Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Springtime for Bush
Here are two rather long posts, both looking at America and Nazi Germany. Depressing, yeah. But what we have is a nation of “good Americans” trying to stay nice, distracted, and decently concerned (well, we can’t really turn our backs on it, but after all, it’s a very confusing subject and we wouldn’t want to have another terrorist attack, and our leaders really are looking out for us, and.....and besides that, American Idol is on TV—)
Fred Branfman: 'On being 'good Americans' in a time of torture'
Date: Tuesday, February 28 @ 09:52:40 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism
Fred Branfman, Zmag
"Gestapo interrogation methods included: repeated near drownings of a prisoner in a bathtub."
-- http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-gestapo.htm
"The CIA officers say 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under waterboarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk, with debatable results."
-- Brian Ross, ABC World News Tonight, November 18, 2005
"When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said."
-- "Bush Could Bypass Torture Ban," Boston Globe, January 4, 2006
As a teenager, I could not understand how the German people could claim to be "good Germans," unaware of what the Nazis had done in their names. I could understand if these ordinary German people had said they had known and been horrified, but were afraid to speak up. But they would then be "weak, fearful or indifferent Germans," not "good Germans." The idea that only the Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust made no sense.
Whatever the Germans as a whole know about the concentration camps, they certainly knew about the systematic mistreatment of Jews that had occurred before their very eyes, and from which so many had profited. And if they were not really "good Germans," I wondered, what should or could they have done, given the reality of Nazi tyranny?
The issue became personal for me in the summer of 1961, when I hitchhiked through Europe with a lovely German woman named Inge. Still in love after an idyllic summer, we visited Hyde Park the day before I was to return home. A bearded, middle-aged concentration-camp survivor was angrily attacking the German people for standing by and letting the Jews be slaughtered. I was moved beyond words. Suddenly the woman I loved began yelling angrily at him, screaming that the Germans did not know, that her father had just been a soldier and was not responsible for the Holocaust.
Our relationship essentially ended then and there. I understood intellectually that she was just defending her father and was neither an anti-Semite nor an evil person. But there it was. She on one side. The survivor on the other. A gulf between them. Whatever my head said, my heart knew that the world is divided into evil-doers, their victims, and those like Inge who do not want to know.
And that I had no choice but to stand with the victims.
I never dreamed at that moment that I, as an American, would a few years later face this same question as my government committed mass murder of civilians in Indochina in violation of the Nuremberg Principles. Or that more than four decades later I would still be struggling with what it means to be a "good American" after learning that a group of U.S. leaders has unilaterally seized the right to torture anyone it chooses without evidence and in violation of international law, human decency, and the sacrifice of the many Americans who have died fighting autocracy and totalitarianism.
Bush Embraces Torture
To ask what it means to be a "good American" is not to compare Bush to Hitler, or Republicans to Nazis. The question does not arise only when leaders engage in mass murder on the scale of a Hitler or Stalin, which Bush has not. It requires only that they engage in actions that are clearly evil, which Bush has.
Every generation or so an evil arises which is so monstrous, so degrading to the human spirit, so morally bankrupt, that even to debate it is a sign of moral corruption. Native American genocide, slavery, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow laws are evils so unspeakable that we cannot understand today how anyone with a shred of decency could have once supported them. Today torture, a practice far more degrading to us than to our victims, represents such an evil.
The issue has become urgent because Bush has chosen to demand the legal right to torture anyone he wishes. When torture was revealed at Abu Ghraib, the administration - falsely and shamelessly - attempted to shift its own responsibility onto foot-soldiers like Lynndie England. Since then, however, leaks have revealed that the CIA has tortured terrorist suspects all around the world, using techniques like "waterboarding." In response, Senator John McCain proposed an amendment, attached to the 2006 Defense bill, that would ban torture.
Bush's first response to McCain's amendment was to threaten to veto the Defense Bill if it passed. When it became clear that McCain's amendment would pass by an overwhelming majority (it passed in by a 90-9 margin in the end), Bush reversed course and said he would support the amendment. Yet when he actually signed the bill, Bush added something called a "signing statement" in which he reserved the right to do whatever he chooses as Commander-in-Chief to "protect the American people from further terrorist attacks." In short, even as he signed McCain's amendment, Bush let it be known that he intends to torture as he sees fit.
Bush's demand is unprecedented. No leader in all human history, not even Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, has publicly demanded the right to torture. All others have behaved as Bush did before the amendment when he secretly tortured on a scale unseen in American history even while saying he wasn't. Forced into the open by the McCain amendment, however, Bush chose to openly demand the legal right to torture. Most experts assume he will continue to torture.
It is important to understand what this means. Bush justifies his right to torture on the grounds of saving American lives in a global "war on terrorism." Unlike previous wars, however, this war will never end. On the contrary, Bush's bungling of the war on terror--including the increased Muslim hatred of the United States that the practice of torture has caused--makes it more likely that there will be another domestic 9/11, leading in turn to more demands to torture. Bush's assertion of his right to torture, therefore, would make torture a permanent and growing instrument of U.S. state policy.
Also, by opposing the McCain amendment, Bush took direct responsibility for the torture he and his administration have inflicted on countless suspects. As you read these words, people are screaming in agony from Gestapo techniques used in CIA and "allied" torture chambers around the world. Many or even most of the victims are innocent. The New Republic has noted that "Pentagon reports have acknowledged that up to 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, many of whom were abused and tortured, were not guilty of anything.... And Abu Ghraib produced a tiny fraction of the number of abuse, torture, and murder cases that have been subsequently revealed."
"BEFORE BUSH, NO LEADER IN MODERN HISTORY, NOT EVEN HITLER, STALIN, OR MAO, HAD PUBLICLY DEMANDED THE RIGHT TO TORTURE."
Mr. Bush's statement that "we do not torture," even as he was threatening to veto the entire Defense bill because it limited his right to torture, is a dramatic example of how torture degrades the torturer even more than his victims. And it is a disgraceful commentary on our nation that no major church, business, or political leader, nor the fawning media personalities who interview him and his officials, has expressed outrage at this bald-faced lie. And one can barely mention an unspeakable Congress, which ignored his lying about torture after spending two years impeaching his predecessor for lying about sex.
The real question for us, however, is what this says not about President Bush and our other leaders, but ourselves. What are we, as citizens, as human beings, willing to live with? Are we willing to live with a President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Attorney-General who either engage in or rationalize torture in our names, even as they shamelessly deny they are doing so?
If we are willing to live with this evil, the torture will continue. If not, it can be brought to an end. Who are we?
Becoming "Good Americans"
We are in some ways more morally compromised than the "good Germans" of the 1930s.
To begin with, we are far less able to claim we do not know. Our daily newspapers regularly report new revelations of Bush Administration torture.
Second, by opposing torture, we face far less severe threats than did Germans who tried to help Jews. Even the strong possibility that we could become targets of illegal spying by this Administration for protesting its torture is far less frightening than the death or imprisonment faced by Germans who helped Jews.
And, third, unlike the Germans, we cannot reasonably claim that it is futile to oppose our leaders. Creating or joining an organized effort to prevent torture can succeed because we possess one great advantage that human rights advocates in Germany did not have: the public is with us.
Most Americans abhor torture and can understand the argument that it does not protect American lives. This is why the McCain amendment enjoyed 90 percent majorities in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, and why it is possible to bring to power leaders who are not committed to torture.
If we can build a movement to limit and ultimately remove from power those who torture, and thus endanger our lives, we will be achieving other important goals as well.
We will be building support for international law, which is one of humanity's few frail protections against far greater violence. If we can implement international law against torture, perhaps we can extend it to preventing the murder of civilians or aggressive war. We will be reaffirming America's once strong commitment to building the kind of new international order that is required to reduce international terrorism, and fostering a world in which U.S. leaders would once again be respected as fighters for human decency rather than despised as threats to it.
We will bring the once-powerful but forgotten force of morality and nonviolent action-- for civil rights, for peace, for women's rights-- back into our politics. A false morality that claims to love Jesus while torturing and killing in his name will be replaced by an authentic morality that seeks to address the root-causes of terrorism and violence.
We will thus also join this renewed moral force with a practical strategy that can actually protect us from terrorism. Torture is only the most dramatic example of how Bush has endangered our lives by bungling the war on terrorism. He has also dangerously neglected Homeland Security, alienated world opinion, helped Al Qaeda grow in numbers and fervor, wasted vast resources in Iraq in ways that increase terrorist ranks, failed to build an effective democracy in Afghanistan, failed to bring peace to the Middle East, and failed to address the poverty that fuels anti-American terrorism. Ending torture is a necessary precondition to developing an effective strategy that will actually protect rather than endanger Americans.
And we will strengthen democracy at home. Nothing is more un-American and undemocratic than the idea that a small group of Executive Branch leaders should be free to torture, kill, and spy at will. This idea is in fact precisely what generations of Americans have died fighting against. Ending Bush's use of torture will be the beginning of restoring an accountable and democratic government to this nation.
Conservative Totalitarianism
Ending torture will have a major impact beyond torture itself for a simple reason: as slavery was the linchpin to the entire pre-bellum Southern social order, torture has become integral to today's conservative ideology. Conservative ideology was once a coherent set of ideas built around limiting state power over the individual. It has today degenerated into a rationale for expanding executive power over the individual, including not only the right to torture but the right to spy on citizens, wage aggressive war while lying about it, prevent gay people from marrying, deny a woman the right to an abortion, publish disguised government propaganda in the media, and even deny us the right to die in peace if conservatives decree that we must live as vegetables or in unendurable pain.
It is no coincidence that the executive's right to torture was defended not ony by Bush and Cheney, but also by conservative ideologues at The Weekly Standard, financed by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and edited by William Kristol, who published a cover story by Charles Krauthammer-- widely admired in conservative circles-- which declared that "we must all be prepared to torture" to save American lives. Or that the The National Review opined that "if McCain's amendment becomes law ... we will then be able to apply only methods formulated to deal with conventional soldiers in a different sort of conflict than the one that faces us now. This is folly."
Today's conservative movement has been reduced to a set of impulses, above all a totalitarian impulse to support the expansion of autocratic power it was founded to restrain. Since its ideological blinders prevent it from developing sensible measures to reduce terrorism, it has turned to justifying only those policies that expand executive power and seek to rule through coercion, threats, and violence.
Whatever a movement to abolish torture will achieve for society, it is clear what participating in it means for each of us as individuals. It means above all that our children and grandchildren will not remember us with shame, that they will not one day have to try to justify to our victims our failure to oppose the torture being conducted in our names, and that the term "Good American" will mean just that, and not an excuse for fear or indifference, like the idea of the "Good German."
When we fight to end torture we not only fight for human decency, international law, democracy, and freedom.
We fight for ourselves.
Fred Branfman is a writer and long-time political activist. His email address is fredbranfman@aol.com and his website is pscdmg@hofstra.edu. He is writing a book entitled Facing Death at Any Age.
Source: Zmag
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=9802
The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=25048
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Published on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy.
by David Michael Green
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0221-32.htm
This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.
Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?
Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.
But, nowadays, even George F. Will is worried. You know you’re in a seriously bad place when that happens.
America may not be a fascist country today, but it’s not for want of trying. I have no question but that through Dick Cheney’s dark heart courses the blood of Mussolini. No wonder the damn thing’s so diseased. And I have no doubt that Karl Rove has only admiration and envy for Joseph Goebbels. Hey, why can’t we do that here? (Hint: We are.)
America is not a fascist country (if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this), but pardon me if I don’t defer to Bush defenders and ringside Democrats who consider me hysterical for worrying about the direction in which we’re heading.
These are the same people who’ve spent the last two decades denying the existence of global warming, while we now learn with each passing week how much worse than we had ever imagined is that environmental wreckage. These are the same people who said Iraq would be a cakewalk, and planned accordingly. These are the same people who prepared us for 9/11, the Iraq occupation, Hurricane Katrina and the prescription drug plan, and who have set new records for ineptitude in responding to those crises. These are the people who can’t get body armor on our troops, three years after launching the war, and who are getting flunking grades in terrorism preparation from the 9/11 Commission four years after that attack. These are the same people who have turned a massive surplus into a record-setting debt, and coupled it with equally breathtaking trade deficits. And now they want to cut federal tax revenue even more.
Yes, he is the president, but golly gee, Sargent Carter, he sure seems to make an awful lot of mistakes!
So forgive me if I don’t trust their judgement on matters of rather serious importance. Forgive me if I don’t stand by hoping they’re right as the two hundred year-old experiment in American democracy goes down the toilet. Besides, I thought being a conservative meant taking the prudent course, anyhow. Even if there was only a one in a hundred chance that a grenade was live, would you play with it? Wouldn’t it have been better to have acted ‘conservatively’ with the fate of the planet at stake, and assumed that global warming might be real? And, likewise, shouldn’t we worry about what is happening to American democracy now, while we still can?
The truth is, there is a government in office which seeks such complete power and dominance that even some conservatives have started to notice. Too blind to see the true intentions of this bunch, they can at least figure out that an imperial presidency created by George Bush might one day be inherited by Hillary Clinton (complete with her plans for a revolutionary dope-smoking lesbian Marxist state and global UN domination, enforced by an armada of black helicopters), so now even these fools are getting nervous about where this goes. They know that the only difference between the monarchism our Founders so reviled and contemporary Cheneyism is that the technology of our time allows George Bush to turn George III into George Orwell.
It’s Munich in America, people. We can dream the pleasant dream that if we just stand by quietly while the Boy King gobbles up some of our liberties, he won’t want any more, but that would be a lot like Chamberlain dreaming that a chunk of Czechoslovakia would be enough to appease Hitler. It wasn’t, and it won’t be.
Do I overstate the concern? The New York Times recently editorialized “We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers – and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.” The Times should know. Between rah-rah’ing the war for Bush, sitting on the Downing Street Memos as if they were banana import trade policy documents, and covering for Judith Miller while she covered for The Cheney Gang, they have about as much blood on their hands as does Donald Rumsfeld. But if even the Times can work up the concern to print a line like that, we’re in a world of hurt.
And we are, in fact, in a world of hurt. Those shreds of parchment on the floor of the National Archives aren’t from Mrs. Washington’s shopping list, I’m afraid to say.
It is true, of course, that other presidents – even the best of them – have taken enormous liberties with the Constitution, especially during wartime. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR jailed Americans on the West Coast for the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Truman and Eisenhower stood by while McCarthyism ripped a gaping hole through American civil liberties, and Nixon and his plumbers went to work on his political enemies in the name of national security. Of course, we now look back on those episodes as among the most shameful in American history. But the present crew is even more dangerous for their intentions of creating permanent war to justify permanent repression.
Already they’ve torn large chunks out of the Constitution.
Article One creates the legislative branch, that which the Founders intended to be the most powerful and consequential. Today, we have a president who makes the stunning assertion that he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs”. This Congress seems mostly to agree, even though the Founders gave them the power to declare war, to fund all governmental activities, to ratify treaties and to oversee the executive. Who, us? Bye-bye Article One.
Article Three creates a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes (especially over governmental powers) and to protect the Constitution. But BushCo can’t be bothered to follow even the Court’s tentative interventions into due process concerning Guantánamo and beyond. And why should it? By the time they get done with loading the damn thing up with ‘unitary executive’ fifth-column shills like Roberts and Alito, it will be a moot court, just like the ones in law school. Once the Supreme Court becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch (about one vote from now), it’s bye-bye Article Three.
The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble in protest. But protest is a joke in Bush’s America. People are kenneled off into pens so far from the president he is never confronted with any contrary views at all, apart from the odd funeral he has to show up at but Rove can’t script. The halls of Congress are ground zero for American democracy, much boasted about at home and jammed down the throat of the world (except when the results don’t favor American corporate or strategic interests). But go there and sit in the balcony wearing a t-shirt with the number of dead soldiers in Iraq printed on it and see how fast you get a lesson in Bush’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. And that little display at the state of the union address was no freak event, either. That kind of thing happened all the time during the 2004 campaign. At Bush rallies, people were getting arrested for the bumper-stickers on their cars.
The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness. Between the White House intimidating most of the press, coopting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation”. Can you say “NSA”? “Guantánamo”? “Abu Ghraib”? It’s bad enough that Bush has authorized himself to bug anybody, arrest anybody, convict anybody and silence anybody, but his NSA chief doesn’t even appear to have read the Fourth Amendment. That whole thing about probable cause was lost on him, as he and his president simultaneously trampled the separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines by eliminating two out of three branches of government from their little surveillance loop.
Meanwhile, informed estimates repeatedly assert that the majority of detainees rotting away in Guantánamo are there either because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time simply and got swept away like so much garbage into a dustpan, or were reported as al Qaeda so that one Afghan clan could use the US military to burn another. And so there they sit, unable to be charged, to be tried, to exercise habeas corpus, to have representation, to confront witnesses – unable now even to starve themselves to death in protest. If this wasn’t precisely the fear of the Founders when they put this language into the Constitution, then Dick Cheney is a poster boy for the ACLU. Strike the Fourth Amendment.
And take with it the Fifth (no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”), the Sixth (“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”), and the Eighth, providing against “cruel and unusual punishments”). Boom, boom, boom.
In a disgusting display of legal sophistry, the administration would argue that these provisions don’t apply because of jurisdiction, which of course was the entire purpose for putting their gulag in Guantánamo in the first place. As if it is not American territory since we ‘lease’ it from Cuba. As if Castro could send in the police to clean up the open sore of Bush’s human rights travesty there, and the US could do nothing about it, since it is Cuban land. Right.
But even if Fun With Domestic Jurisprudence is to be their game, the actions of the administration also represent a massive breach of international law, since the Geneva Conventions prohibit precisely these sorts of horrors which the Creature from Crawford has visited upon the poor SOBs caught in his dragnet.
Your scissors are probably getting a bit dull by now, but this means that not only is international law in scraps, but you can also go ahead and cut out Article Six of the Constitution as well, which provides that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”. Ah, how ‘quaint’. How very ‘obsolete’.
Such treaties may be the supreme law in some land, but apparently not in Bush Land. Or, at least not if you don’t mind another cute legal charade, in which a new category of POWs called “unlawful combatants” is fabricated with the intention of rendering – with disingenuousness extraordinaire – the detainees as falling outside the Geneva provisions.
That’s precious, as if a ‘lawful’ Bush all of a sudden got religion for the fine points of international jurisprudence. Except, of course, when it came to the need for obtaining a Security Council resolution to invade Iraq. Except when it comes to the International Criminal Court, which the Bush junta has been desperately trying to undermine at every opportunity (gee, I wonder why, given the Court’s mandate to prosecute war criminals). Except for nuclear nonproliferation. Except for the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Apparently the only legal distinctions these guys follow are the ones Bush orders Alberto Gonzales, that paragon of legal independence and the rule of law, to create for him out of whole cloth. That international law.
There’s not much left of the Constitution now that these guys have tortured it as if it were some personal project in Lynndie England’s basement. Of course, they’ve made damn sure that the Second Amendment is fully protected, to the point where John Ashcroft wouldn’t investigate the gun purchase records of the 9/11 hijackers. You gotta love that. I wish they gave the rest of the Bill of Rights a tenth of the attention the Second Amendment gets. Heck, for that matter, I wish they’d even interpret the Second Amendment properly. Maybe in my next lifetime.
Meanwhile, arguably the three most brilliant inventions of the Constitution are separation of powers, the guarantee of civil liberties, and federalism. Even the latter – which has least to do with foreign affairs or checking executive power, and therefore has been least assaulted – is under duress as the Bush Gang attack state power any time it strays from their regressive political agenda, for instance with respect to euthanasia, medical marijuana or affirmative action.
In fact, all three of these key constitutional doctrines are suffering under a brutal assault from a regime which finds democracy and liberty fundamentally inconvenient to their aspirations for unlimited power. The administration absurdly claims to be bringing democracy to the Mid-East. (After that whole WMD thing went MIA, and Saddam’s links to al Qaeda proved equally credible, what the hell else were they going to say?). But far from the ludicrous claims that they are agents for the spread of democracy abroad, they are busy unraveling it with furious industry here at home.
It is, I’m afraid, Munich in America, and now we must decide whether to appease the bullies and pray for happy endings, or fight back to preserve a two hundred year-old experiment in democracy. Despite all its flaws and failures, Churchill was still right about it: Democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. And that makes it worth fighting for.
But the spot we’re in now is actually worse than Munich, because there will be no Normandy in this war, and no Stalingrad. No country with the deterrent threat of a nuclear arsenal can ever be invaded by another country or group of countries, regardless of the magnitude of the latter’s own military power.
That means we’re on our own, folks. If we flip completely over to the dark side, nobody will be storming our beaches and scrambling up our cliffs to liberate us from our own folly. Hell, if they weren’t so worried about the international menace we represent, they’d probably be laughing at us, anyhow, thinking how richly we deserved the government we got.
But there’s nothing funny about this situation. Hitler dreamed of a thousand year reich, but didn’t count on the resilience of an endless army of Slavs, or the technological prowess of a nation of shopkeepers’ great-grandchildren hammering his would-be millennium down to a decade. If the US goes authoritarian (or worse), on the other hand, who will play Russia or America to our Germany? The answer is no one, and it is not apocalyptic paranoia to fear a very, very long period of unrelenting political darkness, once the curtain comes down.
Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? Maybe. I have no doubt that unchecked Cheneyism intends precisely that. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to stop it. It’s up to us to say yes to Philadelphia, and no to Munich. Because there will be no Normandy.
Now we find out if we can keep Mr. Franklin’s republic, after all.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (pscdmg@hofstra.edu), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.
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Fred Branfman: 'On being 'good Americans' in a time of torture'
Date: Tuesday, February 28 @ 09:52:40 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism
Fred Branfman, Zmag
"Gestapo interrogation methods included: repeated near drownings of a prisoner in a bathtub."
-- http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/triumph/tr-gestapo.htm
"The CIA officers say 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under waterboarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk, with debatable results."
-- Brian Ross, ABC World News Tonight, November 18, 2005
"When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief. Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said."
-- "Bush Could Bypass Torture Ban," Boston Globe, January 4, 2006
As a teenager, I could not understand how the German people could claim to be "good Germans," unaware of what the Nazis had done in their names. I could understand if these ordinary German people had said they had known and been horrified, but were afraid to speak up. But they would then be "weak, fearful or indifferent Germans," not "good Germans." The idea that only the Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust made no sense.
Whatever the Germans as a whole know about the concentration camps, they certainly knew about the systematic mistreatment of Jews that had occurred before their very eyes, and from which so many had profited. And if they were not really "good Germans," I wondered, what should or could they have done, given the reality of Nazi tyranny?
The issue became personal for me in the summer of 1961, when I hitchhiked through Europe with a lovely German woman named Inge. Still in love after an idyllic summer, we visited Hyde Park the day before I was to return home. A bearded, middle-aged concentration-camp survivor was angrily attacking the German people for standing by and letting the Jews be slaughtered. I was moved beyond words. Suddenly the woman I loved began yelling angrily at him, screaming that the Germans did not know, that her father had just been a soldier and was not responsible for the Holocaust.
Our relationship essentially ended then and there. I understood intellectually that she was just defending her father and was neither an anti-Semite nor an evil person. But there it was. She on one side. The survivor on the other. A gulf between them. Whatever my head said, my heart knew that the world is divided into evil-doers, their victims, and those like Inge who do not want to know.
And that I had no choice but to stand with the victims.
I never dreamed at that moment that I, as an American, would a few years later face this same question as my government committed mass murder of civilians in Indochina in violation of the Nuremberg Principles. Or that more than four decades later I would still be struggling with what it means to be a "good American" after learning that a group of U.S. leaders has unilaterally seized the right to torture anyone it chooses without evidence and in violation of international law, human decency, and the sacrifice of the many Americans who have died fighting autocracy and totalitarianism.
Bush Embraces Torture
To ask what it means to be a "good American" is not to compare Bush to Hitler, or Republicans to Nazis. The question does not arise only when leaders engage in mass murder on the scale of a Hitler or Stalin, which Bush has not. It requires only that they engage in actions that are clearly evil, which Bush has.
Every generation or so an evil arises which is so monstrous, so degrading to the human spirit, so morally bankrupt, that even to debate it is a sign of moral corruption. Native American genocide, slavery, totalitarianism, and Jim Crow laws are evils so unspeakable that we cannot understand today how anyone with a shred of decency could have once supported them. Today torture, a practice far more degrading to us than to our victims, represents such an evil.
The issue has become urgent because Bush has chosen to demand the legal right to torture anyone he wishes. When torture was revealed at Abu Ghraib, the administration - falsely and shamelessly - attempted to shift its own responsibility onto foot-soldiers like Lynndie England. Since then, however, leaks have revealed that the CIA has tortured terrorist suspects all around the world, using techniques like "waterboarding." In response, Senator John McCain proposed an amendment, attached to the 2006 Defense bill, that would ban torture.
Bush's first response to McCain's amendment was to threaten to veto the Defense Bill if it passed. When it became clear that McCain's amendment would pass by an overwhelming majority (it passed in by a 90-9 margin in the end), Bush reversed course and said he would support the amendment. Yet when he actually signed the bill, Bush added something called a "signing statement" in which he reserved the right to do whatever he chooses as Commander-in-Chief to "protect the American people from further terrorist attacks." In short, even as he signed McCain's amendment, Bush let it be known that he intends to torture as he sees fit.
Bush's demand is unprecedented. No leader in all human history, not even Hitler, Stalin, or Mao, has publicly demanded the right to torture. All others have behaved as Bush did before the amendment when he secretly tortured on a scale unseen in American history even while saying he wasn't. Forced into the open by the McCain amendment, however, Bush chose to openly demand the legal right to torture. Most experts assume he will continue to torture.
It is important to understand what this means. Bush justifies his right to torture on the grounds of saving American lives in a global "war on terrorism." Unlike previous wars, however, this war will never end. On the contrary, Bush's bungling of the war on terror--including the increased Muslim hatred of the United States that the practice of torture has caused--makes it more likely that there will be another domestic 9/11, leading in turn to more demands to torture. Bush's assertion of his right to torture, therefore, would make torture a permanent and growing instrument of U.S. state policy.
Also, by opposing the McCain amendment, Bush took direct responsibility for the torture he and his administration have inflicted on countless suspects. As you read these words, people are screaming in agony from Gestapo techniques used in CIA and "allied" torture chambers around the world. Many or even most of the victims are innocent. The New Republic has noted that "Pentagon reports have acknowledged that up to 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, many of whom were abused and tortured, were not guilty of anything.... And Abu Ghraib produced a tiny fraction of the number of abuse, torture, and murder cases that have been subsequently revealed."
"BEFORE BUSH, NO LEADER IN MODERN HISTORY, NOT EVEN HITLER, STALIN, OR MAO, HAD PUBLICLY DEMANDED THE RIGHT TO TORTURE."
Mr. Bush's statement that "we do not torture," even as he was threatening to veto the entire Defense bill because it limited his right to torture, is a dramatic example of how torture degrades the torturer even more than his victims. And it is a disgraceful commentary on our nation that no major church, business, or political leader, nor the fawning media personalities who interview him and his officials, has expressed outrage at this bald-faced lie. And one can barely mention an unspeakable Congress, which ignored his lying about torture after spending two years impeaching his predecessor for lying about sex.
The real question for us, however, is what this says not about President Bush and our other leaders, but ourselves. What are we, as citizens, as human beings, willing to live with? Are we willing to live with a President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and Attorney-General who either engage in or rationalize torture in our names, even as they shamelessly deny they are doing so?
If we are willing to live with this evil, the torture will continue. If not, it can be brought to an end. Who are we?
Becoming "Good Americans"
We are in some ways more morally compromised than the "good Germans" of the 1930s.
To begin with, we are far less able to claim we do not know. Our daily newspapers regularly report new revelations of Bush Administration torture.
Second, by opposing torture, we face far less severe threats than did Germans who tried to help Jews. Even the strong possibility that we could become targets of illegal spying by this Administration for protesting its torture is far less frightening than the death or imprisonment faced by Germans who helped Jews.
And, third, unlike the Germans, we cannot reasonably claim that it is futile to oppose our leaders. Creating or joining an organized effort to prevent torture can succeed because we possess one great advantage that human rights advocates in Germany did not have: the public is with us.
Most Americans abhor torture and can understand the argument that it does not protect American lives. This is why the McCain amendment enjoyed 90 percent majorities in the Republican-controlled House and Senate, and why it is possible to bring to power leaders who are not committed to torture.
If we can build a movement to limit and ultimately remove from power those who torture, and thus endanger our lives, we will be achieving other important goals as well.
We will be building support for international law, which is one of humanity's few frail protections against far greater violence. If we can implement international law against torture, perhaps we can extend it to preventing the murder of civilians or aggressive war. We will be reaffirming America's once strong commitment to building the kind of new international order that is required to reduce international terrorism, and fostering a world in which U.S. leaders would once again be respected as fighters for human decency rather than despised as threats to it.
We will bring the once-powerful but forgotten force of morality and nonviolent action-- for civil rights, for peace, for women's rights-- back into our politics. A false morality that claims to love Jesus while torturing and killing in his name will be replaced by an authentic morality that seeks to address the root-causes of terrorism and violence.
We will thus also join this renewed moral force with a practical strategy that can actually protect us from terrorism. Torture is only the most dramatic example of how Bush has endangered our lives by bungling the war on terrorism. He has also dangerously neglected Homeland Security, alienated world opinion, helped Al Qaeda grow in numbers and fervor, wasted vast resources in Iraq in ways that increase terrorist ranks, failed to build an effective democracy in Afghanistan, failed to bring peace to the Middle East, and failed to address the poverty that fuels anti-American terrorism. Ending torture is a necessary precondition to developing an effective strategy that will actually protect rather than endanger Americans.
And we will strengthen democracy at home. Nothing is more un-American and undemocratic than the idea that a small group of Executive Branch leaders should be free to torture, kill, and spy at will. This idea is in fact precisely what generations of Americans have died fighting against. Ending Bush's use of torture will be the beginning of restoring an accountable and democratic government to this nation.
Conservative Totalitarianism
Ending torture will have a major impact beyond torture itself for a simple reason: as slavery was the linchpin to the entire pre-bellum Southern social order, torture has become integral to today's conservative ideology. Conservative ideology was once a coherent set of ideas built around limiting state power over the individual. It has today degenerated into a rationale for expanding executive power over the individual, including not only the right to torture but the right to spy on citizens, wage aggressive war while lying about it, prevent gay people from marrying, deny a woman the right to an abortion, publish disguised government propaganda in the media, and even deny us the right to die in peace if conservatives decree that we must live as vegetables or in unendurable pain.
It is no coincidence that the executive's right to torture was defended not ony by Bush and Cheney, but also by conservative ideologues at The Weekly Standard, financed by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and edited by William Kristol, who published a cover story by Charles Krauthammer-- widely admired in conservative circles-- which declared that "we must all be prepared to torture" to save American lives. Or that the The National Review opined that "if McCain's amendment becomes law ... we will then be able to apply only methods formulated to deal with conventional soldiers in a different sort of conflict than the one that faces us now. This is folly."
Today's conservative movement has been reduced to a set of impulses, above all a totalitarian impulse to support the expansion of autocratic power it was founded to restrain. Since its ideological blinders prevent it from developing sensible measures to reduce terrorism, it has turned to justifying only those policies that expand executive power and seek to rule through coercion, threats, and violence.
Whatever a movement to abolish torture will achieve for society, it is clear what participating in it means for each of us as individuals. It means above all that our children and grandchildren will not remember us with shame, that they will not one day have to try to justify to our victims our failure to oppose the torture being conducted in our names, and that the term "Good American" will mean just that, and not an excuse for fear or indifference, like the idea of the "Good German."
When we fight to end torture we not only fight for human decency, international law, democracy, and freedom.
We fight for ourselves.
Fred Branfman is a writer and long-time political activist. His email address is fredbranfman@aol.com and his website is pscdmg@hofstra.edu. He is writing a book entitled Facing Death at Any Age.
Source: Zmag
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=9802
The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=25048
_____________________________________________________________________
Published on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy.
by David Michael Green
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0221-32.htm
This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.
Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?
Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.
But, nowadays, even George F. Will is worried. You know you’re in a seriously bad place when that happens.
America may not be a fascist country today, but it’s not for want of trying. I have no question but that through Dick Cheney’s dark heart courses the blood of Mussolini. No wonder the damn thing’s so diseased. And I have no doubt that Karl Rove has only admiration and envy for Joseph Goebbels. Hey, why can’t we do that here? (Hint: We are.)
America is not a fascist country (if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this), but pardon me if I don’t defer to Bush defenders and ringside Democrats who consider me hysterical for worrying about the direction in which we’re heading.
These are the same people who’ve spent the last two decades denying the existence of global warming, while we now learn with each passing week how much worse than we had ever imagined is that environmental wreckage. These are the same people who said Iraq would be a cakewalk, and planned accordingly. These are the same people who prepared us for 9/11, the Iraq occupation, Hurricane Katrina and the prescription drug plan, and who have set new records for ineptitude in responding to those crises. These are the people who can’t get body armor on our troops, three years after launching the war, and who are getting flunking grades in terrorism preparation from the 9/11 Commission four years after that attack. These are the same people who have turned a massive surplus into a record-setting debt, and coupled it with equally breathtaking trade deficits. And now they want to cut federal tax revenue even more.
Yes, he is the president, but golly gee, Sargent Carter, he sure seems to make an awful lot of mistakes!
So forgive me if I don’t trust their judgement on matters of rather serious importance. Forgive me if I don’t stand by hoping they’re right as the two hundred year-old experiment in American democracy goes down the toilet. Besides, I thought being a conservative meant taking the prudent course, anyhow. Even if there was only a one in a hundred chance that a grenade was live, would you play with it? Wouldn’t it have been better to have acted ‘conservatively’ with the fate of the planet at stake, and assumed that global warming might be real? And, likewise, shouldn’t we worry about what is happening to American democracy now, while we still can?
The truth is, there is a government in office which seeks such complete power and dominance that even some conservatives have started to notice. Too blind to see the true intentions of this bunch, they can at least figure out that an imperial presidency created by George Bush might one day be inherited by Hillary Clinton (complete with her plans for a revolutionary dope-smoking lesbian Marxist state and global UN domination, enforced by an armada of black helicopters), so now even these fools are getting nervous about where this goes. They know that the only difference between the monarchism our Founders so reviled and contemporary Cheneyism is that the technology of our time allows George Bush to turn George III into George Orwell.
It’s Munich in America, people. We can dream the pleasant dream that if we just stand by quietly while the Boy King gobbles up some of our liberties, he won’t want any more, but that would be a lot like Chamberlain dreaming that a chunk of Czechoslovakia would be enough to appease Hitler. It wasn’t, and it won’t be.
Do I overstate the concern? The New York Times recently editorialized “We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers – and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.” The Times should know. Between rah-rah’ing the war for Bush, sitting on the Downing Street Memos as if they were banana import trade policy documents, and covering for Judith Miller while she covered for The Cheney Gang, they have about as much blood on their hands as does Donald Rumsfeld. But if even the Times can work up the concern to print a line like that, we’re in a world of hurt.
And we are, in fact, in a world of hurt. Those shreds of parchment on the floor of the National Archives aren’t from Mrs. Washington’s shopping list, I’m afraid to say.
It is true, of course, that other presidents – even the best of them – have taken enormous liberties with the Constitution, especially during wartime. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR jailed Americans on the West Coast for the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Truman and Eisenhower stood by while McCarthyism ripped a gaping hole through American civil liberties, and Nixon and his plumbers went to work on his political enemies in the name of national security. Of course, we now look back on those episodes as among the most shameful in American history. But the present crew is even more dangerous for their intentions of creating permanent war to justify permanent repression.
Already they’ve torn large chunks out of the Constitution.
Article One creates the legislative branch, that which the Founders intended to be the most powerful and consequential. Today, we have a president who makes the stunning assertion that he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs”. This Congress seems mostly to agree, even though the Founders gave them the power to declare war, to fund all governmental activities, to ratify treaties and to oversee the executive. Who, us? Bye-bye Article One.
Article Three creates a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes (especially over governmental powers) and to protect the Constitution. But BushCo can’t be bothered to follow even the Court’s tentative interventions into due process concerning Guantánamo and beyond. And why should it? By the time they get done with loading the damn thing up with ‘unitary executive’ fifth-column shills like Roberts and Alito, it will be a moot court, just like the ones in law school. Once the Supreme Court becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch (about one vote from now), it’s bye-bye Article Three.
The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble in protest. But protest is a joke in Bush’s America. People are kenneled off into pens so far from the president he is never confronted with any contrary views at all, apart from the odd funeral he has to show up at but Rove can’t script. The halls of Congress are ground zero for American democracy, much boasted about at home and jammed down the throat of the world (except when the results don’t favor American corporate or strategic interests). But go there and sit in the balcony wearing a t-shirt with the number of dead soldiers in Iraq printed on it and see how fast you get a lesson in Bush’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. And that little display at the state of the union address was no freak event, either. That kind of thing happened all the time during the 2004 campaign. At Bush rallies, people were getting arrested for the bumper-stickers on their cars.
The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness. Between the White House intimidating most of the press, coopting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation”. Can you say “NSA”? “Guantánamo”? “Abu Ghraib”? It’s bad enough that Bush has authorized himself to bug anybody, arrest anybody, convict anybody and silence anybody, but his NSA chief doesn’t even appear to have read the Fourth Amendment. That whole thing about probable cause was lost on him, as he and his president simultaneously trampled the separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines by eliminating two out of three branches of government from their little surveillance loop.
Meanwhile, informed estimates repeatedly assert that the majority of detainees rotting away in Guantánamo are there either because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time simply and got swept away like so much garbage into a dustpan, or were reported as al Qaeda so that one Afghan clan could use the US military to burn another. And so there they sit, unable to be charged, to be tried, to exercise habeas corpus, to have representation, to confront witnesses – unable now even to starve themselves to death in protest. If this wasn’t precisely the fear of the Founders when they put this language into the Constitution, then Dick Cheney is a poster boy for the ACLU. Strike the Fourth Amendment.
And take with it the Fifth (no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”), the Sixth (“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”), and the Eighth, providing against “cruel and unusual punishments”). Boom, boom, boom.
In a disgusting display of legal sophistry, the administration would argue that these provisions don’t apply because of jurisdiction, which of course was the entire purpose for putting their gulag in Guantánamo in the first place. As if it is not American territory since we ‘lease’ it from Cuba. As if Castro could send in the police to clean up the open sore of Bush’s human rights travesty there, and the US could do nothing about it, since it is Cuban land. Right.
But even if Fun With Domestic Jurisprudence is to be their game, the actions of the administration also represent a massive breach of international law, since the Geneva Conventions prohibit precisely these sorts of horrors which the Creature from Crawford has visited upon the poor SOBs caught in his dragnet.
Your scissors are probably getting a bit dull by now, but this means that not only is international law in scraps, but you can also go ahead and cut out Article Six of the Constitution as well, which provides that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”. Ah, how ‘quaint’. How very ‘obsolete’.
Such treaties may be the supreme law in some land, but apparently not in Bush Land. Or, at least not if you don’t mind another cute legal charade, in which a new category of POWs called “unlawful combatants” is fabricated with the intention of rendering – with disingenuousness extraordinaire – the detainees as falling outside the Geneva provisions.
That’s precious, as if a ‘lawful’ Bush all of a sudden got religion for the fine points of international jurisprudence. Except, of course, when it came to the need for obtaining a Security Council resolution to invade Iraq. Except when it comes to the International Criminal Court, which the Bush junta has been desperately trying to undermine at every opportunity (gee, I wonder why, given the Court’s mandate to prosecute war criminals). Except for nuclear nonproliferation. Except for the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Apparently the only legal distinctions these guys follow are the ones Bush orders Alberto Gonzales, that paragon of legal independence and the rule of law, to create for him out of whole cloth. That international law.
There’s not much left of the Constitution now that these guys have tortured it as if it were some personal project in Lynndie England’s basement. Of course, they’ve made damn sure that the Second Amendment is fully protected, to the point where John Ashcroft wouldn’t investigate the gun purchase records of the 9/11 hijackers. You gotta love that. I wish they gave the rest of the Bill of Rights a tenth of the attention the Second Amendment gets. Heck, for that matter, I wish they’d even interpret the Second Amendment properly. Maybe in my next lifetime.
Meanwhile, arguably the three most brilliant inventions of the Constitution are separation of powers, the guarantee of civil liberties, and federalism. Even the latter – which has least to do with foreign affairs or checking executive power, and therefore has been least assaulted – is under duress as the Bush Gang attack state power any time it strays from their regressive political agenda, for instance with respect to euthanasia, medical marijuana or affirmative action.
In fact, all three of these key constitutional doctrines are suffering under a brutal assault from a regime which finds democracy and liberty fundamentally inconvenient to their aspirations for unlimited power. The administration absurdly claims to be bringing democracy to the Mid-East. (After that whole WMD thing went MIA, and Saddam’s links to al Qaeda proved equally credible, what the hell else were they going to say?). But far from the ludicrous claims that they are agents for the spread of democracy abroad, they are busy unraveling it with furious industry here at home.
It is, I’m afraid, Munich in America, and now we must decide whether to appease the bullies and pray for happy endings, or fight back to preserve a two hundred year-old experiment in democracy. Despite all its flaws and failures, Churchill was still right about it: Democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. And that makes it worth fighting for.
But the spot we’re in now is actually worse than Munich, because there will be no Normandy in this war, and no Stalingrad. No country with the deterrent threat of a nuclear arsenal can ever be invaded by another country or group of countries, regardless of the magnitude of the latter’s own military power.
That means we’re on our own, folks. If we flip completely over to the dark side, nobody will be storming our beaches and scrambling up our cliffs to liberate us from our own folly. Hell, if they weren’t so worried about the international menace we represent, they’d probably be laughing at us, anyhow, thinking how richly we deserved the government we got.
But there’s nothing funny about this situation. Hitler dreamed of a thousand year reich, but didn’t count on the resilience of an endless army of Slavs, or the technological prowess of a nation of shopkeepers’ great-grandchildren hammering his would-be millennium down to a decade. If the US goes authoritarian (or worse), on the other hand, who will play Russia or America to our Germany? The answer is no one, and it is not apocalyptic paranoia to fear a very, very long period of unrelenting political darkness, once the curtain comes down.
Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? Maybe. I have no doubt that unchecked Cheneyism intends precisely that. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to stop it. It’s up to us to say yes to Philadelphia, and no to Munich. Because there will be no Normandy.
Now we find out if we can keep Mr. Franklin’s republic, after all.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (pscdmg@hofstra.edu), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.
###
Friday, February 24, 2006
Munich in America; Springtime for Cheney
We hear a lot about "connecting the dots," but when we do, the picture is ugly and frightening: it's America spelled Amerika. David Michael Green is willing to complete the picture and show it to us. I don't much like the way it looks, but what can we do? There're too many heads in the sand, already.
Published on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy.
by David Michael Green
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0221-32.htm
This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.
Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?
Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.
But, nowadays, even George F. Will is worried. You know you’re in a seriously bad place when that happens.
America may not be a fascist country today, but it’s not for want of trying. I have no question but that through Dick Cheney’s dark heart courses the blood of Mussolini. No wonder the damn thing’s so diseased. And I have no doubt that Karl Rove has only admiration and envy for Joseph Goebbels. Hey, why can’t we do that here? (Hint: We are.)
America is not a fascist country (if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this), but pardon me if I don’t defer to Bush defenders and ringside Democrats who consider me hysterical for worrying about the direction in which we’re heading.
These are the same people who’ve spent the last two decades denying the existence of global warming, while we now learn with each passing week how much worse than we had ever imagined is that environmental wreckage. These are the same people who said Iraq would be a cakewalk, and planned accordingly. These are the same people who prepared us for 9/11, the Iraq occupation, Hurricane Katrina and the prescription drug plan, and who have set new records for ineptitude in responding to those crises. These are the people who can’t get body armor on our troops, three years after launching the war, and who are getting flunking grades in terrorism preparation from the 9/11 Commission four years after that attack. These are the same people who have turned a massive surplus into a record-setting debt, and coupled it with equally breathtaking trade deficits. And now they want to cut federal tax revenue even more.
Yes, he is the president, but golly gee, Sargent Carter, he sure seems to make an awful lot of mistakes!
So forgive me if I don’t trust their judgement on matters of rather serious importance. Forgive me if I don’t stand by hoping they’re right as the two hundred year-old experiment in American democracy goes down the toilet. Besides, I thought being a conservative meant taking the prudent course, anyhow. Even if there was only a one in a hundred chance that a grenade was live, would you play with it? Wouldn’t it have been better to have acted ‘conservatively’ with the fate of the planet at stake, and assumed that global warming might be real? And, likewise, shouldn’t we worry about what is happening to American democracy now, while we still can?
The truth is, there is a government in office which seeks such complete power and dominance that even some conservatives have started to notice. Too blind to see the true intentions of this bunch, they can at least figure out that an imperial presidency created by George Bush might one day be inherited by Hillary Clinton (complete with her plans for a revolutionary dope-smoking lesbian Marxist state and global UN domination, enforced by an armada of black helicopters), so now even these fools are getting nervous about where this goes. They know that the only difference between the monarchism our Founders so reviled and contemporary Cheneyism is that the technology of our time allows George Bush to turn George III into George Orwell.
It’s Munich in America, people. We can dream the pleasant dream that if we just stand by quietly while the Boy King gobbles up some of our liberties, he won’t want any more, but that would be a lot like Chamberlain dreaming that a chunk of Czechoslovakia would be enough to appease Hitler. It wasn’t, and it won’t be.
Do I overstate the concern? The New York Times recently editorialized “We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers – and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.” The Times should know. Between rah-rah’ing the war for Bush, sitting on the Downing Street Memos as if they were banana import trade policy documents, and covering for Judith Miller while she covered for The Cheney Gang, they have about as much blood on their hands as does Donald Rumsfeld. But if even the Times can work up the concern to print a line like that, we’re in a world of hurt.
And we are, in fact, in a world of hurt. Those shreds of parchment on the floor of the National Archives aren’t from Mrs. Washington’s shopping list, I’m afraid to say.
It is true, of course, that other presidents – even the best of them – have taken enormous liberties with the Constitution, especially during wartime. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR jailed Americans on the West Coast for the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Truman and Eisenhower stood by while McCarthyism ripped a gaping hole through American civil liberties, and Nixon and his plumbers went to work on his political enemies in the name of national security. Of course, we now look back on those episodes as among the most shameful in American history. But the present crew is even more dangerous for their intentions of creating permanent war to justify permanent repression.
Already they’ve torn large chunks out of the Constitution.
Article One creates the legislative branch, that which the Founders intended to be the most powerful and consequential. Today, we have a president who makes the stunning assertion that he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs”. This Congress seems mostly to agree, even though the Founders gave them the power to declare war, to fund all governmental activities, to ratify treaties and to oversee the executive. Who, us? Bye-bye Article One.
Article Three creates a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes (especially over governmental powers) and to protect the Constitution. But BushCo can’t be bothered to follow even the Court’s tentative interventions into due process concerning Guantánamo and beyond. And why should it? By the time they get done with loading the damn thing up with ‘unitary executive’ fifth-column shills like Roberts and Alito, it will be a moot court, just like the ones in law school. Once the Supreme Court becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch (about one vote from now), it’s bye-bye Article Three.
The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble in protest. But protest is a joke in Bush’s America. People are kenneled off into pens so far from the president he is never confronted with any contrary views at all, apart from the odd funeral he has to show up at but Rove can’t script. The halls of Congress are ground zero for American democracy, much boasted about at home and jammed down the throat of the world (except when the results don’t favor American corporate or strategic interests). But go there and sit in the balcony wearing a t-shirt with the number of dead soldiers in Iraq printed on it and see how fast you get a lesson in Bush’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. And that little display at the state of the union address was no freak event, either. That kind of thing happened all the time during the 2004 campaign. At Bush rallies, people were getting arrested for the bumper-stickers on their cars.
The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness. Between the White House intimidating most of the press, coopting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation”. Can you say “NSA”? “Guantánamo”? “Abu Ghraib”? It’s bad enough that Bush has authorized himself to bug anybody, arrest anybody, convict anybody and silence anybody, but his NSA chief doesn’t even appear to have read the Fourth Amendment. That whole thing about probable cause was lost on him, as he and his president simultaneously trampled the separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines by eliminating two out of three branches of government from their little surveillance loop.
Meanwhile, informed estimates repeatedly assert that the majority of detainees rotting away in Guantánamo are there either because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time simply and got swept away like so much garbage into a dustpan, or were reported as al Qaeda so that one Afghan clan could use the US military to burn another. And so there they sit, unable to be charged, to be tried, to exercise habeas corpus, to have representation, to confront witnesses – unable now even to starve themselves to death in protest. If this wasn’t precisely the fear of the Founders when they put this language into the Constitution, then Dick Cheney is a poster boy for the ACLU. Strike the Fourth Amendment.
And take with it the Fifth (no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”), the Sixth (“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”), and the Eighth, providing against “cruel and unusual punishments”). Boom, boom, boom.
In a disgusting display of legal sophistry, the administration would argue that these provisions don’t apply because of jurisdiction, which of course was the entire purpose for putting their gulag in Guantánamo in the first place. As if it is not American territory since we ‘lease’ it from Cuba. As if Castro could send in the police to clean up the open sore of Bush’s human rights travesty there, and the US could do nothing about it, since it is Cuban land. Right.
But even if Fun With Domestic Jurisprudence is to be their game, the actions of the administration also represent a massive breach of international law, since the Geneva Conventions prohibit precisely these sorts of horrors which the Creature from Crawford has visited upon the poor SOBs caught in his dragnet.
Your scissors are probably getting a bit dull by now, but this means that not only is international law in scraps, but you can also go ahead and cut out Article Six of the Constitution as well, which provides that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”. Ah, how ‘quaint’. How very ‘obsolete’.
Such treaties may be the supreme law in some land, but apparently not in Bush Land. Or, at least not if you don’t mind another cute legal charade, in which a new category of POWs called “unlawful combatants” is fabricated with the intention of rendering – with disingenuousness extraordinaire – the detainees as falling outside the Geneva provisions.
That’s precious, as if a ‘lawful’ Bush all of a sudden got religion for the fine points of international jurisprudence. Except, of course, when it came to the need for obtaining a Security Council resolution to invade Iraq. Except when it comes to the International Criminal Court, which the Bush junta has been desperately trying to undermine at every opportunity (gee, I wonder why, given the Court’s mandate to prosecute war criminals). Except for nuclear nonproliferation. Except for the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Apparently the only legal distinctions these guys follow are the ones Bush orders Alberto Gonzales, that paragon of legal independence and the rule of law, to create for him out of whole cloth. That international law.
There’s not much left of the Constitution now that these guys have tortured it as if it were some personal project in Lynndie England’s basement. Of course, they’ve made damn sure that the Second Amendment is fully protected, to the point where John Ashcroft wouldn’t investigate the gun purchase records of the 9/11 hijackers. You gotta love that. I wish they gave the rest of the Bill of Rights a tenth of the attention the Second Amendment gets. Heck, for that matter, I wish they’d even interpret the Second Amendment properly. Maybe in my next lifetime.
Meanwhile, arguably the three most brilliant inventions of the Constitution are separation of powers, the guarantee of civil liberties, and federalism. Even the latter – which has least to do with foreign affairs or checking executive power, and therefore has been least assaulted – is under duress as the Bush Gang attack state power any time it strays from their regressive political agenda, for instance with respect to euthanasia, medical marijuana or affirmative action.
In fact, all three of these key constitutional doctrines are suffering under a brutal assault from a regime which finds democracy and liberty fundamentally inconvenient to their aspirations for unlimited power. The administration absurdly claims to be bringing democracy to the Mid-East. (After that whole WMD thing went MIA, and Saddam’s links to al Qaeda proved equally credible, what the hell else were they going to say?). But far from the ludicrous claims that they are agents for the spread of democracy abroad, they are busy unraveling it with furious industry here at home.
It is, I’m afraid, Munich in America, and now we must decide whether to appease the bullies and pray for happy endings, or fight back to preserve a two hundred year-old experiment in democracy. Despite all its flaws and failures, Churchill was still right about it: Democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. And that makes it worth fighting for.
But the spot we’re in now is actually worse than Munich, because there will be no Normandy in this war, and no Stalingrad. No country with the deterrent threat of a nuclear arsenal can ever be invaded by another country or group of countries, regardless of the magnitude of the latter’s own military power.
That means we’re on our own, folks. If we flip completely over to the dark side, nobody will be storming our beaches and scrambling up our cliffs to liberate us from our own folly. Hell, if they weren’t so worried about the international menace we represent, they’d probably be laughing at us, anyhow, thinking how richly we deserved the government we got.
But there’s nothing funny about this situation. Hitler dreamed of a thousand year reich, but didn’t count on the resilience of an endless army of Slavs, or the technological prowess of a nation of shopkeepers’ great-grandchildren hammering his would-be millennium down to a decade. If the US goes authoritarian (or worse), on the other hand, who will play Russia or America to our Germany? The answer is no one, and it is not apocalyptic paranoia to fear a very, very long period of unrelenting political darkness, once the curtain comes down.
Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? Maybe. I have no doubt that unchecked Cheneyism intends precisely that. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to stop it. It’s up to us to say yes to Philadelphia, and no to Munich. Because there will be no Normandy.
Now we find out if we can keep Mr. Franklin’s republic, after all.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (pscdmg@hofstra.edu), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.
###
Published on Tuesday, February 21, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
It’s Munich In America. There Will Be No Normandy.
by David Michael Green
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0221-32.htm
This is it, folks. This is the scenario our Founders lost sleep over. This is the day they prepared us for.
Outside the Philadelphia convention Benjamin Franklin was asked what sort of government he and his colleagues were crafting. His reply? “A republic. If you can keep it.” And that is just the question at issue today. Can we keep it?
Sure, it can sound melodramatic to use the f-word (no, not the one Churlish Cheney hurled at Patrick Leahy), and I have mostly avoided doing so for just that reason. Especially where the politically less informed are concerned, arguing that America is slipping into fascism can be the first and last point they’ll hear you make.
But, nowadays, even George F. Will is worried. You know you’re in a seriously bad place when that happens.
America may not be a fascist country today, but it’s not for want of trying. I have no question but that through Dick Cheney’s dark heart courses the blood of Mussolini. No wonder the damn thing’s so diseased. And I have no doubt that Karl Rove has only admiration and envy for Joseph Goebbels. Hey, why can’t we do that here? (Hint: We are.)
America is not a fascist country (if it was, you wouldn’t be reading this), but pardon me if I don’t defer to Bush defenders and ringside Democrats who consider me hysterical for worrying about the direction in which we’re heading.
These are the same people who’ve spent the last two decades denying the existence of global warming, while we now learn with each passing week how much worse than we had ever imagined is that environmental wreckage. These are the same people who said Iraq would be a cakewalk, and planned accordingly. These are the same people who prepared us for 9/11, the Iraq occupation, Hurricane Katrina and the prescription drug plan, and who have set new records for ineptitude in responding to those crises. These are the people who can’t get body armor on our troops, three years after launching the war, and who are getting flunking grades in terrorism preparation from the 9/11 Commission four years after that attack. These are the same people who have turned a massive surplus into a record-setting debt, and coupled it with equally breathtaking trade deficits. And now they want to cut federal tax revenue even more.
Yes, he is the president, but golly gee, Sargent Carter, he sure seems to make an awful lot of mistakes!
So forgive me if I don’t trust their judgement on matters of rather serious importance. Forgive me if I don’t stand by hoping they’re right as the two hundred year-old experiment in American democracy goes down the toilet. Besides, I thought being a conservative meant taking the prudent course, anyhow. Even if there was only a one in a hundred chance that a grenade was live, would you play with it? Wouldn’t it have been better to have acted ‘conservatively’ with the fate of the planet at stake, and assumed that global warming might be real? And, likewise, shouldn’t we worry about what is happening to American democracy now, while we still can?
The truth is, there is a government in office which seeks such complete power and dominance that even some conservatives have started to notice. Too blind to see the true intentions of this bunch, they can at least figure out that an imperial presidency created by George Bush might one day be inherited by Hillary Clinton (complete with her plans for a revolutionary dope-smoking lesbian Marxist state and global UN domination, enforced by an armada of black helicopters), so now even these fools are getting nervous about where this goes. They know that the only difference between the monarchism our Founders so reviled and contemporary Cheneyism is that the technology of our time allows George Bush to turn George III into George Orwell.
It’s Munich in America, people. We can dream the pleasant dream that if we just stand by quietly while the Boy King gobbles up some of our liberties, he won’t want any more, but that would be a lot like Chamberlain dreaming that a chunk of Czechoslovakia would be enough to appease Hitler. It wasn’t, and it won’t be.
Do I overstate the concern? The New York Times recently editorialized “We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers – and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less.” The Times should know. Between rah-rah’ing the war for Bush, sitting on the Downing Street Memos as if they were banana import trade policy documents, and covering for Judith Miller while she covered for The Cheney Gang, they have about as much blood on their hands as does Donald Rumsfeld. But if even the Times can work up the concern to print a line like that, we’re in a world of hurt.
And we are, in fact, in a world of hurt. Those shreds of parchment on the floor of the National Archives aren’t from Mrs. Washington’s shopping list, I’m afraid to say.
It is true, of course, that other presidents – even the best of them – have taken enormous liberties with the Constitution, especially during wartime. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, FDR jailed Americans on the West Coast for the crime of having Japanese ancestry, Truman and Eisenhower stood by while McCarthyism ripped a gaping hole through American civil liberties, and Nixon and his plumbers went to work on his political enemies in the name of national security. Of course, we now look back on those episodes as among the most shameful in American history. But the present crew is even more dangerous for their intentions of creating permanent war to justify permanent repression.
Already they’ve torn large chunks out of the Constitution.
Article One creates the legislative branch, that which the Founders intended to be the most powerful and consequential. Today, we have a president who makes the stunning assertion that he is the “sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs”. This Congress seems mostly to agree, even though the Founders gave them the power to declare war, to fund all governmental activities, to ratify treaties and to oversee the executive. Who, us? Bye-bye Article One.
Article Three creates a Supreme Court to adjudicate disputes (especially over governmental powers) and to protect the Constitution. But BushCo can’t be bothered to follow even the Court’s tentative interventions into due process concerning Guantánamo and beyond. And why should it? By the time they get done with loading the damn thing up with ‘unitary executive’ fifth-column shills like Roberts and Alito, it will be a moot court, just like the ones in law school. Once the Supreme Court becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of the executive branch (about one vote from now), it’s bye-bye Article Three.
The First Amendment guarantees the freedom to assemble in protest. But protest is a joke in Bush’s America. People are kenneled off into pens so far from the president he is never confronted with any contrary views at all, apart from the odd funeral he has to show up at but Rove can’t script. The halls of Congress are ground zero for American democracy, much boasted about at home and jammed down the throat of the world (except when the results don’t favor American corporate or strategic interests). But go there and sit in the balcony wearing a t-shirt with the number of dead soldiers in Iraq printed on it and see how fast you get a lesson in Bush’s interpretation of the Bill of Rights. And that little display at the state of the union address was no freak event, either. That kind of thing happened all the time during the 2004 campaign. At Bush rallies, people were getting arrested for the bumper-stickers on their cars.
The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness. Between the White House intimidating most of the press, coopting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment.
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “against unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that “no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation”. Can you say “NSA”? “Guantánamo”? “Abu Ghraib”? It’s bad enough that Bush has authorized himself to bug anybody, arrest anybody, convict anybody and silence anybody, but his NSA chief doesn’t even appear to have read the Fourth Amendment. That whole thing about probable cause was lost on him, as he and his president simultaneously trampled the separation of powers and checks and balances doctrines by eliminating two out of three branches of government from their little surveillance loop.
Meanwhile, informed estimates repeatedly assert that the majority of detainees rotting away in Guantánamo are there either because they were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time simply and got swept away like so much garbage into a dustpan, or were reported as al Qaeda so that one Afghan clan could use the US military to burn another. And so there they sit, unable to be charged, to be tried, to exercise habeas corpus, to have representation, to confront witnesses – unable now even to starve themselves to death in protest. If this wasn’t precisely the fear of the Founders when they put this language into the Constitution, then Dick Cheney is a poster boy for the ACLU. Strike the Fourth Amendment.
And take with it the Fifth (no one shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”), the Sixth (“the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury”, the right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense”), and the Eighth, providing against “cruel and unusual punishments”). Boom, boom, boom.
In a disgusting display of legal sophistry, the administration would argue that these provisions don’t apply because of jurisdiction, which of course was the entire purpose for putting their gulag in Guantánamo in the first place. As if it is not American territory since we ‘lease’ it from Cuba. As if Castro could send in the police to clean up the open sore of Bush’s human rights travesty there, and the US could do nothing about it, since it is Cuban land. Right.
But even if Fun With Domestic Jurisprudence is to be their game, the actions of the administration also represent a massive breach of international law, since the Geneva Conventions prohibit precisely these sorts of horrors which the Creature from Crawford has visited upon the poor SOBs caught in his dragnet.
Your scissors are probably getting a bit dull by now, but this means that not only is international law in scraps, but you can also go ahead and cut out Article Six of the Constitution as well, which provides that “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land”. Ah, how ‘quaint’. How very ‘obsolete’.
Such treaties may be the supreme law in some land, but apparently not in Bush Land. Or, at least not if you don’t mind another cute legal charade, in which a new category of POWs called “unlawful combatants” is fabricated with the intention of rendering – with disingenuousness extraordinaire – the detainees as falling outside the Geneva provisions.
That’s precious, as if a ‘lawful’ Bush all of a sudden got religion for the fine points of international jurisprudence. Except, of course, when it came to the need for obtaining a Security Council resolution to invade Iraq. Except when it comes to the International Criminal Court, which the Bush junta has been desperately trying to undermine at every opportunity (gee, I wonder why, given the Court’s mandate to prosecute war criminals). Except for nuclear nonproliferation. Except for the use of white phosphorus in Falluja. Apparently the only legal distinctions these guys follow are the ones Bush orders Alberto Gonzales, that paragon of legal independence and the rule of law, to create for him out of whole cloth. That international law.
There’s not much left of the Constitution now that these guys have tortured it as if it were some personal project in Lynndie England’s basement. Of course, they’ve made damn sure that the Second Amendment is fully protected, to the point where John Ashcroft wouldn’t investigate the gun purchase records of the 9/11 hijackers. You gotta love that. I wish they gave the rest of the Bill of Rights a tenth of the attention the Second Amendment gets. Heck, for that matter, I wish they’d even interpret the Second Amendment properly. Maybe in my next lifetime.
Meanwhile, arguably the three most brilliant inventions of the Constitution are separation of powers, the guarantee of civil liberties, and federalism. Even the latter – which has least to do with foreign affairs or checking executive power, and therefore has been least assaulted – is under duress as the Bush Gang attack state power any time it strays from their regressive political agenda, for instance with respect to euthanasia, medical marijuana or affirmative action.
In fact, all three of these key constitutional doctrines are suffering under a brutal assault from a regime which finds democracy and liberty fundamentally inconvenient to their aspirations for unlimited power. The administration absurdly claims to be bringing democracy to the Mid-East. (After that whole WMD thing went MIA, and Saddam’s links to al Qaeda proved equally credible, what the hell else were they going to say?). But far from the ludicrous claims that they are agents for the spread of democracy abroad, they are busy unraveling it with furious industry here at home.
It is, I’m afraid, Munich in America, and now we must decide whether to appease the bullies and pray for happy endings, or fight back to preserve a two hundred year-old experiment in democracy. Despite all its flaws and failures, Churchill was still right about it: Democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. And that makes it worth fighting for.
But the spot we’re in now is actually worse than Munich, because there will be no Normandy in this war, and no Stalingrad. No country with the deterrent threat of a nuclear arsenal can ever be invaded by another country or group of countries, regardless of the magnitude of the latter’s own military power.
That means we’re on our own, folks. If we flip completely over to the dark side, nobody will be storming our beaches and scrambling up our cliffs to liberate us from our own folly. Hell, if they weren’t so worried about the international menace we represent, they’d probably be laughing at us, anyhow, thinking how richly we deserved the government we got.
But there’s nothing funny about this situation. Hitler dreamed of a thousand year reich, but didn’t count on the resilience of an endless army of Slavs, or the technological prowess of a nation of shopkeepers’ great-grandchildren hammering his would-be millennium down to a decade. If the US goes authoritarian (or worse), on the other hand, who will play Russia or America to our Germany? The answer is no one, and it is not apocalyptic paranoia to fear a very, very long period of unrelenting political darkness, once the curtain comes down.
Is this the beginning of the end for American democracy? Maybe. I have no doubt that unchecked Cheneyism intends precisely that. It’s therefore up to the rest of us to stop it. It’s up to us to say yes to Philadelphia, and no to Munich. Because there will be no Normandy.
Now we find out if we can keep Mr. Franklin’s republic, after all.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (pscdmg@hofstra.edu), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.
###
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Outsourcing full stomachs?
How good are things? Not as all as good as various people would have us believe. More and more people are sliding into the quicksand of poverty—or, if not right into the quicksand, they’re standing right next to it. That’s not good. Wages haven’t just stagnated, they’ve actually shrunk, when you consider buying-power. Nobody says too much about this, because it’s very scary.
Yet the boy emperor is still telling us how wonderful—except for the dreadful frightful terrorists, of course—everything is. Why, people in India are busy buying products with American names on them! That benefits all of us! Except, he doesn’t tell us how it benefits us...
washingtonpost.com
Food Bank Network Served Over 25M in '05
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 23, 2006; 12:38 AM
WASHINGTON -- More than 25 million Americans turned to the nation's largest network of food banks, soup kitchens and shelters for meals last year, up 9 percent from 2001.
Those seeking food included 9 million children and nearly 3 million senior citizens, says a report from America's Second Harvest.
"The face of hunger doesn't have a particular color, and it doesn't come from a particular neighborhood," said Ertharin Cousin, executive vice president of the group. "They are your neighbors, they are working Americans, they are senior citizens who have worked their entire lives, and they are children."
The organization said it interviewed 52,000 people at food banks, soup kitchens and shelters across the country last year. The network represents about 39,000 hunger-relief organizations, or about 80 percent of those in the United States. The vast majority are run locally by churches and private nonprofit groups.
The surveys were done before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. After the hurricanes, demand for emergency food assistance tripled in Gulf Coast states, according to a separate report by the group.
The new report, being released Thursday, found that 36 percent of people seeking food came from households in which at least one person had a job. About 35 percent came from households that received food stamps.
Cousin said the numbers show that many working people don't make enough money to feed their families. She said the food stamp numbers show that the government program, while important, is insufficient.
"The benefits they are receiving are not enough," Cousin said.
Government reports also show the number of hungry Americans increasing.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released last year said 13.5 million American households, or nearly 12 percent, had difficulty providing enough food for family members at some time in 2004. That was up from about 11 percent in 2003.
Jean Daniel, a USDA spokeswoman, said private groups play an important role in supplementing the government's safety net.
"We have said all along that the government cannot do this alone, nor should it," Daniel said. "Their efforts dovetail very nicely with ours."
Some local food-assistance groups saw big jumps in their numbers of people seeking food, despite an improving economy.
In Washington, the Capital Area Food Bank served more than 383,000 people last year, a 39 percent increase over 2001, said Kasandra Gunter Robinson, the food bank's spokeswoman.
Of those people, nearly half had jobs, she said.
"It is the working poor who are struggling," Robinson said.
Robinson said skyrocketing rents and real estate prices in the Washington area have drained family budgets and increased hunger.
Lisa Koch of the Greater Chicago Food Depository said she interviewed people at a Chicago soup kitchen who were on their lunch breaks from work. About 39 percent of the households in the Chicago survey included at least one adult with a job. The agency served a half million people last year.
"Even though the economy might be changing, it isn't creating the kinds of jobs that allow people to make ends meet," Koch said.
___
On The Net:
America's Second Harvest: http://www.secondharvest.org/
U.S. Department of Agriculture: http://www.usda.gov
© 2006 The Associated Press
Posted on Thu, Feb. 23, 2006
Bush insists outsourcing to India has its benefits
By Jim Puzzanghera
Mercury News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - To people in Silicon Valley and around the country concerned about the outsourcing of jobs to India, President Bush on Wednesday offered something to make the practice more palatable.
Pizza.
It's just one of the U.S. products that India's rapidly growing middle class is developing an appetite for, Bush said in a speech to the Asia Society as he prepares for a trip to India and Pakistan next month. While acknowledging the individual trauma of Americans who lose jobs when companies move operations abroad, Bush said India's economic growth is an overall plus for the U.S. economy.
``India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut,'' Bush said to laughs from the audience at a Washington hotel. ``Today, India's consumers associate American brands with quality and value, and this trade is creating opportunity at home.''
Yet the boy emperor is still telling us how wonderful—except for the dreadful frightful terrorists, of course—everything is. Why, people in India are busy buying products with American names on them! That benefits all of us! Except, he doesn’t tell us how it benefits us...
washingtonpost.com
Food Bank Network Served Over 25M in '05
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 23, 2006; 12:38 AM
WASHINGTON -- More than 25 million Americans turned to the nation's largest network of food banks, soup kitchens and shelters for meals last year, up 9 percent from 2001.
Those seeking food included 9 million children and nearly 3 million senior citizens, says a report from America's Second Harvest.
"The face of hunger doesn't have a particular color, and it doesn't come from a particular neighborhood," said Ertharin Cousin, executive vice president of the group. "They are your neighbors, they are working Americans, they are senior citizens who have worked their entire lives, and they are children."
The organization said it interviewed 52,000 people at food banks, soup kitchens and shelters across the country last year. The network represents about 39,000 hunger-relief organizations, or about 80 percent of those in the United States. The vast majority are run locally by churches and private nonprofit groups.
The surveys were done before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. After the hurricanes, demand for emergency food assistance tripled in Gulf Coast states, according to a separate report by the group.
The new report, being released Thursday, found that 36 percent of people seeking food came from households in which at least one person had a job. About 35 percent came from households that received food stamps.
Cousin said the numbers show that many working people don't make enough money to feed their families. She said the food stamp numbers show that the government program, while important, is insufficient.
"The benefits they are receiving are not enough," Cousin said.
Government reports also show the number of hungry Americans increasing.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released last year said 13.5 million American households, or nearly 12 percent, had difficulty providing enough food for family members at some time in 2004. That was up from about 11 percent in 2003.
Jean Daniel, a USDA spokeswoman, said private groups play an important role in supplementing the government's safety net.
"We have said all along that the government cannot do this alone, nor should it," Daniel said. "Their efforts dovetail very nicely with ours."
Some local food-assistance groups saw big jumps in their numbers of people seeking food, despite an improving economy.
In Washington, the Capital Area Food Bank served more than 383,000 people last year, a 39 percent increase over 2001, said Kasandra Gunter Robinson, the food bank's spokeswoman.
Of those people, nearly half had jobs, she said.
"It is the working poor who are struggling," Robinson said.
Robinson said skyrocketing rents and real estate prices in the Washington area have drained family budgets and increased hunger.
Lisa Koch of the Greater Chicago Food Depository said she interviewed people at a Chicago soup kitchen who were on their lunch breaks from work. About 39 percent of the households in the Chicago survey included at least one adult with a job. The agency served a half million people last year.
"Even though the economy might be changing, it isn't creating the kinds of jobs that allow people to make ends meet," Koch said.
___
On The Net:
America's Second Harvest: http://www.secondharvest.org/
U.S. Department of Agriculture: http://www.usda.gov
© 2006 The Associated Press
Posted on Thu, Feb. 23, 2006
Bush insists outsourcing to India has its benefits
By Jim Puzzanghera
Mercury News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON - To people in Silicon Valley and around the country concerned about the outsourcing of jobs to India, President Bush on Wednesday offered something to make the practice more palatable.
Pizza.
It's just one of the U.S. products that India's rapidly growing middle class is developing an appetite for, Bush said in a speech to the Asia Society as he prepares for a trip to India and Pakistan next month. While acknowledging the individual trauma of Americans who lose jobs when companies move operations abroad, Bush said India's economic growth is an overall plus for the U.S. economy.
``India's middle class is buying air-conditioners, kitchen appliances and washing machines, and a lot of them from American companies like GE and Whirlpool and Westinghouse. And that means their job base is growing here in the United States. Younger Indians are acquiring a taste for pizzas from Domino's, Pizza Hut,'' Bush said to laughs from the audience at a Washington hotel. ``Today, India's consumers associate American brands with quality and value, and this trade is creating opportunity at home.''
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Canned Hunts, Devalued Life
I like to hunt—or, I should say, I liked to hunt. I haven't done it in years. Fishing was a favorite, too. The hardest thing about those activities was looking at the bird or animal or fish who's life I'd just taken, and both thanking it and apologizing. Killing is heavy-duty emotional work. For me, anyhow.
Cheney and his peers hunt like the old-time European aristocracy: game-keepers, raised-in-a-cage birds, hanging with fellow movers and shakers. And killing as much as is possible. This is sort of all-American, isn’t it? All Amerikan is more like it. Canned and limitless hunting. These are the people who consider themselves “sportsmen” and endorse all the right outdoor causes, from Ducks Unlimited to Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to the NRA, with nice donations. And, in the case of politicians, they get back endorsements from those organizations.
But it’s just the ruling class out for blood. Maybe in their dreams they hunt humans who can’t shoot back.
Cheney's Canned Kill, and Other Hunting Excesses of the Bush Administration
By Wayne Pacelle
The Humane Society of the United States
Tuesday 21 February 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney went pheasant shooting in Pennsylvania in December 2003, but unlike most of his fellow hunters across America, he didn't have to spend hours or even days tramping the fields and hedgerows in hopes of bagging a brace of birds for the dinner table.
Upon his arrival at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, gamekeepers released 500 pen-raised pheasants from nets for the benefit of him and his party. In a blaze of gunfire, the group - which included legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), along with major fundraisers for Republican candidates - killed at least 417 of the birds. According to one gamekeeper who spoke to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cheney was credited with shooting more than 70 of the pen-reared fowl.
After lunch, the group shot flocks of mallard ducks, also reared in pens and shot like so many live skeet. There's been no report on the number of mallards the hunting party killed, but it's likely that hundreds fell.
Rolling Rock is an exclusive private club for the wealthy with a world-class golf course and a closed membership list. It is also a "canned hunting" operation - a place where fee-paying hunters blast away at released animals, whether birds or mammals, who often have no reasonable chance to escape. Most are "no kill, no pay" operations where patrons only shells out funds for the animals they kill.
Bird-shooting operations offer pheasants, quail, partridges, and mallard ducks, often dizzying the birds and planting them in front of hunters or tossing them from towers toward waiting shotguns. There are, perhaps, more than 3,000 such operations in the United States, according to outdoor writer Ted Williams.
For canned hunts involving mammals, hunters can shoot animals native to given continents - everything from Addax to Zebra - within the confines of a fenced area, assuring the animals have no opportunity to escape. Time magazine estimates that 2,000 facilities offer native or exotic mammals for shooting within fenced enclosures.
The HSUS worked hard to expose Cheney's shooting spree, and we were fortunate in persuading The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, and other media outlets to cover the events of that day and our subsequent criticism.
Our criticism is simple to understand: Farm-raised pheasants are about as wary as urban pigeons and shooting them is nothing more than live target practice, especially when they are released from a hill in front of 10 gunners hidden below in blinds - as Cheney and his party were. Such hunting makes a mockery of basic principles of fair play and humane treatment, and the vice president should not associate himself with such conduct.
The private excesses of Cheney are bad enough, and worthy of The HSUS's rebuke. But it's the public policy excesses that are of even greater concern to me. Cheney's hunting trip strikes me as emblematic of the Bush Administration's callousness towards the earth's animals.
The administration's most outrageous proposal is its plan to allow trophy hunters to shoot endangered species in other countries and import the trophies and hides into the United States. The administration first floated the proposal a few months ago, with formal proposals subsequently published in the Federal Register, and President Bush is expected to make a final decision soon on the plan, which originated with his U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
For 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has provided critical protections for species near extinction in the United States. The act also protects species in foreign nations, by barring pet traders, circuses, trophy hunters, and others from importing live or dead endangered species. While we can't prevent the shooting or capture of endangered species overseas, we can prevent imports - thus eliminating the incentive for American hunters and others to shoot or trap the animals in the first place.
But with this plan the administration is seeking to punch gaping holes in the prohibitions, under the assumption that generating revenue through the sale of hunting licenses will aid on-the-ground conservation in foreign lands.
The plan is transparent on its face. It's not aimed to help species, but to aid special interests who want to profit from the exploitation of wildlife. No group is more centrally involved in this miserable plan than Safari Club International, the world's leading trophy hunting organization and an entity with close ties to the Bush Administration.
The 40,000 member organization of rich trophy collectors has doled out close to $600,000 in campaign contributions among GOP candidates in the past six years. President Bush appointed a former top lobbyist of the Safari Club to be the deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - again, the very agency promoting the plan to allow the selling off of endangered species to private interests.
The HSUS is not a pro-hunting organization. That said, we view certain types of hunting as worse than others. It crosses any reasonable line to support the shooting of some of the rarest and most endangered animals in the world. And it is beyond the pale to advocate for or participate in the shooting of animals in canned hunts - for birds or mammals.
President Bush met with leaders of 19 hunting organizations on December 12. While we expect him to endorse certain forms of hunting, he should in no way countenance the shooting of endangered species or the hunting of captive or pen-reared animals. If that's where these hunting groups want to lead him, he needs to resist their entreaties. He needs to stand up to these special interest groups and draw a bright line between certain types of hunting conduct.
Americans don't support this nonsense, and the president shouldn't either.
Cheney and his peers hunt like the old-time European aristocracy: game-keepers, raised-in-a-cage birds, hanging with fellow movers and shakers. And killing as much as is possible. This is sort of all-American, isn’t it? All Amerikan is more like it. Canned and limitless hunting. These are the people who consider themselves “sportsmen” and endorse all the right outdoor causes, from Ducks Unlimited to Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to the NRA, with nice donations. And, in the case of politicians, they get back endorsements from those organizations.
But it’s just the ruling class out for blood. Maybe in their dreams they hunt humans who can’t shoot back.
Cheney's Canned Kill, and Other Hunting Excesses of the Bush Administration
By Wayne Pacelle
The Humane Society of the United States
Tuesday 21 February 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney went pheasant shooting in Pennsylvania in December 2003, but unlike most of his fellow hunters across America, he didn't have to spend hours or even days tramping the fields and hedgerows in hopes of bagging a brace of birds for the dinner table.
Upon his arrival at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, gamekeepers released 500 pen-raised pheasants from nets for the benefit of him and his party. In a blaze of gunfire, the group - which included legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), along with major fundraisers for Republican candidates - killed at least 417 of the birds. According to one gamekeeper who spoke to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cheney was credited with shooting more than 70 of the pen-reared fowl.
After lunch, the group shot flocks of mallard ducks, also reared in pens and shot like so many live skeet. There's been no report on the number of mallards the hunting party killed, but it's likely that hundreds fell.
Rolling Rock is an exclusive private club for the wealthy with a world-class golf course and a closed membership list. It is also a "canned hunting" operation - a place where fee-paying hunters blast away at released animals, whether birds or mammals, who often have no reasonable chance to escape. Most are "no kill, no pay" operations where patrons only shells out funds for the animals they kill.
Bird-shooting operations offer pheasants, quail, partridges, and mallard ducks, often dizzying the birds and planting them in front of hunters or tossing them from towers toward waiting shotguns. There are, perhaps, more than 3,000 such operations in the United States, according to outdoor writer Ted Williams.
For canned hunts involving mammals, hunters can shoot animals native to given continents - everything from Addax to Zebra - within the confines of a fenced area, assuring the animals have no opportunity to escape. Time magazine estimates that 2,000 facilities offer native or exotic mammals for shooting within fenced enclosures.
The HSUS worked hard to expose Cheney's shooting spree, and we were fortunate in persuading The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, and other media outlets to cover the events of that day and our subsequent criticism.
Our criticism is simple to understand: Farm-raised pheasants are about as wary as urban pigeons and shooting them is nothing more than live target practice, especially when they are released from a hill in front of 10 gunners hidden below in blinds - as Cheney and his party were. Such hunting makes a mockery of basic principles of fair play and humane treatment, and the vice president should not associate himself with such conduct.
The private excesses of Cheney are bad enough, and worthy of The HSUS's rebuke. But it's the public policy excesses that are of even greater concern to me. Cheney's hunting trip strikes me as emblematic of the Bush Administration's callousness towards the earth's animals.
The administration's most outrageous proposal is its plan to allow trophy hunters to shoot endangered species in other countries and import the trophies and hides into the United States. The administration first floated the proposal a few months ago, with formal proposals subsequently published in the Federal Register, and President Bush is expected to make a final decision soon on the plan, which originated with his U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
For 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has provided critical protections for species near extinction in the United States. The act also protects species in foreign nations, by barring pet traders, circuses, trophy hunters, and others from importing live or dead endangered species. While we can't prevent the shooting or capture of endangered species overseas, we can prevent imports - thus eliminating the incentive for American hunters and others to shoot or trap the animals in the first place.
But with this plan the administration is seeking to punch gaping holes in the prohibitions, under the assumption that generating revenue through the sale of hunting licenses will aid on-the-ground conservation in foreign lands.
The plan is transparent on its face. It's not aimed to help species, but to aid special interests who want to profit from the exploitation of wildlife. No group is more centrally involved in this miserable plan than Safari Club International, the world's leading trophy hunting organization and an entity with close ties to the Bush Administration.
The 40,000 member organization of rich trophy collectors has doled out close to $600,000 in campaign contributions among GOP candidates in the past six years. President Bush appointed a former top lobbyist of the Safari Club to be the deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - again, the very agency promoting the plan to allow the selling off of endangered species to private interests.
The HSUS is not a pro-hunting organization. That said, we view certain types of hunting as worse than others. It crosses any reasonable line to support the shooting of some of the rarest and most endangered animals in the world. And it is beyond the pale to advocate for or participate in the shooting of animals in canned hunts - for birds or mammals.
President Bush met with leaders of 19 hunting organizations on December 12. While we expect him to endorse certain forms of hunting, he should in no way countenance the shooting of endangered species or the hunting of captive or pen-reared animals. If that's where these hunting groups want to lead him, he needs to resist their entreaties. He needs to stand up to these special interest groups and draw a bright line between certain types of hunting conduct.
Americans don't support this nonsense, and the president shouldn't either.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Work Makes Free
This reminds me of a German saying that goes “Work Makes Free.” Anyone remember where it was posted?
consortiumnews.com
Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'
www.consortiumnews.com/print/2006/022106a.html
By Nat Parry
February 21, 2006
Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.
“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.
“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.
“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”
In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.
But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.
Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]
Detention Centers
Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]
Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]
Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.
“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.
Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.
Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.
Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.
Farrell pointed out that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
Labor Camps
There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”
The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a “rapid action revision” on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.
On its face, the Army’s labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to “establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him” and “make available … the services of United States prisoners” to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.
Though the timing of the document’s posting – within the past few weeks – may just be a coincidence, the reference to a “rapid action revision” and the KBR contract’s contemplation of “rapid development of new programs” have raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.
These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in “counter-terrorism” operations inside the United States.
Pentagon Surveillance
Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.
The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]
The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.
The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don’t seem to think that new laws are even necessary.
In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information.”
Drawing a distinction between “collecting” information and “receiving” information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime.” [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2005]
This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.
There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.
Tice added that the “special access” surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]
With this expanded surveillance, the government’s list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”
Homeland Defense
As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program.”
Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees “have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place.”
The combination of the Bush administration’s expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.
A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland.”
The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”
But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.
In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 “suspicious incidents” over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a “threat.”
The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.
A secret Pentagon “Information Operations Roadmap,” approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “full spectrum” information operations and notes that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”
“PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”
It calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.
Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between “collecting” and “receiving” intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally “targeted,” any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.
The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”
In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration’s perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.
“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place,” Rumsfeld said.
The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched “heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.
Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as “some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater’s presence in New Orleans “raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.”
U.S. Battlefield
In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.
“The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President,” wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. “He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general.”
For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what’s in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.
Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.
But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration’s arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.
This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.
“In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield,” Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]
Given Bush’s now open assertions that he is using his “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.
As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, “Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?”
In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.
By Nat Parry
February 21, 2006
Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.
“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.
“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.
“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”
In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.
But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.
Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]
Detention Centers
Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]
Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]
Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.
“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.
Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.
Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.
Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.
Farrell pointed out that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
Labor Camps
There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”
The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a “rapid action revision” on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.
On its face, the Army’s labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to “establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him” and “make available … the services of United States prisoners” to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.
Though the timing of the document’s posting – within the past few weeks – may just be a coincidence, the reference to a “rapid action revision” and the KBR contract’s contemplation of “rapid development of new programs” have raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.
These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in “counter-terrorism” operations inside the United States.
Pentagon Surveillance
Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.
The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]
The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.
The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don’t seem to think that new laws are even necessary.
In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information.”
Drawing a distinction between “collecting” information and “receiving” information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime.” [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2005]
This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.
There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.
Tice added that the “special access” surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]
With this expanded surveillance, the government’s list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”
Homeland Defense
As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program.”
Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees “have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place.”
The combination of the Bush administration’s expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.
A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland.”
The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”
But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.
In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 “suspicious incidents” over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a “threat.”
The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.
A secret Pentagon “Information Operations Roadmap,” approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “full spectrum” information operations and notes that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”
“PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”
It calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.
Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between “collecting” and “receiving” intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally “targeted,” any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.
The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”
In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration’s perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.
“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place,” Rumsfeld said.
The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched “heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.
Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as “some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater’s presence in New Orleans “raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.”
U.S. Battlefield
In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.
“The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President,” wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. “He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general.”
For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what’s in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.
Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.
But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration’s arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.
This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.
“In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield,” Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]
Given Bush’s now open assertions that he is using his “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.
As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, “Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?”
In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.
consortiumnews.com
Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'
www.consortiumnews.com/print/2006/022106a.html
By Nat Parry
February 21, 2006
Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.
“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.
“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.
“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”
In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.
But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.
Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]
Detention Centers
Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]
Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]
Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.
“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.
Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.
Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.
Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.
Farrell pointed out that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
Labor Camps
There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”
The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a “rapid action revision” on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.
On its face, the Army’s labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to “establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him” and “make available … the services of United States prisoners” to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.
Though the timing of the document’s posting – within the past few weeks – may just be a coincidence, the reference to a “rapid action revision” and the KBR contract’s contemplation of “rapid development of new programs” have raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.
These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in “counter-terrorism” operations inside the United States.
Pentagon Surveillance
Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.
The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]
The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.
The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don’t seem to think that new laws are even necessary.
In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information.”
Drawing a distinction between “collecting” information and “receiving” information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime.” [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2005]
This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.
There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.
Tice added that the “special access” surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]
With this expanded surveillance, the government’s list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”
Homeland Defense
As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program.”
Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees “have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place.”
The combination of the Bush administration’s expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.
A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland.”
The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”
But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.
In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 “suspicious incidents” over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a “threat.”
The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.
A secret Pentagon “Information Operations Roadmap,” approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “full spectrum” information operations and notes that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”
“PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”
It calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.
Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between “collecting” and “receiving” intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally “targeted,” any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.
The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”
In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration’s perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.
“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place,” Rumsfeld said.
The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched “heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.
Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as “some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater’s presence in New Orleans “raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.”
U.S. Battlefield
In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.
“The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President,” wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. “He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general.”
For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what’s in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.
Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.
But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration’s arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.
This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.
“In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield,” Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]
Given Bush’s now open assertions that he is using his “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.
As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, “Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?”
In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.
By Nat Parry
February 21, 2006
Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.
“The administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue Fifth Column movements,” Graham, R-S.C., told Gonzales during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6.
“I stand by this President’s ability, inherent to being Commander in Chief, to find out about Fifth Column movements, and I don’t think you need a warrant to do that,” Graham added, volunteering to work with the administration to draft guidelines for how best to neutralize this alleged threat.
“Senator,” a smiling Gonzales responded, “the President already said we’d be happy to listen to your ideas.”
In less paranoid times, Graham’s comments might be viewed by many Americans as a Republican trying to have it both ways – ingratiating himself to an administration of his own party while seeking some credit from Washington centrists for suggesting Congress should have at least a tiny say in how Bush runs the War on Terror.
But recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.
Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com “Upside-Down Media” or below.]
Detention Centers
Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” KBR said. [Market Watch, Jan. 26, 2006]
Later, the New York Times reported that “KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space.” [Feb. 4, 2006]
Like most news stories on the KBR contract, the Times focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for bilking U.S. taxpayers by overcharging for sub-par services.
“It’s hard to believe that the administration has decided to entrust Halliburton with even more taxpayer dollars,” remarked Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California.
Less attention centered on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people. Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.
Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.
Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees,” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.
Farrell pointed out that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
Labor Camps
There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army Web site, about the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program “provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations.”
The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a “rapid action revision” on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.
On its face, the Army’s labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the Attorney General to “establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him” and “make available … the services of United States prisoners” to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.
Though the timing of the document’s posting – within the past few weeks – may just be a coincidence, the reference to a “rapid action revision” and the KBR contract’s contemplation of “rapid development of new programs” have raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.
These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in “counter-terrorism” operations inside the United States.
Pentagon Surveillance
Despite the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions against U.S. military personnel engaging in domestic law enforcement, the Pentagon has expanded its operations beyond previous boundaries, such as its role in domestic surveillance activities.
The Washington Post has reported that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the Defense Department has been creating new agencies that gather and analyze intelligence within the United States. [Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2005]
The White House also is moving to expand the power of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), created three years ago to consolidate counterintelligence operations. The White House proposal would transform CIFA into an office that has authority to investigate crimes such as treason, terrorist sabotage or economic espionage.
The Pentagon also has pushed legislation in Congress that would create an intelligence exception to the Privacy Act, allowing the FBI and others to share information about U.S. citizens with the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies. But some in the Pentagon don’t seem to think that new laws are even necessary.
In a 2001 Defense Department memo that surfaced in January 2006, the U.S. Army’s top intelligence officer wrote, “Contrary to popular belief, there is no absolute ban on [military] intelligence components collecting U.S. person information.”
Drawing a distinction between “collecting” information and “receiving” information on U.S. citizens, the memo argued that “MI [military intelligence] may receive information from anyone, anytime.” [See CQ.com, Jan. 31, 2005]
This receipt of information presumably would include data from the National Security Agency, which has been engaging in surveillance of U.S. citizens without court-approved warrants in apparent violation of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act. Bush approved the program of warrantless wiretaps shortly after 9/11.
There also may be an even more extensive surveillance program. Former NSA employee Russell D. Tice told a congressional committee on Feb. 14 that such a top-secret surveillance program existed, but he said he couldn’t discuss the details without breaking classification laws.
Tice added that the “special access” surveillance program may be violating the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. [UPI, Feb. 14, 2006]
With this expanded surveillance, the government’s list of terrorist suspects is rapidly swelling.
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 15 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s central repository now holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a four-fold increase since the fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”
Homeland Defense
As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress also have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.
During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the wiretap program, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, complained that the House and Senate Intelligence Committees “have not been briefed on the scope and nature of the program.”
Feinstein added that, therefore, the committees “have not been able to explore what is a link or an affiliate to al-Qaeda or what minimization procedures (for purging the names of innocent people) are in place.”
The combination of the Bush administration’s expansive reading of its own power and its insistence on extraordinary secrecy has raised the alarm of civil libertarians when contemplating how far the Pentagon might go in involving itself in domestic matters.
A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the … U.S. homeland.”
The Pentagon strategy paper calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”
But there are concerns over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.
In December 2005, NBC News revealed the existence of a secret 400-page Pentagon document listing 1,500 “suspicious incidents” over a 10-month period, including dozens of small antiwar demonstrations that were classified as a “threat.”
The Defense Department also might be moving toward legitimizing the use of propaganda domestically, as part of its overall war strategy.
A secret Pentagon “Information Operations Roadmap,” approved by Rumsfeld in October 2003, calls for “full spectrum” information operations and notes that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP, increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa.”
“PSYOPS messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public,” the document states. The Pentagon argues, however, that “the distinction between foreign and domestic audiences becomes more a question of USG [U.S. government] intent rather than information dissemination practices.”
It calls for “boundaries” between information operations abroad and the news media at home, but does not outline any corresponding limits on PSYOP campaigns.
Similar to the distinction the Pentagon draws between “collecting” and “receiving” intelligence on U.S. citizens, the Information Operations Roadmap argues that as long as the American public is not intentionally “targeted,” any PSYOP propaganda consumed by the American public is acceptable.
The Pentagon plan also includes a strategy for taking over the Internet and controlling the flow of information, viewing the Web as a potential military adversary. The “roadmap” speaks of “fighting the net,” and implies that the Internet is the equivalent of “an enemy weapons system.”
In a speech on Feb. 17 to the Council on Foreign Relations, Rumsfeld elaborated on the administration’s perception that the battle over information would be a crucial front in the War on Terror, or as Rumsfeld calls it, the Long War.
“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place,” Rumsfeld said.
The Department of Homeland Security also has demonstrated a tendency to deploy military operatives to deal with domestic crises.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the department dispatched “heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, (and had them) openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” reported journalists Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo on Sept. 10, 2005.
Noting the reputation of the Blackwater mercenaries as “some of the most feared professional killers in the world,” Scahill and Crespo said Blackwater’s presence in New Orleans “raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here.”
U.S. Battlefield
In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the United States and has been in place since shortly after the 9/11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order No. 1 which empowered him to detain any non-citizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant.
“The President decided that he was no longer running the country as a civilian President,” wrote civil rights attorney Michael Ratner in the book Guantanamo: What the World Should Know. “He issued a military order giving himself the power to run the country as a general.”
For any American citizen suspected of collaborating with terrorists, Bush also revealed what’s in store. In May 2002, the FBI arrested U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in Chicago on suspicion that he might be an al-Qaeda operative planning an attack.
Rather than bring criminal charges, Bush designated Padilla an “enemy combatant” and had him imprisoned indefinitely without benefit of due process. After three years, the administration finally brought charges against Padilla, in order to avoid a Supreme Court showdown the White House might have lost.
But since the Court was not able to rule on the Padilla case, the administration’s arguments have not been formally repudiated. Indeed, despite filing charges against Padilla, the White House still asserts the right to detain U.S. citizens without charges as enemy combatants.
This claimed authority is based on the assertion that the United States is at war and the American homeland is part of the battlefield.
“In the war against terrorists of global reach, as the Nation learned all too well on Sept. 11, 2001, the territory of the United States is part of the battlefield,” Bush's lawyers argued in briefs to the federal courts. [Washington Post, July 19, 2005]
Given Bush’s now open assertions that he is using his “plenary” – or unlimited – powers as Commander in Chief for the duration of the indefinite War on Terror, Americans can no longer trust that their constitutional rights protect them from government actions.
As former Vice President Al Gore asked after recounting a litany of sweeping powers that Bush has asserted to fight the War on Terror, “Can it be true that any President really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?”
In such extraordinary circumstances, the American people might legitimately ask exactly what the Bush administration means by the “rapid development of new programs,” which might require the construction of a new network of detention camps.
Want To Visit With Bush? That'll Be $1.2 Million, Please
I remember the old days, when the Republicans were outraged that Clinton was “selling the Lincoln Bedroom!” and how upset they were that Gore had been phoning potential donors from the White House. Those Democrats were so dishonorable it was amazing God hadn't struck them dead. And so on.
Now we know that selling access and favors goes with the territory, at least these days. The Abramoff scandals are gross, certainly as gross as semen stains on a dress...but the stains just stayed the same size; the Abramoff blot just gets bigger and bigger. Now, one of our loyal royal allies—or loyal tyrannical allies, as the case may be, reveals he and his pals coughed up $1.2 million to have a visit with our president.
The best thing about crooks is they just won’t stay bought.
Feb. 20, 2006, 11:05PM
Ex-Malasian Leader Says He Paid Abramoff
© 2006 The Associated Press
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Monday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize his 2002 meeting with President Bush, but denied the money came from the Malaysian government.
Mahathir told reporters he was aware a payment was made to Abramoff, but he didn't know who made it. He said he had been persuaded by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation to meet with Bush at the time.
"It is true that somebody paid but it was not the (Malaysian) government," Mahathir said. "I understood some people paid a sum of money to lobbyists in America but I do not know who these people were and it was not the Malaysian government."
Mahathir said the Heritage Foundation believed he could help "influence (Bush) in some way regarding U.S. policies."
Mahathir visited the White House at a time when this Southeast Asian country had emerged as a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, following Mahathir's crackdown on suspected Islamic militants although he had been consistently critical of Bush's foreign policies.
Abramoff, once among Washington's top lobbyists, pleaded guilty last month to charges that he and a former partner concocted a fake wire transfer to make it appear they were putting a sizable stake of their own money into a 2000 purchase of casinos.
Abramoff also has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from an investigation into his ties to members of Congress and to the Bush administration.
This article is: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3673369.html
Now we know that selling access and favors goes with the territory, at least these days. The Abramoff scandals are gross, certainly as gross as semen stains on a dress...but the stains just stayed the same size; the Abramoff blot just gets bigger and bigger. Now, one of our loyal royal allies—or loyal tyrannical allies, as the case may be, reveals he and his pals coughed up $1.2 million to have a visit with our president.
The best thing about crooks is they just won’t stay bought.
Feb. 20, 2006, 11:05PM
Ex-Malasian Leader Says He Paid Abramoff
© 2006 The Associated Press
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Monday that disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was paid $1.2 million to organize his 2002 meeting with President Bush, but denied the money came from the Malaysian government.
Mahathir told reporters he was aware a payment was made to Abramoff, but he didn't know who made it. He said he had been persuaded by the U.S. think tank Heritage Foundation to meet with Bush at the time.
"It is true that somebody paid but it was not the (Malaysian) government," Mahathir said. "I understood some people paid a sum of money to lobbyists in America but I do not know who these people were and it was not the Malaysian government."
Mahathir said the Heritage Foundation believed he could help "influence (Bush) in some way regarding U.S. policies."
Mahathir visited the White House at a time when this Southeast Asian country had emerged as a key U.S. ally in the war on terror, following Mahathir's crackdown on suspected Islamic militants although he had been consistently critical of Bush's foreign policies.
Abramoff, once among Washington's top lobbyists, pleaded guilty last month to charges that he and a former partner concocted a fake wire transfer to make it appear they were putting a sizable stake of their own money into a 2000 purchase of casinos.
Abramoff also has pleaded guilty to charges stemming from an investigation into his ties to members of Congress and to the Bush administration.
This article is: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/3673369.html
Monday, February 20, 2006
Federal cops hassle peace activist. Again.
Good cynics don’t have a lot invested in coincidences. Especially not when it comes to federal law enforcement techniques. We saw what happened with Cindy Sheehan at the State of the Union address, the VA nurse who was investigated for “sedition,” and other people who have expressed constitutionally-protected speech that didn’t follow The Party Line. Here’s another example:
Printed from the Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper website: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=158729
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 15, 2006:
Red State, Meet Police State
A federal employee gets hassled by Homeland Security for antiwar stickers on his car. Is it a mistake, a new rule, or the part of a trend of the First Amendment being bullied out of existence? Read the transcript, read the rules and decide for yourself
By Nicholas Collias
[image-1]Dwight Scarbrough's idea of political dissent is one that rubs some people the wrong way. He likes to blame his compulsion for peaceful troublemaking on his birthday: October 2, the same as Ghandi. However, a few of Scarbrough's techniques are all his own--especially when it comes to his truck.
For instance, when the Iraq War was looking imminent, not long after September 11, Dwight attached a garbage bag to the back of his truck bed. He splattered the bag and the truck with ketchup and added a sign reading, "This veteran knows that our children are worth more than a $6.95 body bag." When he drove down the freeway, the bag would inflate and appear occupied.
"That one was a little in-your-face and on-the-edge," Scarbrough recalls. "It got a lot of response."
Scarbrough wasn't always so anti-military. During the waning years of the Cold War, he even served five years on a nuclear submarine for the U.S. Navy. But now, instead of trying to stop the spread of "red" states like China and the USSR, Dwight lives in a red state--Idaho. He's the founder and head of Boise's local branch of Veterans for Peace, he leads seminars exposing military recruitment practices in schools, and he--and his truck--are fixtures at nearly every Democratic, antiwar or pro-peace event in town.
While no longer smeared with ketchup, his ride is still hard to ignore. On the back, he tapes weekly updates of the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq. Beneath that, on a large, white (and also taped-on) placard: "Support our returning troops and their families when they need help: Give them this number: GI RIGHTS HOTLINE: 1-800-394-9544." On both doors, in bold capital letters: "DEATH IN IRAQ IS NOT A CAREER OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUNG AMERICANS." Taking up nearly half of the back window: "Veterans for Peace Chapter 117, Idaho." On the driver's side wheel well, also in all caps: "PERHAPS GOD BLESSES EVERY NATION, NOT JUST THE USA." And interspersed between them all, he places a variety of purchased bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons reading, among other sentiments, "Support our Troops: Bring them Home Now," "Support Diversity" and "Honor Vets, Wage Peace."
Scarbrough gets his share of negative attention--including plenty of people "flying the bald eagle," as he likes to call it--but he savors such attention. He likes to call his truck a "sociological experiment on wheels," and whether you like the message of that experiment or not, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Scarbrough is the type of extreme voice that the First Amendment--that one about free speech--is intended to protect.
Or at least it seemed that way until last Tuesday.
On February 7, Scarbrough went to his job like any other day. He is a scientist with a federal agency in Boise--one that is part of the executive branch, ironically--and he parked in his usual spot, just outside of the federal Natural Resource Center on Vinnell Way in Boise, kitty corner to a Wal-Mart, a Lowe's Home Improvement Center and a 21-screen Edwards cineplex. Made up of two large, square brick buildings, the complex houses a variety of federal offices including the Social Security Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, among others. But despite the fact that most of the employees in the complex can, at least officially, consider George W. Bush their boss, Scarbrough has taken remarkably little grief for his strident anti-Bush views and props. Even those who don't agree with his message usually tolerate it.
Once, last year, some conservative-minded ladies objected about the "BUSHIT" sticker in Scarbrough's passenger-side window. Scarbrough and his supervisor reviewed all the federal rules concerning bumper stickers on employee vehicles, and discovered that nothing he had displayed could be considered illegal. But for once, Scarbrough simply removed the sticker. Indeed, his current lineup is quite sparse by his standards, he says.
But on this day, apparently it was still too much.
Around 2:15 p.m., Scarbrough says, he answered his office phone and found himself talking to a man who identified himself as Officer R. of the Department of Homeland Security. (I'm withholding the officer's name; you know, what with Plamegate and all.) Scarbrough was told that he was in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations, the set of rules that govern all executive departments and agencies, and that he was in danger of being cited unless he came out to the parking lot or let the officer come up to his office. Scarbrough chose the first option, and took along a co-worker--also a veteran--and, being an experienced peace activist, a tape recorder. Downstairs, they found two armed officers with "Homeland Security" insignia patches on their shoulders, waiting for them in large white SUVs. Scarbrough informed the officers that he would record their conversation, and what follows is the transcript of that recording.
Officer: Step back here please.
Dwight Scarbrough: Let's have a seat.
O: I'd like to talk to you.
DS: Let's have a seat.
O: Sir, come over here please.
DS: I don't want to come over there. I want to sit down.
O: Let me tell you what's going on here. OK, there's a violation of the code of federal regulations.
DS: For what?
O: The CFR. 41, CFR, 102, 74, 415. Posting or affixing signs, pamphlets, handbills or flyers on federal property. Do you understand that?
DS: I'm not doing anything on federal property.
O: Yes, sir, you've got signs posted on your vehicle. I'm informing you that you're in violation.
DS: That's not illegal. That's not illegal.
O: You're posting ...
DS: I ... All right.
O: Would you like to listen to me before ... sir...
DS: [To his co-worker] Would you go get [their supervisor]?
O: I need you to listen when I'm talking, sir.
DS: [To co-worker]. Would you go get [him] please? [To officer] I'm listening.
O: Okay.
DS: You're at my place of work, first of all. And you're harassing me.
O: Sir, you're in violation of the code of federal regulations.
DS: I'm not in violation.
O: You're posting signs on this property.
DS: I am not posting signs. That's on a private vehicle.
O: Sir, I'm here to tell you now that you have to remove those signs.
DS: Was the law just changed?
O: No, there was no law just changed.
DS: Then it's not a violation.
O: I just told you what the law is, sir.
DS: It is not a violation. I've read the statutes already.
O: If you do not comply with my order to remove the signs from the property, I will cite you for it, OK? Do you understand that?
DS: You know what? This is harassment.
O: No, sir, it's not.
DS: Yes, it is.
O: No, it's not.
DS: Say it again, please. (Holds up microphone.) This is harassment.
O: Do you understand what I've told you?
DS: I understand what you've told me, but I've also read the statute that as a federal employee--
O: I've just given you an order and told you to remove those signs from the property.
DS: I will move my vehicle off the property.
O: That will be fine. That will comply with it, and we don't have to ...
DS: You know this is total B.S., though. Because--will you get [his supervisor], please?--I've already had this conversation once, and we've already looked up all the statues and laws covering personal vehicles with stick ... with anything on them on government property. And it is not illegal.
O: It's in 41 CFR. Look that up.
D: "Why don't you look it up?" I have.
O: 41 CF4 102--
D: What is the violation?
O: Posting of signs on--
D: Which one?
O: I just told you the violation.
D: Those are not signs.
O: Twice now I've told you.
D: Those are not signs.
O: Yes, sir, they are. What are they then?
D: So any vehicle that comes on with, like, a police sign, or with delivery or FedEx or something, that's not a sign?
O: All signs are prohibited--
D: You know you're harassing me. You know you're harassing me.
O: No, sir, I'm not.
D: You know the Department of Homeland Security is giving me harassment--
O: Sir--
D: --because I'm a person who happens to express my viewpoints on my vehicle.
O: I need you to comply with my order and remove the signs...
D: Who has filed a complaint?
O: ...you said you'd do that, that's fine ...
D: Who has filed a complaint? Who has filed a complaint?
O: No one has filed a complaint, sir.
D: Well, then what's the complaint?
O: It's law enforcement on federal property.
D: You know this is ... I would like my supervisor down here, please.
O: This doesn't concern him at all.
D: Yes, it does, because I've already had this discussion with him, and I've already been asked to change the signs, and I did. And I looked up all the statutes.
O: (Muffled)
D: Do you have a piece of paper with the number then, please?
O: I told you the number.
D: I would like to write it down, then.
O: I will give you a piece of paper ...
D: Just write it down. That's all I'm asking.
O: But I need you to comply with my instructions to remove the--
D: You're harassing me, in other words.
O: Sir, this is not harassment.
D: It's crap, and you know it.
O: No, sir, it is not.
D: It is. Okay, go ahead.
O: 41, C-F-R...
D: 41, C-F-R...
O: 102 ...
D: 102 ...
O: 74 ...
D: 74 ...
O: Subpart C ...
D: Subpart C ...
O: Paragraph 415.
D: Paragraph 415.
O: And they are posted at the entrances to federal facilities, as they are here, and it is referenced.
D: And this defines exactly what "signs" are, right?
O: It says "signs," sir.
D: Yeah. You're harassing me. I'll be back in a minute. I don't have my keys with me.
O: Sir--
D: I don't have my car keys with me.
O: Okay.
D: I had no clue what you were here to bother me about ... (walks toward door)... this is your buddy, your boss and my boss harassing people for expressing political viewpoints. And you know it. There's nothing illegal about it. (Door beeps).
Scarbrough moved his car to the parking lot in front of a nearby Goodwill store, a private property where it could legally be towed if the managers objected to his decorations. It wasn't towed, but according to his co-worker, Scarbrough was still "very distraught"--both by the accusations and by the way the officers maneuvered themselves between Scarbrough and his coworker, isolating them in a classic police crowd-control technique.
"I wasn't arrested, but I could have been," Scarbrough recalls. "I was still violated and harassed." He took the rest of the week off after the incident. But he didn't just sit and mope. He looked up the rule that the Homeland Security officers referenced, and found that it read:
"All persons entering in or on Federal property are prohibited from: ...
(b) Posting or affixing materials, such as pamphlets, handbills, or flyers, on bulletin boards or elsewhere on GSA-controlled property..."
However, after his experience with the "Bushit" sticker last year, he was also quick to reference the Hatch Act, the rules that lay out exactly what political activities federal employees are allowed to participate in. According to the Hatch Act, political bumper stickers are allowed on cars parked on federal property, with no stated limitation on either size or number of stickers. So by the current rules, Scarbrough's car would seem to be legit--unless the "elsewhere" of the pamphlet rule is meant to extend to personal property as well as government property.
If that's the case, both Scarbrough and his coworker said, "That's news to me." It would also be news to the dozens of people parked in the Natural Resource Complex with bumper stickers reading, among other sentiments, "My Dad is a Marine," "Create Peace," "POW/ MIA," and others of both the pro-choice and pro-life variety.
But after going through the incident, both Scarbrough and his coworker are insistent: it's not the location or size that mattered in this case. It's the message. They are quick to relate the event to Cindy Sheehan being arrested at President Bush's State of the Union address just a week earlier, where she was wearing a T-shirt reading: "2245 Dead. How many more?" Sheehan's charges were dropped, and Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer apologized to her in a statement, saying "The policies and procedures were too vague."
Scarbrough's co-worker doesn't see any vagueness in the incidents. "It's starting to look like this is something like a directive from the Department of Homeland Security to suppress opposition to the war," he says. He calls the officers "image control," but Scarbrough's take is even more forceful:
"This is a fascist state. At least, it's the beginning of a fascist state."
If you're unfamiliar with the Boise office of the Federal Department of Homeland Security, you're not alone. There's not a listing for it in the most recent federal government listings in the local phonebook. The representative from Idaho State Bureau of Homeland Security, located at the Gowen Field Air National Guard Base behind the Boise Airport, hadn't even heard there was an office when I contacted him. Neither had the receptionist at the local U.S. Marshal's office, though she was able to track down a number for the local office of the Federal Protective Service, the section of DHS in charge of protecting federally owned and leased facilities, after putting me on hold for a few minutes (It's (208) 334-9374, in case you're curious. Your taxes fund it, after all.).
I was only able to confirm the location of the office after asking the security officer at the Natural Resource Complex, whose job (ostensibly, at least) it is to enforce the rules concerning pamphlets, dogs and other controlled substances on federal property. He would not comment about the incident, saying, "If this is about what I think it's about, I'm not allowed to say nothing." He referred me to "FPS, Federal Courthouse, Department of Homeland Security," to find someone who would be able to comment. When I asked who I should say referred me, he covered his nameplate with his hand.
The "office," once I found it, wasn't much of an office at all, from a service perspective. The door was locked and there was neither a receptionist nor a desk at the front window. When I rang the doorbell, a woman emerged from a nearby cubicle and spoke to me through a tennis-ball-sized hole in the window. She would not confirm the name or identity of the officers, nor their badge numbers (Scarbrough, of course, had written them all down). I slipped a business card through the hole, and by press time, no one had called me back.
However, when I tried the number provided by the U.S. Marshals, Terry Martin at the Federal Protection Service was able to confirm that the officers identified by Scarbrough did, in fact, work for Homeland Security. He then referred me to the Department of Homeland Security's media spokesman in Texas, who had not responded by press time to my request for information about the incident, or about any change in federal law concerning stickers on vehicles in federal parking lots.
In the meantime, Scarbrough has gone back to work and says he plans to continue parking in the same spot. But now he has an ally. After the incident, he contacted the local office of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU helped hook him up to a local lawyer who will represent Scarbrough, pro bono, if he is cited. Several other lawyers have already made similar offers, Scarbrough says. But that doesn't make him feel any better about the incident or the message it sends, not only to dissenters like him, but to all federal employees and anyone who thinks their opinions--or their stickers--are only of concern to themselves.
"Bottom line: My rights are very dear to me. I served my country to defend them," he says. "And one of the things I was defending was free speech. It's the First Amendment for a reason--not the last, not the middle. The first."
URL for this story: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=158729
Printed from the Boise Weekly - Not Your Everyday Newspaper website: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=158729
POSTED ON FEBRUARY 15, 2006:
Red State, Meet Police State
A federal employee gets hassled by Homeland Security for antiwar stickers on his car. Is it a mistake, a new rule, or the part of a trend of the First Amendment being bullied out of existence? Read the transcript, read the rules and decide for yourself
By Nicholas Collias
[image-1]Dwight Scarbrough's idea of political dissent is one that rubs some people the wrong way. He likes to blame his compulsion for peaceful troublemaking on his birthday: October 2, the same as Ghandi. However, a few of Scarbrough's techniques are all his own--especially when it comes to his truck.
For instance, when the Iraq War was looking imminent, not long after September 11, Dwight attached a garbage bag to the back of his truck bed. He splattered the bag and the truck with ketchup and added a sign reading, "This veteran knows that our children are worth more than a $6.95 body bag." When he drove down the freeway, the bag would inflate and appear occupied.
"That one was a little in-your-face and on-the-edge," Scarbrough recalls. "It got a lot of response."
Scarbrough wasn't always so anti-military. During the waning years of the Cold War, he even served five years on a nuclear submarine for the U.S. Navy. But now, instead of trying to stop the spread of "red" states like China and the USSR, Dwight lives in a red state--Idaho. He's the founder and head of Boise's local branch of Veterans for Peace, he leads seminars exposing military recruitment practices in schools, and he--and his truck--are fixtures at nearly every Democratic, antiwar or pro-peace event in town.
While no longer smeared with ketchup, his ride is still hard to ignore. On the back, he tapes weekly updates of the number of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in Iraq. Beneath that, on a large, white (and also taped-on) placard: "Support our returning troops and their families when they need help: Give them this number: GI RIGHTS HOTLINE: 1-800-394-9544." On both doors, in bold capital letters: "DEATH IN IRAQ IS NOT A CAREER OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUNG AMERICANS." Taking up nearly half of the back window: "Veterans for Peace Chapter 117, Idaho." On the driver's side wheel well, also in all caps: "PERHAPS GOD BLESSES EVERY NATION, NOT JUST THE USA." And interspersed between them all, he places a variety of purchased bumper stickers and magnetic ribbons reading, among other sentiments, "Support our Troops: Bring them Home Now," "Support Diversity" and "Honor Vets, Wage Peace."
Scarbrough gets his share of negative attention--including plenty of people "flying the bald eagle," as he likes to call it--but he savors such attention. He likes to call his truck a "sociological experiment on wheels," and whether you like the message of that experiment or not, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Scarbrough is the type of extreme voice that the First Amendment--that one about free speech--is intended to protect.
Or at least it seemed that way until last Tuesday.
On February 7, Scarbrough went to his job like any other day. He is a scientist with a federal agency in Boise--one that is part of the executive branch, ironically--and he parked in his usual spot, just outside of the federal Natural Resource Center on Vinnell Way in Boise, kitty corner to a Wal-Mart, a Lowe's Home Improvement Center and a 21-screen Edwards cineplex. Made up of two large, square brick buildings, the complex houses a variety of federal offices including the Social Security Administration, the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, among others. But despite the fact that most of the employees in the complex can, at least officially, consider George W. Bush their boss, Scarbrough has taken remarkably little grief for his strident anti-Bush views and props. Even those who don't agree with his message usually tolerate it.
Once, last year, some conservative-minded ladies objected about the "BUSHIT" sticker in Scarbrough's passenger-side window. Scarbrough and his supervisor reviewed all the federal rules concerning bumper stickers on employee vehicles, and discovered that nothing he had displayed could be considered illegal. But for once, Scarbrough simply removed the sticker. Indeed, his current lineup is quite sparse by his standards, he says.
But on this day, apparently it was still too much.
Around 2:15 p.m., Scarbrough says, he answered his office phone and found himself talking to a man who identified himself as Officer R. of the Department of Homeland Security. (I'm withholding the officer's name; you know, what with Plamegate and all.) Scarbrough was told that he was in violation of the Code of Federal Regulations, the set of rules that govern all executive departments and agencies, and that he was in danger of being cited unless he came out to the parking lot or let the officer come up to his office. Scarbrough chose the first option, and took along a co-worker--also a veteran--and, being an experienced peace activist, a tape recorder. Downstairs, they found two armed officers with "Homeland Security" insignia patches on their shoulders, waiting for them in large white SUVs. Scarbrough informed the officers that he would record their conversation, and what follows is the transcript of that recording.
Officer: Step back here please.
Dwight Scarbrough: Let's have a seat.
O: I'd like to talk to you.
DS: Let's have a seat.
O: Sir, come over here please.
DS: I don't want to come over there. I want to sit down.
O: Let me tell you what's going on here. OK, there's a violation of the code of federal regulations.
DS: For what?
O: The CFR. 41, CFR, 102, 74, 415. Posting or affixing signs, pamphlets, handbills or flyers on federal property. Do you understand that?
DS: I'm not doing anything on federal property.
O: Yes, sir, you've got signs posted on your vehicle. I'm informing you that you're in violation.
DS: That's not illegal. That's not illegal.
O: You're posting ...
DS: I ... All right.
O: Would you like to listen to me before ... sir...
DS: [To his co-worker] Would you go get [their supervisor]?
O: I need you to listen when I'm talking, sir.
DS: [To co-worker]. Would you go get [him] please? [To officer] I'm listening.
O: Okay.
DS: You're at my place of work, first of all. And you're harassing me.
O: Sir, you're in violation of the code of federal regulations.
DS: I'm not in violation.
O: You're posting signs on this property.
DS: I am not posting signs. That's on a private vehicle.
O: Sir, I'm here to tell you now that you have to remove those signs.
DS: Was the law just changed?
O: No, there was no law just changed.
DS: Then it's not a violation.
O: I just told you what the law is, sir.
DS: It is not a violation. I've read the statutes already.
O: If you do not comply with my order to remove the signs from the property, I will cite you for it, OK? Do you understand that?
DS: You know what? This is harassment.
O: No, sir, it's not.
DS: Yes, it is.
O: No, it's not.
DS: Say it again, please. (Holds up microphone.) This is harassment.
O: Do you understand what I've told you?
DS: I understand what you've told me, but I've also read the statute that as a federal employee--
O: I've just given you an order and told you to remove those signs from the property.
DS: I will move my vehicle off the property.
O: That will be fine. That will comply with it, and we don't have to ...
DS: You know this is total B.S., though. Because--will you get [his supervisor], please?--I've already had this conversation once, and we've already looked up all the statues and laws covering personal vehicles with stick ... with anything on them on government property. And it is not illegal.
O: It's in 41 CFR. Look that up.
D: "Why don't you look it up?" I have.
O: 41 CF4 102--
D: What is the violation?
O: Posting of signs on--
D: Which one?
O: I just told you the violation.
D: Those are not signs.
O: Twice now I've told you.
D: Those are not signs.
O: Yes, sir, they are. What are they then?
D: So any vehicle that comes on with, like, a police sign, or with delivery or FedEx or something, that's not a sign?
O: All signs are prohibited--
D: You know you're harassing me. You know you're harassing me.
O: No, sir, I'm not.
D: You know the Department of Homeland Security is giving me harassment--
O: Sir--
D: --because I'm a person who happens to express my viewpoints on my vehicle.
O: I need you to comply with my order and remove the signs...
D: Who has filed a complaint?
O: ...you said you'd do that, that's fine ...
D: Who has filed a complaint? Who has filed a complaint?
O: No one has filed a complaint, sir.
D: Well, then what's the complaint?
O: It's law enforcement on federal property.
D: You know this is ... I would like my supervisor down here, please.
O: This doesn't concern him at all.
D: Yes, it does, because I've already had this discussion with him, and I've already been asked to change the signs, and I did. And I looked up all the statutes.
O: (Muffled)
D: Do you have a piece of paper with the number then, please?
O: I told you the number.
D: I would like to write it down, then.
O: I will give you a piece of paper ...
D: Just write it down. That's all I'm asking.
O: But I need you to comply with my instructions to remove the--
D: You're harassing me, in other words.
O: Sir, this is not harassment.
D: It's crap, and you know it.
O: No, sir, it is not.
D: It is. Okay, go ahead.
O: 41, C-F-R...
D: 41, C-F-R...
O: 102 ...
D: 102 ...
O: 74 ...
D: 74 ...
O: Subpart C ...
D: Subpart C ...
O: Paragraph 415.
D: Paragraph 415.
O: And they are posted at the entrances to federal facilities, as they are here, and it is referenced.
D: And this defines exactly what "signs" are, right?
O: It says "signs," sir.
D: Yeah. You're harassing me. I'll be back in a minute. I don't have my keys with me.
O: Sir--
D: I don't have my car keys with me.
O: Okay.
D: I had no clue what you were here to bother me about ... (walks toward door)... this is your buddy, your boss and my boss harassing people for expressing political viewpoints. And you know it. There's nothing illegal about it. (Door beeps).
Scarbrough moved his car to the parking lot in front of a nearby Goodwill store, a private property where it could legally be towed if the managers objected to his decorations. It wasn't towed, but according to his co-worker, Scarbrough was still "very distraught"--both by the accusations and by the way the officers maneuvered themselves between Scarbrough and his coworker, isolating them in a classic police crowd-control technique.
"I wasn't arrested, but I could have been," Scarbrough recalls. "I was still violated and harassed." He took the rest of the week off after the incident. But he didn't just sit and mope. He looked up the rule that the Homeland Security officers referenced, and found that it read:
"All persons entering in or on Federal property are prohibited from: ...
(b) Posting or affixing materials, such as pamphlets, handbills, or flyers, on bulletin boards or elsewhere on GSA-controlled property..."
However, after his experience with the "Bushit" sticker last year, he was also quick to reference the Hatch Act, the rules that lay out exactly what political activities federal employees are allowed to participate in. According to the Hatch Act, political bumper stickers are allowed on cars parked on federal property, with no stated limitation on either size or number of stickers. So by the current rules, Scarbrough's car would seem to be legit--unless the "elsewhere" of the pamphlet rule is meant to extend to personal property as well as government property.
If that's the case, both Scarbrough and his coworker said, "That's news to me." It would also be news to the dozens of people parked in the Natural Resource Complex with bumper stickers reading, among other sentiments, "My Dad is a Marine," "Create Peace," "POW/ MIA," and others of both the pro-choice and pro-life variety.
But after going through the incident, both Scarbrough and his coworker are insistent: it's not the location or size that mattered in this case. It's the message. They are quick to relate the event to Cindy Sheehan being arrested at President Bush's State of the Union address just a week earlier, where she was wearing a T-shirt reading: "2245 Dead. How many more?" Sheehan's charges were dropped, and Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer apologized to her in a statement, saying "The policies and procedures were too vague."
Scarbrough's co-worker doesn't see any vagueness in the incidents. "It's starting to look like this is something like a directive from the Department of Homeland Security to suppress opposition to the war," he says. He calls the officers "image control," but Scarbrough's take is even more forceful:
"This is a fascist state. At least, it's the beginning of a fascist state."
If you're unfamiliar with the Boise office of the Federal Department of Homeland Security, you're not alone. There's not a listing for it in the most recent federal government listings in the local phonebook. The representative from Idaho State Bureau of Homeland Security, located at the Gowen Field Air National Guard Base behind the Boise Airport, hadn't even heard there was an office when I contacted him. Neither had the receptionist at the local U.S. Marshal's office, though she was able to track down a number for the local office of the Federal Protective Service, the section of DHS in charge of protecting federally owned and leased facilities, after putting me on hold for a few minutes (It's (208) 334-9374, in case you're curious. Your taxes fund it, after all.).
I was only able to confirm the location of the office after asking the security officer at the Natural Resource Complex, whose job (ostensibly, at least) it is to enforce the rules concerning pamphlets, dogs and other controlled substances on federal property. He would not comment about the incident, saying, "If this is about what I think it's about, I'm not allowed to say nothing." He referred me to "FPS, Federal Courthouse, Department of Homeland Security," to find someone who would be able to comment. When I asked who I should say referred me, he covered his nameplate with his hand.
The "office," once I found it, wasn't much of an office at all, from a service perspective. The door was locked and there was neither a receptionist nor a desk at the front window. When I rang the doorbell, a woman emerged from a nearby cubicle and spoke to me through a tennis-ball-sized hole in the window. She would not confirm the name or identity of the officers, nor their badge numbers (Scarbrough, of course, had written them all down). I slipped a business card through the hole, and by press time, no one had called me back.
However, when I tried the number provided by the U.S. Marshals, Terry Martin at the Federal Protection Service was able to confirm that the officers identified by Scarbrough did, in fact, work for Homeland Security. He then referred me to the Department of Homeland Security's media spokesman in Texas, who had not responded by press time to my request for information about the incident, or about any change in federal law concerning stickers on vehicles in federal parking lots.
In the meantime, Scarbrough has gone back to work and says he plans to continue parking in the same spot. But now he has an ally. After the incident, he contacted the local office of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU helped hook him up to a local lawyer who will represent Scarbrough, pro bono, if he is cited. Several other lawyers have already made similar offers, Scarbrough says. But that doesn't make him feel any better about the incident or the message it sends, not only to dissenters like him, but to all federal employees and anyone who thinks their opinions--or their stickers--are only of concern to themselves.
"Bottom line: My rights are very dear to me. I served my country to defend them," he says. "And one of the things I was defending was free speech. It's the First Amendment for a reason--not the last, not the middle. The first."
URL for this story: http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=158729
Extent of US Poverty
Sometimes, outsiders see more than insiders. We've blinded ourselves to the extent of poverty in the U.S.. Thirty-seven-million....
37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty
Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening
Paul Harris in Kentucky
Sunday February 19, 2006
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329415755-119093,00.html
Observer
The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.
The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill.
It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help.
A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.
Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.
For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.
Oklahoma is in America's heartland. Tulsa looks like picture-book Middle America. Yet there is hunger here. When it comes to the most malnourished poor in America, Oklahoma is ahead of any other state. It should be impossible to go hungry here. But it is not. Just ask those gathered at a food handout last week. They are a cross section of society: black, white, young couples, pensioners and the middle-aged. A few are out of work or retired, everyone else has jobs.
They are people like Freda Lee, 33, who has two jobs, as a marketer and a cashier. She has come to the nondescript Loaves and Fishes building - flanked ironically by a Burger King and a McDonald's - to collect food for herself and three sons. 'America is meant to be free. What's free?' she laughs. 'All we can do is pay off the basics.'
Or they are people like Tammy Reinbold, 37. She works part-time and her husband works full-time. They have two children yet rely on the food handouts. 'The church is all we have to fall back on,' she says. She is right. When government help is being cut and wages are insufficient, churches often fill the gap. The needy gather to receive food boxes. They listen to a preacher for half an hour on the literal truth of the Bible. Then he asks them if they want to be born again. Three women put up their hands.
But why are some Tulsans hungry?
Many believe it is the changing face of the US economy. Tulsa has been devastated by job losses. Big-name firms like WorldCom, Williams Energy and CitGo have closed or moved, costing the city about 24,000 jobs. Now Wal-Mart embodies the new American job market: low wages, few benefits.
Well-paid work only goes to the university-educated. Many others who just complete high school face a bleak future. In Texas more than a third of students entering public high schools now drop out. These people are entering the fragile world of the working poor, where each day is a mere step away from tragedy. Some of those tragedies in Tulsa end up in the care of Steve Whitaker, a pastor who runs a homeless mission in the shadow of a freeway overpass.
Each day the homeless and the drug addicted gather here, looking for a bed for the night. Some also want a fresh chance. They are men like Mark Schloss whose disaster was being left by his first wife. The former Wal-Mart manager entered a world of drug addiction and alcoholism until he wound up with Whitaker. Now he is back on track, sporting a silver ring that says Faith, Hope, Love. 'Without this place I would be in prison or dead,' he says. But Whitaker equates saving lives with saving souls. Those entering the mission's rehabilitation programme are drilled in Bible studies and Christianity. At 6ft 5in and with a black belt in karate, Whitaker's Christianity is muscular both literally and figuratively. 'People need God in their lives,' he says.
These are mean streets. Tulsa is a city divided like the country. Inside a building run by Whitaker's staff in northern Tulsa a group of 'latch-key kids' are taking Bible classes after school while they wait for parents to pick them up. One of them is Taylor Finley, aged nine. Wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on the front, she dreams of travel. 'I want to have fun in a new place, a new country,' she says. Taylor wants to see the world outside Oklahoma. But at the moment she cannot even see her own neighbourhood. The centre in which she waits for mom was built without windows on its ground floor. It was the only way to keep out bullets from the gangs outside.
During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty directly was John Edwards, whose campaign theme was 'Two Americas'. He was derided by Republicans for doing down the country and - after John Kerry picked him as his Democratic running mate - the rhetoric softened in the heat of the campaign.
But, in fact, Edwards was right. While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent. Whitaker put the figures into simple English. 'The poor have got poorer and the rich have got richer,' he said.
Dealing with poverty is not a viable political issue in America. It jars with a cultural sense that the poor bring things upon themselves and that every American is born with the same chances in life. It also runs counter to the strong anti-government current in modern American politics. Yet the problem will not disappear. 'There is a real sense of impending crisis, but political leaders have little motivation to address this growing divide,' Cynthia Duncan says.
There is little doubt which side of America's divide the hills of east Kentucky fall on. Driving through the wooded Appalachian valleys is a lesson in poverty. The mountains have never been rich. Times now are as tough as they have ever been. Trailer homes are the norm. Every so often a lofty mansion looms into view, a sign of prosperity linked to the coal mines or the logging firms that are the only industries in the region. Everyone else lives on the margins, grabbing work where they can. The biggest cash crop is illicitly grown marijuana.
Save The Children works here. Though the charity is usually associated with earthquakes in Pakistan or famine in Africa, it runs an extensive programme in east Kentucky. It includes a novel scheme enlisting teams of 'foster grandparents' to tackle the shocking child illiteracy rates and thus eventually hit poverty itself.
The problem is acute. At Jone's Fork school, a team of indomitable grannies arrive each day to read with the children. The scheme has two benefits: it helps the children struggle out of poverty and pays the pensioners a small wage. 'This has been a lifesaver for me and I feel as if the children would just fall through the cracks without us,' says Erma Owens. It has offered dramatic help to some. One group of children are doing so well in the scheme that their teacher, Loretta Shepherd, has postponed retirement in order to stand by them. 'It renewed me to have these kids,' she said.
Certainly Renae Sturgill sees the changes in her children. She too lives in deep poverty. Though she attends college and her husband has a job, the Sturgill trailer sits amid a clutter of abandoned cars. Money is scarce. But now her kids are in the reading scheme and she has seen how they have changed. Especially eight-year-old Zach. He's hard to control at times, but he has come to love school. 'Zach likes reading now. I know it's going to be real important for him,' Renae says. Zach is shy and won't speak much about his achievements. But Genny Waddell, who co-ordinates family welfare at Jone's Fork, is immensely proud. 'Now Zach reads because he wants to. He really fought to get where he is,' she says.
In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves.
It is an impression backed up by many of those mired in poverty in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Few asked for handouts. Many asked for decent wages. 'It is unfair. I am working all the time and so what have I done wrong?' says Freda Lee. But the economy does not seem to be allowing people to make a decent living. It condemns the poor to stay put, fighting against seemingly impossible odds or to pull up sticks and try somewhere else.
In Tulsa, Tammy Reinbold and her family are moving to Texas as soon as they save the money for enough petrol. It could take several months. 'I've been in Tulsa 12 years and I just gotta try somewhere else,' she says.
Savethechildren.org
From Tom Joad to Roseanne
In a country that prides itself on a culture of rugged individualism, hard work and self-sufficiency, it is no surprise that poverty and the poor do not have a central place in America's cultural psyche.
But in art, films and books American poverty has sometimes been portrayed with searing honesty. John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was made into a John Ford movie, is the most famous example. It was an unflinching account of the travails of a poor Oklahoma family forced to flee the Dust Bowl during the 1930s Depression. Its portrait of Tom Joad and his family's life on the road as they sought work was a nod to wider issues of social justice in America.
Another ground-breaking work of that time was John Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a non-fiction book about time spent among poor white farmers in the Deep South. It practically disappeared upon its first publication in 1940 but in the Sixties was hailed as a masterpiece. In mainstream American culture, poverty often lurks in the background. Or it is portrayed - as in Sergio Leone's crime epic Once Upon A Time In America - as the basis for a tale of rags to riches.
One notable, yet often overlooked, exception was the great success of the sitcom Roseanne. The show depicted the realities of working-class Middle American life with a grit and humour that is a world away from the usual sitcom settings in a sunlit suburbia, most often in New York or California. The biggest sitcoms of the past decade - Friends, Frasier or Will and Grace - all deal with aspirational middle-class foibles that have little relevance to America's millions of working poor.
An America divided
· There are 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. That figure has increased by five million since President George W. Bush came to power.
· The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.
· Almost a quarter of all black Americans live below the poverty line; 22 per cent of Hispanics fall below it. But for whites the figure is just 8.6 per cent.
· There are 46 million Americans without health insurance.
· There are 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone.
· In 2004 the poorest community in America was Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Unemployment is over 80 per cent, 69 per cent of people live in poverty and male life expectancy is 57 years. In the Western hemisphere only Haiti has a lower number.
· The richest town in America is Rancho Santa Fe in California. Average incomes are more than $100,000 a year; the average house price is $1.7m.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty
Americans have always believed that hard work will bring rewards, but vast numbers now cannot meet their bills even with two or three jobs. More than one in 10 citizens live below the poverty line, and the gap between the haves and have-nots is widening
Paul Harris in Kentucky
Sunday February 19, 2006
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329415755-119093,00.html
Observer
The flickering television in Candy Lumpkins's trailer blared out The Bold and the Beautiful. It was a fantasy daytime soap vision of American life with little relevance to the reality of this impoverished corner of Kentucky.
The Lumpkins live at the definition of the back of beyond, in a hollow at the top of a valley at the end of a long and muddy dirt road. It is strewn with litter. Packs of stray dogs prowl around, barking at strangers. There is no telephone and since their pump broke two weeks ago Candy has collected water from nearby springs. Oblivious to it all, her five-year-old daughter Amy runs barefoot on a wooden porch frozen by a midwinter chill.
It is a vision of deep and abiding poverty. Yet the Lumpkins are not alone in their plight. They are just the negative side of the American equation. America does have vast, wealthy suburbs, huge shopping malls and a busy middle class, but it also has vast numbers of poor, struggling to make it in a low-wage economy with minimal government help.
A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins has work and his children go to school. But the economy, stripped of worker benefits like healthcare, is having trouble providing good wages.
Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes.
For a brief moment last year in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina brought America's poor into the spotlight. Poverty seemed on the government's agenda. That spotlight has now been turned off. 'I had hoped Katrina would have changed things more. It hasn't,' says Cynthia Duncan, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.
Oklahoma is in America's heartland. Tulsa looks like picture-book Middle America. Yet there is hunger here. When it comes to the most malnourished poor in America, Oklahoma is ahead of any other state. It should be impossible to go hungry here. But it is not. Just ask those gathered at a food handout last week. They are a cross section of society: black, white, young couples, pensioners and the middle-aged. A few are out of work or retired, everyone else has jobs.
They are people like Freda Lee, 33, who has two jobs, as a marketer and a cashier. She has come to the nondescript Loaves and Fishes building - flanked ironically by a Burger King and a McDonald's - to collect food for herself and three sons. 'America is meant to be free. What's free?' she laughs. 'All we can do is pay off the basics.'
Or they are people like Tammy Reinbold, 37. She works part-time and her husband works full-time. They have two children yet rely on the food handouts. 'The church is all we have to fall back on,' she says. She is right. When government help is being cut and wages are insufficient, churches often fill the gap. The needy gather to receive food boxes. They listen to a preacher for half an hour on the literal truth of the Bible. Then he asks them if they want to be born again. Three women put up their hands.
But why are some Tulsans hungry?
Many believe it is the changing face of the US economy. Tulsa has been devastated by job losses. Big-name firms like WorldCom, Williams Energy and CitGo have closed or moved, costing the city about 24,000 jobs. Now Wal-Mart embodies the new American job market: low wages, few benefits.
Well-paid work only goes to the university-educated. Many others who just complete high school face a bleak future. In Texas more than a third of students entering public high schools now drop out. These people are entering the fragile world of the working poor, where each day is a mere step away from tragedy. Some of those tragedies in Tulsa end up in the care of Steve Whitaker, a pastor who runs a homeless mission in the shadow of a freeway overpass.
Each day the homeless and the drug addicted gather here, looking for a bed for the night. Some also want a fresh chance. They are men like Mark Schloss whose disaster was being left by his first wife. The former Wal-Mart manager entered a world of drug addiction and alcoholism until he wound up with Whitaker. Now he is back on track, sporting a silver ring that says Faith, Hope, Love. 'Without this place I would be in prison or dead,' he says. But Whitaker equates saving lives with saving souls. Those entering the mission's rehabilitation programme are drilled in Bible studies and Christianity. At 6ft 5in and with a black belt in karate, Whitaker's Christianity is muscular both literally and figuratively. 'People need God in their lives,' he says.
These are mean streets. Tulsa is a city divided like the country. Inside a building run by Whitaker's staff in northern Tulsa a group of 'latch-key kids' are taking Bible classes after school while they wait for parents to pick them up. One of them is Taylor Finley, aged nine. Wearing a T-shirt with an American flag on the front, she dreams of travel. 'I want to have fun in a new place, a new country,' she says. Taylor wants to see the world outside Oklahoma. But at the moment she cannot even see her own neighbourhood. The centre in which she waits for mom was built without windows on its ground floor. It was the only way to keep out bullets from the gangs outside.
During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty directly was John Edwards, whose campaign theme was 'Two Americas'. He was derided by Republicans for doing down the country and - after John Kerry picked him as his Democratic running mate - the rhetoric softened in the heat of the campaign.
But, in fact, Edwards was right. While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent. Whitaker put the figures into simple English. 'The poor have got poorer and the rich have got richer,' he said.
Dealing with poverty is not a viable political issue in America. It jars with a cultural sense that the poor bring things upon themselves and that every American is born with the same chances in life. It also runs counter to the strong anti-government current in modern American politics. Yet the problem will not disappear. 'There is a real sense of impending crisis, but political leaders have little motivation to address this growing divide,' Cynthia Duncan says.
There is little doubt which side of America's divide the hills of east Kentucky fall on. Driving through the wooded Appalachian valleys is a lesson in poverty. The mountains have never been rich. Times now are as tough as they have ever been. Trailer homes are the norm. Every so often a lofty mansion looms into view, a sign of prosperity linked to the coal mines or the logging firms that are the only industries in the region. Everyone else lives on the margins, grabbing work where they can. The biggest cash crop is illicitly grown marijuana.
Save The Children works here. Though the charity is usually associated with earthquakes in Pakistan or famine in Africa, it runs an extensive programme in east Kentucky. It includes a novel scheme enlisting teams of 'foster grandparents' to tackle the shocking child illiteracy rates and thus eventually hit poverty itself.
The problem is acute. At Jone's Fork school, a team of indomitable grannies arrive each day to read with the children. The scheme has two benefits: it helps the children struggle out of poverty and pays the pensioners a small wage. 'This has been a lifesaver for me and I feel as if the children would just fall through the cracks without us,' says Erma Owens. It has offered dramatic help to some. One group of children are doing so well in the scheme that their teacher, Loretta Shepherd, has postponed retirement in order to stand by them. 'It renewed me to have these kids,' she said.
Certainly Renae Sturgill sees the changes in her children. She too lives in deep poverty. Though she attends college and her husband has a job, the Sturgill trailer sits amid a clutter of abandoned cars. Money is scarce. But now her kids are in the reading scheme and she has seen how they have changed. Especially eight-year-old Zach. He's hard to control at times, but he has come to love school. 'Zach likes reading now. I know it's going to be real important for him,' Renae says. Zach is shy and won't speak much about his achievements. But Genny Waddell, who co-ordinates family welfare at Jone's Fork, is immensely proud. 'Now Zach reads because he wants to. He really fought to get where he is,' she says.
In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves.
It is an impression backed up by many of those mired in poverty in Oklahoma and Kentucky. Few asked for handouts. Many asked for decent wages. 'It is unfair. I am working all the time and so what have I done wrong?' says Freda Lee. But the economy does not seem to be allowing people to make a decent living. It condemns the poor to stay put, fighting against seemingly impossible odds or to pull up sticks and try somewhere else.
In Tulsa, Tammy Reinbold and her family are moving to Texas as soon as they save the money for enough petrol. It could take several months. 'I've been in Tulsa 12 years and I just gotta try somewhere else,' she says.
Savethechildren.org
From Tom Joad to Roseanne
In a country that prides itself on a culture of rugged individualism, hard work and self-sufficiency, it is no surprise that poverty and the poor do not have a central place in America's cultural psyche.
But in art, films and books American poverty has sometimes been portrayed with searing honesty. John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was made into a John Ford movie, is the most famous example. It was an unflinching account of the travails of a poor Oklahoma family forced to flee the Dust Bowl during the 1930s Depression. Its portrait of Tom Joad and his family's life on the road as they sought work was a nod to wider issues of social justice in America.
Another ground-breaking work of that time was John Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a non-fiction book about time spent among poor white farmers in the Deep South. It practically disappeared upon its first publication in 1940 but in the Sixties was hailed as a masterpiece. In mainstream American culture, poverty often lurks in the background. Or it is portrayed - as in Sergio Leone's crime epic Once Upon A Time In America - as the basis for a tale of rags to riches.
One notable, yet often overlooked, exception was the great success of the sitcom Roseanne. The show depicted the realities of working-class Middle American life with a grit and humour that is a world away from the usual sitcom settings in a sunlit suburbia, most often in New York or California. The biggest sitcoms of the past decade - Friends, Frasier or Will and Grace - all deal with aspirational middle-class foibles that have little relevance to America's millions of working poor.
An America divided
· There are 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. That figure has increased by five million since President George W. Bush came to power.
· The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.
· Almost a quarter of all black Americans live below the poverty line; 22 per cent of Hispanics fall below it. But for whites the figure is just 8.6 per cent.
· There are 46 million Americans without health insurance.
· There are 82,000 homeless people in Los Angeles alone.
· In 2004 the poorest community in America was Pine Ridge Indian reservation. Unemployment is over 80 per cent, 69 per cent of people live in poverty and male life expectancy is 57 years. In the Western hemisphere only Haiti has a lower number.
· The richest town in America is Rancho Santa Fe in California. Average incomes are more than $100,000 a year; the average house price is $1.7m.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Home-Grown Taliban Arises in Maryland
As I understand, the Taliban in Afghanistan operate as a religious police, out to make sure women don’t expose their ankles, music is suppressed, etc.. I use the present tense because according to reports the Taliban still operates in many towns and cities in Afghanistan. They’re not nice people.
One of the great warnings we’ve received is “be careful not to become the thing you’re fighting against.” It would appear that in Montgomery County MD the homeland security branch of the local law, forgot that warning. They became, in effect, a Taliban all by themselves.
washingtonpost.com
Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description
Montgomery Homeland Security Officers Reassigned After Library Incident
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602066_pf.html
By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 17, 2006; B08
Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.
The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Homeland Security." The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.
After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user's choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library's work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.
They were officers of the security division of Montgomery County's Homeland Security Department, an unarmed force that patrols about 300 county buildings -- but is not responsible for enforcing obscenity laws.
In the post-9/11 era, even suburban counties have homeland security departments. Montgomery County will not specify how many officers are in the department's security division, citing security reasons. Its annual budget, including salaries, is $3.6 million.
Later that afternoon, Montgomery County's chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, issued a statement calling the incident "unfortunate" and "regrettable" -- two words that bureaucrats often deploy when things have gone awry. He said the officers had been reassigned to other duties.
Romer said the officers believed they were enforcing the county's sexual harassment policy but "overstepped their authority" and had to be reminded that Montgomery "supports the rights of patrons to view the materials of their choice."
The sexual harassment policy forbids the "display of offensive or obscene printed or visual material." But in a library, which is both a public arena and a county workplace, the U.S. Constitution trumps Montgomery's rules.
At most public libraries in the Washington area, an adult can view pornography on a library computer more or less unfettered. Montgomery asks customers to be considerate of others when viewing Web sites. If others are put off, librarians will provide the viewer of the offending material with a "privacy screen."
Fairfax County forbids library use of the Internet to view child pornography or obscene materials or to engage in gambling or fraud. But Fairfax library spokeswoman Lois Kirkpatrick said, "Librarians are not legally empowered to determine obscenity."
D.C. library spokeswoman Monica Lewis said the system is working on guidelines for Internet use, but she added that recessed computer screens generally ensure patrons their privacy.
Although many library systems in the United States use filtering software, the D.C. and Fairfax systems do not, and Montgomery uses such software only on computers available to children. Leslie Burger, president-elect of the American Library Association, said the reality is that "libraries are not the hotbed of looking at porn sites."
Still, Montgomery plans to train its homeland security officers "so they fully understand library policy and its consistency with residents' First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution," Romer said in his statement.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
One of the great warnings we’ve received is “be careful not to become the thing you’re fighting against.” It would appear that in Montgomery County MD the homeland security branch of the local law, forgot that warning. They became, in effect, a Taliban all by themselves.
washingtonpost.com
Policing Porn Is Not Part of Job Description
Montgomery Homeland Security Officers Reassigned After Library Incident
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602066_pf.html
By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 17, 2006; B08
Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.
The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words "Homeland Security." The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.
After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user's choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library's work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.
They were officers of the security division of Montgomery County's Homeland Security Department, an unarmed force that patrols about 300 county buildings -- but is not responsible for enforcing obscenity laws.
In the post-9/11 era, even suburban counties have homeland security departments. Montgomery County will not specify how many officers are in the department's security division, citing security reasons. Its annual budget, including salaries, is $3.6 million.
Later that afternoon, Montgomery County's chief administrative officer, Bruce Romer, issued a statement calling the incident "unfortunate" and "regrettable" -- two words that bureaucrats often deploy when things have gone awry. He said the officers had been reassigned to other duties.
Romer said the officers believed they were enforcing the county's sexual harassment policy but "overstepped their authority" and had to be reminded that Montgomery "supports the rights of patrons to view the materials of their choice."
The sexual harassment policy forbids the "display of offensive or obscene printed or visual material." But in a library, which is both a public arena and a county workplace, the U.S. Constitution trumps Montgomery's rules.
At most public libraries in the Washington area, an adult can view pornography on a library computer more or less unfettered. Montgomery asks customers to be considerate of others when viewing Web sites. If others are put off, librarians will provide the viewer of the offending material with a "privacy screen."
Fairfax County forbids library use of the Internet to view child pornography or obscene materials or to engage in gambling or fraud. But Fairfax library spokeswoman Lois Kirkpatrick said, "Librarians are not legally empowered to determine obscenity."
D.C. library spokeswoman Monica Lewis said the system is working on guidelines for Internet use, but she added that recessed computer screens generally ensure patrons their privacy.
Although many library systems in the United States use filtering software, the D.C. and Fairfax systems do not, and Montgomery uses such software only on computers available to children. Leslie Burger, president-elect of the American Library Association, said the reality is that "libraries are not the hotbed of looking at porn sites."
Still, Montgomery plans to train its homeland security officers "so they fully understand library policy and its consistency with residents' First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution," Romer said in his statement.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Wagging the dog of American politics
There have been two notable movie coincidences: the Manchurian Candidate was released not long before the assassination of John Kennedy, and Wag The Dog, not too long before America went to war against “Terror.”
I put off seeing Wag The Dog for a long time. Recently, I saw it for the first time. Prescient is the word to describe that movie. It’s good of course, De Niro and Hoffman and Heche do a fine job; as good as Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, and Landbury in the first Manchurian Candidate and Washington and Streep in the second version.
Larry Beinhart, who wrote Wag The Dog, is a sharp observer of politics. Read this essay, go see the movie, and do something about the situation.
February 20, 2006
What It Means To Be A Republican
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/02/con06068.html
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Larry Beinhart
The vice president shoots you in the heart and in the face. Then you apologize for all the trouble it’s caused him. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
Despite almost hysterical warnings the president stays asleep at the wheel. He does nothing about terrorism and 9/11 happens. He responds by running away to Nebraska. Three days later he makes a supposedly impromptu speech with a bull horn on the rubble of the World Trade Center. He is universally cheered as a hero. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The president puts together false claims to go to war with the wrong country. His party universally supports him. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The administration mismanages the war in Iraq so that it creates chaos, a breeding ground for terrorists and political opportunities for Islamic fundamentalists. Along the way, the reasons for going to war are exposed as false. The president runs on national security as his main issue. He is re-elected. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The president cheerfully gives away the surplus to the richest people in the country. Then he runs up record debts, just to throw more money their way. He claims it has helped America’s economy. People act like they believe him. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The administration continues it’s magnificent tradition of going to sleep when it is warned of disaster. It does nothing when Katrina is coming. It continues its record of doing nothing when disaster arrives. As New Orleans was lost, just as when the World Trade Center was lost, the president got as far away as possible. But he can’t be blamed for what nature did. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The president orders wiretaps without warrants, a straightforward violation of the constitution. When the Attorney General is called to testify, the head of the Judiciary Committee insists that his testimony not be under oath. The head of the intelligence committee suggests that the law be changed, now, to make it legal after the fact. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
Alberto Gonzales helped come up with the program that rejected the Geneva Conventions, that permits torture, that says that the president is above the law and that “I was only following orders” should be a defense against a charge of war crimes. Ah, if only the Nazi war criminals who were hung at Nuremberg had Gonzales there to defend them. The president nominates Gonzales to be his new Attorney General. He is confirmed with little debate and no outrage. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
This needs to be understood.
What it implies is that Republicans can’t be dealt with as if reason and facts will sway them. Because it won't. It’s hard for reality-based people, regular Democrats and Liberals, to understand that.
What it lets us know is that reality-based people -- Democrats, Liberals, real Conservatives, old-fashioned Republicans and non-profit Christians -- have to take more vigorous and rigorous stands. Or reality and real American values and the American landscape will disappear, not just temporarily, but forever.
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org.
I put off seeing Wag The Dog for a long time. Recently, I saw it for the first time. Prescient is the word to describe that movie. It’s good of course, De Niro and Hoffman and Heche do a fine job; as good as Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, and Landbury in the first Manchurian Candidate and Washington and Streep in the second version.
Larry Beinhart, who wrote Wag The Dog, is a sharp observer of politics. Read this essay, go see the movie, and do something about the situation.
February 20, 2006
What It Means To Be A Republican
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/02/con06068.html
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Larry Beinhart
The vice president shoots you in the heart and in the face. Then you apologize for all the trouble it’s caused him. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
Despite almost hysterical warnings the president stays asleep at the wheel. He does nothing about terrorism and 9/11 happens. He responds by running away to Nebraska. Three days later he makes a supposedly impromptu speech with a bull horn on the rubble of the World Trade Center. He is universally cheered as a hero. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The president puts together false claims to go to war with the wrong country. His party universally supports him. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The administration mismanages the war in Iraq so that it creates chaos, a breeding ground for terrorists and political opportunities for Islamic fundamentalists. Along the way, the reasons for going to war are exposed as false. The president runs on national security as his main issue. He is re-elected. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The president cheerfully gives away the surplus to the richest people in the country. Then he runs up record debts, just to throw more money their way. He claims it has helped America’s economy. People act like they believe him. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The administration continues it’s magnificent tradition of going to sleep when it is warned of disaster. It does nothing when Katrina is coming. It continues its record of doing nothing when disaster arrives. As New Orleans was lost, just as when the World Trade Center was lost, the president got as far away as possible. But he can’t be blamed for what nature did. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
The president orders wiretaps without warrants, a straightforward violation of the constitution. When the Attorney General is called to testify, the head of the Judiciary Committee insists that his testimony not be under oath. The head of the intelligence committee suggests that the law be changed, now, to make it legal after the fact. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
Alberto Gonzales helped come up with the program that rejected the Geneva Conventions, that permits torture, that says that the president is above the law and that “I was only following orders” should be a defense against a charge of war crimes. Ah, if only the Nazi war criminals who were hung at Nuremberg had Gonzales there to defend them. The president nominates Gonzales to be his new Attorney General. He is confirmed with little debate and no outrage. That’s what it means to be a Republican.
This needs to be understood.
What it implies is that Republicans can’t be dealt with as if reason and facts will sway them. Because it won't. It’s hard for reality-based people, regular Democrats and Liberals, to understand that.
What it lets us know is that reality-based people -- Democrats, Liberals, real Conservatives, old-fashioned Republicans and non-profit Christians -- have to take more vigorous and rigorous stands. Or reality and real American values and the American landscape will disappear, not just temporarily, but forever.
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org.
Friday, February 17, 2006
ABC Does A Fox
The ABC network announced that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction and that they were indeed hidden. Uh-huh: so hidden that they’ve never been found. Never will be found. ABC neglected to tell people that their source for this, Saddam’s son-in-law, who had defected, also said the weapons had been destroyed. Destroyed. ABC failed to include this information, thereby strengthened the Bush-Cheney administration’s justifications for the War On Iraq.
Why would they do a thing like this? Gee, I can’t imagine. Yes, I can. ABC is helping the administration save some of it's budget for PR work, free of charge. They like having Barbara Walters being able to talk to Laura Bush. They like being close to power; after all it hasn't hurt the Fox Network.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2825
Action Alert
Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop'
Star defector Hussein Kamel said weapons were destroyed
2/17/06
On February 15, ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross delivered an exclusive report on World News Tonight and Nightline that purported to be a bombshell. ABC had obtained tape-recorded conversations from mid-1995 that seemed to show that Iraq had been concealing its weapons of mass destruction program. The tapes, according to Ross, "will only serve to fuel the continuing debate about Saddam's true intentions and whether he, in fact, did hide weapons of mass destruction." But ABC viewers were left in the dark about information that would undermine the tape's most important revelations.
ABC emphasized the excerpts of a conversation between Saddam Hussein and his weapons chief (and son-in-law) Hussein Kamel that seem to bolster the idea that Iraq was hiding weapons from inspectors. As Ross reported on Nightline, "Saddam's son-in-law briefs Saddam on the Iraqi campaign of deceit aimed at fooling UN inspectors." Kamel is then heard telling Saddam Hussein, in ABC's translation: "We did not reveal all that we have. Not the type of weapons. Not the volume of the materials we imported. Not the volume of the production we told them about. Not the volume of news. None of this was correct."
ABC provides little context for the exchange, but suggests that these admissions might provide new insight into the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq a decade later. In fact, what Kamel revealed about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs has been known for some time, and portions of his account were an integral part of the White House's case for war.
Kamel defected from Iraq in 1995, and talked at great length with U.N. weapons inspectors and the CIA about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. He revealed at that time that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs had been more advanced than the Saddam Hussein regime had admitted to the inspectors. Kamel publicly revealed the concealment of WMD-related activities in an interview with CNN (9/21/95): "The order was to hide much of it from the start, and we hid a lot of that information. These were not individual acts of concealment, but were as a result of direct orders from the top." So the fact that Saddam Hussein was attempting to deceive the weapons inspectors, as in ABC's tape, is hardly news more than 10 years later.
But ABC's story does not include what was arguably Kamel's more important revelation, which was that Iraq had destroyed its stocks of usable unconventional weapons. "Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction," he told CNN in 1995. He told the same story to U.N. and U.S. officials, saying that by destroying the weapons in the summer of 1991, Saddam Hussein hoped to conceal how far Iraq had gotten in developing weapons, with the intent of restarting these programs after the inspection regime was ended.
Hussein Kamel was lured back to Iraq in 1996, where he was almost immediately killed by Saddam Hussein's forces. But when the Bush administration began gearing up for war with Iraq in 2002, it found that selective citation of Kamel's testimony could be very helpful in making its case. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in an August 2002 speech (8/26/02) that the Iraqi regime had been "very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," and continued "to pursue the nuclear program they began many years ago." To back this up these claims, Cheney added, "We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law"—a reference to Kamel.
In a Chicago Tribune op-ed (9/10/02), former head of the U.N. weapons inspection team Scott Ritter pointed out that Cheney had left out a critical part of Kamel’s story:
"Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a U.N. special commission, Hussein Kamel reiterated his main point—that nothing was left. 'All chemical weapons were destroyed,' he said. 'I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed.'"
Nevertheless, the administration continued to selectively use Kamel's disclosures to bolster its case that Iraq had hidden stockpiles of banned weapons. "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX," then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his February 5, 2003 speech to the U.N. "The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." Powell did not note that Kamel had also reported that this nerve gas, along with all other such weapons, had been destroyed years earlier (Extra!, 5-6/03).
Shortly before the invasion of Iraq began, Newsweek (3/3/03) obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by officials from UNSCOM, the U.N. inspections team, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It published Kamel's key statement from that transcript: "All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed." Newsweek reported that Kamel told the same story to the CIA, but his account had been "hushed up." Shortly thereafter, the complete transcript of Kamel's discussions with inspectors was made public by Cambridge University's Glen Rangwala.
As FAIR noted shortly after the Newsweek report (FAIR Media Advisory, 2/27/03), this crucial information went largely unreported in the mainstream media. Three years later, that is still the case. Instead of this critical context—which frankly undermines the importance of the network's "exclusive"—ABC opted for political speculation. The network's report quotes Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.): "From reading some of the transcripts, you would think that it's pretty likely that there were WMD that were hidden or that were moved out of the country." By omitting countervailing information, ABC is in effect bolstering such ill-informed claims.
Nightline anchor Terry Moran asserted that the tapes ABC aired made an important contribution to our understanding of the Iraq controversy: "Without question, these tapes will shed new light on the debate over the war and on Saddam's future." If ABC's report is any indication, that debate will continue to ignore inconvenient facts about what was really known before the war about Iraq's weapons.
ACTION: Contact ABC and ask why its reports citing an Iraqi official to bolster the idea that Iraq had WMDs failed to mention that the same official told weapons inspectors that Iraq's weapons stockpiles were destroyed in 1991.
CONTACT:
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
netaudr@abc.com
ABC Nightline
Phone: 202-222-7000
nightline@abc.com
Why would they do a thing like this? Gee, I can’t imagine. Yes, I can. ABC is helping the administration save some of it's budget for PR work, free of charge. They like having Barbara Walters being able to talk to Laura Bush. They like being close to power; after all it hasn't hurt the Fox Network.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2825
Action Alert
Missing From ABC's WMD 'Scoop'
Star defector Hussein Kamel said weapons were destroyed
2/17/06
On February 15, ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross delivered an exclusive report on World News Tonight and Nightline that purported to be a bombshell. ABC had obtained tape-recorded conversations from mid-1995 that seemed to show that Iraq had been concealing its weapons of mass destruction program. The tapes, according to Ross, "will only serve to fuel the continuing debate about Saddam's true intentions and whether he, in fact, did hide weapons of mass destruction." But ABC viewers were left in the dark about information that would undermine the tape's most important revelations.
ABC emphasized the excerpts of a conversation between Saddam Hussein and his weapons chief (and son-in-law) Hussein Kamel that seem to bolster the idea that Iraq was hiding weapons from inspectors. As Ross reported on Nightline, "Saddam's son-in-law briefs Saddam on the Iraqi campaign of deceit aimed at fooling UN inspectors." Kamel is then heard telling Saddam Hussein, in ABC's translation: "We did not reveal all that we have. Not the type of weapons. Not the volume of the materials we imported. Not the volume of the production we told them about. Not the volume of news. None of this was correct."
ABC provides little context for the exchange, but suggests that these admissions might provide new insight into the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq a decade later. In fact, what Kamel revealed about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs has been known for some time, and portions of his account were an integral part of the White House's case for war.
Kamel defected from Iraq in 1995, and talked at great length with U.N. weapons inspectors and the CIA about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs. He revealed at that time that Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs had been more advanced than the Saddam Hussein regime had admitted to the inspectors. Kamel publicly revealed the concealment of WMD-related activities in an interview with CNN (9/21/95): "The order was to hide much of it from the start, and we hid a lot of that information. These were not individual acts of concealment, but were as a result of direct orders from the top." So the fact that Saddam Hussein was attempting to deceive the weapons inspectors, as in ABC's tape, is hardly news more than 10 years later.
But ABC's story does not include what was arguably Kamel's more important revelation, which was that Iraq had destroyed its stocks of usable unconventional weapons. "Iraq does not possess any weapons of mass destruction," he told CNN in 1995. He told the same story to U.N. and U.S. officials, saying that by destroying the weapons in the summer of 1991, Saddam Hussein hoped to conceal how far Iraq had gotten in developing weapons, with the intent of restarting these programs after the inspection regime was ended.
Hussein Kamel was lured back to Iraq in 1996, where he was almost immediately killed by Saddam Hussein's forces. But when the Bush administration began gearing up for war with Iraq in 2002, it found that selective citation of Kamel's testimony could be very helpful in making its case. Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in an August 2002 speech (8/26/02) that the Iraqi regime had been "very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents," and continued "to pursue the nuclear program they began many years ago." To back this up these claims, Cheney added, "We've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors, including Saddam's own son-in-law"—a reference to Kamel.
In a Chicago Tribune op-ed (9/10/02), former head of the U.N. weapons inspection team Scott Ritter pointed out that Cheney had left out a critical part of Kamel’s story:
"Throughout his interview with UNSCOM, a U.N. special commission, Hussein Kamel reiterated his main point—that nothing was left. 'All chemical weapons were destroyed,' he said. 'I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed.'"
Nevertheless, the administration continued to selectively use Kamel's disclosures to bolster its case that Iraq had hidden stockpiles of banned weapons. "It took years for Iraq to finally admit that it had produced four tons of the deadly nerve agent, VX," then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said in his February 5, 2003 speech to the U.N. "The admission only came out after inspectors collected documentation as a result of the defection of Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's late son-in-law." Powell did not note that Kamel had also reported that this nerve gas, along with all other such weapons, had been destroyed years earlier (Extra!, 5-6/03).
Shortly before the invasion of Iraq began, Newsweek (3/3/03) obtained the transcript of Kamel's 1995 debriefing by officials from UNSCOM, the U.N. inspections team, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It published Kamel's key statement from that transcript: "All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear—were destroyed." Newsweek reported that Kamel told the same story to the CIA, but his account had been "hushed up." Shortly thereafter, the complete transcript of Kamel's discussions with inspectors was made public by Cambridge University's Glen Rangwala.
As FAIR noted shortly after the Newsweek report (FAIR Media Advisory, 2/27/03), this crucial information went largely unreported in the mainstream media. Three years later, that is still the case. Instead of this critical context—which frankly undermines the importance of the network's "exclusive"—ABC opted for political speculation. The network's report quotes Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.): "From reading some of the transcripts, you would think that it's pretty likely that there were WMD that were hidden or that were moved out of the country." By omitting countervailing information, ABC is in effect bolstering such ill-informed claims.
Nightline anchor Terry Moran asserted that the tapes ABC aired made an important contribution to our understanding of the Iraq controversy: "Without question, these tapes will shed new light on the debate over the war and on Saddam's future." If ABC's report is any indication, that debate will continue to ignore inconvenient facts about what was really known before the war about Iraq's weapons.
ACTION: Contact ABC and ask why its reports citing an Iraqi official to bolster the idea that Iraq had WMDs failed to mention that the same official told weapons inspectors that Iraq's weapons stockpiles were destroyed in 1991.
CONTACT:
ABC World News Tonight
Phone: 212-456-4040
netaudr@abc.com
ABC Nightline
Phone: 202-222-7000
nightline@abc.com
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Cheney: We Got The Power, Like It Or Not
This is a long and detailed analysis of what’s probably Cheney’s defense in the “outing” of Valerie Plame. It’s chilling.
Basically, Bush and Cheney have taken over the government. By the amount of authority they claim, they can call off elections. How long does it take for people to figure this out? They have reduced Congress to an appendage of the Executive Branch. This is not what the writers of the Constitution had in mind; this is not what England’s “Glorious Revolution” was all about. But it’s what is.
Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/16/104857/925
Cheney & Classification
by georgia10
Thu Feb 16, 2006 at 08:48:57 AM PDT
The Executive's authority to classify or declassify information does not come from Congressional statute. Rather, Presidents have long held that it is part of the President's inherent authority. Courts have concurred.
THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF HAS BROAD AUTHORITY IN CLASSIFICATION DECISIONS
In 1951, President Truman signed Executive Order 10290 (pdf), the President relied on his Constitutional authority as President of the United States to enact a classification scheme. Such language has been included in classification orders since then.
In Department of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518 (1988), the Supreme Court stated in its dicta that the authority to control access to sensitive information is vested in the President of the United States. Accordingly, an argument can be made that the President need not "ask permission" from the CIA or NSA or anyone when it comes to classifying or declassifying information. This is because the CIA or NSA do not have any power to deal with classified information that does not emanate from the President himself:
The President, after all, is the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." U.S. Const., Art. II, 2. His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security and to determine whether an individual is sufficiently trustworthy to occupy a position in the Executive Branch that will give that person access to such information flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant. See Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U.S. 886, 890 (1961). This Court has recognized the Government's "compelling interest" in withholding national security information from unauthorized persons in the course of executive business. Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507, 509, n. 3 (1980). See also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 267 (1967); United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 10 (1953); Totten v. United States, 92 U.S. 105, 106 (1876). The authority to protect such information falls on the President as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief.
Since World War I, the Executive Branch has engaged in efforts to protect national security information by means of a classification system graded according to sensitivity. See Note, Developments in the Law - The National Security Interest and Civil Liberties, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 1130, 1193-1194 (1972). After World War II, certain civilian agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Atomic Energy Commission, were entrusted with gathering, protecting, or creating information bearing on national security. Presidents, in a series of Executive Orders, have sought to protect sensitive information and to ensure its proper classification throughout the Executive Branch by delegating this responsibility to the heads of agencies. See Exec. Order No. 10290, 3 CFR 789 (1949-1953 Comp.); Exec. Order No. 10501, 3 CFR 979 (1949-1953 Comp.); Exec. Order No. 11652, 3 CFR 678 (1971-1975 Comp.); Exec. Order No. 12065, 3 CFR 190 (1979); Exec. Order No. 12356, 4.1(a), 3 CFR 174 (1983).
It should be obvious that no one has a "right" to a security clearance.
Notice the passivity of such agencies. They're "entrusted" with national secrets and are "delegated" authority by the President. But such authority rests only in the President. Keep that in mind as we now go through President Bush's executive orders on classification.
More below...
* georgia10's diary :: ::
*
CURRENT CLASSIFICATION AUTHORITY UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER 13292 (signed March 2003)
Now, let's examine the current policy in the Bush administration with respect to classified information:
Sec. 1.3. Classification Authority. (a) The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:
(1) the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;
This section deals with classification authority. Does it include declassification as well? If the President and Vice-President have the discretion to unilaterally classify information, would it not follow that they have the discretion to unilaterally declassify it?
Part 3 of the order deals with declassification. Plame's identity and occupation were classified and should have remained classified. But, Cheney may have an escape route in this section:
3.1(b) It is presumed that information that continues to meet the classification requirements under this order requires continued protection. In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure.
How do we know Cheney will cling to this provision for dear life if his authority to declassify is indeed challenged? Because this has been his office's defense since Day 1. Notice that the standard is "public interest in the disclosure of information." An extremely broad standard which provides more than enough wiggle room for Cheney to claim he authorized the leaking of Plame's identity and name to "set the record straight" and minimize the damage Wilson was doing to the case for war. Note that this section of the Executive Order does not speak to motive. I'd also note that particular section is not new but was first enacted under President Clinton in Executive Order 12356, signed in 1995.
Up until this point, it looks like Cheney is in the clear, at least legally speaking. But let's examine another section pertaining to declassification, Sec. 4.1. General Restrictions on Access:
4.1(c) Classified information shall remain under the control of the originating agency or its successor in function. An agency shall not disclose information originally classified by another agency without its authorization. An official or employee leaving agency service may not remove classified information from the agency's control.
It reads that "an agency" shall not disclose information without authorization. Does "an agency" include the Vice-President of the United States? Yep. In the definitional section of the order:
(i) "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105, and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.
So, if we accept that "entity" includes individual entities like the Vice-President, it looks like Cheney should have asked permission from the "originating agency" (the CIA) before authorizing Libby to leak. Also, it may be that Cheney's declassification--even if it was consistent with this order--should have gone through the mandatory declassification review in Section 3.5(a).
COVERING UP?
Prior to March 25, 2003, the authority to unilaterally classify and perhaps declassify info was vested solely in the President. However, with Executive Order 13292, President Bush greatly expanded Vice-Presidential power. He changed many sections throughout his original order, each time granting Cheney the authority to exercise the same power as the President. Basically, any time the order stated that the President had authority to do something (which, as explained above, that authority is derived from the Constitution), Bush tacked on the phrase "and in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President". Bush essentially then delegated that Constitutional authority granted solely to him as Commander-in-Chief to the Vice-President of the United States.
As A Patriot points out, the timing of the March 25, 2003 order is incredibly suspicious. Why did the President chose March 2003 to enact such a starking aggrandizemnet of Vice-Presidential power? It was in March, as we all know, that the decision to smear Wilson was made:
Wilson connects Cheney to the events involving his wife through a meeting he said occurred in March 2003. He charged that Cheney's staff -- with at least the "implicit" involvement of the vice president -- met and decided to investigate his background. The investigation, he said, uncovered his wife's role at the CIA.
"The office of the vice president, either the vice president himself or more likely his chief of staff, chaired a meeting at which a decision was made to do a 'work-up' on me," Wilson wrote in The Politics of Truth.
So the decision was made to smear the Wilson by leaking the information about his wife. Such a leak could not originate from the President's office--too dangerous, its members too high-profile, and we know that the dirty deeds have been orchestrated by the vice-president's office in the past. Did the President and the Vice-President conspire then to alter the exective order to give the Vice-President the authority to orchestrate the smear?
Perhaps that is why Bush was able to say with such a straight face the following:
He added that he did not know of "anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."
Because of the changes to his order, it's possible Bush thinks that the information wasn't "leaked," but rather was "declassified" by the newly vested authority by the Vice-President. Libby, as his defense claims, didn't leak "classified" information. They read over the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and concocted the perfect defense. The act reads in part:
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Cheney was the one with authorized access. He disclosed that information to one authorized to receive classified information. But at that moment, the information, according to Cheney, was no longer classified, giving Libby the cover to disseminate the info at will. That explains why the Bush administration has embraced a "fine, go ahead, investigate us" attitude. They believe that, by virtue of Bush's cover-up amendments, that they have all the legal cover they need.
The defense all along was to set this up as an authorized disclosure. This tactic is not surprising at all. Break the law, then bend the law to cover up your lawlessness.
Do you recall that when it became clear Rove had leaked the information to reports, there was a flurry of articles about how "upset" Bush was, that he felt betrayed by Karl? In the New York Daily News (yes, I know) there was a hint that the anger wasn't at the disclosure, but at the fact the Office of the President was tied to the leak:
A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.
"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.
That's because, as this whole conspiracy illustrates, the plan was to confine the smear to the Office of the Vice-President. That is why the order was amended to give Cheney the power to smear. That is why Libby was the main leaker. When Rove's deviousness tempted him to play along, he screwed up the plan by tainting the Office of the President with the leak.
The Vice-President's decision to declassify this information may not be judged in the courts, but rather in the court of public opinion. Courts long have been hesitant to question the President's discretion in dealing with classified materials. Does such deference extend to the Vice-President? Even if the legal cover-up here withstands or avoid judicial review, what will the public make of the fact that Vice-President Cheney committed a crime, but President Bush chauffeured the getaway car?
© Kos Media, LLC
Site content may be used for any purpose without
explicit permission unless otherwise specified.
Basically, Bush and Cheney have taken over the government. By the amount of authority they claim, they can call off elections. How long does it take for people to figure this out? They have reduced Congress to an appendage of the Executive Branch. This is not what the writers of the Constitution had in mind; this is not what England’s “Glorious Revolution” was all about. But it’s what is.
Daily Kos
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/2/16/104857/925
Cheney & Classification
by georgia10
Thu Feb 16, 2006 at 08:48:57 AM PDT
The Executive's authority to classify or declassify information does not come from Congressional statute. Rather, Presidents have long held that it is part of the President's inherent authority. Courts have concurred.
THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF HAS BROAD AUTHORITY IN CLASSIFICATION DECISIONS
In 1951, President Truman signed Executive Order 10290 (pdf), the President relied on his Constitutional authority as President of the United States to enact a classification scheme. Such language has been included in classification orders since then.
In Department of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518 (1988), the Supreme Court stated in its dicta that the authority to control access to sensitive information is vested in the President of the United States. Accordingly, an argument can be made that the President need not "ask permission" from the CIA or NSA or anyone when it comes to classifying or declassifying information. This is because the CIA or NSA do not have any power to deal with classified information that does not emanate from the President himself:
The President, after all, is the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." U.S. Const., Art. II, 2. His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security and to determine whether an individual is sufficiently trustworthy to occupy a position in the Executive Branch that will give that person access to such information flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant. See Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U.S. 886, 890 (1961). This Court has recognized the Government's "compelling interest" in withholding national security information from unauthorized persons in the course of executive business. Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507, 509, n. 3 (1980). See also United States v. Robel, 389 U.S. 258, 267 (1967); United States v. Reynolds, 345 U.S. 1, 10 (1953); Totten v. United States, 92 U.S. 105, 106 (1876). The authority to protect such information falls on the President as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief.
Since World War I, the Executive Branch has engaged in efforts to protect national security information by means of a classification system graded according to sensitivity. See Note, Developments in the Law - The National Security Interest and Civil Liberties, 85 Harv. L. Rev. 1130, 1193-1194 (1972). After World War II, certain civilian agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Atomic Energy Commission, were entrusted with gathering, protecting, or creating information bearing on national security. Presidents, in a series of Executive Orders, have sought to protect sensitive information and to ensure its proper classification throughout the Executive Branch by delegating this responsibility to the heads of agencies. See Exec. Order No. 10290, 3 CFR 789 (1949-1953 Comp.); Exec. Order No. 10501, 3 CFR 979 (1949-1953 Comp.); Exec. Order No. 11652, 3 CFR 678 (1971-1975 Comp.); Exec. Order No. 12065, 3 CFR 190 (1979); Exec. Order No. 12356, 4.1(a), 3 CFR 174 (1983).
It should be obvious that no one has a "right" to a security clearance.
Notice the passivity of such agencies. They're "entrusted" with national secrets and are "delegated" authority by the President. But such authority rests only in the President. Keep that in mind as we now go through President Bush's executive orders on classification.
More below...
* georgia10's diary :: ::
*
CURRENT CLASSIFICATION AUTHORITY UNDER EXECUTIVE ORDER 13292 (signed March 2003)
Now, let's examine the current policy in the Bush administration with respect to classified information:
Sec. 1.3. Classification Authority. (a) The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:
(1) the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;
This section deals with classification authority. Does it include declassification as well? If the President and Vice-President have the discretion to unilaterally classify information, would it not follow that they have the discretion to unilaterally declassify it?
Part 3 of the order deals with declassification. Plame's identity and occupation were classified and should have remained classified. But, Cheney may have an escape route in this section:
3.1(b) It is presumed that information that continues to meet the classification requirements under this order requires continued protection. In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to the national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure.
How do we know Cheney will cling to this provision for dear life if his authority to declassify is indeed challenged? Because this has been his office's defense since Day 1. Notice that the standard is "public interest in the disclosure of information." An extremely broad standard which provides more than enough wiggle room for Cheney to claim he authorized the leaking of Plame's identity and name to "set the record straight" and minimize the damage Wilson was doing to the case for war. Note that this section of the Executive Order does not speak to motive. I'd also note that particular section is not new but was first enacted under President Clinton in Executive Order 12356, signed in 1995.
Up until this point, it looks like Cheney is in the clear, at least legally speaking. But let's examine another section pertaining to declassification, Sec. 4.1. General Restrictions on Access:
4.1(c) Classified information shall remain under the control of the originating agency or its successor in function. An agency shall not disclose information originally classified by another agency without its authorization. An official or employee leaving agency service may not remove classified information from the agency's control.
It reads that "an agency" shall not disclose information without authorization. Does "an agency" include the Vice-President of the United States? Yep. In the definitional section of the order:
(i) "Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105, and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.
So, if we accept that "entity" includes individual entities like the Vice-President, it looks like Cheney should have asked permission from the "originating agency" (the CIA) before authorizing Libby to leak. Also, it may be that Cheney's declassification--even if it was consistent with this order--should have gone through the mandatory declassification review in Section 3.5(a).
COVERING UP?
Prior to March 25, 2003, the authority to unilaterally classify and perhaps declassify info was vested solely in the President. However, with Executive Order 13292, President Bush greatly expanded Vice-Presidential power. He changed many sections throughout his original order, each time granting Cheney the authority to exercise the same power as the President. Basically, any time the order stated that the President had authority to do something (which, as explained above, that authority is derived from the Constitution), Bush tacked on the phrase "and in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President". Bush essentially then delegated that Constitutional authority granted solely to him as Commander-in-Chief to the Vice-President of the United States.
As A Patriot points out, the timing of the March 25, 2003 order is incredibly suspicious. Why did the President chose March 2003 to enact such a starking aggrandizemnet of Vice-Presidential power? It was in March, as we all know, that the decision to smear Wilson was made:
Wilson connects Cheney to the events involving his wife through a meeting he said occurred in March 2003. He charged that Cheney's staff -- with at least the "implicit" involvement of the vice president -- met and decided to investigate his background. The investigation, he said, uncovered his wife's role at the CIA.
"The office of the vice president, either the vice president himself or more likely his chief of staff, chaired a meeting at which a decision was made to do a 'work-up' on me," Wilson wrote in The Politics of Truth.
So the decision was made to smear the Wilson by leaking the information about his wife. Such a leak could not originate from the President's office--too dangerous, its members too high-profile, and we know that the dirty deeds have been orchestrated by the vice-president's office in the past. Did the President and the Vice-President conspire then to alter the exective order to give the Vice-President the authority to orchestrate the smear?
Perhaps that is why Bush was able to say with such a straight face the following:
He added that he did not know of "anybody in my administration who leaked classified information."
Because of the changes to his order, it's possible Bush thinks that the information wasn't "leaked," but rather was "declassified" by the newly vested authority by the Vice-President. Libby, as his defense claims, didn't leak "classified" information. They read over the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and concocted the perfect defense. The act reads in part:
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Cheney was the one with authorized access. He disclosed that information to one authorized to receive classified information. But at that moment, the information, according to Cheney, was no longer classified, giving Libby the cover to disseminate the info at will. That explains why the Bush administration has embraced a "fine, go ahead, investigate us" attitude. They believe that, by virtue of Bush's cover-up amendments, that they have all the legal cover they need.
The defense all along was to set this up as an authorized disclosure. This tactic is not surprising at all. Break the law, then bend the law to cover up your lawlessness.
Do you recall that when it became clear Rove had leaked the information to reports, there was a flurry of articles about how "upset" Bush was, that he felt betrayed by Karl? In the New York Daily News (yes, I know) there was a hint that the anger wasn't at the disclosure, but at the fact the Office of the President was tied to the leak:
A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.
"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.
That's because, as this whole conspiracy illustrates, the plan was to confine the smear to the Office of the Vice-President. That is why the order was amended to give Cheney the power to smear. That is why Libby was the main leaker. When Rove's deviousness tempted him to play along, he screwed up the plan by tainting the Office of the President with the leak.
The Vice-President's decision to declassify this information may not be judged in the courts, but rather in the court of public opinion. Courts long have been hesitant to question the President's discretion in dealing with classified materials. Does such deference extend to the Vice-President? Even if the legal cover-up here withstands or avoid judicial review, what will the public make of the fact that Vice-President Cheney committed a crime, but President Bush chauffeured the getaway car?
© Kos Media, LLC
Site content may be used for any purpose without
explicit permission unless otherwise specified.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Medicaid Cuts Spur Lawsuit
This may be the only way out of this mess: a series of lawsuits leading back to Washington, D.C.. The cuts to Medicaid are cuts at a targeted and vulnerable population; there’s nobody with any clout who speaks for these people. The administration wants to cut as much spending as it can, without offending any of it’s donors. There are very few donors who are also on Medicaid; therefore, it’s a safe target.
Oregon, of course, doesn’t have the money. It’s like the No Child Left Behind Act: the orders are laid down but there’s no money to pay for them. Oregon’s nearly broke. The schools are wretched, the highways crumbling, and tens of thousands of working people have to depend on free or reduced-cost clinics. But looking around town, I see half-million dollar houses going up one after another; there are nice cars on the streets, and people are spending money—on themselves. Nobody’s spending money on the poor, sick, young, and old. And nobody in Washington, D.C., believes that the vulnerable need to be protected.
Appeals court says Medicaid patients can sue state
2/9/2006, 4:17 p.m. PT
The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-14/113953105518410.xml&storylist=orlocal
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Elderly and disabled people the Oregon Legislature cut from the Oregon Health Plan in 2003 can sue the state for nursing home care, an appeals court has ruled.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to a federal trial court in Portland.
The case involves more than 3,000 people whose nursing care was halted when the state narrowed eligibility requirements to help balance the budget.
Oregon officials estimated that the cuts would affect more than 10,000 people, including 385 who lived in licensed nursing homes, the court said. Legislators later restored some of the funding.
The Oregonians sued under a section of the federal Medicaid law that requires states to provide specific levels of nursing care to low-income aged and disabled residents. The ruling returns the case to a lower court to determine whether Oregon violated the law. The Oregon Health Plan is the state's version of the federal-state Medicaid program for low-income people.
The ruling is binding in the nine states covered by the court, including California, which has not made similar reductions in publicly funded nursing care. But the recently passed federal Deficit Reduction Act will require cuts in Medicaid that could lead to lawsuits under Wednesday's ruling, said attorney Jeanne Finberg of the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Oakland.
The Oregon suit was dismissed in 2004 by a federal judge who said the law requiring nursing services could be enforced only by the federal government — which can cut off funding to states for noncompliance — and not by private citizens. The appeals court disagreed in a 3-0 ruling, saying the law had been designed to protect the rights of patients who lack adequate redress at the state level.
Plaintiffs' attorney Lauren Saunders of the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Washington, D.C., said some of the seven Oregon residents who sued had regained eligibility for nursing services when their conditions worsened.
Saunders said she hopes the suit can now be settled.
Kevin Neely, spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, said the state will work with the plaintiffs to determine the next steps in the case.
The ruling gives legislators "a better understanding of the consequences of their action," Neely said. He said the Democratic attorney general advised the Republican-controlled Legislature that a lawsuit was inevitable when the cuts were first proposed in 2001, "but they ran out of options and had to cut somewhere."
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Oregon, of course, doesn’t have the money. It’s like the No Child Left Behind Act: the orders are laid down but there’s no money to pay for them. Oregon’s nearly broke. The schools are wretched, the highways crumbling, and tens of thousands of working people have to depend on free or reduced-cost clinics. But looking around town, I see half-million dollar houses going up one after another; there are nice cars on the streets, and people are spending money—on themselves. Nobody’s spending money on the poor, sick, young, and old. And nobody in Washington, D.C., believes that the vulnerable need to be protected.
Appeals court says Medicaid patients can sue state
2/9/2006, 4:17 p.m. PT
The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-14/113953105518410.xml&storylist=orlocal
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Elderly and disabled people the Oregon Legislature cut from the Oregon Health Plan in 2003 can sue the state for nursing home care, an appeals court has ruled.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to a federal trial court in Portland.
The case involves more than 3,000 people whose nursing care was halted when the state narrowed eligibility requirements to help balance the budget.
Oregon officials estimated that the cuts would affect more than 10,000 people, including 385 who lived in licensed nursing homes, the court said. Legislators later restored some of the funding.
The Oregonians sued under a section of the federal Medicaid law that requires states to provide specific levels of nursing care to low-income aged and disabled residents. The ruling returns the case to a lower court to determine whether Oregon violated the law. The Oregon Health Plan is the state's version of the federal-state Medicaid program for low-income people.
The ruling is binding in the nine states covered by the court, including California, which has not made similar reductions in publicly funded nursing care. But the recently passed federal Deficit Reduction Act will require cuts in Medicaid that could lead to lawsuits under Wednesday's ruling, said attorney Jeanne Finberg of the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Oakland.
The Oregon suit was dismissed in 2004 by a federal judge who said the law requiring nursing services could be enforced only by the federal government — which can cut off funding to states for noncompliance — and not by private citizens. The appeals court disagreed in a 3-0 ruling, saying the law had been designed to protect the rights of patients who lack adequate redress at the state level.
Plaintiffs' attorney Lauren Saunders of the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Washington, D.C., said some of the seven Oregon residents who sued had regained eligibility for nursing services when their conditions worsened.
Saunders said she hopes the suit can now be settled.
Kevin Neely, spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, said the state will work with the plaintiffs to determine the next steps in the case.
The ruling gives legislators "a better understanding of the consequences of their action," Neely said. He said the Democratic attorney general advised the Republican-controlled Legislature that a lawsuit was inevitable when the cuts were first proposed in 2001, "but they ran out of options and had to cut somewhere."
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Trying to Squash the Internet
Continuing on the theme of the government and the internet, there’s this piece about how the Pentagon sees the communication ability of the internet as a threat.
In the old days, anything published had to be licensed; it wasn’t until the Revolution Settlement in England that the term “a free press” had any meaning at all in the English-speaking world. That the press is really free is still questionable, sure. The governments all exercise a certain amount of censorship on what’s printed. Most of the control is through economics; it costs a lot of money to put out a newspaper or a magazine, so money sources exercise a lot of control. The government does it indirectly. It's true there's not much overt control, but when there’s a war, there’s a lot. Radio and TV, of course, are licensed and controlled. Now we have the internet.
Marshall McLuhan said the “hottest” —most powerful— media are the ones that are the biggest threats to the established order. There’s no doubt the internet is the hottest, because that’s where the authoritarians are applying pressure.
Mike Whitney: 'The Pentagon's war on the Internet'
Date: Tuesday, February 14 @ 10:13:57 EST
Topic: The Military
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=24849
Mike Whitney
The Pentagon has developed a comprehensive strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the free flow of information. The plan appears in a recently declassified document, "The Information Operations Roadmap", which was provided under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and revealed in an article by the BBC.
The Pentagon sees the internet in terms of a military adversary that poses a vital threat to its stated mission of global domination. This explains the confrontational language in the document which speaks of "fighting the net"; implying that the internet is the equivalent of "an enemy weapons system."
The Defense Dept. places a high-value on controlling information. The new program illustrates their determination to establish the parameters of free speech.
The Pentagon sees information as essential in manipulating public perceptions and, thus, a crucial tool in eliciting support for unpopular policies. The recent revelations of the military placing propaganda in the foreign press demonstrate the importance that is given to co-opting public opinion.
Information-warfare is used to create an impenetrable cloud around the activities of government so that decisions can be made without dissent. The smokescreen of deception that encompasses the Bush administration has less to do with prevaricating politicians than it does with a clearly articulated policy of obfuscation. "The Information Operations Roadmap" is solely intended to undermine the principle of an informed citizenry.
The Pentagon's focus on the internet tells us a great deal about the mainstream media and its connection to the political establishment.
Why, for example, would the Pentagon see the internet as a greater threat than the mainstream media, where an estimated 75% of Americans get their news?
The reason is clear; because the MSM is already a fully-integrated part of the corporate-system providing a 24 hour per day streaming of business-friendly news. Today's MSM operates as a de-facto franchise of the Pentagon, a reliable and sophisticated propagandist for Washington's wars of aggression and political subterfuge.
The internet, on the other hand, is the last bastion of American democracy; a virtual world where reliable information moves instantly from person to person without passing through the corporate filter. Online visitors can get a clear picture of their governments' depredations with a click of the mouse. This is the liberalization of the news, an open source of mind-expanding information that elevates citizen awareness of complex issues and threatens the status quo.
The Pentagon program is just one facet of a broader culture of deception; a pervasive ethos of dishonesty that envelopes all aspects of the Bush White House. The "Strategic Intelligence" Dept is a division of the Defense establishment that is entirely devoted to concealing, distorting, omitting and manipulating the truth.
In what way is "strategic intelligence" different from plain intelligence?
It is information that is shaped in a way that meets the needs of a particular group. In other words, it is not the truth at all, but a fabrication, a fiction, a lie.
Strategic intelligence is an oxymoron; a tidy bit of Orwellian doublespeak that reflects the deeply rooted cynicism of its authors.
The internet is a logical target for the Pentagon's electronic warfare. Already the Downing Street memos, Bush's bombing-threats against Al Jazeera, the fraudulent 2004 elections, and the leveling of Falluja, have disrupted the smooth execution of Bush's wars. It is understandable that Rumsfeld and Co. would seek to transform this potential enemy into an ally, much as it has done with the MSM.
The Pentagon's plans for engaging in "virtual warfare" are impressive. As BBC notes: "The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks." (BBC)
The enemy, of course, is you, dear reader, or anyone who refuses to accept their role as a witless-cog in new world order. Seizing the internet is a prudent way of controlling every piece of information that one experiences from cradle to grave; all necessary for an orderly police-state.
The Information Operations Roadmap (IOR) recommends that psychological operations (Psyops) "should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet." No idea is too costly or too far-fetched that it escapes the serious consideration of the Pentagon chieftains.
The War Dept. is planning to insert itself into every area of the internet from blogs to chat rooms, from leftist web sites to editorial commentary. The objective is to challenge any tidbit of information that appears on the web that may counter the official narrative; the fairytale of benign American intervention to promote democracy and human rights across the planet.
The IOR aspires to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum" and develop the capability to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". (BBC)
Full spectrum dominance.
The ultimate goal of the Pentagon is to create an internet-paradigm that corresponds to the corporate mainstream model, devoid of imagination or divergent points of view. They envision an internet that is increasingly restricted by the gluttonous influence of industry and its vast "tapestry of lies."
The internet is the modern-day marketplace of ideas, an invaluable resource for human curiosity and organized resistance. It provides a direct link between the explosive power of ideas and engaged citizen involvement (a.k.a. participatory democracy).
The Pentagon is laying the groundwork for privatizing the internet so the information-revolution can be transformed into an information-tyranny, extending to all areas of communications and serving the exclusive interests of a few well-heeled American plutocrats.
(After this article was finished the Associated Press reported that, "The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.
Bloggers?
Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."
"Misinformation campaigns"? "Political rantings"? "Musings about current events"?
The resolve to foreclose on free speech has never been stronger and continues apace.)
The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=24849
In the old days, anything published had to be licensed; it wasn’t until the Revolution Settlement in England that the term “a free press” had any meaning at all in the English-speaking world. That the press is really free is still questionable, sure. The governments all exercise a certain amount of censorship on what’s printed. Most of the control is through economics; it costs a lot of money to put out a newspaper or a magazine, so money sources exercise a lot of control. The government does it indirectly. It's true there's not much overt control, but when there’s a war, there’s a lot. Radio and TV, of course, are licensed and controlled. Now we have the internet.
Marshall McLuhan said the “hottest” —most powerful— media are the ones that are the biggest threats to the established order. There’s no doubt the internet is the hottest, because that’s where the authoritarians are applying pressure.
Mike Whitney: 'The Pentagon's war on the Internet'
Date: Tuesday, February 14 @ 10:13:57 EST
Topic: The Military
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=24849
Mike Whitney
The Pentagon has developed a comprehensive strategy for taking over the internet and controlling the free flow of information. The plan appears in a recently declassified document, "The Information Operations Roadmap", which was provided under the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and revealed in an article by the BBC.
The Pentagon sees the internet in terms of a military adversary that poses a vital threat to its stated mission of global domination. This explains the confrontational language in the document which speaks of "fighting the net"; implying that the internet is the equivalent of "an enemy weapons system."
The Defense Dept. places a high-value on controlling information. The new program illustrates their determination to establish the parameters of free speech.
The Pentagon sees information as essential in manipulating public perceptions and, thus, a crucial tool in eliciting support for unpopular policies. The recent revelations of the military placing propaganda in the foreign press demonstrate the importance that is given to co-opting public opinion.
Information-warfare is used to create an impenetrable cloud around the activities of government so that decisions can be made without dissent. The smokescreen of deception that encompasses the Bush administration has less to do with prevaricating politicians than it does with a clearly articulated policy of obfuscation. "The Information Operations Roadmap" is solely intended to undermine the principle of an informed citizenry.
The Pentagon's focus on the internet tells us a great deal about the mainstream media and its connection to the political establishment.
Why, for example, would the Pentagon see the internet as a greater threat than the mainstream media, where an estimated 75% of Americans get their news?
The reason is clear; because the MSM is already a fully-integrated part of the corporate-system providing a 24 hour per day streaming of business-friendly news. Today's MSM operates as a de-facto franchise of the Pentagon, a reliable and sophisticated propagandist for Washington's wars of aggression and political subterfuge.
The internet, on the other hand, is the last bastion of American democracy; a virtual world where reliable information moves instantly from person to person without passing through the corporate filter. Online visitors can get a clear picture of their governments' depredations with a click of the mouse. This is the liberalization of the news, an open source of mind-expanding information that elevates citizen awareness of complex issues and threatens the status quo.
The Pentagon program is just one facet of a broader culture of deception; a pervasive ethos of dishonesty that envelopes all aspects of the Bush White House. The "Strategic Intelligence" Dept is a division of the Defense establishment that is entirely devoted to concealing, distorting, omitting and manipulating the truth.
In what way is "strategic intelligence" different from plain intelligence?
It is information that is shaped in a way that meets the needs of a particular group. In other words, it is not the truth at all, but a fabrication, a fiction, a lie.
Strategic intelligence is an oxymoron; a tidy bit of Orwellian doublespeak that reflects the deeply rooted cynicism of its authors.
The internet is a logical target for the Pentagon's electronic warfare. Already the Downing Street memos, Bush's bombing-threats against Al Jazeera, the fraudulent 2004 elections, and the leveling of Falluja, have disrupted the smooth execution of Bush's wars. It is understandable that Rumsfeld and Co. would seek to transform this potential enemy into an ally, much as it has done with the MSM.
The Pentagon's plans for engaging in "virtual warfare" are impressive. As BBC notes: "The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks." (BBC)
The enemy, of course, is you, dear reader, or anyone who refuses to accept their role as a witless-cog in new world order. Seizing the internet is a prudent way of controlling every piece of information that one experiences from cradle to grave; all necessary for an orderly police-state.
The Information Operations Roadmap (IOR) recommends that psychological operations (Psyops) "should consider a range of technologies to disseminate propaganda in enemy territory: unmanned aerial vehicles, "miniaturized, scatterable public address systems", wireless devices, cellular phones and the internet." No idea is too costly or too far-fetched that it escapes the serious consideration of the Pentagon chieftains.
The War Dept. is planning to insert itself into every area of the internet from blogs to chat rooms, from leftist web sites to editorial commentary. The objective is to challenge any tidbit of information that appears on the web that may counter the official narrative; the fairytale of benign American intervention to promote democracy and human rights across the planet.
The IOR aspires to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum" and develop the capability to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". (BBC)
Full spectrum dominance.
The ultimate goal of the Pentagon is to create an internet-paradigm that corresponds to the corporate mainstream model, devoid of imagination or divergent points of view. They envision an internet that is increasingly restricted by the gluttonous influence of industry and its vast "tapestry of lies."
The internet is the modern-day marketplace of ideas, an invaluable resource for human curiosity and organized resistance. It provides a direct link between the explosive power of ideas and engaged citizen involvement (a.k.a. participatory democracy).
The Pentagon is laying the groundwork for privatizing the internet so the information-revolution can be transformed into an information-tyranny, extending to all areas of communications and serving the exclusive interests of a few well-heeled American plutocrats.
(After this article was finished the Associated Press reported that, "The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.
Bloggers?
Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."
"Misinformation campaigns"? "Political rantings"? "Musings about current events"?
The resolve to foreclose on free speech has never been stronger and continues apace.)
The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=24849
Monday, February 13, 2006
Democrats Being Blackmailed?
After trying to figure it out for weeks, I found this piece about why the Democrats are so squishy about blasting Bush. I mean, I thought, maybe, yeah, they’re so dirty they can’t do anything, but, naah, they really do want to win in November...
Well, maybe they do, but does anyone believe the Republicans are so moral they wouldn’t blackmail the opposition?
Not me.
Paul Craig Roberts:
http://newsforreal.com/
...We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people. Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives.
Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.
Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.
The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. The "liberal press" has been co-opted. As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush administration, suppressing for an entire year the news that the Bush administration was illegally spying on American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore's speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush administration.
The TV networks mimic Fox News' faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.
The years of illegal spying have given the Bush administration power over the media and the opposition. Journalists and Democratic politicians don't want to have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in headlines in the local press with their names attached. Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand up for the country.
Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our protectors. They undermine our protection by trashing the Constitution and the civil liberties it guarantees. Those with a tyrannical turn of mind have always used fear and hysteria to overcome obstacles to their power and to gain new means of silencing opposition.
Consider the no-fly list. This list has no purpose whatsoever but to harass and disrupt the livelihoods of Bush's critics. If a known terrorist were to show up at check-in, he would be arrested and taken into custody, not told that he could not fly. What sense does it make to tell someone who is not subject to arrest and who has cleared screening that he or she cannot fly? How is this person any more dangerous than any other passenger?
If Senator Ted Kennedy, a famous senator with two martyred brothers, can be put on a no-fly list, as he was for several weeks, anyone can be put on the list. The list has no accountability. People on the list cannot even find out why they are on the list. There is no recourse, no procedure for correcting mistakes.
I am certain that there are more Bush critics on the list than there are terrorists. According to reports, the list now comprises 80,000 names! This number must greatly dwarf the total number of terrorists in the world and certainly the number of known terrorists.
How long before members of the opposition party, should there be one, find that they cannot return to Washington for important votes, because they have been placed on the no-fly list? What oversight does Congress or a panel of federal judges exercise over the list to make sure there are valid reasons for placing people on the list?
If the government can have a no-fly list, it can have a no-drive list. The Iraqi resistance has demonstrated the destructive potential of car bombs. If we are to believe the government's story about the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh showed that a rental truck bomb could destroy a large office building. Indeed, what is to prevent the government from having a list of people who are not allowed to leave their homes? If the Bush administration can continue its policy of picking up people anywhere in the world and detaining them indefinitely without having to show any evidence for their detention, it can do whatever it wishes.
Many readers have told me, some gleefully, that I will be placed on the no-fly list along with all other outspoken critics of the growth in unaccountable executive power and war based on lies and deception. It is just a matter of time. Unchecked, unaccountable power grows more audacious by the day.
Congress and the media have no fight in them, and neither, apparently, do the American people. Considering the feebleness of the opposition, perhaps the best strategy is for the opposition to shut up, not merely for our own safety but, more importantly, to remove any impediments to Bush administration self-destruction.
The sooner the Bush administration realizes its goals of attacking Iran, Syria, and the Shia militias in Lebanon, the more likely the administration will collapse in the maelstrom before it achieves a viable police state. Hamas' victory in the recent Palestinian elections indicates that Muslim outrage over further US aggression in the Middle East has the potential to produce uprisings in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Not even Karl Rove and Fox "News" could spin Bush out of the catastrophe.
Debate is dead in America for two reasons: One is that the media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or their advertising revenues by becoming "controversial." The media follows a safe line and purveys only politically correct information. The other reason is that Americans today are no longer enthralled by debate. They just want to hear what they want to hear. The right-wing, left-wing, and libertarians alike preach to the faithful. Democracy cannot succeed when there is no debate.
Americans need to understand that many interests are using the "war on terror" to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the "war on terror" to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neocons are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to remove constraints on their powers and to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule--theirs. The Bush administration is using the war to avoid accountability and evade constraints on executive powers. Arms industries, or what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," are using the war to fatten profits. Terrorism experts are using the war to gain visibility. Security firms are using it to gain customers. Readers can add to this list at will. The lack of debate gives carte blanche to these agendas.
One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it.
Well, maybe they do, but does anyone believe the Republicans are so moral they wouldn’t blackmail the opposition?
Not me.
Paul Craig Roberts:
http://newsforreal.com/
...We have reached a point where the Bush administration is determined to totally eclipse the people. Bewitched by neoconservatives and lustful for power, the Bush administration and the Republican Party are aligning themselves firmly against the American people. Their first victims, of course, were the true conservatives.
Having eliminated internal opposition, the Bush administration is now using blackmail obtained through illegal spying on American citizens to silence the media and the opposition party.
Before flinching at my assertion of blackmail, ask yourself why President Bush refuses to obey the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The purpose of the FISA court is to ensure that administrations do not spy for partisan political reasons. The warrant requirement is to ensure that a panel of independent federal judges hears a legitimate reason for the spying, thus protecting a president from the temptation to abuse the powers of government. The only reason for the Bush administration to evade the court is that the Bush administration had no legitimate reasons for its spying. This should be obvious even to a naif.
The United States is undergoing a coup against the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. The "liberal press" has been co-opted. As everyone must know by now, the New York Times has totally failed its First Amendment obligations, allowing Judith Miller to make war propaganda for the Bush administration, suppressing for an entire year the news that the Bush administration was illegally spying on American citizens, and denying coverage to Al Gore's speech that challenged the criminal deeds of the Bush administration.
The TV networks mimic Fox News' faux patriotism. Anyone who depends on print, TV, or right-wing talk radio media is totally misinformed. The Bush administration has achieved a de facto Ministry of Propaganda.
The years of illegal spying have given the Bush administration power over the media and the opposition. Journalists and Democratic politicians don't want to have their adulterous affairs broadcast over television or to see their favorite online porn sites revealed in headlines in the local press with their names attached. Only people willing to risk such disclosures can stand up for the country.
Homeland Security and the Patriot Act are not our protectors. They undermine our protection by trashing the Constitution and the civil liberties it guarantees. Those with a tyrannical turn of mind have always used fear and hysteria to overcome obstacles to their power and to gain new means of silencing opposition.
Consider the no-fly list. This list has no purpose whatsoever but to harass and disrupt the livelihoods of Bush's critics. If a known terrorist were to show up at check-in, he would be arrested and taken into custody, not told that he could not fly. What sense does it make to tell someone who is not subject to arrest and who has cleared screening that he or she cannot fly? How is this person any more dangerous than any other passenger?
If Senator Ted Kennedy, a famous senator with two martyred brothers, can be put on a no-fly list, as he was for several weeks, anyone can be put on the list. The list has no accountability. People on the list cannot even find out why they are on the list. There is no recourse, no procedure for correcting mistakes.
I am certain that there are more Bush critics on the list than there are terrorists. According to reports, the list now comprises 80,000 names! This number must greatly dwarf the total number of terrorists in the world and certainly the number of known terrorists.
How long before members of the opposition party, should there be one, find that they cannot return to Washington for important votes, because they have been placed on the no-fly list? What oversight does Congress or a panel of federal judges exercise over the list to make sure there are valid reasons for placing people on the list?
If the government can have a no-fly list, it can have a no-drive list. The Iraqi resistance has demonstrated the destructive potential of car bombs. If we are to believe the government's story about the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh showed that a rental truck bomb could destroy a large office building. Indeed, what is to prevent the government from having a list of people who are not allowed to leave their homes? If the Bush administration can continue its policy of picking up people anywhere in the world and detaining them indefinitely without having to show any evidence for their detention, it can do whatever it wishes.
Many readers have told me, some gleefully, that I will be placed on the no-fly list along with all other outspoken critics of the growth in unaccountable executive power and war based on lies and deception. It is just a matter of time. Unchecked, unaccountable power grows more audacious by the day.
Congress and the media have no fight in them, and neither, apparently, do the American people. Considering the feebleness of the opposition, perhaps the best strategy is for the opposition to shut up, not merely for our own safety but, more importantly, to remove any impediments to Bush administration self-destruction.
The sooner the Bush administration realizes its goals of attacking Iran, Syria, and the Shia militias in Lebanon, the more likely the administration will collapse in the maelstrom before it achieves a viable police state. Hamas' victory in the recent Palestinian elections indicates that Muslim outrage over further US aggression in the Middle East has the potential to produce uprisings in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Not even Karl Rove and Fox "News" could spin Bush out of the catastrophe.
Debate is dead in America for two reasons: One is that the media concentration permitted in the 1990s has put news and opinion in the hands of a few corporate executives who do not dare risk their broadcasting licenses by getting on the wrong side of government, or their advertising revenues by becoming "controversial." The media follows a safe line and purveys only politically correct information. The other reason is that Americans today are no longer enthralled by debate. They just want to hear what they want to hear. The right-wing, left-wing, and libertarians alike preach to the faithful. Democracy cannot succeed when there is no debate.
Americans need to understand that many interests are using the "war on terror" to achieve their agendas. The Federalist Society is using the "war on terror" to achieve its agenda of concentrating power in the executive and packing the Supreme Court to this effect. The neocons are using the war to achieve their agenda of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Police agencies are using the war to remove constraints on their powers and to make themselves less accountable. Republicans are using the war to achieve one-party rule--theirs. The Bush administration is using the war to avoid accountability and evade constraints on executive powers. Arms industries, or what President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex," are using the war to fatten profits. Terrorism experts are using the war to gain visibility. Security firms are using it to gain customers. Readers can add to this list at will. The lack of debate gives carte blanche to these agendas.
One certainty prevails. Bush is committing America to a path of violence and coercion, and he is getting away with it.
Terrorism: Good For The Economy
The more we read (those of us who still read) about the rip-offs of funds in Iraq and New Orleans, the blunders in the TSA program, and cost over-runs on defense, the more obvious it becomes that the current administration is crooked. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush—when these guys die, they’re going to have to be screwed into the ground to be buried. These guys have their fingers in so many cookie jars... It’s like reading about the administration of U.S. Grant or Warren G. Harding—only there doesn’t seem to be any way to alibi them by saying they were just too naive and had unscrupulous friends. Birds of a feather, we know, flock together.
Terrorism: a president's best friend
Robert Scheer - Creators Syndicate
02.10.06 - Where would the Bush administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.
Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security -- 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively -- aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the president get away with blindly dumping another $120 billion into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?
In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36 billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president re-elected after promising to expand, rather than curtail health-care services to seniors.
Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.
These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the president insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his opprobrium, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that shill for him in the media, by doing just that.
To begin with, we must remember that this "war" was launched against an enemy, still mostly at large, who on Sept. 11 accomplished phenomenal destruction and suffering with armaments no fiercer or costly than some box-cutters. Their key weapon, in fact, was suicidal fanaticism.
Yet, rather than sensibly investing in aggressive global detective work, collaborating with our European allies, engaging meaningfully with an independent and skeptical Arab world, and working to protect vulnerable U.S. sites such as nuclear-power plants, our leaders decided to turn logic on its head and make ignorance about the enemy into a virtue, slash civil liberties and recklessly invade a major Muslim country that had no connection to the attacks.
In other words, our response to Sept. 11 has been almost completely military in nature, granting the Defense Department an excuse to increase spending by 48 percent in just four years. Yet, despite all this spending, and the loss of life that has accompanied it, our standing in the Muslim world has been in freefall since we invaded Iraq, we have never captured or killed Osama bin Laden or his top strongman, we don't know how to "fix" Iraq or Afghanistan and we have greatly strengthened the hand of our rivals in Iran.
We don't even know, as the Sept. 11 commission report revealed, much of anything about the 15 Saudi hijackers and their four leaders from other parts of the Arab world who committed the Sept. 11 attacks. We do know, however, that they weren't from Iraq, weren't funded by Iraq and weren't trained by or in Iraq. Nevertheless, the huge elephant in the Bush budget is the war and occupation of Iraq, now approaching its third anniversary, not the effort to dismantle al-Qaida.
"Since 2001, the administration ... liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan," boasts the Bush budget document. Ah, but if they have been liberated, then why the need for an additional $50 billion emergency "bridge funding" in 2007, itself coming on the heels of a supplementary $70 billion budget request last week? The answer provided by the report is that Iraq is far from being stabilized and that in Afghanistan "enemy activity has increased over the past year."
Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership in Congress is still unwilling to challenge the necessity of "winning" the war in Iraq, and as a result, its complaints about cutting needed domestic programs are framed exclusively as an argument against making Bush's tax cuts permanent. It is a losing argument, because it leaves Bush as both the big spender and the big tax-cutter once again, posturing as the savior of the taxpayer when he is in fact quite the opposite for all but the wealthiest Americans.
(c) 2006 Creators Syndicate
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20346
Terrorism: a president's best friend
Robert Scheer - Creators Syndicate
02.10.06 - Where would the Bush administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the president proposed to Congress on Monday.
Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security -- 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively -- aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the president get away with blindly dumping another $120 billion into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?
In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36 billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president re-elected after promising to expand, rather than curtail health-care services to seniors.
Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.
These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the president insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his opprobrium, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that shill for him in the media, by doing just that.
To begin with, we must remember that this "war" was launched against an enemy, still mostly at large, who on Sept. 11 accomplished phenomenal destruction and suffering with armaments no fiercer or costly than some box-cutters. Their key weapon, in fact, was suicidal fanaticism.
Yet, rather than sensibly investing in aggressive global detective work, collaborating with our European allies, engaging meaningfully with an independent and skeptical Arab world, and working to protect vulnerable U.S. sites such as nuclear-power plants, our leaders decided to turn logic on its head and make ignorance about the enemy into a virtue, slash civil liberties and recklessly invade a major Muslim country that had no connection to the attacks.
In other words, our response to Sept. 11 has been almost completely military in nature, granting the Defense Department an excuse to increase spending by 48 percent in just four years. Yet, despite all this spending, and the loss of life that has accompanied it, our standing in the Muslim world has been in freefall since we invaded Iraq, we have never captured or killed Osama bin Laden or his top strongman, we don't know how to "fix" Iraq or Afghanistan and we have greatly strengthened the hand of our rivals in Iran.
We don't even know, as the Sept. 11 commission report revealed, much of anything about the 15 Saudi hijackers and their four leaders from other parts of the Arab world who committed the Sept. 11 attacks. We do know, however, that they weren't from Iraq, weren't funded by Iraq and weren't trained by or in Iraq. Nevertheless, the huge elephant in the Bush budget is the war and occupation of Iraq, now approaching its third anniversary, not the effort to dismantle al-Qaida.
"Since 2001, the administration ... liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan," boasts the Bush budget document. Ah, but if they have been liberated, then why the need for an additional $50 billion emergency "bridge funding" in 2007, itself coming on the heels of a supplementary $70 billion budget request last week? The answer provided by the report is that Iraq is far from being stabilized and that in Afghanistan "enemy activity has increased over the past year."
Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership in Congress is still unwilling to challenge the necessity of "winning" the war in Iraq, and as a result, its complaints about cutting needed domestic programs are framed exclusively as an argument against making Bush's tax cuts permanent. It is a losing argument, because it leaves Bush as both the big spender and the big tax-cutter once again, posturing as the savior of the taxpayer when he is in fact quite the opposite for all but the wealthiest Americans.
(c) 2006 Creators Syndicate
URL: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20346
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Why Cheney went hunting?
Maybe Cheney was just practicing for the round-ups...
Patriot Daily
Find this page online at: http://www.patriotdaily.com/bm/blog/bush-tags-bloggers-as-ter.shtm
Posted 2-12-2006
2/12/2006: Bush Tags Bloggers As Terrorists!
(Cross posted at Daily Kos, Booman Tribune, My Left Wing and MyDD)
All bloggers should know that if the government views the substantive content of your blog as "activist calls" or "deliberate misinformation campaigns," then you may be a domestic "terrorist."
While not a surprise, given all that has transpired in Bush's term, it still was a shocker to read that bloggers are now "terrorists." The nature of blogger terrorist acts should be a concern for both liberal and conservative bloggers: "Deliberate misinformation campaigns" may well describe actions taken by right-wingers and "activist calls" describes actions by bloggers regardless of political affiliation.
Homeland Security completed its "Cyber Storm" wargame to test how our government "would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers." Given that homeland security ran the "wargame," one may infer that the nature of the attacks by bloggers must be national security related. And, given that the major national security fear of our government is terrorists, then it looks like bloggers have made our government's hit list of potential terrorists. But, what is the nature of this "terrorist crime" that was the subject of these wargames?
"Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."
There are other indications that the Bush administration deems bloggers well within the reach of any definition of terrorist, if for no other reason than the crime of dissent and criticism. There are also indicators that relevant parties would be somewhat prepared to assist in the nabbing of terrorist bloggers:
(1) In what may have been a precursor to US bloggers, the US military and government apparently were not offended (at least did not take any publicly disclosed action to free the blogger) when an Iraqi blogger was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned for the crime of reading comments on another blogger's website at a public café:
"Then finally I understood why I was there, after few hours. Security guards at the university had printed out all the websites I was reading while I was online there. They were accusing me of "reading terrorism sites" and "having communications with foreign terrorists".
"Do you know what these pages are?"
I looked at them and figured out they were the comment section of Raed in the Middle!!
I opened the comments section while browsing in the university, read some comments, and didn't even post anything. But these people don't seem to know what the internet is, and they don't speak English, so I was a major suspect of being an assistant of al Zarqawi maybe! Or that I have a terrorist group of my own, with foreign connections!
I was accused of terrorism, and sent to jail after they decided that I'm not helping myself because I am not helping them!!!
(2) US plans to data mine blogs for stated purpose of finding terrorist information to connect the dots to prevent a terrorist attack:
"The U.S. government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity."
(3) "The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chat rooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal."
(4) American Internet providers have assisted foreign countries to jail bloggers for substantive content posted on their blogs:
"Last December, Microsoft shut down the Web site of a dissident Chinese blogger. A few months earlier, Yahoo gave Beijing the name of a dissident Chinese journalist. He got ten years in jail for his Web postings. Ironically, Google's Chinese kowtow comes as the company is resisting efforts by the U.S. government for access to its records."
(5) Indymedia was a subject of a secret, international terrorism investigation in which US government seized its hard drives. A Texas Internet company turned over hard drives pursuant to a court order under an international treaty governing crimes of terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering.
(6) The MSM has shown its willingness to paint bloggers and any lefty journalists as the domestic evil axis of treasonists so that the American people will understand the need to arrest bloggers to make this country safe from terrorists.
(7) The CIA now has its own bloggers and a government website that are part of a revised CIA office for monitoring, translating and analyzing publicly available information. It is good news that the CIA is evaluating publicly available information in the fight against terrorism. The problem is we now know that when our government says "monitoring," it's not just al-Qaeda.
(8) The Bush administration refused to turn over control of the Internet to an international body, preferring to maintain unilateral control over the Internet. The fear is that "policy decisions could at a stroke make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable."
It should be noted that some of these indicators on their face are equivocal, but perhaps should be considered in the context of actions and policies of this administration. In this context, the Bush wagons are circling bloggers. And, once the perception is created that bloggers are a danger to national security, that perception is hard to unravel. The danger is that the American people will continue to follow Bush's lead like sheep frightened by the terrorist wolf.
Patriot Daily
Find this page online at: http://www.patriotdaily.com/bm/blog/bush-tags-bloggers-as-ter.shtm
Posted 2-12-2006
2/12/2006: Bush Tags Bloggers As Terrorists!
(Cross posted at Daily Kos, Booman Tribune, My Left Wing and MyDD)
All bloggers should know that if the government views the substantive content of your blog as "activist calls" or "deliberate misinformation campaigns," then you may be a domestic "terrorist."
While not a surprise, given all that has transpired in Bush's term, it still was a shocker to read that bloggers are now "terrorists." The nature of blogger terrorist acts should be a concern for both liberal and conservative bloggers: "Deliberate misinformation campaigns" may well describe actions taken by right-wingers and "activist calls" describes actions by bloggers regardless of political affiliation.
Homeland Security completed its "Cyber Storm" wargame to test how our government "would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers." Given that homeland security ran the "wargame," one may infer that the nature of the attacks by bloggers must be national security related. And, given that the major national security fear of our government is terrorists, then it looks like bloggers have made our government's hit list of potential terrorists. But, what is the nature of this "terrorist crime" that was the subject of these wargames?
"Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."
There are other indications that the Bush administration deems bloggers well within the reach of any definition of terrorist, if for no other reason than the crime of dissent and criticism. There are also indicators that relevant parties would be somewhat prepared to assist in the nabbing of terrorist bloggers:
(1) In what may have been a precursor to US bloggers, the US military and government apparently were not offended (at least did not take any publicly disclosed action to free the blogger) when an Iraqi blogger was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned for the crime of reading comments on another blogger's website at a public café:
"Then finally I understood why I was there, after few hours. Security guards at the university had printed out all the websites I was reading while I was online there. They were accusing me of "reading terrorism sites" and "having communications with foreign terrorists".
"Do you know what these pages are?"
I looked at them and figured out they were the comment section of Raed in the Middle!!
I opened the comments section while browsing in the university, read some comments, and didn't even post anything. But these people don't seem to know what the internet is, and they don't speak English, so I was a major suspect of being an assistant of al Zarqawi maybe! Or that I have a terrorist group of my own, with foreign connections!
I was accused of terrorism, and sent to jail after they decided that I'm not helping myself because I am not helping them!!!
(2) US plans to data mine blogs for stated purpose of finding terrorist information to connect the dots to prevent a terrorist attack:
"The U.S. government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity."
(3) "The CIA is quietly funding federal research into surveillance of Internet chat rooms as part of an effort to identify possible terrorists, newly released documents reveal."
(4) American Internet providers have assisted foreign countries to jail bloggers for substantive content posted on their blogs:
"Last December, Microsoft shut down the Web site of a dissident Chinese blogger. A few months earlier, Yahoo gave Beijing the name of a dissident Chinese journalist. He got ten years in jail for his Web postings. Ironically, Google's Chinese kowtow comes as the company is resisting efforts by the U.S. government for access to its records."
(5) Indymedia was a subject of a secret, international terrorism investigation in which US government seized its hard drives. A Texas Internet company turned over hard drives pursuant to a court order under an international treaty governing crimes of terrorism, kidnapping and money laundering.
(6) The MSM has shown its willingness to paint bloggers and any lefty journalists as the domestic evil axis of treasonists so that the American people will understand the need to arrest bloggers to make this country safe from terrorists.
(7) The CIA now has its own bloggers and a government website that are part of a revised CIA office for monitoring, translating and analyzing publicly available information. It is good news that the CIA is evaluating publicly available information in the fight against terrorism. The problem is we now know that when our government says "monitoring," it's not just al-Qaeda.
(8) The Bush administration refused to turn over control of the Internet to an international body, preferring to maintain unilateral control over the Internet. The fear is that "policy decisions could at a stroke make all Web sites ending in a specific suffix essentially unreachable."
It should be noted that some of these indicators on their face are equivocal, but perhaps should be considered in the context of actions and policies of this administration. In this context, the Bush wagons are circling bloggers. And, once the perception is created that bloggers are a danger to national security, that perception is hard to unravel. The danger is that the American people will continue to follow Bush's lead like sheep frightened by the terrorist wolf.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Going To War With Bloggers?
The TV and print journalists who tsk-tsk at bloggers and attempt to discredit them might take a look at this article. The government is taking bloggers seriously enough to see them as some sort of risk to the new amerikan order. Well, heck, the contracts are already signed for the “detention centers,” and the military has been playing urban war games in various U.S. cities, so this just all fits in.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/sns-ap-cyber-storm,1,2396329.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
U.S. Concludes 'Cyber Storm' Mock Attacks
By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press Writer
Published February 10, 2006, 7:37 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.
Bloggers?
Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.
The Internet survived, even against fictional abuses against the world's computers on a scale typical for Fox's popular "24" television series. Experts depicted hackers who shut down electricity in 10 states, failures in vital systems for online banking and retail sales, infected discs mistakenly distributed by commercial software companies and critical flaws discovered in core Internet technology.
Some mock attacks were aimed at causing a "significant cyber disruption" that could seriously damage energy, transportation and health care industries and undermine public confidence, said George Foresman, an undersecretary at the Homeland Security Department.
There was no impact on the real Internet during the weeklong exercise. Government officials from the United States, Canada, Australia and England and executives from Microsoft, Cisco, Verisign and others said they were careful to simulate attacks only using isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Services headquarters in downtown Washington.
The Homeland Security Department promised a full report on results from the exercise by summer.
Foresman likened his agency's role during any Internet attack to an orchestra conductor, coordinating responses from law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the military and private firms. The government's goal is a "symphony of preparedness," Foresman said.
Homeland Security coordinated the exercise. More than 115 government agencies, companies and organizations participated. They included the White House National Security Council, Justice Department, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Agency and CIA, which conducted its own cybersecurity exercise called "Silent Horizon" last May.
An earlier cyberterrorism exercise called "Livewire" for Homeland Security and other federal agencies concluded there were serious questions over government's role during a cyberattack depending on who was identified as the culprit -- terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers.
It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/sns-ap-cyber-storm,1,2396329.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
U.S. Concludes 'Cyber Storm' Mock Attacks
By TED BRIDIS
Associated Press Writer
Published February 10, 2006, 7:37 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.
Bloggers?
Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.
The Internet survived, even against fictional abuses against the world's computers on a scale typical for Fox's popular "24" television series. Experts depicted hackers who shut down electricity in 10 states, failures in vital systems for online banking and retail sales, infected discs mistakenly distributed by commercial software companies and critical flaws discovered in core Internet technology.
Some mock attacks were aimed at causing a "significant cyber disruption" that could seriously damage energy, transportation and health care industries and undermine public confidence, said George Foresman, an undersecretary at the Homeland Security Department.
There was no impact on the real Internet during the weeklong exercise. Government officials from the United States, Canada, Australia and England and executives from Microsoft, Cisco, Verisign and others said they were careful to simulate attacks only using isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Services headquarters in downtown Washington.
The Homeland Security Department promised a full report on results from the exercise by summer.
Foresman likened his agency's role during any Internet attack to an orchestra conductor, coordinating responses from law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the military and private firms. The government's goal is a "symphony of preparedness," Foresman said.
Homeland Security coordinated the exercise. More than 115 government agencies, companies and organizations participated. They included the White House National Security Council, Justice Department, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Agency and CIA, which conducted its own cybersecurity exercise called "Silent Horizon" last May.
An earlier cyberterrorism exercise called "Livewire" for Homeland Security and other federal agencies concluded there were serious questions over government's role during a cyberattack depending on who was identified as the culprit -- terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers.
It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies.
TSA Database Insecure; At Risk
Hospital files get cracked; credit card companies get cracked—and, now, there’s the potential for the airline passengers security database to get cracked. This means that the databases are not encrypted in a way that ensures non-entry. This system, flaws and all, cost $150 million. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, though: the entire government is so honey-combed with graft, on-the-cheap programs, good-ol’-boys, and stupidity it’s amazing it works at all. Of course, once something out of the ordinary happens—like a hurricane—it crashes like a bad computer program.
Nobody seems to notice, though, or care. It seems like what’s important is how well American Idol has-beens-that-never-were come out at the Grammys; or what the latest murder case is about. Maybe how the president got a new statue of himself put on display, or which lobbyist corrupted the most politicians. All of these things are flashes, little five-second blips that dazzle us; nothing lasts past tomorrow’s morning “news.” I guess it’s a sort of surrender to what’s perceived to be the inevitable; we’re powerless over our own government.
All we can do is hope that some benevolent hacker gets into the no-fly database and erases the whole system.
Passenger security check program scrapped
2/9/2006, 11:38 a.m. PT
By LESLIE MILLER
The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/politics-2/1139501389139840.xml&storylist=ortravel
WASHINGTON (AP) — An ambitious program to check every domestic airline passenger's name against government terrorist watch lists may not be immune from hackers, a congressional investigator said Thursday.
And because of security concerns, the government is going back to the drawing board with the program called Secure Flight after spending nearly four years and $150 million on it, the Senate Commerce Committee was told.
Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley did not say whether any security breaches had been discovered. An agency spokeswoman, Amy von Valter, told reporters, "We don't believe any passenger information has been compromised."
Cathleen Berrick, the investigator for the Government Accountability Office, said in written testimony that "TSA may not have proper controls in place to protect sensitive information."
Currently, airlines check the names of passengers against watch lists that the government gives them. Under Secure Flight the government would take over from the airlines the task of checking names against watch lists.
According to the GAO testimony, Secure Flight was given formal authority to go live in September, but a government team found that the system software and hardware had 82 security vulnerabilities.
Hawley told the committee that he has directed TSA's information technology staff to conduct a comprehensive audit of the program before developing it further.
"In view of our need to establish trust with all of our stakeholders on the security and privacy of our systems and data, my priority is to ensure that we do it right, not just that we do it quickly," Hawley said.
The audit began several weeks ago and there is no deadline for completion, von Walter said.
Secure Flight has been troubled from the start.
It is strongly opposed by civil libertarians who fear the program would grow into a massive domestic surveillance system in which the government tracks people whenever they travel.
Government auditors gave the project failing grades — twice — and rebuked its authors for secretly obtaining personal information about airline passengers.
Hawley said last month — and the GAO agreed in its testimony Thursday — that the agency hadn't yet determined precisely how Secure Flight would work.
Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told reporters he didn't think that Secure Flight should be held up by the GAO.
"I'm not really pleased," Stevens said. "They ought to stand back and give advice."
The Sept. 11 commission has urged the administration to expedite the development of the program because, it said, the watch lists currently used by airlines aren't complete.
But checking names against watch lists hasn't been as easy as it sounds, partly because airlines collect only limited information about passengers.
Also, the number of names on the watch lists increased into the tens of thousands since the Sept. 11 attacks. That problem has resulted in passengers from infants to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy being mistakenly told they couldn't fly because they have the same name as someone on the watch list.
The project has also drawn protests from privacy advocates and civil libertarians because its stated purpose has changed, often expanding.
Project managers once said that it would be used to track down violent criminals, and then backed down. They've also proposed using commercial data, such as that supplied by Choicepoint, to locate members of terrorist sleeper cells among people who buy airline tickets.
Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who manages the Web site UnSecureFlight.com, welcomed Hawley's announcement.
"Once again the vampire's been driven back into its coffin," he said. "Whether the administration is willing to shoot it with a silver bullet is another question."
___
On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Nobody seems to notice, though, or care. It seems like what’s important is how well American Idol has-beens-that-never-were come out at the Grammys; or what the latest murder case is about. Maybe how the president got a new statue of himself put on display, or which lobbyist corrupted the most politicians. All of these things are flashes, little five-second blips that dazzle us; nothing lasts past tomorrow’s morning “news.” I guess it’s a sort of surrender to what’s perceived to be the inevitable; we’re powerless over our own government.
All we can do is hope that some benevolent hacker gets into the no-fly database and erases the whole system.
Passenger security check program scrapped
2/9/2006, 11:38 a.m. PT
By LESLIE MILLER
The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/politics-2/1139501389139840.xml&storylist=ortravel
WASHINGTON (AP) — An ambitious program to check every domestic airline passenger's name against government terrorist watch lists may not be immune from hackers, a congressional investigator said Thursday.
And because of security concerns, the government is going back to the drawing board with the program called Secure Flight after spending nearly four years and $150 million on it, the Senate Commerce Committee was told.
Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley did not say whether any security breaches had been discovered. An agency spokeswoman, Amy von Valter, told reporters, "We don't believe any passenger information has been compromised."
Cathleen Berrick, the investigator for the Government Accountability Office, said in written testimony that "TSA may not have proper controls in place to protect sensitive information."
Currently, airlines check the names of passengers against watch lists that the government gives them. Under Secure Flight the government would take over from the airlines the task of checking names against watch lists.
According to the GAO testimony, Secure Flight was given formal authority to go live in September, but a government team found that the system software and hardware had 82 security vulnerabilities.
Hawley told the committee that he has directed TSA's information technology staff to conduct a comprehensive audit of the program before developing it further.
"In view of our need to establish trust with all of our stakeholders on the security and privacy of our systems and data, my priority is to ensure that we do it right, not just that we do it quickly," Hawley said.
The audit began several weeks ago and there is no deadline for completion, von Walter said.
Secure Flight has been troubled from the start.
It is strongly opposed by civil libertarians who fear the program would grow into a massive domestic surveillance system in which the government tracks people whenever they travel.
Government auditors gave the project failing grades — twice — and rebuked its authors for secretly obtaining personal information about airline passengers.
Hawley said last month — and the GAO agreed in its testimony Thursday — that the agency hadn't yet determined precisely how Secure Flight would work.
Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, told reporters he didn't think that Secure Flight should be held up by the GAO.
"I'm not really pleased," Stevens said. "They ought to stand back and give advice."
The Sept. 11 commission has urged the administration to expedite the development of the program because, it said, the watch lists currently used by airlines aren't complete.
But checking names against watch lists hasn't been as easy as it sounds, partly because airlines collect only limited information about passengers.
Also, the number of names on the watch lists increased into the tens of thousands since the Sept. 11 attacks. That problem has resulted in passengers from infants to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy being mistakenly told they couldn't fly because they have the same name as someone on the watch list.
The project has also drawn protests from privacy advocates and civil libertarians because its stated purpose has changed, often expanding.
Project managers once said that it would be used to track down violent criminals, and then backed down. They've also proposed using commercial data, such as that supplied by Choicepoint, to locate members of terrorist sleeper cells among people who buy airline tickets.
Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate who manages the Web site UnSecureFlight.com, welcomed Hawley's announcement.
"Once again the vampire's been driven back into its coffin," he said. "Whether the administration is willing to shoot it with a silver bullet is another question."
___
On the Net:
Transportation Security Administration: http://www.tsa.gov
Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Friday, February 10, 2006
Bush: Wannabe King Believes He Makes Law
The president is, to put it simply, lying through his teeth. He pulls these fabricated rabbits out of his Mall-Wart hat whenever the heat is turned on. It’s rumors about rumors. Justifications for justifications. Lies on top of lies.
American law is heavily in debt to English law. If you read about England’s “Glorious Revolution” of the 17th Century, you will learn that the King, James II, was deposed because he claimed that he made law, not Parliament; that he was above Parliament and it met at his pleasure and did his bidding. That wasn’t how it worked. The English, tories and whigs alike, ran his butt out of the country and installed William of Orange instead. William understood that Parliament was the source of law. It’s the same with the American Congress: Congress makes the law, not the king—er, president.
Bush is behaving as King James did, setting himself above Congress, making himself the source of law. It didn’t work in 1688, and it won’t work in 2006. It’s time to fire our wannabe king.
Zachary Abuza: 'Fast and easy with the LA terrorist plot'
Date: Friday, February 10 @ 10:09:26 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism
Zachary Abuza, The Counterterrorism Blog
There is something terribly disingenuous about the President's assertions today that a 9/11 styled attack on the West Coast was thwarted. The President, then later his Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend in a conference call with the press, argued that un-named Al Qaeda operatives arrested in un-named countries were actively planning the attack (though they would not say how far along it was) at an un-named time. All details are classified. How convenient. How un-verifiable for the public. The administration is simply trying to justify its blatantly illegal NSA wire-tapping program to the public. The failure of their legal arguments has been reduced to one point: we are defending America, so anything we do goes.
But was the President's example really an active plot? I have been studying JI for over five years now and it does not smell good. The facts and history just do not add up to what the president said:
"We now know that in October 2001 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks, had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, California."
Actually this is not new information. The 9/11 Commission Report makes very clear that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had proposed a 9/11 styled attack on the West coast to the Al Qaeda leadership, yet this proposal was rejected on two key grounds: First they wanted KSM to stay focused on the 9/11 attacks. There was concern that this was getting too complex. The Al Qaeda leadership thought that the New York and Washington attacks were sufficient. Second, there was a dearth of trained pilots within JI ranks. The President's assertion that "Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September the 11th, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sought out young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion," is true. KSM, who had worked with his nephew Ramzi Yousef in Southeast Asia in the mid 1990s, saw the potential of using Southeast Asian jihadis against America.
The president continued:
"To help carryout this plan, he tapped a terrorist named Hambali, one of the leaders of an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Southeast Asia called JI... Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan. Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden and then began preparations for the West Coast attack."
Fran Townsend stated that this "Absolutely" was stage two of 9/11:
Again there is absolutely no evidence in the public record that this transpired. Starting in December 2001 through January 2002, there were a series of arrests of members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Singapore and Malaysia. Just under 20 people were detained, giving regional authorities - as well as the US Government, their first real understanding of the terrorist organization. At the time, these cells were planning to blow up the US embassy and other commercial interests in Singapore; there is also evidence that they hoped to execute a USS Cole-styled attack against US naval vessels calling on the city state. As a result of these arrests Hambali held an emergency meeting in Bangkok that included 5 other people. All but one were members of JI, none were pilots. It was at this meeting that Hambali made the decision that JI should focus their energies on soft targets in which westerners would be the primary target. This of course led to the Bali bombings in October 2002. There was an AQ operative at the meeting, a young Kuwaiti-Canadian, KSM had recruited, Mohammad Mansour Jabarrah. He was arrested in Oman in March 2003, and had no pilot training.
Hambali then went on the run. He was in Thailand for a while and then Cambodia. He was plotting other attacks, including trying to recruit personnel for attacks against the APEC summit in Bangkok in mid-2002. Again, he did not have the resources to carry out the attack while on the run.
Who was the "key AQ operative" who was arrested in February 2002? There is no public record of this arrest having taken place. What about the other four cell members? Fran Townsend said two were South Asian, two were Southeast Asian. All have been detained, but she won't reveal their names or what countries they were arrested in. She mentioned that the four met with Bin Laden in Afghanistan where they pledged an oath of allegiance to the Sheikh before returning to Southeast Asia. When asked when this meeting took place Ms. Townsend revealed in October 2001; interesting timing seeing that US forces had just invaded the country.
Who were the trained pilots? And this is an important point. Because the President and Fran Townsend differentiated this from Richard Reid's shoe bombing plot in December 2001. Reid simply wanted to blow a hole in the side of the airplane to depressurize the cabin over the mid-Atlantic. But that was not the case here according to the President: the "operatives [planned to] hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door." JI, to my knowledge has no trained pilots.
It is true that one Singaporean member of JI, Mas Salamat Kastari plotted to hijack an Aeroflot jetliner in Bangkok and to crash it into Singapore, but the plan was on hold, Kastari was not a pilot, and one can assume that there was no one in the organization to assist him. Kastari then fled to Indonesia where he was later arrested.
How far along was this plot when it was "disrupted?" What was their level of operational planning? Were they close? Fran Townsend replied:
"We don't know exactly when the plot was scheduled for. The intelligence tells us that Khalid Shaykh Muhammad began to initiate it in October of 2001. We know that between then and when the lead operative was arrested in February of '02, between those two periods of time, they traveled through Afghanistan, they met with bin Laden, they swore biat, they came back, and the lead guy is arrested, which disrupts it in February of '02. So you see what I'm saying? It's during that short window of time, between October of 2001 and February of 2002, but we don't know when they planned -- we don't know when it was planned to actually be executed."
If this plot was real, then why has it taken 4 years to come to light? How come the names or cooperating countries can't be revealed? Why wasn't it played up at the time, especially in a region whose populations are vastly skeptical of the US-led war on terror?
The point that the President and Fran Townsend make about the transnational networks of affiliated jihadists is accurate. These groups do work together and coordinate; Al Qaeda is a network. To that end, cooperation with foreign intelligence and law enforcement services is essential.
But was the plot that the president described far enough along to pose a real threat? It is possible, but I have grave reservations. It is clear that JI and AQ had thought about replicating the 9/11 attacks. But there is no public evidence that the plot was operational at the time and there is no public evidence that the plot was thwarted because of NSA wiretaps that the administration seeks to justify. Like so much else from this administration, it is bits of cherry picked intelligence and facts that the President expects the public to buy hook line and sinker.
Source: The Counterterrorism Blog
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/02/fast_and_easy_i.html
The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=24800
American law is heavily in debt to English law. If you read about England’s “Glorious Revolution” of the 17th Century, you will learn that the King, James II, was deposed because he claimed that he made law, not Parliament; that he was above Parliament and it met at his pleasure and did his bidding. That wasn’t how it worked. The English, tories and whigs alike, ran his butt out of the country and installed William of Orange instead. William understood that Parliament was the source of law. It’s the same with the American Congress: Congress makes the law, not the king—er, president.
Bush is behaving as King James did, setting himself above Congress, making himself the source of law. It didn’t work in 1688, and it won’t work in 2006. It’s time to fire our wannabe king.
Zachary Abuza: 'Fast and easy with the LA terrorist plot'
Date: Friday, February 10 @ 10:09:26 EST
Topic: War & Terrorism
Zachary Abuza, The Counterterrorism Blog
There is something terribly disingenuous about the President's assertions today that a 9/11 styled attack on the West Coast was thwarted. The President, then later his Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend in a conference call with the press, argued that un-named Al Qaeda operatives arrested in un-named countries were actively planning the attack (though they would not say how far along it was) at an un-named time. All details are classified. How convenient. How un-verifiable for the public. The administration is simply trying to justify its blatantly illegal NSA wire-tapping program to the public. The failure of their legal arguments has been reduced to one point: we are defending America, so anything we do goes.
But was the President's example really an active plot? I have been studying JI for over five years now and it does not smell good. The facts and history just do not add up to what the president said:
"We now know that in October 2001 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks, had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, California."
Actually this is not new information. The 9/11 Commission Report makes very clear that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had proposed a 9/11 styled attack on the West coast to the Al Qaeda leadership, yet this proposal was rejected on two key grounds: First they wanted KSM to stay focused on the 9/11 attacks. There was concern that this was getting too complex. The Al Qaeda leadership thought that the New York and Washington attacks were sufficient. Second, there was a dearth of trained pilots within JI ranks. The President's assertion that "Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September the 11th, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sought out young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion," is true. KSM, who had worked with his nephew Ramzi Yousef in Southeast Asia in the mid 1990s, saw the potential of using Southeast Asian jihadis against America.
The president continued:
"To help carryout this plan, he tapped a terrorist named Hambali, one of the leaders of an al Qaeda-affiliated group in Southeast Asia called JI... Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan. Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden and then began preparations for the West Coast attack."
Fran Townsend stated that this "Absolutely" was stage two of 9/11:
Again there is absolutely no evidence in the public record that this transpired. Starting in December 2001 through January 2002, there were a series of arrests of members of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in Singapore and Malaysia. Just under 20 people were detained, giving regional authorities - as well as the US Government, their first real understanding of the terrorist organization. At the time, these cells were planning to blow up the US embassy and other commercial interests in Singapore; there is also evidence that they hoped to execute a USS Cole-styled attack against US naval vessels calling on the city state. As a result of these arrests Hambali held an emergency meeting in Bangkok that included 5 other people. All but one were members of JI, none were pilots. It was at this meeting that Hambali made the decision that JI should focus their energies on soft targets in which westerners would be the primary target. This of course led to the Bali bombings in October 2002. There was an AQ operative at the meeting, a young Kuwaiti-Canadian, KSM had recruited, Mohammad Mansour Jabarrah. He was arrested in Oman in March 2003, and had no pilot training.
Hambali then went on the run. He was in Thailand for a while and then Cambodia. He was plotting other attacks, including trying to recruit personnel for attacks against the APEC summit in Bangkok in mid-2002. Again, he did not have the resources to carry out the attack while on the run.
Who was the "key AQ operative" who was arrested in February 2002? There is no public record of this arrest having taken place. What about the other four cell members? Fran Townsend said two were South Asian, two were Southeast Asian. All have been detained, but she won't reveal their names or what countries they were arrested in. She mentioned that the four met with Bin Laden in Afghanistan where they pledged an oath of allegiance to the Sheikh before returning to Southeast Asia. When asked when this meeting took place Ms. Townsend revealed in October 2001; interesting timing seeing that US forces had just invaded the country.
Who were the trained pilots? And this is an important point. Because the President and Fran Townsend differentiated this from Richard Reid's shoe bombing plot in December 2001. Reid simply wanted to blow a hole in the side of the airplane to depressurize the cabin over the mid-Atlantic. But that was not the case here according to the President: the "operatives [planned to] hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door." JI, to my knowledge has no trained pilots.
It is true that one Singaporean member of JI, Mas Salamat Kastari plotted to hijack an Aeroflot jetliner in Bangkok and to crash it into Singapore, but the plan was on hold, Kastari was not a pilot, and one can assume that there was no one in the organization to assist him. Kastari then fled to Indonesia where he was later arrested.
How far along was this plot when it was "disrupted?" What was their level of operational planning? Were they close? Fran Townsend replied:
"We don't know exactly when the plot was scheduled for. The intelligence tells us that Khalid Shaykh Muhammad began to initiate it in October of 2001. We know that between then and when the lead operative was arrested in February of '02, between those two periods of time, they traveled through Afghanistan, they met with bin Laden, they swore biat, they came back, and the lead guy is arrested, which disrupts it in February of '02. So you see what I'm saying? It's during that short window of time, between October of 2001 and February of 2002, but we don't know when they planned -- we don't know when it was planned to actually be executed."
If this plot was real, then why has it taken 4 years to come to light? How come the names or cooperating countries can't be revealed? Why wasn't it played up at the time, especially in a region whose populations are vastly skeptical of the US-led war on terror?
The point that the President and Fran Townsend make about the transnational networks of affiliated jihadists is accurate. These groups do work together and coordinate; Al Qaeda is a network. To that end, cooperation with foreign intelligence and law enforcement services is essential.
But was the plot that the president described far enough along to pose a real threat? It is possible, but I have grave reservations. It is clear that JI and AQ had thought about replicating the 9/11 attacks. But there is no public evidence that the plot was operational at the time and there is no public evidence that the plot was thwarted because of NSA wiretaps that the administration seeks to justify. Like so much else from this administration, it is bits of cherry picked intelligence and facts that the President expects the public to buy hook line and sinker.
Source: The Counterterrorism Blog
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the_counterterrorism_blog/2006/02/fast_and_easy_i.html
The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=24800
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Free Speech As Long As You Don't Criticism Our Glorious Leaders
Two seperate articles with one common theme: suppression of free speech. I hear a lot about David Horowitz and his little bribe gig to get students to record “left-wing” speech by their college teachers; that’s bad enough, sure, but there’s more going on and it’s going on at the governmental level.
Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, time after time, talk about how questioning the government is actually aiding the “enemy.” It’s a blatant attempt to link dissent with sedition. Cicero did it; Nixon did it. Now the current administration is doing it. They’re encouraging it on a local level as well as a national platform.
The first piece is about teachers losing their jobs for speaking out. The second piece is a Veterans’ Administration nurse who found herself being questioned about “sedition,” for statements she made, not on the job, or as a VA employee, that questioned our glorious leaders.
Censorship? Sure. Just wait until the people who speak out find themselves being locked up. If all else fails, that’s what those authoritarian creeps in Washington will do.
Educators face blowback for protesting Iraq war in schools
02/09/2006 @ 12:25 pm
Filed by Carlos Miller
http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1866
Just over three years ago, as the nation readied for war with Iraq, elementary school teacher Deb Mayer stood in front of her class and uttered the word that would get her blacklisted from her profession.
Advertisement
It was a word that got her deemed “unpatriotic” by an angry parent. A word that led to her termination from the Bloomington, Indiana school district. A word that got her labeled as a potential sex offender and ruined her chances of finding work elsewhere.
That word was “peace.”
Today, after spending more than $50,000 in legal fees in a lawsuit against the Monroe County Community School Corporation, Mayer awaits a decision from a Reagan-appointed federal judge as to whether or not she will be granted a jury trial.
“If Judge [Sarah E.] Barker doesn’t grant us a jury trial, it would really be criminal,” Mayer said from her son’s home in Wisconsin, where she was forced to live after finding herself unable to support herself. “It means I would have spent all this money for nothing.”
Mayer is one of at least three teachers in the country who have filed lawsuits against their employers since the beginning of the war, claiming their First Amendment rights were violated after they were fired for what they said was an opposition to the war.
So far, one case has been settled out of court in favor of the teacher. In 2004, former New Mexico high school teacher Bill Nevins received a $205,000 settlement from the Rio Rancho School District. A year earlier, one of his students recited a poem over the school’s intercom system that questioned the war in Iraq. Nevins, a 10th-grade Humanities teacher, was also the coach of the Rio Rancho High School poetry team. His contract was terminated within months of the incident.
Professor says he was denied tenure for body count
In November 2005, Alan Temes, an assistant professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against the college after he failed to get tenure. Temes said he would post the body count of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians next to a bulletin board filled with pro-military imagery, which included the words “Operation Iraqi Freedom” next to a picture of the burning twin towers.
In the lawsuit, Temes claims he was warned by the department chair that he would not get tenure if he continued posting the body count next to the pro-war bulletin board. His last day at the college is in May and he’s been looking for work for several months with no luck. He has no regrets about what he did.
“If you’re going to push the war, at least be aware that the count of Iraqi civilians is growing at a phenomenal rate,” Temes said. “I figured the American people need to know the facts. I didn’t think the mainstream press was doing enough of a job.”
In Mayer’s case, she says it was an article in Time Magazine for Kids that lead to her termination. In January 2003, she was teaching a Current Events class to fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Clear Creek Elementary School. They had been discussing the articles in the magazine, which dedicated an issue to the situation in Iraq. One student asked Mayer if she had ever participated in a peace march.
“I said that peace marches are going on all over the country and that whenever I pass the courthouse square where the demonstrators were, I honk for peace because they hold up signs that say honk for peace.”
That night, a sixth-grade student girl told her parents that Mayer was encouraging them to protest against the war, igniting a furor that Mayer said she'd never before experienced in her 20-year teaching career.
Three days later, the girl’s father showed up to the school for a meeting with Mayer and principal Victoria Rogers. Mayer explained that she had simply explained to the children that there are two sides to the story. When the father asked if she had any children in the military, she told him her son had recently enlisted. But that only seemed to antagonize him even further.
“He kept getting angrier and angrier,” she said. “He stood up and started pointing his finger in my face. I felt very threatened.”
The father turned to Rogers with a request.
“I want her to promise never the mention the word peace in her class again,” Mayer remembered him saying.
Rogers assured him that could be done, and Mayer reluctantly agreed never to mention the word “peace” in her class again.
“I wanted to calm the parent down,” she said. “I didn’t want to be insubordinate.”
Later that afternoon in a faculty meeting, Rogers circulated a memo announcing the cancellation of “Peace Month,” a traditional month-long series of activities beginning on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that taught children how to settle differences through mediation.
“She said that we can talk about war, but not about peace,” Mayer said. “That for now on, nobody is allowed to have a stance on the war.”
Rogers, who declined to go into specifics about Mayer’s case, said that Peace Month was never cancelled but that it “died a natural death.”
“We felt we were working on it all year round,” said Rogers, who has since retired as principal of the school. “We were already working on life skills throughout the year so it became incorporated into what we were doing every day.”
But Peace Month was scheduled to begin less than two weeks before she sent out the original memo on Jan. 13, 2003 announcing the cancellation of the five-year tradition. Over the next few months, as President Bush declared Mission Accomplished and the country became increasingly divided, the angry father rallied other parents against the teacher.
Complaint filed on sexual harrassment form
At least two parent complaints against Mayer were typed up on Title IX Sexual Discrimination and Harassment grievance documents and placed in her personnel file.
“There was no substance to it,” Mayer said. “This complaint was very mysterious. I never saw it until I was disposed (in September 2005).”
That likely explains why she had been unable to find work since losing her teaching job on the Gulf Coast of Florida in 2005, where she had been hired as a teacher in Boca Grande, an upscale community and long-time retreat for the Bush family.
Mayer, who is certified to be an administrator, applied to be a principal when a position came open within the Boca Grande school district. But when they checked on her references, the sexual harassment complaint came to light.
“I did not get the principal’s job. I got fired again,” she said.
Even though it was typed on an official sexual harassment document, the actual complaint against Mayer accused her of “harassing” children because she would put up her hand to silence a child if the child had interrupted a conversation between herself and another student.
“The parent had signed it, but nobody on the school administration has signed it,” she said. “When we tried to find out who did it, nobody admitted to it.”
She then found another complaint against her on the same sexual harassment form, this one accusing her of announcing to the class about a student’s medication. Mayer denies the allegation.
When Mayer’s attorney looked into why the complaints were typed up on Title IX forms, they told him they had been writing all complaints against teachers on the federal forms for a decade.
Mayer contacted the ACLU about her case three years ago, but was told to hire an attorney if she could afford it.
“At the time I could afford it, but now I’m out of money,” she said. And when Indiana author Kurt Vonnegut heard of her case, he contacted the Indiana chapter of the ACLU on her behalf, but they refused to intervene. If anything, history is on her side. Not only did the teacher in New Mexico receive a $205,000 settlement in 2004, but a Wisconsin teacher had a similar victory in 1991.
During the first war in Iraq, high school teacher and wrestling coach Jim Low, opposed plans for a ceremony supporting the war in Iraq to be held before a wrestling match. When the ceremony continued as planned, Low walked out of the building, delegating his coaching duties to an assistant. When his contract was terminated two months later, Low sued the Lakeland Union High School District in Minocqua, claiming his First Amendment free speech rights had been violated. He subsequently received a settlement of $140,000 from the northern Wisconsin school district.
If Judge Barker grants Mayer a trial by jury, it would begin on Mar. 6. “Usually they give you at least a month’s notice as a courtesy, but February 6th already passed and I haven’t heard anything,” she said. “So I’m still waiting to hear from her.”
Mayer said her case is such a clear cut example of a First Amendment violation that she can not comprehend why it has not already been settled. “At first, the contention of the school was that my speech wasn’t protected because the war in Iraq wasn’t a matter of public concern,” she said. “Then they changed their contention and said that my speech wasn’t protected because the classroom wasn’t a public forum.”
She believes small-town politics may play a role. The teacher’s union refused to help her; Mayer notes that the principal comes from an “old family” and that she was married to the former president of the union.
But others have kept her spirits up. Mayer says Howard Dean, whom she had volunteered for in 2004, has taken an interest in her case and checks up on it periodically. And the local Air America affiliate in Wisconsin has set up a legal fund to help Mayer raise money for her court battle.
“If the judge rules against me, she will be saying that a teacher doesn’t have a right to free speech at school,” Mayer said. “If the classroom is not a public forum, then a teacher has no right to free speech.”
___________________________________
New Mexico ACLU wants apology to employee investigated on 'sedition'
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/38858.html#
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 1, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico wants the government to apologize to a nurse for seizing her computer and investigating her for "sedition" after she criticized the Bush administration.
The ACLU said Wednesday the Department of Veterans Affairs found no evidence Laura Berg used her office computer to write the critical letter.
VA human resources chief Mel Hooker said in a Nov. 9 letter that his agency was obligated to investigate "any act which potentially represents sedition," the ACLU said.
A VA spokesman in Washington could not say Wednesday whether the agency had received the ACLU's request.
It seeks an apology from Hooker "to remedy the unconstitutional chilling effect on the speech of VA employees that has resulted from these intimidating tactics."
Even if Berg had used an office computer, neither that nor her criticism approached "unlawful insurrection," said Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU.
"Is the government so jealous of its power, so fearful of dissent, that it needs to threaten people who openly oppose its policies with charges of sedition?" he said.
Berg, a clinical nurse specialist, wrote a letter in September to a weekly Albuquerque newspaper criticizing how the administration handled Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. She urged people to "act forcefully" to remove an administration she said played games of "vicious deceit."
She signed the letter as a private citizen, and the VA had no reason to suspect she used government resources to write it, the ACLU said.
"From all appearances, the seizure of her work computer was an act of retaliation and a hardball attempt to scare Laura into silence," the ACLU said.
Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, time after time, talk about how questioning the government is actually aiding the “enemy.” It’s a blatant attempt to link dissent with sedition. Cicero did it; Nixon did it. Now the current administration is doing it. They’re encouraging it on a local level as well as a national platform.
The first piece is about teachers losing their jobs for speaking out. The second piece is a Veterans’ Administration nurse who found herself being questioned about “sedition,” for statements she made, not on the job, or as a VA employee, that questioned our glorious leaders.
Censorship? Sure. Just wait until the people who speak out find themselves being locked up. If all else fails, that’s what those authoritarian creeps in Washington will do.
Educators face blowback for protesting Iraq war in schools
02/09/2006 @ 12:25 pm
Filed by Carlos Miller
http://rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1866
Just over three years ago, as the nation readied for war with Iraq, elementary school teacher Deb Mayer stood in front of her class and uttered the word that would get her blacklisted from her profession.
Advertisement
It was a word that got her deemed “unpatriotic” by an angry parent. A word that led to her termination from the Bloomington, Indiana school district. A word that got her labeled as a potential sex offender and ruined her chances of finding work elsewhere.
That word was “peace.”
Today, after spending more than $50,000 in legal fees in a lawsuit against the Monroe County Community School Corporation, Mayer awaits a decision from a Reagan-appointed federal judge as to whether or not she will be granted a jury trial.
“If Judge [Sarah E.] Barker doesn’t grant us a jury trial, it would really be criminal,” Mayer said from her son’s home in Wisconsin, where she was forced to live after finding herself unable to support herself. “It means I would have spent all this money for nothing.”
Mayer is one of at least three teachers in the country who have filed lawsuits against their employers since the beginning of the war, claiming their First Amendment rights were violated after they were fired for what they said was an opposition to the war.
So far, one case has been settled out of court in favor of the teacher. In 2004, former New Mexico high school teacher Bill Nevins received a $205,000 settlement from the Rio Rancho School District. A year earlier, one of his students recited a poem over the school’s intercom system that questioned the war in Iraq. Nevins, a 10th-grade Humanities teacher, was also the coach of the Rio Rancho High School poetry team. His contract was terminated within months of the incident.
Professor says he was denied tenure for body count
In November 2005, Alan Temes, an assistant professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania filed a lawsuit against the college after he failed to get tenure. Temes said he would post the body count of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians next to a bulletin board filled with pro-military imagery, which included the words “Operation Iraqi Freedom” next to a picture of the burning twin towers.
In the lawsuit, Temes claims he was warned by the department chair that he would not get tenure if he continued posting the body count next to the pro-war bulletin board. His last day at the college is in May and he’s been looking for work for several months with no luck. He has no regrets about what he did.
“If you’re going to push the war, at least be aware that the count of Iraqi civilians is growing at a phenomenal rate,” Temes said. “I figured the American people need to know the facts. I didn’t think the mainstream press was doing enough of a job.”
In Mayer’s case, she says it was an article in Time Magazine for Kids that lead to her termination. In January 2003, she was teaching a Current Events class to fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Clear Creek Elementary School. They had been discussing the articles in the magazine, which dedicated an issue to the situation in Iraq. One student asked Mayer if she had ever participated in a peace march.
“I said that peace marches are going on all over the country and that whenever I pass the courthouse square where the demonstrators were, I honk for peace because they hold up signs that say honk for peace.”
That night, a sixth-grade student girl told her parents that Mayer was encouraging them to protest against the war, igniting a furor that Mayer said she'd never before experienced in her 20-year teaching career.
Three days later, the girl’s father showed up to the school for a meeting with Mayer and principal Victoria Rogers. Mayer explained that she had simply explained to the children that there are two sides to the story. When the father asked if she had any children in the military, she told him her son had recently enlisted. But that only seemed to antagonize him even further.
“He kept getting angrier and angrier,” she said. “He stood up and started pointing his finger in my face. I felt very threatened.”
The father turned to Rogers with a request.
“I want her to promise never the mention the word peace in her class again,” Mayer remembered him saying.
Rogers assured him that could be done, and Mayer reluctantly agreed never to mention the word “peace” in her class again.
“I wanted to calm the parent down,” she said. “I didn’t want to be insubordinate.”
Later that afternoon in a faculty meeting, Rogers circulated a memo announcing the cancellation of “Peace Month,” a traditional month-long series of activities beginning on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that taught children how to settle differences through mediation.
“She said that we can talk about war, but not about peace,” Mayer said. “That for now on, nobody is allowed to have a stance on the war.”
Rogers, who declined to go into specifics about Mayer’s case, said that Peace Month was never cancelled but that it “died a natural death.”
“We felt we were working on it all year round,” said Rogers, who has since retired as principal of the school. “We were already working on life skills throughout the year so it became incorporated into what we were doing every day.”
But Peace Month was scheduled to begin less than two weeks before she sent out the original memo on Jan. 13, 2003 announcing the cancellation of the five-year tradition. Over the next few months, as President Bush declared Mission Accomplished and the country became increasingly divided, the angry father rallied other parents against the teacher.
Complaint filed on sexual harrassment form
At least two parent complaints against Mayer were typed up on Title IX Sexual Discrimination and Harassment grievance documents and placed in her personnel file.
“There was no substance to it,” Mayer said. “This complaint was very mysterious. I never saw it until I was disposed (in September 2005).”
That likely explains why she had been unable to find work since losing her teaching job on the Gulf Coast of Florida in 2005, where she had been hired as a teacher in Boca Grande, an upscale community and long-time retreat for the Bush family.
Mayer, who is certified to be an administrator, applied to be a principal when a position came open within the Boca Grande school district. But when they checked on her references, the sexual harassment complaint came to light.
“I did not get the principal’s job. I got fired again,” she said.
Even though it was typed on an official sexual harassment document, the actual complaint against Mayer accused her of “harassing” children because she would put up her hand to silence a child if the child had interrupted a conversation between herself and another student.
“The parent had signed it, but nobody on the school administration has signed it,” she said. “When we tried to find out who did it, nobody admitted to it.”
She then found another complaint against her on the same sexual harassment form, this one accusing her of announcing to the class about a student’s medication. Mayer denies the allegation.
When Mayer’s attorney looked into why the complaints were typed up on Title IX forms, they told him they had been writing all complaints against teachers on the federal forms for a decade.
Mayer contacted the ACLU about her case three years ago, but was told to hire an attorney if she could afford it.
“At the time I could afford it, but now I’m out of money,” she said. And when Indiana author Kurt Vonnegut heard of her case, he contacted the Indiana chapter of the ACLU on her behalf, but they refused to intervene. If anything, history is on her side. Not only did the teacher in New Mexico receive a $205,000 settlement in 2004, but a Wisconsin teacher had a similar victory in 1991.
During the first war in Iraq, high school teacher and wrestling coach Jim Low, opposed plans for a ceremony supporting the war in Iraq to be held before a wrestling match. When the ceremony continued as planned, Low walked out of the building, delegating his coaching duties to an assistant. When his contract was terminated two months later, Low sued the Lakeland Union High School District in Minocqua, claiming his First Amendment free speech rights had been violated. He subsequently received a settlement of $140,000 from the northern Wisconsin school district.
If Judge Barker grants Mayer a trial by jury, it would begin on Mar. 6. “Usually they give you at least a month’s notice as a courtesy, but February 6th already passed and I haven’t heard anything,” she said. “So I’m still waiting to hear from her.”
Mayer said her case is such a clear cut example of a First Amendment violation that she can not comprehend why it has not already been settled. “At first, the contention of the school was that my speech wasn’t protected because the war in Iraq wasn’t a matter of public concern,” she said. “Then they changed their contention and said that my speech wasn’t protected because the classroom wasn’t a public forum.”
She believes small-town politics may play a role. The teacher’s union refused to help her; Mayer notes that the principal comes from an “old family” and that she was married to the former president of the union.
But others have kept her spirits up. Mayer says Howard Dean, whom she had volunteered for in 2004, has taken an interest in her case and checks up on it periodically. And the local Air America affiliate in Wisconsin has set up a legal fund to help Mayer raise money for her court battle.
“If the judge rules against me, she will be saying that a teacher doesn’t have a right to free speech at school,” Mayer said. “If the classroom is not a public forum, then a teacher has no right to free speech.”
___________________________________
New Mexico ACLU wants apology to employee investigated on 'sedition'
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/38858.html#
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 1, 2006
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico wants the government to apologize to a nurse for seizing her computer and investigating her for "sedition" after she criticized the Bush administration.
The ACLU said Wednesday the Department of Veterans Affairs found no evidence Laura Berg used her office computer to write the critical letter.
VA human resources chief Mel Hooker said in a Nov. 9 letter that his agency was obligated to investigate "any act which potentially represents sedition," the ACLU said.
A VA spokesman in Washington could not say Wednesday whether the agency had received the ACLU's request.
It seeks an apology from Hooker "to remedy the unconstitutional chilling effect on the speech of VA employees that has resulted from these intimidating tactics."
Even if Berg had used an office computer, neither that nor her criticism approached "unlawful insurrection," said Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU.
"Is the government so jealous of its power, so fearful of dissent, that it needs to threaten people who openly oppose its policies with charges of sedition?" he said.
Berg, a clinical nurse specialist, wrote a letter in September to a weekly Albuquerque newspaper criticizing how the administration handled Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. She urged people to "act forcefully" to remove an administration she said played games of "vicious deceit."
She signed the letter as a private citizen, and the VA had no reason to suspect she used government resources to write it, the ACLU said.
"From all appearances, the seizure of her work computer was an act of retaliation and a hardball attempt to scare Laura into silence," the ACLU said.
Eat, or we'll ram it down your throat...
There’s something revolting about this. Strapping people in chairs and then sticking tubes in them may, according to the chief military spokesrat at Gitmo, be done “in a humane and compassing manner,” but somehow I doubt it. I think "sadistic" would be more descriptive. I think it is probably done in the crudest and roughest manner possible; Marine guards—or any other kind of guards in military facilities—are mean.
The New York Times
February 9, 2006
Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba
By TIM GOLDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/politics/09gitmo.html?th&emc=th
United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers.
The measures appear to have had drastic effects. The chief military spokesman at Guantánamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, said yesterday that the number of detainees on hunger strike had dropped to 4 from 84 at the end of December.
Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantánamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the detention center. Colonel Martin said force-feeding was carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner" and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. H e said in a statement that "a restraint system to aid detainee feeding" was being used but refused to answer questions about the restraint chairs.
Lawyers who have visited clients in recent weeks criticized the latest measures, particularly the use of the restraint chair, as abusive.
"It is clear that the government has ended the hunger strike through the use of force and through the most brutal and inhumane types of treatment," said Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, who last week visited the six Kuwaiti detainees he represents. "It is a disgrace."
The lawyers said other measures used to dissuade the hunger strikers included placing them in uncomfortably cold air-conditioned isolation cells, depriving them of "comfort items" like blankets and books and sometimes using riot-control soldiers to compel the prisoners to sit still while long plastic tubes were threaded down their nasal passages and into their stomachs.
Officials of the military and the Defense Department strongly disputed that they were taking punitive measures to break the strike. They said that they were sensitive to the ethical issues raised by feeding the detainees involuntarily and that their procedures were consistent with those of federal prisons in the United States. Those prisons authorize the involuntary treatment of hunger strikers when there is a threat to an inmate's life or health.
"There is a moral question," the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., said in an interview. "Do you allow a person to commit suicide? Or do you take steps to protect their health and preserve their life?"
Dr. Winkenwerder said that after a review of the policy on involuntary feeding last summer Pentagon officials came to the basic conclusion that it was ethical to stop the inmates from killing themselves.
"The objective in any circumstance is to protect and sustain a person's life," he said.
Some international medical associations and human rights groups, including the World Medical Association, oppose the involuntary feeding of hunger strikers as coercive.
Lawyers for the detainees, although troubled by what they said were earlier reports of harsh treatment of the hunger strikers, have generally not objected to such actions when necessary to save their clients.
The Guantánamo prison, which is holding some 500 detainees, has been beset by periodic hunger strikes almost since it was established in January 2002 to hold foreign terror suspects. At least one detainee who went on a prolonged hunger strike was involuntarily fed through a nasal tube in 2002, military officials said.
Since last year, the protests have intensified, a sign of what defense lawyers say is the growing desperation of the detainees. In a study released yesterday, two of those lawyers said Pentagon documents indicated that the military had determined that only 45 percent of the detainees had committed some hostile act against the United States or its allies and that only 8 percent were fighters for Al Qaeda.
After dozens of detainees began joining a hunger strike last June, military doctors at Guantánamo asked Pentagon officials to review their policy for such feeding. Around that time, officials said, the Defense Department also began working out procedures to deal with the eventual suicide of one or more detainees, including how and where to bury them if their native countries refused to accept their remains.
"This is just a reality of long-term detention," a Pentagon official said. "It doesn't matter whether you're at Leavenworth or some other military prison. You are going to have to deal with this kind of thing."
Military officials and detainees' lawyers said the primary rationale for the hunger strikes had evolved since last summer. In June and July, they said, the detainees were mostly complaining about their conditions at Guantánamo.
Several lawyers said that military officers there had negotiated with an English-speaking Saudi detainee, Shaker Aamer, who is thought to be a leader of the inmates, and that the detainees had agreed to stop their hunger strike in return for various concessions.
Military officials denied that such negotiations had occurred. But military officials and the lawyers agreed that when another wave of hunger strikes began in early August they were more generally focused on the indefinite nature of the detentions and that it was harder for the authorities there to address.
Colonel Martin said the number of hunger strikers peaked around Sept. 11 at 131, but added that he could not speculate about why other than to note that "hunger striking is an Al Qaeda tactic used to elicit media attention and also to bring pressure on the U.S. government."
Until yesterday, Guantánamo officials had acknowledged only having forcibly restrained detainees to feed them a handful of times. In those cases, the officials said, doctors had restrained detainees on hospital beds using Velcro straps.
Two military officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the question, said that the use of restraint chairs started after it was found that some hunger strikers were deliberately vomiting in their cells after having been tube-fed and that their health was growing precarious.
In a telephone interview yesterday, the manufacturer of the so-called Emergency Restraint Chair, Tom Hogan, said his small Iowa company shipped five $1,150 chairs to Guantánamo on Dec. 5 and 20 additional chairs on Jan. 10, using a military postal address in Virginia. Mr. Hogan said the chairs were typically used in jails, prisons and psychiatric hospitals to deal with violent inmates or patients.
Mr. Hogan said that he did not know how they were used at Guantánamo and that had not been asked how to use them by military representatives.
Detainees' lawyers said they believed that the tougher approach to the hunger strikes was related to the passage in Congress of measure intended to curtail the detainees' access to United States courts.
Federal district courts have put aside most lawyers' motions on the detainees' treatment until questions about applying the measure have been litigated.
"Because of the actions in Congress, the military feels emboldened to take more extreme measures vis-à-vis the hunger strikers," said one lawyer, Sarah Havens of Allen & Overy. "The courts are going to stay out of it now."
Mr. Wilner, who was among the first lawyers to accept clients at Guantánamo and represented them in a case in 2004 before the Supreme Court, said a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, told him last week that around Dec. 20, guards began taking away items like shoes, towels and blankets from the hunger strikers.
Mr. Odah also said that lozenges that had been distributed to soothe the hunger strikers' throats had disappeared and that the liquid formula they were given was mixed with other ingredients to cause diarrhea, Mr. Wilner said.
On Jan. 9, Mr. Odah told his lawyers, an officer read him what he described as an order from the Guantánamo commander, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood of the Army, saying hunger strikers who refused to drink their liquid formula voluntarily would be strapped into metal chairs and tube-fed.
Mr. Odah said he heard "screams of pain" from a hunger striker in the next cell as a thick tube was inserted into his nose. At the other detainee's urging, Mr. Odah told his lawyers that he planned to end his hunger strike the next day.
Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted.
"He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves," Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added. "Jum'ah understands that officers told the hunger strikers that if they challenged the United States, the United States would challenge them back using these tactics."
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
The New York Times
February 9, 2006
Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba
By TIM GOLDEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/politics/09gitmo.html?th&emc=th
United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
In recent weeks, the officials said, guards have begun strapping recalcitrant detainees into "restraint chairs," sometimes for hours a day, to feed them through tubes and prevent them from deliberately vomiting afterward. Detainees who refuse to eat have also been placed in isolation for extended periods in what the officials said was an effort to keep them from being encouraged by other hunger strikers.
The measures appear to have had drastic effects. The chief military spokesman at Guantánamo, Lt. Col. Jeremy M. Martin, said yesterday that the number of detainees on hunger strike had dropped to 4 from 84 at the end of December.
Some officials said the new actions reflected concern at Guantánamo and the Pentagon that the protests were becoming difficult to control and that the death of one or more prisoners could intensify international criticism of the detention center. Colonel Martin said force-feeding was carried out "in a humane and compassionate manner" and only when necessary to keep the prisoners alive. H e said in a statement that "a restraint system to aid detainee feeding" was being used but refused to answer questions about the restraint chairs.
Lawyers who have visited clients in recent weeks criticized the latest measures, particularly the use of the restraint chair, as abusive.
"It is clear that the government has ended the hunger strike through the use of force and through the most brutal and inhumane types of treatment," said Thomas B. Wilner, a lawyer at Shearman & Sterling in Washington, who last week visited the six Kuwaiti detainees he represents. "It is a disgrace."
The lawyers said other measures used to dissuade the hunger strikers included placing them in uncomfortably cold air-conditioned isolation cells, depriving them of "comfort items" like blankets and books and sometimes using riot-control soldiers to compel the prisoners to sit still while long plastic tubes were threaded down their nasal passages and into their stomachs.
Officials of the military and the Defense Department strongly disputed that they were taking punitive measures to break the strike. They said that they were sensitive to the ethical issues raised by feeding the detainees involuntarily and that their procedures were consistent with those of federal prisons in the United States. Those prisons authorize the involuntary treatment of hunger strikers when there is a threat to an inmate's life or health.
"There is a moral question," the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., said in an interview. "Do you allow a person to commit suicide? Or do you take steps to protect their health and preserve their life?"
Dr. Winkenwerder said that after a review of the policy on involuntary feeding last summer Pentagon officials came to the basic conclusion that it was ethical to stop the inmates from killing themselves.
"The objective in any circumstance is to protect and sustain a person's life," he said.
Some international medical associations and human rights groups, including the World Medical Association, oppose the involuntary feeding of hunger strikers as coercive.
Lawyers for the detainees, although troubled by what they said were earlier reports of harsh treatment of the hunger strikers, have generally not objected to such actions when necessary to save their clients.
The Guantánamo prison, which is holding some 500 detainees, has been beset by periodic hunger strikes almost since it was established in January 2002 to hold foreign terror suspects. At least one detainee who went on a prolonged hunger strike was involuntarily fed through a nasal tube in 2002, military officials said.
Since last year, the protests have intensified, a sign of what defense lawyers say is the growing desperation of the detainees. In a study released yesterday, two of those lawyers said Pentagon documents indicated that the military had determined that only 45 percent of the detainees had committed some hostile act against the United States or its allies and that only 8 percent were fighters for Al Qaeda.
After dozens of detainees began joining a hunger strike last June, military doctors at Guantánamo asked Pentagon officials to review their policy for such feeding. Around that time, officials said, the Defense Department also began working out procedures to deal with the eventual suicide of one or more detainees, including how and where to bury them if their native countries refused to accept their remains.
"This is just a reality of long-term detention," a Pentagon official said. "It doesn't matter whether you're at Leavenworth or some other military prison. You are going to have to deal with this kind of thing."
Military officials and detainees' lawyers said the primary rationale for the hunger strikes had evolved since last summer. In June and July, they said, the detainees were mostly complaining about their conditions at Guantánamo.
Several lawyers said that military officers there had negotiated with an English-speaking Saudi detainee, Shaker Aamer, who is thought to be a leader of the inmates, and that the detainees had agreed to stop their hunger strike in return for various concessions.
Military officials denied that such negotiations had occurred. But military officials and the lawyers agreed that when another wave of hunger strikes began in early August they were more generally focused on the indefinite nature of the detentions and that it was harder for the authorities there to address.
Colonel Martin said the number of hunger strikers peaked around Sept. 11 at 131, but added that he could not speculate about why other than to note that "hunger striking is an Al Qaeda tactic used to elicit media attention and also to bring pressure on the U.S. government."
Until yesterday, Guantánamo officials had acknowledged only having forcibly restrained detainees to feed them a handful of times. In those cases, the officials said, doctors had restrained detainees on hospital beds using Velcro straps.
Two military officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the question, said that the use of restraint chairs started after it was found that some hunger strikers were deliberately vomiting in their cells after having been tube-fed and that their health was growing precarious.
In a telephone interview yesterday, the manufacturer of the so-called Emergency Restraint Chair, Tom Hogan, said his small Iowa company shipped five $1,150 chairs to Guantánamo on Dec. 5 and 20 additional chairs on Jan. 10, using a military postal address in Virginia. Mr. Hogan said the chairs were typically used in jails, prisons and psychiatric hospitals to deal with violent inmates or patients.
Mr. Hogan said that he did not know how they were used at Guantánamo and that had not been asked how to use them by military representatives.
Detainees' lawyers said they believed that the tougher approach to the hunger strikes was related to the passage in Congress of measure intended to curtail the detainees' access to United States courts.
Federal district courts have put aside most lawyers' motions on the detainees' treatment until questions about applying the measure have been litigated.
"Because of the actions in Congress, the military feels emboldened to take more extreme measures vis-à-vis the hunger strikers," said one lawyer, Sarah Havens of Allen & Overy. "The courts are going to stay out of it now."
Mr. Wilner, who was among the first lawyers to accept clients at Guantánamo and represented them in a case in 2004 before the Supreme Court, said a Kuwaiti detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, told him last week that around Dec. 20, guards began taking away items like shoes, towels and blankets from the hunger strikers.
Mr. Odah also said that lozenges that had been distributed to soothe the hunger strikers' throats had disappeared and that the liquid formula they were given was mixed with other ingredients to cause diarrhea, Mr. Wilner said.
On Jan. 9, Mr. Odah told his lawyers, an officer read him what he described as an order from the Guantánamo commander, Brig. Gen. Jay W. Hood of the Army, saying hunger strikers who refused to drink their liquid formula voluntarily would be strapped into metal chairs and tube-fed.
Mr. Odah said he heard "screams of pain" from a hunger striker in the next cell as a thick tube was inserted into his nose. At the other detainee's urging, Mr. Odah told his lawyers that he planned to end his hunger strike the next day.
Another lawyer, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, said one of his three Bahraini clients, Jum'ah al-Dossari, told him about 10 days ago that more than half of a group of 34 long-term hunger strikers had abandoned their protest after being strapped in restraint chairs and having their feeding tubes inserted and removed so violently that some bled or fainted.
"He said that during these force feedings too much food was given deliberately, which caused diarrhea and in some cases caused detainees to defecate on themselves," Mr. Colangelo-Bryan added. "Jum'ah understands that officers told the hunger strikers that if they challenged the United States, the United States would challenge them back using these tactics."
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Ambramoff Bush photos
FISA And The Bush-Cheney Coup
Bush-Cheney love secrecy. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is something from the Middle Ages. It’s almost totally secret and dances along a thin edge between legality and illegality. It would seem the government intelligence agencies have a wee bit of trouble telling the difference between what is legal and what isn’t. As does the administration.
The administration has by-passed the court not because of expediency, I believe, but as an assertion of raw and total power. The executive branch has seized that power. I worry about whether or not Congress will do something about that seizure. How do you undo a low-key coup?
Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data
Program May Have Led Improperly to Warrants
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802511.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006; A01
Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.
The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.
The two heads of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were the only judges in the country briefed by the administration on Bush's program. The president's secret order, issued sometime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and contacts overseas.
James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, discovered in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information. He alerted Kollar-Kotelly, who complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the sources said.
Yet another problem in a 2005 warrant application prompted Kollar-Kotelly to issue a stern order to government lawyers to create a better firewall or face more difficulty obtaining warrants.
The two judges' discomfort with the NSA spying program was previously known. But this new account reveals the depth of their doubts about its legality and their behind-the-scenes efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence. The new accounts also show the degree to which Baker, a top intelligence expert at Justice, shared their reservations and aided the judges.
Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president's program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional, according to sources familiar with their actions. Yet the judges believed they did not have the authority to rule on the president's power to order the eavesdropping, government sources said, and focused instead on protecting the integrity of the FISA process.
It was an odd position for the presiding judges of the FISA court, the secret panel created in 1978 in response to a public outcry over warrantless domestic spying by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The court's appointees, chosen by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, were generally veteran jurists with a pro-government bent, and their classified work is considered a powerful tool for catching spies and terrorists.
The FISA court secretly grants warrants for wiretaps, telephone record traces and physical searches to the Justice Department, whose lawyers must show they have probable cause to believe that a person in the United States is the agent of a foreign power or government. Between 1979 and 2004, it approved 18,748 warrants and rejected five.
Lamberth, the presiding judge at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Kollar-Kotelly, who took over in May 2002, have repeatedly declined to comment on the program or their efforts to protect the FISA court. A Justice Department spokesman also declined to comment.
Both presiding judges agreed not to disclose the secret program to the 10 other FISA judges, who routinely handled some of the government's most highly classified secrets.
So early in 2002, the wary court and government lawyers developed a compromise. Any case in which the government listened to someone's calls without a warrant, and later developed information to seek a FISA warrant for that same suspect, was to be carefully "tagged" as having involved some NSA information. Generally, there were fewer than 10 cases each year, the sources said.
According to government officials familiar with the program, the presiding FISA judges insisted that information obtained through NSA surveillance not form the basis for obtaining a warrant and that, instead, independently gathered information provide the justification for FISA monitoring in such cases. They also insisted that these cases be presented only to the presiding judge.
Lamberth and Kollar-Kotelly derived significant comfort from the trust they had in Baker, the government's liaison to the FISA court. He was a stickler-for-rules career lawyer steeped in foreign intelligence law, and had served as deputy director of the office before becoming the chief in 2001.
Baker also had privately expressed hesitation to his bosses about whether the domestic spying program conflicted with the FISA law, a government official said. Justice higher-ups viewed him as suspect, but they also recognized that he had the judges' confidence and kept him in the pivotal position of obtaining warrants to spy on possible terrorists.
In 2004, Baker warned Kollar-Kotelly he had a problem with the tagging system. He had concluded that the NSA was not providing him with a complete and updated list of the people it had monitored, so Justice could not definitively know -- and could not alert the court -- if it was seeking FISA warrants for people already spied on, government officials said.
Kollar-Kotelly complained to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, and her concerns led to a temporary suspension of the program. The judge required that high-level Justice officials certify the information was complete -- or face possible perjury charges.
In 2005, Baker learned that at least one government application for a FISA warrant probably contained NSA information that was not made clear to the judges, the government officials said. Some administration officials explained to Kollar-Kotelly that a low-level Defense Department employee unfamiliar with court disclosure procedures had made a mistake.
Kollar-Kotelly asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to ensure that wouldn't happen again, government officials said.
Baker declined to comment through an office assistant, who referred questions about his FISA work to a Justice Department spokesman. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith also declined to comment and referred questions to Justice officials. Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department could not discuss its work with the FISA court.
"The department always strives to meet the highest ethical and professional standards in its appearances before any court, including the FISA court," Roehrkasse said. "This is especially true when department attorneys appear before a court on an ex parte basis, as is the case in the FISA court."
Shortly after the warrantless eavesdropping program began, then-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden and Ashcroft made clear in private meetings that the president wanted to detect possible terrorist activity before another attack. They also made clear that, in such a broad hunt for suspicious patterns and activities, the government could never meet the FISA court's probable-cause requirement, government officials said.
So it confused the FISA court judges when, in their recent public defense of the program, Hayden and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that NSA analysts do not listen to calls unless they have a reasonable belief that someone with a known link to terrorism is on one end of the call. At a hearing Monday, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the "reasonable belief" standard is merely the "probable cause" standard by another name.
Several FISA judges said they also remain puzzled by Bush's assertion that the court was not "agile" or "nimble" enough to help catch terrorists. The court had routinely approved emergency wiretaps 72 hours after they had begun, as FISA allows, and the court's actions in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks suggested that its judges were hardly unsympathetic to the needs of their nation at war.
On Sept. 12, Bush asked new FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in a Cabinet meeting whether it was safe for commercial air traffic to resume, according to senior government officials. Mueller had to acknowledge he could not give a reliable assessment.
Mueller and Justice officials went to Lamberth, who agreed that day to expedited procedures to issue FISA warrants for eavesdropping, a government official said.
The requirement for detailed paperwork was greatly eased, allowing the NSA to begin eavesdropping the next day on anyone suspected of a link to al Qaeda, every person who had ever been a member or supporter of militant Islamic groups, and everyone ever linked to a terrorist watch list in the United States or abroad, the official said.
In March 2002, the FBI and Pakistani police arrested Abu Zubaida, then the third-ranking al Qaeda operative, in Pakistan. When agents found Zubaida's laptop computer, a senior law enforcement source said, they discovered that the vast majority of people he had been communicating with were being monitored under FISA warrants or international spying efforts.
"Finally, we got some comfort" that surveillance efforts were working, said a government official familiar with Zubaida's arrest.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
The administration has by-passed the court not because of expediency, I believe, but as an assertion of raw and total power. The executive branch has seized that power. I worry about whether or not Congress will do something about that seizure. How do you undo a low-key coup?
Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data
Program May Have Led Improperly to Warrants
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802511.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 9, 2006; A01
Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events.
The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from their court, according to government sources, and both had been assured by administration officials it would never happen.
The two heads of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court were the only judges in the country briefed by the administration on Bush's program. The president's secret order, issued sometime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, allows the National Security Agency to monitor telephone calls and e-mails between people in the United States and contacts overseas.
James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, discovered in 2004 that the government's failure to share information about its spying program had rendered useless a federal screening system that the judges had insisted upon to shield the court from tainted information. He alerted Kollar-Kotelly, who complained to Justice, prompting a temporary suspension of the NSA spying program, the sources said.
Yet another problem in a 2005 warrant application prompted Kollar-Kotelly to issue a stern order to government lawyers to create a better firewall or face more difficulty obtaining warrants.
The two judges' discomfort with the NSA spying program was previously known. But this new account reveals the depth of their doubts about its legality and their behind-the-scenes efforts to protect the court from what they considered potentially tainted evidence. The new accounts also show the degree to which Baker, a top intelligence expert at Justice, shared their reservations and aided the judges.
Both judges expressed concern to senior officials that the president's program, if ever made public and challenged in court, ran a significant risk of being declared unconstitutional, according to sources familiar with their actions. Yet the judges believed they did not have the authority to rule on the president's power to order the eavesdropping, government sources said, and focused instead on protecting the integrity of the FISA process.
It was an odd position for the presiding judges of the FISA court, the secret panel created in 1978 in response to a public outcry over warrantless domestic spying by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. The court's appointees, chosen by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, were generally veteran jurists with a pro-government bent, and their classified work is considered a powerful tool for catching spies and terrorists.
The FISA court secretly grants warrants for wiretaps, telephone record traces and physical searches to the Justice Department, whose lawyers must show they have probable cause to believe that a person in the United States is the agent of a foreign power or government. Between 1979 and 2004, it approved 18,748 warrants and rejected five.
Lamberth, the presiding judge at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, and Kollar-Kotelly, who took over in May 2002, have repeatedly declined to comment on the program or their efforts to protect the FISA court. A Justice Department spokesman also declined to comment.
Both presiding judges agreed not to disclose the secret program to the 10 other FISA judges, who routinely handled some of the government's most highly classified secrets.
So early in 2002, the wary court and government lawyers developed a compromise. Any case in which the government listened to someone's calls without a warrant, and later developed information to seek a FISA warrant for that same suspect, was to be carefully "tagged" as having involved some NSA information. Generally, there were fewer than 10 cases each year, the sources said.
According to government officials familiar with the program, the presiding FISA judges insisted that information obtained through NSA surveillance not form the basis for obtaining a warrant and that, instead, independently gathered information provide the justification for FISA monitoring in such cases. They also insisted that these cases be presented only to the presiding judge.
Lamberth and Kollar-Kotelly derived significant comfort from the trust they had in Baker, the government's liaison to the FISA court. He was a stickler-for-rules career lawyer steeped in foreign intelligence law, and had served as deputy director of the office before becoming the chief in 2001.
Baker also had privately expressed hesitation to his bosses about whether the domestic spying program conflicted with the FISA law, a government official said. Justice higher-ups viewed him as suspect, but they also recognized that he had the judges' confidence and kept him in the pivotal position of obtaining warrants to spy on possible terrorists.
In 2004, Baker warned Kollar-Kotelly he had a problem with the tagging system. He had concluded that the NSA was not providing him with a complete and updated list of the people it had monitored, so Justice could not definitively know -- and could not alert the court -- if it was seeking FISA warrants for people already spied on, government officials said.
Kollar-Kotelly complained to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, and her concerns led to a temporary suspension of the program. The judge required that high-level Justice officials certify the information was complete -- or face possible perjury charges.
In 2005, Baker learned that at least one government application for a FISA warrant probably contained NSA information that was not made clear to the judges, the government officials said. Some administration officials explained to Kollar-Kotelly that a low-level Defense Department employee unfamiliar with court disclosure procedures had made a mistake.
Kollar-Kotelly asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to ensure that wouldn't happen again, government officials said.
Baker declined to comment through an office assistant, who referred questions about his FISA work to a Justice Department spokesman. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith also declined to comment and referred questions to Justice officials. Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department could not discuss its work with the FISA court.
"The department always strives to meet the highest ethical and professional standards in its appearances before any court, including the FISA court," Roehrkasse said. "This is especially true when department attorneys appear before a court on an ex parte basis, as is the case in the FISA court."
Shortly after the warrantless eavesdropping program began, then-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden and Ashcroft made clear in private meetings that the president wanted to detect possible terrorist activity before another attack. They also made clear that, in such a broad hunt for suspicious patterns and activities, the government could never meet the FISA court's probable-cause requirement, government officials said.
So it confused the FISA court judges when, in their recent public defense of the program, Hayden and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that NSA analysts do not listen to calls unless they have a reasonable belief that someone with a known link to terrorism is on one end of the call. At a hearing Monday, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the "reasonable belief" standard is merely the "probable cause" standard by another name.
Several FISA judges said they also remain puzzled by Bush's assertion that the court was not "agile" or "nimble" enough to help catch terrorists. The court had routinely approved emergency wiretaps 72 hours after they had begun, as FISA allows, and the court's actions in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks suggested that its judges were hardly unsympathetic to the needs of their nation at war.
On Sept. 12, Bush asked new FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III in a Cabinet meeting whether it was safe for commercial air traffic to resume, according to senior government officials. Mueller had to acknowledge he could not give a reliable assessment.
Mueller and Justice officials went to Lamberth, who agreed that day to expedited procedures to issue FISA warrants for eavesdropping, a government official said.
The requirement for detailed paperwork was greatly eased, allowing the NSA to begin eavesdropping the next day on anyone suspected of a link to al Qaeda, every person who had ever been a member or supporter of militant Islamic groups, and everyone ever linked to a terrorist watch list in the United States or abroad, the official said.
In March 2002, the FBI and Pakistani police arrested Abu Zubaida, then the third-ranking al Qaeda operative, in Pakistan. When agents found Zubaida's laptop computer, a senior law enforcement source said, they discovered that the vast majority of people he had been communicating with were being monitored under FISA warrants or international spying efforts.
"Finally, we got some comfort" that surveillance efforts were working, said a government official familiar with Zubaida's arrest.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Saudis Behind Cartoon Furor
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are beating the war drums against Syria and Iran. Whatever they can find becomes justification for their belligerance. So, of course, they lie about the current cartoon-gate, yelling at Syria and Iran to shape up. And Condi Rice, loyal to her masters in the Big White House, carries the lies to the world as well.
What a surprise! It’s our old ally, Saudi Arabia, that got things moving. Of course: they’re the most fundamental of Muslim fundamentalists; their financing has enabled the spread of fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world. They love Sharia. Fifteen of the nineteen highjackers on 9/11 were Saudis. Their women can hardly go out in public. Boy, what freedom-freaks are the Saudis—not.
But, we’re still tight with Saudi Arabia, despite everything. So we have to blame our current bad guys for the furor.
The New York Times
February 9, 2006
The Protests
At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 8 — As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.
The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions."
The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance. But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — was something of a turning point.
After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.
In recent days, some governments in Muslim countries have tried to calm the rage, worried by the increasing level of violence and deaths in some cases.
But the pressure began building as early as October, when Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.
"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference when the O.I.C. took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.
He said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction — of course they were offended — and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about.' "
The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.
At first, the agitation was limited to Denmark. Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons.
Mr. Akkari said the group had worked for more than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response. "We collected 17,000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no action," Mr. Akkari said, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons. He added that the prime minister's office had not even responded to the petition.
Frustrated, he said, the group turned to the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark and asked them to speak to the prime minister on their behalf. He refused them too.
"Then the case moved to a new stage," Mr. Akkari recalled. "We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world."
The group put together a 43-page dossier, including the offending cartoons and three more shocking images that had been sent to Danish Muslims who had spoken out against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.
Mr. Akkari denied that the three other offending images had contributed to the violent reaction, saying the images, received in the mail by Muslims who had complained about the cartoons, were included to show the response that Muslims got when they spoke out in Denmark.
In early December, the group's first delegation of Danish Muslims flew to Cairo, where they met with the grand mufti, Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.
"After that, there was a certain response," Mr. Akkari said, adding that the Cairo government and the Arab League both summoned the Danish ambassador to Egypt for talks.
Mr. Akkari denies that the group had meant to misinform, but concedes that there were misunderstandings along the way.
In Cairo, for example, the group also met with journalists from Egypt's media. During a news conference, they spoke about a proposal from the far-right Danish People's Party to ban the Koran in Denmark because of some 200 verses that are alleged to encourage violence.
Several newspapers then ran articles claiming that Denmark planned to issue a censored version of the Koran. The delegation returned to Denmark, but the dossier continued to make waves in the Middle East. Egypt's foreign minister had taken the dossier with him to the Mecca meeting, where he showed it around. The Danish group also sent a second delegation to Lebanon to meet religious and political leaders there.
Mr. Akkari went on that trip. The delegation met with the grand mufti in Lebanon, Muhammad Rashid Kabbani, and the spiritual head of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, as well as the patriarch of the Maronite Church, Nasrallah Sfeir. The group also appeared on Hezbollah's satellite station Al Manar TV, which is seen throughout the Arab world.
Mr. Akkari also made a side trip to Damascus, Syria, to deliver a copy of the dossier to that country's grand mufti, Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun.
Lebanon's foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, says he agreed to meet in mid-December with Egypt's ambassador to Lebanon, who presented him with a letter from his foreign minister, Aboul Gheit, urging him to get involved in the issue. Attached to the letter were copies of some of the drawings.
At the end of December, the pace picked up as talk of a boycott became more prominent. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, comprising more than 50 states, published on its Web site a statement condemning "the aggressive campaign waged against Islam and its Prophet" by Jyllands-Posten, and officials of the organization said member nations should impose a boycott on Denmark until an apology was offered for the drawings.
"We encourage the organization's members to boycott Denmark both economically and politically until Denmark presents an official apology for the drawings that have offended the world's Muslims," said Abdulaziz Othman al-Twaijri, the organization's secretary general.
In a few weeks, the Jordanian Parliament condemned the cartoons, as had several other Arab governments.
On Jan. 10, as anti-Danish pressure built, a Norwegian newspaper republished the caricatures in an act of solidarity with the Danes, leading many Muslims to believe that a real campaign against them had begun.
On Jan. 26, in a key move, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark, and Libya followed suit. Saudi clerics began sounding the call for a boycott, and within a day, most Danish products were pulled off supermarket shelves.
"The Saudis did this because they have to score against Islamic fundamentalists," said Mr. Said, the Cairo political scientist. "Syria made an even worse miscalculation," he added, alluding to the sense that the protest had gotten out of hand. The issue of the cartoons came at a critical time in the Muslim world because of Muslim anger over the occupation of Iraq and a sense that Muslims were under siege. Strong showings by Islamists in elections in Egypt and the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections had given new momentum to Islamic movements in the region, and many economies, especially those in the Persian Gulf, realized their economic power as it pertained to Denmark.
"The cartoons were a fuse that lit a bigger fire," said Rami Khouri, editor at large at the English-language Daily Star of Beirut. "It is this deepening sense of vulnerability combines with a sense that the Islamists were on a roll that made it happen."
The wave swept many in the region. Sheik Muhammad Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.
"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Sheik Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus in Christian countries. "I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries."
Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.
"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said. "It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."
Last week, Sheik Abu Zaid heard about a march being planned on the Danish Consulate in Beirut, and he decided to join. He and 600 others boarded buses bound for Beirut. Within an hour of arriving, some of the demonstrators — none of his people, he insisted — became violent, and began attacking the building that housed the embassy. It was just two days after a similar attack against the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus.
"In the demonstration, I believe 99 percent of the people were good and peaceful, but I could hear people saying, 'We don't want to demonstrate peacefully; we want to burn,' " the sheik said.
He tried in vain to calm people down, he said. "I was calling to the people, 'Please, please follow us and go back.' " he said. "We were hoping to calm people down, and we were hoping to help the peaceful people who were caught in the middle of the fight."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Craig S. Smith from Paris, Katherine Zoepf from Beirut, Suha Maayeh from Amman, Abeer Allam from Cairo and Massoud A. Derhally from Dubai.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
What a surprise! It’s our old ally, Saudi Arabia, that got things moving. Of course: they’re the most fundamental of Muslim fundamentalists; their financing has enabled the spread of fundamentalism throughout the Muslim world. They love Sharia. Fifteen of the nineteen highjackers on 9/11 were Saudis. Their women can hardly go out in public. Boy, what freedom-freaks are the Saudis—not.
But, we’re still tight with Saudi Arabia, despite everything. So we have to blame our current bad guys for the furor.
The New York Times
February 9, 2006
The Protests
At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized
By HASSAN M. FATTAH
BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 8 — As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue: Danish cartoons satirizing the Prophet Muhammad.
The closing communiqué took note of the issue when it expressed "concern at rising hatred against Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Muhammad in the media of certain countries" as well as over "using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religions."
The meeting in Mecca, a Saudi city from which non-Muslims are barred, drew minimal international press coverage even though such leaders as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran were in attendance. But on the road from quiet outrage in a small Muslim community in northern Europe to a set of international brush fires, the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference — and the role its member governments played in the outrage — was something of a turning point.
After that meeting, anger at the Danish caricatures, especially at an official government level, became more public. In some countries, like Syria and Iran, that meant heavy press coverage in official news media and virtual government approval of demonstrations that ended with Danish embassies in flames.
In recent days, some governments in Muslim countries have tried to calm the rage, worried by the increasing level of violence and deaths in some cases.
But the pressure began building as early as October, when Danish Islamists were lobbying Arab ambassadors and Arab ambassadors lobbied Arab governments.
"It was no big deal until the Islamic conference when the O.I.C. took a stance against it," said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University in Beirut, said that for Arab governments resentful of the Western push for democracy, the protests presented an opportunity to undercut the appeal of the West to Arab citizens. The freedom pushed by the West, they seemed to say, brought with it disrespect for Islam.
He said the demonstrations "started as a visceral reaction — of course they were offended — and then you had regimes taking advantage saying, 'Look, this is the democracy they're talking about.' "
The protests also allowed governments to outflank a growing challenge from Islamic opposition movements by defending Islam.
At first, the agitation was limited to Denmark. Ahmed Akkari, 28, a Lebanese-born Dane, acts as spokesman for the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, an umbrella group of 27 Danish Muslim organizations to press the Danish government into action over the cartoons.
Mr. Akkari said the group had worked for more than two months in Denmark without eliciting any response. "We collected 17,000 signatures and delivered them to the office of the prime minister, we saw the minister of culture, we talked to the editor of the Jyllands-Posten, we took many steps within Denmark, but could get no action," Mr. Akkari said, referring to the newspaper that published the cartoons. He added that the prime minister's office had not even responded to the petition.
Frustrated, he said, the group turned to the ambassadors of Muslim countries in Denmark and asked them to speak to the prime minister on their behalf. He refused them too.
"Then the case moved to a new stage," Mr. Akkari recalled. "We decided then that to be heard, it must come from influential people in the Muslim world."
The group put together a 43-page dossier, including the offending cartoons and three more shocking images that had been sent to Danish Muslims who had spoken out against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.
Mr. Akkari denied that the three other offending images had contributed to the violent reaction, saying the images, received in the mail by Muslims who had complained about the cartoons, were included to show the response that Muslims got when they spoke out in Denmark.
In early December, the group's first delegation of Danish Muslims flew to Cairo, where they met with the grand mufti, Muhammad Sayid Tantawy, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.
"After that, there was a certain response," Mr. Akkari said, adding that the Cairo government and the Arab League both summoned the Danish ambassador to Egypt for talks.
Mr. Akkari denies that the group had meant to misinform, but concedes that there were misunderstandings along the way.
In Cairo, for example, the group also met with journalists from Egypt's media. During a news conference, they spoke about a proposal from the far-right Danish People's Party to ban the Koran in Denmark because of some 200 verses that are alleged to encourage violence.
Several newspapers then ran articles claiming that Denmark planned to issue a censored version of the Koran. The delegation returned to Denmark, but the dossier continued to make waves in the Middle East. Egypt's foreign minister had taken the dossier with him to the Mecca meeting, where he showed it around. The Danish group also sent a second delegation to Lebanon to meet religious and political leaders there.
Mr. Akkari went on that trip. The delegation met with the grand mufti in Lebanon, Muhammad Rashid Kabbani, and the spiritual head of Lebanon's Shiite Muslims, Sheik Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, as well as the patriarch of the Maronite Church, Nasrallah Sfeir. The group also appeared on Hezbollah's satellite station Al Manar TV, which is seen throughout the Arab world.
Mr. Akkari also made a side trip to Damascus, Syria, to deliver a copy of the dossier to that country's grand mufti, Sheik Ahmed Badr-Eddine Hassoun.
Lebanon's foreign minister, Fawzi Salloukh, says he agreed to meet in mid-December with Egypt's ambassador to Lebanon, who presented him with a letter from his foreign minister, Aboul Gheit, urging him to get involved in the issue. Attached to the letter were copies of some of the drawings.
At the end of December, the pace picked up as talk of a boycott became more prominent. The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, comprising more than 50 states, published on its Web site a statement condemning "the aggressive campaign waged against Islam and its Prophet" by Jyllands-Posten, and officials of the organization said member nations should impose a boycott on Denmark until an apology was offered for the drawings.
"We encourage the organization's members to boycott Denmark both economically and politically until Denmark presents an official apology for the drawings that have offended the world's Muslims," said Abdulaziz Othman al-Twaijri, the organization's secretary general.
In a few weeks, the Jordanian Parliament condemned the cartoons, as had several other Arab governments.
On Jan. 10, as anti-Danish pressure built, a Norwegian newspaper republished the caricatures in an act of solidarity with the Danes, leading many Muslims to believe that a real campaign against them had begun.
On Jan. 26, in a key move, Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark, and Libya followed suit. Saudi clerics began sounding the call for a boycott, and within a day, most Danish products were pulled off supermarket shelves.
"The Saudis did this because they have to score against Islamic fundamentalists," said Mr. Said, the Cairo political scientist. "Syria made an even worse miscalculation," he added, alluding to the sense that the protest had gotten out of hand. The issue of the cartoons came at a critical time in the Muslim world because of Muslim anger over the occupation of Iraq and a sense that Muslims were under siege. Strong showings by Islamists in elections in Egypt and the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections had given new momentum to Islamic movements in the region, and many economies, especially those in the Persian Gulf, realized their economic power as it pertained to Denmark.
"The cartoons were a fuse that lit a bigger fire," said Rami Khouri, editor at large at the English-language Daily Star of Beirut. "It is this deepening sense of vulnerability combines with a sense that the Islamists were on a roll that made it happen."
The wave swept many in the region. Sheik Muhammad Abu Zaid, an imam from the Lebanese town of Saida, said he began hearing of the caricatures from several Palestinian friends visiting from Denmark in December but made little of it.
"For me, honestly, this didn't seem so important," Sheik Abu Zaid said, comparing the drawings to those made of Jesus in Christian countries. "I thought, I know that this is something typical in such countries."
Then, he started to hear that ambassadors of Arab countries had tried to meet with the prime minister of Denmark and had been snubbed, and he began to feel differently.
"It started to seem that this way of thinking was an insult to us," he said. "It is fine to say, 'This is our freedom, this is our way of thinking.' But we began to believe that their freedom was something that hurts us."
Last week, Sheik Abu Zaid heard about a march being planned on the Danish Consulate in Beirut, and he decided to join. He and 600 others boarded buses bound for Beirut. Within an hour of arriving, some of the demonstrators — none of his people, he insisted — became violent, and began attacking the building that housed the embassy. It was just two days after a similar attack against the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Damascus.
"In the demonstration, I believe 99 percent of the people were good and peaceful, but I could hear people saying, 'We don't want to demonstrate peacefully; we want to burn,' " the sheik said.
He tried in vain to calm people down, he said. "I was calling to the people, 'Please, please follow us and go back.' " he said. "We were hoping to calm people down, and we were hoping to help the peaceful people who were caught in the middle of the fight."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Craig S. Smith from Paris, Katherine Zoepf from Beirut, Suha Maayeh from Amman, Abeer Allam from Cairo and Massoud A. Derhally from Dubai.
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Ted Rall: the Bland Leading the Bland
This is from Ted Rall, a cartoonist and columnist I’ve got to like in the last few years—he’s one of those who stands up and tells the truth to power and conventional wisdom. This column is about the hoo-haw over the five-month-old cartoons from Denmark that have become such a flap. The Republican agit-prop machine has been having a field day over the behavior of the members of Islam. Like, we Americans, westerners in general, are way far above such behaviors.
When I lived, some years back, down in Southern Oregon, the Assemblies of God churches were pulling out all stops to get the movie “The Last Temptation of Christ” banned from every theatre in Jackson County. They almost did—only one movie theatre, in Ashland, dared show it. I knew a lot of members of the Assembly of God church, they were neighbors and almost friends (I even smoked dope with a few of them, drank with others), and they were utterly outraged that such a movie had been made. One or two of them thought it was because of the “Commies and Jews in the movie business.”
The Reverend Fred Phelps and his friends make the news regularly, protesting the funerals of gay people and warning of the wrath of (their version of) God. Many of us have seen the ugly protests of skinheads and white supremacists in various American cities and towns. Lynchings still happens. Yeah, we’re a lot more sophisticated, tolerant, educated, and whatever than those Ay-rabs. They burn flags! We burn their people. They have demagogues; we have Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson.
But, we don’t really want to go into that, do we?
THE BLAND LEADING THE BLIND
The Nanny Press and the Cartoon Controversy
http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20060207&uc_comic=ru
LAS VEGAS--Of course it was a provocation. In September, the editor of a right-wing Danish newspaper decided "to test cartoonists to see if they were self-censoring their work, out of fear of violence from Islamic radicals." Though some declined, 12 artists accepted the editor's invitation to make light of the Prophet Mohammed, and submitted work equating Islam with terrorism and the oppression of women, among other things.
Five months later editor Fleming Rose has learned that cartoonists have good reason to watch what they draw. Thousands of demonstrators, furious at the publication's violation of an Islamic stricture banning graphic depictions of the Prophet, marched through the streets of Cairo, Karachi, Istanbul, Teheran and Mehtarlam, Afghanistan, where at least five were killed by police. Gunmen took over the European Union office in Gaza. Mobs burned Danish flags and called for a Muslim boycott of Danish goods. Iran withdrew its ambassador from Copenhagen. Danes were ordered to flee Lebanon after mobs burned the Danish consulates in Damascus and Beirut, where they also trashed a Christian neighborhood. The Danish cartoonists, having been threatened with beheading, are presumably catching up on their Salman Rushdie while they weather the storm.
Adding fuel to the fire, said the Times, were "a group of Denmark's fundamentalist Muslim clerics...[who] took their show on the road" last fall, traveling around the Middle East showing a package that included cartoons that had never actually appeared in any newspaper, "some depicting Mohammed as a pedophile, a pig or engaged in bestiality." Newspapers in France, Germany and elsewhere further fanned the flames by reprinting the Danish drawings.
Being provoked, as I tell myself when I'm sitting next to Sean Hannity, doesn't justify reacting with violence. And as Kuwaiti oil executive Samia al-Duaij pointed out to Time, there are better reasons to torch embassies than over cartoons: "America kills thousands of Muslims, and you lose your head and withdraw ambassadors over a bunch of cartoons printed in a second-rate paper in a Nordic country with a population of five million? That's the true outrage."
As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can't decide who's a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies, or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of "free speech"--the same folks who call for the censorship and even murder of anti-Bush cartoonists here--as an excuse to join the post-9/11 Muslims-suck media pile-on. Most reasonable people reject both--but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America's self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.
"CNN has chosen not to show the [Danish Mohammed] cartoons out of respect for Islam," said the news channel.
"We always weigh the value of the journalistic impact against the impact that publication might have as far as insulting or hurting certain groups," said an editor at The San Francisco Chronicle.
"The cartoons didn't meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content," said the Associated Press.
Bull----.
If these cowards were worried about offending the faithful, they wouldn't cover or quote such Muslim-bashers as Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens or George W. Bush. The truth is, our national nanny media is managed by cowards so terrified by the prospect of their offices being firebombed that they wallow in self-censorship.
Precisely because they subvert free speech from within with their oh-so-reasonable odes for "moderation" and against "sensationalism," the gatekeepers of our national nanny media are more dangerous to Western values than distant mullahs and clueless neocons combined. Editors and producers decide not only what's fit to print but also what's not: flag-draped coffins and body bags arriving from Iraq, photographs of Afghan civilians, their bodies reduced to blobs of blood and protoplasm, all purged from our national consciousness. You might think it's news when the vice president tells a senator to "go f--- yourself" on the Senate floor, but you'd be wrong--only tortured roundabout descriptions (like "f---") make newsprint. "This is a family newspaper," any editor will say, arguing for self-censorship--as if kids couldn't fill in those three letters in "f---."
As if kids read the paper.
The nanny media, even more prudish since 9/11, covers our millions of eyes to protect us from our own icky deeds. In Afghanistan in 2001, while covering a war that had officially killed 12 civilians, I watched a colleague from a major television network collate footage of a B-52 bombing indiscriminately obliterating a civilian neighborhood. "If people saw what bombing looks like here on the ground, " he observed as body parts and burning houses and screaming children filled the screen, "they would demand an end to it. Which is why this will never air on American television." But other countries don't have our nanny media. Europeans and Arabs see the horror wreaked in our name on their airwaves, assume that we see the same imagery and hate us for not giving a damn. America's self-censors make anti-Americanism worse.
Ugly truths come out one way or the other. While the Muslim world was raging over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles received a chilling letter from the Joints Chief of Staff in reaction to his single-panel rendition of a quadriplegic veteran; if not for the nanny media's slavish refusal to run photos of the real thing, would that abstract image have shocked anyone? While we're at it, using prose to describe graphic images--as editors and anchormen are doing about the Mohammed imagery--makes as much sense as talking about the Rodney King police brutality video. "[Describing the cartoons without showing them] seems a reasonable choice," editorialized The New York Times, a paper whose readers' right to know apparently includes classified surveillance programs--but not cartoons.
Toles "crossed the line" from appropriate commentary into outright tastelessness, complained the Joint Chiefs. Similarly, many Muslims say the 12 Danish cartoonists "crossed the line" when they indulged in blasphemy of one of the world's major religions. U.S. State Department spokesman and honorary mullah Sean McCormack helpfully tells us where The Line is drawn: "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," he said. But who can distinguish "anti-Muslim images" from "acceptable" satire? Taste is subjective. Right-wing Time columnist Andrew Sullivan, who has repeatedly called for censoring my work because it's critical of Bush, calls the Danish cartoons "not arbitrarily offensive" and thus acceptable free speech. Lefties, on the other hand, rallied to get Rush Limbaugh fired from his gig as a football commentator.
Hypocrisy abounds: Everyone supports the free speech they agree with.
Which is why, in a nation with a truly free media, there is no line. To hell with the nanny media. Free speech is like a Ferrari: What good is it if you don't use it or if you barely use it, only driving it in town, in stop-and-go traffic? It's useless until you can head out to the Arizona desert and push it past 150 mph. Short of libel, slander and impersonation, anything goes--that is, if you believe in the First Amendment.
What if millions of people take offense? What if some of them turn violent, even murderous? So what? No one can make you angry. You decide whether or not to become angry. If journalistic gatekeepers worry about the mere possibility of prompting outrage, they'll validate mob rule and undermine our right to a free press, one that covers the controversial along with the bland.
While deciding what goes into the paper and the evening news, good journalists ought to be guided by only one consideration: Is it news? If the answer is yes, send it out. Even if it's tasteless as all f---.
Postscript: A European Muslim website has posted a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler. "If it is the time to break taboos and cross all the red lines," the site explains, "we certainly do not want to fall behind." It's an idiotic cartoon. Breaking taboos, on the other hand, is something our nanny media ought to try.
COPYRIGHT 2006 TED RALL
When I lived, some years back, down in Southern Oregon, the Assemblies of God churches were pulling out all stops to get the movie “The Last Temptation of Christ” banned from every theatre in Jackson County. They almost did—only one movie theatre, in Ashland, dared show it. I knew a lot of members of the Assembly of God church, they were neighbors and almost friends (I even smoked dope with a few of them, drank with others), and they were utterly outraged that such a movie had been made. One or two of them thought it was because of the “Commies and Jews in the movie business.”
The Reverend Fred Phelps and his friends make the news regularly, protesting the funerals of gay people and warning of the wrath of (their version of) God. Many of us have seen the ugly protests of skinheads and white supremacists in various American cities and towns. Lynchings still happens. Yeah, we’re a lot more sophisticated, tolerant, educated, and whatever than those Ay-rabs. They burn flags! We burn their people. They have demagogues; we have Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson.
But, we don’t really want to go into that, do we?
THE BLAND LEADING THE BLIND
The Nanny Press and the Cartoon Controversy
http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=20060207&uc_comic=ru
LAS VEGAS--Of course it was a provocation. In September, the editor of a right-wing Danish newspaper decided "to test cartoonists to see if they were self-censoring their work, out of fear of violence from Islamic radicals." Though some declined, 12 artists accepted the editor's invitation to make light of the Prophet Mohammed, and submitted work equating Islam with terrorism and the oppression of women, among other things.
Five months later editor Fleming Rose has learned that cartoonists have good reason to watch what they draw. Thousands of demonstrators, furious at the publication's violation of an Islamic stricture banning graphic depictions of the Prophet, marched through the streets of Cairo, Karachi, Istanbul, Teheran and Mehtarlam, Afghanistan, where at least five were killed by police. Gunmen took over the European Union office in Gaza. Mobs burned Danish flags and called for a Muslim boycott of Danish goods. Iran withdrew its ambassador from Copenhagen. Danes were ordered to flee Lebanon after mobs burned the Danish consulates in Damascus and Beirut, where they also trashed a Christian neighborhood. The Danish cartoonists, having been threatened with beheading, are presumably catching up on their Salman Rushdie while they weather the storm.
Adding fuel to the fire, said the Times, were "a group of Denmark's fundamentalist Muslim clerics...[who] took their show on the road" last fall, traveling around the Middle East showing a package that included cartoons that had never actually appeared in any newspaper, "some depicting Mohammed as a pedophile, a pig or engaged in bestiality." Newspapers in France, Germany and elsewhere further fanned the flames by reprinting the Danish drawings.
Being provoked, as I tell myself when I'm sitting next to Sean Hannity, doesn't justify reacting with violence. And as Kuwaiti oil executive Samia al-Duaij pointed out to Time, there are better reasons to torch embassies than over cartoons: "America kills thousands of Muslims, and you lose your head and withdraw ambassadors over a bunch of cartoons printed in a second-rate paper in a Nordic country with a population of five million? That's the true outrage."
As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can't decide who's a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies, or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of "free speech"--the same folks who call for the censorship and even murder of anti-Bush cartoonists here--as an excuse to join the post-9/11 Muslims-suck media pile-on. Most reasonable people reject both--but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America's self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.
"CNN has chosen not to show the [Danish Mohammed] cartoons out of respect for Islam," said the news channel.
"We always weigh the value of the journalistic impact against the impact that publication might have as far as insulting or hurting certain groups," said an editor at The San Francisco Chronicle.
"The cartoons didn't meet our long-held standards for not moving offensive content," said the Associated Press.
Bull----.
If these cowards were worried about offending the faithful, they wouldn't cover or quote such Muslim-bashers as Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens or George W. Bush. The truth is, our national nanny media is managed by cowards so terrified by the prospect of their offices being firebombed that they wallow in self-censorship.
Precisely because they subvert free speech from within with their oh-so-reasonable odes for "moderation" and against "sensationalism," the gatekeepers of our national nanny media are more dangerous to Western values than distant mullahs and clueless neocons combined. Editors and producers decide not only what's fit to print but also what's not: flag-draped coffins and body bags arriving from Iraq, photographs of Afghan civilians, their bodies reduced to blobs of blood and protoplasm, all purged from our national consciousness. You might think it's news when the vice president tells a senator to "go f--- yourself" on the Senate floor, but you'd be wrong--only tortured roundabout descriptions (like "f---") make newsprint. "This is a family newspaper," any editor will say, arguing for self-censorship--as if kids couldn't fill in those three letters in "f---."
As if kids read the paper.
The nanny media, even more prudish since 9/11, covers our millions of eyes to protect us from our own icky deeds. In Afghanistan in 2001, while covering a war that had officially killed 12 civilians, I watched a colleague from a major television network collate footage of a B-52 bombing indiscriminately obliterating a civilian neighborhood. "If people saw what bombing looks like here on the ground, " he observed as body parts and burning houses and screaming children filled the screen, "they would demand an end to it. Which is why this will never air on American television." But other countries don't have our nanny media. Europeans and Arabs see the horror wreaked in our name on their airwaves, assume that we see the same imagery and hate us for not giving a damn. America's self-censors make anti-Americanism worse.
Ugly truths come out one way or the other. While the Muslim world was raging over the Danish Mohammed cartoons, Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles received a chilling letter from the Joints Chief of Staff in reaction to his single-panel rendition of a quadriplegic veteran; if not for the nanny media's slavish refusal to run photos of the real thing, would that abstract image have shocked anyone? While we're at it, using prose to describe graphic images--as editors and anchormen are doing about the Mohammed imagery--makes as much sense as talking about the Rodney King police brutality video. "[Describing the cartoons without showing them] seems a reasonable choice," editorialized The New York Times, a paper whose readers' right to know apparently includes classified surveillance programs--but not cartoons.
Toles "crossed the line" from appropriate commentary into outright tastelessness, complained the Joint Chiefs. Similarly, many Muslims say the 12 Danish cartoonists "crossed the line" when they indulged in blasphemy of one of the world's major religions. U.S. State Department spokesman and honorary mullah Sean McCormack helpfully tells us where The Line is drawn: "Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-Semitic images," he said. But who can distinguish "anti-Muslim images" from "acceptable" satire? Taste is subjective. Right-wing Time columnist Andrew Sullivan, who has repeatedly called for censoring my work because it's critical of Bush, calls the Danish cartoons "not arbitrarily offensive" and thus acceptable free speech. Lefties, on the other hand, rallied to get Rush Limbaugh fired from his gig as a football commentator.
Hypocrisy abounds: Everyone supports the free speech they agree with.
Which is why, in a nation with a truly free media, there is no line. To hell with the nanny media. Free speech is like a Ferrari: What good is it if you don't use it or if you barely use it, only driving it in town, in stop-and-go traffic? It's useless until you can head out to the Arizona desert and push it past 150 mph. Short of libel, slander and impersonation, anything goes--that is, if you believe in the First Amendment.
What if millions of people take offense? What if some of them turn violent, even murderous? So what? No one can make you angry. You decide whether or not to become angry. If journalistic gatekeepers worry about the mere possibility of prompting outrage, they'll validate mob rule and undermine our right to a free press, one that covers the controversial along with the bland.
While deciding what goes into the paper and the evening news, good journalists ought to be guided by only one consideration: Is it news? If the answer is yes, send it out. Even if it's tasteless as all f---.
Postscript: A European Muslim website has posted a cartoon depicting Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler. "If it is the time to break taboos and cross all the red lines," the site explains, "we certainly do not want to fall behind." It's an idiotic cartoon. Breaking taboos, on the other hand, is something our nanny media ought to try.
COPYRIGHT 2006 TED RALL
Majority leader even rents from lobbyist
Ceasar's wife must be above even the hint of impropriety—Anyone remembeer that line? I guess it's inoperative, anymore. At least in D.C..
I would guess the neo-con supporters would dismiss this as a) coincidence or b) a smear by the “liberal media.” Maybe both. Of course there’s nothing more than coincidence, and as Mark Twain said, “some circumstantial evidence is very strong, such as when you find a trout in the milk.”
Boehner Rents Apartment Owned by Lobbyist in D.C.
By Thomas B. Edsall and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; A03
Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.
The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation. Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday. Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings.
Milne's clients -- including restaurant chains and health insurance companies -- hired him to lobby on issues at the heart of Boehner's work, including minimum-wage increases, small-business tax breaks and tax-free savings accounts to help cover insurance costs, congressional lobbying records show.
In the weeks preceding last week's GOP leadership elections, Boehner acknowledged his close ties to the lobbying community, but he assured Republican lawmakers that all of his relationships were ethical and he campaigned on a platform of change and reform. Seymour reiterated that message last night.
"John Milne does not lobby John Boehner on any issue and has not lobbied him on any issue during the time period in which John has been renting the property," he said.
Seymour added that he does not know if other members of Milne's mCapitol Management firm have lobbied Boehner. "We really have no idea on this one," he said. "We'd have to know who else works for those firms, which we don't offhand. It's possible the answer is yes, but we don't know."
House members may not accept anything from lobbyists worth more than $50. If Boehner is paying market-rate rent, it would appear he is not violating that rule.
Boehner's work closely coincides with the interests of Milne. In 2002, the House approved the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act, a tax measure originally drafted by Boehner, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) as the Back to Work Act. The measure eventually was signed into law.
Lobbying disclosure forms indicate that one of Milne's clients, Fortis Health Plans, hired him to lobby the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act.
Another client, the Buca di Beppo chain of Italian restaurants, hired Milne to push the Small Business Tax Fairness Act, which would allow restaurants to deduct the cost of investments at a faster pace. The measure was introduced by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) in 2003, with Boehner as one of 15 co-sponsors. Many of its provisions have since become law.
Fortis, now called Assurant Health, also asked Milne to push Health Savings Accounts, the tax-free savings accounts established by Congress to help with health care costs not covered by high-deductible plans. Boehner is a proponent of such accounts, which President Bush is targeting for a major expansion.
Buca di Beppo and another restaurant chain, Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc., also hired Milne to lobby on the minimum wage and tax credits for tips, issues directly under the Education and the Workforce Committee's purview.
The restaurant industry has long fought minimum-wage increases, seeking instead to augment restaurant wages with tips that become more valuable if they can avoid taxation. Despite numerous attempts by Democrats and some pro-labor Republicans, the minimum wage has not been raised since 1997, when it was lifted from $4.75 to $5.15. Since then, inflation has eroded its value to near-record lows.
That such companies would hire Milne is no mystery. His firm overtly promotes its connections to influential lawmakers.
"At mCapitol Management, we specialize in leveraging relationships on our clients' behalf. Our bipartisan team's unique resources allow our clients unparalleled access at the international, federal, state and local level," the firm's Web site boasts.
Milne could not be reached by phone or e-mail. His wife, Anderson, who is on the advisory board of mCapitol, said she and her husband have been friends with Boehner and his wife for years. After buying the house in 2004, she said, she mentioned at a social gathering that they had a place to rent, and Boehner said he was interested.
Anderson described Boehner as an "excellent tenant" who pays his rent on time.
Seymour said Boehner originally met Anderson in the early 1990s, when she worked in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
I would guess the neo-con supporters would dismiss this as a) coincidence or b) a smear by the “liberal media.” Maybe both. Of course there’s nothing more than coincidence, and as Mark Twain said, “some circumstantial evidence is very strong, such as when you find a trout in the milk.”
Boehner Rents Apartment Owned by Lobbyist in D.C.
By Thomas B. Edsall and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 8, 2006; A03
Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who was elected House majority leader last week, is renting his Capitol Hill apartment from a veteran lobbyist whose clients have direct stakes in legislation Boehner has co-written and that he has overseen as chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee.
The relationship between Boehner, John D. Milne and Milne's wife, Debra R. Anderson, underscores how intertwined senior lawmakers have become with the lobbyists paid to influence legislation. Boehner's primary residence is in West Chester, Ohio, but for $1,600 a month, he rents a two-bedroom basement apartment near the House office buildings on Capitol Hill owned by Milne, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour said yesterday. Boehner's monthly rent appears to be similar to other rentals of two-bedroom English basement apartments close to the House side of the Capitol in Southeast, based on a review of apartment listings.
Milne's clients -- including restaurant chains and health insurance companies -- hired him to lobby on issues at the heart of Boehner's work, including minimum-wage increases, small-business tax breaks and tax-free savings accounts to help cover insurance costs, congressional lobbying records show.
In the weeks preceding last week's GOP leadership elections, Boehner acknowledged his close ties to the lobbying community, but he assured Republican lawmakers that all of his relationships were ethical and he campaigned on a platform of change and reform. Seymour reiterated that message last night.
"John Milne does not lobby John Boehner on any issue and has not lobbied him on any issue during the time period in which John has been renting the property," he said.
Seymour added that he does not know if other members of Milne's mCapitol Management firm have lobbied Boehner. "We really have no idea on this one," he said. "We'd have to know who else works for those firms, which we don't offhand. It's possible the answer is yes, but we don't know."
House members may not accept anything from lobbyists worth more than $50. If Boehner is paying market-rate rent, it would appear he is not violating that rule.
Boehner's work closely coincides with the interests of Milne. In 2002, the House approved the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act, a tax measure originally drafted by Boehner, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.) and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Calif.) as the Back to Work Act. The measure eventually was signed into law.
Lobbying disclosure forms indicate that one of Milne's clients, Fortis Health Plans, hired him to lobby the Economic Security and Worker Assistance Act.
Another client, the Buca di Beppo chain of Italian restaurants, hired Milne to push the Small Business Tax Fairness Act, which would allow restaurants to deduct the cost of investments at a faster pace. The measure was introduced by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.) in 2003, with Boehner as one of 15 co-sponsors. Many of its provisions have since become law.
Fortis, now called Assurant Health, also asked Milne to push Health Savings Accounts, the tax-free savings accounts established by Congress to help with health care costs not covered by high-deductible plans. Boehner is a proponent of such accounts, which President Bush is targeting for a major expansion.
Buca di Beppo and another restaurant chain, Parasole Restaurant Holdings Inc., also hired Milne to lobby on the minimum wage and tax credits for tips, issues directly under the Education and the Workforce Committee's purview.
The restaurant industry has long fought minimum-wage increases, seeking instead to augment restaurant wages with tips that become more valuable if they can avoid taxation. Despite numerous attempts by Democrats and some pro-labor Republicans, the minimum wage has not been raised since 1997, when it was lifted from $4.75 to $5.15. Since then, inflation has eroded its value to near-record lows.
That such companies would hire Milne is no mystery. His firm overtly promotes its connections to influential lawmakers.
"At mCapitol Management, we specialize in leveraging relationships on our clients' behalf. Our bipartisan team's unique resources allow our clients unparalleled access at the international, federal, state and local level," the firm's Web site boasts.
Milne could not be reached by phone or e-mail. His wife, Anderson, who is on the advisory board of mCapitol, said she and her husband have been friends with Boehner and his wife for years. After buying the house in 2004, she said, she mentioned at a social gathering that they had a place to rent, and Boehner said he was interested.
Anderson described Boehner as an "excellent tenant" who pays his rent on time.
Seymour said Boehner originally met Anderson in the early 1990s, when she worked in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Cartoons, politics, and religion
A bit more on the cartoon furor:
I don't believe the CIA is the only shit-stirrer in the world today. The uproar over the cartoons of Muhammad are orchestrated; one source says orchestrated by the Wahabiists of Saudi Arabia to cover up their own fuckups with the building collapse—and to take the heat off other Wahabiist mullahs and such. I believe that. I think the government of Iran is hateful enough to be pumping money and energy into the demonstrations, too. There's nothing like a very vivid external boogeyman to bring about domestic solidarity. And to provoke the West as much as possible.
To be honest, I don't respect the Moslem religion anymore than I respect any organized religion. Catholicism? No. Protestantism? Nope. Judaism? Hah. All of them preach intolerance of other faiths—every one of them. All of them do their best to repress women. All of them cover up for short-comings within their organizations. And all of them are authoritarian.
I don't believe the CIA is the only shit-stirrer in the world today. The uproar over the cartoons of Muhammad are orchestrated; one source says orchestrated by the Wahabiists of Saudi Arabia to cover up their own fuckups with the building collapse—and to take the heat off other Wahabiist mullahs and such. I believe that. I think the government of Iran is hateful enough to be pumping money and energy into the demonstrations, too. There's nothing like a very vivid external boogeyman to bring about domestic solidarity. And to provoke the West as much as possible.
To be honest, I don't respect the Moslem religion anymore than I respect any organized religion. Catholicism? No. Protestantism? Nope. Judaism? Hah. All of them preach intolerance of other faiths—every one of them. All of them do their best to repress women. All of them cover up for short-comings within their organizations. And all of them are authoritarian.
War: Always Good For Mid-Term Elections
The scenario of war with Iran is ready-made for Bush-Cheney.
Would Bush-Cheney actually strike Iran before the elections? The neo-cons are under a lot of pressure. If the Democrats actually try, they could destroy the Republican majority in the Senate and House. This would be dangerous for the administration; they might actually face being put on trial.
So, the answer to the question, would they actually strike Iran before the elections? The answer is, Does a bear shit in the woods?
The Times February 07, 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-2027979,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=World
Hawks have warplanes ready if the nuclear diplomacy fails
By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor
IT IS the option of last resort with consequences too hideous to contemplate. And yet, with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme is being actively considered by those grappling with one of the world’s most pressing security problems.
For five years the West has used every diplomatic device at its disposal to entice Iran into complying with strict conditions that would prevent its nuclear programme being diverted to produce an atomic bomb.
Those efforts, however, are now faltering. US leaders are openly discussing the looming conflict. A recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Americans favoured military intervention to stop Iran building a bomb.
Tehran scoffs at threats by the West, has pledged to press on with its nuclear progamme and defend itself if attacked.
The military option may be the only means of halting a regime that has threatened to annihilate Israel from developing a bomb and triggering a regional nuclear arms race.
Experts agree that America has the military capability to destroy Iran’s dozen known atomic sites. US forces virtually surround Iran with military air bases to the west in Afghanistan, to the east in Iraq, Turkey and Qatar and the south in Oman and Diego Garcia. The US Navy also has a carrier group in the Gulf, armed with attack aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. B2 stealth bombers flying from mainland America could also be used.
The air campaign would not be easy. The Iranians have been preparing for an attack. Key sites are ringed with air defences and buried underground. Sensitive parts of the Natanz facility are concealed 18 metres (60ft) underground and protected by reinforced concrete two meters thick. Similar protection has been built around the uranium conversion site at Esfahan.
“American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq centre in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq,” said the Global Security consultantcy.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former US Air Force officer, predicted that knocking out nuclear sites could be over in less than a week. But he gave warning that would only be the beginning.
Iran has threatened to defend itself if attacked. It could use medium-range missiles to hit Israel or US military targets in Iraq and the region. It could also use its missiles and submarines to attack shipping in the Gulf, the main export route for much of the world’s energy needs. “Once you have dealt with the nuclear sites you would have to expand the targets,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Gardiner. “There are another 125 to deal with including chemical plants, missile launchers, airfields and submarines.”
While this huge US offensive is underway Iran would almost certainly deploy its most powerful weapon. It would unleash a counter-attack through proxies in the region. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia, would attack Israel. Moqtadr al-Sadr, the militant Iraqi Shia religious leader, could order his Mahdi Army to rise up against American and British forces in Iraq. Iranian-backed groups could wreak havoc against Western targets across the world.
What began as a military operation to maintain a balance of power in the Middle East, could instead plunge the region into another conflict.
“It will have to be diplomats, not F15s that stop the mullahs,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “An air strike against the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government. Finally, the strike would not, as it often said, delay the Iranian programme. It would almost certainly speed it up,” he wrote in an article.
PUBLIC OPTIONS
‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary
‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’
John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona and US presidential hopeful
‘We are not seeking a military confrontation, but if that happens we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history’
Abdolrahim Moussavi, head of Iran’s joint chiefs of staff
‘Give another year to make HEU (highly-enriched uranium) for a nuclear weapon and a few more months to convert the uranium into weapon components, Iran could have its first nuclear weapon in 2009’
David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Institute for Science and International Security
‘There isn’t a military option. There certainly isn’t one on the table, let’s be clear about that.’
Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary
‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’
Tony Blair
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy . To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website .
Would Bush-Cheney actually strike Iran before the elections? The neo-cons are under a lot of pressure. If the Democrats actually try, they could destroy the Republican majority in the Senate and House. This would be dangerous for the administration; they might actually face being put on trial.
So, the answer to the question, would they actually strike Iran before the elections? The answer is, Does a bear shit in the woods?
The Times February 07, 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,251-2027979,00.html#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=World
Hawks have warplanes ready if the nuclear diplomacy fails
By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor
IT IS the option of last resort with consequences too hideous to contemplate. And yet, with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme is being actively considered by those grappling with one of the world’s most pressing security problems.
For five years the West has used every diplomatic device at its disposal to entice Iran into complying with strict conditions that would prevent its nuclear programme being diverted to produce an atomic bomb.
Those efforts, however, are now faltering. US leaders are openly discussing the looming conflict. A recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Americans favoured military intervention to stop Iran building a bomb.
Tehran scoffs at threats by the West, has pledged to press on with its nuclear progamme and defend itself if attacked.
The military option may be the only means of halting a regime that has threatened to annihilate Israel from developing a bomb and triggering a regional nuclear arms race.
Experts agree that America has the military capability to destroy Iran’s dozen known atomic sites. US forces virtually surround Iran with military air bases to the west in Afghanistan, to the east in Iraq, Turkey and Qatar and the south in Oman and Diego Garcia. The US Navy also has a carrier group in the Gulf, armed with attack aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. B2 stealth bombers flying from mainland America could also be used.
The air campaign would not be easy. The Iranians have been preparing for an attack. Key sites are ringed with air defences and buried underground. Sensitive parts of the Natanz facility are concealed 18 metres (60ft) underground and protected by reinforced concrete two meters thick. Similar protection has been built around the uranium conversion site at Esfahan.
“American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq centre in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq,” said the Global Security consultantcy.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former US Air Force officer, predicted that knocking out nuclear sites could be over in less than a week. But he gave warning that would only be the beginning.
Iran has threatened to defend itself if attacked. It could use medium-range missiles to hit Israel or US military targets in Iraq and the region. It could also use its missiles and submarines to attack shipping in the Gulf, the main export route for much of the world’s energy needs. “Once you have dealt with the nuclear sites you would have to expand the targets,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Gardiner. “There are another 125 to deal with including chemical plants, missile launchers, airfields and submarines.”
While this huge US offensive is underway Iran would almost certainly deploy its most powerful weapon. It would unleash a counter-attack through proxies in the region. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia, would attack Israel. Moqtadr al-Sadr, the militant Iraqi Shia religious leader, could order his Mahdi Army to rise up against American and British forces in Iraq. Iranian-backed groups could wreak havoc against Western targets across the world.
What began as a military operation to maintain a balance of power in the Middle East, could instead plunge the region into another conflict.
“It will have to be diplomats, not F15s that stop the mullahs,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “An air strike against the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government. Finally, the strike would not, as it often said, delay the Iranian programme. It would almost certainly speed it up,” he wrote in an article.
PUBLIC OPTIONS
‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary
‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’
John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona and US presidential hopeful
‘We are not seeking a military confrontation, but if that happens we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history’
Abdolrahim Moussavi, head of Iran’s joint chiefs of staff
‘Give another year to make HEU (highly-enriched uranium) for a nuclear weapon and a few more months to convert the uranium into weapon components, Iran could have its first nuclear weapon in 2009’
David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Institute for Science and International Security
‘There isn’t a military option. There certainly isn’t one on the table, let’s be clear about that.’
Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary
‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’
Tony Blair
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions . Please read our Privacy Policy . To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website .
Pat Robertson: "Racial Suicide"
This is what it amounts to, among the white evangelicals: race.
There is no such thing as “racial suicide,” except in the twisted minds of discredited eugenicists and the unreconstructed supporters of racial superiority. Robertson yanked the covers on his own movement.
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200602070002
Robertson: Europe committing "racial suicide"
Summary: Pat Robertson said, "Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate."
During the February 6 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said that "Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate." Robertson blamed the declining birth rate on the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, which, according to Robertson, "has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe" and has left Europeans without "a faith in the future."
From the February 6 edition of CBN's The 700 Club:
ROBERTSON: Studies that I have read indicate that having babies is a sign of a faith in the future. You know, unless you believe in the future, you're not going to take the trouble of raising a child, educating a child, doing something. If there is no future, why do it? Well, unless you believe in God, there's really no future. And when you go back to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the whole idea of this desperate nightmare we are in -- you know, that we are in this prison, and it has no hope, no exit. That kind of philosophy has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe, and hopefully it doesn't come here. But nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate. And they just can't get it together. Why? There's no hope.
— S.G.
Posted to the web on Tuesday February 7, 2006 at 11:02 AM EST
There is no such thing as “racial suicide,” except in the twisted minds of discredited eugenicists and the unreconstructed supporters of racial superiority. Robertson yanked the covers on his own movement.
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200602070002
Robertson: Europe committing "racial suicide"
Summary: Pat Robertson said, "Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate."
During the February 6 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said that "Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate." Robertson blamed the declining birth rate on the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, which, according to Robertson, "has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe" and has left Europeans without "a faith in the future."
From the February 6 edition of CBN's The 700 Club:
ROBERTSON: Studies that I have read indicate that having babies is a sign of a faith in the future. You know, unless you believe in the future, you're not going to take the trouble of raising a child, educating a child, doing something. If there is no future, why do it? Well, unless you believe in God, there's really no future. And when you go back to the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the whole idea of this desperate nightmare we are in -- you know, that we are in this prison, and it has no hope, no exit. That kind of philosophy has permeated the intellectual thinking of Europe, and hopefully it doesn't come here. But nevertheless, ladies and gentlemen, Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate. And they just can't get it together. Why? There's no hope.
— S.G.
Posted to the web on Tuesday February 7, 2006 at 11:02 AM EST
Monday, February 06, 2006
Water Water Water: Buy Buy Buy
About time people started paying attention to the bottle water binge this country is on (well, to be fair, other countries are behaving just as foolishly). But, that’s the gig: the U.S. is the most privileged nation in the world, so we get to drink only the best...assuming it is the best, of course. What it means is that we get to use up more resources that could be better used elsewhere. I questioned a friend about why he continually bought carton after carton of bottle water. “Well, it’s convenient, and I’m always losing the expensive bottles you use if I take tapwater when I go somewhere.” I think on hot days he leaves the engine running in his car, when he goes shopping, so the car will be cool when he comes back.
Published on Sunday, February 5, 2006 by OneWorld.net
Bottled Water: Nectar of the Frauds?
by Abid Aslam
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines06/0205-01.htm
WASHINGTON - Water, water everywhere and we are duped into buying it bottled.
Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief--often mistaken, as it happens--that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week.
Members of the United Nations have agreed to halve the proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. To meet this goal, they would have to double the $15 billion spent every year on water supply and sanitation.
''While this amount may seem large, it pales in comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent each year on bottled water,'' said EPI researcher Emily Arnold.
''There is no question that clean, affordable drinking water is essential to the health of our global community,'' Arnold said. ''But bottled water is not the answer in the developed world, nor does it solve problems for the 1.1 billion people who lack a secure water supply. Improving and expanding existing water treatment and sanitation systems is more likely to provide safe and sustainable sources of water over the long term.''
Worldwide, bottled water consumption surged to 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from 98 billion liters in 1999, EPI said in a written analysis citing industry data.
By one view, the consequences for the planet and for consumers' purses are horrifying.
''Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing--producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy,'' said Arnold. ''Although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more.''
At up to $2.50 per liter ($10 per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline in the United States.
A close look at the multibillion-dollar bottled water industry renewed Arnold's affection for the faucet.
Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled water must be transported long distances--and nearly one-fourth of it across national borders--by boat, train, airplane, and truck. This ''involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels,'' Arnold said.
By way of example, in 2004 alone, a Helsinki company shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) to Saudi Arabia. And although 94 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States is produced domestically, some Americans import water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places to satisfy demand for what Arnold termed ''chic and exotic bottled water.''
More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ''Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,'' Arnold said.
Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
Once it has been emptied, the bottle must be dumped. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals tied to a host of human and animal health problems. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.
Of the bottles deposited for recycling in 2004, the United States exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as far away as China--meaning that even more fossil fuels were burned in the process.
Meanwhile, communities from near which the water came in the first place risk running dry.
More than 50 Indian villages have complained of water shortages after bottlers began extracting water for sale under Coca-Cola Co.'s Dasani label, EPI said.
''Similar problems have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of North America, where farmers, fishers, and others who depend on water for their livelihoods are suffering from concentrated water extraction as water tables drop quickly,'' ''Arnold said.
All this, because many consumers associate bottled water with healthy living.
More fool us.
''Bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water. In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit,'' EPI said.
France's Senate, it added, ''even advises people who drink bottled mineral water to change brands frequently because the added minerals are helpful in small amounts but may be dangerous in higher doses.''
To be sure, many municipal water systems have run afoul of government water quality standards--driving up demand for bottled water as a result. But according to the study, ''in a number of places, including Europe and the United States, there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than bottled water.''
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets more stringent quality standards for tap water than does the Food and Drug Administration for the bottled stuff, it added.
Americans drank 26 billion liters of bottled water in 2004, or roughly one eight-ounce glass per person every day. Mexico had the second highest consumption, at 18 billion liters. China and Brazil followed, at close to 12 billion liters each. Italy and Germany ranked fifth and sixth in consumption, downing just over 10 billion liters of bottled water each.
Italians drank the most bottled water per person, at nearly 184 liters in 2004--more than two glasses per day. Mexico and the United Arab Emirates consumed 169 and 164 liters per person. Belgium and France followed, knocking back almost 145 liters annually. Spain ranked sixth, with 137 liters swallowed each year.
Some of the fastest growth in bottled water consumption is taking place in poor countries, however.
With consumption per person increasing by 44-50 percent between 1999 and 2004, Lebanon and Mexico had among the fastest growth rates of the top 15 per-capita guzzlers, EPI said.
Indian and Chinese people drank far less individually but collectively, the world's two most populous countries appear to have been on a bender. India swigged three times as much bottled water in 2004 as it did in 1999 and China, more than twice as much.
If individual Chinese consumers drank one-fourth the bottled water downed by the average American, EPI said, China would springboard over the United States and become the world's largest consumer.
© 2006 OneWorld.net
###
Published on Sunday, February 5, 2006 by OneWorld.net
Bottled Water: Nectar of the Frauds?
by Abid Aslam
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines06/0205-01.htm
WASHINGTON - Water, water everywhere and we are duped into buying it bottled.
Consumers spend a collective $100 billion every year on bottled water in the belief--often mistaken, as it happens--that this is better for us than what flows from our taps, according to environmental think tank the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
For a fraction of that sum, everyone on the planet could have safe drinking water and proper sanitation, the Washington, D.C.-based organization said this week.
Members of the United Nations have agreed to halve the proportion of people who lack reliable and lasting access to safe drinking water by the year 2015. To meet this goal, they would have to double the $15 billion spent every year on water supply and sanitation.
''While this amount may seem large, it pales in comparison to the estimated $100 billion spent each year on bottled water,'' said EPI researcher Emily Arnold.
''There is no question that clean, affordable drinking water is essential to the health of our global community,'' Arnold said. ''But bottled water is not the answer in the developed world, nor does it solve problems for the 1.1 billion people who lack a secure water supply. Improving and expanding existing water treatment and sanitation systems is more likely to provide safe and sustainable sources of water over the long term.''
Worldwide, bottled water consumption surged to 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from 98 billion liters in 1999, EPI said in a written analysis citing industry data.
By one view, the consequences for the planet and for consumers' purses are horrifying.
''Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing--producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast quantities of energy,'' said Arnold. ''Although in the industrial world bottled water is often no healthier than tap water, it can cost up to 10,000 times more.''
At up to $2.50 per liter ($10 per gallon), bottled water costs more than gasoline in the United States.
A close look at the multibillion-dollar bottled water industry renewed Arnold's affection for the faucet.
Tap water comes to us through an energy-efficient infrastructure whereas bottled water must be transported long distances--and nearly one-fourth of it across national borders--by boat, train, airplane, and truck. This ''involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels,'' Arnold said.
By way of example, in 2004 alone, a Helsinki company shipped 1.4 million bottles of Finnish tap water 4,300 kilometers (2,700 miles) to Saudi Arabia. And although 94 percent of the bottled water sold in the United States is produced domestically, some Americans import water shipped some 9,000 kilometers from Fiji and other faraway places to satisfy demand for what Arnold termed ''chic and exotic bottled water.''
More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ''Making bottles to meet Americans' demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,'' Arnold said.
Worldwide, some 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
Once it has been emptied, the bottle must be dumped. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 86 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States become garbage or litter. Incinerating used bottles produces toxic byproducts such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals tied to a host of human and animal health problems. Buried water bottles can take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.
Of the bottles deposited for recycling in 2004, the United States exported roughly 40 percent to destinations as far away as China--meaning that even more fossil fuels were burned in the process.
Meanwhile, communities from near which the water came in the first place risk running dry.
More than 50 Indian villages have complained of water shortages after bottlers began extracting water for sale under Coca-Cola Co.'s Dasani label, EPI said.
''Similar problems have been reported in Texas and in the Great Lakes region of North America, where farmers, fishers, and others who depend on water for their livelihoods are suffering from concentrated water extraction as water tables drop quickly,'' ''Arnold said.
All this, because many consumers associate bottled water with healthy living.
More fool us.
''Bottled water is not guaranteed to be any healthier than tap water. In fact, roughly 40 percent of bottled water begins as tap water; often the only difference is added minerals that have no marked health benefit,'' EPI said.
France's Senate, it added, ''even advises people who drink bottled mineral water to change brands frequently because the added minerals are helpful in small amounts but may be dangerous in higher doses.''
To be sure, many municipal water systems have run afoul of government water quality standards--driving up demand for bottled water as a result. But according to the study, ''in a number of places, including Europe and the United States, there are more regulations governing the quality of tap water than bottled water.''
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets more stringent quality standards for tap water than does the Food and Drug Administration for the bottled stuff, it added.
Americans drank 26 billion liters of bottled water in 2004, or roughly one eight-ounce glass per person every day. Mexico had the second highest consumption, at 18 billion liters. China and Brazil followed, at close to 12 billion liters each. Italy and Germany ranked fifth and sixth in consumption, downing just over 10 billion liters of bottled water each.
Italians drank the most bottled water per person, at nearly 184 liters in 2004--more than two glasses per day. Mexico and the United Arab Emirates consumed 169 and 164 liters per person. Belgium and France followed, knocking back almost 145 liters annually. Spain ranked sixth, with 137 liters swallowed each year.
Some of the fastest growth in bottled water consumption is taking place in poor countries, however.
With consumption per person increasing by 44-50 percent between 1999 and 2004, Lebanon and Mexico had among the fastest growth rates of the top 15 per-capita guzzlers, EPI said.
Indian and Chinese people drank far less individually but collectively, the world's two most populous countries appear to have been on a bender. India swigged three times as much bottled water in 2004 as it did in 1999 and China, more than twice as much.
If individual Chinese consumers drank one-fourth the bottled water downed by the average American, EPI said, China would springboard over the United States and become the world's largest consumer.
© 2006 OneWorld.net
###
Vonnegut on the horror and glory of America, 2006
Slaughter House Five: one of the great novels about the real horror of World War II—because it exposed the bald truth that in fighting the Nazis we resorted to the same tactics they did, mass extermination.
The bombing of Dresden, one phosphorous firebomb for every two people, in fourteen hours, killed more than the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. A quarter of a million bodies were found afterward, but since temperatures in the center of the firestorm reached 1600 degrees Centigrade, at least as many bodies were evaporated—or melted into puddles.
We’d never have known about the nature of this horror, probably, except for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novel, Slaughter House Five. He was there, on the ground, an American p.o.w.. He helped clean up the ashes and puddles.
Dresden was not a military target. It was a city of civilians; half a million refugees had swelled the population to over a million. Churchill wanted to impress Joe Stalin with western ruthlessness. Churchill was later knighted.
War is hell. And afterward we’re always shocked at the number of veterans who have become casualties once the actual fighting is over. They’re driven nuts by the experience, is what happened. The same thing is happening again... And the guys that decide to have wars don’t have to fight in them. They’re still war criminals, though.
So, here’s Kurt Vonnegut, looking around at the world, and telling us some of what he sees. If it doesn’t get you out trying to stop this current wave of lunatic stupidity, go down and get yourself a striped uniform—and a number. Decide you like living behind barbed wire. Get used to it.
Sunday Herald - 05 February 2006
http://www.sundayherald.com/print53889
‘‘The blues was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like the USA. Foreigners love us for our jazz. They don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us for our arrogance.’’
Vonnegut's Blues for America
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn’t be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.
That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today’s war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.
And how come the people in countries we invade can’t fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?
Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today – jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on – is derived from the blues.
A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.
The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country – an atrocity from which we can never fully recover – the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.
Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can’t drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it’s being played. So please remember that.
Foreigners love us for our jazz. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.
When I went to grade school in Indianapolis, the James Whitcomb Riley School #43, we used to draw pictures of houses of tomorrow, boats of tomorrow, airplanes of tomorrow, and there were all these dreams for the future. Of course at that time everything had come to a stop. The factories had stopped, the Great Depression was on, and the magic word was Prosperity. Sometime Prosperity will come. We were preparing for it. We were dreaming of the sorts of houses human beings should inhabit – ideal dwellings, ideal forms of transportation.
What is radically new today is that my daughter, Lily, who has just turned 21, finds herself, as do your children, as does George W Bush, himself a kid, and Saddam Hussein and on and on, heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an Aids epidemic, and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women, and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. Our children have inherited technologies whose by-products, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind.
Anyone who has studied science and talks to scientists notices that we are in terrible danger now. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.
The biggest truth to face now – what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life – is that I don’t think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.
Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the second world war, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.
May I name two of them? Aristotle and Hitler.
One good guesser and one bad one.
And the masses of humanity through the ages, feeling inadequately educated just like we do now, and rightly so, have had little choice but to believe this guesser or that one.
Russians who didn’t think much of the guesses of Ivan the Terrible, for example, were likely to have their hats nailed to their heads.
We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead – the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.
But the guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies.
Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership far so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn’t the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.
Loaded pistols are good for everyone except inmates in prisons or lunatic asylums.
That’s correct.
Millions spent on public health are inflationary.
That’s correct.
Billions spent on weapons will bring inflation down.
That’s correct.
Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships to the left.
That’s correct.
The more hydrogen bomb warheads we have, all set to go off at a moment’s notice, the safer humanity is and the better off the world will be that our grandchildren will inherit.
That’s correct.
Industrial wastes, and especially those that are radioactive, hardly ever hurt anybody, so everybody should shut up about them.
That’s correct.
Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do: bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition, and raid the Treasury when they go broke.
That’s correct.
That’s free enterprise.
And that’s correct.
The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences.
That’s correct.
The United States of America cannot be expected to look after its own people.
That’s correct.
The free market will do that.
That’s correct.
The free market is an automatic system of justice.
That’s correct.
I’m kidding.
And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, DC. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington, DC. Do you remember those doctors a few months back who got together and announced that it was a simple, clear medical fact that we could not survive even a moderate attack by hydrogen bombs? They were not welcome in Washington, DC.
Even if we fired the first salvo of hydrogen weapons and the enemy never fired back, the poisons released would probably kill the whole planet by and by.
What is the response in Washington? They guess otherwise. What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge – the haters of information. And the guessers are almost all highly educated people. Think of that. They have had to throw away their educations, even Harvard or Yale educations.
If they didn’t do that, there is no way their uninhibited guessing could go on and on and on. Please, don’t you do that. But if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you – and now I have to guess – about 10 to one.
I’M going to tell you some news.
No, I am not running for President, although I do know that a sentence, if it is to be complete, must have both a subject and a verb.
Nor will I confess that I sleep with children. I will say this, though: My wife is by far the oldest person I ever slept with.
Here’s the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only 12 years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me.
But I am now 82. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
Our government’s got a war on drugs. That’s certainly a lot better than no drugs at all. That’s what was said about prohibition. Do you realise that from 1919 to 1933 it was absolutely against the law to manufacture, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages, and the Indiana newspaper humourist Ken Hubbard said: “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.”
But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 40. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse, I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine, LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s licence – look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut!
And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialised world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any left. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
I turned 82 on November 11, 2004. What’s it like to be this old? I can’t parallel park worth a damn any more, so please don’t watch while I try to do it. And gravity has become a lot less friendly and manageable than it used to be.
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged: “What is life all about?’” I have seven kids, three of them orphaned nephews.
I put my big question about life to my son the pediatrician. Dr Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
© Kurt Vonnegut
Extracted from A Man Without A Country: A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush’s America, published by Bloomsbury, £
Copyright © 2006 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088
The bombing of Dresden, one phosphorous firebomb for every two people, in fourteen hours, killed more than the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. A quarter of a million bodies were found afterward, but since temperatures in the center of the firestorm reached 1600 degrees Centigrade, at least as many bodies were evaporated—or melted into puddles.
We’d never have known about the nature of this horror, probably, except for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s novel, Slaughter House Five. He was there, on the ground, an American p.o.w.. He helped clean up the ashes and puddles.
Dresden was not a military target. It was a city of civilians; half a million refugees had swelled the population to over a million. Churchill wanted to impress Joe Stalin with western ruthlessness. Churchill was later knighted.
War is hell. And afterward we’re always shocked at the number of veterans who have become casualties once the actual fighting is over. They’re driven nuts by the experience, is what happened. The same thing is happening again... And the guys that decide to have wars don’t have to fight in them. They’re still war criminals, though.
So, here’s Kurt Vonnegut, looking around at the world, and telling us some of what he sees. If it doesn’t get you out trying to stop this current wave of lunatic stupidity, go down and get yourself a striped uniform—and a number. Decide you like living behind barbed wire. Get used to it.
Sunday Herald - 05 February 2006
http://www.sundayherald.com/print53889
‘‘The blues was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like the USA. Foreigners love us for our jazz. They don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us for our arrogance.’’
Vonnegut's Blues for America
No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.
If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC
Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn’t be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out.
That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today’s war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.
And how come the people in countries we invade can’t fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?
Back to music. It makes practically everybody fonder of life than he or she would be without it. Even military bands, although I am a pacifist, always cheer me up. And I really like Strauss and Mozart and all that, but the priceless gift that African Americans gave the whole world when they were still in slavery was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like us at least a little bit. That specific remedy for the worldwide epidemic of depression is a gift called the blues. All pop music today – jazz, swing, be-bop, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Stones, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, and on and on – is derived from the blues.
A gift to the world? One of the best rhythm-and-blues combos I ever heard was three guys and a girl from Finland playing in a club in Krakow, Poland.
The wonderful writer Albert Murray, who is a jazz historian and a friend of mine among other things, told me that during the era of slavery in this country – an atrocity from which we can never fully recover – the suicide rate per capita among slave owners was much higher than the suicide rate among slaves.
Murray says he thinks this was because slaves had a way of dealing with depression, which their white owners did not: They could shoo away Old Man Suicide by playing and singing the Blues. He says something else which also sounds right to me. He says the blues can’t drive depression clear out of a house, but can drive it into the corners of any room where it’s being played. So please remember that.
Foreigners love us for our jazz. And they don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us now for our arrogance.
When I went to grade school in Indianapolis, the James Whitcomb Riley School #43, we used to draw pictures of houses of tomorrow, boats of tomorrow, airplanes of tomorrow, and there were all these dreams for the future. Of course at that time everything had come to a stop. The factories had stopped, the Great Depression was on, and the magic word was Prosperity. Sometime Prosperity will come. We were preparing for it. We were dreaming of the sorts of houses human beings should inhabit – ideal dwellings, ideal forms of transportation.
What is radically new today is that my daughter, Lily, who has just turned 21, finds herself, as do your children, as does George W Bush, himself a kid, and Saddam Hussein and on and on, heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an Aids epidemic, and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women, and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads. Our children have inherited technologies whose by-products, whether in war or peace, are rapidly destroying the whole planet as a breathable, drinkable system for supporting life of any kind.
Anyone who has studied science and talks to scientists notices that we are in terrible danger now. Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.
The biggest truth to face now – what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life – is that I don’t think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.
Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the second world war, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts us absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many lifeless bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
Human beings have had to guess about almost everything for the past million years or so. The leading characters in our history books have been our most enthralling, and sometimes our most terrifying, guessers.
May I name two of them? Aristotle and Hitler.
One good guesser and one bad one.
And the masses of humanity through the ages, feeling inadequately educated just like we do now, and rightly so, have had little choice but to believe this guesser or that one.
Russians who didn’t think much of the guesses of Ivan the Terrible, for example, were likely to have their hats nailed to their heads.
We must acknowledge that persuasive guessers, even Ivan the Terrible, now a hero in the Soviet Union, have sometimes given us the courage to endure extraordinary ordeals which we had no way of understanding. Crop failures, plagues, eruptions of volcanoes, babies being born dead – the guessers often gave us the illusion that bad luck and good luck were understandable and could somehow be dealt with intelligently and effectively. Without that illusion, we all might have surrendered long ago.
But the guessers, in fact, knew no more than the common people and sometimes less, even when, or especially when, they gave us the illusion that we were in control of our destinies.
Persuasive guessing has been at the core of leadership far so long, for all of human experience so far, that it is wholly unsurprising that most of the leaders of this planet, in spite of all the information that is suddenly ours, want the guessing to go on. It is now their turn to guess and guess and be listened to. Some of the loudest, most proudly ignorant guessing in the world is going on in Washington today. Our leaders are sick of all the solid information that has been dumped on humanity by research and scholarship and investigative reporting. They think that the whole country is sick of it, and they could be right. It isn’t the gold standard that they want to put us back on. They want something even more basic. They want to put us back on the snake-oil standard.
Loaded pistols are good for everyone except inmates in prisons or lunatic asylums.
That’s correct.
Millions spent on public health are inflationary.
That’s correct.
Billions spent on weapons will bring inflation down.
That’s correct.
Dictatorships to the right are much closer to American ideals than dictatorships to the left.
That’s correct.
The more hydrogen bomb warheads we have, all set to go off at a moment’s notice, the safer humanity is and the better off the world will be that our grandchildren will inherit.
That’s correct.
Industrial wastes, and especially those that are radioactive, hardly ever hurt anybody, so everybody should shut up about them.
That’s correct.
Industries should be allowed to do whatever they want to do: bribe, wreck the environment just a little, fix prices, screw dumb customers, put a stop to competition, and raid the Treasury when they go broke.
That’s correct.
That’s free enterprise.
And that’s correct.
The poor have done something very wrong or they wouldn’t be poor, so their children should pay the consequences.
That’s correct.
The United States of America cannot be expected to look after its own people.
That’s correct.
The free market will do that.
That’s correct.
The free market is an automatic system of justice.
That’s correct.
I’m kidding.
And if you actually are an educated, thinking person, you will not be welcome in Washington, DC. I know a couple of bright seventh graders who would not be welcome in Washington, DC. Do you remember those doctors a few months back who got together and announced that it was a simple, clear medical fact that we could not survive even a moderate attack by hydrogen bombs? They were not welcome in Washington, DC.
Even if we fired the first salvo of hydrogen weapons and the enemy never fired back, the poisons released would probably kill the whole planet by and by.
What is the response in Washington? They guess otherwise. What good is an education? The boisterous guessers are still in charge – the haters of information. And the guessers are almost all highly educated people. Think of that. They have had to throw away their educations, even Harvard or Yale educations.
If they didn’t do that, there is no way their uninhibited guessing could go on and on and on. Please, don’t you do that. But if you make use of the vast fund of knowledge now available to educated persons, you are going to be lonesome as hell. The guessers outnumber you – and now I have to guess – about 10 to one.
I’M going to tell you some news.
No, I am not running for President, although I do know that a sentence, if it is to be complete, must have both a subject and a verb.
Nor will I confess that I sleep with children. I will say this, though: My wife is by far the oldest person I ever slept with.
Here’s the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only 12 years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me.
But I am now 82. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.
Our government’s got a war on drugs. That’s certainly a lot better than no drugs at all. That’s what was said about prohibition. Do you realise that from 1919 to 1933 it was absolutely against the law to manufacture, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages, and the Indiana newspaper humourist Ken Hubbard said: “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.”
But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 40. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse, I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine, LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s licence – look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut!
And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialised world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any left. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t the TV news is it? Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
I turned 82 on November 11, 2004. What’s it like to be this old? I can’t parallel park worth a damn any more, so please don’t watch while I try to do it. And gravity has become a lot less friendly and manageable than it used to be.
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged: “What is life all about?’” I have seven kids, three of them orphaned nephews.
I put my big question about life to my son the pediatrician. Dr Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”
© Kurt Vonnegut
Extracted from A Man Without A Country: A Memoir Of Life In George W Bush’s America, published by Bloomsbury, £
Copyright © 2006 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Secret Troops, Secret Ops, Hollywood At The Pentagon?
I wouldn’t want to say that this indicates the US would send in military units to fight in countries we’re not at war with, but... Hey, all those “Delta Force” kind of movies and movies about super-secret hit teams—they were to soften us up for it to happen in real life. Rambo for real; the Lone Marauder As Patriot.
What this also means is that Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld have read too goddam many Tom Clancy novels. Or, in Dubya's case, watched the movie versions.
washingtonpost.com
Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan
Conventional Tactics De-Emphasized
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A01
[snipped]
... calls for a one-third increase in Army Special Forces battalions, whose troops are trained in languages and to work with indigenous fighters; an increase in Navy SEAL teams; and the creation of a new SOF squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles to "locate and target enemy capabilities" in countries where access is difficult.
In addition, civil affairs and psychological operations units will gain 3,500 personnel, a 33 percent increase, while the Marine Corps will establish a 2,600-strong Special Operations force for training foreign militaries, conducting reconnaissance and carrying out strikes.
"SOF will increase their capacity to perform more demanding and specialized tasks, especially long-duration, indirect and clandestine operations in politically sensitive environments and denied areas," the report says. By 2007, SOF will have newly modified Navy submarines, each armed with 150 Tomahawk missiles, for reaching "denied areas" and striking individuals or other targets.
"SOF will have the capacity to operate in dozens of countries simultaneously" and will deploy for longer periods to build relationships with "foreign military and security forces," it says.
To conduct strikes against terrorists and other enemies -- work typically assigned to Delta Force members and SEAL teams -- these forces will gain "an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally," the report says.
The growth will also allow for the creation of small teams of operatives assigned to "detect, locate, and render safe" nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- as well as to prevent their transfer from states such as North Korea to terrorist groups.
To strengthen homeland defense, the report calls for improving communications and command systems so that military efforts can be better coordinated with state and local governments.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
What this also means is that Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld have read too goddam many Tom Clancy novels. Or, in Dubya's case, watched the movie versions.
washingtonpost.com
Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan
Conventional Tactics De-Emphasized
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A01
[snipped]
... calls for a one-third increase in Army Special Forces battalions, whose troops are trained in languages and to work with indigenous fighters; an increase in Navy SEAL teams; and the creation of a new SOF squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles to "locate and target enemy capabilities" in countries where access is difficult.
In addition, civil affairs and psychological operations units will gain 3,500 personnel, a 33 percent increase, while the Marine Corps will establish a 2,600-strong Special Operations force for training foreign militaries, conducting reconnaissance and carrying out strikes.
"SOF will increase their capacity to perform more demanding and specialized tasks, especially long-duration, indirect and clandestine operations in politically sensitive environments and denied areas," the report says. By 2007, SOF will have newly modified Navy submarines, each armed with 150 Tomahawk missiles, for reaching "denied areas" and striking individuals or other targets.
"SOF will have the capacity to operate in dozens of countries simultaneously" and will deploy for longer periods to build relationships with "foreign military and security forces," it says.
To conduct strikes against terrorists and other enemies -- work typically assigned to Delta Force members and SEAL teams -- these forces will gain "an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally," the report says.
The growth will also allow for the creation of small teams of operatives assigned to "detect, locate, and render safe" nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- as well as to prevent their transfer from states such as North Korea to terrorist groups.
To strengthen homeland defense, the report calls for improving communications and command systems so that military efforts can be better coordinated with state and local governments.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Secret Troops, Secret Ops, Hollywood At The Pentagon?
I wouldn’t want to say that this indicates the US would send in military units to fight in countries we’re not at war with, but... Hey, all those “Delta Force” kind of movies and movies about super-secret hit teams—they were to soften us up for it to happen in real life. Rambo for real; the Lone Marauder As Patriot.
What this also means is that Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld have read too goddam many Tom Clancy novels. Or, in Dubya's case, watched the movie versions.
washingtonpost.com
Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan
Conventional Tactics De-Emphasized
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A01
[snipped]
... calls for a one-third increase in Army Special Forces battalions, whose troops are trained in languages and to work with indigenous fighters; an increase in Navy SEAL teams; and the creation of a new SOF squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles to "locate and target enemy capabilities" in countries where access is difficult.
In addition, civil affairs and psychological operations units will gain 3,500 personnel, a 33 percent increase, while the Marine Corps will establish a 2,600-strong Special Operations force for training foreign militaries, conducting reconnaissance and carrying out strikes.
"SOF will increase their capacity to perform more demanding and specialized tasks, especially long-duration, indirect and clandestine operations in politically sensitive environments and denied areas," the report says. By 2007, SOF will have newly modified Navy submarines, each armed with 150 Tomahawk missiles, for reaching "denied areas" and striking individuals or other targets.
"SOF will have the capacity to operate in dozens of countries simultaneously" and will deploy for longer periods to build relationships with "foreign military and security forces," it says.
To conduct strikes against terrorists and other enemies -- work typically assigned to Delta Force members and SEAL teams -- these forces will gain "an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally," the report says.
The growth will also allow for the creation of small teams of operatives assigned to "detect, locate, and render safe" nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- as well as to prevent their transfer from states such as North Korea to terrorist groups.
To strengthen homeland defense, the report calls for improving communications and command systems so that military efforts can be better coordinated with state and local governments.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
What this also means is that Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld have read too goddam many Tom Clancy novels. Or, in Dubya's case, watched the movie versions.
washingtonpost.com
Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan
Conventional Tactics De-Emphasized
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 4, 2006; A01
[snipped]
... calls for a one-third increase in Army Special Forces battalions, whose troops are trained in languages and to work with indigenous fighters; an increase in Navy SEAL teams; and the creation of a new SOF squadron of unmanned aerial vehicles to "locate and target enemy capabilities" in countries where access is difficult.
In addition, civil affairs and psychological operations units will gain 3,500 personnel, a 33 percent increase, while the Marine Corps will establish a 2,600-strong Special Operations force for training foreign militaries, conducting reconnaissance and carrying out strikes.
"SOF will increase their capacity to perform more demanding and specialized tasks, especially long-duration, indirect and clandestine operations in politically sensitive environments and denied areas," the report says. By 2007, SOF will have newly modified Navy submarines, each armed with 150 Tomahawk missiles, for reaching "denied areas" and striking individuals or other targets.
"SOF will have the capacity to operate in dozens of countries simultaneously" and will deploy for longer periods to build relationships with "foreign military and security forces," it says.
To conduct strikes against terrorists and other enemies -- work typically assigned to Delta Force members and SEAL teams -- these forces will gain "an expanded organic ability to locate, tag and track dangerous individuals and other high-value targets globally," the report says.
The growth will also allow for the creation of small teams of operatives assigned to "detect, locate, and render safe" nuclear, chemical and biological weapons -- as well as to prevent their transfer from states such as North Korea to terrorist groups.
To strengthen homeland defense, the report calls for improving communications and command systems so that military efforts can be better coordinated with state and local governments.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
OK For Bush To Order Killings Within U.S.?
What if the “terrorist” had no ties to, say, Al Qaeda? If ELF and ALF are the “major” terrorists threats in this country, as the FBI has said, would Bush have the authority to order offing a member a member of either of those groups? What if there was a “credible” report of say, a dirty nuke or anthrax or...? How about if Bush is incapacited due to falling off his bicycle or something—can Cheney then order a killing?
The COINTEL operations essentially arranged the killings of several people, most notably Anna Mae Aquash and Fred Hampton. They did it, but got somebody else to pull the triggers. In Anna Mae’s case, it was members of AIM, under the impression she was a snitch. Fred Hampton was done in by the Chicago P.D.. It’s argued that the shoot-out in L.A. that did in the Symbionese Liberation Army was a set-up, too.
So, what this means is that Bush-Cheney feel secure enough, just about, to simply by-pass the middlemen.
Welcome to the New World Order, Chapter Two.
MSNBC.com
Exclusive: Can the President Order a Killing on U.S. Soil?
Newsweek
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11180519/site/newsweek/
Feb. 13, 2006 issue - In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.
Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack? University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein says the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.
A Justice Department official, who asked not to be ID'd because of the sensitive subject, said Bradbury's remarks were made during an "academic discussion" of theoretical contingencies. In real life, the official said, the highest priority of those hunting a terrorist on U.S. soil would be to capture that person alive and interrogate him. At a public intel-committee hearing, Feinstein was told by intel czar John Negroponte and FBI chief Robert Mueller that they were unaware of any case in which a U.S. agency was authorized to kill a Qaeda-linked person on U.S. soil. Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told NEWSWEEK: "Mr. Bradbury's meeting was an informal, off-the-record briefing about the legal analysis behind the president's terrorist-surveillance program. He was not presenting the legal views of the Justice Department on hypothetical scenarios outside of the terrorist-surveillance program."
—Mark Hosenball
The COINTEL operations essentially arranged the killings of several people, most notably Anna Mae Aquash and Fred Hampton. They did it, but got somebody else to pull the triggers. In Anna Mae’s case, it was members of AIM, under the impression she was a snitch. Fred Hampton was done in by the Chicago P.D.. It’s argued that the shoot-out in L.A. that did in the Symbionese Liberation Army was a set-up, too.
So, what this means is that Bush-Cheney feel secure enough, just about, to simply by-pass the middlemen.
Welcome to the New World Order, Chapter Two.
MSNBC.com
Exclusive: Can the President Order a Killing on U.S. Soil?
Newsweek
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11180519/site/newsweek/
Feb. 13, 2006 issue - In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush's surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.
Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack? University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein says the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force against Al Qaeda empowered the president to kill 9/11 perpetrators, or people who assisted their plot, whether they were overseas or inside the United States. On the other hand, Sunstein says, the president would be on less solid legal ground were he to order the killing of a terror suspect in the United States who was not actively preparing an attack.
A Justice Department official, who asked not to be ID'd because of the sensitive subject, said Bradbury's remarks were made during an "academic discussion" of theoretical contingencies. In real life, the official said, the highest priority of those hunting a terrorist on U.S. soil would be to capture that person alive and interrogate him. At a public intel-committee hearing, Feinstein was told by intel czar John Negroponte and FBI chief Robert Mueller that they were unaware of any case in which a U.S. agency was authorized to kill a Qaeda-linked person on U.S. soil. Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, told NEWSWEEK: "Mr. Bradbury's meeting was an informal, off-the-record briefing about the legal analysis behind the president's terrorist-surveillance program. He was not presenting the legal views of the Justice Department on hypothetical scenarios outside of the terrorist-surveillance program."
—Mark Hosenball
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Being Present At the SOTU While Brown
While white folks getting rousted was a big side-bar to Bush’s SOTU, a brown man got rousted, too. He’s an American citizen, though born in India. He’s got security clearance and works with the Department of Defense. He was a guest of Alcee Hastings (D-FLA). At the end of the speech, he was surrounded by cops and taken to a room for questioning; the story is they thought he “looked like somebody” on a Secret Service watch list.
Uh-huh. Anybody who’s been rousted for driving while black or brown knows that one. Or “a car like your’s was seen fleeing a robbery.” Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Think about this: we have an administration that is totally infilitrated with southerners. The Republican ass-kissing and seduction of the Dixiecrats is well-documented. In many ways, though it took 130 or so years, the south won the Civil War. Why else the roll-backs of civil rights protections and affirmative action? Why else the ability of scumbags like DeLay and Reed and Frist to escape punishment? For what other reasons, besides family-ties, was Florida chosen for the first big-time vote theft? And why else would a non-white, simply because of skin color, be hassled at the SOTU?
Yeah, I do think the Bush-Cheney Regime is racist. Among other things.
Saturday, Feb. 04, 2006
The State of the Union's Mystery Suspect
An anti-war activist and a congressman's wife weren't the only ones detained by the Capitol Police
By MELISSA AUGUST/WASHINGTON
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1156497,00.html
T-shirts, it turns out, aren't the only things that get you in trouble with the Capitol Police at the State of the Union address. Much has already been made of the fact that both anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young, the wife of Republican Congressman Bill Young, were ejected from the speech for wearing shirts with political messages; in Sheehan's case, her t-shirt read "2,245 dead. How many more?", while Young was sporting a sweat shirt with the words, "Support the Troops-Defending Our Freedom." Both have denounced their treatment-and both have received apologies from the police.
But on the same evening that President Bush was lauding democracy and freedom, there was one other person in attendance whose rights were infringed upon. The man, who did not want his identity revealed after the disturbing incident, was a personal guest of Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. He is a prominent businessman from Broward County, Florida who works with the Department of Defense-and has a security clearance. After sitting in the gallery for the entire speech, he was surrounded by about ten law enforcement officers as he exited the chamber and whisked away to a room in the Capitol.
For close to an hour the man, who was born in India but is an American citizen, was questioned by the Police, who thought he resembled someone on a Secret Service photo watch list, according to Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer. Eventually, the police realized it was a case of mistaken identity and let him go. Gainer has assured Hastings that the Capitol Police, Secret Service and FBI will investigate why the man was detained for so long, and try to "sharpen our procedures." But the man was "very, very scared" by the incident, says Fred Turner, a spokesperson for Hastings. On Tuesday night, he told the congressman that the experience was "maybe just the price of being brown in America," Turner says.
"He shouldn't have gone through the ringer as long as he did," Gainer says. "He did get caught up in the morass of Secret Service FBI, Capitol Police. Everybody was trying to figure out whether he was a threat. And he absolutely, unequivocally clearly was not." Gainer apologized to the man afterwards, only one of the many apologies he has had to make this week. He met with Congressman Young at least twice, as well as with Young's wife. "There is no prohibition against simply wearing a T-shirt that states your particular cause," Gainer stresses, taking full accountability for not providing clearer direction to his officers.
Gainer says he will work with the House Sergeant at Arms to clarify the rules of the House of Representatives, and to ensure that officers have a better understanding of what constitutes a protest and demonstration. Before he finalizes the new rules, Gainer has asked his staff to look into previous arrests and ejections in the gallery to see what he can learn. One of the first protests at a State of the Union speech occurred in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson was speaking and a group of suffragettes sitting in the gallery unfurled a large yellow banner with the words, "Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?" The Capitol Police prepared to arrest the women, but the chief doorkeeper ordered them to leave them alone. An assistant doorkeeper on the floor, however, did manage to pull the banner down. Compared to what happened at this week's speech, that almost seems civilized.
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Uh-huh. Anybody who’s been rousted for driving while black or brown knows that one. Or “a car like your’s was seen fleeing a robbery.” Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Think about this: we have an administration that is totally infilitrated with southerners. The Republican ass-kissing and seduction of the Dixiecrats is well-documented. In many ways, though it took 130 or so years, the south won the Civil War. Why else the roll-backs of civil rights protections and affirmative action? Why else the ability of scumbags like DeLay and Reed and Frist to escape punishment? For what other reasons, besides family-ties, was Florida chosen for the first big-time vote theft? And why else would a non-white, simply because of skin color, be hassled at the SOTU?
Yeah, I do think the Bush-Cheney Regime is racist. Among other things.
Saturday, Feb. 04, 2006
The State of the Union's Mystery Suspect
An anti-war activist and a congressman's wife weren't the only ones detained by the Capitol Police
By MELISSA AUGUST/WASHINGTON
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1156497,00.html
T-shirts, it turns out, aren't the only things that get you in trouble with the Capitol Police at the State of the Union address. Much has already been made of the fact that both anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young, the wife of Republican Congressman Bill Young, were ejected from the speech for wearing shirts with political messages; in Sheehan's case, her t-shirt read "2,245 dead. How many more?", while Young was sporting a sweat shirt with the words, "Support the Troops-Defending Our Freedom." Both have denounced their treatment-and both have received apologies from the police.
But on the same evening that President Bush was lauding democracy and freedom, there was one other person in attendance whose rights were infringed upon. The man, who did not want his identity revealed after the disturbing incident, was a personal guest of Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. He is a prominent businessman from Broward County, Florida who works with the Department of Defense-and has a security clearance. After sitting in the gallery for the entire speech, he was surrounded by about ten law enforcement officers as he exited the chamber and whisked away to a room in the Capitol.
For close to an hour the man, who was born in India but is an American citizen, was questioned by the Police, who thought he resembled someone on a Secret Service photo watch list, according to Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer. Eventually, the police realized it was a case of mistaken identity and let him go. Gainer has assured Hastings that the Capitol Police, Secret Service and FBI will investigate why the man was detained for so long, and try to "sharpen our procedures." But the man was "very, very scared" by the incident, says Fred Turner, a spokesperson for Hastings. On Tuesday night, he told the congressman that the experience was "maybe just the price of being brown in America," Turner says.
"He shouldn't have gone through the ringer as long as he did," Gainer says. "He did get caught up in the morass of Secret Service FBI, Capitol Police. Everybody was trying to figure out whether he was a threat. And he absolutely, unequivocally clearly was not." Gainer apologized to the man afterwards, only one of the many apologies he has had to make this week. He met with Congressman Young at least twice, as well as with Young's wife. "There is no prohibition against simply wearing a T-shirt that states your particular cause," Gainer stresses, taking full accountability for not providing clearer direction to his officers.
Gainer says he will work with the House Sergeant at Arms to clarify the rules of the House of Representatives, and to ensure that officers have a better understanding of what constitutes a protest and demonstration. Before he finalizes the new rules, Gainer has asked his staff to look into previous arrests and ejections in the gallery to see what he can learn. One of the first protests at a State of the Union speech occurred in 1916, when President Woodrow Wilson was speaking and a group of suffragettes sitting in the gallery unfurled a large yellow banner with the words, "Mr. President, what will you do for woman suffrage?" The Capitol Police prepared to arrest the women, but the chief doorkeeper ordered them to leave them alone. An assistant doorkeeper on the floor, however, did manage to pull the banner down. Compared to what happened at this week's speech, that almost seems civilized.
Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
More On U.S. Internment Camps
Remember, you read about it here, first. But the more I think about it, the more I worry...
2/02/2006 11:19 PM
Customs `camps' cause for concern
By Tom Hennessy, Columnist
Long Beach Press Telegram
http://www.presstelegram.com/search/ci_3470080
Maybe a lifetime in the news business makes one paranoid. Or maybe it was just a matter of timing.
The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."
Jamie Zuieback, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), explained such an emergency like this: "If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that's the type of situation that the contract would address."
That sounds a tad fuzzy, but let's concede that the camps do have something to do with immigration, illegal or not. In fact, there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing illegal immigrants.
But for anyone familiar with history U.S. or European the construction of detention camps for whatever purpose should prompt a chilling scenario.
Same folks
The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.
Halliburton was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000. Democrats in Congress have accused the administration of favoring the company via no-bid contracts. But KBR says the detention contract was competitive.
Tuesday's story also said the contract was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers. However, Halliburton says it was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security in support of ICE.
The contract is for a year, but includes four one-year options. It is a renewal of an existing ICE contract, notes Halliburton.
KBR, in fact, had the $9.7 million contract to build the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. This facility, popularly dubbed "Gitmo," holds 660 prisoners classified by the government as "enemy combatants."
Anyone care?
This column is written with the distinct feeling that not many people will give a hoot about any or all of this. But as already noted, a news story about construction of government detention centers should give us all pause.
Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.
Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.
This is an instance in which we could be well served by our representatives in Congress. They need to look at this and give constituents a better picture of what is going on.
Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.
Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@aol.com
2/02/2006 11:19 PM
Customs `camps' cause for concern
By Tom Hennessy, Columnist
Long Beach Press Telegram
http://www.presstelegram.com/search/ci_3470080
Maybe a lifetime in the news business makes one paranoid. Or maybe it was just a matter of timing.
The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."
Jamie Zuieback, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), explained such an emergency like this: "If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that's the type of situation that the contract would address."
That sounds a tad fuzzy, but let's concede that the camps do have something to do with immigration, illegal or not. In fact, there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing illegal immigrants.
But for anyone familiar with history U.S. or European the construction of detention camps for whatever purpose should prompt a chilling scenario.
Same folks
The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.
Halliburton was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000. Democrats in Congress have accused the administration of favoring the company via no-bid contracts. But KBR says the detention contract was competitive.
Tuesday's story also said the contract was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers. However, Halliburton says it was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security in support of ICE.
The contract is for a year, but includes four one-year options. It is a renewal of an existing ICE contract, notes Halliburton.
KBR, in fact, had the $9.7 million contract to build the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. This facility, popularly dubbed "Gitmo," holds 660 prisoners classified by the government as "enemy combatants."
Anyone care?
This column is written with the distinct feeling that not many people will give a hoot about any or all of this. But as already noted, a news story about construction of government detention centers should give us all pause.
Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.
Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.
This is an instance in which we could be well served by our representatives in Congress. They need to look at this and give constituents a better picture of what is going on.
Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.
Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. He can be reached at (562) 499-1270 or by e-mail at Scribe17@aol.com
Dictatorial P.C.? You bet: from the Republicans
Sacred cows and political correctness? You bet. Even the US State Department has got into the act (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/politics/04mideast.html?th&emc=th). The march of fundamentalism goes on and on. Censorship and control is what any kind of fundamentalism is about: US, Israel, Muslim nations, Marxist ones...censorshiip is a favorite tool of dictatorships. Including the dictatorship of the Bush-Cheney crowd.
AlterNet
The Cartoonish State of the Media
By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet
Posted on February 4, 2006, Printed on February 4, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31781/
When it comes to matters of free speech and sound journalism, it's getting increasingly difficult to determine who is worse: the present rulers of the United States or the Islamo-fascists they're now at war with. When they're not busy attacking one another, each side in the current conflict keeps busy attacking journalists (more already dead in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam era), journalism and the very concept of freedom of the press.
In the midst of the ongoing controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and the pusillanimous reaction by scared outlets such as CNN and France Soir (of which more later), it was particularly sad to see U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lobbing yet another round of verbal grenades at the media last week.
Claiming that press criticism has made "our people … chilled and reticent and uncomfortable," Rumsfeld resurrected the silly, shopworn shibboleth that the media will be to blame if the United States "loses" the global war on terrorism.
"We're not going to lose wars or battles out there. The only place we can lose is if the country loses its will," Rumsfeld said. "And the determinant of that is what is played in the media."
The terrorists, Rumsfeld noted, "manipulate and manage to influence what the media carries throughout the world. And they do it very successfully. They're good at it."
Meanwhile, U.S. military personnel "get penalized because there's bad press, there's bad news, someone doesn't like it, there's a congressional hearing, the newspaper has it on the front page because it's about the media, and the media likes to write about the media," Rumsfeld said. "How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can't do, [and] the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don't see much criticizing of them."
Rummy spoke just a few days after a Freedom of Information Act request by the redoubtable National Security Archive, a research institution based at George Washington University, compelled the release of the previously secret "Information Operations road map" he signed in 2003.
The newly declassified 74-page document details the U.S. military's plans for "information dominance" -- from influencing public opinion through media to designing "computer network attack" weapons -- and notes that information is "critical to military success." The "road map" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare.
The document was written to set out policy guidelines and establish the Pentagon's rationale for making information operations a "core" mission for the U.S. military. It says, "Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future."
The operations described in the document include a range of military activities, the most disturbing of which is the acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or psyops, is finding its way to the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public."
The document's authors agree that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda, and say, "Specific boundaries should be established," but don't bother to explain how.
But the National Security Archive calls this 'psyops' what it really is: propaganda planted overseas that will inevitably make its way back to the United States. "In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States -- even though they were directed abroad," said Kristin Adair, a representative of the group.
The road map portrays the internet as the equivalent of an enemy weapons system. The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the road map, and it forthrightly states, "Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system."
Despite the release of the "road map," the real direction of the Pentagon's information operations remains unclear. The document does, however, provide at least an inkling of the DOD's Info War planning -- and its global scale. It recommends, for example, that the United States should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum." In plain English, that means the U.S. military seeks the capability to knock out, among other things, every telephone and every networked computer on the planet.
While our fundamentally undemocratic defense secretary is busy blaming the media for his own repeated failures, fundamentalists on the other side of the world are in a tizzy over European media that have published cartoon drawings of Mohammad. Although the Islamo-fascists preface the Prophet's name with the standard phrase "peace be unto him," their protests have been typically far from peaceful, including a rampage in a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta, the seizure by Palestinian gunmen of an innocent German citizen, and a hand grenade thrown into the compound of the French Cultural Centre in Gaza -- not to mention the 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages sent to the editor of a Norwegian magazine that reprinted the cartoons.
Faced with the threat of such attacks, many in the media have courageously followed the example of the besieged Norwegian editor and supported the bedrock principle of free expression. But others have not, and instead have shamefully retreated. In Paris, the managing editor of the daily newspaper, France Soir, published the cartoons under the headline, "Yes, one has the right to caricature God" -- and was promptly fired. And CNN chose not to show the cartoons "in respect for Islam." It said nothing about concern for the commercial interests of its parent conglomerate Time Warner or respect for the Bill of Rights.
When it comes to the First Amendment, I'm a strict constructionist. Censorship is censorship, no matter what its provenance, and once you start down that slippery slope, there's no stopping. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, for example, was quoted by the state Anatolian news agency as saying the cartoons -- one depicting the founder of Islam wearing a turban resembling a bomb -- showed "There should be a limit to press freedom."
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw apparently concurs with that sentiment. Straw praised Britan's normally unfettered newspapers, which have so far refused to publish the cartoons, saying "I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong." He added, "I place on record my regard for the British media, which has shown considerable responsibility and sensitivity."
But Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had it right when he said the issue has gone beyond a feud between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and is now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam.
To which I can only add: "And taboos in the U.S. Department of Defense."
More of the controversial cartoons can be seen here: mediachannel.org
This and other articles by Rory O'Connor are available on his blog.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31781/
AlterNet
The Cartoonish State of the Media
By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet
Posted on February 4, 2006, Printed on February 4, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/31781/
When it comes to matters of free speech and sound journalism, it's getting increasingly difficult to determine who is worse: the present rulers of the United States or the Islamo-fascists they're now at war with. When they're not busy attacking one another, each side in the current conflict keeps busy attacking journalists (more already dead in Iraq than in the entire Vietnam era), journalism and the very concept of freedom of the press.
In the midst of the ongoing controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, and the pusillanimous reaction by scared outlets such as CNN and France Soir (of which more later), it was particularly sad to see U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lobbing yet another round of verbal grenades at the media last week.
Claiming that press criticism has made "our people … chilled and reticent and uncomfortable," Rumsfeld resurrected the silly, shopworn shibboleth that the media will be to blame if the United States "loses" the global war on terrorism.
"We're not going to lose wars or battles out there. The only place we can lose is if the country loses its will," Rumsfeld said. "And the determinant of that is what is played in the media."
The terrorists, Rumsfeld noted, "manipulate and manage to influence what the media carries throughout the world. And they do it very successfully. They're good at it."
Meanwhile, U.S. military personnel "get penalized because there's bad press, there's bad news, someone doesn't like it, there's a congressional hearing, the newspaper has it on the front page because it's about the media, and the media likes to write about the media," Rumsfeld said. "How do we compete in this struggle in a way that can counter the ability of the enemy to lie, which we can't do, [and] the ability of the enemy to not have a free media criticizing them? You don't see much criticizing of them."
Rummy spoke just a few days after a Freedom of Information Act request by the redoubtable National Security Archive, a research institution based at George Washington University, compelled the release of the previously secret "Information Operations road map" he signed in 2003.
The newly declassified 74-page document details the U.S. military's plans for "information dominance" -- from influencing public opinion through media to designing "computer network attack" weapons -- and notes that information is "critical to military success." The "road map" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare.
The document was written to set out policy guidelines and establish the Pentagon's rationale for making information operations a "core" mission for the U.S. military. It says, "Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future."
The operations described in the document include a range of military activities, the most disturbing of which is the acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or psyops, is finding its way to the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public."
The document's authors agree that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda, and say, "Specific boundaries should be established," but don't bother to explain how.
But the National Security Archive calls this 'psyops' what it really is: propaganda planted overseas that will inevitably make its way back to the United States. "In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States -- even though they were directed abroad," said Kristin Adair, a representative of the group.
The road map portrays the internet as the equivalent of an enemy weapons system. The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the road map, and it forthrightly states, "Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system."
Despite the release of the "road map," the real direction of the Pentagon's information operations remains unclear. The document does, however, provide at least an inkling of the DOD's Info War planning -- and its global scale. It recommends, for example, that the United States should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum." In plain English, that means the U.S. military seeks the capability to knock out, among other things, every telephone and every networked computer on the planet.
While our fundamentally undemocratic defense secretary is busy blaming the media for his own repeated failures, fundamentalists on the other side of the world are in a tizzy over European media that have published cartoon drawings of Mohammad. Although the Islamo-fascists preface the Prophet's name with the standard phrase "peace be unto him," their protests have been typically far from peaceful, including a rampage in a building housing the Danish embassy in Jakarta, the seizure by Palestinian gunmen of an innocent German citizen, and a hand grenade thrown into the compound of the French Cultural Centre in Gaza -- not to mention the 25 death threats and thousands of hate messages sent to the editor of a Norwegian magazine that reprinted the cartoons.
Faced with the threat of such attacks, many in the media have courageously followed the example of the besieged Norwegian editor and supported the bedrock principle of free expression. But others have not, and instead have shamefully retreated. In Paris, the managing editor of the daily newspaper, France Soir, published the cartoons under the headline, "Yes, one has the right to caricature God" -- and was promptly fired. And CNN chose not to show the cartoons "in respect for Islam." It said nothing about concern for the commercial interests of its parent conglomerate Time Warner or respect for the Bill of Rights.
When it comes to the First Amendment, I'm a strict constructionist. Censorship is censorship, no matter what its provenance, and once you start down that slippery slope, there's no stopping. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, for example, was quoted by the state Anatolian news agency as saying the cartoons -- one depicting the founder of Islam wearing a turban resembling a bomb -- showed "There should be a limit to press freedom."
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw apparently concurs with that sentiment. Straw praised Britan's normally unfettered newspapers, which have so far refused to publish the cartoons, saying "I believe the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary, it has been insensitive, it has been disrespectful and it has been wrong." He added, "I place on record my regard for the British media, which has shown considerable responsibility and sensitivity."
But Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen had it right when he said the issue has gone beyond a feud between Copenhagen and the Muslim world and is now centered on Western free speech versus taboos in Islam.
To which I can only add: "And taboos in the U.S. Department of Defense."
More of the controversial cartoons can be seen here: mediachannel.org
This and other articles by Rory O'Connor are available on his blog.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/31781/
Friday, February 03, 2006
Washington A Mecca For Sex With Animals?
Our neighbors up in Washington are very very concerned about bestiality. It would appear to be a pressing problem for them. As usual, the Republicans are doing all they can to save us from, gasp, sex with animals. Actually, I think they're trying to save us from sex, period.
How someone came up with a figure of 96% of abusers having started with animals is beyond me. But, apparently, there’s the contagion theory of sexual abuse: once you start having sex with animals it just naturally spreads to other kinds of sex. Sort of like if you smoke pot you’re going to become a heroin addict.
Thursday, February 2, 2006 - 12:00 AM
Nicole Brodeur
Bestiality bill teaches a lesson in restraint
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002777700&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=brodeur02m&date=20060202
Oh, dear. Two older ladies with proper hairdos were sitting in the second row of Senate Hearing Room 1 in Olympia on Tuesday.
This was not good, and certainly not what I expected when I logged onto the TVW Web site that day for the Senate Judiciary Committee's public hearing on Senate Bill 6417. My guess is that the ladies were there for the committee's hearing on grandparents' visitation rights. Not the one on whether sex with an animal should be outlawed in Washington state.
Still stumped about how a bill becomes a law? SB 6417 is one that should renew the public's interest in state government.
I know I couldn't resist watching the suits in Olympia take on what people have been wisecracking about for months: the man, the horse, the farm in Enumclaw, the cause of death that was anything but natural. Not to mention the stunning fact that sex with animals is perfectly legal in this state.
Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, whose district includes the infamous farm, was good and ready to present the bill making sex with animals a Class C felony, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
***
"People are coming from out of state to do this here," Roach said. "We don't need to have a Mecca here for abusing animals."
Dan Satterberg of the King County prosecutor's office said the bill is not just about animal welfare. Sex with animals can lead to "violence to humans," he said, adding that 96 percent of juvenile sex offenders "started off abusing the family pet."
***
Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
How someone came up with a figure of 96% of abusers having started with animals is beyond me. But, apparently, there’s the contagion theory of sexual abuse: once you start having sex with animals it just naturally spreads to other kinds of sex. Sort of like if you smoke pot you’re going to become a heroin addict.
Thursday, February 2, 2006 - 12:00 AM
Nicole Brodeur
Bestiality bill teaches a lesson in restraint
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002777700&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=brodeur02m&date=20060202
Oh, dear. Two older ladies with proper hairdos were sitting in the second row of Senate Hearing Room 1 in Olympia on Tuesday.
This was not good, and certainly not what I expected when I logged onto the TVW Web site that day for the Senate Judiciary Committee's public hearing on Senate Bill 6417. My guess is that the ladies were there for the committee's hearing on grandparents' visitation rights. Not the one on whether sex with an animal should be outlawed in Washington state.
Still stumped about how a bill becomes a law? SB 6417 is one that should renew the public's interest in state government.
I know I couldn't resist watching the suits in Olympia take on what people have been wisecracking about for months: the man, the horse, the farm in Enumclaw, the cause of death that was anything but natural. Not to mention the stunning fact that sex with animals is perfectly legal in this state.
Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, whose district includes the infamous farm, was good and ready to present the bill making sex with animals a Class C felony, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
***
"People are coming from out of state to do this here," Roach said. "We don't need to have a Mecca here for abusing animals."
Dan Satterberg of the King County prosecutor's office said the bill is not just about animal welfare. Sex with animals can lead to "violence to humans," he said, adding that 96 percent of juvenile sex offenders "started off abusing the family pet."
***
Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
No Comment Needed
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires---a wiretap requires a court order.
Nothing has changed, by the way.
When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.
It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
---President George W. Bush
April 20, 2004
Perpetual War For Perpetual Power
Rumsfeld says we’ll have to carry on the so-called War On Terror for generations.
Of course: without the Cold War, what would our defense-security industries do for contracts? Gore Vidal and William Grieder, among others, have repeatedly pointed out that the industries that benefit from a war-time footing are running the show.
The thing is, now, they not only operate behind the scenes, they are so confident and well-placed, they can actually just about tell the truth. Rumsfeld, like Cheney and countless others, are unreconstructed Cold Warriors; they like it that way. Job security, power, wealth, control: all the things they consider essential to their lives. And to their manhood....
Rumsfeld Offers Strategies for Current War
Pentagon to Release 20-Year Plan Today
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202296_pf.html
By Josh White and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 3, 2006
The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake.
"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the National Press Club.
The speech, which aides said was titled "The Long War," came on the eve of the Pentagon's release of its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which sets out plans for how the U.S. military will address major security challenges 20 years into the future. The plans to be released today include shifts to make the military more agile and capable of dealing with unconventional threats, something Rumsfeld has said is necessary to move from a military designed for the Cold War into one that is more flexible.
He said the nation must focus on three strategies in the ongoing war: preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, defending the U.S. homeland and helping allies fight terrorism. He emphasized that these goals could take a long time to achieve.
Indeed, the QDR, mandated every four years by Congress, opens with the declaration: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
The review has been widely anticipated in Washington defense circles because of the dramatic changes in the U.S. military's global role since the last review in 2001. Adding to the high expectations is the fact that Rumsfeld and his team have now been in place for more than four years.
The QDR strategy draws heavily on lessons learned by the military from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide campaign against terrorism, shifting the Pentagon's emphasis away from conventional warfare of the Cold War era toward three new areas.
First are "irregular" conflicts against insurgents, terrorists and other non-state enemies. Iraq and Afghanistan are the "early battles" in the campaign against Islamic extremists and terrorists, who are "profoundly more dangerous" than in the past because of technological advances that allow them to operate globally, said Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England in an address on Wednesday.
The QDR also focuses on defending the U.S. homeland against "catastrophic" attacks such as with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Finally, it sets out plans for deterring the rising military heft of major powers such as China.
The strategic vision outlined in the QDR has won high marks from defense analysts for diagnosing the problems the U.S. military will likely face. However, it is less successful in translating those concepts into concrete military capabilities, the analysts say.
The review does not dramatically change the "force construct" -- the set of world contingencies that the U.S. military is expected to be able to deal with. The most important change is the recognition that U.S. forces may have to carry out long-term stability operations, or surge suddenly to a world hot spot. There are not "huge tectonic shifts," said Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an address Wednesday.
The strategy does call for devoting resources to accelerate a long-range strike capability directed at hostile nations, and for new investments aimed at countering biological and nuclear weapons -- such as teams able to defuse a nuclear bomb. But it makes relatively minor adjustments in key weapons systems, with the biggest programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter and the Army's Future Combat Systems escaping virtually unscathed. This leaves less room for investments in innovative programs and forces to address the types of problems that the QDR identifies, analysts say.
"A lot of tough choices are kicked down the road," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
One of the toughest battles facing the United States, Rumsfeld said yesterday, is recognizing the seriousness of the terrorist threat and the immediacy of fighting the nation's enemies. He said the task facing Western nations could be arduous, as terrorists operate in numerous countries around the world, hidden, and with the willingness to wait long periods between attacks. Military leaders and officials in the Bush administration have taken to calling the global war on terrorism the "long war," which defense experts say is a recognition that there is no end in sight.
"Dealing with the issue of terrorism and extremism is going to take a long time," said Robert E. Hunter, senior adviser at Rand Corp. and a former ambassador to NATO. "But we have to define success. You're never going to get rid of all terrorism."
Rumsfeld said he does not believe the war will end with a bang but, instead, with a whimper, "fading down over a sustained period of time as more countries in the world are successful," much as how democracy outlasted communism in the Cold War. He added that the early decades of the Cold War also brought confusion and doubt.
"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight, or think it's not important enough, or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Of course: without the Cold War, what would our defense-security industries do for contracts? Gore Vidal and William Grieder, among others, have repeatedly pointed out that the industries that benefit from a war-time footing are running the show.
The thing is, now, they not only operate behind the scenes, they are so confident and well-placed, they can actually just about tell the truth. Rumsfeld, like Cheney and countless others, are unreconstructed Cold Warriors; they like it that way. Job security, power, wealth, control: all the things they consider essential to their lives. And to their manhood....
Rumsfeld Offers Strategies for Current War
Pentagon to Release 20-Year Plan Today
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/02/AR2006020202296_pf.html
By Josh White and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 3, 2006
The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.
Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years. He said there is a tendency to underestimate the threats that terrorists pose to global security, and said liberty is at stake.
"Compelled by a militant ideology that celebrates murder and suicide with no territory to defend, with little to lose, they will either succeed in changing our way of life, or we will succeed in changing theirs," Rumsfeld said in a speech at the National Press Club.
The speech, which aides said was titled "The Long War," came on the eve of the Pentagon's release of its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which sets out plans for how the U.S. military will address major security challenges 20 years into the future. The plans to be released today include shifts to make the military more agile and capable of dealing with unconventional threats, something Rumsfeld has said is necessary to move from a military designed for the Cold War into one that is more flexible.
He said the nation must focus on three strategies in the ongoing war: preventing terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, defending the U.S. homeland and helping allies fight terrorism. He emphasized that these goals could take a long time to achieve.
Indeed, the QDR, mandated every four years by Congress, opens with the declaration: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
The review has been widely anticipated in Washington defense circles because of the dramatic changes in the U.S. military's global role since the last review in 2001. Adding to the high expectations is the fact that Rumsfeld and his team have now been in place for more than four years.
The QDR strategy draws heavily on lessons learned by the military from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the worldwide campaign against terrorism, shifting the Pentagon's emphasis away from conventional warfare of the Cold War era toward three new areas.
First are "irregular" conflicts against insurgents, terrorists and other non-state enemies. Iraq and Afghanistan are the "early battles" in the campaign against Islamic extremists and terrorists, who are "profoundly more dangerous" than in the past because of technological advances that allow them to operate globally, said Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England in an address on Wednesday.
The QDR also focuses on defending the U.S. homeland against "catastrophic" attacks such as with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Finally, it sets out plans for deterring the rising military heft of major powers such as China.
The strategic vision outlined in the QDR has won high marks from defense analysts for diagnosing the problems the U.S. military will likely face. However, it is less successful in translating those concepts into concrete military capabilities, the analysts say.
The review does not dramatically change the "force construct" -- the set of world contingencies that the U.S. military is expected to be able to deal with. The most important change is the recognition that U.S. forces may have to carry out long-term stability operations, or surge suddenly to a world hot spot. There are not "huge tectonic shifts," said Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an address Wednesday.
The strategy does call for devoting resources to accelerate a long-range strike capability directed at hostile nations, and for new investments aimed at countering biological and nuclear weapons -- such as teams able to defuse a nuclear bomb. But it makes relatively minor adjustments in key weapons systems, with the biggest programs such as the Joint Strike Fighter and the Army's Future Combat Systems escaping virtually unscathed. This leaves less room for investments in innovative programs and forces to address the types of problems that the QDR identifies, analysts say.
"A lot of tough choices are kicked down the road," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
One of the toughest battles facing the United States, Rumsfeld said yesterday, is recognizing the seriousness of the terrorist threat and the immediacy of fighting the nation's enemies. He said the task facing Western nations could be arduous, as terrorists operate in numerous countries around the world, hidden, and with the willingness to wait long periods between attacks. Military leaders and officials in the Bush administration have taken to calling the global war on terrorism the "long war," which defense experts say is a recognition that there is no end in sight.
"Dealing with the issue of terrorism and extremism is going to take a long time," said Robert E. Hunter, senior adviser at Rand Corp. and a former ambassador to NATO. "But we have to define success. You're never going to get rid of all terrorism."
Rumsfeld said he does not believe the war will end with a bang but, instead, with a whimper, "fading down over a sustained period of time as more countries in the world are successful," much as how democracy outlasted communism in the Cold War. He added that the early decades of the Cold War also brought confusion and doubt.
"The only way that terrorists can win this struggle is if we lose our will and surrender the fight, or think it's not important enough, or in confusion or in disagreement among ourselves give them the time to regroup and reestablish themselves in Iraq or elsewhere," he said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Gimme That Old-Time Police State!
Just to get a wee bit absurd here, I’m posting this, a column from the Seattle Times, about the current security-state mania. Like On-Star and the telephone-locating services, this is another step toward an authoritarian fantasy that George Orwell couldn’t have dreamed of.
Aren’t we lucky? Even our animals will be locatable. And all the documentation—how does any of this make the government smaller? Well, to be able to do it, it means we’ll have to eliminate all domestics programs except surveillance. Simple.
Friday, February 3, 2006 - 12:00 AM
Danny Westneat
What next: animal mug shots?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002780418&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=danny03&date=20060203
Because of 9/11, our national government has decided to issue electronically readable, standardized ID cards to every human being within our borders.
By 2008, you'll need the card, embedded with a radio-frequency chip, to board planes, open a bank account or use government services. The goal is to make it tougher for terrorists to move freely among us.
When Pat Showalter heard of the cards, the 71-year-old great-grandmother who lives in the woods near Snohomish shook her head and wondered what the U.S. was coming to.
She soon found out. They want to radio-tag all the animals, too.
"I tell people about this, and they think I've gone nuts."
She's talking about an extraordinary plan under way to register, and track, every livestock animal in the U.S. That's all the cows, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs, even llamas.
It's called the National Animal Identification System. It seeks to assign each animal a 15-digit ID number and physical tag such as a radio-frequency device. So far it's voluntary, but it's slated to be mandatory in 2009 for any animal that moves from one property to another (i.e. if they're sold, borrowed, displayed at a fair, or just wander around a lot.)
It's well-meaning. If we know where all the animals are at all times, then we can quickly quell outbreaks of disease, such as mad-cow or avian flu.
But there are more than 10 billion such animals in the U.S. We kill 9 billion chickens a year. Keeping track of them all, even if some are registered in groups, will require massive government record keeping.
Another problem: It's insane. Especially for people who own just a handful of animals.
Take Showalter. She keeps 30 goats, 50 Muscovy ducks and "several dozen chickens, some of them feral," on her five-acre Zederkamm Farm near the Snohomish River.
She says radio-tagging them is doable, though pricey. But she'll have to file reports whenever they leave her land — such as when children borrow a goat to pull a cart, or she sells some ducks, or a coyote runs off with a chicken. She figures she won't have time for much else.
It's one thing to track animals at big feedlots. But goats in the woods in Snohomish?
This program will no doubt be softened. It's too burdensome and creepy to survive as advertised.
It has already radicalized at least one great-grandmother.
Showalter says she's never been an activist. She's a conservative, a Christian, a seller of goat-milk soap.
"But I absolutely will not go along with this," she said. "I refuse. I guess I'm just going to hold out up here until the government comes to get me."
This is about more than this one program. It's about who we're becoming. That we're considering radio-tagging all our people and animals, even if it's to fight terrorism and disease, is a mark of a country gone round the bend with fear.
As Showalter puts it:
"We're looking over our shoulders so much, afraid of something terrible happening, that we can't see that this is no way to live."
Danny Westneat's column
appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Aren’t we lucky? Even our animals will be locatable. And all the documentation—how does any of this make the government smaller? Well, to be able to do it, it means we’ll have to eliminate all domestics programs except surveillance. Simple.
Friday, February 3, 2006 - 12:00 AM
Danny Westneat
What next: animal mug shots?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002780418&zsection_id=2002111777&slug=danny03&date=20060203
Because of 9/11, our national government has decided to issue electronically readable, standardized ID cards to every human being within our borders.
By 2008, you'll need the card, embedded with a radio-frequency chip, to board planes, open a bank account or use government services. The goal is to make it tougher for terrorists to move freely among us.
When Pat Showalter heard of the cards, the 71-year-old great-grandmother who lives in the woods near Snohomish shook her head and wondered what the U.S. was coming to.
She soon found out. They want to radio-tag all the animals, too.
"I tell people about this, and they think I've gone nuts."
She's talking about an extraordinary plan under way to register, and track, every livestock animal in the U.S. That's all the cows, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs, even llamas.
It's called the National Animal Identification System. It seeks to assign each animal a 15-digit ID number and physical tag such as a radio-frequency device. So far it's voluntary, but it's slated to be mandatory in 2009 for any animal that moves from one property to another (i.e. if they're sold, borrowed, displayed at a fair, or just wander around a lot.)
It's well-meaning. If we know where all the animals are at all times, then we can quickly quell outbreaks of disease, such as mad-cow or avian flu.
But there are more than 10 billion such animals in the U.S. We kill 9 billion chickens a year. Keeping track of them all, even if some are registered in groups, will require massive government record keeping.
Another problem: It's insane. Especially for people who own just a handful of animals.
Take Showalter. She keeps 30 goats, 50 Muscovy ducks and "several dozen chickens, some of them feral," on her five-acre Zederkamm Farm near the Snohomish River.
She says radio-tagging them is doable, though pricey. But she'll have to file reports whenever they leave her land — such as when children borrow a goat to pull a cart, or she sells some ducks, or a coyote runs off with a chicken. She figures she won't have time for much else.
It's one thing to track animals at big feedlots. But goats in the woods in Snohomish?
This program will no doubt be softened. It's too burdensome and creepy to survive as advertised.
It has already radicalized at least one great-grandmother.
Showalter says she's never been an activist. She's a conservative, a Christian, a seller of goat-milk soap.
"But I absolutely will not go along with this," she said. "I refuse. I guess I'm just going to hold out up here until the government comes to get me."
This is about more than this one program. It's about who we're becoming. That we're considering radio-tagging all our people and animals, even if it's to fight terrorism and disease, is a mark of a country gone round the bend with fear.
As Showalter puts it:
"We're looking over our shoulders so much, afraid of something terrible happening, that we can't see that this is no way to live."
Danny Westneat's column
appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Fundamentalist Christians Erupt In Guatemala
Here we go, social cleansing, courtesy of the fundamentalist christians. Anyone remember The Handmaiden’s Tale? About what the U.S. would be like if the bible-thumpers got in control...ooops, OK, girls, get those head-coverings on!
Christian gang arrested in Guatemala
Last Updated Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:23:47 EST
CBC News
Police in Guatemala have arrested a gang of religious fanatics on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons and extortion, and the possible murder of five people in a small town.
San Lucas Toliman, about 70 kilometres west of Guatemala City, was the target of the seven men, who called themselves the Social Cleansing of the Town, police allege.
They are also alleged to have killed as many as five people they considered criminals. Part of their purported work also involved setting up their own roadside checkpoints to charge travellers to pass through.
"This was a fundamentalist Christian organization in character that harangued the town's population on religious themes," said Victor Soto, head of the national criminal investigations unit.
The group allegedly targeted anyone suspected of not following the Bible, including taking part in theft or marital infidelity, said police.
Their work started with delivering notes containing biblical quotations and threats.
The seven are being held while police carry out ballistics tests.
Copyright ©2006 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
Christian gang arrested in Guatemala
Last Updated Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:23:47 EST
CBC News
Police in Guatemala have arrested a gang of religious fanatics on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons and extortion, and the possible murder of five people in a small town.
San Lucas Toliman, about 70 kilometres west of Guatemala City, was the target of the seven men, who called themselves the Social Cleansing of the Town, police allege.
They are also alleged to have killed as many as five people they considered criminals. Part of their purported work also involved setting up their own roadside checkpoints to charge travellers to pass through.
"This was a fundamentalist Christian organization in character that harangued the town's population on religious themes," said Victor Soto, head of the national criminal investigations unit.
The group allegedly targeted anyone suspected of not following the Bible, including taking part in theft or marital infidelity, said police.
Their work started with delivering notes containing biblical quotations and threats.
The seven are being held while police carry out ballistics tests.
Copyright ©2006 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - All Rights Reserved
The President's Gestapo
Maybe we need a banner to be shown each time Bush-Cheney appears. It would say, “Silence Makes Free,” sort of like the sign at the gates of Dachau. The administration claims to welcome dissent, but it has a gang of white-shirted suits to act as Gestapo. Anyone who’s at least checked the news, or talked with anybody who’s paid attention, knows that Cindy Sheehan was evicted and busted for wearing a t-shirt that listed the number of Americans killed in the occupation of Iraq. Yes, another woman, a Republican, was removed, too, but after Sheehan, because the cops didn’t want to appear to take sides. But it seems like the cops were keeping a very close eye on Ms Sheehan. Also, Ms Young, the Republican, was not handcuffed...and she even called the cop “idiot.”
It stinks, you know. I hear Michelle Malkin posted that Ms Sheehan is less than a true-blue American for saying she’s against the war. Ms Malkin, you remember, wrote a book about what a good idea it was to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II (I look forward to reading what she has to say about the Massacre at Wounded Knee).
- The Carpetbagger Report - http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com -
The T-shirt scourge on America
Posted By Carpetbagger On 1st February 2006 @ 10:50
Think whatever you want about Cindy Sheehan; there isn't much of a defense for this.
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush's State of the Union address.
"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman, adding that Sheehan was arrested for unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail, Schneider said.
Sheehan was an invited guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) last night and was not disrupting the address when she was taken away by police. There were rumors on the networks that Sheehan held up an anti-war banner, but she did not. She sat in her seat, wearing a T-shirt that read, "2,245 Dead — How Many More?"
This, apparently, is now a crime. Again, this isn't about Sheehan, so much as it's about why the Capitol Police believe a law-abiding citizen can be taken into custody based on the non-obscene political message on a shirt.
______________________________________________
Indeed, it's worth noting that when it comes to Bush's "bubble," T-shirts have become quite a public menace.
* In August 2004, John Prather, a mild-mannered math professor at Ohio University, was removed by security from a presidential event on public property because he wore a shirt that promoted John Kerry.
* On July 4, 2004, Nicole and Jeff Rank were arrested at a Bush event in West Virginia for wearing T-shirts that criticized the president. (About the same time the Ranks were being taken away in handcuffs, Bush was reminding the audience, "On this 4th of July, we confirm our love of freedom, the freedom for people to speak their minds." Gotta love irony.)
* In August 2004, campaign workers removed a family from a presidential event in Michigan because one woman, a 50-year-old chemist, carried in a rolled-up T-shirt emblazoned with a pro-choice slogan. She later said, "I just wanted to see my president," and brought the extra shirt in case she got cold.
* In July 2004, Jayson Nelson, a county supervisor in Appleton, Wis., was thrown out of a presidential event because of a pro-Kerry T-shirt. An event staffer saw the shirt, snatched the VIP ticket, and called for police. "Look at his shirt! Look at his shirt!" Nelson recalled the woman telling the Ashwaubenon Public Safety officer who answered the call. Nelson said the officer told him, "You gotta go," and sternly directed him to a Secret Service contingent that spent seven or eight minutes checking him over before ejecting him from the property.
* In October 2004, three Oregon schoolteachers were removed from a Bush event and threatened with arrest for wearing t-shirts that said "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
In each instance, the "accused" had tickets to see the president. Moreover, none were disturbing the peace, disrupting the event, or causing a ruckus. Their crime was their shirt.
In this sense, Sheehan's arrest was predictable. Sad, but inevitable.
URL to article: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/6500.html
OK, now this, from John Nichols’ blog at The Nation:
Beverly Young, the wife of Representative C.W. Bill Young, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, showed for the State of the Union address up sporting a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops--Defending Our Freedom." When Capitol Police asked her to leave the gallery because she was wearing clothing that featured a political message, Mrs. Young says, she argued loudly with officers and called one of them "an idiot."
But Mrs. Young was not handcuffed. She was not dragged from the Capitol. She was not arrested. She was not jailed.
Sheehan, who caused no ruckus, was arrested not because she engaged in "unlawful conduct." Rather, by every evidence, she was arrested because of what her T-shirt said--and, by extension, because of what she believes.
That makes this a most serious matter. Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is one of the senior members of the House, is right when he says that Sheehan's arrest by officers he refers to as "the President's Gestapo," tells us a lot more about the George Bush and the sorry state of our basic liberties in the midst of the President's open-ended "war on terror" than anything that was said in the State of the Union address. "It shows he still has a thin skin," Stark says of the President who claims to welcome dissent.
It also shows that the father of the Constitution, James Madison, was right when he warned that, in times of war, the greatest danger to America would not be foreign foes but Presidents and their minions, who would abuse the powers of the executive branch with the purpose of "subduing the force of the people."
It stinks, you know. I hear Michelle Malkin posted that Ms Sheehan is less than a true-blue American for saying she’s against the war. Ms Malkin, you remember, wrote a book about what a good idea it was to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II (I look forward to reading what she has to say about the Massacre at Wounded Knee).
- The Carpetbagger Report - http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com -
The T-shirt scourge on America
Posted By Carpetbagger On 1st February 2006 @ 10:50
Think whatever you want about Cindy Sheehan; there isn't much of a defense for this.
Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush's State of the Union address.
"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman, adding that Sheehan was arrested for unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor.
The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail, Schneider said.
Sheehan was an invited guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) last night and was not disrupting the address when she was taken away by police. There were rumors on the networks that Sheehan held up an anti-war banner, but she did not. She sat in her seat, wearing a T-shirt that read, "2,245 Dead — How Many More?"
This, apparently, is now a crime. Again, this isn't about Sheehan, so much as it's about why the Capitol Police believe a law-abiding citizen can be taken into custody based on the non-obscene political message on a shirt.
______________________________________________
Indeed, it's worth noting that when it comes to Bush's "bubble," T-shirts have become quite a public menace.
* In August 2004, John Prather, a mild-mannered math professor at Ohio University, was removed by security from a presidential event on public property because he wore a shirt that promoted John Kerry.
* On July 4, 2004, Nicole and Jeff Rank were arrested at a Bush event in West Virginia for wearing T-shirts that criticized the president. (About the same time the Ranks were being taken away in handcuffs, Bush was reminding the audience, "On this 4th of July, we confirm our love of freedom, the freedom for people to speak their minds." Gotta love irony.)
* In August 2004, campaign workers removed a family from a presidential event in Michigan because one woman, a 50-year-old chemist, carried in a rolled-up T-shirt emblazoned with a pro-choice slogan. She later said, "I just wanted to see my president," and brought the extra shirt in case she got cold.
* In July 2004, Jayson Nelson, a county supervisor in Appleton, Wis., was thrown out of a presidential event because of a pro-Kerry T-shirt. An event staffer saw the shirt, snatched the VIP ticket, and called for police. "Look at his shirt! Look at his shirt!" Nelson recalled the woman telling the Ashwaubenon Public Safety officer who answered the call. Nelson said the officer told him, "You gotta go," and sternly directed him to a Secret Service contingent that spent seven or eight minutes checking him over before ejecting him from the property.
* In October 2004, three Oregon schoolteachers were removed from a Bush event and threatened with arrest for wearing t-shirts that said "Protect Our Civil Liberties."
In each instance, the "accused" had tickets to see the president. Moreover, none were disturbing the peace, disrupting the event, or causing a ruckus. Their crime was their shirt.
In this sense, Sheehan's arrest was predictable. Sad, but inevitable.
URL to article: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/6500.html
OK, now this, from John Nichols’ blog at The Nation:
Beverly Young, the wife of Representative C.W. Bill Young, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, showed for the State of the Union address up sporting a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops--Defending Our Freedom." When Capitol Police asked her to leave the gallery because she was wearing clothing that featured a political message, Mrs. Young says, she argued loudly with officers and called one of them "an idiot."
But Mrs. Young was not handcuffed. She was not dragged from the Capitol. She was not arrested. She was not jailed.
Sheehan, who caused no ruckus, was arrested not because she engaged in "unlawful conduct." Rather, by every evidence, she was arrested because of what her T-shirt said--and, by extension, because of what she believes.
That makes this a most serious matter. Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is one of the senior members of the House, is right when he says that Sheehan's arrest by officers he refers to as "the President's Gestapo," tells us a lot more about the George Bush and the sorry state of our basic liberties in the midst of the President's open-ended "war on terror" than anything that was said in the State of the Union address. "It shows he still has a thin skin," Stark says of the President who claims to welcome dissent.
It also shows that the father of the Constitution, James Madison, was right when he warned that, in times of war, the greatest danger to America would not be foreign foes but Presidents and their minions, who would abuse the powers of the executive branch with the purpose of "subduing the force of the people."
House Cuts Domestic Spending: Corruption in Iraq
The House voted through some big cuts in available money for student loans, Medicare, and Medicaid. The voting, of course, went pretty much along party lines. The Republicans are perfectly satisfied seeing poor people get denied access to as much as is possible.
The cuts are to help out the Bush-Cheney Regime so they can dump more money into holes that their pals happen to have their hands in. Outrageously priced toilet seats, defective armor, over-priced and out-moded weapons systems... We got to find the money somewhere, right?
Pigs.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/international/middleeast/02reconstruct.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
February 2, 2006
Wide Plot Seen in Guilty Plea in Iraq Project
By JAMES GLANZ
Robert J. Stein Jr. could not have been clearer about his feelings toward the American businessman who was receiving millions of dollars in contracts from Mr. Stein to build a major police academy and other reconstruction projects in Iraq.
"I love to give you money," Mr. Stein wrote in an e-mail message to the businessman, Philip H. Bloom, on Jan. 3, 2004, just as the United States was trying to ramp up its rebuilding program in Iraq.
As it turned out, Mr. Stein had the money to give. Despite a prior conviction on felony fraud that his Pentagon background check apparently missed, Mr. Stein was hired and put in charge of at least $82 million of reconstruction money in the south central Iraqi city of Hilla by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led administration that was then running Iraq.
***
Elizabeth Rubin contributed reporting for this article
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
The cuts are to help out the Bush-Cheney Regime so they can dump more money into holes that their pals happen to have their hands in. Outrageously priced toilet seats, defective armor, over-priced and out-moded weapons systems... We got to find the money somewhere, right?
Pigs.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/international/middleeast/02reconstruct.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print
February 2, 2006
Wide Plot Seen in Guilty Plea in Iraq Project
By JAMES GLANZ
Robert J. Stein Jr. could not have been clearer about his feelings toward the American businessman who was receiving millions of dollars in contracts from Mr. Stein to build a major police academy and other reconstruction projects in Iraq.
"I love to give you money," Mr. Stein wrote in an e-mail message to the businessman, Philip H. Bloom, on Jan. 3, 2004, just as the United States was trying to ramp up its rebuilding program in Iraq.
As it turned out, Mr. Stein had the money to give. Despite a prior conviction on felony fraud that his Pentagon background check apparently missed, Mr. Stein was hired and put in charge of at least $82 million of reconstruction money in the south central Iraqi city of Hilla by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led administration that was then running Iraq.
***
Elizabeth Rubin contributed reporting for this article
* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
High-Tech Surveillance/Stalking
It was obvious from the get-go that the “On-Star” system of communications from cars had the potential to do some super surveillance of a car’s whereabouts. How nice: we’ll help you because we know where you are—in fact, we know where you are even if you don’t need help. Now it’s available for cell phones.
How I stalked my girlfriend
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5388423-103680,00.html
Ben Goldacre
Wednesday February 1, 2006
Guardian
For the past week I've been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It has been very interesting to find out about her day. Now I'm going to tell you how I did it.
First, though, I ought to point out, that my girlfriend is a journalist, that I had her permission ("in principle ...") and that this was all in the name of science, bagging a Pulitzer and paying the school fees. You have nothing to worry about, or at least not from me.
But back to business. First I had to get hold of her phone. It wasn't difficult. We live together and she has no reason not to trust me, so she often leaves it lying around. And, after all, I only needed it for five minutes.
I unplugged her phone and took it upstairs to register it on a website I had been told about. It looks as if the service is mainly for tracking stock and staff movements: the Guardian, rather sensibly, doesn't want me to tell you any more than that. I ticked the website's terms and conditions without reading them, put in my debit card details, and bought 25 GSM Credits for £5 plus vat.
Almost immediately, my girlfriend's phone vibrated with a new text message. "Ben Goldacre has requested to add you to their Buddy List! To accept, simply reply to this message with 'LOCATE'". I sent the requested reply. The phone vibrated again. A second text arrived: "WARNING: [this service] allows other people to know where you are. For your own safety make sure that you know who is locating you." I deleted both these text messages.
On the website, I see the familiar number in my list of "GSM devices" and I click "locate". A map appears of the area in which we live, with a person-shaped blob in the middle, roughly 100 yards from our home. The phone doesn't go off at all. There is no trace of what I'm doing on her phone. I can't quite believe my eyes: I knew that the police could do this, and telecommunications companies, but not any old random person with five minutes access to someone else's phone. I can't find anything in her mobile that could possibly let her know that I'm checking her location. As devious systems go, it's foolproof. I set up the website to track her at regular intervals, take a snapshot of her whereabouts automatically, every half hour, and plot her path on the map, so that I can view it at my leisure. It felt, I have to say, exceedingly wrong.
By the time my better half got home, I was so childishly over-excited that I managed to keep all of this secret for precisely 30 seconds. And to my disappointment, she wasn't even slightly freaked out. I don't know if that says good or bad things about our relationship and I wouldn't want you to come away thinking it's all a bit "Mr & Mrs Smith" around here. Having said that, we came up with at least five new uses for this technology between us in a few minutes, all far more sinister than anything I had managed to concoct on my own.
And that, for me, was the clincher. Your mobile phone company could make money from selling information about your location to the companies that offer this service. If you have any reason to suspect that your phone might have been out of your sight, even for five minutes, and there is anyone who might want to track you: call your phone company and ask it to find out if there is a trace on your phone. Anybody could be watching you. It could be me.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
How I stalked my girlfriend
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5388423-103680,00.html
Ben Goldacre
Wednesday February 1, 2006
Guardian
For the past week I've been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It has been very interesting to find out about her day. Now I'm going to tell you how I did it.
First, though, I ought to point out, that my girlfriend is a journalist, that I had her permission ("in principle ...") and that this was all in the name of science, bagging a Pulitzer and paying the school fees. You have nothing to worry about, or at least not from me.
But back to business. First I had to get hold of her phone. It wasn't difficult. We live together and she has no reason not to trust me, so she often leaves it lying around. And, after all, I only needed it for five minutes.
I unplugged her phone and took it upstairs to register it on a website I had been told about. It looks as if the service is mainly for tracking stock and staff movements: the Guardian, rather sensibly, doesn't want me to tell you any more than that. I ticked the website's terms and conditions without reading them, put in my debit card details, and bought 25 GSM Credits for £5 plus vat.
Almost immediately, my girlfriend's phone vibrated with a new text message. "Ben Goldacre has requested to add you to their Buddy List! To accept, simply reply to this message with 'LOCATE'". I sent the requested reply. The phone vibrated again. A second text arrived: "WARNING: [this service] allows other people to know where you are. For your own safety make sure that you know who is locating you." I deleted both these text messages.
On the website, I see the familiar number in my list of "GSM devices" and I click "locate". A map appears of the area in which we live, with a person-shaped blob in the middle, roughly 100 yards from our home. The phone doesn't go off at all. There is no trace of what I'm doing on her phone. I can't quite believe my eyes: I knew that the police could do this, and telecommunications companies, but not any old random person with five minutes access to someone else's phone. I can't find anything in her mobile that could possibly let her know that I'm checking her location. As devious systems go, it's foolproof. I set up the website to track her at regular intervals, take a snapshot of her whereabouts automatically, every half hour, and plot her path on the map, so that I can view it at my leisure. It felt, I have to say, exceedingly wrong.
By the time my better half got home, I was so childishly over-excited that I managed to keep all of this secret for precisely 30 seconds. And to my disappointment, she wasn't even slightly freaked out. I don't know if that says good or bad things about our relationship and I wouldn't want you to come away thinking it's all a bit "Mr & Mrs Smith" around here. Having said that, we came up with at least five new uses for this technology between us in a few minutes, all far more sinister than anything I had managed to concoct on my own.
And that, for me, was the clincher. Your mobile phone company could make money from selling information about your location to the companies that offer this service. If you have any reason to suspect that your phone might have been out of your sight, even for five minutes, and there is anyone who might want to track you: call your phone company and ask it to find out if there is a trace on your phone. Anybody could be watching you. It could be me.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Killing The Mentally Ill: a trend in the American system of justice
There’s a debate about whether or not the right-to-die movement is immoral. Many people who are disabled see it as troubling—like a foot in the door for “mercy killing.” And they see abortion-on-demand as a way to produce customized people, no troubling disabilities. I disagree with them. I think this is a much more troubling trend in the American system of justice: the killing of the clearly mentally ill.
USA: Too Slow to Help, Too Eager to Kill
Amnesty International | Press Release
Tuesday 31 January 2006
Systemic failure and the execution of severely mentally ill offenders.
Hundreds of severely mentally ill offenders in the US, are mired within a healthcare system that is too slow to help and a justice system that is too quick to pass death sentences, said Amnesty International today as it launched a major report on the use of the death penalty against mentally ill offenders in the US.
The report focuses on the systemic problems confronting the mentally ill and chronicles the cases of 100 severely mentally ill offenders who have been executed since 1977 - 1 in 10 of the total number of executions carried out since then.
Citing pervasive systemic failures in both the healthcare and criminal justice systems, the report also highlights the grim situation of the mentally ill currently on death row, which according to the US National Association of Mental Health is 5 to 10 per cent of the US's total death row population of approximately 3,400.
"The execution of those suffering from severe mental illnesses is a cruel and inhumane practice, which has been overlooked for far too long. Prejudice and ignorance give rise to fear and for many people it is easier to sentence a mentally ill offender to death rather than to find genuine treatment solutions," said Susan Lee, Amnesty International Americas Programme Director.
An illustrative case is Scott Panetti, who was sentenced to death in Texas in 1995 for killing his parents-in-law in 1992. He has a long-documented history of hospitalization for his mental illness, including schizophrenia - which caused him visual and auditory hallucinations.
During his trial, Scott - who acted as his own lawyer dressed as a cowboy - said that demons had been laughing at him as he left the scene of the crime.
One of the doctors who was at the trial said: "... Scott was completely unaware of the effect of his words and actions. Members of the jury had hostile stares and looked at Scott in disbelief while he rambled and made no sense ..."
Scott is still on death row.
In June 2002 the US Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for people with mental retardation (the term mental retardation, rather than learning disability, is used in the USA) on the ground that mental retardation diminishes personal culpability and because of the difficulty to justify the deterrent argument.
"Mental retardation and mental illness are not the same but the symptoms can have similar consequences - a mentally ill person's delusional beliefs may cause them to engage in illogical reasoning and to act on impulse. There is a profound inconsistency in exempting people with mental retardation from the death penalty while those with serious mental illness remain exposed to it," said Susan Lee.
"Capital punishment is a highly politicized punishment. For far too long, politicians have generally failed to offer the electorate any measurable evidence that judicial killing, let alone of offenders with mental illness, offers a constructive solution to violent crime."
According to Amnesty International's report, the case of Scott Panetti is representative of the circumstances in which people with severe mental illnesses are given death sentences and executed.
In many cases, those with severe mental illness don't understand the charges against them or the seriousness of the crime they committed. In others, the defendant is heavily medicated for the trial, and perceived by the jury as remorseless. Lack of remorse is a highly aggravating factor that weighs heavily in a jury's decision to impose the death penalty.
Some defendants have even been forcibly medicated in order to make them "competent" to be executed.
Amnesty International calls on all US authorities to immediately ban the use of the death penalty against mentally ill offenders and to put an end to the broken capital punishment system once and for all. Additionally, public officials at all levels must ensure that pleas for help by those suffering from mental illness do not go unanswered and that adequate medical treatment is given to those who need it the most.
For More Information:
For a copy of the 189-page report: "USA: The Execution of Mentally Ill Offenders," please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/indexAMR510032006.
For a copy of the 43-page summary report: "USA: The Execution of Mentally Ill Offenders," please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/indexAMR510022006.
For more information and updates on AI's campaign against the death penalty, please see: http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng.
USA: Too Slow to Help, Too Eager to Kill
Amnesty International | Press Release
Tuesday 31 January 2006
Systemic failure and the execution of severely mentally ill offenders.
Hundreds of severely mentally ill offenders in the US, are mired within a healthcare system that is too slow to help and a justice system that is too quick to pass death sentences, said Amnesty International today as it launched a major report on the use of the death penalty against mentally ill offenders in the US.
The report focuses on the systemic problems confronting the mentally ill and chronicles the cases of 100 severely mentally ill offenders who have been executed since 1977 - 1 in 10 of the total number of executions carried out since then.
Citing pervasive systemic failures in both the healthcare and criminal justice systems, the report also highlights the grim situation of the mentally ill currently on death row, which according to the US National Association of Mental Health is 5 to 10 per cent of the US's total death row population of approximately 3,400.
"The execution of those suffering from severe mental illnesses is a cruel and inhumane practice, which has been overlooked for far too long. Prejudice and ignorance give rise to fear and for many people it is easier to sentence a mentally ill offender to death rather than to find genuine treatment solutions," said Susan Lee, Amnesty International Americas Programme Director.
An illustrative case is Scott Panetti, who was sentenced to death in Texas in 1995 for killing his parents-in-law in 1992. He has a long-documented history of hospitalization for his mental illness, including schizophrenia - which caused him visual and auditory hallucinations.
During his trial, Scott - who acted as his own lawyer dressed as a cowboy - said that demons had been laughing at him as he left the scene of the crime.
One of the doctors who was at the trial said: "... Scott was completely unaware of the effect of his words and actions. Members of the jury had hostile stares and looked at Scott in disbelief while he rambled and made no sense ..."
Scott is still on death row.
In June 2002 the US Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for people with mental retardation (the term mental retardation, rather than learning disability, is used in the USA) on the ground that mental retardation diminishes personal culpability and because of the difficulty to justify the deterrent argument.
"Mental retardation and mental illness are not the same but the symptoms can have similar consequences - a mentally ill person's delusional beliefs may cause them to engage in illogical reasoning and to act on impulse. There is a profound inconsistency in exempting people with mental retardation from the death penalty while those with serious mental illness remain exposed to it," said Susan Lee.
"Capital punishment is a highly politicized punishment. For far too long, politicians have generally failed to offer the electorate any measurable evidence that judicial killing, let alone of offenders with mental illness, offers a constructive solution to violent crime."
According to Amnesty International's report, the case of Scott Panetti is representative of the circumstances in which people with severe mental illnesses are given death sentences and executed.
In many cases, those with severe mental illness don't understand the charges against them or the seriousness of the crime they committed. In others, the defendant is heavily medicated for the trial, and perceived by the jury as remorseless. Lack of remorse is a highly aggravating factor that weighs heavily in a jury's decision to impose the death penalty.
Some defendants have even been forcibly medicated in order to make them "competent" to be executed.
Amnesty International calls on all US authorities to immediately ban the use of the death penalty against mentally ill offenders and to put an end to the broken capital punishment system once and for all. Additionally, public officials at all levels must ensure that pleas for help by those suffering from mental illness do not go unanswered and that adequate medical treatment is given to those who need it the most.
For More Information:
For a copy of the 189-page report: "USA: The Execution of Mentally Ill Offenders," please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/indexAMR510032006.
For a copy of the 43-page summary report: "USA: The Execution of Mentally Ill Offenders," please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/indexAMR510022006.
For more information and updates on AI's campaign against the death penalty, please see: http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-index-eng.
Budget Cuts Target The Not-Rich
You got to admit, the Bush-Cheney Administration really does not give a damn for the poor. Time after time, the government will whack the poor and stroke the rich. Give those suits credit for consistency, if nothing else.
January 30, 2006
Budget to Hurt Poor People on Medicaid, Report Says
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — Millions of low-income people would have to pay
more for health care under a bill worked out by Congress, and some of
them would forgo care or drop out of Medicaid because of the higher
co-payments and premiums, the Congressional Budget Office says in a
new report.
The Senate has already approved the measure, the first major effort
to rein in federal benefit programs in eight years, and the House is
expected to vote Wednesday, clearing the bill for President Bush.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Bush plans to
recommend a variety of steps to help people obtain health insurance
and cope with rising health costs. But the bill, the Deficit
Reduction Act, written by Congress over the last year with support
from the White House, could reduce coverage and increase the number
of uninsured, the budget office said.
Over all, the bill is estimated to save $38.8 billion in the next
five years and $99.3 billion from 2006 to 2015, with cuts in student
loans, crop subsidies and many other programs, the budget office
said. Medicaid and Medicare account for half of the savings, 27
percent and 23 percent over 10 years.
The report gives Democrats new ammunition to attack the bill. But
they appear unlikely to defeat it, since the House approved a nearly
identical version of the legislation by a vote of 212 to 206 on Dec. 19.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the bill was
needed because Medicaid had been growing at an unsustainable rate.
But Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, said the budget
office report confirmed that the bill would "cut access to care for
some of our most vulnerable citizens."
The bill gives states sweeping new authority to charge premiums and
co-payments under Medicaid.
"In response to the new premiums, some beneficiaries would not apply
for Medicaid, would leave the program or would become ineligible due
to nonpayment," the Congressional Budget Office said in its report,
completed Friday night. "C.B.O. estimates that about 45,000 enrollees
would lose coverage in fiscal year 2010 and that 65,000 would lose
coverage in fiscal year 2015 because of the imposition of premiums.
About 60 percent of those losing coverage would be children."
The budget office predicted that 13 million low-income people, about
a fifth of Medicaid recipients, would face new or higher co-payments
for medical services like doctor's visits and hospital care.
It said that by 2010 about 13 million low-income people would have to
pay more for prescription drugs, and that this number would rise to
20 million by 2015.
"About one-third of those affected would be children, and almost half
would be individuals with income below the poverty level," the report
said in addressing co-payments for prescription drugs.
Under the bill, states could end Medicaid coverage for people who
failed to pay premiums for 60 days or more. Doctors and hospitals
could deny services to Medicaid beneficiaries who did not make the
required co-payments.
The budget office said the new co-payments would save money by
reducing the use of medical services.
"About 80 percent of the savings from higher cost-sharing would be
due to decreased use of services," the report said.
The official estimates take into account the fact that "savings from
the reduced use of certain services could be partly offset by higher
spending in other areas, such as emergency room visits."
After talking to federal and state officials and reviewing Medicaid
data, analysts at the Congressional Budget Office predicted that
states would charge premiums to 1.3 million low-income people and cut
benefits for 1.6 million people. Most of the cuts would affect
dental, vision and mental health services, it said.
The bill also makes it more difficult for people to qualify for
Medicaid coverage of nursing home care by transferring assets to
children or other relatives for less than fair market value.
This provision would delay Medicaid eligibility for 120,000 people,
or about 15 percent of the new recipients of Medicaid nursing home
benefits each year, the budget office said.
Under another provision of the bill, Medicaid would deny coverage of
nursing home care to any person with home equity exceeding $500,000.
States could increase the ceiling to $750,000. About 2,000 people a
year would be denied nursing home benefits because of the cap on home
equity, the budget office said.
Taken together, these provisions, requiring people to use more of
their own assets to pay for nursing home care, are expected to save
the federal government $6.4 billion over 10 years.
The budget office estimated that 35,000 Medicaid recipients would
lose coverage because of new, more stringent requirements for them to
prove United States citizenship. Most of those losing coverage would
be illegal immigrants, but some would be citizens unable to supply
the necessary documents, the report said.
Other provisions of the bill would establish stricter work
requirements for welfare recipients and cut federal payments to the
states for enforcing child support orders. The cut would save the
federal government $4.1 billion over 10 years, but child support
collections would decline as a result, the budget office said.
January 30, 2006
Budget to Hurt Poor People on Medicaid, Report Says
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — Millions of low-income people would have to pay
more for health care under a bill worked out by Congress, and some of
them would forgo care or drop out of Medicaid because of the higher
co-payments and premiums, the Congressional Budget Office says in a
new report.
The Senate has already approved the measure, the first major effort
to rein in federal benefit programs in eight years, and the House is
expected to vote Wednesday, clearing the bill for President Bush.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Mr. Bush plans to
recommend a variety of steps to help people obtain health insurance
and cope with rising health costs. But the bill, the Deficit
Reduction Act, written by Congress over the last year with support
from the White House, could reduce coverage and increase the number
of uninsured, the budget office said.
Over all, the bill is estimated to save $38.8 billion in the next
five years and $99.3 billion from 2006 to 2015, with cuts in student
loans, crop subsidies and many other programs, the budget office
said. Medicaid and Medicare account for half of the savings, 27
percent and 23 percent over 10 years.
The report gives Democrats new ammunition to attack the bill. But
they appear unlikely to defeat it, since the House approved a nearly
identical version of the legislation by a vote of 212 to 206 on Dec. 19.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said the bill was
needed because Medicaid had been growing at an unsustainable rate.
But Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, said the budget
office report confirmed that the bill would "cut access to care for
some of our most vulnerable citizens."
The bill gives states sweeping new authority to charge premiums and
co-payments under Medicaid.
"In response to the new premiums, some beneficiaries would not apply
for Medicaid, would leave the program or would become ineligible due
to nonpayment," the Congressional Budget Office said in its report,
completed Friday night. "C.B.O. estimates that about 45,000 enrollees
would lose coverage in fiscal year 2010 and that 65,000 would lose
coverage in fiscal year 2015 because of the imposition of premiums.
About 60 percent of those losing coverage would be children."
The budget office predicted that 13 million low-income people, about
a fifth of Medicaid recipients, would face new or higher co-payments
for medical services like doctor's visits and hospital care.
It said that by 2010 about 13 million low-income people would have to
pay more for prescription drugs, and that this number would rise to
20 million by 2015.
"About one-third of those affected would be children, and almost half
would be individuals with income below the poverty level," the report
said in addressing co-payments for prescription drugs.
Under the bill, states could end Medicaid coverage for people who
failed to pay premiums for 60 days or more. Doctors and hospitals
could deny services to Medicaid beneficiaries who did not make the
required co-payments.
The budget office said the new co-payments would save money by
reducing the use of medical services.
"About 80 percent of the savings from higher cost-sharing would be
due to decreased use of services," the report said.
The official estimates take into account the fact that "savings from
the reduced use of certain services could be partly offset by higher
spending in other areas, such as emergency room visits."
After talking to federal and state officials and reviewing Medicaid
data, analysts at the Congressional Budget Office predicted that
states would charge premiums to 1.3 million low-income people and cut
benefits for 1.6 million people. Most of the cuts would affect
dental, vision and mental health services, it said.
The bill also makes it more difficult for people to qualify for
Medicaid coverage of nursing home care by transferring assets to
children or other relatives for less than fair market value.
This provision would delay Medicaid eligibility for 120,000 people,
or about 15 percent of the new recipients of Medicaid nursing home
benefits each year, the budget office said.
Under another provision of the bill, Medicaid would deny coverage of
nursing home care to any person with home equity exceeding $500,000.
States could increase the ceiling to $750,000. About 2,000 people a
year would be denied nursing home benefits because of the cap on home
equity, the budget office said.
Taken together, these provisions, requiring people to use more of
their own assets to pay for nursing home care, are expected to save
the federal government $6.4 billion over 10 years.
The budget office estimated that 35,000 Medicaid recipients would
lose coverage because of new, more stringent requirements for them to
prove United States citizenship. Most of those losing coverage would
be illegal immigrants, but some would be citizens unable to supply
the necessary documents, the report said.
Other provisions of the bill would establish stricter work
requirements for welfare recipients and cut federal payments to the
states for enforcing child support orders. The cut would save the
federal government $4.1 billion over 10 years, but child support
collections would decline as a result, the budget office said.
