disturbing the comfortable

Location sensors, monitoring devices, illegal wiretaps, secret police infiltrating anti-war groups, the equation of dissent with disloyalty... And now surveillance drones over us all. Will it make us safer? Depends on who it will make us safer from: it ain’t going to make us safer from the government.


CNET News.com http://www.news.com/
Drone aircraft may prowl U.S. skies

By Declan McCullagh
http://news.com.com/Drone+aircraft+may+prowl+U.S.+skies/2100-11746_3-6055658.html

Story last modified Thu Mar 30 11:23:50 PST 2006

Unmanned aerial vehicles have soared the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq for years, spotting enemy encampments, protecting military bases, and even launching missile attacks against suspected terrorists.

Now UAVs may be landing in the United States.

A House of Representatives panel on Wednesday heard testimony from police agencies that envision using UAVs for everything from border security to domestic surveillance high above American cities. Private companies also hope to use UAVs for tasks such as aerial photography and pipeline monitoring.
Click for photos

"We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory," Michael Kostelnik, assistant commissioner at Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection Bureau, told the House Transportation subcommittee.

Kostelnik was talking about patrolling U.S. borders and ports from altitudes around 12,000 feet, an automated operation that's currently under way in Arizona. But that's only the beginning of the potential of surveillance from the sky.

In a scene that could have been inspired by the movie "Minority Report," one North Carolina county is using a UAV equipped with low-light and infrared cameras to keep watch on its citizens. The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air--close enough to identify faces--and many more uses, such as the aerial detection of marijuana fields, are planned.

That raises not just privacy concerns, but also safety concerns because of the possibility of collisions with commercial and general aviation aircraft.

"They're a legitimate user of the airspace and they need to play by the same rules as everyone else," Melissa Rudinger, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, said in a telephone interview.

Pilots undergo extensive training on collision detection and avoidance. Planes that fly at night are required to have certain types of lights, for instance. Operating an aircraft near busy airports (in government parlance, "Class B" airports) requires a transponder that broadcasts its altitude. And during all flights that take place in poor weather or higher than 18,000 feet above sea level, the pilot must be in radio contact with controllers.

No such anti-collision rules apply to UAVs. Rudinger is concerned that UAVs--either remote-controlled or autonomous drones--will pose a safety threat to pilots and their passengers. She's not that worried about larger UAVs operated by the military that have sophisticated radar systems, but about smaller ones that have limited equipment and potentially inexperienced ground controllers.

"The FAA needs to define what is a UAV," Rudinger said. "And they need to regulate it just like they do any other aircraft, and integrate it into the system. The problem is the technology has advanced, and there are no regulations that talk about how to certify these aircraft, how to certify the operator, and how to operate in the national airspace system."

For its part, the FAA says it's created a UAV "program office" to come up with new rules of the sky. Preliminary standards for "sense and avoid" UAV avionics are expected in three to four years.

"Currently there is no recognized technology solution that could make these aircraft capable of meeting regulatory requirements for 'see and avoid,' and 'command and control,'" said Nick Sabatini, associate FAA administrator for aviation safety. "Further, some unmanned aircraft will likely never receive unrestricted access to (U.S. airspace) due to the limited amount of avionics it can carry because of weight, such as transponders, that can be installed in a vehicle itself weighing just a few ounces."

Complicating the question of how to deal with UAVs is the fact that there are so many different varieties of them. Some are essentially large model aircraft and weigh only a few ounces or pounds, while some military models are the size of a Boeing 737. Most are designed to sip fuel slowly, so they have long flight times and low airspeeds--meaning that they could be flying at the same altitude as a jet aircraft but at half the speed.

Egging on Congress and the FAA are manufacturers of UAVs, who see a lucrative market in domestic surveillance and aerial photography.

"It is quite easy to envision a future in which (UAVs), unaffected by pilot fatigue, provide 24-7 border and port surveillance to protect against terrorist intrusion," said Mike Heintz on behalf of the UNITE Alliance which represents Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. "Other examples are limited only by our imagination."


Copyright ©1995-2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

The highest federal budget in history; the country has borrowed more money than all the previous administrations did, put together...And these thieves tell us the Federal Government won’t be able to help very much?

Oregon prepares for flu pandemic
3/30/2006, 5:30 p.m. PT
By SARAH SKIDMORE
The Associated Press
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-14/114376916188250.xml&storylist=orlocal

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregonians and people across the country need to take the possibility of a flu pandemic seriously and prepare for a possible outbreak, a top Bush administration official and Oregon's governor said Thursday.

"We're overdue for a pandemic and under-prepared," Mike Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told more than 100 government, health and business representatives at an influenza planning summit.

At the meeting, state and federal officials sharpened their plans to deal with a potential global influenza problem in Oregon. If a pandemic occurs, government officials are prepared to detect and attempt to control it but said the total impact would be beyond their reach.

An influenza pandemic could cripple the work force, economy and well-being of the state. So, officials recommend all citizens, community groups and businesses also make plans to cope.

"People of Oregon will have to come to the help of people of Oregon," said Leavitt, whose agency is holding influenza pandemic preparedness summits in every state.

A flu pandemic occurs when a new virus emerges that can be passed easily and rapidly among people across the globe. Because it is new, people would have no natural immunity and it could cause a more serious problem than a normal seasonal flu.

If a moderate flu pandemic occurred, about 1 million Oregonians could become ill, 12,000 could require hospitalization and 3,000 could die, the state public health department said.

There has not been an influenza pandemic since 1968 and the odds are low that the current avian flu strain will mutate to one passed easily among humans, said Susan Allan, Oregon's public health director.

If an influenza pandemic did occur, hospital and health systems could be short of staff and equipment to care for all patients, forcing some to ration care. The public health system would be able to communicate in real-time with hospitals and other first responders but might not be able to address all community needs.

"We seem to live in increasingly troubled times," Gov. Ted Kulongoski said. "Strangely though, Americans are not worried about influenza."

"We in Oregon are not prepared for a pandemic," Kulongoski said.

Kulongoski and others urged families, community groups and businesses to use government tips and checklists, which are available online, to develop disaster plans.

Oregon officials said they are constantly updating their ability to respond to a major emergency. The state has disbursed more than $28 million of federal grants during the last four years to improve public health response. It has already held a small test of its response system and will conduct a full-scale test in the fall.

"Anything you say about a pandemic before it happens seems alarmist; anything you do after it comes that you've prepared for seems inadequate," Leavitt said. "There's no one in the world who is well-prepared for a pandemic ... we are getting better prepared everyday."

___ On the Net:

Department of Health and Human Services pandemic flu information: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

More evidence that the government’s homeland security program is essentially a mess. The prosecution of two suspected “terrorists” down in California hinges on uncorroborated testimony of a well-paid snitch, a cop-wannabe, who seems to be somewhat un-hinged, himself.

This was one of the DOJ’s biggest—and most publicised— cases, claims that a domestic terror cell was broken and a major attack thwarted, and it is now falling apart. The federal prosecutor at the time has been charged with concealing evidence. The number of actual terrorists busted here in America, other than the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front members, is constantly getting revised downward.

The New York Times

March 30, 2006
Ex-Prosecutor in Terror Inquiry Is Indicted
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/national/30prosecutor.html?_r=1&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th&pagewanted=print
WASHINGTON, March 29 — A grand jury charged Wednesday that a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who led one of the Justice Department's biggest terrorism investigations concealed critical evidence in an effort to bolster the government's theory that a group of local Muslim men were plotting an attack.

The former prosecutor, Richard G. Convertino, and a State Department employee who served as a chief government witness were each indicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. The grand jury charged that they had conspired to conceal evidence about photographs of a military hospital in Jordan that was the supposed target of a terrorist plot by the Detroit defendants.

Mr. Convertino, once a rising star at the Justice Department who fell out of favor with supervisors in Washington, denied that he had ever withheld evidence, and he pledged that he would be vindicated.

"These charges are clearly vindictive and retaliatory, and it's an effort to discredit and smear someone who tried to expose the government's mismanagement of the war on terrorism," he said in a telephone interview.

The indictment of the former prosecutor and one of his star witnesses marked a dramatic turnaround in a case once hailed by President Bush and John Ashcroft, his first attorney general, as a major breakthrough against terrorism plotted on American soil.

After four Muslim men were arrested days after the Sept. 11 attacks in a dilapidated Detroit apartment, federal authorities charged that they were part of a "sleeper" terrorist cell plotting attacks against Americans overseas.

Two of the men were convicted on terrorism charges after a high-profile trial in 2003, with Mr. Convertino as the lead prosecutor. But the case soon began to unravel amid accusations of concealed evidence and government misconduct. The Justice Department ultimately repudiated its own case, leading to the dismissal of all terrorism charges against the men in 2004.

"I can't recall a case like this in recent memory where you have not only the collapse of the prosecution's entire case, but now the prosecutor himself indicted," said Brian Levin, a professor at California State University, San Bernardino, who has written on terrorism prosecutions.

"The government has made clear it's going to do everything it can to go after terrorism, but here you have a case where it appears that hubris might have intoxicated the prosecutor, and he might have taken one step over the line," Mr. Levin said.

Mr. Convertino, 45, who has left the Justice Department and opened his own law practice in the Detroit area, faces 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted. His co-defendant, Harry R. Smith III, 49, a security officer for the State Department who assisted in the prosecution, faces 20 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

The indictment lays blame for the collapse of the case against the terrorism suspects at the feet of Mr. Convertino and Mr. Smith. It said the two men conspired "to present false evidence at trial and to conceal inconsistent and potentially damaging evidence from the defendants."

But an investigation by The New York Times published in October 2004 found that senior officials at the Justice Department knew of problems in the case yet still pushed for an aggressive prosecution.

An internal Justice Department memorandum prepared in Washington before the 2002 indictments of the men acknowledged that the evidence was "somewhat weak," that the case relied on a single informant with "some baggage," and that there was no clear link to terrorist groups.

The prosecution exposed deep rifts within the Justice Department over issues of strategy — to the point that some Washington prosecutors assigned to the case were barely on speaking terms with Mr. Convertino and his Detroit prosecutors.

The opening of the government's indictment against the terror suspects, drafted by prosecutors in Washington, appeared to have been lifted almost verbatim from a scholarly article on Islamic fundamentalism. And Mr. Ashcroft was rebuked by the Detroit judge hearing the case for publicly asserting — in error — that the defendants were suspected of having advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The trial of the Detroit terror suspects turned on a set of sketches found in a day planner in the apartment where three of them lived.

At the terrorism trial in 2003 of the four defendants, Mr. Convertino and the prosecution team argued that the sketches, with corresponding words in Arabic, represented "casings" of two overseas targets — an American air base in Turkey and a military hospital in Jordan.

Defense lawyers sought to debunk the theory, arguing that the supposed sketch of the Turkey air base looked more like a map of the Middle East, but the jury convicted two of the men on terrorism charges.

Mr. Smith, who was based in Jordan through 2003, testified at the trial that diplomatic constraints had prevented him from photographing the hospital. But the grand jury charged that the real reason he and Mr. Convertino concealed photographs of the hospital taken by Mr. Smith and another State Department employee was that they did not match the sketches.

Richard Helfrick, a public defender in Detroit who represented Karim Koubriti, one of the defendants originally convicted and then cleared on terrorism charges, said his client was gratified to learn of Mr. Convertino's indictment on Wednesday.

Mr. Koubriti "wants to be in court when Mr. Convertino is arraigned," Mr. Helfrick said.

The former prosecutor said his legal troubles were the result not of wrongdoing, but of his clashes with Justice Department supervisors in terrorism prosecution and elsewhere. "This is just devastating," Mr. Convertino said. "I have five kids, and I had to tell my kids today, 'They're charging Dad with a crime.' But if they think they can scare me off like this, they've got the wrong guy."

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

There’s been an immense flap about an Afghan citizen, Abdul Rahman, who converted to christianity, and was then put on trial in his country for apostasy from Islam. Shock and horror, screams and blithering came from this country’s christian Right over such an awful thing.

No one seems to have noticed, except a few commentators on the left side of the dial, that while Rahman’s case is outrageous, Afghani women are still under a great deal of persecution—as much as under the Taliban. I’ve seen newsclips and videos from Afghanistan: the majority of women still wrapped in black and under burkas. Outside of the metro area, it’s the vast majority of women who are totally covered. There are still religious police who pound on women for exposing their faces. Women still are illiterate, and there are few schools for them. Just like under the Taliban.

But, silence from the American Right. I think they like the idea of women being totally subjugated (except for a few apologists like Bay Buchanan, Michelle Malkin, Katherine Harris who periodically get up to lambast the liberals). In the meanwhile, Afghan women are still as suppressed as they were under the Taliban. An irony of history is that under the Russian dominated government in that country, the burka was outlawed and women were allowed to go to school.




AlterNet
Selective Outrage
By Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls, AlterNet
Posted on March 30, 2006, Printed on March 30, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/34222/

Daily media reports over the case of Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman have revealed a sudden concern over Afghanistan's repressive human rights environment. But routine human rights reports of the ongoing oppression of Afghan women, suppression of the media and underlying Western complicity have barely been noticed.

In the West, government officials, media pundits and right-wing commentators have expressed vocal concern over the life of one Afghan man who chose, 16 years ago, to convert from Islam to Christianity. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Rahman's arrest for apostasy (renunciation of faith), a crime that carries the death penalty was "beyond belief." U.S. President George W. Bush said he was "deeply troubled" by the case. The New York Times opined that "the case is more than deeply troubling, it's barbaric."

These same officials, whose governments underwrite the Afghan government, were apparently so moved by Rahman's situation that they pushed for President Hamid Karzai to have Rahman released. In what the Associated Press called "an unusual move," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice phoned Karzai to convey "in the strongest possible terms" her government's wish for a "favorable resolution." Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also appealed to Karzai and got positive results.

Three days before Rahman was released, Harper said, "[Karzai] conveyed to me that we don't have to worry about [Rahman's execution. He] assured me that what's alarmed most of us will be worked out quickly … in a way that fully respects religious rights, religious freedoms and human rights." Not surprisingly, the case was dismissed on March 27 due to "insufficient evidence.

Prior to the dismissal, Bush boasted, "We have got influence in Afghanistan, and we are going to use it to remind them that there are universal values." In other words, the Afghan courts are free to come to their own verdict, so long as the U.S. agrees with it. On CNN's Late Edition, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., warned, "Let's hope they make the right decision. If they don't, I think there are going to be a great many problems."

Behind Roberts' words was an unmistakable threat that the United States and other Western governments would withdraw their support for the fragile Karzai government. Gary Bauer, president of the conservative group American Values, sent an email to 250,000 supporters warning that Rahman's execution would "result in a complete collapse in support for the war." The New York Times echoed these sentiments: "What's the point of the United States' propping up the government of Afghanistan if it's not even going to pretend to respect basic human rights?" The newspaper's editors threatened, "If Afghanistan wants to return to the Taliban days, it can do so without the help of the United States."

The implication is clear: By "liberating" Afghanistan, the Christian West now stakes a claim in its internal affairs. Recognizing this influence, vocal leaders have discovered a sudden interest in international law and universal values -- but it is a piecemeal recognition, avoiding the systemic issues of human rights violations seen in Afghanistan on a daily basis. Before one applauds the outcome, it is important to understand that Rahman's religious freedom case is a symptom of a much larger problem.

While Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins laments that "such a 'trial' is a flagrant violation of Article 18 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights," he does not cite Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: the right to education. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) reports that the number of educational facilities for women has actually been reduced in the past year. In southern Afghanistan, the United Nations reports about 300 girls' schools were burned down in 2005. Nationwide, women's literacy rates are half that of men. Some provinces report literacy rates of 3 percent for women.

For Afghanistan's approximately 15 million women, "universal values" do not include women's rights. A UNICEF report released last week warned of the grim statistics concerning Afghan women and children:

[A]n estimated 600 children under the age of 5 die every day in Afghanistan, mostly due to preventable illnesses, some 50 women die every day due to obstetric complications, less than half of primary school age girls attend classes, while a quarter of primary school age children undertake some form of work, and an estimated one-third of women are married before the age of 18.

In 2001, similar statistics were routinely reported as a justification for the war on Afghanistan and women's "liberation." Yet, five years later, the situation has scarcely improved.

The case of Abdul Rahman has drawn attention to Afghanistan's judicial system, which has been in dire need of reform since it was set up at the end of 2001. But, other than Rahman's case, most commentators have a meager understanding of how this system has affected the lives of Afghans, especially women, its greatest victims. Amnesty International notes that "the current criminal justice system is simply unwilling or unable to address issues of violence against women. At the moment (October 2003) it is more likely to violate the rights of women than to protect and uphold their rights (emphasis added)."

The main legal document of Afghanistan is the constitution, drafted and passed in early 2004 with the oversight of then U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. In March 2004, we warned of the constitution's ambivalent stance toward women's rights:

[P]ossibly negating any rights of women is the ominous inclusion of the supremacy of Islamic law in the constitution: "in Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam." As if to underscore the threat this statement presents, the Chairman of the constitutional convention, … Sibghatullah Mojadidi, said to the women delegates at the convention, "Even God has not given you equal rights because under his decision two women are counted as equal to one man."

Islamic law in the constitution was meant to appease extremist right-wing factions, including the Chief Justice Fazl Al Shinwari. Shinwari is a close ally of the fundamentalist warlord and U.S.-Saudi protege of the early 1990s Abdul-Rabb al-Rasul Sayyaf, now a member of the Afghan parliament. Human Rights Watch reported that Shinwari and his deputy "do not appear to act independently, the first requirement of a judge, instead making political judgments in close collaboration with warlords like Sayyaf."

Shinwari has taken full advantage of his position and the new constitution to appoint judges who share his extreme beliefs to the lower courts, and handing out misogynist decisions on cases involving women, particularly in family law. He refuses to appoint women to high court positions, saying, "If a woman becomes a top judge, then what would happen when she has a menstruation cycle once a month, and she cannot go to the mosque?"

Shinwari has banned cable television in Afghanistan, arrested journalists for blasphemy, and forced Women's Affairs minister Sima Samar to resign her post after she was charged with blasphemy for making "irresponsible statements" criticizing Shari'a law. As with apostasy, the penalty for blasphemy is death. Yet, we hear no criticisms from the West regarding the court's numerous medieval blasphemy accusations.

The consequences for women of such a repressive justice system have been dire. The AIHRC noted 150 cases of self-immolation among women in the western region of the country in 2005 alone. Women who burn themselves to death often do so as a result of forced marriages, which are sanctioned by extremist interpretations of Shari'a law and are occurring at an alarming rate. Cases of violence against women are also rising. A young woman named Gulbar in the Baghdis province was repeatedly abused by her husband, who finally set fire to her. While she attempts to recover from extreme burns covering 40 percent of her body, no steps have been taken by local authorities to hold her husband accountable.

In late 2005, the well-respected 25-year-old poet Nadia Anjuman was beaten by her husband and died of injuries. U.N. spokesperson Adrian Edwards condemned the killing: "The death of Nadia Anjuman … is indeed tragic and a great loss to Afghanistan. It needs to be investigated, and anyone found responsible needs to be dealt with in a proper court of law."

The New York Times sarcastically commented that if Rahman was to be executed, "maybe Afghanistan should also return to stoning women to death for adultery." Perhaps the Times will recall last spring, when 29-year-old Amina of Badakhshan province was stoned to death after being accused of adultery by her husband and convicted by local officials.There was no international outcry from the United States or other foreign countries and no attempts to get President Karzai to enforce universal human rights.

It is likely that, given the current atmosphere in Afghanistan, justice will not be served for Gulbar, Nadia Anjuman, Amina or the uncounted women who have been stifled by a judicial system that was designed to work against them. The complicit silence from Western media and government officials indicates that Bush's "influence in Afghanistan" is not worth exercising to protect women's rights.

Note that Bush administration officials have remained entirely silent on the fate of a brave Afghan woman named Malalai Joya. Joya is one of the youngest members of Afghanistan's parliament and a fierce critic of U.S.-backed fundamentalist warlords. She has survived four assassination attempts and has received over 100 death threats. The only action the Karzai government has taken recently is to withdraw the security guards that she was previously provided.

In early 2005, the position of U.N. independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan, held by Cherif Bassiouni, was eliminated at the request of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Just before he was fired, Bassiouni had published a report describing "arbitrary arrest, illegal detentions and abuses committed by the United States-led coalition forces," as well as activities by these forces which "fall under the internationally accepted definition of torture."

Abdul Rahman's case is not unique -- it provides an example of the fear with which most ordinary Afghans, especially women, live. Even if one were to take seriously the Western concern for religious freedom, there appears to be less concern for the everyday violations of women's humanity ensconced in the Afghan legal and political system, or for the criminal behavior of Washington's own troops in Afghanistan. Most expressions of outrage at Rahman's plight disregard the human rights violations for which the West is directly responsible and reveal an unstated contempt for the rights of women, the most common victims of the current Afghan justice system.

Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls are co-directors of the Afghan Women's Mission, and the authors of the forthcoming book, "Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence" (Seven Stories, 2006).
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/34222/

Since it’s now official to “blame the media,” as in newspapers and TV, I thought I’d look around for some other sources of info about Iraq. As in blogs from Iraq. Here’s a list of some I found:

http://afamilyinbaghdad.blogspot.com
http://astarfrommosul.blogspot.com
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com
www.riverbendblog.blogspot.com

These are posted by people in the midst of things. Riverbend, whoever she is, has a fine series of posts, showing how life just goes on the middle of chaos—but how the chaos is only as far away as a knock at the door. According to buzzflash.com, she’s up for a British award for non-fiction writing. She should be. Her writing is simple and matter-of-fact. Here’s her post from last Tuesday.


Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Uncertainty...
I sat late last night switching between Iraqi channels (the half dozen or so I sometimes try to watch). It’s a late-night tradition for me when there’s electricity- to see what the Iraqi channels are showing. Generally speaking, there still isn’t a truly ‘neutral’ Iraqi channel. The most popular ones are backed and funded by the different political parties currently vying for power. This became particularly apparent during the period directly before the elections.

I was trying to decide between a report on bird flu on one channel, a montage of bits and pieces from various latmiyas on another channel and an Egyptian soap opera on a third channel. I paused on the Sharqiya channel which many Iraqis consider to be a reasonably toned channel (and which during the elections showed its support for Allawi in particular). I was reading the little scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the page. The usual- mortar fire on an area in Baghdad, an American soldier killed here, another one wounded there… 12 Iraqi corpses found in an area in Baghdad, etc. Suddenly, one of them caught my attention and I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering if I had read it correctly.

E. was sitting at the other end of the living room, taking apart a radio he later wouldn’t be able to put back together. I called him over with the words, “Come here and read this- I’m sure I misunderstood…” He stood in front of the television and watched the words about corpses and Americans and puppets scroll by and when the news item I was watching for appeared, I jumped up and pointed. E. and I read it in silence and E. looked as confused as I was feeling.

The line said:

وزارة الدفاع تدعو المواطنين الى عدم الانصياع لاوامر دوريات الجيش والشرطة الليلية اذا لم تكن برفقة قوات التحالف العاملة في تلك المنطقة
The translation:

“The Ministry of Defense requests that civilians do not comply with the orders of the army or police on nightly patrols unless they are accompanied by coalition forces working in that area.”

That’s how messed up the country is at this point.

We switched to another channel, the “Baghdad” channel (allied with Muhsin Abdul Hameed and his group) and they had the same news item, but instead of the general “coalition forces” they had “American coalition forces”. We checked two other channels. Iraqiya (pro-Da’awa) didn’t mention it and Forat (pro-SCIRI) also didn’t have it on their news ticker.

We discussed it today as it was repeated on another channel.

“So what does it mean?” My cousin’s wife asked as we sat gathered at lunch.

“It means if they come at night and want to raid the house, we don’t have to let them in.” I answered.

“They’re not exactly asking your permission,” E. pointed out. “They break the door down and take people away- or have you forgotten?”

“Well according to the Ministry of Defense, we can shoot at them, right? It’s trespassing-they can be considered burglars or abductors…” I replied.

The cousin shook his head, “If your family is inside the house- you’re not going to shoot at them. They come in groups, remember? They come armed and in large groups- shooting at them or resisting them would endanger people inside of the house.”

“Besides that, when they first attack, how can you be sure they DON’T have Americans with them?” E. asked.

We sat drinking tea, mulling over the possibilities. It confirmed what has been obvious to Iraqis since the beginning- the Iraqi security forces are actually militias allied to religious and political parties.

But it also brings to light other worrisome issues. The situation is so bad on the security front that the top two ministries in charge of protecting Iraqi civilians cannot trust each other. The Ministry of Defense can’t even trust its own personnel, unless they are “accompanied by American coalition forces”.

It really is difficult to understand what is happening lately. We hear about talks between Americans and Iran over security in Iraq, and then American ambassador in Iraq accuses Iran of funding militias inside of the country. Today there are claims that Americans killed between 20 to 30 men from Sadr’s militia in an attack on a husseiniya yesterday. The Americans are claiming that responsibility for the attack should be placed on Iraqi security forces (the same security forces they are constantly commending).

All of this directly contradicts claims by Bush and other American politicians that Iraqi troops and security forces are in control of the situation. Or maybe they are in control- just not in a good way.

They’ve been finding corpses all over Baghdad for weeks now- and it’s always the same: holes drilled in the head, multiple shots or strangulation, like the victims were hung. Execution, militia style. Many of the people were taken from their homes by security forces- police or special army brigades… Some of them were rounded up from mosques.

A few days ago we went to pick up one of my female cousins from college. Her college happens to be quite close to the local morgue. E., our cousin L., and I all sat in the car which, due to traffic, we parked slightly further away from the college to wait for our other cousin. I looked over at the commotion near the morgue.

There were dozens of people- mostly men- standing around in a bleak group. Some of them smoked cigarettes, others leaned on cars or pick-up trucks... Their expressions varied- grief, horror, resignation. On some faces, there was an anxious look of combined dread and anticipation. It’s a very specific look, one you will find only outside the Baghdad morgue. The eyes are wide and bloodshot, as if searching for something, the brow is furrowed, the jaw is set and the mouth is a thin frown. It’s a look that tells you they are walking into the morgue, where the bodies lay in rows, and that they pray they do not find what they are looking for.

The cousin sighed heavily and told us to open a couple of windows and lock the doors- he was going to check the morgue. A month before, his wife’s uncle had been taken away from a mosque during prayer- they’ve yet to find him. Every two days, someone from the family goes to the morgue to see if his body was brought in. “Pray I don’t find him… or rather... I just- we hate the uncertainty.” My cousin sighed heavily and got out of the car. I said a silent prayer as he crossed the street and disappeared into the crowd.

E. and I waited patiently for H., who was still inside the college and for L. who was in the morgue. The minutes stretched and E. and I sat silently- smalltalk seeming almost blasphemous under the circumstances. L. came out first. I watched him tensely and found myself chewing away at my lower lip, “Did he find him? Inshalla he didn’t find him…” I said to no one in particular. As he got closer to the car, he shook his head. His face was immobile and grim, but behind the grim expression, we could see relief, “He’s not there. Hamdulilah [Thank God].”

“Hamdulilah” E. and I repeated the words in unison.

WE all looked back at the morgue. Most of the cars had simple, narrow wooden coffins on top of them, in anticipation of the son or daughter or brother. One frenzied woman in a black abaya was struggling to make her way inside, two relatives holding her back. A third man was reaching up to untie the coffin tied to the top of their car.

“See that woman- they found her son. I saw them identifying him. A bullet to the head.” The woman continued to struggle, her legs suddenly buckling under her, her wails filling the afternoon, and although it was surprisingly warm that day, I pulled at my sleeves, trying to cover my suddenly cold fingers.

We continued to watch the various scenes of grief, anger, frustration and every once in a while, an almost tangible relief as someone left the morgue having not found what they dreaded most to find- eyes watery from the smell, the step slightly lighter than when they went in, having been given a temporary reprieve from the worry of claiming a loved one from the morgue…

There’re daily incidences like this being reported, you might notice. Every day, the limits of what we used to call “free speech” are redrawn, smaller and smaller.


Woman fights $100 fine for 'Bushit' bumper sticker
03/28/2006 @ 1:36 am
Filed by RAW STORY

"It was 9:30 on a recent Friday night when Denise Grier saw blue lights in her rearview mirror," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution begins in Thursday editions. Excerpts:
Advertisement
#

She pulled over on Chamblee-Tucker Road, unaware of her infraction.

"The officer asked if I knew I had a lewd decal on my car and I thought, 'Oh gosh, what did my kids put on my car?' "

As it turns out, the decal was an anti-Bush bumper sticker Grier slapped on her 2001 Chrysler Sebring last summer. The bumper sticker — "I'm Tired Of All The BUSH—" — contains an expletive.

The officer "said DeKalb had an ordinance about lewd decals and wrote me a ticket" for $100, said Grier, an oncology nurse at Emory University Hospital who lives in Athens.

"This is all about free speech," Grier said in a telephone interview Monday. "The officer pulled me over because he didn't agree with my politics. That's what this is about, not whether I support Bush, not because of the war in Iraq, but about my right to free speech."

Officer Herschel Grangent Jr., a spokesman for the DeKalb County Police Department, confirmed the incident Monday but said he couldn't "speculate on or discuss another officer's decision to write a citation."

FULL REGISTRATION-RESTRICTED STORY

Over the years I’ve noticed that the daughters and granddaughters of my friends have generally gone farther than the sons and grandsons. Farther in education, farther in achievements. That’s good, since I remember how hard it used to be for women to get into college and to stay in college. Their jobs were almost always subservient positions: receptionists, secretaries, lower-level teachers. That’s really changed in the last thirty years. I’m glad.

At the same time, the pressures to keep them as ambulatory dolls, sex objects, and flunkies have increased. I still hear the line “you can’t be too thin or too rich,” applied to women. Not much about “you can’t be too bright.

And the women, like men, can’t just brush off the pressure to assume the old roles. The conflicts are internalized, one way or another.

A group of women, though, has discovered they can better deal with these conflicts if they not just expose their internal debates, but talk to others about them. Way to go!


AlterNet

Over-Achievers With Low Self-Esteem

By Amy DePaul, WireTap
Posted on March 28, 2006, Printed on March 28, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/34116/



If you read the most-emailed article in the New York Times at the end of last week ("To All the Girls I've Rejected"), then you know that some college admission offices are holding female applicants to a higher standard than their male counterparts in hopes of achieving a greater gender balance on campus.

That's because women's enrollment in college is dramatically outpacing men's. By the 2009-2010 school year, according to the Business Roundtable, women will earn 142 bachelor's degrees and 173 associate degrees for every 100 awarded to men in these categories.

American girls, meanwhile, are not only advancing in the classroom but on playing fields as well. One in three high school girls now plays a sport, compared to one in 27 before Title IX (an act that called for more college scholarships for women to ensure parity with male athletes in 1972). The cultural landscape has shifted accordingly, offering up highly empowered female heroines both real and fictional, including Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

But for all the undisputed advances made by young women, evidence suggests there is more to this story, a dark side that has long been acknowledged but seems all the more baffling in this era of increasingly accomplished girls.

Foremost, a young woman's body is still a battleground -- the relentless focus of the porn industry, the celebrity and the weight-loss industries. Advocates in the field of eating disorders remind us that these illnesses have doubled their reach in the last 30 years, that they are fatal in 10 percent of cases, and that they are affecting younger and more ethnically diverse girls. And it's not just about food and other forms of bodily self-abuse such as cutting. In a 2001 Harvard study, one in five teen girls reported being hit or being forced into sex by their partners. Depression is another pervasive affliction among college women, despite their groundbreaking achievements and presumably bright economic prospects.

The hazards that young women face on the way to adulthood are real -- as real as ever. The problem is how to understand them in light of girl power, Buffy and the WNBA.

Going public in Ohio

One window into the conflicted inner lives of young women who appear by every measure to kick ass -- in school, on the soccer field -- while secretly struggling with self-worth, was made available to me as an instructor at Miami University of Ohio. Founded in 1809, Miami is a mostly residential college of old brick buildings with ivy tendrils, majestic trees and verdant lawns. The social life is Greek-dominated, and the college is famous for its "Miami Mergers," that is, couples who meet in their undergraduate years and go on to marry.

But even a traditional campus in southwest rural Ohio -- deep in the red zone -- shows signs of change. Miami is one of the state's most competitive universities, drawing a select group of highly motivated, achievement-oriented young women among its students. These largely middle- and upper-class women are as vulnerable as anyone to the afflictions of modern American girlhood. Four years ago, a group of female students at Miami formed an organization to go public with their struggles.

The group was called Achieving You, and it was modeled on an organization at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The goal of its members was to provide support to one another and to younger peers. Many members of the group had faced down self-esteem-related disorders, and now they wanted to talk about their experiences and their recoveries. Eventually, the Miami students hoped to speak frankly about their lives to high school girls in the area.

Sharing stories

In late 2003, a group of about 20 Miami women came together at a large meeting room in the school's student union to share their stories of struggle. Pulling their chairs into a circle, many discussed depression, others eating disorders and still others abusive boyfriends or compulsive promiscuity. They described their lives in college and high school, where they had played a variety of sports, such as lacrosse, swimming and soccer. Most if not all said that in high school they took advanced placement classes and held leadership positions such as class officer. Now in college, many had joined sororities and relished the female camaraderie offered by Greek life.

Unlike the starving ballerina types so often depicted in journalistic accounts of female self-esteem disorders, all the speakers were wryly funny, self-aware and fully confident young women, or so it seemed:

"I was the captain of my water polo team in high school, in the honor society "

"I was a perfectionist in every sense of the word. I came home from school and would rewrite my notes from class. I had to be the president of every organization. You can guess my grades "

"I was tomboy central ..."

"I was an A student in AP classes ..."

"I was a valedictorian ..."

"I was on two championship teams ..."

Foiled expectations

Given these introductions, the stories that inevitably followed -- clogging the shower drain with vomit or being kicked and taunted publicly by a boyfriend, or fantasizing about the best method of suicide -- seemed all the more unlikely. As the group's founder, Brie Henry, put it, "You wouldn't expect these problems from these girls."

The improbable combination of strength and frailty on display that night raises tough questions. Shouldn't the educated, physically empowered and ambitious young women of today be less susceptible to disorders of self-esteem than the girls before them? And how do you maintain a balance between potent self-confidence, on one hand, and crushing self-doubt, on the other, without eventually losing your grounding?

As it turns out, you don't. I learned that most of the women in Achieving You who had struggled in their teens had ultimately broken down, either late in high school or soon after starting college. Some simply stopped going to class, focusing instead on grueling exercises for hours at a time every day. Or they played with razors, or their parents finally caught them with their hands down their throats. In the more dramatic cases, some reported relief when the balancing act was over, and they could begin rebuilding more authentic identities through therapy, honest communication and introspection.

Finding strength, serving others

The women I interviewed said they needed the connection provided by Achieving You, which allowed them to share their stories and to celebrate triumph in their recovery. What made Achieving You more than a typical peer-support group were two important factors: The women had organized themselves rather than being led by well-meaning adults such as health teachers and therapists. In addition, the young women in the group had taken it upon themselves to contact local high schools to arrange to tell their stories -- with emphasis on recovery -- directly to adolescent girls, and in so doing, offer positive models of leadership.

And so the Miami students began arranging visits in Cincinnati-area schools, contacting health teachers and setting up meetings with girls only. The Miami students would walk into a class of 30-40 girls, usually starting at 8:30 a.m., breaking for lunch and continuing to meet with successive classes until the end of the school day. After every session, audience members were asked to write comments and questions on index cards. The high school girls' comments were a mix of relief and admiration:

"Your stories inspired me. I know I'm not alone now."

"The girl who talked about the guy who raped her, and who said she was ugly and not worth it -- I can relate!"

"Hey, I'm really sorry that this happened to you all, and I'm glad that people like you are helping make a difference with young women's lives."

"I love the girls. You're amazing girls. Girls rock!"

A sort of schizophrenia

The striking thing about Achieving You is how clearly its members represented the very combination of empowerment and victimization that is so perplexing among American young women today. These and other young women embody a sort of schizophrenia in which they surge ahead in academics and athletics while at the same time adopt behaviors that compromise them. The obvious question is why.

My interviews and observation suggest one possible explanation: That the girls' self-destructive anxieties and compulsions arose, at least in part, to meet a powerful need. That need was to maintain a check on their own forcefulness, that is, to dilute their otherwise formidable strength.

"A girl worries about being too smart, too successful, too intimidating, too blond, too promiscuous," says Erin Lenger, 23, an original member of Achieving You, which is still active at Miami.

Not surprisingly, the members of Achieving You never arrived at a single answer to the question, 'Why did this happen to me and so many other girls?' But they were able to establish at least one thing: In their struggles they had found the strength to heal themselves and now stood in a position to help others to do the same. Unbowed, emboldened even by their own battles for self-worth, they had emerged stronger, more connected to other women and more aware of the complexity of being female.

"I turn to other girls and stories that make me feel a little more normal," Lenger says. "Achieving You did that for me, most definitely. I realized that my abusive relationship was just one of a million things that girls struggle with daily. I turn to my mother, my sister, and my girlfriends to understand their lives, and then align their experiences with my own. Open communication with other females, especially ones that you can confide in, is imperative."


Amy DePaul is a writer living in Irvine, Calif.


© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/34116/

Democrats.com claims that this British memo “drives a stake” into the heart of the Bush-Cheney Junta’s argument that an alternative to war with Iraq was actually searched for. I don’t know about that: the administrations lies about the war have been shredded dozens of times, beginning with the New American Century’s arguments for international imperialism, published long before either 9/11 or the war itself. Denials come out of Washington more often than in a treatment center.

And the country itself, the citizens and the media, are in denial, too. It hurts to admit you’ve been lied to, that the nation is really on a Crusade to Make The World Safe For American Interests and Addictions. More Hummers are sold every day, more ATVs, more plastic bags. Oil, oil, the national heroin. Oil and power, actually: there’s little doubt both Bush and Blair are equally strung out on the idea of running the world the way they think it should be run.

Anyhow, the memo. The lies. The lying. It won’t quit.


The New York Times

March 27, 2006
Leaders
Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/27/international/europe/27memo.html?ei=5094&en=1a8220fd45b2aca0&hp=&ex=1143522000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

The timetable came at an important diplomatic moment. Five days after the Bush-Blair meeting, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was scheduled to appear before the United Nations to present the American evidence that Iraq posed a threat to world security by hiding unconventional weapons.

Although the United States and Britain aggressively sought a second United Nations resolution against Iraq — which they failed to obtain — the president said repeatedly that he did not believe he needed it for an invasion.

Stamped "extremely sensitive," the five-page memorandum, which was circulated among a handful of Mr. Blair's most senior aides, had not been made public. Several highlights were first published in January in the book "Lawless World," which was written by a British lawyer and international law professor, Philippe Sands. In early February, Channel 4 in London first broadcast several excerpts from the memo.

Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein.

Those proposals were first reported last month in the British press, but the memo does not make clear whether they reflected Mr. Bush's extemporaneous suggestions, or were elements of the government's plan.

Consistent Remarks

Two senior British officials confirmed the authenticity of the memo, but declined to talk further about it, citing Britain's Official Secrets Act, which made it illegal to divulge classified information. But one of them said, "In all of this discussion during the run-up to the Iraq war, it is obvious that viewing a snapshot at a certain point in time gives only a partial view of the decision-making process."

On Sunday, Frederick Jones, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said the president's public comments were consistent with his private remarks made to Mr. Blair. "While the use of force was a last option, we recognized that it might be necessary and were planning accordingly," Mr. Jones said.

"The public record at the time, including numerous statements by the President, makes clear that the administration was continuing to pursue a diplomatic solution into 2003," he said. "Saddam Hussein was given every opportunity to comply, but he chose continued defiance, even after being given one final opportunity to comply or face serious consequences. Our public and private comments are fully consistent."

The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Mr. Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.

The latest memo is striking in its characterization of frank, almost casual, conversation by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about the most serious subjects. At one point, the leaders swapped ideas for a postwar Iraqi government. "As for the future government of Iraq, people would find it very odd if we handed it over to another dictator," the prime minister is quoted as saying.

"Bush agreed," Mr. Manning wrote. This exchange, like most of the quotations in this article, have not been previously reported.

Mr. Bush was accompanied at the meeting by Condoleezza Rice, who was then the national security adviser; Dan Fried, a senior aide to Ms. Rice; and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff. Along with Mr. Manning, Mr. Blair was joined by two other senior aides: Jonathan Powell, his chief of staff, and Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide and the author of the Downing Street memo.

By late January 2003, United Nations inspectors had spent six weeks in Iraq hunting for weapons under the auspices of Security Council Resolution 1441, which authorized "serious consequences" if Iraq voluntarily failed to disarm. Led by Hans Blix, the inspectors had reported little cooperation from Mr. Hussein, and no success finding any unconventional weapons.

At their meeting, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair candidly expressed their doubts that chemical, biological or nuclear weapons would be found in Iraq in the coming weeks, the memo said. The president spoke as if an invasion was unavoidable. The two leaders discussed a timetable for the war, details of the military campaign and plans for the aftermath of the war.

Discussing Provocation

Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation. Since they were first reported last month, neither the White House nor the British government has discussed them.

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.

A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein. The memo does not indicate how Mr. Blair responded to the idea.

Mr. Sands first reported the proposals in his book, although he did not use any direct quotations from the memo. He is a professor of international law at University College of London and the founding member of the Matrix law office in London, where the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, is a partner.

Mr. Jones, the National Security Council spokesman, declined to discuss the proposals, saying, "We are not going to get into discussing private discussions of the two leaders."

At several points during the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair, there was palpable tension over finding a legitimate legal trigger for going to war that would be acceptable to other nations, the memo said. The prime minister was quoted as saying it was essential for both countries to lobby for a second United Nations resolution against Iraq, because it would serve as "an insurance policy against the unexpected."

The memo said Mr. Blair told Mr. Bush, "If anything went wrong with the military campaign, or if Saddam increased the stakes by burning the oil wells, killing children or fomenting internal divisions within Iraq, a second resolution would give us international cover, especially with the Arabs."

Running Out of Time

Mr. Bush agreed that the two countries should attempt to get a second resolution, but he added that time was running out. "The U.S. would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten," Mr. Bush was paraphrased in the memo as saying.

The document added, "But he had to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway."

The leaders agreed that three weeks remained to obtain a second United Nations Security Council resolution before military commanders would need to begin preparing for an invasion.

Summarizing statements by the president, the memo says: "The air campaign would probably last four days, during which some 1,500 targets would be hit. Great care would be taken to avoid hitting innocent civilians. Bush thought the impact of the air onslaught would ensure the early collapse of Saddam's regime. Given this military timetable, we needed to go for a second resolution as soon as possible. This probably meant after Blix's next report to the Security Council in mid-February."

Mr. Blair was described as responding that both countries would make clear that a second resolution amounted to "Saddam's final opportunity." The memo described Mr. Blair as saying: "We had been very patient. Now we should be saying that the crisis must be resolved in weeks, not months."

It reported: "Bush agreed. He commented that he was not itching to go to war, but we could not allow Saddam to go on playing with us. At some point, probably when we had passed the second resolutions — assuming we did — we should warn Saddam that he had a week to leave. We should notify the media too. We would then have a clear field if Saddam refused to go."

Mr. Bush devoted much of the meeting to outlining the military strategy. The president, the memo says, said the planned air campaign "would destroy Saddam's command and control quickly." It also said that he expected Iraq's army to "fold very quickly." He also is reported as telling the prime minister that the Republican Guard would be "decimated by the bombing."

Despite his optimism, Mr. Bush said he was aware that "there were uncertainties and risks," the memo says, and it goes on, "As far as destroying the oil wells were concerned, the U.S. was well equipped to repair them quickly, although this would be easier in the south of Iraq than in the north."

The two men briefly discussed plans for a post-Hussein Iraqi government. "The prime minister asked about aftermath planning," the memo says. "Condi Rice said that a great deal of work was now in hand.

Referring to the Defense Department, it said: "A planning cell in D.O.D. was looking at all aspects and would deploy to Iraq to direct operations as soon as the military action was over. Bush said that a great deal of detailed planning had been done on supplying the Iraqi people with food and medicine."

Planning for After the War

The leaders then looked beyond the war, imagining the transition from Mr. Hussein's rule to a new government. Immediately after the war, a military occupation would be put in place for an unknown period of time, the president was described as saying. He spoke of the "dilemma of managing the transition to the civil administration," the memo says.

The document concludes with Mr. Manning still holding out a last-minute hope of inspectors finding weapons in Iraq, or even Mr. Hussein voluntarily leaving Iraq. But Mr. Manning wrote that he was concerned this could not be accomplished by Mr. Bush's timeline for war.

"This makes the timing very tight," he wrote. "We therefore need to stay closely alongside Blix, do all we can to help the inspectors make a significant find, and work hard on the other members of the Security Council to accept the noncooperation case so that we can secure the minimum nine votes when we need them, probably the end of February."

At a White House news conference following the closed-door session, Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair said "the crisis" had to be resolved in a timely manner. "Saddam Hussein is not disarming," the president told reporters. "He is a danger to the world. He must disarm. And that's why I have constantly said — and the prime minister has constantly said — this issue will come to a head in a matter of weeks, not months."

Despite intense lobbying by the United States and Britain, a second United Nations resolution was not obtained. The American-led military coalition invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, nine days after the target date set by the president on that late January day at the White House.

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

The Senate, knowing a good thing when it sees one, has decided it wants some sort of “guest worker” program to ease the inflow of Latino immigrants coming up across the US-Mexican border. This has been done before, like with the bracero program of some decades back. This provides a source of cheap labor, and helps relax the tensions of the population explosion to our south. It’s a major problem: if we “seal” the border, if we could, the soaring numbers in Latin America, particularly Mexico, combined with horrendous poverty and unemployment down there, we’ll only be shortening the fuse of a real explosion. If we don’t, our own racial tensions may snap.

The appeal of the guest worker program, I believe, comes from observations of countries like Kuwait, the UAE, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and even Iraq, where imported cheap labor is exploited. In those places, the imported workers are essentially held in detention camps, closely supervised, and paid at the bare minimum. Then they’re sent home. Cheap unorganized labor is always popular with employers.


Migrants and the Middle East: Welcome to the other side of Dubai
For the people who visit, it is a world-class centre of finance and tourism. But for the people who are building it - mainly labourers from the Indian subcontinent - the reality is very different.

Kim Sengupta reports on a rising tide of protest
Published: 28 March 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article354070.ece

It is the fastest growing city on earth, a landscape of building sites full of workers feverishly constructing the highest, the largest and the deepest in the world. It's a neverland, rising out of the barren desert and fringed by beaches and a ski resort. There are no taxes. And it is the favoured destination of Britons wishing to work and play abroad.

Fifty per cent of the world's supply of cranes are now at work in Dubai on projects worth $100bn - twice the World Bank's estimated cost of reconstructing Iraq and double the total foreign investment in China, the word's third-largest economy.

But there is also a downside to the glistening towers that soar above the shopping malls, the six-lane highways and the world's only seven-star hotel with suites that can cost $50,000 (£28,000) a night. More than 2,500 workers at the site of the world's tallest building, the $800m Burj Dubai, went on strike last week in a country where striking - and unions - are illegal. It is the latest manifestation of the deep discontent felt by the semi-indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent who are building this glitzy oasis. Complaining of unpaid wages, and demanding better conditions, the labourers marched out of the cramped, stifling dormitories where they are corralled 25 to a room in violent protests which caused $1m worth of damage. They overturned cars and smashed up offices in a very graphic reminder of a problem which normally receives little publicity.

Almost everything is for sale in this part of the United Arab Emirates. Those investing in this frantic construction boom are convinced there will be no shortage of moneyed buyers. Among the developments springing up daily are Flower City, which aims to take over the international flower trade from Amsterdam; Hydropolis, an underwater hotel alongside another with revolving mountains; a Chess City with buildings in the shape of chess pieces; the $5bn Dubailand, which will become the world's biggest theme park - bigger than Manhattan and dwarfing Disneyland. Then there are the 300 manmade islands in the Arabian Gulf in the shape of different countries of the world ...

Like some other Arab countries, Dubai's oil reserves are dwindling and the ruling family, the Maktoums, want to reinvent their personal fiefdom as a financial and transport centre using the profits, while stocks last, from oil at $70 a barrel.

The state-owned Dubai Ports is voraciously buying up port complexes around the globe. There was a recent setback in the US when the company, being Arab, was deemed to be a security threat. It provoked outraged editorials in Dubai's government-controlled newspapers. But the reality is that the UAE, a bastion of rampant capitalism, cannot afford to alienate Washington. The search for acquisitions continues.

The one thing money cannot buy in Dubai, however, is UAE nationality. Around 80 per cent of the population are foreigners from no less than 160 different countries and the Maktoums appear to be prepared to let the foreigner-to-local ratio grow even wider. But however long the expatriates stay, they will not be allowed citizenship. Visas are tied to jobs, and there is always the risk of being thrown out when the contract ends.

The people most vulnerable to this are the very workers putting up Dubai's glossy edifices. Thirty-nine of them died in building-site accidents last year - with at least some of the casualties resulting from inadequate safety provisions. Another 84 committed suicide last year, up from 70 in 2004.

The average pay for an unskilled labourer is around $4 a day, and that is enough of a lure for the impoverished of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to flock to the UAE. The jobs are arranged through contractors and those who get them have to take out loans, often at exorbitant rates of interest, to pay for their passage. On arrival in Dubai, their passports are confiscated to prevent absconding while they are on contract.

I wonder just how much money is spent on spying on groups like Food Not Bombs, the American Friends Service Committee, and various anti-war activists. Probably enough to lift several families out of poverty for a year or two.

So the FBI keeps an eye on the League of Women Voters, as well. Greenpeace? The Audobon Society? That wouldn’t surpise me, either. Hardly anything the cop-set does surprises me any more. And there are so many agencies the spies are spying on each other.

Riccardi, in the article, mentions FBI activities back in the ‘60s. How about the ‘50s and ‘40s, ‘30s and ‘20s and ‘teens? The Feds have spent as much time spying on political dissidents as they have pursuing organized crime. Sure, some of the groups, like the Stalinists and Nazis and the Klan, Al-Qaeda, are bad news: but, really, were people like Emma Goldman or Gene Debs?

The Denver FBI spokeswoman said that the FBI didn't have enough agents to spy on the innocent. But people who break windows...they're a different story.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi27mar27,0,5815737.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines
From the Los Angeles Times
FBI Keeps Watch on Activists
Antiwar, other groups are monitored to curb violence, not because of ideology, agency says.
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer

March 27, 2006

DENVER — The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.

For years, the FBI's definition of terrorism has included violence against property, such as the window-smashing during the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. That definition has led FBI investigations to online discussion boards, organizing meetings and demonstrations of a wide range of activist groups. Officials say that international terrorists pose the greatest threat to the nation but that they cannot ignore crimes committed by some activists.

"It's one thing to express an idea or such, but when you commit acts of violence in support of that activity, that's where our interest comes in," said FBI spokesman Bill Carter in Washington.

He stressed that the agency targeted individuals who committed crimes and did not single out groups for ideological reasons. He cited the recent arrest of environmental activists accused of firebombing an unfinished ski resort in Vail. "People can get hurt," Carter said. "Businesses can be ruined."

The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act after agents visited several activists before the 2004 political conventions. Details have steadily trickled out over the last year, but newly released documents provide a fuller view of some FBI probes.

"Any definition of terrorism that would include someone throwing a bottle or rock through a window during an antiwar demonstration is dangerously overbroad," ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner said. "The FBI will have its hands full pursuing antiwar groups instead of truly dangerous organizations."

ACLU attorneys say most violence during demonstrations is minor and is better handled by local police than federal counterterrorism agents. They say the FBI, which spied on antiwar and civil rights leaders during the 1960s, appears to be investigating activists solely for opposing the government.

"They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me," said environmental activist Kirsten Atkins. Her license plate number showed up in an FBI terrorism file after she attended a protest against the lumber industry in Colorado Springs in 2002.

ACLU attorneys acknowledge that the FBI memos are heavily redacted and contain incomplete portraits of some cases. Still, the attorneys say, the documents show that the FBI has monitored groups that were not suspected of any crime.

"It certainly seems they're casting a net much more widely than would be necessary to thwart something like the blowing up of the Oklahoma City federal building," said Mark Silverstein, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado.

FBI officials respond that there is nothing improper about agents attending a meeting or demonstration.

"We have to be able to go out and look at things; we have to be able to conduct an investigation," said William J. Crowley, a spokesman for the FBI in Pittsburgh. His field office filed a report — released by the ACLU this month — in which an agent described photographing Pittsburgh activists who were handing out fliers for a war protest. The report mentioned no potential violence or crimes.

Crowley said his office had been looking for a certain person in that case and had closed the file when it realized the suspect was not among those handing out the leaflets.

The murky connection that the federal government makes between some left-wing activist groups and terrorism was illustrated in a Justice Department presentation to a college law class this month.

An FBI counterterrorism official showed the class, at the University of Texas in Austin, 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamist groups. Senior Special Agent Charles Rasner said one slide, labeled "Anarchism," was a federal analyst's list of groups that people intent on terrorism might associate with.

The list included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people, and — with a question mark next to it — Indymedia, a collective that publishes what it calls radical journalism online. Both groups are among the numerous organizations affiliated with anarchists and anti-globalization protests, where there has been some violence.

Elizabeth Wagoner said she was one of the few students who objected to the groups' inclusion on the list. "My friends do Indymedia," she said. "My friends aren't terrorists."

Rasner said that he'd never heard of the two groups before and didn't mean to condemn them. But he added that it made sense to worry about violent people emerging from anarchist networks — "Any group can have somebody that goes south."

Denver, where the ACLU fought a lengthy court battle with local police over its spying on political groups, has the most extensive records of encounters between the FBI and activists. Documents obtained by the ACLU there revealed how agents monitored the lumber industry demonstration, an antiwar march and an anarchist group that activists say was never formed.

In June 2002, environmental activists protested the annual meeting of the North American Wholesale Lumber Assn. in Colorado Springs. An FBI memo justified opening an inquiry into the protest because an activist training camp was to be held on "nonviolent methods of forest defense … security culture, street theater and banner making."

About 30 to 40 people attended the protest; three were arrested for trespassing while hanging a political banner. Colorado Springs police faxed the FBI a three-page list of demonstrators' license plate numbers.

In a recent interview, Denver FBI spokeswoman Monique R. Kelso first said the training camp and protest would not have been enough to merit an anti-terrorism inquiry. But later she said that she wasn't familiar with the details of the case and that the FBI opened cases when there was possible criminal activity.

The FBI's Denver office also monitored a February 2003 antiwar demonstration in Colorado Springs. A bureau memo said that activists planned to block streets and an Air Force base entrance, and that a more "radical" faction had announced online that it would meet near the demonstration but break away for unspecified purposes. The memo said an agent would watch the breakaway group and report to local police and FBI agents monitoring the march.

FBI officials say there was additional information, which they cannot disclose, that justified a terrorism investigation of that protest. They stress that they have to be aggressive in investigating terrorism in the post-Sept. 11 world.

"There's a lot of responsibility on the FBI," said Joe Airey, head of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver. "We have a real obligation to make sure there are no additional terrorist acts on this soil."

Denver-area activists said that since the surveillance documents became public, there had been a subtle chill, with some people avoiding protests for fear of ending up in an FBI file. Some activists think the FBI has been watching their groups to intimidate them.

"We've kind of gathered up our skirts and pulled in," said Sarah Bardwell, who works for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group. Along with some activist roommates, she has also volunteered for Food Not Bombs.

"In our house, we don't talk about politics anymore," Bardwell said. "There's been a toning down of everything we do."

That change came after six FBI agents and Denver police officers visited her house in July 2004.

Months earlier, the FBI had obtained a flier advertising a meeting near Bardwell's house to form a chapter of Anarchist Black Cross. That movement has two wings; one, according to the FBI, has been associated with "some of the most violent left-wing groups of the past 40 years."

The organizer of the meeting, Dawn Rewolinski, said the prospective chapter would have been part of the movement's other wing, which writes letters to prisoners. The chapter was never established, Rewolinski said. "All we did is eat some cookies and talk about various prisoners and realize we didn't have enough money for a P.O. box."

Nonetheless, FBI investigators believed a Denver chapter had been launched. They discovered that Anarchist Black Cross was affiliated with Food Not Bombs, and authorities ended up on Bardwell's doorstep, asking about the anarchists' plans for protests at the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Kelso, the FBI spokeswoman, said there were documents that could not be released to the ACLU that showed good reasons for the government's concern. She dismissed the idea that agents were spying on activists for political reasons.

"We don't have enough agents," Kelso said, "to go out there to monitor and surveil innocent people."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times

The end of the month is always a jammed-up time for me. I’m committed to turning in a column a month for an on-line magazine (www.audacitymagazine.com), and there’s always a packet of material from a local anti-poverty group to review. Some people would write the column well in advance, I guess, and then just send it before the deadline.
Some people, but not me.
I wonder if there’s a gene for procrastination. I’ve pretty well accepted that while I put things off, I usually get them done. It’s just the way I am. I know I’m not the only one. Part of getting old is realizing that there’s just not enough time any more to trash myself with as many neurotic conflicts as I used to do. A friend of mine pointed out that the ultimate goal of all kinds of therapies is simply self-acceptance—not necessarily personal change. The personal change isn’t possible when we’re all wrapped up in trying to make ourselves better, in trying to jettison well-entrenched habits, wanting to be liked, different, blah blah. Those conflicts use up most all of our psychic energy and most often end up in deadlocks, anyhow. Seems to me that when we stop trying to change, trying to force ourselves to be different, then energy is freed up and who knows what’s possible...

Anyhow, the column is done and sent off. The packet of materials hasn’t arrived yet. In the time I used writing the column, stuff piled up for the blog. Now most of that has been posted and the desktop on my computer has a lot fewer icons on it. That’s a relief. Now I can figure out what's important in the present and get on with it.

Speaking of insanity and blindness... Bush signs bill but says he doesn’t have to follow it: King’s X, in effect. There was a French king who said “The Government is me.” It would appear that our president and his junta, are following in that king’s footsteps: I can do what I want because I’m the boss. This the madness of a truly spoiled rich kid—who happens to be more or less running the most powerful nation on Earth.

I wish I could just find some point where I can detach and let it all go to hell or where-ever it’s going. Bush is not only on a different path than America, but America is on still another path—following Desperate Housewives or March Madness or something. Maybe I’m just taking the wrong anti-depressants, or maybe it’s just because I sobered up a few years back.

Or maybe the aliens really have taken over...

The Boston Globe
Bush shuns Patriot Act requirement
In addendum to law, he says oversight rules are not binding
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | March 24, 2006

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/03/24/bush_shuns_patriot_act_requirement?mode=PF


WASHINGTON -- When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers.

The bill contained several oversight provisions intended to make sure the FBI did not abuse the special terrorism-related powers to search homes and secretly seize papers. The provisions require Justice Department officials to keep closer track of how often the FBI uses the new powers and in what type of situations. Under the law, the administration would have to provide the information to Congress by certain dates.

Bush signed the bill with fanfare at a White House ceremony March 9, calling it ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people." But after the reporters and guests had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement," an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law.

In the statement, Bush said that he did not consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers were being used and that, despite the law's requirements, he could withhold the information if he decided that disclosure would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

Bush wrote: ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "

The statement represented the latest in a string of high-profile instances in which Bush has cited his constitutional authority to bypass a law.

After The New York Times disclosed in December that Bush had authorized the military to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans' international phone calls and e-mails without obtaining warrants, as required by law, Bush said his wartime powers gave him the right to ignore the warrant law.

And when Congress passed a law forbidding the torture of any detainee in US custody, Bush signed the bill but issued a signing statement declaring that he could bypass the law if he believed using harsh interrogation techniques was necessary to protect national security.

Past presidents occasionally used such signing statements to describe their interpretations of laws, but Bush has expanded the practice. He has also been more assertive in claiming the authority to override provisions he thinks intrude on his power, legal scholars said.

Bush's expansive claims of the power to bypass laws have provoked increased grumbling in Congress. Members of both parties have pointed out that the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to write the laws and the executive branch the duty to ''faithfully execute" them.

Several senators have proposed bills to bring the warrantless surveillance program under the law. One Democrat, Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, has gone so far as to propose censuring Bush, saying he has broken the wiretapping law.

Bush's signing statement on the USA Patriot Act nearly went unnoticed.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, inserted a statement into the record of the Senate Judiciary Committee objecting to Bush's interpretation of the Patriot Act, but neither the signing statement nor Leahy's objection received coverage from in the mainstream news media, Leahy's office said.

Yesterday, Leahy said Bush's assertion that he could ignore the new provisions of the Patriot Act -- provisions that were the subject of intense negotiations in Congress -- represented ''nothing short of a radical effort to manipulate the constitutional separation of powers and evade accountability and responsibility for following the law."

''The president's signing statements are not the law, and Congress should not allow them to be the last word," Leahy said in a prepared statement. ''The president's constitutional duty is to faithfully execute the laws as written by the Congress, not cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow. It is our duty to ensure, by means of congressional oversight, that he does so."

The White House dismissed Leahy's concerns, saying Bush's signing statement was simply ''very standard language" that is ''used consistently with provisions like these where legislation is requiring reports from the executive branch or where disclosure of information is going to be required."

''The signing statement makes clear that the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. ''The president has welcomed at least seven Inspector General reports on the Patriot Act since it was first passed, and there has not been one verified abuse of civil liberties using the Patriot Act."

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said the statement may simply be ''bluster" and does not necessarily mean that the administration will conceal information about its use of the Patriot Act.

But, he said, the statement illustrates the administration's ''mind-bogglingly expansive conception" of executive power, and its low regard for legislative power.

''On the one hand, they deny that Congress even has the authority to pass laws on these subjects like torture and eavesdropping, and in addition to that, they say that Congress is not even entitled to get information about anything to do with the war on terrorism," Golove said.

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

It’s no surprise that a dry (hopefully, but none the less questionably) drunk will continue to pursue a policy of alcoholic insanity. It’s done all the time: one aspect of a life changes, slightly, but the rest of one’s life remains the same.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome is blindness: when it involves the deaths of thousands, it’s murder. Like a drunk driver who kills someone, the madness is no excuse.


Robert C. Koehler: 'The definition of insanity'
Date: Saturday, March 25 @ 08:36:07 EST
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

When Bush champions human dignity, God help us all

Robert C. Koehler, Common Wonders

"We have a responsibility to promote human freedom. Yet freedom cannot be imposed; it must be chosen."

The more I ponder these words, the deeper my confusion grows -- at the consciousness that confabulated them, at the futility of any possible response. And so the war enters its fourth year, impervious to its own unpopularity, disabling critics with the irony it generates.

In the context of what can only be called worldwide despair, the Bush administration has issued a National Security Strategy white paper oblivious to the extent that it fits the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results each time.

The report's assemblers proudly announce to the nation that they have learned nothing, hoisting one more time the flag of pre-emption, as though no one will notice how tattered and blood-stained it is: ". . . we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."



For the two-thirds of the country who do notice, and have withdrawn all support for the president and his sorcerer's-apprentice war, this inane assurance is added: "We will always proceed deliberately, weighing the consequences of our actions. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just."

The statement is breathtaking in its absolute failure to reference reality. I hope this failure is merely cynical (as in Greg Palast's observation that Operation Iraqi Liberation is abbreviated O-I-L), rather than a reflection of messianic lunacy. The cynicism can be outed. Lunacy has no awareness of itself.

Whatever the case, the only antidote I know is the truth, which flowed through the streets this past weekend, as people marked the third anniversary of the worst foreign-policy disaster in American history.

Here's 50cc of seldom-reported truth about how the Bush doctrine is working for some of us. Sara Rich, the mother of a female GI who has refused redeployment in Iraq, told an antiwar rally in Eugene, Ore. (as reported by truthout.org):

"The isolation and fear of being attacked, harassed, molested and raped was a huge part of her life in Iraq. She was always full of anxiety and stress just keeping herself safe when her commanding officers would show up banging on her door in the middle of the night, intoxicated and wanting to have sex with her. The intimidation and sexual harassment that our female soldiers are enduring is leading to massive stress and in some cases even death for our military women in Iraq. They are not supported but shamed when they bring these to the attention of their superiors."

This is how skilled America is at promoting human freedom through militarism. "I took a deep breath" Rich went on, "and I told her either way she is my hero and I will support her decision. She decided that she was going to go AWOL and to leave the Army."

On the ground, we're inflicting hell on earth. But in the rarefied world of pure ideology, the Bush administration policies "champion aspirations for human dignity":

"The United States," the white paper informs us, "must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. . . . The United States Government will work to advance human dignity in word and deed, speaking out for freedom and against violations of human rights and allocating appropriate resources to advance these ideals."

About the time the National Security Strategy paper was made public, the New York Times ran an expose of the detention site at the Baghdad airport known as Camp Nama, "the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26 " -- an elite special forces unit that specialized in the systematic abuse of detainees. Eyewitness accounts from Camp Nama help to "belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib," the Times reported.

The story tells of the usual torture and degradation -- the sort of fare the Bush administration regards as essential in the promotion of human dignity -- along with a boys-will-be-boys touch of Americana in which soldiers "used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball": dehumanization with a sense of humor.

And naturally, according to critics, "the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives," the Times reported.

"The goal of our statecraft," the white paper says, "is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. This is the best way to provide enduring security for the American people."

God help us all.

(c) Robert C. Koehler

Source: Common Wonders
http://commonwonders.com/


The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=25400

League of Women Voters of the United States and Common Cause press release:


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
March 22, 2006
http://www.lwv.org/AM/Template.cfm?Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=4639
Kelly Ceballos
202-263-1331
kceballos@lwv.org

Mary Boyle
mboyle@commoncause.org
202-736-5770

FBI Action Perceived As Intimidation
Statement by Kay J. Maxwell, President of the League of Women Voters of the United States and Chellie Pingree, President of Common Cause

Washington, D.C. – The League of Women Voters of the United States (LWVUS) and Common Cause expressed concern today over a recent incident involving the League of Women Voters of Berrien and Cass Counties (LWVBCC) in Michigan, Common Cause and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

“At a time when Americans are relying on the FBI to protect against terrorism, it seems strange that precious resources would be spent contacting citizen advocacy groups to question their work educating the public about open government. Such behavior smacks of intimidation,” said Kay J. Maxwell, LWVUS President.

“The FBI’s actions in this instance seemed intended to have a chilling effect on the right of Americans to freely express themselves,” said Chellie Pingree, president of Common Cause.

The LWVBCC on March 14 sponsored a public meeting on Openness in Government. Common Cause President Chellie Pingree was among four members of a panel that included representatives of the media, academic and legal communities. The forum was part of the League’s activities during national Sunshine Week, March 12-18, 2006. Leagues across the country sponsored similar community forums to stimulate public discussion about why open government is important to everyone and why it is under challenge today.

After the panel, an FBI agent contacted the local League president, Susan Gilbert, to challenge comments that Pingree made at the LWV panel that were reported in a local newspaper on March 17.

According to Gilbert, FBI agent Al DiBrito said that “this Pingree woman” was “way off base” in her comments about the USA PATRIOT Act, and that the League should have invited someone from the federal government to be on the panel and to respond. DiBrito told Gilbert a U.S. Attorney from the Grand Rapids office would contact her to give her the real story on the USA PATRIOT Act.

The local League of Women Voters and Common Cause raised their concerns in a letter sent Tuesday (read the letter) to FBI Director Robert Mueller.

“Citizens can be intimidated when an FBI agent calls and questions their activities,” said Maxwell. “Why should a citizen meeting on open government merit the attention of the FBI?” said Pingree.

###

The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.

This is a great piece on alternative news sources. It speaks (so to speak...) for itself. These are the links I hit.

A Few Political Tidbits Not Covered by Corporate Media
Stephen Crockett
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=7227

March 24, 2006

Recently, there were many interesting stories that largely went uncovered by the mainstream Corporate Media. Here are a few examples that demonstrate the inadequate nature of relying on the Corporate Media as your main news source. We urge everyone to visit the many news sources on the Internet daily.

Excellent news sources include
OpEd News http://www.opednews.com ,
\Buzzflash http://www.buzzflash.com ,
Raw Story http://www.rawstory.com ,
Consortium News http://www.consortiumnews.com ,
Smirking Chimp http://www.smirkingchimp.com ,
American Chronicle http://www.americanchronicle.com ,
Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com ,
Brad Blog http://www.bradblog.com ,
Common Dreams http://commondreams.org ,
Truthout http://www.truthout.org , etc.

This list is certainly not complete. This writer recommends you try exploring links on your favor sites for new sources of news.

The Washington Post revealed a Right Wing bias much like their rival, The Washington Times. They did this by launching a blatantly Right Wing website called Red America while not balancing this Right Wing site with any “Blue” counterpart. Nothing could be more blatantly partisan. You can read the full story at Media Matters http://mediamatters.org/items/200603210017 .

Scoop News in New Zealand published a story from the Atlanta Progressive News organization that informed readers that 30 members of Congress now support impeachment hearing for Bush. You can read the full story at Scoop http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0603/S00158.htm .

The Corporate Media extensively covered the failure of Senate democrats to endorse the Feingold measure censoring Bush but completely ignored this equally big story. A truly balanced news coverage would have given each story equal time.

Greg Palast wrote an amazing column for The Guardian in London called Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools: THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED. Palast argues that the Iraq War was launched to prevent Iraqi oil from flooding the international market and keeping oil prices low. The column points to the dominate role Big Oil has in the Bush political machine. Palast discusses how the oil industry has been able to profit excessively from the huge increases in oil prices during Bush from tight supplies. This shocking column has been ignored in the Corporate Media. You can read the full story at Greg Palast.com http://www.gregpalast.com .

The growing scandal over electronic voting machine failures exploded in state after state. Voting machine failures created news from Texas to Maryland to Utah to Florida. The best place to start reading the many breaking stories is at Brad Blog. This column is simply not long enough to even begin to list the many daily breaking stories concerning the growing election voting scandal.

Maryland politicians from both major Parties are looking to scuttle the Diebold machines. A Texas primary recount was halted by court order when the voting machines were not counting properly for the recounts. Errors were reported up to 20 percent. Voting machine tests should serious errors and security weaknesses in tests in Utah and Florida. The Bush Administration and allies in Congress are pushing to make these failed voting machines the standard by the Fall elections. Growing numbers of voting rights activists are seeking emergency action to guarantee verified paper trails to prevent election fraud and other snafus this year. The Corporate Media has not given the issue significant coverage. Many citizens are unaware their votes may not get counted this election. Information on the subject is readily available on the Internet.

Written by Stephen Crockett (co-host of Democratic Talk Radio http://www.DemocraticTalkRadio.com ). Mail: P.O. Box 283, Earleville, Maryland 21919. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com . Phone: 443-907-2367.

It seems to me the Brown V. Board of Education and Roe V. Wade are two of the most important court decisions of my lifetime. The Republican Party and the reactionary religious continue to chip away at both of them.

South Dakota’s recent outlawing of abortion is one of the biggest blows against Roe V. Wade yet. It’s a terrible thing to do to women: it’s abusive, in effect.

My hat is off to Cecilia Fire Thunder, President of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. The Lakota Sioux have been abused by the United States for almost 200 years. They know what a bunch of white males can do in their power-quests.

Please think about contacting Planned Parenthood of South Dakota, and Ms Fire Thunder and helping preserve women’s rights in South Dakota. It shouldn’t take a whole lot of money to bring about a new clinic at Pine Ridge.

San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

Original article is at http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1809859.php

Oglala Sioux Tribe on the South Dakota Abortion Ban
by blackeye1776 Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2006 at 12:34 PM

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty." President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, says "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

South Dakota's abortion law
Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) 3/20/2006
© 2006 Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc.

When Governor Mike Rounds signed HB 1215 into law it effectively banned all abortions in the state with the exception that it did allow saving the mother's life. There were, however, no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. His actions, and the comments of State Senators like Bill Napoli of Rapid City, SD, set of a maelstrom of protests within the state.

Napoli suggested that if it was a case of "simple rape," there should be no thoughts of ending a pregnancy. Letters by the hundreds appeared in local newspapers, mostly written by women, challenging Napoli's description of rape as "simple." He has yet to explain satisfactorily what he meant by "simple rape."

The President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Cecilia Fire Thunder, was incensed. A former nurse and healthcare giver she was very angry that a state body made up mostly of white males, would make such a stupid law against women.

"To me, it is now a question of sovereignty," she said to me last week. "I will personally establish a Planned Parenthood clinic on my own land which is within the boundaries of the Pine Ridge Reservation where the State of South Dakota has absolutely no jurisdiction."

Strong words from a very strong lady. I hope Ms. Fire Thunder challenges Gov. Rounds and the state legislators on this law that is an affront to all independent women.

(Tim Giago is the president of the Native American Journalists Foundation, Inc., and the publisher of Indian Education Today Magazine. He can be reached at najournalists@rushmore.com or by writing him at 2050 W. Main St., Suite 5, Rapid City, SD. He was also the founder and publisher of the Lakota Times and Indian Country Today newspapers)
www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=7669


® 2000–2006 San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the SF Bay Area IMC. Disclaimer | Privacy | Contact

How rank is Congress? Pretty damn’ smelly. We lost a good political reporter when Hunter Thompson took the burned-out alcoholic writer’s road. It was a loss to American writing, as well.

Slowly, though, Matt Taibbi is emerging as a post-Thompson writer of skill and insight and downright recklessness—without, I hope, the self-destructive drive of Hunter. Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone on a regular basis. It’s worth buying the magazine to read his stuff, screw the sappy music crap.

Lobbying: the whoring of career Washington polititicians. Here’s a report on Conrad Burns, a man that, when he dies, even the buzzards would avoid.

How to Be a Lobbyist Without Trying
A personal journey into Washington's culture of greed

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9519839/how_to_be_a_lobbyist_without_trying?rnd=1143267693706&has-player=true

In January, I was in Washington, D.C., interviewing an activist from a political watchdog group about Abramoff-related stuff.

"I'll tell you who's got a lot of balls," he said to me. "Senator Conrad Burns. He talked about his lobby-reform plan today, but check it out, he's throwing a thousand-buck-a-plate birthday party for himself tomorrow night. I'm surprised he didn't show up on the Hill today in a fucking Hamburglar costume."

The activist handed me a printout with the details: "Please join us for Senator Burns's Birthday!!!" It was $1,000 a ticket for organizations, $500 for individuals. RSVP Amy Miller, the Bellwether Group.

It sure would be interesting to go to that party, I thought.

"So go to the party!" said my Friend in Politics. "Just say you're a lobbyist and go. Who's stopping you?"

We hashed out a plan. All I needed to do, he said, was print out a few business cards, and maybe -- for just-in-case verisimilitude -- type out a jazzy-looking fact sheet with a plan for some bogus project my "clients" would be pushing. "But make it as ridiculous as possible," my Friend insisted. "The magic words are: 'My clients will be seeking some regulatory relief' and 'Our project has an energy-independent profile.' Trust me, a guy like Conrad Burns will pop a boner in ten seconds flat."

Jack Abramoff would later tell reporters that he and his team got "every appropriation we wanted" from the staff of Sen. Conrad Burns, who sat on a number of important committees, including Indian Affairs, and Energy and Natural Resources. Overall, Abramoff gave more to Burns than to any other politician. Though Abramoff would later claim that he himself was the "softest touch in town," in reality he probably meant he was the second-softest, after the wrinkly senator from Montana. Burns, a mean-spirited dipshit, is one of dozens of craven morons whose presence has only recently been detected, with the aid of the Abramoff scandal. Among other things, reporters combing through his record found that he once answered "[It's] a hell of a challenge" to a Montanan supporter who asked how he could live in Washington with "all those niggers."

My fact sheet was headlined crude oil in grand canyon national park. It had a nice picture of the Grand Canyon on it. I was going to be Matthew Taibbi, Government Relations adviser for Dosko, a fictional Russian firm representing various energy interests, including a fictional oil company called PerDuNefteGaz that wanted to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon. My friend ratified the plan as the perfect lobbyist's pitch: shady foreign company seeking to violate, with a long metal phallus, America's most sacred natural landmark. I'd be welcomed with open arms, he said.

I called the Bellwether Group to reserve a spot at the party. A girl named Monica swallowed my introduction but added a warning.

"We're expecting some protesters tonight," she said. "I thought you should know." "Protesters?" I said. "Gosh, what for?"

"It's a long story," she said. "We're expecting . . . two people in Jack Abramoff costumes."

"Oh, that's ridiculous," I said. "People have to grow up."

"I know, it's silly," she said. "Well, see you tonight."

By the time I showed up at the small reception hall, the angry mob that had been there at the reception had dwindled to a few sorry individuals shivering in the cold weather. I slithered past them unnoticed.

The schmoozefest was on. There were about fifty people present, all in suits and all with name tags representing everyone from the NRA to Motorola to the White House; they all started furiously shaking one another's hands and gaping at one another's name tags, like dogs sniffing each other in a Central Park run. I accosted a young girl named Kristin, who was wearing a Burns name tag, and explained who I was and what I wanted, stammering out the phrase "seeking regulatory relief" and mentioning oil in the Grand Canyon.

"You need to talk to Chris Heggem," she said.

She led me across the room and passed me off to an early-fortyish woman with dirty-blond hair who was busily engaged with three other suits. "This is the person to talk to," Kristin whispered. "She handles all of the energy and commerce and . . . the energy and commerce and, uh . . . environment."

When Heggem was finally free, I introduced myself. "I work for Dosko-Konsult," I said. "We're a Russian company. We represent a number of Russian energy companies. Specifically I work with a company called PerDuNefteGaz."

"What?" she said, leaning over.

"PerDuNefteGaz," I said. "It's a Russian oil company . . ."

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Yeah, of course."

I suppressed a laugh. My Friend in Politics had told me that everyone I met at the party would pretend to know the company I worked for. "PerDuNefteGaz" translates roughly as "FartOilGas."

I pressed on, stammering through a researched speech about my client's discovery of an "abiogenic theory of petroleum recovery" and some new surveys we'd been conducting. A sharp woman, Heggem was right there with me, even when I stopped making sense. "Basically you're using new technology, new recovery methods," she said.

"Exactly," I said. Then I laid it on her. "We're pursuing a number of projects," I said. "Including one that would involve some exploratory drilling in Grand Canyon National Park. Now, obviously this is complicated but . . . at some point in time I was hoping we could sit down and I could tell you a little more about our company and our energy-independent project."

"OK," she said. She gave me her information and told me to call her anytime. We shook hands. For a few minutes more we stood there chatting. I asked what the protesters were there for, pleading ignorance -- I'd just flown in from Moscow.

"It's all of that Abramoff stuff," she said.

"It's funny," I said. "In Russia, they can't understand . . ."

"They don't understand why this is even a big deal with Abramoff, right?" she cut in.

"Exactly," I said.

We parted; I moved through the crowd in the direction of Burns. Up close, the senator looks like little more than a big exhausted lump -- like a sack of potatoes with a mushy, half-caved-in pineapple on top.

"Senator!" I said, extending a hand. "Matt Taibbi, Dosko-Konsult. Happy birthday, sir . . ."

"Yeah," he snorted, half-assedly shaking my hand and quickly ditching me in favor of a crowd of telecom suits.

Jilted, I stood there guzzling a beer for a moment. A friendly lobbyist/advertising guy came up and struck up a conversation. We talked about Abramoff.

"I don't know if everything he did was illegal, exactly," he said. "But it was just too excessive, in bad taste."

"My clients want to drill for oil in the Grand Canyon," I blurted out.

"Well, as long as you've got the environmental-impact research, that won't be too bad," he said.

"Our research shows that less than eleven percent of marine life will be affected," I said, misquoting my own fact sheet.

"Yeah, well . . ." he said.

A few minutes later I was talking to a lobbyist and her schoolteacher husband, who were hanging around the periphery of the party. I spilled a very long spiel about our Grand Canyon project, railing against government regulation. The husband joined me in being angry about the obstacles.

"The thing is, you come up with something like that, the first thing they'll say is [here he changed his voice to a high-pitched whine] 'Oh, the animals, the animals!' Fucking New York liberals."

"Yeah," I said. "It's like the spotted owl and all that shit."

"Totally," he said.

Later on, I met my Friend in Politics, who said, "Well, at least you learned something: It costs $500 for a meeting." He paused. "And you're an utter tool, too."

"I guess it would be a lot easier for a professional like Abramoff," I said.

"Yeah," my friend said. "And he had a lot more than 500 bucks. A lot more."

MATT TAIBBI

Posted Mar 24, 2006 11:53 AM

This from today’s Washington Post, one of the right-wing’s fave “liberal media” rags. Of course it’s liberal: that’s why it hired that plagaristic right-winger to do a “Red State” blog. Sheesh!

However, what caught my eye in this piece are the references to “leftist” insurgencies in Latin America, back a few decades. That wasn’t how the TV and newspapers presented them—since the government said the rebels were communists, that’s how they were presented to the American public. Not as popular uprisings against ruthless and corrupt dictators, who happened to be propped up by American support, but as part of the world-saturating “communist conspiracy.” I think it’s safe to predict that for the immediate future, all popular uprisings against the current crop of US-backed thieves is going to be part of the world-wide “terrorist conspiracy.” At least that's how we'll be militarily and financially involved.

The names change, but the situation remains. Same shit, different day.


washingtonpost.com

Salvadorans Ambushed By Memories in Iraq
U.S. Had Aided Soldiers in Civil War
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032402126_pf.html
By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, March 25, 2006; A01

SAN SALVADOR -- The convoy of Salvadoran troops was rumbling along a highway in southern Iraq when a bomb exploded under the first Humvee, slicing the driver's neck with shrapnel. As a medic scrambled to reach him, insurgents hiding nearby unleashed a torrent of small-arms fire.

It was the soldiers' first taste of combat in Iraq. But for those who had fought in El Salvador's fierce civil war as teenagers two decades earlier, the skirmish near Diwaniyah last September felt uncomfortably familiar.

Once again, they were crouching for cover against the deafening rat-a-tat-tat of AK-47 assault rifles. Once again, they were firing back with weapons and ammunition supplied by the U.S. government.

"Suddenly all these memories of the civil war came back to me," recalled Gustavo, a 35-year-old sergeant who returned to his village in northern El Salvador last month. Like other soldiers interviewed, he asked that his full name not be published because he was not authorized to speak publicly. "It was strange," he said. "I started remembering all these ambushes and battles I hadn't thought about in so long."

The Salvadoran government's willingness to keep sending troops to Iraq -- after three other Latin American countries pulled out their forces -- underscores the unusually strong political and economic bonds, as well as the unique military relationship, forged in the past two decades between this tiny country and the United States. More than 1 million Salvadorans now live in the United States, including 125,000 in the Washington region, census figures show. The Salvadoran Embassy estimates the number in the region at 500,000.

The Salvadoran and U.S. militaries have largely reversed their roles in the two conflicts. In El Salvador, Salvadoran soldiers did nearly all the fighting against leftist guerrillas, while dozens of U.S. military advisers trained, armed and often secretly directed them as part of a broader policy to prevent any more Central American nations from succumbing to the leftist revolution that swept Nicaragua in 1979.

In Iraq, the roughly 380 Salvadoran troops are a tiny presence compared with the 133,000 U.S. troops there. Perhaps their greatest contribution is to help preserve the diminishing "coalition of the willing" that President Bush assembled in 2003. Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic originally sent troops but have since withdrawn.

One reason El Salvador has agreed to stay, according to analysts, is that its three most recent elected presidents have been members of the rightist ARENA party, which has close ties with the Bush administration and shares its commitment to a proposed regional free-trade agreement.

Salvadoran workers in the United States send home $2.8 billion annually, and the current Salvadoran president, Elias Antonio Saca, has been lobbying the U.S. government to liberalize immigration laws so more can enter legally. He has also requested repeated extensions of the temporary legal status that the United States granted to more than 220,000 illegal Salvadoran immigrants in 2001 after earthquakes devastated El Salvador.

Last month, the Bush administration announced the latest extension of the controversial program, two weeks after Saca agreed to send a sixth contingent of troops to Iraq. So far, more than 2,300 Salvadorans have served there, and two have been killed.

"ARENA has evolved considerably, but the continuity is still there," noted Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. Although neither government has acknowledged a link to El Salvador's Iraq policy, "it certainly doesn't hurt," he observed.

Some Salvadorans feel it is unfair to send the troops to Iraq. One is Herminia Ramos, whose son Natividad died there in 2004.

"Yes, they have a duty to serve. But it's a duty to protect their own country, not to take care of a country so far away that has nothing to do with us," Ramos, 47, said bitterly on a recent morning as she shelled peas in the dirt yard of her village home. "It's like our government is selling these soldiers to the United States."

Ramos said Natividad dropped out of school at age 15 to join the army after his father died. Ramos, an illiterate laundress, needed money to raise her three younger children, and the army paid about $240 a month.

Within two years, Natividad was deployed to Iraq. He was killed in the city of Najaf on April 4, 2004, when supporters of the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr stormed a barracks defended by Salvadoran and Spanish troops. A second Salvadoran soldier died in a vehicle accident.

Ramos said she knew her son was dead the moment she saw a delegation of soldiers coming up the path to her mud-brick hut. "I had this horrible feeling in my stomach," she recalled, tears rolling down her cheeks. "All I felt was pain."

Her grief soon turned to anger. It took months of nagging to get the military to build the small cement house it had promised her, and Natividad's $7,000 government life insurance payment soon ran out.

Last summer, with help from another son, Ramos wrote to President Saca, begging him not to send any more soldiers to Iraq. But there have been only small, scattered antiwar demonstrations in El Salvador, and several recently returned soldiers said they did not resent being deployed.

"Maybe going doesn't benefit me personally. But I know it's good for the country and for all those Salvadorans in the United States," Gustavo said.

Other soldiers said that when they passed through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on their way to Iraq, Salvadoran janitors thanked them, saying their military service was creating more respect for Salvadoran immigrants.

Many also said they felt a personal duty to repay U.S. soldiers for serving alongside them during the civil war.

The U.S. involvement in that conflict remains controversial because U.S. officials overlooked or played down atrocities committed by the Salvadoran military against civilians. But many Salvadorans who were drafted as teenagers to fight guerrillas viewed the U.S. money and training as a lifesaver for their country.

In Iraq, the warm relations have continued. Salvadorans said many U.S. soldiers, particularly those who spoke some Spanish, would seek them out in mess halls or stop by their barracks to say hello.

"They'd call us 'brother' and ask for our Salvadoran flag patches to put on their uniforms," recalled Cesar, 37, a sergeant who lives near the capital. In response, he said, he stuck an American flag patch on his flak vest, until his Iraqi translator warned him it would increase his chances of being shot at by insurgents.

Salvadoran soldiers have faced plenty of danger in Iraq, including the ambush at Diwaniyah. On patrols, they said, bullets would strike their Humvees; at night, their barracks were frequently attacked with mortars.

One day, Gustavo's unit was called to guard the scene of a suicide bombing in a market. Picking his way past body parts, he said, he was flooded with gruesome memories of the civil war he had tried to forget: his brother, blinded after stepping on a mine; the corpse of a female social worker, cut open and left naked in the middle of a road.

Now, three weeks after returning home, Gustavo said he still has trouble sleeping. If his wife taps him even gently, he bounds out of bed and takes cover.

"You felt like you were taunting death every time you went out," Gustavo said.

Over time, the soldiers became more reluctant to go on patrols. The decline in morale was partly fueled by rumors of corruption among the battalion's leadership, whom soldiers suspected of stealing new uniforms and boots. They were also humiliated to learn that troops from other developing nations were being paid up to seven times what they were getting.

Pablo, 37, a corporal now on leave in his cinder-block home in a slum near the capital, said he was hoping for his first raise in 10 years. If it doesn't come through, he said, he will have no choice but to try to sneak into the United States. He has four young children and mounting school expenses.

Besides, he said with a hopeful smile, "if the border police catch me, then I'll just explain to them that I'm a Salvadoran who served in Iraq. Then maybe they'll let me stay."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company

There just aren’t enough good conversationalists who are also willing to examine American history and politics. Somehow, in our age of trivia, pop-culture, neurotic narcissism, and superficiality, being good with words and serious have become antithetical to each other. Maybe it’s because...well, it’s because nobody really wants to think about reality! Or, in our great democracy, everything has sunk to the lowest common denominator—which, when you get to it, is what George Dubya Bush is all about....

I’m glad Gore Vidal is still around: he’s funny, on-target, and smart.

Truthdig

'This Place Is Broken'
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060308_vidal_terrorism_propaganda_war/
Posted on Mar. 7, 2006

By Sheerly Avni

Last week, Gore Vidal spoke with Truthdig’s Sheerly Avni about a range of topics, including this year’s Oscar-nominated films (see Part I). He also commented at length about many of the real-life concerns these films attempt to address, including terrorism, war, propaganda movies and, finally, the troubling relationship between the U.S. government and the American entertainment industry, which Vidal refers to as White House East and White House West.

Sheerly Avni: We were talking about “Munich,” “Paradise Now” earlier, and how both of those films faced the criticism that they were too soft on terrorists.

Gore Vidal: I wish the word terrorist would be erased from our language. All meaning has been pumped out of it by our rulers and their media, who wish to demonize everyone or -thing they dislike starting with Us The People. Certainly under the name of fighting terrorism we are conducting wars with everyone on Earth, shifting feverishly from old loyal employees like Noriega and Saddam Hussein to new servants to be abandoned in due course. We are treacherous friends. Meanwhile, thanks to all this maneuvering, more and more of our freedoms are being erased.

So you would be comfortable using the word fascism to describe the direction we are heading in now?

No, most uncomfortable. After all, the original fascist Mussolini could never explain just what fascism was in his native Italy. Let’s say arbitrary, dictatorial government that says any law may be ignored if the leadership dislikes it in the interest of fighting terrorism, which is… whatever the controlled media tells us that morning. Although the 9/11 bombings released all sorts of fascistic measures, as I listed in my “President Jonah" piece, the detonating trigger was not 9/11 but Oklahoma City. When the federal building was struck, the Clinton administration came up with an anti-terrorist Bill of Wrongs which is still at the heart of the USA Patriot Act and other curtailments of our liberties. And it is also clear that there is no terrorist army supported by an evil empire out there. Angry Muslims who have nothing to lose will always do some suicide bombing, to blow up our buildings and so forth, but with decent intelligence and a moderately competent government we can anticipate them and thwart them.

If I had been in charge of things at the time of 9/11, I would have called the police. You don’t declare war on an innocent – two innocent countries – Afghanistan and Iraq that had nothing to do with September 11th. A bunch of crazy religious zealots from Saudi Arabia did it all, and I would go to Interpol. I’d say, “Arrest these guys”—out of religious frenzy, they’ve just blown up a part of New York, a part of Washington. Arrest them, try them, do whatever you like with them, but get them.

Unfortunately we were waiting for an excuse to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and establish American bases up and down the Middle East, for all sorts of nefarious purposes, starting, dare I say?, with oil.

How far back does this “waiting” go?

The early terrorism legislation was cooked up by Janet Reno and the Justice Department under Clinton: as usual, a lone crazed killer, T. McVeigh, was found guilty. But it’s my impression that there was a considerable conspiracy, and the FBI didn’t follow up. One newspaper editor, Joel Dyer, got hold of all the FBI interrogations of suspects who might have been involved in the blowing up of the federal building in Oklahoma City. They didn’t follow up on one of them.

I remember reading that you said it would have taken nine people to load the bomb in the truck.

Yes, this skinny little guy could not have loaded it, much less – have you ever driven as much explosives as he is supposed to have driven? A forensic expert in Ireland who had examined a lot of explosions found that the IRA was constantly blowing themselves up, they would put the bomb on a board across their lap, and then drive the car across bumpy roads, and the car would often explode. And all that would be left of the drivers would be the genitals, because they’d been covered by a board.

Everything else blew up, except that treasured part, which would be in the dust under the cars. It was a grimly funny report.

This is old news now, but in terms of terrorism, there was a lot of protest against the Palestinian Oscar nominee, “Paradise Now,” with a 36,000-person petition to get the film dropped from the roster because it sympathized with “terrorists.”

Never forget there are 1 billion Muslims on Earth. The United States is far too small a country to play big boss – and now far too insolvent a country; we have no revenues, we can’t repair our own infrastructure, much less rebuild the cities that we’ve just knocked down in the Middle East. I think we should learn a little modesty, we’re not number one! At invoking terrorism, yes, we’re pretty good at provoking people to hate us. In fact we’ve been quite successful at that. But we live in a small country, a vulnerable country, a country with no defenses, only “homeland security.” But there’s no true security here – anyone can do anything he wants and will!

Right, so now we have these proposals to build a wall on the Texas/Mexico border, to fill in the tunnels….

Oh it’s just Looney Time, but you see, we have no educational system for the general public. If you come from a well-to-do family, you get a fairly good education, but you get a lot of propaganda along with it. And we have a media that is quite poisonous and only echoes what the administration—and corporate America, which owns the administration—wants us to hear. So the average person has no information, or what he has is so distorted. How can he make up his mind intelligently on any subject?

As far as the American media goes, though, you’ve spoken out strongly against The New York Times, but I’m thinking now of a Bush-voting friend of mine who gets most of his information from Bill O’Reilly and Fox News. The reason he won’t read The New York Times is that he thinks it’s a left-wing mouthpiece.

Ignorance is an epidemic in our country, and it’s kind of virulent. No, they don’t have any information, they don’t have access to it, and the newspaper they like to hate, they might very well hate for other reasons if they had any other reasons, but they don’t have any. They have no evidence.

Or if they’re told about the lies of Judith Miller—it would take you 10 years to explain who she was and how she got to tell lies. And what the lies were about. There’s no such time for us. By the time you are grown and able to read The New York Times without moving your lips, you’ve been had.

So how can the media get to my red-state friend?

I don’t think you can get to him. You can get to him if something blows up somewhere—he certainly grasps that. I think what’s most apt to be getting to him these days is the firing of people at Ford, and General Motors, and people being out of work. He’s no fool when it comes to his own welfare. If he sees that jobs are drying up, he may be inclined to think “well, we’d better get another war” because he’s learned from experience that when we have a war we have full employment….

In 1940 the Depression had returned. It had not been defeated in ’33 by Roosevelt: alas, it was back, so Roosevelt put 8 billion dollars into defense to build up particularly our air force, and we had full employment for the first time in 50 years. By the time Truman got to be president we were totally militarized, which was a very bad thing for us, but he had thought it was for a good reason. I mean, he feared, as did Dean Acheson and the others, that we would slip back into the Depression unless we had all this fueling, with federal money, of the military-industrial complex, as General Eisenhower so nicely advised us. Having served it all of his life, so he knew what he was talking about.

And the need for war now is systemic. There’s no going back. You can’t just say OK, we’re just stopping and we’re going to cut down the Pentagon budget by 50%, we’ll build some hospitals, we’ll do this, we’ll actually try to educate people.

[If you do] you’ll find a huge movement against it. Look, there are all those enemies out there: The Mexicans are armed with anthrax, and they’re entering El Paso even as we speak though hidden tunnels. Isn’t that good for conspiracy theorists? Those tunnels are great symbols.

And then there are the Canadians. Who knows what they’ll do to us from up north!

[sotto voce] They’re the most vicious of all, because they pretend to be quiet and orderly.

Altogether, this is not a very optimistic prognosis.

Well, I’m not very optimistic. This place is broken. It’s going to take a generation to repair what’s been done to the Bill of Rights, what has been done to the legal system.

Meanwhile, they’ll get a chance to add a couple more Supreme Court justices giving us, for a generation, a very, very right-wing interpretation of our liberties, because they don’t like them.

Quite openly they don’t like the freedoms we have, particularly freedom of speech, so they classify it – Top Secret. Don’t speak, whisper.

What will it take?

Organization, there will be quite a few demagogues who will say let’s burn Lawrence, Kan., like Quantrill, but there will be others, like Huey Long: Every Man a King. Make the Standard Oil pay—which is what he did in Louisiana. Built Tulane, built hospitals, siphoned all that money right into the state so everyone could benefit.

Roosevelt was scared to death of him in 1936, because Huey was going to run on a third ticket. And he could have denied Roosevelt a second term, and Huey’s plan was that he himself would be—in 1940—he would be the Democratic nominee and Roosevelt would be finished. And then we would get Huey Longism, which was true populism. The money was going to go to the people for the things that would make the people’s lives better. Then he was killed in the state capitol at Baton Rouge, by a crazy MD, a doctor, who wasn’t political at all.

Then there were rumors that Roosevelt had hired people to kill him. Seems to me a little far-fetched since I’m pro-Roosevelt.

FDR gave a presidential address from the Academy Awards thanking them for being so patriotic. How much has Hollywood changed since you first started working there, in terms of its relationship to the government?

The change had started much earlier than Roosevelt. The change began with Woodrow Wilson.... The whole country did not want to go to war in Europe, nor did we care about whether Germany organized Europe or whether France organized Europe. It was not a matter of concern to the average American. Nor should it have been. There was no Hitler in Germany. Those days, there was the Kaiser, he was no worse than the French leaders, so it was just a continuation of that long war that had gone on and off and on for centuries between [the] French and Germany. Who’s the heir to Charlemagne? That’s what it was about.

Wilson wanted to go to the war very early, and the American people didn’t. So he found a great public relations man called George Creel…. And George Creel, he sent out to Hollywood to get people to make anti-German movies. So we had nothing but blind nuns being raped by German soldiers. “The Huns are coming! The Huns are coming!” A lot of those movies were made, and then others to show how great the British were, how great the French were. And Wilson, he was shameless; he went so far as to put himself into a number of movies.

That’s how it all started, the marriage between Washington and Hollywood. And I remember when I was first under contract to MGM, in about ’54, I had nothing but déjà vu every time I looked around the Thalberg Building. I said, “What does this remind me of?” These little offices, these whitewashed walls and powerful producers on every other floor, talented people like Scott Fitzgerald working in little cubbyholes….

And I said, “This is the White House. This is the White House West, the Thalberg Building. And the White House itself is the Thalberg Building East. And they’re bound to marry.

With an oligarchy bureau chief on each side.

Yes, and George Creel was the bridge.

How was that marriage going in the ’60s?

In the ’60s, well, it got a big boost when Jack got to be president. Everybody out here was very pro-Kennedy. So it looked like a new generation had picked up the torch, and would “Bear any burden” – a pretty terrible inaugural speech, when you think about it. It was sort of a period of nostalgia: “Since You Went Away,” “Best Years of Our Lives,” it was putting a golden haze over WWII and perhaps over Korea, which had been a total mess. It was getting us comfortable and relaxed, homebodies at last, but really once again, to march and follow the flag, wherever it might lead.

That’s what Kennedy’s speech was about: We will bear any burden. To which the answer is, well, why? We’re not in charge of the world. There are a lot of places that we have no business bearing any other burden.

So does the marriage ever get rocky? In the ’70s when you have start having these more acerbic films, you have people like Robert Altman....

Oh yes, and as Vietnam got worse, that was what the ’70s were about, and the movies began to push back, and you have Altman doing it with satire wonderfully well, and quite a few others making their contributions, showing that war is hell… not too much picking of sides either.

Woodrow Wilson would have seen to it that we did.

And then we have Reagan….

“It’s morning in America,” he said – just as night fell.

And Clinton, the most telegenic president we’ve ever had.

Probably the most intelligent one we’ve ever had. It does not necessarily make him the very best, but certainly he was the only one who understood economics and could get up and explain it to the public—for example his first State of the Union. The teleprompter broke down, he did the entire speech from memory; now that’s over two hours of nothing but statistics and analysis. It was a brilliant coup of memory and showed that he thoroughly understood what he was talking about, he wasn’t reading.

What were some of his big errors?

Well, ending welfare as we have known it brought on disastrous effects. The business about “don’t ask, don’t tell,” whatever that was about. People who were interested in same sex in the services, so the officers were not supposed to ask questions and they weren’t supposed to give answers. This proved to be totally disastrous. And still is, to the extent that it’s enforced.

If Washington West is Democrat and liberal and Washington East is Republican, who gets custody of how the nation thinks?

Hollywood won’t. Washington East picks up all the marbles: They have the Congress, they have the courts, and of course they have the executives.

They also have the Christian right, making advances in Hollywood. What about that?

Oh they all get locked up as rapists sooner or later. [chuckles]

Copyright © 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

Mike Whitney hits it close to the bulls-eye. While I’ve used the model of El Salvador, as a testing ground for death squads, it goes back at least...let’s see, the French in Algeria used similar tactics against the FLN: midnight terror raids, bodies dumped in the streets. Hell, the Germans did it during the Nazi regime. The French, though, talked and wrote a lot about the tactic. Americans read their publications and applied it in Vietnam. It became a standard m.o. of “counter-terrorism.” Argentina, Brazil, Chile: all earlier testing grounds than El Salvador. Were Americans involved in South America? Do bears poop in the woods?

If there’s an opposition to the official government, according to these strategies, one of the things you do is break up the opposition, get them fighting each other. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t; but it’s cheap, saves military lives, and appears not to involve the United States.

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

Death Squad Democracy

"As successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line in combating the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror through the application of extreme violence."

"For Iraq, the 'Salvador Option' becomes Reality" - Max Fuller
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12438.htm
By Mike Whitney

03/22/06 "ICH' -- -- The notion that Iraq is now consumed by civil war depends on a number of assumptions that are inherently false. First of all, it assumes that the Pentagon is ignoring the fundamental principle which underscores all wars: "Know your enemy". In this case, there's no doubt about who the enemy is; it is the 87% of the Iraqi people who want to see an immediate end to the American occupation. Therefore, the greatest threat to American objectives of permanent bases and occupation is the camaraderie that that manifests itself in the form of Arab solidarity or Iraqi nationalism.

To this end, the Pentagon, through its surrogates in the media, has created a "self-fulfilling" narrative that civil war is already under way. Most of the war coverage now makes it appear as though the violence is generated from ethnic tensions and sectarian hatred. But is it? Some of the more astute observers have noticed that other parts of the propaganda war, (like references to the "imaginary" al-Zarqawi) have completely vanished from the newspapers, as government spin-doctors are now devoting 100% of their time to promoting their latest product-line; civil war.

In fact, if any of us were involved in the Pentagon's "pacification" plans we'd probably be doing the same thing. After all, the War Department is already overextended, so a plan had to be devised to divert attention from the occupation forces and get Iraqis to kill each other. The only reasonable choice is to incite "sectarian violence" and make civil war inevitable. That, of course, is the task of the American trained death squads. (The New York Times has confirmed that the Interior Ministry death squads were trained by American forces)

For three years the Iraqi resistance has successfully kept American troops on the defensive; taking control of more area, destroying pipelines and oil facilities at will, discouraging enlistment in the Iraqi Security Forces, and undermining public support among Americans (63% of who now believe the war was "a mistake")

These are the goals of every guerilla movement; a gradual erosion of public support, deflating morale, surprise attacks, and eliciting greater support from the general population.

It is clear that this has been a winning strategy for the resistance, and not one that they would readily abandon to pursue an ethnic/religious war.

So, where does the violence originate? Could it be that the independent militias are engaged in sectarian war without help from the greater resistance?

It could be, but it's not likely. Again, the only one who benefits from civil war is the US military; and it's clear that the military has no other option but to follow a "divide and rule" strategy. They simply don't have the human resources for any other plan.

In a larger sense, the "alleged" sectarian violence is consistent with what we have seen in previous CIA-run operations in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Negroponte are alumna of those conflicts (which, according to Cheney, succeeded quite admirably) so it's probable that they would apply what they have learned about counterinsurgency to the ongoing war in Iraq. The El Salvador-experiment proved that the masses can eventually be terrorized into compliance.

Isn't that what is taking place in Iraq?

In Iraq, terror is being used as a substitute for security, because the United States has no intention of providing the manpower or funding needed to maintain order.

Death Squad Democracy

Video footage of a massacre outside of Nahrwan, east of Baghdad, has appeared on the Internet showing the bodies of Shiite laborers who were allegedly killed by Sunni death squads. Journalist Paul McGeough was given the tapes and is planning to report on their content in the "Sydney Morning Herald".

In one incident, four adults were pulled from their vehicle and either shot or stabbed to death in front of a 5 year old boy whose father was one of the victims. When the townspeople came to investigate the scene, they discovered the bodies of 48 men and women who had been dumped in a ditch. The corpses showed the signs of having been "systematically murdered. Most were shot but some appear to have been stabbed and mutilated".

It is the "stabbed and mutilated" part that should interest us. After all, the intention of the Iraqi resistance is to gather greater support for their cause, not to alienate ordinary Iraqis through gratuitous acts of murder. If, however, this was the work of American-backed death squads, then the alternate goal of "governing through terror" has been achieved.

Journalist McGeough sticks with the same, feeble mantra as the establishment-media to explain the tragedy: "The current round of tit-for-tat sectarian violence was sparked by the bombing of the Samarra mosque"a holy site for Shiites. In the immediate aftermath, there were reports of many killings and fears that Shiite reprisals could see the country descend into a civil war."

Isn't this the official narrative?

The media insists that the destruction of the Golden-dome mosque was a "9-11-type event" which caused an up-tick in the bloodshed. But, was it? Or was it merely part of a broader (covert) strategy to foment civil war?

There's evidence that the plan to divert attention from the occupation forces is succeeding. In February the military reported less servicemen killed (31) than in any month in the last year.

Isn't this the goal?

In Max Fuller's seminal article "For Iraq, the 'Salvador Option' becomes Reality" the author disproves the idea "that sectarianism is a sufficient explanation for the violence in Iraq". Instead, Fuller says that what is taking place is in "the hands of the state" and a "part of the ongoing economic subjugation of Iraq."

Fuller's well-documented article is indispensable in making sense of the apparent chaos:

"In Iraq, the war comes in two phases. The first phase is complete: the destruction of the existing state, which did not comply with the interests of British and American capital. The second phase consists of building a new state tied to those interests and smashing every dissenting sector of society. Openly, this involves the same sort of shock therapy that has done so such damage in swathes of the Third World and Eastern Europe. Covertly, it means intimidating, kidnapping, and murdering opposition voices."

Fuller backs up his observations with ample evidence; citing open-source material he has compiled in his research:

"What we do know, however, is that hundreds of Iraqis are being murdered and that paramilitary hit-squads of the proxy government organized by US trainers with a fulsome pedigree in state terrorism are increasingly being associated with them."

The objective of the death squads is not simply to target one particular group or ethnicity, but to direct the violence outwards creating as much fear as possible in order to pacify the population.

Fuller winds up his polemic with a summary statement that confirms the long and bloody history of colonial wars:

"The pattern is repeated time after time in every imperialist so-called counter-insurgency war; for behind each and every one lurks the reality of exploitation and class war, and, as successive imperialist powers have shown, the bottom line in combating the hopes and dreams of ordinary people is to resort to spreading terror through the application of extreme violence."

A spokesman for the Association of Muslim Scholars, Hareth al-Dhari, put it more succinctly than Fuller; "This is state terrorism."

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com



(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Information Clearing House

Poor ol’ Habeas Corpus. Habe is really turning into a corpus; if the government wants to hold someone as a “material witness,” then there’s not much to be done: no trial necessary, do not pass go, do not... The hook is that if there’s no evidence, the government can lock someone up because the feds think the person might do something. For years and years, police and law enforcement people have bleated about how criminals have all the rights and their hands are just so tied by court decisions... Bull. That’s all it is: pure unadulterated manure. If they want someone bad enough, they’ll find a way. Especially now, with all the “war on terrorism” hype.

Welcome to the New Amerikan Order.


Material witness detention under scrutiny
03/21/2006 @ 8:40 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
http://www.rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1675
Detention of material witnesses has become a hotly debated tactic in the wake of reports of government prosecutorial abuses, according to a story set for Wednesday's New York Times, RAW STORY has learned.
Advertisement

Excerpts from the article written by Eric Liptak:
#

A 22-year-old federal law that allows people to be held without charges if they have information about others' crimes is coming under fresh scrutiny in the courts, in Congress and within the Justice Department after reports that it has been abused in terrorism investigations.

The law allows so-called material witnesses to be held long enough to secure their testimony if there is reason to think they will flee. But lawyers for people detained as material witnesses say the law has been used to hold people the government fears will commit terrorist acts but lacks probable cause to charge with a crime.

Concerns about how the law has been used have prompted calls from across the political spectrum for a reassessment. A bill introduced by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., would curtail the use of the material witness law to hold people suspected of plotting terrorist acts.

....

But Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who took part in terrorism investigations in New York after the Sept. 11 attacks, said curtailing the ability to hold potentially dangerous people could be a devastating mistake.

"Terrorism cases present, obviously, the least margin for error that you could conceivably have," McCarthy, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said. "If you lose control of people who come up on the radar screen, you could have massive death."
#

Someone asked me, this morning, who I'd consider a very audacious person.

Here, this is the most audacious person I can think of:


Yahoo! News
Wounded Iraq War Vet Wins Ill. Primary

By DENNIS CONRAD, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 11 minutes ago

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060322/ap_on_el_ho/congress_iraq_war_vet&printer=1;_ylt=An4RxKiFJwkNzO_qKTO2J1dh24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

Iraq war veteran L. Tammy Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot who lost her legs in a grenade attack two years ago, narrowly won the Democratic congressional primary nomination for the suburban Chicago district held by retiring Republican Rep. Henry Hyde (news, bio, voting record).

Duckworth, 38, who spent months recovering from her wounds at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., was heavily recruited by Democrats eager to give the party more credibility on security issues.

Addressing supporters early Wednesday, Duckworth expressed her thanks "to my buddies who pulled me out of that field in Iraq, to the medical professionals who saved my life and taught me to walk again, to the many volunteers who worked so hard throughout this campaign."

"I especially would like to thank my husband ... He's been there with me every step of the way," she said. Her husband Bryan Bowlsbey is a captain in the Illinois Army National Guard.

Duckworth, who uses a wheelchair and prosthetic legs, captured major newspaper endorsements and received more than $650,000 in contributions since announcing her candidacy in December. She had the backing of Illinois' Democratiic senators, Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (news, bio, voting record), the Chicagoan who heads the House Democrats' fundraising efforts.

Even Sens. John Kerry, the party's 2004 presidential nominee, and Hillary Clinton, a 2008 presidential prospect, helped raise money for the Thailand-born Army Reserves major.

With nearly all the precincts counted in unofficial returns from Tuesday's primary, Duckworth had 43.8 percent of the votes for the Democratic nomination in the 6th Congressional District. The Democrats' 2004 nominee, businesswoman Christine Cegelis, had 40.4 percent, and Lindy Scott, a Wheaton College professor, had 15.7 percent.

Her Democratic opponents had accused national party leaders of meddling, noting Duckworth does not even live in the district. Duckworth, who lives two miles outside the district, thinks voters will look beyond that issue.

In November's election, Duckworth will face state Sen. Peter Roskam, who was unopposed in the Republican primary. Hyde served in Congress for 32 years representing the district in Chicago's affluent Western suburbs.

In her campaign, Duckworth says she wants to focus on health care, education and improving the U.S. economy's position globally, though she knows the Iraq war will be a big issue.

She privately disagreed with President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, but still volunteered to serve.

"We should have been fighting the enemies that attacked us at home on 9/11," she said in December when she announced her candidacy. "We should have been out there trying to catch Osama bin Laden."

She does not favor an immediate troop withdrawal but prefers setting "benchmarks" for leaving Iraq, such as pulling out U.S. battalions one-for-one as Iraqi security battalions take over.

On Nov. 12, 2004, Duckworth was severely wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents hit the helicopter she was flying and landed at her feet. She awoke from unconsciousness eight days later at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Duckworth, who was later promoted to major, was released from active military duty in December shortly before she announced her candidacy.

Duckworth, who has degrees in political science and international affairs, says she decided to run after attending Bush's State of the Union address in January 2005 as a guest of Sen. Durbin, and testifying before veteran affairs committees on Capitol Hill.

The daughter of a retired Marine, Duckworth was born in Bangkok, where her father did U.N. refugee work and married Lamai Sompornpairin, an ethnic Chinese. She spent much of her youth in Southeast Asia.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

OK, this one I edited way down. Too much heavy reading can confuse us. The point is that leading mainstream churches regard “Creationism” or “Intelligent Design” as sectarian poop, spread by Bible literalists who cannot bear to let go of an absolutist life-line. Doubt, to these people, is awful: maybe a sin. Thinking for oneself is also sinful. The world is a scary place and they want as much authority as they can get, about everything. That's why they like Bush and his certainties, Cheney as his dead-eye shot-gun, Rumsfeld with his always absolutes.

Archbishop: stop teaching creationism

Williams backs science over Bible
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1735730,00.html
Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Tuesday March 21, 2006
The Guardian

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in schools.

How macho does a country have to be? As macho as it feels insecure. It’s like the “small-dick-syndrome” is running the show. Wannabe-hunters and fighter pilots, testosterone deprived secretaries of state, and the increasing sales of over-sized SUVs all point to a country that’s terribly frightened of something-or-other.


The star-spangled fantasyland of the fake and home of the bogus
US politicians aim for rugged, macho images because insecure voters want to feel that real men are in charge

Linda Colley
Saturday March 18, 2006
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1733675,00.html

In America, the excitement about Dick Cheney's shooting accident is over. There are no more talkshow debates about why he took so long to make a statement, and no more news reports about his 78-year-old victim. Even the delicious contrast between the vicepresident's bravery in the face of small birds and the deferments he took to keep from going to Vietnam no longer raises eyebrows. Yet the shrewdest comment I heard on the incident was rarely touched on. What did the vice-president think he was doing, inquired a serious hunter? Real men got up early and went into the countryside hunting wild quail alone with their dog. Going in groups to a farm to shoot specially bred birds was for sissies. It wasn't Cheney's involvement in masculine pursuits that was noteworthy; it was that the mode of masculinity on show was bogus.


Bogus masculine posturing seems to be the style of the current US administration. Its most conspicuous expression was perhaps Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo opportunity after the invasion of Iraq. There he was, this veteran of the home guard, clad in a snug-fitting flight suit, strutting the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln among real warriors, and claiming victory. It was, wrote one commentator, "a masculine drag performance". Similar posturing went on in the Republican convention before the last presidential election: politicians whose own warlike masculinity was nonexistent strove very effectively to effeminise John Kerry, who really had been a hero. So we had Cheney, rather obscenely, accusing the Democratic candidate of wanting to show al-Qaida a "softer side", and muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger making his famous reference to "girlie-men".

Why do current US political officeholders feel the need for such a transparent strategy, and why does it seem to work? To be sure, political power and shows of masculinity have traditionally gone closely together. In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people. And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals. Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised duel and tournament redolent of testosterone. By way of voice lessons, wearing severe suits and her own aggression, Margaret Thatcher mastered it (the verb seems appropriate).

Yet the historic fact that power has usually been male scarcely explains why American politicians now appear to feel an obligation to try so very hard. Nor does it explain why Kerry's Purple Heart and Silver Star, won in combat, didn't win greater electoral dividends. As far as the latter's failure with the voters was concerned, I suspect that his allusions to his own heroism in the Democratic convention ("reporting for duty") struck a false note. Anyone who has spoken to experienced combat troops knows that they rarely brag about their exploits. Strong and silent is the preferred style.

The fact that Kerry was encouraged by his advisers to deviate from this mode, rather than maintaining a dignified reticence about his Vietnam record and letting it speak for itself, was yet another aspect of the Democrats' ineptitude in the last presidential election. None the less, the tendency of some US voters to dismiss Kerry, despite all his medals, as "French" - which for Americans, as for Britons, is often a euphemism for effeminate - and to be impressed by George Bush's bluster, his wearing of a Stetson, a leather jacket and cowboy boots on his ranch, and images of him chain-sawing trees, suggests at the very least a degree of confusion about what does constitute masculinity.

This is surely one reason why the Republicans - and, indeed, some Democrats (think of Bill Clinton's busy sexual adventurism) - have been tempted in recent times to use postures of masculinity to such a crass degree. They are not acting this way because Americans possess a strong and confident cult of the masculine virtues, but rather because many are anxiously uncertain about just what these virtues are. These uncertainties stem in part from America's own domestic situation. In some respects, female emancipation has progressed further there than in Europe. At present both the Republican and Democratic parties possess powerful female figures who may well come into play in 2008, in Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. By contrast, in Britain female MPs were nowhere in the recent Conservative and Lib Dem leadership contests - just as they will be nowhere in the race to lead the Labour party when Tony Blair stands down.

Partly because women in the US are better represented in the hierarchies, the culture wars over gender there have been particularly fierce. This can be seen in the ferocity of the debates over gay marriage, but also over far less serious things. It should, for instance, have come as no surprise that Brokeback Mountain, with its deconstruction of one of the most iconic American male heroes - the cowboy - did rather better at the Baftas in London than at the Oscars in Hollywood. For some Americans, I suspect, this movie was too uncomfortable, even heretical. It scratched at issues that were already irritating.

One way of understanding the bogus masculine posturing of the likes of Bush and Cheney is to view it as a kind of comfort blanket being knowingly extended to troubled American voters (of both sexes) who feel deeply worried that conventional gender roles in their country are unravelling. Male blue-collar workers, who have witnessed the disappearance in recent years of large numbers of conventional masculine jobs in heavy industry, and evangelical Christians concerned about the sanctity and survival of the family are particularly susceptible to such strategies on the part of knowing politicians, however crude and artificial they may seem to non-believers.

There is, however, another factor in play. In Britain, as in the rest of Europe, politics remains overwhelmingly a male pursuit, but it is no longer necessary to try too hard. David Cameron could get away with simply patting his pregnant wife's bump, a New Man gesture that was also, of course, a gesture of proprietorship and potency. But Blair and he do not need to strut upon battleships, however much they might enjoy doing so. Britain, like other European states, is not and never will again be in the topworld- power league, so its male leaders can afford to play subtler, more variegated roles. Leaders of the US don't have that option. They preside over an empire, over the biggest military power the world has ever seen, which is now at war. The pressure on them to be seen to be conventionally masculine is therefore enormous. Just how Hillary Clinton in particular will cope with this in 2008 is not clear.

· Linda Colley is the author of Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, and professor of history at Princeton University lcolley@princeton.edu

Here’s some more stuff on the lunatical “anti-terrorism” campaign the government is waging against the citizens.

What we’ve learned is that there isn’t just one “anti-terrorism” program spying on us: there are layers upon layers of them. Some are federal, some are local, some are, god help us, volunteer (i.e. snitch on the people you don’t like). As usual, with any beauracratic system, there must be justifications for it’s survival. This means there has to be a lot of spying and suspected “threats” for the system or agency to continue.


Geov Parrish: 'Police state files: Government cracks down on dissent in name of 'anti-terrorism''
Date: Tuesday, March 21 @ 10:05:25 EST
Topic: Laws, the Courts and the Legal System

Geov Parrish, Working For Change

Two releases of local law enforcement files in recent days have shed new light on just how far the Bush administration, federal, and local law enforcement are going to suppress political dissent in the aftermath of 9-11.

The first case was in Pittsburgh, where a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union yielded the revelation that from 2002, when opposition to an invasion of Iraq began in earnest, right through at least until the final, heavily redacted document from 2005, law enforcement officials investigated, monitored, harassed, and infiltrated activists from Pittsburgh's Thomas Merton Center. Merton was a renowned Catholic theologian and pacifist who fiercely opposed the Vietnam War and all wars, and his namesake descendants apply the same beliefs to Iraq.

As the released documents make clear, that, and only that, was why they became targets: because they opposed the war in Iraq. An FBI document from 2002 notes that the center is "a left-wing organization advocating, among many political causes, pacifism." Pacifism! Egads! Aside from the fact that pacifism is a set of personal moral beliefs -- not a "political cause" -- is pacifism, in our militarized 21st Century America, the new Red Scare? Seems so. Just ask the Quakers.



Or maybe, instead, pacifism is simply terrorism. Because the outfit investigating the Thomas Merton Center wasn't the Pentagon TALON program, which was the tool used to go after the Lake Worth (Florida) Quakers and hundreds (at least) of other domestic peace groups. It wasn't even an NSA monitoring program. The Merton Center caught the attention of the Pittsburgh version of a Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force, a program set up in dozens of cities across the U.S. to combine the efforts of the FBI and other federal, state, county, and local law enforcement agencies to combat the alleged threat of "domestic terrorism." With only so many domestic terrorists to go around, there's got to be something handy to keep all those task forces busy and their budget dollars flowing. Now, we have a better idea of what that "something" might be: investigating ordinary, law-abiding citizens who oppose Bush administration policies. That's now considered terrorism. Of course, it's the far right that has engaged in "domestic terrorism" in our recent history (remember Oklahoma City), but for some reason that's not who these task forces are concerned about.

Apparently, in nearly three years of probing, the terrorism most frequently engaged in by the Mertonites was the handing out of leaflets. A February 2003 FBI report titled "International Terrorism Matters" detailed a schedule that the center posted on its web site of anti-war rallies in Pittsburgh, New York, and elsewhere. From Bush on down, the word "terrorism" is being slung around awfully loosely these days.

Still, the FBI defends the investigations, calling them, in a statement, "appropriate." And that raises the question of whether such investigations are still going on (probably), and whether they're being carried out by a local Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force near you (probably), and whether the main target is your local anti-war group or coalition (probably).

The second set of documents came from yet another source: the court-ordered release, as part of an ongoing lawsuit, of five internal NYPD memos detailing and analyzing -- mostly with gleeful satisfaction -- steps taken to disrupt and minimize New York City demonstrations in 2002, particularly the World Economic Forum protest that was the first, and virtually the last, major anti-summit demonstration after 9-11.

What the memos for the first time detail are police tactics that have been used widely across the U.S. against such demonstrations ever since law enforcement was embarrassed by the 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle. Anyone who has been to these demonstrations knows the playbook: massive presence of police in riot gear, heavily armed mostly with chemical weapons and batons; tanks, visible police vans and buses, and a widespread use of undercover cops; corralling protesters into tightly controlled spaces with no access available for the public to enter or leave; a constant shifting of police lines, including provocative forays into the crowd; and the preemptive arrests of any protestors the police don't happen to like or find inconvenient, with the understanding that they'll be held until the summit or convention or whatever leaves town and then released, with charges (if any) later dropped or dismissed. One of the NYPD memos notes, for example, the arrest of about 30 masked demonstrators (doubtless black bloc anarchists) for the "crime" of being "obvious potential rioters."

The last I checked, the Constitution doesn't allow for arresting people for what they might potentially do. But that, along with the rest of these tactics, with minor variations, is pretty much what's happened at every major post-Seattle U.S. protest of the war or the international corporate regime, in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Miami, and so on. The black bloc property destruction in Seattle, and the media overhype it provoked, allowed law enforcement to sell such tactics as necessary; in every one of these cities, a major protest has been preceded by a local media hysteria over the potential for "another Seattle," local city councils passed restrictive new anti-protest measures, and law enforcement got lots of pricey new crowd control toys.

Now, such protesters are not only "obvious potential rioters," but "terrorists." The recent reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, passed with widespread bipartisan support, included a new "anti-terrorist" provision allowing police to establish anti-protester "exclusion zones" at any event of "national significance." (In Seattle, where this idea was first used and then legitimized by the courts, it was more honestly called a "no-protest zone," an egregious violation of the First Amendment.)

The idea of all these harsh tactics is both to scare potentially sympathetic members of the public, who don't necessarily want to be caught in a riot (police or otherwise), away from attending; and at the same time to legitimize whatever forms of police and jail abuse are inflicted on the protesters who do attend, in hopes they'll think better of it next time. It's worked, and in six years, as the crackdown grows ever-harsher, activists have yet to devise effective counter-measures.

What does any of this have to do with protecting the country from terrorist attack? Not a damn thing, of course. But it's exactly the sort of rationale dictatorships and totalitarian states throughout history have used to scare the public, rationalize domestic state violence, and suppress, marginalize, and eventually silence political dissent. According to your high school civics class, America doesn't go for that sort of thing.

But then, that book seems to have been thrown out.

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange.

© 2006 Working Assets.

Source: Working Assets
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=20503



This article comes from The Smirking Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=25340

While America postures and preens as the greatest big country in the World, there are a few cracks in the facade. They're not publicized in your local Daily Bleat, but they do get noticed.

U.S. told to stop abuse of Western Shoshone

© Indian Country Today March 16, 2006. All Rights Reserved

Posted: March 16, 2006

by: Brenda Norrell / Indian Country Today

GENEVA - With strong language calling for the United States to desist and halt the abuse of Western Shoshone human rights, the U.N. Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued an ''Early Warning and Urgent Action Procedure'' during its 68th session. ''The Committee has received credible information alleging that the Western Shoshone indigenous peoples are being denied their traditional rights to land, and that measures taken and even accelerated lately by the State party in relation to the status, use and occupation of these lands may cumulatively lead to irreparable harm to these communities,'' the committee said in its conclusions to the United States. Praising the action of the U.N. committee, Bernice Lalo, among Western Shoshone in a delegation to Geneva, said the future of the people is at risk from gold mining and the unlawful seizure of land. ''We are Shoshone delegates speaking for a Nation threatened by extinction. The mines are polluting our waters, destroying hot springs and exploding sacred mountains - our burials along with them - attempting to erase our signature on the land. ''We are coerced and threatened by mining and federal agencies when we seek to continue spiritual prayers for traditional food or medicine on Shoshone land. ''We have endured murder of our Newe people for centuries, as chronicled in military records, but now we are asked to endure a more painful death from the U.S. governmental agencies - a separation from land and spiritual renewal.'' The committee advised the United States to ''freeze any plan to privatize Western Shoshone ancestral lands for transfer to multinational extractive industries and energy developers.'' Further, the United States was advised to desist from all activities on Western Shoshone ancestral lands in relation to natural resources, which are being carried out without consultation with the Western Shoshone and despite their protests. ''It notes in particular the reinvigorated federal efforts to open a nuclear waste repository at the Yucca Mountain; the alleged use of explosives and open-pit gold mining activities on Mount Tenabo and Horse Canyon; and the alleged issuance of geothermal energy leases at, or near, hot springs,'' the committee said. The committee said it has been advised of reported resumption of underground nuclear testing on Western Shoshone ancestral lands. Further, it advised the United States to stop imposing grazing fees, trespass and collection notices, horse and livestock impoundments and restrictions on hunting, fishing and gathering. The United States was told to halt arrests and rescind all past such notices to Western Shoshone people who were using their ancestral lands. The committee's action challenges the U.S. government's assertion of federal ownership of nearly 90 percent of Western Shoshone lands, approximately 60 million acres in what is now referred to as Nevada, Idaho, Utah and California. Joe Kennedy, a Timbisha Shoshone in the delegation to Geneva, said, ''The situation is outrageous and we're glad the United Nations Committee agrees with us. Our people have suffered more nuclear testing than anywhere else in the world and ... underground testing [is continuing] despite our protests. ''Yucca Mountain is being hollowed out in order to store nuclear waste. We cannot stand for it - this earth, the air, the water are sacred. People of all races must stop this insanity now in order to secure a safe future for all.'' Judy Rojo, Western Shoshone, said U.S. federal agencies are preventing Western Shoshone access to many sacred places. ''Our ancestors' burials are being dug up and placed into local museums' basement storage areas because of [a] surge of gold mines and nuclear developments. This is an outrage to our people! ''While others are allowed the freedom of religion, we are kept from the very same right. The Newe [people] use this ancestral land for sacred ceremonies. ''Truth is what it is - that can never change. We pray for the healing of our peoples, the land and the harassment and destruction to stop.'' Although the battle has been going on for some time, the delegation said there is now a dramatic rush by the federal government to finalize what they consider to be a settlement with the Western Shoshone. After receiving the report form the Western Shoshone delegation, the committee said it is concerned by the United States' legal position that asserts that Western Shoshone peoples' legal rights to ancestral lands have been extinguished through gradual encroachment. The initial request for U.N. intervention came from the Western Shoshone National Council, Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, Winnemucca Indian Colony and Yomba Shoshone Tribe. The committee's decision in March came after the United States failed to respond to previous requests for responses. The committee told the United States that it has the obligation to guarantee the right of everyone to equality before the law in the enjoyment of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, without discrimination based on race, color, or national or ethnic origin. Praising the committee's decision to intervene, Steven Brady, Western Shoshone, said, ''Again, we are very pleased that our rights are finally being taken seriously and we look forward to positive actions being taken by the U.S.''

There's more and more talk about withdrawing from Iraq. It's a mess: everybody but fall-on-the-sword-Republicans says it's a mess. A bloody awful hateful mess. We don't have control of the streets of the cities, even in the daylight. We can't set up linked forts across the country like the Crusaders did in the Middle Ages, because that doesn't do any good. Remember "strategic hamlets?"

Why not just apologize to the world and get the hell out? We invaded the country because of lies spread by the president and his handlers. We invaded it in a pre-emptive strike, something America has never overtly done before. The original lies turned out to not be good enough, so the political propaganda wing generated new lies. We were and are in Iraq illegally, contrary to international law. The men who planned and ordered this invasion and occupation are war criminals, no more no less. We need to remove our troops as fast as we can, prosecute the men and women who got us into it, and then make reparations.

Yes, the Americans who died and are maimed there were sacrificed for a lie. That's all. I don't know why there haven't been mobs of people storming the White House and the Capitol Building. Our country has been stolen by thieves and liars.

Some people call it a “resource war,” but Greg Palast believes it’s simply a war for more profits for Big Oil. It depends on whether or not we believe those knuckleheads in Washington D.C. have a future-vision, or they just have cash registers for brains.



The Observer - Britain's Premier Sunday Newspaper - Guardian
Bush Didn't Bungle Iraq, You Fools
THE MISSION WAS INDEED ACCCOMPLISHED
The Guardian
Monday, March 20, 2006
by Greg Palast

Get off it. All the carping, belly-aching and complaining about George Bush's incompetence in Iraq, from both the Left and now the Right, is just dead wrong.

On the third anniversary of the tanks rolling over Iraq's border, most of the 59 million Homer Simpsons who voted for Bush are beginning to doubt if his mission was accomplished.


But don't kid yourself -- Bush and his co-conspirator, Dick Cheney, accomplished exactly what they set out to do. In case you've forgotten what their real mission was, let me remind you of White House spokesman Ari Fleisher's original announcement, three years ago, launching of what he called,

"Operation

Iraqi

Liberation."

O.I.L. How droll of them, how cute. Then, Karl Rove made the giggling boys in the White House change it to "OIF" -- Operation Iraqi Freedom. But the 101st Airborne wasn't sent to Basra to get its hands on Iraq's OIF.

"It's about oil," Robert Ebel told me. Who is Ebel? Formerly the CIA's top oil analyst, he was sent by the Pentagon, about a month before the invasion, to a secret confab in London with Saddam's former oil minister to finalize the plans for "liberating" Iraq's oil industry. In London, Bush's emissary Ebel also instructed Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum, the man the Pentagon would choose as post-OIF oil minister for Iraq, on the correct method of disposing Iraq's crude.

And what did the USA want Iraq to do with Iraq's oil? The answer will surprise many of you: and it is uglier, more twisted, devilish and devious than anything imagined by the most conspiracy-addicted blogger. The answer can be found in a 323-page plan for Iraq's oil secretly drafted by the State Department. Our team got a hold of a copy; how, doesn't matter. The key thing is what's inside this thick Bush diktat: a directive to Iraqis to maintain a state oil company that will "enhance its relationship with OPEC."

Enhance its relationship with OPEC??? How strange: the government of the United States ordering Iraq to support the very OPEC oil cartel which is strangling our nation with outrageously high prices for crude.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

There you have it. Yes, Bush went in for the oil -- not to get more of Iraq's oil, but to prevent Iraq producing too much of it.

You must keep in mind who paid for George's ranch and Dick's bunker: Big Oil. And Big Oil -- and their buck-buddies, the Saudis -- don't make money from pumping more oil, but from pumping less of it. The lower the supply, the higher the price.

It's Economics 101. The oil industry is run by a cartel, OPEC, and what economists call an "oligopoly" -- a tiny handful of operators who make more money when there's less oil, not more of it. So, every time the "insurgents" blow up a pipeline in Basra, every time Mad Mahmoud in Tehran threatens to cut supply, the price of oil leaps. And Dick and George just love it.

Dick and George didn't want more oil from Iraq, they wanted less. I know some of you, no matter what I write, insist that our President and his Veep are on the hunt for more crude so you can cheaply fill your family Hummer; that somehow, these two oil-patch babies are concerned that the price of gas in the USA is bumping up to $3 a gallon.

Not so, gentle souls. Three bucks a gallon in the States (and a quid a litre in Britain) means colossal profits for Big Oil, and that makes Dick's ticker go pitty-pat with joy. The top oily-gopolists, the five largest oil companies, pulled in $113 billion in profit in 2005 -- compared to a piddly $34 billion in 2002 before Operation Iraqi Liberation. In other words, it's been a good war for Big Oil.

As per Plan Bush, Bahr Al-Ulum became Iraq's occupation oil minister; the conquered nation "enhanced its relationship with OPEC;" and the price of oil, from Clinton peace-time to Bush war-time, shot up 317%.

In other words, on the third anniversary of invasion, we can say the attack and occupation is, indeed, a Mission Accomplished. However, it wasn't America's mission, nor the Iraqis'. It was a Mission Accomplished for OPEC and Big Oil.

**********
On June 6, Penguin Dutton will release Greg Palast's new book, Armed Madhouse: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War. Order it here today. View his investigative reports for Harper's Magazine and BBC television's Newsnight at www.GregPalast.com.

This article is rather long, but it’s a feature story and doesn’t fit easily into the “who-what-where-when-why-and-how” of news-article trimming. It’s worth reading (hey, I did, so you might try it, too....)

It fits with the last post, about the FBI conducting warrantless physical searches of “terrorist suspects’” property. We know that right after 9/11, there were some instances of physical abuse happening to people arrested here in the States. We know that Gitmo has documented physical abuse of prisoners. We know the Secret Police have been tapping phones and putting people under surveillance and even arresting them without bothering about legal baggage. So when does this stuff begin here? Or has it?

The New York Times

March 19, 2006
Task Force 6-26
In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' a Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse
By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html?_r=1&ei=5094&en=9efb5b3a1aa3d685&hp=&ex=1142744400&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL." The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.

It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that August.

It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp.

For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26 seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since 2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined in some form for mistreating prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit, according to new figures the Special Operations Command provided in response to questions from The New York Times. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three months ago for kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.

Some of the serious accusations against Task Force 6-26 have been reported over the past 16 months by news organizations including NBC, The Washington Post and The Times. Many details emerged in hundreds of pages of documents released under a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. But taken together for the first time, the declassified documents and interviews with more than a dozen military and civilian Defense Department and other federal personnel provide the most detailed portrait yet of the secret camp and the inner workings of the clandestine unit.

The documents and interviews also reflect a culture clash between the free-wheeling military commandos and the more cautious Pentagon civilians working with them that escalated to a tense confrontation. At one point, one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Stephen A. Cambone, ordered a subordinate to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.

Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three years.

Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them, they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture insurgents or save American lives.

Virtually all of those who agreed to speak are career government employees, many with previous military service, and they were granted anonymity to encourage them to speak candidly without fear of retribution from the Pentagon. Many of their complaints are supported by declassified military documents and e-mail messages from F.B.I. agents who worked regularly with the task force in Iraq.

A Demand for Intelligence

Military officials say there may have been extenuating circumstances for some of the harsh treatment at Camp Nama and its field stations in other parts of Iraq. By the spring of 2004, the demand on interrogators for intelligence was growing to help combat the increasingly numerous and deadly insurgent attacks.

Some detainees may have been injured resisting capture. A spokesman for the Special Operations Command, Kenneth S. McGraw, said there was sufficient evidence to prove misconduct in only 5 of 29 abuse allegations against task force members since 2003. As a result of those five incidents, 34 people were disciplined.

"We take all those allegations seriously," Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the commander of the Special Operations Command, said in a brief hallway exchange on Capitol Hill on March 8. "Any kind of abuse is not consistent with the values of the Special Operations Command."

The secrecy surrounding the highly classified unit has helped to shield its conduct from public scrutiny. The Pentagon will not disclose the unit's precise size, the names of its commanders, its operating bases or specific missions. Even the task force's name changes regularly to confuse adversaries, and the courts-martial and other disciplinary proceedings have not identified the soldiers in public announcements as task force members.

General Brown's command declined requests for interviews with several former task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies the unit's most elite troops.

One Special Operations officer and a senior enlisted soldier identified by Defense Department personnel as former task force members at Camp Nama declined to comment when contacted by telephone. Attempts to contact three other Special Operations soldiers who were in the unit — by phone, through relatives and former neighbors — were also unsuccessful.

Cases of detainee abuse attributed to Task Force 6-26 demonstrate both confusion over and, in some cases, disregard for approved interrogation practices and standards for detainee treatment, according to Defense Department specialists who have worked with the unit.

In early 2004, an 18-year-old man suspected of selling cars to members of the Zarqawi terrorist network was seized with his entire family at their home in Baghdad. Task force soldiers beat him repeatedly with a rifle butt and punched him in the head and kidneys, said a Defense Department specialist briefed on the incident.

Some complaints were ignored or played down in a unit where a conspiracy of silence contributed to the overall secretiveness. "It's under control," one unit commander told a Defense Department official who complained about mistreatment at Camp Nama in the spring of 2004.

For hundreds of suspected insurgents, Camp Nama was a way station on a journey that started with their capture on the battlefield or in their homes, and ended often in a cell at Abu Ghraib. Hidden in plain sight just off a dusty road fronting Baghdad International Airport, Camp Nama was an unmarked, virtually unknown compound at the edge of the taxiways.

The heart of the camp was the Battlefield Interrogation Facility, alternately known as the Temporary Detention Facility and the Temporary Holding Facility. The interrogation and detention areas occupied a corner of the larger compound, separated by a fence topped with razor wire.

Unmarked helicopters flew detainees into the camp almost daily, former task force members said. Dressed in blue jumpsuits with taped goggles covering their eyes, the shackled prisoners were led into a screening room where they were registered and examined by medics.

Just beyond the screening rooms, where Saddam Hussein was given a medical exam after his capture, detainees were kept in as many as 85 cells spread over two buildings. Some detainees were kept in what was known as Motel 6, a group of crudely built plywood shacks that reeked of urine and excrement. The shacks were cramped, forcing many prisoners to squat or crouch. Other detainees were housed inside a separate building in 6-by-8-foot cubicles in a cellblock called Hotel California.

The interrogation rooms were stark. High-value detainees were questioned in the Black Room, nearly bare but for several 18-inch hooks that jutted from the ceiling, a grisly reminder of the terrors inflicted by Mr. Hussein's inquisitors. Jailers often blared rap music or rock 'n' roll at deafening decibels over a loudspeaker to unnerve their subjects.

Another smaller room offered basic comforts like carpets and cushioned seating to put more cooperative prisoners at ease, said several Defense Department specialists who worked at Camp Nama. Detainees wore heavy, olive-drab hoods outside their cells. By June 2004, the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib galvanized the military to promise better treatment for prisoners. In one small concession at Camp Nama, soldiers exchanged the hoods for cloth blindfolds with drop veils that allowed detainees to breathe more freely but prevented them from peeking out.

Some former task force members said the Nama in the camp's name stood for a coarse phrase that soldiers used to describe the compound. One Defense Department specialist recalled seeing pink blotches on detainees' clothing as well as red welts on their bodies, marks he learned later were inflicted by soldiers who used detainees as targets and called themselves the High Five Paintball Club.

Mr. McGraw, the military spokesman, said he had not heard of the Black Room or the paintball club and had not seen any mention of them in the documents he had reviewed.

In a nearby operations center, task force analysts pored over intelligence collected from spies, detainees and remotely piloted Predator surveillance aircraft, to piece together clues to aid soldiers on their raids. Twice daily at noon and midnight military interrogators and their supervisors met with officials from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and allied military units to review operations and new intelligence.

Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon's post-Sept. 11 campaign against terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain intelligence and battle insurgents in the future. Originally known as Task Force 121, it was formed in the summer of 2003, when the military merged two existing Special Operations units, one hunting Osama bin Laden in and around Afghanistan, and the other tracking Mr. Hussein in Iraq. (Its current name is Task Force 145.)

The task force was a melting pot of military and civilian units. It drew on elite troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, whose elements include the Army unit Delta Force, Navy's Seal Team 6 and the 75th Ranger Regiment. Military reservists and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel with special skills, like interrogators, were temporarily assigned to the unit. C.I.A. officers, F.B.I. agents and special operations forces from other countries also worked closely with the task force.

Many of the American Special Operations soldiers wore civilian clothes and were allowed to grow beards and long hair, setting them apart from their uniformed colleagues. Unlike conventional soldiers and marines whose Iraq tours lasted 7 to 12 months, unit members and their commanders typically rotated every 90 days.

Task Force 6-26 had a singular focus: capture or kill Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant operating in Iraq. "Anytime there was even the smell of Zarqawi nearby, they would go out and use any means possible to get information from a detainee," one official said.

Defense Department personnel briefed on the unit's operations said the harsh treatment extended beyond Camp Nama to small field outposts in Baghdad, Falluja, Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk. These stations were often nestled within the alleys of a city in nondescript buildings with suburban-size yards where helicopters could land to drop off or pick up detainees.

At the outposts, some detainees were stripped naked and had cold water thrown on them to cause the sensation of drowning, said Defense Department personnel who served with the unit.

In January 2004, the task force captured the son of one of Mr. Hussein's bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told Army investigators that he was forced to strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach until he vomited. Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June 2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved. The unit also asserted that 70 percent of its computer files had been lost.

Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.

Back at Camp Nama, the task force leaders established a ritual for departing personnel who did a good job, Pentagon officials said. The commanders presented them with two unusual mementos: a detainee hood and a souvenir piece of tile from the medical screening room that once held Mr. Hussein.

Early Signs of Trouble

Accusations of abuse by Task Force 6-26 came as no surprise to many other officials in Iraq. By early 2004, both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had expressed alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques.

The C.I.A.'s Baghdad station sent a cable to headquarters on Aug. 3, 2003, raising concern that Special Operations troops who served with agency officers had used techniques that had become too aggressive. Five days later, the C.I.A. issued a classified directive that prohibited its officers from participating in harsh interrogations. Separately, the C.I.A. barred its officers from working at Camp Nama but allowed them to keep providing target information and other intelligence to the task force.

The warnings still echoed nearly a year later. On June 25, 2004, nearly two months after the disclosure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, an F.B.I. agent in Iraq sent an e-mail message to his superiors in Washington, warning that a detainee captured by Task Force 6-26 had suspicious burn marks on his body. The detainee said he had been tortured. A month earlier, another F.B.I. agent asked top bureau officials for guidance on how to deal with military interrogators across Iraq who used techniques like loud music and yelling that exceeded "the bounds of standard F.B.I. practice."

American generals were also alerted to the problem. In December 2003, Col. Stuart A. Herrington, a retired Army intelligence officer, warned in a confidential memo that medical personnel reported that prisoners seized by the unit, then known as Task Force 121, had injuries consistent with beatings. "It seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of detainees," Colonel Herrington concluded.

By May 2004, just as the scandal at Abu Ghraib was breaking, tensions increased at Camp Nama between the Special Operations troops and civilian interrogators and case officers from the D.I.A.'s Defense Human Intelligence Service, who were there to support the unit in its fight against the Zarqawi network. The discord, according to documents, centered on the harsh treatment of detainees as well as restrictions the Special Operations troops placed on their civilian colleagues, like monitoring their e-mail messages and phone calls.

Maj. Gen. George E. Ennis, who until recently commanded the D.I.A.'s human intelligence division, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in written responses to questions, General Ennis said he never heard about the numerous complaints made by D.I.A. personnel until he and his boss, Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, then the agency's director, were briefed on June 24, 2004.

The next day, Admiral Jacoby wrote a two-page memo to Mr. Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence. In it, he described a series of complaints, including a May 2004 incident in which a D.I.A. interrogator said he witnessed task force soldiers punch a detainee hard enough to require medical help. The D.I.A. officer took photos of the injuries, but a supervisor confiscated them, the memo said.

The tensions laid bare a clash of military cultures. Combat-hardened commandos seeking a steady flow of intelligence to pinpoint insurgents grew exasperated with civilian interrogators sent from Washington, many of whom were novices at interrogating hostile prisoners fresh off the battlefield.

"These guys wanted results, and our debriefers were used to a civil environment," said one Defense Department official who was briefed on the task force operations.

Within days after Admiral Jacoby sent his memo, the D.I.A. took the extraordinary step of temporarily withdrawing its personnel from Camp Nama.

Admiral Jacoby's memo also provoked an angry reaction from Mr. Cambone. "Get to the bottom of this immediately. This is not acceptable," Mr. Cambone said in a handwritten note on June 26, 2004, to his top deputy, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin. "In particular, I want to know if this is part of a pattern of behavior by TF 6-26."

General Boykin said through a spokesman on March 17 that at the time he told Mr. Cambone he had found no pattern of misconduct with the task force.

A Shroud of Secrecy

Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit, and the likelihood that some allegations went unreported.

In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in even tighter secrecy.

Soon after their rank-and-file clashed in 2004, D.I.A. officials in Washington and military commanders at Fort Bragg agreed to improve how the task force integrated specialists into its ranks. The D.I.A. is now sending small teams of interrogators, debriefers and case officers, called "deployable Humint teams," to work with Special Operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior military commanders insist that the elite warriors, who will be relied on more than ever in the campaign against terrorism, are now treating detainees more humanely and can police themselves. The C.I.A. has resumed conducting debriefings with the task force, but does not permit harsh questioning, a C.I.A. official said.

General McChrystal, the leader of the Joint Special Operations Command, received his third star in a promotion ceremony at Fort Bragg on March 13.

On Dec. 8, 2004, the Pentagon's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said that four Special Operations soldiers from the task force were punished for "excessive use of force" and administering electric shocks to detainees with stun guns. Two of the soldiers were removed from the unit. To that point, Mr. Di Rita said, 10 task force members had been disciplined. Since then, according to the new figures provided to The Times, the number of those disciplined for detainee abuse has more than tripled. Nine of the 34 troops disciplined received written or oral counseling. Others were reprimanded for slapping detainees and other offenses.

The five Army Rangers who were court-martialed in December received punishments including jail time of 30 days to six months and reduction in rank. Two of them will receive bad-conduct discharges upon completion of their sentences.

Human rights advocates and leading members of Congress say the Pentagon must still do more to hold senior-level commanders and civilian officials accountable for the misconduct.

The Justice Department inspector general is investigating complaints of detainee abuse by Task Force 6-26, a senior law enforcement official said. The only wide-ranging military inquiry into prisoner abuse by Special Operations forces was completed nearly a year ago by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, and was sent to Congress.

But the United States Central Command has refused repeated requests from The Times over the past several months to provide an unclassified copy of General Formica's findings despite Mr. Rumsfeld's instructions that such a version of all 12 major reports into detainee abuse be made public.

E-mail: sfburo@nytimes.com.

* Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

US News & World Report used to be the ultimate conservative news magazine. But whatever they said was going on could be deposited in the bank: it was that solid. I assume that’s more or less still true.

The White House went against the FBI because the FBI believed there were too many “legal and constitutional questions,” according to the report. Now, when the FBI raises concerns with the WH over constitutional issues, you know the behavior is as questionable as a baseball balanced on a pin’s head. But, that didn’t matter to the President and his posse; what mattered was making sure the executive office really was in charge of the government and the nation. Which it ain’t, at least according to the Constitution.


White House lawyers argued for warrantless searches after 9/11
03/17/2006 @ 10:03 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
http://www.rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1664

According to a news magazine, White House lawyers argued for the right to conduct warrantless searches of terrorism suspects on U.S. soil after the 9/11 attacks based on the "same legal authority" as President Bush's controversial wiretapping program, RAW STORY has learned.
Advertisement

The U.S. News & World Report article reveals that FBI Director Robert Mueller bitterly opposed warrantless physical searches "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised."

Excerpts from the article written by Chitra Ragavan:
#

In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval.

Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases."

....

At least one defense attorney representing a subject of a terrorism investigation believes he was the target of warrantless clandestine searches. On Sept. 23, 2005--nearly three months before the Times broke the NSA story--Thomas Nelson wrote to U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut in Oregon that in the previous nine months, "I and others have seen strong indications that my office and my home have been the target of clandestine searches."

....

In October, Immergut wrote to Nelson reassuring him that the FBI would not target terrorism suspects' lawyers without warrants and, even then, only "under the most exceptional circumstances," because the government takes attorney-client relationships "extremely seriously." Nelson nevertheless filed requests, under the Freedom of Information Act, with the NSA. The agency's director of policy, Louis Giles, wrote back, saying, "The fact of the existence or nonexistence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter."
#

The rest of the article can be read at the U.S. News & World Report Website at this link.

(Updated to reflect published story instead of press release)

US News & World Report used to be the ultimate conservative news magazine. But whatever they said was going on could be deposited in the bank: it was that solid. I assume that’s more or less still true.

The White House went against the FBI because the FBI believed there were too many “legal and constitutional questions,” according to the report. Now, when the FBI raises concerns with the WH over constitutional issues, you know the behavior is as questionable as a baseball balanced on a pin’s head. But, that didn’t matter to the President and his posse; what mattered was making sure the executive office really was in charge of the government and the nation. Which it ain’t, at least according to the Constitution.


White House lawyers argued for warrantless searches after 9/11
03/17/2006 @ 10:03 pm
Filed by RAW STORY
http://www.rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1664

According to a news magazine, White House lawyers argued for the right to conduct warrantless searches of terrorism suspects on U.S. soil after the 9/11 attacks based on the "same legal authority" as President Bush's controversial wiretapping program, RAW STORY has learned.
Advertisement

The U.S. News & World Report article reveals that FBI Director Robert Mueller bitterly opposed warrantless physical searches "not only because of the blowback issue but also because of the legal and constitutional questions raised."

Excerpts from the article written by Chitra Ragavan:
#

In the dark days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a small group of lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department began meeting to debate a number of novel legal strategies to help prevent another attack. Soon after, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin conducting electronic eavesdropping on terrorism suspects in the United States, including American citizens, without court approval.

Meeting in the FBI's state-of-the-art command center in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the lawyers talked with senior FBI officials about using the same legal authority to conduct physical searches of homes and businesses of terrorism suspects--also without court approval, one current and one former government official tell U.S. News. "There was a fair amount of discussion at Justice on the warrantless physical search issue," says a former senior FBI official. "Discussions about--if [the searches] happened--where would the information go, and would it taint cases."

....

At least one defense attorney representing a subject of a terrorism investigation believes he was the target of warrantless clandestine searches. On Sept. 23, 2005--nearly three months before the Times broke the NSA story--Thomas Nelson wrote to U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut in Oregon that in the previous nine months, "I and others have seen strong indications that my office and my home have been the target of clandestine searches."

....

In October, Immergut wrote to Nelson reassuring him that the FBI would not target terrorism suspects' lawyers without warrants and, even then, only "under the most exceptional circumstances," because the government takes attorney-client relationships "extremely seriously." Nelson nevertheless filed requests, under the Freedom of Information Act, with the NSA. The agency's director of policy, Louis Giles, wrote back, saying, "The fact of the existence or nonexistence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter."
#

The rest of the article can be read at the U.S. News & World Report Website at this link.

(Updated to reflect published story instead of press release)

Our government (it used to be my government, anyway), is still hyping the war on Iraq in the press and through government spokes-weasels. Condi Rice is one of the lead spokes-weasels, maybe going to go the distance and finish ahead of all her predecessors.

Anyhow, the latest well-written major operation against terrorists appears to be another, well, flop. Time Magazine, this week, reports it’s little more than PR. Here’s this from Bloomberg:


U.S., Iraq Hold 30 Suspects in Anti-Insurgency Sweep (Update2)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=a3mL1hYtSEHw&refer=top_world_news#
March 17 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. and Iraqi forces were holding about 30 people as part of a major operation to root out insurgents northeast of Samarra.

The suspects were among about 50 arrested, of whom 17 were released, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Edward Loomis said in an e- mailed reply to questions. ``Tactical interviews'' began immediately, he added.

No casualties have been reported by Iraqi security forces or coalition units, Loomis said.

Operation Swarmer, the largest helicopter assault in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, began early yesterday with more than 1,500 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, about 200 military vehicles and more than 50 aircraft. The offensive demonstrated the increasing effectiveness of Iraq's security forces, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

Samarra's Golden Mosque, a shrine sacred to Shiite Muslims, was destroyed in a bombing last month that prompted reprisals against Sunni Muslims and brought the country to the brink of a civil war. Samarra lies in the northern Salah ad-Din province, about 80 miles (125 kilometers) from Baghdad on the Tigris River.

``There have been concerns about Samarra as a stronghold for terrorists for some time,'' Rice said at a news conference in Sydney. She said she ``would call attention to the role that Iraqi Security Forces have played in this offensive,'' which ``demonstrates that Iraqi forces are indeed taking on more of the security side.''

Iraqi Units

U.S. Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the Multinational Corps in Iraq, echoed Rice's comments during a televised news conference.

Iraqi soldiers are performing well ``without regard to religious or tribal affiliations,'' he said. ``Iraqi units with our support can be used in just about any role.''

The U.S. military last month said there were no Iraqi battalions capable of operating without support, a reduction from one battalion in September and three in June that were in the Pentagon's top category of readiness, Level 1.

The initial force of 1,500 soldiers involved in Operation Swarmer today was reduced to 900 after Iraqi commandos who took part returned to Samarra, Agence France-Presse reported, without saying where it obtained the information. In replying to the e- mailed questions, Loomis didn't respond to one concerning the AFP report, nor to a follow-up e-mail.

Salah ad-Din's Governor Abdallah Hussein said that about 200 insurgents were active in the Samarra area, including local nationals and members of the Sunni extremist group Jaish Muhammad, AFP reported. U.S. officials had earlier put the number of active insurgents in the area at around 40, though they said they had yet to meet any, AFP said.

The soldiers ``continue to methodically search their 10- mile-by-10-mile objective area for terrorists and bases from which they operate,'' Loomis said.

Six arms caches have been discovered so far, and their contents are being inventoried, Loomis said. Initial reports are that the caches include mortar rounds and rockets of various calibers, bomb-making materials, land mines and rocket-propelled grenades, he added.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 17, 2006 10:54 EST

Here:
“Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. ... They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities.” —George Gerbner

Pretty obvious that bribery pays, as it were. Knight Ridder Newspapers realed Friday that one of the companies that bribed ex Rep. Randy Cunningham landed a fat contract to do surveillance on various places around the country that might either harbor “terrorists” or be targets of them. Now, if the company hadn’t been able to find suitable places, it wouldn’t have been able to hustle more contracts; therefore, it had to, ah, find such places. Regardless of the true-life nature of such locations, right.

Same old, same old: if there ain’t no terrorists, criminals, anarchists, communists, etc., etc., we’ll have to provide them to justify our work.

And, don't worry about how real all this is, by the time people like Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly, and others get done spreading the big lies, people will believe them.

Posted on Fri, Mar. 17, 2006
Pentagon hired contractor to advise on collecting information on churches, mosques, other U.S. sites
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/14126125.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon intelligence agency that kept files on American anti-war activists hired one of the contractors who bribed former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., to help it collect data on houses of worship, schools, power plants and other locations in the United States.

MZM Inc., headed by Mitchell Wade, also received three contracts totaling more than $250,000 to provide unspecified "intelligence services" to the White House, according to documents obtained by Knight Ridder. The White House didn't respond to an inquiry about what those intelligence services entailed.

MZM's Pentagon and White House deals were part of tens of millions of dollars in federal government business that Wade's company attracted beginning in 2002.

MZM and Wade, who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Cunningham and unnamed Defense Department officials to steer work to his firm, are the focus of ongoing probes by Pentagon and Department of Justice investigators.

In February 2003, MZM won a two-month contract worth $503,144.70 to provide technical support to the Pentagon's Joint Counter-Intelligence Field Activity, or CIFA. The top-secret agency was created five months earlier primarily to protect U.S. defense personnel and facilities from foreign terrorists.

The job involved advising CIFA on selecting software and technology designed to ferret out commercial and government data that could be used in what's called a Geospatial Information System. A GIS system inserts information about geographic locations, such as buildings, into digital maps produced from satellite photographs.

According to a "statement of work," the data that CIFA was interested in obtaining included "maps, street addresses, lines of communication, critical infrastructure elements, demographic and other pertinent sources that would support geocoding and multi-level analysis."

Geocoding involves assigning latitudes and longitudes to locations, such as street addresses, so they can be displayed as points on maps. Such tools increasingly are being used by U.S. corporations and law enforcement agencies.

MZM was to "assist the government in identifying and procuring data" on maps, as well as "airports, ports, dams, churches/mosques/synagogues, schools (and) power plants," said the statement of work.

"In many cases, the government already owns such data, and for reasons of economy, government-owned data is preferred," said the statement. It isn't clear why U.S. intelligence agencies couldn't do the work themselves.

Navy Cmdr. Gregory Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, said MZM began working on the project in October 2002, when the agency was created.

Its job was to help the agency integrate technology into its "information architecture to help CIFA use available (satellite) imagery, which is produced legally by other commercial and government agencies," Hicks said.

"GIS software ... is designed to allow integration of geographic and imagery data with threat information to provide complex analytic products," he said. "Not knowing the location of key infrastructure and points of interest, such as bridges, chemical plants, schools, parks, and even religious facilities, as they relate to threat information, could significantly affect the accuracy of such analysis and plans and lead to disastrous results."

He was unable to discuss further details of CIFA's dealings with MZM, citing the ongoing investigations into Wade's dealings with the Pentagon.

CIFA recently has come under fire following disclosures that it maintained information on individuals and groups involved in peaceful anti-war protests at defense facilities and recruiting offices.

The information was stored in a database that was supposed to be reserved for reports related to potential foreign terrorist activity.

In a March 8 letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a senior Pentagon official said that a review of the Cornerstone database had identified 186 "protest-related reports" containing the names of 43 people that were mistakenly retained in the database.

"These reports have since been removed from the Cornerstone database and refresher training on intelligence oversight and database management is being given to all CI (counter-intelligence) and intelligence personnel," said the letter from Robert W. Rogalski, an acting deputy undersecretary of defense.

The disclosure that CIFA was storing information on anti-war activities added to concerns that the Bush administration may have used its war on terrorism to give government agencies expanded power to monitor Americans' finances, associations, travel and other activities.

The administration's domestic eavesdropping program and FBI monitoring of environmental, animal rights and anti-war groups have also fueled such fears. The administration contends that its programs are legal and insists that they're designed to ensure civil liberties while protecting national security.

A Washington Post story last year contained a brief reference to the White House contracts in a report on the company's dealings with the Pentagon.

Wade, who faces up to 20 years in prison, was one of four men charged in the Cunningham case. Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in November after serving for 15 years, was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison earlier this month.

© 2006 KR Washington Bureau and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.realcities.com

“Pro-active arrests” in the name of Freedom and the American Way. Yeah, right. This means the cops bust people because, in the cops' opinions, the people might, repeat, might, do something illegal. The problem is that so many people will feel safer because of these illlegal busts. On the other hand, Hitler did stop the communist threat in pre-war Germany, right?

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002939.html

From "pre-emptive war" to "proactive arrests": NYC's thought police

There've been a lot of alarming stories this week, but none more so that this explosive article in tomorrow's N.Y. Times by a friend and former co-worker, Jim Dwyer. On a day when we ponder the third anniversary of a U.S. unprovoked invasion of another country and when President Bush reaffirms the need for pre-emptive war, we now learn that the New York (thought) police are busting folks who look like they might riot:

In five internal reports made public yesterday as part of a lawsuit, New York City police commanders candidly discuss how they had successfully used "proactive arrests," covert surveillance and psychological tactics at political demonstrations in 2002, and recommend that those approaches be employed at future gatherings.

Among the most effective strategies, one police captain wrote, was the seizure of demonstrators on Fifth Avenue who were described as "obviously potential rioters."

The reports provide a rare glimpse of internal police evaluations and strategies on security and free speech issues that have provoked sharp debate between city officials and political demonstrators since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The reports also made clear what the police have yet to discuss publicly: that the department uses undercover officers to infiltrate political gatherings and monitor behavior.

How tragic, for it is New York that the terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, and with this type of un-American response, it is the terrorists who are winning. The actions described in the story took place not long after 9/11, during the 2002 World Economic Forum. In one case, a high-ranking official called for spreading deliberate misinformation among the protestors, and another inspector sought a massive show of force that would "cause them to be alarmed."

This is what irrational fears do to us. Tonight I happened to see the top of the 6 o' clock news, and the lead story was about the evacuation of a basketball arena in San Diego, and whether it meant "a terror threat" here in Philly, where NCAA March Madness games take place tomorrow. No, it just means that some guy 3,000 miles away lost his briefcase. But when such panic causes us to lose our way, to cower in the corner and make "proactive arrests," then we do in fact experience a very real kind of fear -- for this country's soul.

Posted on March 16, 2006 10:36 PM

The Cheney-Bush Junta has announced that it has the “right” to bomb, burn, and riddle with bullets anyplace in the world it wants to, because the country has the power to do so. If there are “terrorists,” or what the Junta decides are terrorists, anywhere, we’ll zap them. I wonder if this means Santa Cruz or Berkeley...


Yahoo! News
Bush Reaffirms Pre-Emptive Use of Force
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_national_security&printer=1;_ylt=Ai_9.WX2C6s8yEu1Zh2YKIIGw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 59 minutes ago

Undaunted by the difficult war in Iraq, President Bush reaffirmed his strike-first policy against terrorists and enemy nations on Thursday and said Iran may pose the biggest challenge for America.

In a 49-page national security report, the president said diplomacy is the U.S. preference in halting the spread of nuclear and other heinous weapons.

"The president believes that we must remember the clearest lesson of Sept. 11: that the United States of America must confront threats before they fully materialize," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said.

"The president's strategy affirms that the doctrine of preemption remains sound and must remain an integral part of our national security strategy," Hadley said. "If necessary, the strategy states, under longstanding principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

Titled "National Security Strategy," the report summarizes Bush's plan for protecting America and directing U.S. relations with other nations. It is an updated version of a report Bush issued in 2002.

In the earlier report a year after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush underscored his administration's adoption of a pre-emptive policy, marking the end of a deterrent military strategy that dominated the Cold War.

The latest report makes it clear Bush hasn't changed his mind, even though no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

"When the consequences of an attack with weapons of mass destruction are potentially so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. ... The place of pre-emption in our national security strategy remains the same," Bush wrote.

The report had harsh words for Iran. It accused the regime of supporting terrorists, threatening Israel and disrupting democratic reform in Iraq. Bush said diplomacy to halt Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons work must prevail to avert a conflict.

"This diplomatic effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided," Bush said.

He did not say what would happen if international negotiations with Iran failed. The Bush administration currently is working to persuade Russia and China to support a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding that Iran end its uranium enrichment program.

"We are, I think, beginning to get indications that the Iranians are finally beginning to listen, and there is beginning to be a debate within the leadership — and I would hope a debate between the leadership and their people — about whether the course they're on is the right course for the good of their country," Hadley said. "That has only come about because they have heard a coordinated message from the international community. It has been difficult to hold together."

A top Iranian official said Thursday that his country was ready to open direct talks with the United States over Iraq, marking a major shift in Tehran's foreign policy a day after an Iraqi leader called for such talks. Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator and secretary of the country's Supreme National Security Council, told reporters that any talks between the United States and Iran would deal only with Iraqi issues.

Bush also had tough words for North Korea, which he said poses a serious nuclear proliferation challenge, counterfeits U.S. currency, traffics in narcotics, threatens its neighbors and starves its people.

"The North Korean regime needs to change these polices, open up its political system and afford freedom to its people," Bush said. "In the interim, we will continue to take all necessary measures to protect our national and economic security against the adverse effects of their bad conduct."

Bush issued rebukes to Russia and China and called Syria a tyranny that harbors terrorists and sponsors terrorist activity.

On Russia, Bush said recent trends show a waning commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions. "Strengthening our relationship will depend on the policies, foreign and domestic, that Russia adopts," he said.

The United States also is nudging China down a road of reform and openness.

"China's leaders must realize, however, that they cannot stay on this peaceful path while holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world," Bush wrote.

He said these "old ways" include enlarging China's military in a non-transparent way, expanding trade, yet seeking to direct markets rather than opening them up, and supporting energy-rich nations without regard to their misrule or misbehavior at home or abroad.

In 2002, when he sent his first report to Congress, Bush was struggling to persuade U.S. allies to join an offensive to topple Saddam Hussein.

Since then, the oppressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan was replaced by a freely elected government. In Iraq, citizens voted in the nation's first free election, a constitution was passed by referendum and nearly 12 million Iraqis elected a permanent government.

Challenges remain in Iraq, where sectarian violence threatens the fragile government and the U.S. death toll has topped 2,300.

The report is laden with strategies for advancing democracy across the globe, a theme of Bush's second inaugural address.

The president said his administration was advancing this goal by holding high-level meetings at the White House with democratic reformers in repressive nations; using foreign aid to support fair elections, women's rights and religious freedom; and pushing to abolish human trafficking.

Countering suggestions that he favors a go-it-alone approach to foreign policy, Bush emphasized multilateral problem-solving.

"Many of the problems we face — from the threat of pandemic disease to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to terrorism, to human trafficking, to natural disasters — reach across borders," he said.

"Effective multinational efforts are essential to solve these problems. Yet history has shown that only when we do our part will others do theirs. America must continue to lead."

___

On the Web:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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One of the leading Republican candidates for Oregon’s next governor announced that he believes “illegal immigrants” are the major, major problem in this state. Of course, he’s fatuous: Oregon’s problems come by the dozen: a collapsed school finance system, housing costs that increasingly exclude working people, a reliance on the good old boom-and-bus economy of the wild west, no money for social services, and on and on and on...

So, anyhow, for Mr Ron Saxon, major Republican, I offer this article:

Immigrant journey ends with girl's death
3/14/2006, 12:10 p.m. PT
By AMANDA LEE MYERS
The Associated Press

YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — Juan Cruz-Torralva brought his 12-year-old daughter through the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border because he wanted a better life for her in the United States.

Three days into the journey, a U.S. Border Patrol agent spotted the group of illegal immigrants, and as the agent chased them, the Border Patrol truck hit Cruz-Torralva and his daughter, Lourdes, killing her.

Yuma County sheriff's detectives determined the death was an accident, but Cruz-Torralva was arrested on charges of endangerment. Deputies argued that he had placed the child in "risk of imminent death" by bringing her into the desert.

A prosecutor on Monday refused to pursue the case, saying there wasn't enough evidence to prove the charge.

Cruz-Torralva, meanwhile, sat in jail and said he didn't understand why he was there.

"They said it's my fault for bringing her here, that it's my fault my daughter died. But I wasn't driving the truck," said the 28-year-old farm worker from Oaxaca, Mexico, who speaks limited Spanish.

He said he can barely walk since the accident, and his parents in Mexico are ill and don't have jobs.

"I just wanted her to get a good education," he said tearfully.

He had planned to take her to Oxnard, Calif., where his wife was living with the couple's 2-month-old son. He wanted to enroll Lourdes in school and work in the area's strawberry fields, he said.

"I was looking for a better life," he said. "I needed money to send to my family."

According to a report by the Yuma County Attorney's office, Cruz-Torralva and his daughter were among a dozen illegal immigrants followed by a Border Patrol agent.

After they stopped, the agent got out of his truck, heard moaning and discovered he had run over Cruz-Torralva and his daughter.

Cruz-Torralva was jailed March 8. The Mexican consul general in Yuma told him Monday that he would be returned to Mexico.

"He doesn't understand what happened," Consul General Hugo Rene Oliva Romero said outside the jail. "He's very concerned about the body of his daughter."

Richard Hays, a spokesman with the Border Patrol, would not comment on the case because an internal investigation was under way.

Cruz-Torralva said he just wants to go home to Mexico to be with his family.

"My daughter is dead, and my mom and dad are sick," he said. "I've been in jail for a week, I don't have any money, and I'm in pain."

"I just want to leave this place and never come back," he added, wiping tears from his eyes. "Never."

___

On the Net:

Border Patrol: http://www.cbp.gov/

Mexican Consulate of Yuma: http://www.sre.gob.mx/yuma/

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

In another life, I used to live outside a small town in southern Oregon. The town was small enough that I had friends of all kinds: some crazy, some conservative, some conventional, some fundamentalist.

One of my friends belonged to a church that was very youth oriented, a sort of total-service church: child-care, sobriety groups, kids activities, outings—quite a nice place , actuallly. I knew the pastor and his family. My friend, "Tom," was very enthusiastic about the church and various church-ish things. One of the things he was enthusiastic about was prohibiting abortion, of course. I remember one day he told me about some "Outreach tapes" he'd been listening to that not only talked about the emotional problems of people who'd had abortions, but how even birth control was very detrimental to society. Couples were supposed to have children; if they didn't, or they set an arbitrary limit on the number of children they had, why those marriages almost always broke up. Therefore, birth control was a bad idea for married people; of course it was totally sinful for unmarried people... Because the availability of it could cause unmarried people to commit sin.

You know the argument.

I found this, today, about the refusal of a state—MO—to pay for any contraception. It made me remember what my friend had told me...It isn't just abortion the right-to-lifers want to stop, ultimately it's all birth control.



Posted on Wed, Mar. 15, 2006


House rejects spending for birth control
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/14098907.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
DAVID A. LIEB
Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - An attempt to resume state spending on birth control got shot down Wednesday by House members who argued it would have amounted to an endorsement of promiscuous lifestyles.

Missouri stopped providing money for family planning and certain women's health services when Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature in 2003.

But a Democratic lawmaker, in a little-noticed committee amendment, had successfully inserted language into the proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would have allowed part of the $9.2 million intended for "core public health functions" to go to contraception provided through public health clinics.

The House voted 96-59 to delete the funding for contraception and infertility treatments after Rep. Susan Phillips told lawmakers that anti-abortion groups such as Missouri Right to Life were opposed to the spending.

"If you hand out contraception to single women, we're saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that," Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.

Others, including some lawmakers who described themselves as "pro-life," said it was illogical for anti-abortion lawmakers to deny money for contraception to low-income people who use public health clinics.

"It's going to have the opposite effect of what the intention is, which will be more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions," said Rep. Kate Meiners, D-Kansas City.

The other alternative is for low-income women to give birth to more children, which is only likely to drive up the state's costs to provide services to them, said Democratic Rep. Melba Curls, also of Kansas City.

The family planning program that was canceled in 2003 had provided state grants for women's health care services. Anti-abortion lawmakers had battled in court for years to try to prevent that money from going to Planned Parenthood, which also provides abortions.

This year's provision, inserted by Rep. Margaret Donnelly, D-St. Louis, would have avoided the Planned Parenthood controversy by only providing contraception through public health clinics. It primarily would have affected women who lack private insurance but who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, which provides contraception under federal rules.

Donnelly said it was a first step to restoring the services of the deleted program.

"The average Missourian believes that as part of women's health, they should be offered in a medical clinic a voluntary choice of contraception," Donnelly said.

While deleting the contraception language, lawmakers left in tact most of the rest of Donnelly's language also directing money to such things as screenings for breast and cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. But they approved Phillips' additional language specifically preventing the money from going toward family planning services or abortion referrals.

Missouri Right to Life said it was concerned with the contraception language because it was loosely written and could have included emergency contraception - often referred to as the morning-after pill.

The Missouri Catholic Conference also opposed the birth control funding.

"State taxpayers should not be required to subsidize activities they believe are immoral or unethical, relating to contraceptives or abortions," said Larry Weber, executive director of the state Catholic Conference.



© 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.kansascity.com

I came across this yesterday. Over the years, I’ve been involved with the situation of American Indians in northwest Washington. Like their cousins elsewhere, they’ve been screwed over continuously. Judge Boldt’s decision, giving the Indians a fair share of the salmon catch intensified the anger of white people up there over the Indians still being around. A few years ago, when the Makah were exercising their treaty rights to harvest a gray whale, the anger once again boiled to the surface. One of the anti-Indian signs read: “Save a whale: spear a Makah.”

A few months back, the citizens of Port Angeles went into a tizzy over the discovery and preservation of an ancient village site. The location was right where the state wanted to build a graving dock that had the possibility of offering some jobs to the local population. Once again name-calling and violence erupted against the First Citizens of the area.

Adele Fergusen's column contains the first defense of slavery I've seen in years. Sure, I avoid the white nationalist sites like I do rattlesnakes and wasp nests—but to find such a piece in a "business journal" staggers me.

One friend told me I’d have to live in the area to fully understand the depth and amount of racism that’s present up there. However, my understanding increased when I read the following column:


The Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal

http://www.kpbj.com/opinioneditorial/articles/2006-03-13-EDT-02.html

3-13-2006
POLITICS
Why do blacks continue to support Democrats?
By Adele Fergusen
One of these days before I die, I hope to see a shift in the attitudes of so many of my black brothers and sisters in this great country we share, from perpetual victimhood, to pride in their achievements on the road from slave to American citizen.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? He went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, “With all that manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.”

The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves.

Besides freedom, a job and a roof over their heads, they all sought respect. But even after all these years, too many have yet to realize that to get respect, you have to give it.

The treatment given President Bush at Coretta King’s funeral was shameful. And these weren’t poor, uneducated black people who “dissed” him. They were among the country’s top-drawer blacks, there to bury black royalty. While Bush got the cold shoulder, former President Clinton was welcomed as if he still held the office.

It mystifies me why the black population remains in thrall to the Democratic party. Black parents want a good education for their children yet they are consistently denied two opportunities that have proven enormously helpful in the few places where they are allowed because the D’s oppose them. School vouchers and charter schools.

The teacher unions, among top contributors to the Democratic party, oppose them for fear of losing control of the public schools which continue to turn out kids who have to be slipped through graduation by finding alternatives to standard requirements for learning, and where black kids fall behind whites. And what the teacher unions are against, the Democrats are against. Many a school board member is a Democratic activist there to be on the ground floor against vouchers and charter schools.

In the few places where vouchers to attend private schools and innovative charter schools are allowed, the unions file lawsuits claiming damage to the public schools by diverting the voucher money to poor families and limiting as much as possible the number of students who can attend the charters. They won one in Florida last month.

Sure, the ultimate solution is to jack up the performance of the public schools, but so long as the unions are running the show, that isn’t going to happen. The unions don’t care if you’re a good teacher, just that you’re a member and pay your dues. It is nearly impossible to get rid of an incompetent teacher. Their interest is themselves, not the kids, and their answer to the poor performance of the schools is more money.

Black students regularly trail white students because they get the more inexperienced and less qualified teachers and are plagued by low expectations. Results of the use of vouchers and charter schools have been outstanding, yet the Democrats say no, so why do black parents support them? Why do they act the victim?

Blacks have no Cesar Chavez. Jesse Jackson isn’t going to buck the Democratic Party. Neither is the NAACP. Black parents should confront Democratic leaders at all levels and demand these tools of learning be made available or expanded or don’t count on our vote for your candidates. You’ve let the unions keep your kids down too long already.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)

Yesterday, I wrote about how America keeps trying to cleanse it’s memory of it’s own history, like Germany did after World War II. “Patriotism,” as it’s defined by the conservatives, means never having to say your sorry—or even admit that you ever were wrong. The Mexican War, the invasion and capture of the Philippine Islands, the attack on Grenada, and other such adventures were necessary and just according to the theory.

And the Earth is flat...

Howard Zinn is a personal hero, like Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Cindy Sheehan, and a few others. They tell the truth. Not what voters want to hear, or the people in power want, but just what is. Telling what is, not what should be or might be is always an act of courage. And it always is met with derision and resistance, lies and violence.

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

Lessons of Iraq War start with U.S. history
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12339.htm
By Howard Zinn

03/14/06 "The Progressive" -- -- On the third anniversary of President Bush's Iraq debacle, it's important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war.

I believe there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture.

One is an absence of historical perspective. The other is an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism.

If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.

President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico "shed American blood upon the American soil" but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that he really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to "civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Wilson lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to make the world safe for the rising American power.

President Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was "a military target."

And everyone lied about Vietnam -- President Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, President Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin and President Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia. They all claimed the war was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanted to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

President Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991 -- hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait, rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

There is an even bigger lie: the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

If our starting point for evaluating the world around us is the firm belief that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then we are not likely to question the president when he says we are sending our troops here or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values -- democracy, liberty, and let's not forget free enterprise -- to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the world.

But we must face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation.

We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which the U.S. government drove millions of Indians off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations.

We must face our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation and racism.

And we must face the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is not a history of which we can be proud.

Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted the belief in the minds of many people that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. Both the Republican and Democratic Parties have embraced this notion.

But what is the idea of our moral superiority based on?

A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world.

It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join people around the world in the common cause of peace and justice.

Howard Zinn, who served as a bombardier in the Air Force in World War II, is the author of "A People's History of the United States" (HarperCollins, 1995). He is also the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of "Voices of a People's History of the United States" (Seven Stories Press, 2004). He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org

© 2006 - The Progressive. All Rights Reserved

I really enjoy finding people who write things that I've thought about writing, but haven't quite got around to (or forgot about....). Reich, Fromm, and others have discussed fascism from a psycho-sexual dynamic point of view. I don't know that anyone's seriously doing that anymore, but it seems that fear of or actual impotence is a major factor in the behavior of various right-wing demagogues and their spokes-weasels on radio and TV.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rob_kall_060221_diagnosis_and_treatm.htm

February 21, 2006

Diagnosis and Treatment of Right Wing Little Dick Syndrome

By Rob Kall (foul language warning)

Listen up you stupid, white, Bush Loving, little-dicked man. I call you a little dick, because I think you are so desperate to feel like a man, that you blindly and stupidly, because it makes you feel more like a man, continue to support a piece of shit fake macho president, who is screwing you, your community, your family, your children and your country.

In the movie, Defending Your Life, with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks, the main characters are described as "little-heads," because they are so much dumber than the entities in heaven who "judge" their lives.

So, in that light, I've been thinking about dumb white "little-dicks." Michael Moore described "stupid white men" in his book with the same name. But I've concluded that it is not enough to call them stupid and white. These right wing, usually rural or small town fundamentalist guys who form the most loyal core of the right wing political universe are pitifully sexually inadequate. They talk, walk and act macho, needing phallic symbol guns and rifles to compensate for their little dick minds. They may even be physically well endowed, but these dumb white little-dicks are pathetically needing to find ways to feel more manly.

Mention Brokeback Mountain and the thought of seeing gay men sends them into a panic. Give their wife a better paying job, if she's allowed to leave the house, and they start drinking to drown their feelings of inadequacy.

The political war is a war between men and women. A strong majority of Rebublicans are men. A bigger majority of Democrats are women. The right wingers political issues are ALL about holding down and controlling women. These guys aren't man enough to treat women as equals. These guys need to keep women from doing all that they can do.

They use the bible as an excuse. That's pure bull. The taliban and the religious fanatics, the fundamentalists in Islam and Judaism do the same thing. Any man who needs to quote from a 500 year old or older document to keep women down is pathetic. Any religion that needs to keep women down is weak. Let me be clear. I do not believe that Christianity, Islam or Judaism require that women be kept down. Certain sects' leaders choose to interpret their scriptures that way. It is not a matter of sacred scriptures saying any such thing, It is always a matter of some MAN abusing those sacred scriptures, you could even say prostituting them for his own purposes that put women down. Of course, whole sects may develop from one man's interpretations. But it starts with some man who decides the way he can gain power through tapping the religious propensities of people is to step on and abuse the rights of women, and often, disrespecting other faiths, another sure sign of a weak sect. So, all you fundamentalist extremists out there, make sure you read this whole paragraph. I respect Mohomet. I respect Jesus and the God of Abraham. I just don't respect the venal, corrupting spiritual leaders who turn a pure, beautiful religion based on revelation into a corrupt, hating, divisive sect. These sects end up being composed of a society of little dicked, braindead, angry haters.

Then we have the war. There are millions of dumb white little-dicks who have been using the war as some form of compensatory mental penile enhancement therapy. Sorry Johnny, war is not Viagra. Bush, the chronic loser, moron, fraft evading coward is also not V ia gra. Bush won't change how woefully inadequate you are.

But "Bush is THE GUY to protect us from terrorism." Right!! What a lame bunch of limp-spined, tough talking gutless wonders. "Let's haul ass off to Iraq and kill some Muslims and that'll do it," is their thinking. Geez. What a pile of mindless manure. Who actually believes this crap? Dumb, white little-dicks, that's who. They need to believe it, whatever "it" is.

Then I get these letters from these dumb little Dicks, saying, "Why don't you just accept that you liberals lost?" Well, little dick, I don't consider a bank robber who is wealthy a success in life. And I don't consider a party that stole two elections using election corruption and electronic voting machine manipulation the winner either. Again, little dick, you desperately take what you get. But that doesn't make you a winner either. it makes you a pathetic, dumb, little dick loser. Think of Dick Cheney as one of your heroes. He get's drunk, shoots a friend, and his little dicked friend apologizes. Sounds like little dick philosophy to me. The powerful leaders of the little dicks screw the dumb little dick followers and they worship the leaders for screwing them.

Let's not forget the rich white little dicks. They don't necessarily use Bush to feel bigger. They use money and the things and the influence and power it buys to feel better about themselves. So do their women. They stay right wing by repeating the mantra-- tax-and-spend-democrats-- blindly and perhaps traitorously driving their Humvees (clear signs of self perceived penile deficiency-- don't let the women say they feel safer in bigger vehicles) and ignoring the steady drift of America towards fascism-- all so they can buy $600 shoes and sweaters.

There is a cure for little dicks. Be a man, Face the fact that you have supported a total loser, a president who is a lying, traitorous failure at everything he touches, except corruption. He's a brilliant whore for anyone who gives him money. He'll happily take a thousand bucks in contributions and turn it over, in government deals for ten million bucks to his contributors.

There is a cure for little dicks. Be enough of a man to let the women in your life be strong. Be enough of a man to express emotions, to see beauty, to be nurturing, to respect men who are able to be soft and gentle, kind and artistic, whether they are gay or straight. Be man enough to not go into a homophobic panic when you encounter homosexual men. Any man who can't deal, as a calm un-upset adult with a gay man has inner fears that he's gay himself. Does the sight of gay men upset you?

There is a cure for little dicks. Face the fact that money and the things it buys does not make you a better person. Remember, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24) If a rich man is to enter heaven, it will be cause of the good deeds he does, the kindnesses, the gestures of humility, of understanding and compassion-- not the wealth and power accumulated.
There is a cure for little dicks. Grow up. Stop listening to macho for morons right wing talk radio. Rush and Sean and the other dittohead imitating idiots are pandering to the worst parts of you. Are you a member of the KKK? Are you a racist? If you are, go fuck yourself. You're a total asshole and hopeless. But if you're no, then you should know that the right wing talk radio jerks are pushing those kinds of buttons all the time. That's what makes right wing talk radio work so well. They know how to push little dick buttons. Grow out of it. Figure out how to be a real man. Not a right wing little dick. There is a cure for little dicks. It's not the drugs that are offered in billions of spam ads. It's not the bogus products that claim to make you bigger, longer, etcetera. It's about growing up, waking up and seeing that the right wing mindset is what keeps you feeling, deep inside, like less of a man. Let go of it and you'll find out what being a real man is all about-- something right wingers rarely know anything about.



Authors Bio: Rob Kall is editor of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology.

The government doesn’t have a good track record about how well it’s protecting us. It has a worse record at identifying “terrorists.”

It has a good record at fucking up, though.

This is from the American Action Fund's email update for today.


Prosecutorial Incompetence

American Action Fund

The Bush administration has jeopardized the sentencing of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," by tampering with witnesses. The federal judge presiding over the case, Leonie M. Brinkema, said yesterday, "[I]n all my years on the bench, I've never seen a more egregious violation of the rule about witnesses." Carla J. Martin, a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, "violated a court order by e-mailing trial transcripts to seven witnesses -- all current and former federal aviation employees -- and coaching them on their upcoming testimony." It's not the first time a key terrorism prosecution has been jeopardized by incompetence. George Washington University law professor Stephen A. Saltzburg noted, "There have been a lot of flubs." David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown Law Center, argues the problem is rooted in administration policy: "The government in the war on terrorism has generally swept broadly and put a high premium on convictions at any cost. That puts pressures on prosecutors — to overcharge, to coach witnesses, to fail to disclose exculpatory evidence." Whatever the cause, the administration's record prosecuting terrorist suspects is abysmal.

THE DETROIT DEBACLE: In 2003, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was threatened with a contempt of court charge for speaking publicly about a pending terrorism case in Detroit, despite a gag order. U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen publicly rebuked Ashcroft for his "distressing lack of care" in making the public statements, reminding him of his "unyielding obligation, as the nation's chief prosecutor, to ensure that defendants are accorded a fair trial guaranteed to them under our Constitution." In the same case, federal prosecutors withheld documents that, according to the judge, "should have been turned over" to defense attorneys. A lead prosecutor, Richard Convertino, was removed from the case. Convertino, in turn, accused the Justice Department of not providing him with the appropriate resources and sued Ashcroft under a federal whistle-blower statute. (Convertino's lawsuit alleges the Justice Department “continuously placed perception over reality to the serious detriment of the war on terror.”) Eventually, the convictions of two men, which were trumpeted by the Bush administration as "a landmark case in the war on terrorism," were thrown out of court after the Justice Department "admitted widespread prosecutorial misconduct."

THE MAYFIELD DEBACLE: For two weeks, the government held Brandon Mayfield, a former army lieutenant, "as a material witness in the Madrid bombings case, which killed 191 people and injured about 2,000 others." The FBI initially claimed "his fingerprint matched one found on a plastic bag connected to the deadly terror bombings," but, after checking the print more closely, the FBI admitted it was wrong. The FBI issued "a rare public apology" for its conduct, promising it "would review its practices on fingerprint analyses."

GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL: The AP reported that "[t]he Justice Department is investigating its lawyers' conduct in sending terrorism suspects to jail when there was insufficient evidence to charge them with a crime." The investigation appears to be centered around a case of "eight Egyptian men from Evansville, Ind., who were held for about a week in 2001 on material witness warrants when one of their wives falsely accused them of planning a suicide attack." The Bush administration "has apologized to them and to at least five other people detained under that law."

THE IDAHO DEBACLE: The Justice Department accused a University of Idaho student "of running websites used to recruit terrorists, raise money and spread inflammatory rhetoric." The student, Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, was a volunteer webmaster who promoted the study of Islam. After a seven-week trial, the government "failed to convince a jury that [the student] had used his technical expertise to support terrorist activity," and he was acquitted of all terrorism-related charges. Al-Hussayen spent nearly a year-and-a-half in jail.

THE YEE DABACLE: The Bush administration branded Muslim chaplain Captain James Yee a spy, placed him in solitary confinement for 76 days, and threatened to execute him. When it became evident the case against Yee wasn't there, he was maligned with charges of adultery and downloading Internet pornography. Eventually, those charges were thrown out as well. The Army has now agreed to grant Yee an honorable discharge.

OH BROTHER: Two men from Albany were accused of supporting terrorism and detained without bail "based on an address book that prosecutors said was found in an Iraqi terrorist training camp." The government initially claimed the book referred to one of the men as "the commander" in Arabic. Prosecutors later admitted "that translation was an error and the word is 'brother' in Kurdish." The judge ordered both men released an "blasted the government's case by saying there is no evidence they have any links to terrorists." The trial is still pending.

Sixteen or seventeen years ago, there was a German movie playing here in The States. “The Naughty Girl,” was the translated title I remember. It was about a young girl in a provincial German city; as a class project she began researching her city’s scene during the Nazi era—thirty years before, or so. Everyone had become “good” Germans—even anti-fascists—with the passing of time. They weren’t like everybody else, of course, and had never gone along with Hitler’s lunacy. Or so they remembered. When she began to talk about her discoveries, the town went nuts. She reminded them of what had really happened and they didn’t like that, at all.

For me, it brought up that old question: How did that madness happen, and why did the people go along with it?

And today, the question is, how have WE let this happen and why has America gone crazy? How can our government get away with torture? Why has our unilateral invasion of a sovereign country continued, especially since we have lots of proof that the justification for the invasion was a lie? How can the current administration go on with not just the war, but rattle more sabers at another country—two, if you count Venezuela along with Iran? We’re well educated, there is plenty of information about what’s really going on, the administration, additionally, is one of the most corrupt in the last one hundred years, habeas corpus has effectively been scuttled— —

Well, it ain’t all that different than what happened in the Thirties and Forties in Germany. Not when you get right down to it. People have pretty good lives, here. The government keeps promising more oil so people can drive their cars (no coincidence that the three countries I mentioned are all major oil sources), plenty of merchandise in the stores, lots of entertainment to keep people happy, and lots and lots of distractions. And a leader who keeps reminding us of our great nation-hood and what a chosen people we happen to be. Same old shit, different era.

The quote from Trooper Griffin, where he refers to the American soldiers’ view of the Iraqis as “untermenschen” reminded me of conversations I had with some members of our local National Guard units that were about to ship out for Iraq. They kept talking about “sand niggers,” “ragheads,” and “camel jockeys.” “Sand niggers,” yup. Speaking of same old same old.

Maybe, once this is over, and our history is (again) sanitized, we’ll remember how we were good Americans who didn’t go along with Bush and Cheney at all... Assuming we survive it.

SAS soldier quits Army in disgust at 'illegal' American tactics in Iraq
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 12/03/2006)

An SAS soldier has refused to fight in Iraq and has left the Army over the "illegal" tactics of United States troops and the policies of coalition forces.

After three months in Baghdad, Ben Griffin told his commander that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces.

Ben Griffin told commanders that he thought the Iraq war was illegal

He said he had witnessed "dozens of illegal acts" by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as "untermenschen" - the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.

The decision marks the first time an SAS soldier has refused to go into combat and quit the Army on moral grounds.

It immediately brought to an end Mr Griffin's exemplary, eight-year career in which he also served with the Parachute Regiment, taking part in operations in Northern Ireland, Macedonia and Afghanistan.

But it will also embarrass the Government and have a potentially profound impact on cases of other soldiers who have refused to fight.

On Wednesday, the pre-trial hearing will begin into the court martial of Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith, a Royal Air Force doctor who has refused to return to Iraq for a third tour of duty on the grounds that the war is illegal. Mr Griffin's allegations came as the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, visiting Basra yesterday, admitted that Iraq was now "a mess".

Mr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military's "gung-ho and trigger happy mentality" and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population. He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and "most probably" tortured.

Mr Griffin eventually told SAS commanders at Hereford that he could not take part in a war which he regarded as "illegal".

He added that he now believed that the Prime Minister and the Government had repeatedly "lied" over the war's conduct.

"I did not join the British Army to conduct American foreign policy," he said. He expected to be labelled a coward and to face a court martial and imprisonment after making what "the most difficult decision of my life" last March.

Instead, he was discharged with a testimonial describing him as a "balanced, honest, loyal and determined individual who possesses the strength of character to have the courage of his convictions".

Last night Patrick Mercer, the shadow minister for homeland security, said: "Trooper Griffin is a highly experienced soldier. This makes his decision particularly disturbing and his views and opinions must be listened to by the Government."

The MoD declined to comment.

Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or e-mail syndication@telegraph.co.uk

Here's a little reminder about the honesty of our president and his pals:

Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."

Ari Fleischer, Jan. 9, 2003: "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

George W. Bush, March 17, 2003: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

Donald Rumsfeld, May 30, 2003: "If you think -- let me take that, both pieces -- the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Where I live, in central Oregon, the Congressional Representative is Greg Walden, a Republican of the first order. He and semi-disgraced California Rep, Richard Pombo, co-sponsored a bill to “reform” the Endangered Species Act, so that loggers and ranchers and miners, can avoid the current restrictions of the ESA. Walden’s campaign donations from the timber industry are the largest of any member of the two houses; the only Washington D.C. politician who’s got more money from logging is, natch, George Bush.

Walden isn’t a totally evil guy. He knows what our regional issues are, and he works to alleviate many problems. But he sees no problems with clear-cutting forests, and actually believes that “salvage logging” helps the forest. That leads me to wonder how the forests ever survived without white people messing with them.

A few years ago, Walden also teamed up with the neo-militia types to protest the shut-offs of irrigation water in order to save Klamath River salmon.

Democratic Walden challengers to team up, travel together
3/12/2006, 1:31 p.m. PT
The Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — In a tacit acknowledgement of their shared uphill climb, the four Democrats who are vying to unseat U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, will hit the road together for the next seven weekends, until the May 16 primary arrives.

The foursome will visit all of the counties in Oregon's sprawling 2nd Congressional District, which stretches from Grants Pass and Medford to the Idaho border and includes every county on the east side of the Cascades.

"The candidates recognized that one of them will come out on top, and the intent is for all of them to be on the same platform — not bashing each other but taking on Walden," said Pat Ackley, a Sunriver Democratic activist who coordinates the party activities in the district.

The joint appearances will give voters an opportunity to meet all of the candidates and see how they measure up, she said.

In all, five challengers — four Democrats and a Republican — have filed to unseat Walden, who is seeking a fifth term.

The Democrats who hope to earn their party nomination in May are Charles H. Butcher, a Baker City contractor and gun rights activist; Dan Davis, a Jacksonville entrepreneur and military veteran; Carol Voisin, an Ashland college instructor; and Scott Silver, of Bend, an activist for free access to federal forests.

Paul A. Daghlian, a Corvallis Republican, will face Walden in the Republican primary.

Silver said the speaking series simplifies logistics and offers candidates something that might be tough to achieve individually: rooms filled with voters.

"It will allow the candidates to be seen side-by-side in an interactive forum, and there will be opportunities to respond to each other — and those with better ideas to be heard above the others," he said.

The joint forums will be in Jackson and Josephine counties on March 18-19; Hood River, Wasco, Gilliam and Wheeler counties on March 25-26; Wallowa, Union and Umatilla counties on April 1-2; Harney, Lake and Klamath counties on April 22-23; and Baker and Malheur counties on April 29-30.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

So, what we have is a Department of Homeland Security, run by a hack named Chertoff, under an intelligence czar named Negroponte. Chertoff, of course, oversaw the incredible collapse of efforts to save the people of New Orleans. Negroponte's early history included helping Central American Death Squads to eliminate any dissenters of the various military dictatorships down there. He was good at that. He went to Iraq, remember? Now Iraq has death squads. Central America, despite some lurches toward democratic governments, still has armed groups to enforce national morality or something like that... Which sets the stage for the US deporting suspected gang members back to their original countries, most of which are in Central America.

The busts recently carried out of ALF and ELF "terrorists," the groups considered to be high-priority domestic terror organizations, was done by the FBI, not Homeland Security.

And the round-ups of these suspected gang members is done by Homeland Security. This agency may not do a very good job of securing our ports, or catching domestic terrorists, but they can sure round up brown people and send them where they'll probably get shot... So what we have now is a new domestic "security" police. Oh joy.

CNN.com

Feds target gangs in crackdown
375 wanted gang members arrest in two weeks, 2,388 in past year

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bloods, Crips, Disciples and an increasingly popular street gang known as MS-13 were among the gangs targeted in a Department of Homeland Security operation over the past two weeks that yielded 375 arrests of wanted members in 23 states, the department announced Friday.

What makes Operation Community Shield different from other crackdowns is that federal authorities for the first time are using immigration and customs authorities in an attempt to dismantle what they call "transnational, violent street gangs," according to DHS.

DHS launched the operation last year after immigration officials dubbed the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, as "one of the largest and most violent street gangs in the country."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement learned that many of the MS-13 members were foreign born -- usually from El Salvador, Honduras or Guatemala -- and in the country illegally, according to a DHS news release.

ICE's inaugural crackdown in February and March 2005 netted the arrests of more than 100 MS-13 members, and two months later, ICE expanded the operation to include all street and prison gangs with foreign-born members.

The 375 arrests announced Friday bring total apprehensions during the operation to 2,388, according to DHS. About 922 of those were members of MS-13. The rest came from 238 other gangs.

Though the operation no longer discriminates among gangs, the Los Angeles, California-based MS-13 remains a priority. Just last year, FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker testified to a congressional committee that MS-13 had a significant presence in Virginia, New York, California, Texas, Oregon and Nebraska.

The group has about 10,000 "hardcore members," Swecker said, adding that MS-13 was quickly becoming more sophisticated, widespread and violent. Deporting these gang members, Swecker said, "is partially responsible for the growth of those gangs in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico."

In a news conference Friday, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff compared fighting gang violence to fighting terrorism. He added that the participation of all levels of law enforcement was necessary to fight the "scourge" of gang violence in communities across the United States.

Cooperation is key, not only because of the growing sophistication of street gangs, Chertoff said, but also because ICE agents and local police typically identify the gang members, and federal agents determine whether to use immigrations or customs laws, including money-laundering laws, to arrest them.

Many of the gang members, however, don't face criminal charges, and instead are deported after administrative immigration hearings, according to DHS.

"We are meeting their victimization of the innocent with hard-hitting enforcement actions that lead to criminal prosecutions and deportations," he said.

According to DHS, 260 of the 375 arrestees have past criminal records, and 73 face new charges ranging from drug and gun violations to re-entering the country after being deported. The others face deportation proceedings.

Dallas, Texas, had the most arrests during the latest operation, 44. San Diego, California, had 41; Miami, Florida, and Washington, D.C. had 22 each; and Raleigh, North Carolina, had 19.

First Assistant Chief David O'Neal Brown of the Dallas Police Department credited the ongoing operation with improving the violent crime rate in the city.

"Over the past year, the murder rate in the Dallas metropolitan area decreased roughly 20 percent compared to the year before," he said.

The arrests run the gamut of transnational gangs -- some well known, some obscure, some quickly making names for themselves. They include MS-13, Surenos, Latin Kings, Bloods, Crips, Armenian Power, Street Thug Criminals, Brown Pride, Asian Dragon Family, Avenue Assassins, Spanish Gangster Disciples, Big Time Killers and Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos.

The crackdown also snared 51 gang leaders, states the DHS news release.

One of the highest profile arrests came March 3, when ICE agents and U.S. marshals arrested Leobardo Villareal, a member of Surenos.

Villareal was a fugitive wanted on federal charges of murdering ICE Agent Maria Ochoa last year. In September Villareal escaped from a medical center where he was in federal custody, carjacked an automobile occupied by a mother and her children and fled, according to DHS.

He was later featured on the television show, "America's Most Wanted."

Villareal's father -- Juan Eladio Villareal-Saenza -- a convicted murderer and gang member, also was arrested during the operation on charges of re-entry after deportation.

Of the 2,388 members arrested to date, 533 have been charged criminally, while 1,855 faced administrative immigration charges. Authorities said they also seized 117 firearms.



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/10/gang.arrests/index.html

If this reminds people of the situation in Viet Nam, back in the ‘sixties, yeah, it sure does. Back then we insisted we were there to preserve South Viet Nam’s “sovereignty.” But were we? We were there to prop up one corrupt government after another, the U.S. was firebombing and poisoning great expanses of sovereign territory, and, considering every dead body a dead enemy.

We seem to have an enforced absence of historical memory in this country; the United States of Amnesia, as Gore Vidal calls it. There’s a national cult, encouraged by the government, to not look back, to consider everything in the past as resolved, as having received “closure.” That’s as big a fantasy as a Doris Day movie. The past doesn’t go away. We don’t put everything behind us. If we try to ignore the past—our own or our nation’s—it’s going to come back and bite us on the ass, again and again. Life isn’t like a TV series, where every half-hour show finishes one plot line at the end of that half-hour. The national plot-line of imperialism and hubris has been carrying on for over one hundred and fifty years, now. It’s really time to change the story.

First, of course, we have to change the cast of characters...

Stop Your Meddling, Iraqi Minister Tell U.S.

By Paul McGeough Chief Herald Correspondent in Baghdad
Sydney Morning Herald
March 11, 2006


Amid rising American frustration with the political
deadlock in Iraq, the National Security Minister, Abdul
Karim al-Enzy, has rebuked Washington for interfering
in Iraq's domestic affairs.

In a remarkable broadside against the US, Mr Enzy
charged that it was deliberately slowing Iraq's
redevelopment because of a self-serving agenda that
included oil and the "war on terror".

The attack came as the US Defence Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld, told a Senate inquiry in Washington that
Iraq's political leaders needed "to recognise the
seriousness of the situation and form a government of
national unity that will govern from the centre, and to
do it in a reasonably prompt manner".

To that end, US diplomats have demanded a more generous
sharing of key portfolios among Iraq's religious and
ethnic populations than the dominant Shiite religious
parties are willing to concede.

In particular, they are urging the dismissal of the
hardline Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr.

But in an interview with the Herald, Mr Enzy snapped:
"The last time I checked, Bayan Jabr was Interior
Minister of Iraq - not of the US or the UN. He is one
of our best and this is interference in our business."

Mr Enzy argued that if the US-led coalition in Iraq had
been more serious about rebuilding the country's
security forces in the first year of the occupation, it
could now be making substantial cuts in foreign troop
numbers in Iraq. "We don't want foreign forces here,
but it's impossible for them to leave now, because
we're on the edge of civil war," he said.

"The truth is the Americans don't want us to reach the
levels of courage and competence needed to deal with
the insurgency because they want to stay here.

"They came for their own strategic interests. A lot of
the world's oil is in this region and they want to use
Iraq as a battlefield in the war on terror because they
believe they can contain the terrorism in Iraq."

Asked if the West - and the US in particular -
understood Iraq and the region, Mr Enzy said
significant differences of culture and tradition
complicated the relationship.

"We don't want to be a part of international problems -
the US has a problem with Iran, but as an Iraqi
government, we don't. We are not a part of the Israel-
Palestine problem, but the deployment of foreign forces
in Iraq puts pressure on that issue."

The minister's spiel was symptomatic of a rising anti-
American sentiment among Iraq's Shiite majority. Mr
Enzy said many Iraqis believed the US wanted civil war
in the hope it would break the power of the religious
parties still struggling to form a government.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/stop-your-meddling-iraqi-minister-tells-us/2006/03/10/1141701692743.html

I'm wrangling by way through Medicare Part D, like millions of others. It's a mess. It was designed to be a mess, I believe, and to essentially make kajillions of dollars for the pharm companies—a little payback for their donations to certain politicians I won't even bother to name.

There are, however, uncounted thousands, maybe millions, who are falling through those old familiar cracks, the holes in the safety net, out the back door into oblivion.

Billions for resource wars, zilch for health care


Subject: Medicare Drug Benefit Cuts Lifeline
Date: March 11, 2006 12:24:11 PM PST


http://www.newsobserver.com/150/story/416615.html
News & Observer - North Carolina
March 10, 2006

Medicare drug benefit cuts lifeline

The standard Part D benefit requires enrollees to
meet a $250 deductible, then pay 25 percent of the
drug's retail cost.

Once drug costs hit $2,250, Part D then requires
enrollees to cover the cost of their medicines in
full until they have paid $3,600 out of their own
pockets. Only then does coverage resume, with
Medicare paying 95 percent of members' drug costs.

The rules are hurting people, especially those on
expensive drugs, who are not poor enough to
qualify for low-income assistance under Part D
but not affluent enough to afford their
out-of-pocket expenses under the Medicare drug
plan. Medicare is the federal health insurance
program for the elderly and disabled.

By Sabine Vollmer and Jean P. Fisher, Staff Writers

James Hayes has been living with HIV, the virus that
causes AIDS, for more than 24 years. Now he has to
choose between the drugs that keep him alive and a
lifetime of debt.

The reason: the prescription drug benefit, or Medicare
Part D, that took effect Jan 1.

Hayes, who lives near Boone and is on Medicare,
receives about $40,000 worth of drugs for free through
patient assistance programs offered by drug makers to
the poor and uninsured. But now that Medicare enrollees
are eligible for drug coverage, many pharmaceutical
companies are closing those programs to Medicare
patients and urging them to sign up for Part D.

Hayes estimates that under Part D, his annual out-of-
pocket expenses for medicine will increase to at least
$7,000 -- much more than he can afford when his sole
income is a $2,200 monthly disability check.

"I can sign up for it, but I can't afford it," he said.
"The best financial strategist couldn't figure out how
to make this work."

People with HIV/AIDS are not the only patients hurt by
the changes. Anyone on Medicare who now receives free
or low-cost medicine through a patient assistance
program may lose access to free drugs. Many are not
poor enough to qualify for low-income assistance under
Part D but not affluent enough to afford their out-of-
pocket expenses under the Medicare drug plan.

People with HIV/AIDS are particularly vulnerable. They
take multiple drugs. There are few alternatives, no
low-cost generic options, and most are very expensive.
Hayes' most costly drug, for example, is Fuzeon, which
retails for about $1,800 a month.

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy
research group in California, estimates that about
35,000 Americans living with the human immunodeficiency
virus might be unable to afford their medicines under
Part D.

The Kaiser Family Foundation doesn't break down where
those most affected by the Part D changes live, but
HIV/AIDS advocates say North Carolina has more than its
share. HIV/AIDS sufferers here are forced to turn in
greater numbers to patient assistance programs because
strict income limits keep many out of the state's AIDS
drug assistance program. The program provides free
medicine to patients through state and federal funding.
Patients in North Carolina must have an annual income
of $12,250 or less to get assistance.

Government blamed

Drug industry leaders say the federal government has
made it difficult for them to help poor patients.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' fraud
and abuse unit indicated in November that companies
that continue to give free medicine to people enrolled
in Part D might be investigated for violating federal
anti-kickback laws.

The government fears drug companies might provide free
medicine to steer patients toward more expensive drugs,
which would increase Medicare's cost.

The argument makes little sense where HIV/AIDS is
concerned, since no generics or low-cost options are
available, said John Coburn, a senior policy analyst
with Health & Disability Advocates. The Chicago group
is advocating for HIV/AIDS patients who stand to lose
access to patient assistance programs.

In January, the agency that runs Medicare issued a
detailed statement that seems to clear the way for
pharmaceutical companies to keep patient assistance
programs open to Medicare members.

It said drug companies can continue to give free
medicine to Part D enrollees, as long as the value of
the free drugs isn't counted toward patients'
deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. In other
words, needy patients could sign up for Part D, then
not use it for their most costly medicines.

One drug maker, Merck, announced this month that it
will continue to help certain patients enrolled in Part
D. Individuals with special needs could have annual
income of up to $39,200 and still receive free
medicine.

But working around Part D isn't appealing to all drug
companies. Some appear unwilling to give away medicine
when insurance exists to pay for it.

"The mission, historically, of patient assistance
programs is to provide assistance to patients who have
nowhere else to turn and, most often, have no health
insurance options," said Ken Johnson, a spokesman for
the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer's
Association.

Still some drug makers are in talks with Medicare and
hope to come up with mutually acceptable ways to help
needy Part D enrollees afford their drugs, he said.

But there isn't much time. Eligible Medicare members
who fail to enroll in Part D by May 15 will pay higher
monthly premiums for life.

"It's time to get beyond all this and start coming up
with solutions," said Coburn of Health & Disability
Associates. "The one solution that is not acceptable is
for [HIV/AIDS patients] to end up in May with no drugs,
and that's where we're headed."

Patient tells his story

James Hayes plans to wait until the last minute to sign
up for Part D. But he is also helping to raise
awareness of the patient assistance program problem.

Hayes will talk about his situation as part of a town
hall meeting today at the Duke University School of
Law.

The 45-year-old takes up to 17 drugs a day, 15 of them
to keep the HIV in check and treat the side effects of
the AIDS medication. Three of his pills are made by
Abbott Laboratories, a Chicago company, and
GlaxoSmithKline, a British company that conducts most
of its HIV/AIDS drug research at Research Triangle
Park.

Hayes has already received a letter from GSK stating
that, after May 15, he will no longer receive two of
their drugs -- whether he signs up for Part D or not.

A spokeswoman for Abbott said the company will continue
to help patients who do not enroll in Part D but may
consider helping those who do sign up on a case-by-case
basis. A Roche spokesman said the company will continue
to supply Medicare patients with Fuzeon.

Patty Seif, a spokeswoman for GSK, said the company
wants to work out a way to help Medicare patients with
special needs but hasn't fleshed out the details.

Hayes has considered dropping some drugs to be able to
afford others under Medicare Part D, but he said he
fears the health consequences.

"I have lost weight [down] to 70 pounds. I have gone to
sleep at night not knowing whether I would wake up
again. I have been to where I could barely breathe," he
said. "I have no intentions of going off these drugs."

Without help from the drug companies, Hayes said he
will have no choice but to max out his credit cards.
He'd rather put his livelihood at risk than his life.

Staff writer Sabine Vollmer can be reached at 829-8992
or https://lists.portside.org/pipermail/portside/

_______________________________________________________

portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
discussion and debate service of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
provide varied material of interest to people on the
left.


https://lists.portside.org/pipermail/portside/

I just heard from Joe LaMountain, back in Virginia. He has a blog that's worth reading:
http://sparklightblog.blogspot.com

Good comments on single-payer health care, too!

Gore Vidal is good to read because he’s both cynical and optimistic. He’s also extremely erudite, something most writers and public speakers are certainly not. His vocabulary is sometimes up there with William F. Buckley’s, but that’s OK: we all dumb ourselves down too much.

Dean Kuipers: 'National amnesia: An interview with Gore Vidal'
Date: Sunday, March 12 @ 09:02:06 EST
Topic: Liberals And The Left

Novelist and political essayist Gore Vidal on Bush as a corporate puppet, the failure of the media and our loss of a collective memory

Dean Kuipers, Pasadena Weekly

Gore Vidal has been watching American political life for a long time and is liking less and less of what he sees. Born to deep political connections including the Gore and Kennedy clans, Vidal's early series of eight novels, including his debut, "Williwaw" (1946), and "The City and the Pillar" (1948), established him as a major young post-World War II novelist alongside Norman Mailer and Truman Capote. He ran for both the House and the Senate, but it was his National Book Award-winning 1993 tome, "United States: Essays, 1952-1992," that established him as one of this country's most authoritative political commentators on subjects from American dynasties, homosexuality, artists and intelligentsia.

More recently, he has savaged George W. Bush as a transparent corporate shill and an accomplice in a grand betrayal of the polity in a barrage of essays including his 2004 collection, "Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia."

PW: Do you think that it's possible the Bush Administration went into Iraq really believing that it was spreading democracy to the Middle East?



Gore Vidal: Of course not. Why should they do anything like that? They go in out of greed. There's been very little altruism in all of our history. We go into things for profit, and now that we've ceased to be any form of democracy, the people are not consulted about what their rulers want them to do. No war has been declared by that part of the legislative branch which is most democratic, that is most responsive to the people.

So, it was just about oil and war profiteering?

Yes. Meanwhile, we do not have a media that enlightens anybody about anything, and our public school system for the average person is pretty bad. We are quite uninformed about things. Therefore we are not in any position to make up our minds if they're making good policy or a bad policy. First of all, no one will ask us what we think. And then if they say, "Oh, go to the polls," we go to the polls and the election is stolen as in Florida 2000 and 2004 in Ohio.

Do you think that the media is failing in this capacity?

Get the tense right: It has failed.

Has this president made this worse, by being so antagonistic to the media?

Oh, who cares? He doesn't run the country, a handful of corporations run it. No, this is not conspiracy theory, this is conspiracy analysis. The country is very tightly led with corporate goals which push out anything of a national nature. We're out of it. It's like being in a bubble. I've spent a great deal of my life living across the water, and someone said, "How can you follow American politics when you've had your house in Italy for all those years?" And I said, "Well, that's the only way I can find out what's going on in America, because the foreign press, at least in Western Europe, is quite good."

Corporate influence in politics seems more raw and apparent now than ever before.

Of course it is. And it was all due to the "good luck" -- those two words I have just used ironically -- of 9/11. "I'm a wartime president! I'm a wartime president!" Well, he fucking well isn't. He's an accidental president. He happens to be put in by the oil and gas people to cut their taxes and then go in for preemptive wars against countries that are weak and that have done us no harm, like Afghanistan and Iraq. This was a godsend for those who would like to get rid of Congress and the courts and the Constitution. And they're doing very well at it -- very, very well. "Mission accomplished," I believe, is what he said on the aircraft carrier.

Do you think that those effects are lasting, or can they be reversed?

Well, is the glass half full or half empty? I think the damage done to our system by the last 20 years -- of which he's just the most ludicrous example -- is probably irreparable. We may not have time enough to restore the republic. We just lost it. I mean, when the attorney general of the United States goes before Congress and just says the president can pick and choose what he wants to do, and that his wartime powers are inherent - well, if that dumb-dumb Gonzales has ever read the Constitution, he knows that there are no inherent presidential rights, they are enumerated in the Constitution; they're named. And there's a great many things he cannot do. For one, he can't go eavesdropping without getting a court order -- that's the law.

Has our foreign policy stance also been permanently damaged?

I would say nothing is ultimately irreparable, but the Constitution, as we have enjoyed it over the years and as it has sustained us, has been given some death blows. Now everyone is in the habit of seeing people shoot each other, police shoot children, children kill each other, I mean, this is a mess. And how do you start to repair it? That's a real problem for a real political party. Unfortunately, we don't have them at the moment.

Do you have a prescription for achieving that?

It's a tall order, but we have to undertake it, like it or not. A presidential election costs some money, but there're a lot of rich people on the left, or on the side of the Constitution, to hold a true election. Skip the states and just set up balloting machinery around the country. I'd go back to the old-fashioned written ballots, which leave a paper trail, and just go all-out to try and do an honest one. You might have very, very different names at the end of the day. This would cause hysteria and, God knows, bloodshed and whatever by those who don't really want an honest election, but at least we might know what was out there.

[Former UN weapons inspector] Scott Ritter's information seems like vitally important stuff. Is the country too polarized to listen?

They're not used to hearing anything. The only art form that the United States ever developed is the TV commercial. That's our Sistine Chapel. That's our masterpiece. That's a very rare art form, but it's not very informative. Now you've got to get away from advertising. Just through sheer repetition, which is the secret of advertising, these two fools in office have convinced the American people, these 60, 70 percent, that [Saddam Hussein] was responsible for 9/11. He didn't have anything to do with 9/11. No, I don't think he was a nice man and I don't care - he's an Iraqi and I'm an American. We Americans should not worry about Iraqi leaders.

Now Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war. Is it a good idea to pull the troops out?

I would pull them out before they're killed, yes. We have nothing to gain by being there. We have no plans to develop the country, repair the country, or even to give them their oil back. We're gonna plunder and go, so plunder and get out before our people get killed.

That's a pretty grim picture. Do you still enjoy bringing this news to the people?

I don't think enjoy is the correct verb, but I feel one has to do it. You know I was brought up in the '30s; I remember Hitler, I remember American fascism, which was fairly lively. If you don't speak out, things just die and shut down. We're going to have no national memory of anything, and if you are not informed about your past, you have no present. And God help you in the future.

Lurking in there somewhere is a message of hope.

I think there is. There's a moment when things get so bad that people do act. But one certainly doesn't want to wait for a revolution. I'm all for evolution, and we're ready for some.

(c) 2006 Southland Publishing

Source: Pasadena Weekly
http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=3177&IssueNum=10



This article comes from The Smirking Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=25212

I've been off schedule lately. The last year has been hard: two of my best friends have died, the son of other friends died a week ago, and a few days ago was the 2nd anniversary of my son's death. Seems like a lot of stuff swelled up and hit me at once.

I can't stuff those feelings and memories and just keep on keeping on; something had to give, and it was my motivation and focus. I spent a lot of time feeling like I'd just sat through some sort of emotional hurricane. Every news story I flagged for blogging seemed to had strength to the winds, so a lot of valuable stories went by the wayside. Just the way it was for me.

Now, obviously, spring is coming. Tulips and such have started to shove up through the ground surface; I see robins around, and the mallard drakes in the river are behaving as badly as they behave every spring. They're like hormone-addled teen-agers.

Maybe there's a political spring coming, too. I want there to be one, but I'm afraid if I talk about it too much it'll go away. I read the word "impeachment" every day. Even the Republicans are discouraged about the awful resource war against the Iraqis. The Administration continues to rattle sabers at Venezuela and Iran (all that oil!), but nothing can be done until America gets out of the Iraq quagmire—and, then, I'm pretty sure there'll be an anti-imperialist backlash. Things won't be groovy again, but at least the neo-cons will evaporate in disgrace.

Venceremos.

We’re all being driven nuts by the secrecy that’s spread like impetigo through society. Nobody wants to be nailed down about saying anything they might get in trouble for. The government wants to stalk and eliminate anyone who leaks “sensitive” information—or publish it.

If I was a real masochist I’d start re-reading Orwell, but I get depressed enough on my own...


Telling the 'approved' story
March 7, 2006 01:12 AM / The Rant .
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/blog/2006/03/telling_the_approved_story.html
By DOUG THOMPSON

On an unspecified day last week an employee of a federal agency that cannot be revealed delivered a document that cannot be identified to a company that cannot be named seeking information that cannot be discussed.

The aforementioned federal agent left the unidentified document with an employee of the unnamed company. That employee then called the owner, who must remain anonymous, to inform him that the document that could not be identified sought information that could not be discussed. The owner who must remain anonymous instructed the employee to deliver the unidentified document to a lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege.

The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege examined the unidentified document and then reviewed the information that could not be discussed with the owner who must remain anonymous.

With the approval of the owner who must remain anonymous, the lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege contacted a U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed.

The U.S. attorney who demanded that his identity be concealed then claimed the owner who must remain anonymous violated a law that could not be disclosed and faced arrest for charges that could not be specified because he had referred to the document that cannot be identified in an article for a certain, but unnamed, web site.

The lawyer whose name is protected by attorney-client privilege argued that his client could not be charged under the undisclosed law because he had been acting as a journalist at the time of the alleged publication and not as the owner of the company that cannot be named. He had, in fact, learned of the existence of the document that cannot be identified from a third-party, who was not named, and was not aware of its exact contents because he had not seen or read the document and, therefore, was not aware of the exact contents that cannot be discussed.

The U.S. attorney who demanded his identity be concealed consulted with others who names are classified and concluded that the owner who must remain anonymous walked a fine line between legal and illegal and would not face arrest for violating a law that could not be disclosed on charges that could not be specified.

So walking this fine line of justice allowed the owner who must remain anonymous to avoid confinement at an institution at an unknown location for an unspecified length of time.

In exchange for his freedom, the owner who must remain anonymous agreed to write a "clarification" of what happened, following the guidelines for publication laid down by the Bush administration.

Which is what you just read.

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

Good old Molly Ivens!

How few Democrats are willing to say anything substantial is indicated by the way there's really no dissent in Congress. None of them have the courage to say the war against the Iraqis is immoral, foolish, and simply an opportunity for the administrations pals to make a lot of money. Gee whiz, someone might say the Dems are unpatriotic. Father Coughlin lives; just like J. Edgar Hoover, George Wallace, Joe McCarthy, and every other tinhorn wannabe fascist lives on. And everybody is so scared of them...



Molly Ivins: 'Enough of the D.C. Dems'
Date: Saturday, March 11 @ 08:45:13 EST
Topic: The Democrats

Molly Ivins, The Progressive

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don't know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don't jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.

I can't see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can't even see straight.

Look at their reaction to this Abramoff scandal. They're talking about "a lobby reform package." We don't need a lobby reform package, you dimwits, we need full public financing of campaigns, and every single one of you who spends half your time whoring after special interest contributions knows it. The Abramoff scandal is a once in a lifetime gift--a perfect lesson on what's wrong with the system being laid out for people to see. Run with it, don't mess around with little patches, and fix the system.



As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:

1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it's a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.

2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.

3) Single-payer health insurance.

Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, "unpatriotic" by a bunch of rightwingers.

Take "unpatriotic" and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? "Unpatriotic"? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.

This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass.

Who are these idiots talking about Warner of Virginia? Being anodyne is not sufficient qualification for being President. And if there's nobody in Washington and we can't find a Democratic governor, let's run Bill Moyers, or Oprah, or some university president with ethics and charisma.

What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let's get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has "all the money sewed up."

I am tired of having the party nomination decided before the first primary vote is cast, tired of having the party beholden to the same old Establishment money.

We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain't chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let's go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side.

Source: The Progressive
http://progressive.org/mag_ivins0306


The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=25206

Even though schools and school teachers are under pressure—and assault (see the post under this one for a report on a California college prof who’s being “investigated” for perhaps being subversive or not 100% American)—to conform to the official party line, we do hear voices speaking out against the spreading nightmare.

Coups usually come as sudden and violent events. The one we’ve had here in America, though, has been subtle. The only major round-ups came right after Sept 11th, when hundreds of Middle-Easterners were dragged off; since then, the silencing of dissent has been rather gradual. Teachers here and there are reported by student snitches, employees at this or that, people fired for bumper stickers, low-key visits by men in suits, executive orders about which laws will be avoided or nullified, fundamentalist churches given more and more money to take over legitimate government services... But the silences grow longer, and the paranoia strikes deeper and deeper.

Thank you, Creator, for letting people like Kurt Vonnegut still having the courage to speak out.


Peninsula Peace and Justice Center
3/6/06 - Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory"
Monday, March 06 2006 @ 09:06 AM PST (View web-friendly version here)

Harvey Wasserman
Columbus Free Press (Ohio)

On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these “apathetic” heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in to the Ohio Union. At least that many more were turned away. It was the biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.

In an age dominated by hype and sex, neither Moore nor Vonnegut seems a likely candidate to rock a campus whose biggest news has been the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ joint assault on Big Ten championships.

But maybe there’s more going on here than Fox wants us to think.

Vonnegut takes an easy chair across from Prof. Manuel Luis Martinez, a poet and teacher of writing. He grabs Martinez and semi-whispers into his ear (and the mike) “What can I say here?”

Martinez urges candor.

“Well,” says Vonnegut, “I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

The students seem to agree.

“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is that Hitler was elected.”

“You all know, of course, that the election was stolen. Right here.”

Off to a flying start, Vonnegut explains that this will be his “last speech for money.” He can’t remember the first one, but it was on a campus long, long ago, and this will be the end.

The students are hushed with the prospect of the final appearance of America’s greatest living novelist. Alongside Mark Twain and Ben Franklin, Will Rogers and Joseph Heller and a very short list of immortal satirists and storytellers, there stands Kurt Vonnegut, author of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE and SIRENS OF TITAN, CAT’S CRADLE and GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, books these students are studying now, as did their parents, as will their children and grandchildren, with a deeply felt mixture of gratitude and awe.

Nobody tonight seems to think they were in for a detached, scholarly presentation from a disengaged academic genius coasting on his incomparable laurels

“I’m lucky enough to have known a great president, one who really cared about ALL the people, rich and poor. That was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was rich himself, and his class considered him a traitor.

“We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries,” he says. “They run everything.

“We have no Democratic Party. It’s financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans.

“So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever.

“I’m trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending! It’s becoming more and more uninhabitable because of our addiction to oil.

“Bush used that line recently,” Vonnegut adds. “I should sue him for plagiarism.”

Things have gotten so bad, he says, “people are in revolt again life itself.”

Our economy has been making money, but “all the money that should have gone into research and development has gone into executive compensation. If people insist on living as if there’s no tomorrow, there really won’t be one.

“As the world is ending, I’m always glad to be entertained for a few moments. The best way to do that is with music. You should practice once a night.

“If you want really want to hurt your parents and don’t want to be gay, go into the arts,” he says.

Then he breaks into song, doing a passable, tender rendition of “Stardust Memories.”

By this time this packed hall has grown reverential. The sound system is appropriately tenuous. Straining to hear every word is both an effort and a meditation.

“To hell with the advances in computers,” he says after he finishes singing. “YOU are supposed to advance and become, not the computers. Find out what’s inside you. And don’t kill anybody.

“There are no factories any more. Where are the jobs supposed to come from? There’s nothing for people to do anymore. We need to ask the Seminoles: ‘what the hell did you do?’’ after the tribe’s traditional livelihood was taken away.

Answering questions written in by students, he explains the meaning of life. “We should be kind to each other. Be civil. And appreciate the good moments by saying ‘If this isn’t nice, what is?’

“You’re awful cute” he says to someone in the front row. He grins and looks around. “If this isn’t nice, what is?

“You’re all perfectly safe, by the way. I took off my shoes at the airport. The terrorists hate the smell of feet.

“We are here on Earth to fart around,” he explains, and then embarks on a soliloquy about the joys of going to the store to buy an envelope. One talks to the people there, comments on the “silly-looking dog,” finds all sorts of adventures along the way.

As for being a midwesterner, he recalls his roots in nearby Indianapolis, a heartland town, the next one west of here. “I’m a fresh water person. When I swim in the ocean, I feel like I’m swimming in chicken soup. Who wants to swim in flavored water?”

A key to great writing, he adds, is to “never use semi-colons. What are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You’re reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean? All semi-colons do is suggest you’ve been to college.”

Make sure, he adds, “that your reader is having a good time. Get to the who, when, where, what right away, so the reader knows what is going on.”

As for making money, “war is a very profitable thing for a few people. Jesus used to be so merciful and loving of the poor. But now he’s a Republican.

“Our economy today is not capitalism. It’s casino-ism. That’s all the stock market is about. Gambling.

“Live one day at a time. Say ‘if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!’

“You meet saints every where. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society.

“I’m going to sue the cigarette companies because they haven’t killed me,” he says. His son lived out his dream to be a pilot and has spent his career flying for Continental. Now they’ve “screwed up his pension.”

The greatest peace, Vonnegut wraps up, “comes from the knowledge that I have enough. Joe Heller told me that.

“I began writing because I found myself possessed. I looked at what I wrote and I said ‘How the hell did I do that?’

“We may all be possessed. I hope so.”

He accepts the students’ standing ovation with characteristic dignity and grace. Not a few tears flow from young people with the wisdom to appreciate what they are seeing. “If this isn’t nice, we don’t know what is.”

Not long ago we spoke on the phone. I asked Kurt how he was. “Too fucking old,” he replied.

Maybe so. But the mind and soul are still there, powerful and penetrating as ever. Just as they’ll ever be in his books and stories and the precious records of his wonderful talks.

Thankfully, Kurt Vonnegut is still possessed by the genius of seeing and describing the world as only Kurt Vonnegut can.

He is still sharp and clear, full of love and life and light. May he be with us yet for a long long time to come.

Harvey Wasserman read CAT’S CRADLE, SIRENS OF TITAN and SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE in college, sought Boku-Maru, and has never been the same.

Peninsula Peace and Justice Center · 457 Kingsley Ave · Palo Alto, CA
peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20060306090609596

_____________________________________________________________


March 9, 2006 The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seery/pomona-college-professor-_b_17062.html?view=print

Pomona College Professor Gets a Visit from the U.S. Gestapo

Two days ago, March 7, my Pomona College colleague, Miguel Tinker Salas, was holding his regular office hours for his students. Three students were indeed waiting outside his door to speak with him. Two grown men came up and started speaking (without identifying themselves) to the students, asking them pointed questions about what Professor Tinker Salas has been teaching in his classes.

Background info: Professor Miguel Tinker Salas is Arango Professor in Latin American History and Professor of History and Chicano/a Studies. He teaches classes in Latin America history and has special research expertise in the history and politics of Venezuela. Pomona College is a small liberal arts college (about 1500 students) and is one of the five Claremont Colleges, all located in Claremont, California, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles.

Back to the story: The two men asked to speak with Professor Tinker Salas in his office. They identified themselves as Los Angeles County Sheriffs Mike M. Abdeen and Don Lord, operating out of a West Covina office, but they did not show any badges. They explained that they were members of the "L.A. County Sheriff's Department/F.B.I. Joint Task Force on Terrorism." Professor Tinker Salas asked whether they were actual F.B.I. agents, and they said no. They explained that they had "come by to have a conversation" with Professor Tinker Salas because they were "interested in his work," and noted that there is a growing Venezuelan population in the Los Angeles area and thought he might be able to tell them more about it.

Professor Miguel Tinker Salas didn't buy that line and asked them point blank why they were really there.

At that point, they opened a folder, revealing that it was a file on Professor Tinker Salas, along with his picture. And, they said, they had some questions for him. Those questions: What is his immigration status? Is he a U.S. citizen? What is the nature of his contact with the Venezuelan embassy or consulate?

More background: Reporters from various news outlets have lately been contacting Professor Miguel Tinker Salas asking him to provide historical background on the growing tension between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the George Bush administration. For instance, several outlets contacted him for a response after Donald Rumsfeld compared Chavez to Adolf Hitler. Most recently, Professor Tinker Salas was interviewed for ten minutes on CNN en Español about the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America.

Note that in today's Los Angeles Times Mark Weisbrot opines about the U.S. administration's concerted efforts to isolate Chavez. Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for "a united front" against Venezuela.

Evidently that campaign is now authorizing official jackboots to harass internal voices of dissent. The ACLU of Colorado reports that the F.B.I. Joint Terrorism Task Force has been targeting, in a multi-state campaign, all kinds of peaceful protesters as allegedly "domestic terrorist" threats.

What has Venezuelan politics to do with the war against terrorism? Who officially sent out the thugs to pay a visit to my colleague? That "conversation" was clearly meant to serve two purposes: to add to Professor Tinker Salas's ongoing file in a fishing expedition to uncover something incriminating against him; and to let him know that THEY are watching, a not-so-subtle warning to intimidate in order to curb his speech.

We should be outraged. This is an abuse of power, a latter-day domestic enemy's list -- it goes well beyond due diligence in the war against terror. Our elected officials -- Sheriff Lee Baca, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Congressman David Dreier from the 26th District, and Senators Boxer and Feinstein -- should denounce this political harassment in no uncertain terms. The rest of us should convert those chills running up and down our spines into anger and activity.

Copyright 2006 © HuffingtonPost.com, LLC

At the risk of sounding racist, can Gonzales be paraphrased as saying “I don’t gotta show you no stinking law?”

Why is the Republican controlled Congress even bothering, for Christ’s sake? They huff and they puff and then they roll over and play dead. You’re right: that’s exactly what the Democrats do, too. A while back, I suggested that maybe federal-law law enforcement has collected enough sleaze on the Demos that anytime they look like they might say something, they get a little audio-visual reminder of past behaviors. The J. Edgar Hoover Treatment.

This latest example of the arrogance—tempered by contempt, of course—will probably just pass on down the alley-ways of history, maybe to become material in some Republican memorial when Gonzales passes away. No doubt, when Chief of National Homeland Glorious Security dies, there’ll be quite a wing-ding. Maybe even some public burnings of suspected terrorists....or liberal bloggers.

Yahoo! News
Gonzales: NSA Program Doesn't Need a Law

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press WriterWed Mar 8, 5:55 PM ET

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made clear Wednesday that the White House is not seeking congressional action to inscribe the National Security Agency's monitoring into U.S. law, even as members of Congress negotiate with the Bush administration about legislation. Gonzales maintained the program is legal the way it is.

"There's a general consensus — quite frankly — that this is a needed program" designed to listen to al-Qaida's communications, Gonzales told the National Association of Attorneys General Wednesday. "The concern I think that people have, which is a natural concern, is that, is this a limited program?"

Gonzales said administration officials have gone a long way in reassuring lawmakers about the NSA's operations. Over four years, he said, the administration has met "with select congressional leadership on both sides of the aisle about the scope of this program — everything that we're doing related to this program."

Yet House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, the former top Democrat on the intelligence panel, has publicly questioned what those select lawmakers don't know. Her spokeswoman, Jennifer Crider, said congressional Republicans have been unwilling to perform oversight of the administration.

"Since the members were not all briefed at the same time or place, it's not possible to know whether the same information was given to each," Crider said. And "the administration has been unwilling to provide a list of which members were briefed and when," she added.

Aides to West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, noted that he visited the NSA all day Friday — with 450 questions he wanted answered. He's complained about the briefings he received before that session, saying they consisted of intelligence officials rushing through flip-charts.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., remains the most skeptical Republican in Congress. He's said he intends to call Gonzales up to his committee for a second appearance to testify about other classified intelligence programs that the attorney general hinted at in a recent letter.

Specter also had been pressing for a hearing with former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, but has abandoned that request.

Among other issues, lawmakers wanted to know about a 2004 dustup over the surveillance between the White House and Justice officials, including Deputy Attorney General James Comey. It reportedly got so serious that White House Chief of Staff Andy Card and then-White House counsel Gonzales visited Ashcroft in the hospital to discuss the concerns of his deputies.

Specter hinted that that the administration opposed the testimony of Gonzales and Comey.

"I've talked to both of those individuals and understandably they would require administration consent. I do not believe that we would be successful, were they to testify, to find what happened in the reported conversations in the hospital," said Specter, noting the issues touch on the internal deliberation of government lawyers.

Specter was also critical of a terrorist surveillance bill — soon to be introduced by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, and other moderate lawmakers — that would allow the government to monitor the international calls of U.S. residents for 45 days without a warrant. The White House has called that approach a "generally sound measure."

Specter is planning to offer his own proposal that would require a federal intelligence court to vouch for the program's constitutionality every 45 days.

Democrats are calling for more oversight and may not embrace either approach.

"So little is known about this illegal program that it's akin to legislating in the dark," said Tracy Schmaler, Democratic spokeswoman for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Nothing unusual in the senate intelligence (heh!) committee giving the Ruling Party a nice present. The senate Republicans, I swear, would smile and nod and then look in the other direction if they saw George Bush shaking hands with David Duke.

It’s taken years of work to get to this point. The Republicans used to be a sort of Tory party, basically conservative and very referented to the Constitution and the ideas of the framers of the Constitution—extremely concerned about the danger of autocracy, of an all-powerful executive. With a sense of duty (not greed). After all, Adams and Washington and Franklin and the others were determined not to have a monarchy. But, through years of infiltration and power-plays, the reactionaries, the descendents of Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy, have seized power. An all powerful executive is exactly what they’ve wanted. And, by god, they want to keep it that way.

washingtonpost.com
Senate Panel Blocks Eavesdropping Probe
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701549_pf.html
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 8, 2006; A03

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted along party lines yesterday to reject a Democratic proposal to investigate the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program and instead approved establishing, with White House approval, a seven-member panel to oversee the effort.

Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters after the closed session that he had asked the committee "to reject confrontation in favor of accommodation" and that the new subcommittee, which he described as "an accommodation with the White House," would "conduct oversight of the terrorist surveillance program." The program, which became public in December, has allowed the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and e-mails between U.S. residents and suspected terrorists abroad without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that handles such matters.

The panel's vice chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), took a sharply different view of yesterday's outcome. "The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House through its chairman," he told reporters. "At the direction of the White House, the Republican majority has voted down my motion to have a careful and fact-based review of the National Security Agency's surveillance eavesdropping activities inside the United States."

Rockefeller said he had spent 6 1/2 hours at the NSA last week getting answers to more than 450 questions he had submitted to the agency, adding that he had "fought hard for this information to be shared with the full committee." But suddenly, he said, "seven of them are okay and eight of them, sorry, you don't make it." Rockefeller is one of eight members of Congress who have been briefed on the program.

Also yesterday, legislation sponsored by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), a member of the intelligence committee, drew support from two other key GOP panel members, Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.). It would permit warrantless surveillance of calls between the United States and another country involving "a designated terrorist organization" for 45 days, after which the government can stop the eavesdropping, seek a warrant, or explain to Congress why it wants to continue without a warrant.

The bill would also create a subcommittee that would carry out monitoring of all aspects of the program, "on a case-by-case" basis, DeWine told reporters. Roberts told reporters that DeWine had consulted with him and the White House and "in concept it is a very good proposal." At the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan described the DeWine proposal as interesting but reiterated the position that Bush already has the power to institute the program.

The NSA issue was brought up at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is drafting his own bill. Specter warned that he will try to reduce the administration's funding unless Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales agrees to answer more of his committee's questions.

"We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program," Specter said. "I want to put the administration on notice and this committee on notice that I may be looking for an amendment to limit funding as to the electronic surveillance program -- which is the power of the purse -- if we can't get an answer in any other way."

Staff writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Ads by Google

Stop illegal NSA wiretaps
Demand a special counsel to investigate Bush's domestic spying!
www.americasdemocrats.org

This is not right: it violates the separation of church and state. This is another arrogant assault on our Constitution. The strategy should be obvious: attack on as many fronts as possible, and keep hammering. It takes forever to get cases into the courts—and it takes lots and lots of money. How do we stop this?


Bush executive order creates faith-based community center at Homeland Security
03/08/2006 @ 9:45 am
Filed by RAW STORY

The following, posted at the White House website, was discovered by a diarist at DailyKos.

#

Executive Order: Responsibilities of the Department of Homeland Security with Respect to Faith-Based and Community Initiatives

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to help the Federal Government coordinate a national effort to expand opportunities for faith-based and other community organizations and to strengthen their capacity to better meet America's social and community needs, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment of a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Homeland Security.

(a) The Secretary of Homeland Security (Secretary) shall establish within the Department of Homeland Security (Department) a Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (Center).

(b) The Center shall be supervised by a Director appointed by Secretary. The Secretary shall consult with the Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (WHOFBCI Director) prior to making such appointment.

(c) The Department shall provide the Center with appropriate staff, administrative support, and other resources to meet its responsibilities under this order.

(d) The Center shall begin operations no later than 45 days from the date of this order.

Sec. 2. Purpose of Center. The purpose of the Center shall be to coordinate agency efforts to eliminate regulatory, contracting, and other programmatic obstacles to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the provision of social and community services.

Sec. 3. Responsibilities of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In carrying out the purpose set forth in section 2 of this order, the Center shall:

(a) conduct, in coordination with the WHOFBCI Director, a department-wide audit to identify all existing barriers to the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the delivery of social and community services by the Department, including but not limited to regulations, rules, orders, procure-ment, and other internal policies and practices, and outreach activities that unlawfully discriminate against, or otherwise discourage or disadvantage the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in Federal programs;

(b) coordinate a comprehensive departmental effort to incorporate faith-based and other community organizations in Department programs and initiatives to the greatest extent possible;

(c) propose initiatives to remove barriers identified pursuant to section 3(a) of this order, including but not limited to reform of regulations, procurement, and other internal policies and practices, and outreach activities;

(d) propose the development of innovative pilot and demonstration programs to increase the participation of faith-based and other community organizations in Federal as well as State and local initiatives; and

(e) develop and coordinate Departmental outreach efforts to disseminate information more effectively to faith-based and other community organizations with respect to programming changes, contracting opportunities, and other agency initiatives, including but not limited to Web and Internet resources.

Sec. 4. Reporting Requirements.

(a) Report. Not later than 180 days from the date of this order and annually thereafter, the Center shall prepare and submit a report to the WHOFBCI Director.

(b) Contents. The report shall include a description of the Department's efforts in carrying out its responsibilities under this order, including but not limited to:

(i) a comprehensive analysis of the barriers to the full participation of faith-based and other community organizations in the delivery of social and community services identified pursuant to section 3(a) of this order and the proposed strategies to eliminate those barriers; and

(ii) a summary of the technical assistance and other information that will be available to faith-based and other community organizations regarding the program activities of the agency and the preparation of applications or proposals for grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, and procurement.

(c) Performance Indicators. The first report shall include annual performance indicators and measurable objectives for Departmental action. Each report filed thereafter shall measure the Department's performance against the objectives set forth in the initial report.

Sec. 5. Responsibilities of the Secretary. The Secretary shall:

(a) designate an employee within the department to serve as the liaison and point of contact with the WHOFBCI Director; and

(b) cooperate with the WHOFBCI Director and provide such information, support, and assistance to the WHOFBCI Director as requested to implement this order.

Sec. 6. General Provisions. (a) This order shall be implemented subject to the availability of appropriations and to the extent permitted by law.

(b) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

March 7, 2006.

During my morning blog patrol, I came across this piece, which led me to the original source, which is at the bottom. Would the US encourage the Israelis to run down Iranian nuke works? Would Israel like the US to zap those sites? And, as the quote mentions, do we believe the “sovereign” government of Iraq digs this?

In a pig’s valise, as they used to say in old detective novels.

Israeli troops in "Iraq"
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2070420,00.html
The de facto partition of Iraq occurred prior to the invasion, at least the separation of the Kurdish areas from the areas dominated by the Sunnis and Shias. And its utter separation from the rest of Iraq can be seen in this brief paragraph, if Sarah Baxter and Uzi Mahnaimi (in Israel) have told it like it is—

Israel’s special forces are said to be operating inside Iran in an urgent attempt to locate the country’s secret uranium enrichment sites. “We found several suspected sites last year but there must be more,” an Israeli intelligence source said. They are operating from a base in northern Iraq, guarded by Israeli soldiers with the approval of the Americans, according to Israeli sources.

Are we to believe that the "sovereign" government of Iraq is countenancing Israeli soldiers on its territory?

from Times online: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2070420,00.html

When things get crazy, you can bet the crazies are running amok. A bicycle parked on the campus of Ohio University was destroyed by a bomb squad because it had a sticker on it promoting a rock band. “This Bike is a Pipe Bomb,” the sticker said. The dean of stup—er, students—said he was pleased by the bomb squad’s actions. What’s wrong with this picture?

Same thing that’s wrong with calling in National Security when someone reads a book on an airplane. Or rousts a guy for t-shirts that make fun of government agencies. National or Homeland Security has become a Sacred Something, and nothing, but absolutely nothing, can do anything besides worship it. Homeland Security, run by jackoffs like Michael Chertoff, running-dogs of swine like John Negroponte, and wannabe dictators like George Bush, should be made to dress in clown suits and sit on the seats in dunk tanks while we throw baseballs at the little targets. In my darker moments I think the dunk tanks should be filled with sewage.

But I'm just kidding. Ice water would be plenty good enough in the dunk tanks.



WOUB Local

Rock band promotional sticker triggers bomb alert on OU campus
ATHENS, OH (2006-03-02) A sticker on a bicycle outside a restaurant on the campus of Ohio University is behind a bomb scare this morning.
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/woub/news.newsmain?action=printarticle&ARTICLE_ID=885227
Ohio University Dean of Students Terry Hogan says an Ohio University police officer spotted a bicycle attached to the Oasis restaurant at 5:30 a.m. this morning with a sticker containing a message attached to it.

"'This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb' is the name of a band out of Pensacola, Fla.," said Hogan. "The sticker was actually a promotional item for that entity."

A bomb squad was called in from Columbus to investigate the bike, resulting in an evacuation of four buildings on campus for more than three hours.

The area was cordoned off and Gordy Hall, Ellis Hall, Scott Quad and Konneker Alumni Center were all closed until 8:40 a.m. when police allowed students students and faculty into the buildings and the immediate area.

Hogan says police were informed from the owner of the bike that the sign in question was just a sticker. The bomb squad disabled the bike to confirm that.

The bike owner's name is not being released but Hogan says he has cooperated with the investigation.

All in all, Hogan says the university is pleased with the response from OUPD and Athens Police and fire in handling the scare. He says protocol updated after 9/11 was used for the first time in response to the potential threat.

OUPD is investigating the incident but no criminal charges have been filed.

© Copyright 2006, WOUB

In case we get to thinking Amerika is the only country that has thrown common sense to the winds, here’s this news story from Australia, where a rocker was reported to their secret police (excuse me, National Security) for reading, in public, a book about militant Islam.

Latest Airline Terror Threat: People Who Read Books
Rocker Rollins reported for thought crime
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2006/170206terrorthreat.htm
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | February 17 2006

The latest example of airline security gone insane is provided by rock star and stand-up comedian Henry Rollins, who was recently reported to the Australian government for reading a book on an aeroplane.

The Australian Daily Telegraph reports,

"US rocker and writer Henry Rollins was reported to the National Security hotline during his recent Australian tour because of a book he was reading on flight to Brisbane."

"A furious Rollins was informed he was "nominated as a possible threat" for reading Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia."

"The incident happened on a flight from Auckland on the recent Big Day Out tour."

Rollins (pictured above) then received a letter from the Australian government warning him not to read such books in future. His response was to post the letter on his website and tell the Australian government to "go f***k themselves."

Last month we highlighted the case of Margaret Jackson, CEO of Quantas Airlines, who was detained by the TSA at Los Angeles airport for having aircraft diagrams in her bag.

Pregnant white women, senators and 4-year-old boys have also recently been subject to the joys of airport security.

With programs afoot to introduce the same measures to train and subway stations in both the US and the UK, horror stories of this nature will only increase in regularity.

In the UK, London subway passengers will be forced to stand in an 8 foot metal tank and have their entire body scanned. The London bombings, irrefutably carried out with the aid of the highest rungs of the British intelligence establishment, were the paper tiger the government needed to crack the whip against an increasingly skeptical population.

To this day we still have a situation where not one item of cargo that enters the plane is inspected but Grandpa has to remove his shoes because he might be a suicide bomber. Even Playmobile have got in on the act by releasing a security check-in toy, brainwashing children into accepting routine violations of their 4th amendment as normal.

Airport security is non-existent because it is directed at innocent people just trying to go about their business. Screeners are trained not to profile for fear of discrimination. How many white pregnant women, 4-year-old boys, famous rock stars and senators have hijacked planes in the last few decades?

While the publicity continues about the prisoners in Gitmo, and about The Patriot Act, the government has continued on its path of overall secrecy. The erosion of Constitutional guarantees is farther along than we knew.

Programs like “Law and Order” show us an idealized court system, even with certain flaws admitted. Well, we can say, the system isn’t perfect but it works most of the time—and we see that it’s run by idealistic people. However, our courts are on a slippery slope—we’re all on slippery slopes when you think about it—and the administration, with it’s lawnorder mentality (actually it’s more “order” than “law”) is greasing the skids so they we can slide into dictatorship-living without any trouble at all...

There are two court systems, obviously. One is for public viewing if not public scrutiny; the other isn’t public at all. We’re not talking about national securiity. We’re talking about federal criminal proceedings that are kept secret. I’m not sure how these trials are legal in the traditional sense. They may follow the rules, but we just don’t know. That’s the way the government wants it to be.

AP: Thousands of Federal Cases Kept Secret
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060305/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/secret_justice&printer=1;_ylt=Am7hleeWluqnmQ0JP6kdpq.WwvIE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press WritersSun Mar 5, 6:50 AM ET

Despite the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of public trials, nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000 defendants who completed their journey through the federal courts over the last three years. Instances of such secrecy more than doubled from 2003 to 2005.

An Associated Press investigation found, and court observers agree, that most of these defendants are cooperating government witnesses, but the secrecy surrounding their records prevents the public from knowing details of their plea bargains with the government.

Most of these defendants are involved in drug gangs, though lately a very small number come from terrorism cases. Some of these cooperating witnesses are among the most unsavory characters in America's courts — multiple murderers and drug dealers — but the public cannot learn whether their testimony against confederates won them drastically reduced prison sentences or even freedom.

In the nation's capital, which has had a serious problem with drug gangs murdering government witnesses, the secrecy has reached another level — the use of secret dockets. For hundreds of such defendants over the past few years in this city, should someone acquire the actual case number for them and enter it in the U.S. District Court's computerized record system, the computer will falsely reply, "no such case" — rather than acknowledging that it is a sealed case.

At the request of the AP, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts conducted its first tally of secrecy in federal criminal cases. The nationwide data it provided the AP showed 5,116 defendants whose cases were completed in 2003, 2004 and 2005, but the bulk of their records remain secret.

"The constitutional presumption is for openness in the courts, but we have to ask whether we are really honoring that," said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and now law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "What are the reasons for so many cases remaining under seal?"

"What makes the American criminal justice system different from so many others in the world is our willingness to cast some sunshine on the process, but if you can't see it, you can't really criticize it," Levenson said.

The courts' administrative office and the Justice Department declined to comment on the numbers.

The data show a sharp increase in secret case files over time as the Bush administration's well-documented reliance on secrecy in the executive branch has crept into the federal courts through the war on drugs, anti-terrorism efforts and other criminal matters.

"This follows the pattern of this administration," said John Wesley Hall, an Arkansas defense attorney and second vice president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. "I am astonished and shocked that this many criminal proceedings in federal court escape public scrutiny or become buried."

The percentage of defendants who have reached verdicts and been sentenced but still have most of their records sealed has more than doubled in the last three years, the court office's tally shows.

Of nearly 85,000 defendants whose cases were closed in 2003, the records of 952 or 1.1 percent remain mostly sealed. Of more than 82,000 defendants with cases closed in 2004, records for 1,774 or 2.2 percent remain mostly secret. And of more than 87,000 defendants closed out in 2005, court records for 2,390 or 2.7 percent remain mostly closed to the public.

The court office also found a sharp increase in defendants whose case records were partly sealed for a limited time. Among newly charged defendants, the numbers in this category grew from 9,999 or 10.9 percent of all defendants charged in 2003 to 11,508 or 12.6 percent of those charged in 2005.

But the AP investigation found, and court observers agree, that the overwhelming number of these cases sealed for a limited time involve a use of secrecy that draws no criticism: the sealing of an indictment only until the defendant is arrested.

AP's investigation found a large concentration of both kinds of secrecy at the U.S. District Court here: limited sealing of records and extensive sealing that continues even after the courts are done with a defendant.

"When the sentences are sealed, that's a con on the community," said Lexi Christ, a Washington defense lawyer for a man acquitted in a crack cocaine case.

In that case, all the defendants' names became public when the indictment was unsealed. But all other records for six defendants who pleaded guilty remained sealed more than two years after the public trial in which two of the drug dealers were convicted.

One of the cooperating witnesses admitted to seven murders and testified in open court against co-defendants who had committed fewer, Christ said. But like the others who pleaded guilty and cooperated, that witness' plea deal and sentence were sealed.

"Cooperating witnesses are pleading guilty to six or seven murders, and the jury doesn't know they'll be sitting on the Metro (subway) next to them a year later. It's a really, really ugly system," Christ said.

Prosecutors argue that plea agreements must be sealed to protect witnesses and their families from violent retaliation. But Christ said that makes no sense after the trial when the defendants know who testified.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press found the U.S. District Court here has 469 criminal cases, from 2001-2005, that are listed by this court's electronic docket as "no such case." An AP survey over a shorter period found similar numbers here and got oral acknowledgment from the clerk's office that the missing electronic docket numbers corresponded to sealed cases. However, these figures include an unknown number of sealed indictments that will be made public if arrests are made.

"That's horrifying," said Loyola's Levenson. "When I was a prosecutor from 1981 to 1989, I never heard of secret dockets."

No matter how few turn out to be almost totally sealed after the defendant's case was completed, "it's still significant," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee and a pioneer in campaigning against court secrecy.

"The Supreme Court has said that criminal proceedings are public," Dalglish added. "In this country, we don't prosecute and lock up convicts and have no public track record of how we got there. That violates the defendants' rights not to mention the public's right to know what it's court system is doing."

Although Justice Department does not keep comprehensive nationwide statistics on secrecy in federal prosecutions, it does track how often prosecutors ask permission from headquarters to hold a secret court proceeding, like an arraignment, hearing, trial or sentencing.

The department estimates it got 100 such requests from October 2000 though October 2004, Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. Another 100 arrived during the 12 months that ended October 2005, he said.

Sierra said the large recent increase occurred because the department sent a memo to all federal prosecutors in 2004 reminding them they need Washington's approval before requesting or agreeing to secret courtroom proceedings. Filing of secret papers in cases doesn't require such permission.

___

On the Net:

Reporters Committee: http://www.rcfp.org/

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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It's called, Divide and Conquer. It's state terror. John Negroponte our ex-ambassador to Honduras and Iraq has been implicated in the setting up of Central American Death Squads. He is now one of our domestic security honchos; that's enough to make anyone nervous. Perhaps people will speak of the American Option in the future. Once trouble-makers have been either imprisoned in Halliburton-built relocation camps or simply...gee, whatever happened to...? I dunno—I hear they picked him up a couple of months ago...


Roots of Iraq Civil War May Be in ‘Salvador Option’
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/02/roots-of-iraq-civil-war-may-be-in-salvador-option/
In January 2005, Newsweek reported that the Bush Administration was considering using the “Salvador option” against insurgents in Iraq:

[T]he Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported “nationalist” forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.
It should come as no surprise, then, that sectarian death squads tied directly to the Iraqi Interior Ministry are running rampant in Iraq. Today we learned that the head of the Baghdad morgue has fled the country in fear for his life after reporting that the units have killed more than 7,000 people since last summer. The death squads operate so openly that an American military official in Iraq said, “the amazing this is…they tell you exactly what they are going to do.”

In a desperate bid to rescue a failed policy in Iraq, the Bush administration may have given the green light to a strategy that ends any hope of national reconciliation and finally tears Iraq apart along sectarian and ethnic lines.
– Ken Gude

The U.S. government believes it can, basically by fiat, pick and choose what laws it wants to obey and which ones it won’t obey. Maybe it’s historical amnesia or maybe it’s just that the administration has no idea of what the concept of a government of laws and not men is all about. I believe the government is un-American. It’s like the aliens have taken over—the ones from the planet where Nazis run the show.

The good thing is that this is building toward a major explosion in the courts. It obviously isn’t going to happen where it’s supposed to happen, in Congress. Our elected “representatives” won’t bother their incomes to actually get in a knock-down and drag-out with the Executive Branch. The people themselves are too busy worrying about who’s going to get Oscars and, if they put that aside, whether or not their jobs are secure (hint: no, your jobs are as secure as cobwebs).

I worry about the courts: while the neo-cons have been stacking the courts as best they can—they called it “packing” when FDR tried to do it—they may or may not be able to pull this off. If the courts side with the administration (people like Roberts and Scalia, for example), we might as well kiss goodbye to any token Constitutional protections that remain.


U.S. Cites Exception in Torture Ban
McCain Law May Not Apply to Cuba Prison

By Josh White and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 3, 2006; A04

Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."

Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives. Therefore, they said, Mohammed Bawazir, a Yemeni national held since May 2002, cannot claim protection under the anti-torture provisions.

Bawazir's attorneys contend that "extremely painful" new tactics used by the government to force-feed him and end his hunger strike amount to torture.

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said in a hearing yesterday that she found allegations of aggressive U.S. military tactics used to break the detainee hunger strike "extremely disturbing" and possibly against U.S. and international law. But Justice Department lawyers argued that even if the tactics were considered in violation of McCain's language, detainees at Guantanamo would have no recourse to challenge them in court.

In Bawazir's case, the government claims that it had to forcefully intervene in a hunger strike that was causing his weight to drop dangerously. In January, officials strapped Bawazir into a special chair, put a larger tube than they had previously used through his nose and kept him restrained for nearly two hours at a time to make sure he did not purge the food he was being given, the government and Bawazir's attorneys said.

Richard Murphy Jr., Bawazir's attorney, said his client gave in to the new techniques and began eating solid food days after the first use of the restraint chair. Murphy said the military deliberately made the process painful and embarrassing, noting that Bawazir soiled himself because of the approach.

Kessler said getting to the root of the allegations is an "urgent matter."

"These allegations . . . describe disgusting treatment, that if proven, is treatment that is cruel, profoundly disturbing and violative of" U.S. and foreign treaties banning torture, Kessler told the government's lawyers. She said she needs more information, but made clear she is considering banning the use of larger nasal-gastric tubes and the restraint chair.

In court filings, the Justice Department lawyers argued that language in the law written by Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) gives Guantanamo Bay detainees access to the courts only to appeal their enemy combatant status determinations and convictions by military commissions.

"Unfortunately, I think the government's right; it's a correct reading of the law," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "The law says you can't torture detainees at Guantanamo, but it also says you can't enforce that law in the courts."

Thomas Wilner, a lawyer representing several detainees at Guantanamo, agreed that the law cannot be enforced. "This is what Guantanamo was about to begin with, a place to keep detainees out of the U.S. precisely so they can say they can't go to court," Wilner said.

A spokeswoman for McCain's office did not respond to questions yesterday.

Murphy told the judge the military's claims that it switched tactics to protect Bawazir should not be believed. He noted that on Jan. 11 -- days after the new law passed -- the Defense Department made the identical health determination for about 20 other detainees, all of whom had been engaged in the hunger strike.

Guantanamo Bay officials deny that the tactics constitute torture. They wrote in sworn statements that they are necessary efforts to ensure detainee health. Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood, the facility's commander, wrote that Bawazir's claims of abuse are "patently false."

"In short, he is a trained al Qaida terrorist, who has been taught to claim torture, abuse, and medical mistreatment if captured," Hood wrote. He added that Bawazir allegedly went to Afghanistan to train for jihad and ultimately fought with the Taliban against U.S. troops.

Navy Capt. Stephen G. Hooker, who runs the prison's detention hospital, noted that the hunger strike began on Aug. 8, reached a peak of 131 participants on Sept. 11, and dropped to 84 on Christmas Day. After use of the restraint chair began, only five captives continued not eating.

Hooker wrote that he suspected Bawazir was purging his food after feedings. Bawazir weighed 130 pounds in late 2002, according to Hooker, but 97 pounds on the day he was first strapped to the chair. As of Sunday, his weight was back to 137 pounds, the government said.

Kessler noted with irritation that Hood and Hooker made largely general claims about the group of detainees on the hunger strike in defending the switch to the new force-feeding procedures used on Bawazir.

"I know it's a sad day when a federal judge has to ask a DOJ attorney this, but I'm asking you -- why should I believe them?" Kessler asked Justice Department attorney Terry Henry.

Henry said he would attempt to gather more information from the officials but said there was no legal basis for the court to intervene. Bawazir's weight is back to normal, his health is "robust" and he is no longer on a hunger strike, Henry said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company