - web sites), North Korea (news - web sites), Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records.
After the attacks, Bush grouped North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Iraq together as an "axis of evil" countries with both weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorists.
A Treasury Department (news - web sites) spokeswoman said that despite the smaller average fines, the administration was doing a good job of enforcing economic penalties against nations considered sponsors of terrorism. Molly Millerwise said the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, "is committed to ensuring that U.S. entities abide by U.S. sanction laws. We are not in the business of making money."
The smaller average fines could indicate that companies are making fewer large deals with terrorist countries, said Adam Pener, who advises businesses on how to avoid dealing with terrorist nations.
"I would argue this is a good sign OFAC is doing its job," said Pener, chief operating officer of the Conflict Securities Advisory Group. "OFAC in a lot of ways is a deterrent. Especially in the post-9-11 era, companies are policing themselves a lot more."
Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) was a vocal critic of trade embargoes while he headed Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services conglomerate, from 1995 to 2000. Under Cheney, Halliburton expanded its trade with Iran through an offshore subsidiary. That arrangement is now being investigated by a federal grand jury.
Nineteen executives or directors of companies fined by OFAC for dealing with state sponsors of terrorism were top campaign fund-raisers for Bush.
One example is Joseph J. Grano Jr., chairman of the federal Homeland Security Advisory Council, which the president created by executive order and whose members he selected. Grano formerly headed the U.S. subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS AG. It paid more than $100 million in fines for trading U.S. currency to Iran and other nations and for transferring funds to Iraq during Saddam's rule.
Bush renewed the ban on trade with Iran in March 2001. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Treasury Department has added hundreds of names to the list of people and businesses whose U.S. assets are frozen because of suspected links to terrorism. The department also has traced terrorist financing and seized more than $200 million in terrorist assets.
OFAC is the agency that enforces U.S. restrictions on trade with drug traffickers, terrorists and countries on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Part of that job involves investigating and punishing companies that have outlawed transactions with such countries, organizations or individuals.
U.S. laws such as the Trading With the Enemy Act prohibit most trade with those designated countries: Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Cuba. Libya was on the list until this year, after its government agreed to disclose and dismantle its clandestine nuclear and chemical weapons programs.
The Bush administration also removed Iraq from the banned list this year after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam.
The AP used publicly available OFAC records to compile a database of penalties paid by companies for doing business with terrorists or their state sponsors. The database includes entries for more than 500 such cases since 1996.
Analysis of the database showed average penalties for violating the embargoes fell for every terrorism-sponsoring country after the attacks:
_The average corporate penalty for doing business with Cuba was four times higher before the attacks. The pre-attack average penalty was nearly $98,000; the post-attack average was about $23,500. The State Department accuses Cuba of bankrolling some terrorist groups and sheltering members of Basque and Colombian terrorist organizations.
_Penalties for prohibited business involving Iran were nearly twice as high before the attacks. The pre-attack average penalty for an Iran transaction was more than $33,500; the post-attack average fine was about $17,300.
_Fines for trading with Iraq while Saddam was in power averaged more than $101,000 before the Sept. 11 attacks, then fell by more than a third to about $74,800 afterward.
_Companies accused of dealing with Libya paid fines averaging more than $41,000 before the attacks, a figure more than three times higher than the postattack average of about $12,800.
_There was only one fine since 2001 involving a deal with North Korea. It was for prohibited transactions from the 1990s. The State Department says North Korea shelters members of Japanese terrorist groups, although the communist North is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air Lines flight by North Korean agents.
The Treasury Department previously had kept most of OFAC's fines secret. The office released documents detailing its enforcement cases in 2002 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and agreed to begin posting monthly lists of companies which paid penalties. That process began in April 2003.
The AP database includes all penalties detailed in those documents but does not include fines assessed for deals solely involving drug traffickers or embargoed countries not directly linked to terrorism such as Yugoslavia and Haiti.
OFAC does not release information detailing fines against individuals accused of violating the embargoes. Those fines also were not included in the AP database.
___
On the Net:
An interactive map showing fines for selected countries is available at http://wid.ap.org/graphics/terrorfines/index.html
Office of Foreign Assets Control: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/
Well . . .Bush has piled the debts up already, lol. What next?
Terror Financing Fines Fall After 9/11
Sun Nov 7, 6:18 PM ET
Politics - AP
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Despite the Bush administration's pledge to battle terrorist financing, the government's average penalty against companies doing business with countries listed as terrorist-sponsoring states fell sharply after the Sept. 11 attacks, an Associated Press analysis of federal records shows.
The average penalty for a company doing business with Iran, Iraq (news - web sites), North Korea (news - web sites), Sudan or Libya dropped nearly threefold, from more than $50,000 in the five years before the 2001 attacks to about $18,700 afterward, according to a computer-assisted analysis of federal records.
After the attacks, Bush grouped North Korea, Iran and Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Iraq together as an "axis of evil" countries with both weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorists.
A Treasury Department (news - web sites) spokeswoman said that despite the smaller average fines, the administration was doing a good job of enforcing economic penalties against nations considered sponsors of terrorism. Molly Millerwise said the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, "is committed to ensuring that U.S. entities abide by U.S. sanction laws. We are not in the business of making money."
The smaller average fines could indicate that companies are making fewer large deals with terrorist countries, said Adam Pener, who advises businesses on how to avoid dealing with terrorist nations.
"I would argue this is a good sign OFAC is doing its job," said Pener, chief operating officer of the Conflict Securities Advisory Group. "OFAC in a lot of ways is a deterrent. Especially in the post-9-11 era, companies are policing themselves a lot more."
Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) was a vocal critic of trade embargoes while he headed Halliburton, a Houston-based oil services conglomerate, from 1995 to 2000. Under Cheney, Halliburton expanded its trade with Iran through an offshore subsidiary. That arrangement is now being investigated by a federal grand jury.
Nineteen executives or directors of companies fined by OFAC for dealing with state sponsors of terrorism were top campaign fund-raisers for Bush.
One example is Joseph J. Grano Jr., chairman of the federal Homeland Security Advisory Council, which the president created by executive order and whose members he selected. Grano formerly headed the U.S. subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS AG. It paid more than $100 million in fines for trading U.S. currency to Iran and other nations and for transferring funds to Iraq during Saddam's rule.
Bush renewed the ban on trade with Iran in March 2001. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the Treasury Department has added hundreds of names to the list of people and businesses whose U.S. assets are frozen because of suspected links to terrorism. The department also has traced terrorist financing and seized more than $200 million in terrorist assets.
OFAC is the agency that enforces U.S. restrictions on trade with drug traffickers, terrorists and countries on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. Part of that job involves investigating and punishing companies that have outlawed transactions with such countries, organizations or individuals.
U.S. laws such as the Trading With the Enemy Act prohibit most trade with those designated countries: Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Cuba. Libya was on the list until this year, after its government agreed to disclose and dismantle its clandestine nuclear and chemical weapons programs.
The Bush administration also removed Iraq from the banned list this year after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam.
The AP used publicly available OFAC records to compile a database of penalties paid by companies for doing business with terrorists or their state sponsors. The database includes entries for more than 500 such cases since 1996.
Analysis of the database showed average penalties for violating the embargoes fell for every terrorism-sponsoring country after the attacks:
_The average corporate penalty for doing business with Cuba was four times higher before the attacks. The pre-attack average penalty was nearly $98,000; the post-attack average was about $23,500. The State Department accuses Cuba of bankrolling some terrorist groups and sheltering members of Basque and Colombian terrorist organizations.
_Penalties for prohibited business involving Iran were nearly twice as high before the attacks. The pre-attack average penalty for an Iran transaction was more than $33,500; the post-attack average fine was about $17,300.
_Fines for trading with Iraq while Saddam was in power averaged more than $101,000 before the Sept. 11 attacks, then fell by more than a third to about $74,800 afterward.
_Companies accused of dealing with Libya paid fines averaging more than $41,000 before the attacks, a figure more than three times higher than the postattack average of about $12,800.
_There was only one fine since 2001 involving a deal with North Korea. It was for prohibited transactions from the 1990s. The State Department says North Korea shelters members of Japanese terrorist groups, although the communist North is not known to have sponsored any terrorist acts since the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air Lines flight by North Korean agents.
The Treasury Department previously had kept most of OFAC's fines secret. The office released documents detailing its enforcement cases in 2002 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit and agreed to begin posting monthly lists of companies which paid penalties. That process began in April 2003.
The AP database includes all penalties detailed in those documents but does not include fines assessed for deals solely involving drug traffickers or embargoed countries not directly linked to terrorism such as Yugoslavia and Haiti.
OFAC does not release information detailing fines against individuals accused of violating the embargoes. Those fines also were not included in the AP database.
___
On the Net:
An interactive map showing fines for selected countries is available at http://wid.ap.org/graphics/terrorfines/index.html
Office of Foreign Assets Control: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/
Sunday, November 07, 2004
http://www.theeveningleader.com/articles/2004/11/06/news/news.01.txt
Board awaits state followup
By ERIN MILLER
WAPAKONETA -- Auglaize County Board of Election members say they have not heard any more from the state regarding a possible investigation after receiving notice of being placed on administrative oversight last week.
"Absolutely nothing," board member Diana Hausfeld said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon when asked if the board had received any information about the investigation.
Election Board Director Jean Burklo, in her office Wednesday morning, said she has not received any information from Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office since notice of the board being placed on administrative oversight arrived late on Oct. 30.
James Lee, spokesperson for the secretary of state's office, said last week the specific conditions of the administrative oversight and reasons for the oversight were available after Tuesday's election. Lee said Wednesday afternoon the Secretary of State's office was focusing its efforts on assisting county elections boards with processing and counting provision ballots.
"These other issues will be addressed in the coming weeks," Lee said.
In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss claimed in the letter that McGinnis was allowed to use the computer the weekend of Oct. 16.
Nuss, who resigned from his job Oct. 21 after being suspended for a day, was responsible for overseeing the computerized programming of election software, according to his job description. His resignation is effective Nov. 11.
The letter also included allegations that Burklo released a sheet from a petition packet filed by Auglaize County Common Pleas Judge Frederick Pepple last December.
Board awaits state followup
By ERIN MILLER
WAPAKONETA -- Auglaize County Board of Election members say they have not heard any more from the state regarding a possible investigation after receiving notice of being placed on administrative oversight last week.
"Absolutely nothing," board member Diana Hausfeld said in a telephone interview Wednesday afternoon when asked if the board had received any information about the investigation.
Election Board Director Jean Burklo, in her office Wednesday morning, said she has not received any information from Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's office since notice of the board being placed on administrative oversight arrived late on Oct. 30.
James Lee, spokesperson for the secretary of state's office, said last week the specific conditions of the administrative oversight and reasons for the oversight were available after Tuesday's election. Lee said Wednesday afternoon the Secretary of State's office was focusing its efforts on assisting county elections boards with processing and counting provision ballots.
"These other issues will be addressed in the coming weeks," Lee said.
In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the Auglaize County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss claimed in the letter that McGinnis was allowed to use the computer the weekend of Oct. 16.
Nuss, who resigned from his job Oct. 21 after being suspended for a day, was responsible for overseeing the computerized programming of election software, according to his job description. His resignation is effective Nov. 11.
The letter also included allegations that Burklo released a sheet from a petition packet filed by Auglaize County Common Pleas Judge Frederick Pepple last December.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
This article was sent to me by Claudia.
Jammy
http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/110504_snap_out.shtml
© Copyright 2004, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
SNAP OUT OF IT!
The Day to Forget the November 2nd Election Forever is November 3rd
The Rest of the World Fights the Empire With Money -What We Should Have Been Doing Here All Along
Now is the Time to Attack on the Fronts Where WeHave Real Power
by
Michael C. Ruppert
November 5, 2004 1900 PDT (FTW) - The rest of the world has known for some time that it is pointless to oppose this Empire either militarily or electorally. They haven't the resources for the former and are legally barred from the latter. I think it's time the American people adopted the same philosophy. We are, after all, legally barred from inspecting electronic voting machines. The rest of the world has been fighting with money and public relations because these tactics work and work well. This is a lesson that American activists and true patriots should have learned four years ago. Now the tempo of battle will increase just as surely as the stakes have been raised both globally and domestically for us all.
While everyone waits for the administration's first move a Rubicon has been crossed and there is no turning back. America will fight for oil wherever it feels the need.
Now the real Fourth World War begins. Sorry to disappoint all the scriptwriters and futurists who were thinking exclusively in terms of bombs, plagues, famine etc. The first weapons of mass destruction in this war will be economic and they will be devastating beyond imagination.
I feel good now, three days after the election. It was much easier for me to recover than most because FTW and its readers had less invested in the election than most. But I am not so glib or cavalier as to overlook the massive disillusionment that weighs like a wet blanket on all who had hoped that their prodigious efforts might oust the Neo-cons.
The biggest blessing today is that the disillusionment is so deep, so fundamental, that at last people who have bound themselves to ineffective political strategies may rethink their deeper core beliefs; their beliefs about what America was supposed to be versus what it has become. They will redraw their maps. Perhaps with that process - painful as it might be - will also come a willingness to abandon strategies which no longer work for entirely different ones that do. In order for that to happen, however, those on the left, as well as those conservative and libertarian voices who wanted to return a degree of sanity to the Republican party, will have to admit that America is not America anymore.
We are living in a foreign land; a nation that is behaving like our enemy; a nation which has weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
This nation is so deeply divided that the words "civil war" stand for a possibility that is no longer remote. Next year, even the next few months, will reveal these deep and irreconcilable divisions. The electoral process is dead. Only the fear that there is nothing to replace it except revolution and bloodshed will prevent people from seeing that there are different ways to fight; ways that should have been adopted four years ago. The rest of the world knows that physical force is not effective in this struggle and the rest of the world has something to teach us. We will look anew perhaps at the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but it is in what's left of the First that we will find our strength. The freedom of association includes within it the right to decide where and how to spend our money.
Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of prudence, I have been told that some activists and whistleblowers are planning on leaving the country in short order. A thought I have seen circulate in discussions since the election is that many well-known activists and whistleblowers think it wise to run before Dick Cheney and Karl Rove get their legs and start hunting us down, one by one. Reuters published a November 3rd story about many Democrats seeking to emigrate to Canada.
As a man who has written a book charging the President and especially the Vice President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Commander of NORAD, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the former Directors of Central Intelligence and the FBI with multiple counts of premeditated murder, it is my belief that it is foolish to wait and see what the administration does. Now is the time to attack, and to attack with all of the vigor our movement and our wounded, offended spirits can muster. It is our best means of self healing. If we cut and run now, we die.
No longer is that word hyperbolic.
I am going on the attack.
Let me be quite clear about this: This is spiritual warfare. There is no place to run. There is no safe place to hide. On her home page (www.solari.com) Catherine Austin Fitts posts a great quote from Gandhi.
"The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts - that is where the battle should be fought." - Mahatma Gandhi
Only the protection offered by a universe that responds more powerfully to love than to fear can be an effective shield now. That protection has no limits in geography, nor do the dangers against which it guards. I criticize no one for making a decision to expatriate. Some may have physical or financial limitations and concerns. Some may be honoring an old Special Forces axiom that running today makes possible a fight more likely to succeed another day. This is a sifting out for the battles that are to come; battles which will be unlike anything ever seen in this country. There will also be a great many new brethren who will show up on battle lines that we must now redraw to suit ourselves. We must begin choosing the times and places of battle to suit our needs. No task is more important than this.
We have expended our money, our liberty, our hearts and our souls by spending money as powers that be, and media programming describing a fictitious America, told us we should; by volunteering in efforts that were laid out for us by others; by believing that we were doing the right thing playing in a rigged game. The biggest ball and chain for us now is the notion that we might resurrect an electoral process that officially died four years ago. Anything brought to life now would be a Frankenstein rather than a happy ending to an episode of ER; and at what additional cost in terms of time and energy?
What happened on Election Day was no surprise to me and it should have been no surprise to long-term FTW readers. Perhaps now some of the over-conditioned lefties out there will start to ask serious questions about what kind of bang they get for their buck - and their dedication. Billions of dollars and countless man/woman-hours that could have been expended on real-deal strategies that had a chance of making a change have been diverted and pulled away and wasted as badly as the energy of tens of millions of demonstrators who poured into the world's streets for months in an effort to prevent the US invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003.
When will the American opposition start to ask what kind of return on investment they are getting? When will they start demanding better performance? What a waste and what a cost in broken hearts for the young, those just beginning to try and change the world. If the young are to save themselves (and us) they must refuse to be herded into a political process that is, in itself, their prison.
Even though there is evidence that Ohio was stolen, John Kerry has given up; conceded; thrown in the towel. There won't be any lawsuits because he won't allow it. Bush won the popular vote. If the 2000 election passed into history "as-is" it is certain that the 2004 election is zip locked. Fuggedaboudit! The people now performing that task of documenting electoral fraud in Ohio and elsewhere have safely made themselves historians and targets of lesser priority for Cheney and Rove. They are no longer activists.
There will be no successful suits over this election. The courts are rigged and lawyers are sea anchors. As I predicted a week after 9/11, every lawsuit since filed has been derailed, morphed, sidetracked or sabotaged from within. Any lawsuit over the 2004 election (assuming Kerry permitted it) would wind up in the Supreme Court. Has everyone forgotten Bill Rehnquist's cancer or that the Neocons get to pick the next three justices?
HUMAN AND MONETARY THERMODYNAMICS
Human energy works like physical energy.
Just a while ago I received a call from a source indicating that John Kerry ended his campaign with $45 million unspent dollars in his war chest. That money had reportedly been laid aside to pay for a recount or post-election court challenges. There will be none. The caller suggested that Kerry might get to keep it personally. This will need some checking but it would not surprise me.
In many respects the dynamics of money - as activists now spend it - parallels the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It only changes form in an entropic direction; from being able to do useful political and social work to being useless. But there is a way to make it multiply. This is the FTW model where dollars spent with us recirculate within the activist community and create more energy.
As Jesus pointed out, the gift of two pennies from the poor woman was infinitely more valuable than the large gift from the wealthy man. The corporations which profited from all the opposition advertising, the political campaign chests which swelled and spent that money, will never reinvest that money to slow America's descent into tyranny. That energy - created from the sweat of the people - has been pretty-well neutralized. Sure George Soros lost money (I suppose), but what was the percentage cost to him as opposed to all of the "little" Americans who opened their thinly-stretched purses in pursuit of regime change? Soros suckered you into spending money that was far more important to you than his was to him.
What if John Kerry had won? He was going to add 100,000 troops to the army. He denied Peak Oil's existence and promised a chimerical "independence from Mid-East oil". He endorsed the notion that 19 hijackers operating from caves executed the attacks of September 11th. Then he said he would fight the war on terror better than George W. Bush. He said nothing about a corrupt economic system which has fed and sustained both him and George Bush all these years. He hasn't lost a penny.
A day after Kerry conceded defeat; The Boston Herald ran a story:
Bay State electric customers facing shock of high oil pricesBy Jay Fitzgerald
Thursday, November 4, 2004
Massachusetts electric customers can expect more jolts in coming months as rising oil and natural gas prices drive up the cost of generating electricity.
Crude oil prices jumped by $1.26 yesterday after President Bush's election, settling at $50.88 a barrel.
Rising natural gas prices also pushed wholesale electricity in New England up. Natural gas is used to power plants that generate electricity.
The bottom line: Expect electric bills to head higher this winter with heating oil and other energy costs…
Another story talked about how oil and gas companies breathed a sigh of relief after the Bush win because they would face less regulation. Duh. But less regulation only means a more frenetic, thoughtless and careless mad scramble to suck up remaining hydrocarbon energy resources rather than an effort to mitigate our dependence on them by the only real choices available: a reduction in consumption and an intense, transparent effort to look for and liberate renewables and any technologies that may have been suppressed.
Will someone up there in elite land - Yo, you guys up there on Olympus! - please get it. We know what's going on. You are not fooling us.
EVERY VOTE MAY NOT BE COUNTED BUT EVERY DOLLAR ALWAYS IS
So if we don't keep trying to fix the electoral process what do we do? For four years we at FTW and elsewhere have also been consistently saying that the way to change what's wrong with America and the world was to get outside of the election box into which most activists and opposition forces have placed themselves as if under house arrest. The way to fight is not with votes but with money. Every vote may not be counted. But every dollar always is.
For activists wishfully clinging to an old and inaccurate map, there is good reason for despair. On the FTW map, and the map of great economic thinkers like Fitts - the accurate map - there are no grounds for discouragement here. Yes, things will surely now get worse before (if ever) they get better. Yes, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, absent the need to show restraint before a re-election campaign, may now take the gloves off. Quel surprise!
So now what?
VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY
Since 9/11 we have witnessed the evolution of a number of powerful, truly authentic journalism syndicates. FTW is but one of many that are credible, trustworthy and which have proven themselves providers of valuable and accurate information. I know many of these people and small companies personally and we have all pretty much behaved the same way. Every dollar that was spent with used was used to benefit those who gave it to us. That keeps us all in the game.
In November of 2001, when I lectured at Portland State University I pledged to the audience there - and in the permanent record of my video "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" - that I would take money spent on us and devote it to making FTW bigger, more effective and capable of getting more important stories to them; stories that would give them information that might save their lives. In 2001 I had two part-time writers, an office staff of one and me.
Today FTW has an office staff of four, three editors/writers, four regularly contributing writers and now almost 20,000 subscribers in more than 40 countries. I have kept my promise and you have seen the results. I am still living in a studio apartment and driving a 9 year-old Ford. I may soon get to have - out of necessity - a larger and better place to live and for the first time own a home of my own but you get the point. There are many others who have behaved this way because we share a common sense of urgency.
But there's something else your help makes possible for me and for all of us. We are all knocking down the doors of the major media.
ANOTHER PROMISE - I'M GOING TO WASHINGTON
Before describing this economic warfare and how we can fight it let me make you another promise.
As soon as we can reasonably arrange it, I am throwing all of our meager funds for a book tour into one large, well-publicized book signing in Washington, D.C. Rubicon's publisher just did not have the resources to fund a book tour. I am going to ask for all the back-up and support I can get, for as many of you to come to Washington as possible, because I am going there - to the city where Bush, Cheney and Rove rule; the city where I was born - to stand up and publicly accuse them and others of murder: multiple counts, and with premeditation.
The world will be watching and your dollars made that possible.
The only way I know how to lead is from the front. We will keep you apprised of developments via the FTW web site.
MONEY IN THE WORLD - MONEY IN AMERICA
There's a great first rule in economic warfare. It's exactly the same reason why flight attendants instruct people to put on their oxygen masks before assisting others when an airliner's cabin depressurizes. To save the world you must save yourself first. The way you start to fight with money is to get out of debt. If that means simplifying your life then that's good anyway, you'll use less energy. But to be debt free is to stop paying your money to the corporations and banks that are creating this naked aggression anyway.
These are the same corporations and banks that will come and pluck your economic corpse when the economy crashes next year as it surely must. If you are debt free then there will be less for them to pluck.
All around the globe we see newly forming economic and political alliances. In South America and elsewhere new regional common markets are evolving rapidly. The Euro is rising to new significance as a world currency and a way to pull the rug from under the Empire. From Russia, to Iran, to China to Venezuela, to Saudi Arabia the world is drifting inexorably to a decision to price oil in Euros. China has just raised interest rates. In 2005 Iran is planning on opening an oil bourse trading futures in Euros and is quietly building consensus support. This is, in my opinion, the major motive for pressuring Iran just as Saddam Hussein's decision to price oil in Euros was his chief crime.
I still believe that any military adventurism against Iran is not possible and that the US knows this.
On October 22 Pravda reported that the Russian Central Bank had stopped supporting the US dollar. As I write this essay the Euro is now trading at close to $1.30 US (a record high) and gold is holding steady at close to $430 an ounce. It was $280 an ounce just three years ago. Sure, oil prices have dropped a bit but that has no bearing on the reality of Peak Oil. I am still expecting oil to hit $100 a barrel in 2005. What happens to your job then? Your mortgage? The housing bubble is on the verge of collapse and Fannie Mae is under criminal investigation. There may be three times more paper mortgages floating around than there are physical properties. (www.solari.com; www.sandersresearch.com)
Think again of the significance of the fact that Vladimir Putin in Russia has just ratified the Kyoto protocols limiting greenhouse gas emissions. This takes on a whole new meaning when one remembers that for the last 50 years there has been an overwhelming correlation between GDP growth and greenhouse gas emission. In other words, economic growth is not possible without burning more energy and this empire's Achilles heel is its insatiable living requirement of infinite growth even unto the death of the planet. This is the price of fractional reserve banking, debt-based growth, a fiat currency, and markets trapped in Price/Earnings ratios.
Russia's move is significant because under the Kyoto treaty - as reported by The Economist on October 7th - Russia's voice in resurrecting the 1997 accord carries special weight:
LIKE a swamp creature in a bad horror movie, the Kyoto treaty on climate change has risen from the dead. A certain Texan cowboy thought he had killed the Japanese monster. Alas, thanks to a last-minute betrayal by an inscrutable Russian spymaster, the green beast is back.
That is only a slight exaggeration of how some people view the revival of the Kyoto protocol. The controversial UN treaty, agreed in Japan in 1997, commits rich countries to cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012. But it was dealt a near-fatal blow when George Bush confirmed America's rejection in 2001. The EU, Japan, Canada and over 100 others remained in, but Russia wavered. If it did not ratify, the pact would fail.
Today, as I finished this essay, Putin has ratified the accord after overwhelming passage by the Russian legislature. The BBC writes:
Putin clears way for Kyoto treaty
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change - clearing the way for the treaty to come into force next year.
This is Russia's final and crucial stamp of approval for Kyoto. The pact needed support from countries responsible for 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, which most scientists blame for global warming.After the United States refused to ratify it, only Russia could enable this threshold to be passed.
The significance is clear. Limit greenhouse gas emissions and you limit economic growth. Limit economic growth and you undermine America's financial and economic vampire. The world is fighting back. We can too and in this way we can force a change.
HOW DO AMERICANS DO THIS?
There's a reason why I asked former Assistant Housing Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts to write the foreword for Crossing the Rubicon. She knows money and she knows how to change the system. I spoke with her yesterday and neither of us is contemplating a cut and run strategy. We are both committed to taking the fight to Washington and New York, no matter the cost.
"I can show these people how they and all of us can make more money by fixing money and what it does. But the first requirement is that people understand that they have to stop feeding the tapeworm that is creating all of this."
Perhaps now disillusioned Kerry supporters will take a second look at what FTW has been teaching for years.
Get out of debt.
Spend your money and time on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information.
Stop spending a penny with major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you exhausted.
Learn how money works and use it like a weapon.
It is already becoming clear that as Peak Oil becomes a stark reality, survival will become a place-based, local phenomenon. Local economies, to the degree that they exist and are flourishing will provide strength to resist what is coming. Everyone who sees this essay should compare the return on investment they got with the election against something that offers more payoffs, an opportunity to become real, independent actors on the fields of their own lives.
Go to Fitts' web site http://www.solari.com and look at the section "Coming Clean". Not until each one of us looks at the ways that we feed the beast and accept responsibility for that do we have a chance for today and for tomorrow.
As I have said in Crossing the Rubicon and in almost every lecture for the last three years, "We will change nothing until we change the way that money works."
Perhaps now some people will be willing to listen to our voices crying in the wilderness.
Michael C. Ruppert
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