Palast report
Title: Palast report Johnnie Be Good Greg Palast, July 29, 2004 [Boston] The millionaires are dancing now. The balloons are falling on John Kerry, John Edwards and their nuclear families. They're playing Johnnie B. Goode over the loudspeakers. Democrats are hopping up and down like JFK never went to Dallas; like Bill Clinton didn't blow it for us; like there's a chance to bring the boys home alive; like America can crawl out of Dick Cheney's bunker and look at the sun again. But has Johnnie Kerry been good so far? He told us tonight about some poor bastard in Ohio whose job evaporated when his company unbolted the equipment and sent it south. Hey, Johnnie, didn't you vote for NAFTA? We applauded when he said the White House should stop treating teachers and school kids like fugitives from justice and help them out. But, Johnnie, didn't you vote for George Bush's No Child's Behind Left assault on public education? Then there was that little story meant to show us all he is a Man for All Seasons, above party politics. I broke with many in my own party, he said, to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. No, John, it wasn't. It was craven political cowardice, going with the anti-government hysteria that put a knife into the heart of the programs you cried over tonight. He told us the sad story of the poor homeless guy huddled in front of the White House. Is this the same John Kerry that voted for Clinton's welfare reform? That put a five-year limit on food stamps, making child starvation the law of the USA. At least Ronald Reagan offered ketchup as a vegetable. At least he made good use of the cash he saved on feeding the poor. I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street. Hey, thanks, John. But my absolute favorite of the night was when Kerry told us, Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. But, as Senator, you didn't. No questions asked: you just closed your eyes and voted for the lie. I know it, and you sure as hell know it. And you mentioned a time or two tonight that you served your country. Got yourself a medal for it, too. I'm sorry, but shooting a Vietnamese teenager in the back who was defending HIS country doesn't make you a hero. Yesterday, my buddy Michael Moore and I held a press conference in Boston. Some joker of a reporter asked Mr. Fahrenheit about Kerry's gung-ho keep'm-in-Baghdad position. Michael fudged and fidgeted. I felt bad for him as he faked the answer, President Kerry would not have sent us to war. But as Senator, Kerry did. I've got an easier job than Michael: as a journalist I don't have to defend any candidate. Nevertheless, I know that my Democratic Party friends will want to ship me to Guantanamo for asking, You believe in Kerry, but does he believe in you? Remember, comrades, I'm only asking questions, here. I'm sorry if the answers make you uncomfortable about your favorite rich guy. I know what you're going to say. Isn't Bush worse? Fair enough. But asking if Kerry is as bad as Bush is like asking if a slap in the face is as painful as a brick to the skull. It ain't by a long shot. But don't you get tired of being slapped around by privileged politicos on hypocrisy hyper-drive -- then having to applaud? It can't be pleasant, no matter how many pretty balloons they drop on your head. === Greg Palast is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Joker's Wild: George Bush's House of Cards regime change deck. You can order both at Gregpalast.com.
Socialist candidate's view
Title: Socialist candidate's view http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/aug2004/kerr-a14.shtml Kerry and the Democratic campaign: a descent into farce By Bill Van Auken, SEP presidential candidate 14 August 2004 The presidential campaign of John Kerry has in the two brief weeks since the Democratic convention descended from political bankruptcy into outright farce. Kerry and his advisors have managed to paint themselves into a political corner that on first impression would have seemed unimaginable. Bush has the Democratic challenger on the defensive-on the war in Iraq. This unelected government, deemed by millions of Americans to be illegitimate, has been caught out using monstrous lies to drag the country into an illegal and unprovoked war. The criminal character of the entire enterprise has been exposed before America and the world by the torture revelations from Abu Ghraib prison, the bombing of cities, and the shameless corruption and war profiteering by corporations with close connections to the Bush administration. One-and-a-half years after an invasion that Bush claimed would be greeted with flowers, the entire country remains a combat zone. Tens of thousands of ordinary Iraqis have risen in armed resistance against the US military occupation and a puppet regime that lacks any legitimacy. The death toll among US soldiers is fast approaching 1,000, under conditions where the majority of the American population is convinced the war was unnecessary and not worth the blood already spilled. How is it possible, then, that it is Bush who is on the offensive and the Democratic challenger on the ropes over such an unpopular and discredited war? The answer is that the Democratic Party agreed in advance not to make the war an issue. It has no desire to turn the election into a referendum on the war, because Kerry, no less than Bush, is committed to continuing the bloodbath. From the outset, any differences between the two parties over Iraq were tactical, not fundamental. They concerned how best to wage a war that the American people did not want and did not approve, and how best to fashion the lies used to justify it. In the absence of any real debate over Iraq, the issue has been subsumed into the blather about "character" and "values" that both parties use to politically chloroform the electorate and exclude any serious consideration of the issues confronting the broad masses of the people. As a result, Bush and company have had little difficulty focusing what passes for a debate not on the war itself, but rather on Kerry's political twists and turns on Iraq. Consider the Democratic candidate's problem. After criticizing the Bush administration for preparing to go to war prematurely, in October 2002 he joined with other Senate Democrats in voting to give Bush blank-check authorization to launch an invasion whenever he saw fit. In the course of the Democratic primaries, after coming under fire from Howard Dean for his war authorization vote, Kerry suggested that he had cast that vote only because he took Bush's word on the supposed existence of massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He had been misled, he insisted. He told voters in Iowa that if they believed "I would have gone to war the way George Bush did, then don't vote for me." Under conditions in which tens of millions of people around the world, including millions of Americans, had judged the claims of the Bush administration to be crude fabrications, and had taken to the streets to denounce the administration's war-mongering, Kerry's pose of credulity was, to put it mildly, unconvincing. Once he had the nomination wrapped up, Kerry abruptly dropped his anti-war pose and declared, at every opportunity, his support for the occupation of Iraq and opposition to the growing popular sentiment to pull the troops out of Iraq, stating repeatedly that America could not "cut and run." Finally, this week, in response to a direct challenge from Bush, the Democratic candidate announced that he would have voted for the resolution authorizing war, even if he had known then that the justifications given in the resolution itself-Iraq's supposed WMD and Saddam Hussein's alleged collaboration with Al Qaeda-were false. His principal national security adviser, former State Department official James Rubin, went on record saying that had Kerry been president, the US would "in all probability" have invaded Iraq by now. Bush's advisers have taken the measure of their opponent. They have a clear campaign strategy: to use Kerry's contortions on the war to portray the Democratic candidate as a carping hypocrite. This serves to rally Bush's base of pro-war voters, while eroding the pool of potential Kerry voters who mistakenly associate a vote for the Democrat with opposition to the war. The Republican message to the latter is: "Why bother to go to the polls to vote for someone who agrees with our man on the war?" Finding themselves on the
This methinks
Among us commonfolk A vote for Kerry is a vote for corporatism based on fear of Bush. A vote for Bush is a vote for corporatism based on fear, period. A vote for Nader is a fearless vote: against corporatism and based on a want to better the world. The first two options provide the voter with a spectator's gloat of seeming to have taken a stand. The Nader option provides the voter the cudgel of citizenship to tend the common good and withstand corporatism. To vote is not enough. Dan Scanlan
yes
Title: yes Federal Court Rules That Commission on Presidential Debates is a Partisan Organization CPD not credible to run non-partisan debates Nader urges support of Citizens' Debate Commission Washington, DC: Independent Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader today applauded a federal court decision that found the FEC acted contrary to the Federal Elections Act by ignoring evidence that the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is a partisan political organization. "This decision is the first step toward getting real presidential debates this Fall. A federal court, looking at all the evidence, found that the FEC has been ignoring evidence that the Commission on Presidential Debates is a partisan organization," said Nader. "How can a partisan organization sponsor impartial debates? How can they set up fair rules to determine who should be allowed to participate? They can't. And, they shouldn't. The CPD should be prevented from sponsoring these debates under their partisan auspices." The decision was the result of a case filed by Ralph Nader, John Hagelin, Pat Buchanan, Howard Phillips, Winona LaDuke, the Natural Law Party, the Green Party, and the Constitution Party. In an 18-page decision, US District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr. ruled that a dismissal of a complaint filed by Nader with the FEC was wrong because the FEC was incorrect in finding the CPD was non-partisan. He sent the case back to the FEC, ordering the FEC to remedy the situation. In reaching its decision that the evidence does not justify the FEC's dismissal of the plaintiffs' complaint of CPD partisanship, the court relied on plaintiffs' allegations, namely: * CPD was founded by the two major parties * CPD has been co-chaired by the two former DNC and RNC chairmen since its founding in 1987 * Nine of eleven CPD directors are prominent Republicans and Democrats * No third-party member is a CPD director * CPD's current conduct shows it to be a partisan organization (PDF of Decision) The court found persuasive that CPD decided to exclude all third-party candidates from entering the 2000 presidential debates (even as ticket-holding audience members), absent any evidence that the third-party candidates would cause disruption. The CPD used a facebook of all third-party candidates to instruct security to bar their entry into the debates. Nader noted: "There is a new presidential debate commission, the Citizens' Debate Commission, which is clearly non-partisan. It should be responsible for this fall's debates, so that the corporate political duopoly does not control the information highway to tens of millions of Americans. With a prestigious board of directors from across the political spectrum, the Citizens' Debate Commission is clearly non-partisan, free from the the control of any candidate or any party. The FEC and the media should work with the Citizens' Debate Commission in planning the 2004 presidential debates." Polls have consistently shown that voters want more voices and choices in the debates. Among other similar polls, a FOX News poll showed that, in 2000, 64% of the public wanted Ralph Nader and Patrick Buchanan included in the debates. "The media, and especially the television networks, should now look away from this two-party-dominated debate commission-funded by beer, tobacco, auto, and other corporate interests-and look toward the Citizens' Debate Commission as a much more democratically representative institution to sponsor these debates. Otherwise, the networks will be producing ever-lower ratings while relaying parallel interviews, passed off as debates, by a very partisan and exclusionary CPD," said Nader. The case was Hagelin et al v. the Federal Election Commission, Civ. Act. No. 0400731 (August 12, 2004). The Citizens' Debate Commission is at www.opendebates.org.
vote count
Title: vote count On October 28 in 2003 I suggested a strategy on this list for Dennis Kucinich in his quest to be President. I had strong hopes for Kucinich, hopes that only faded when he announced that he would support the Democratic candidate whoever it turned out to be. To my mind, he became part of the problem, not part of the solution -- the greatest problem on this globe is unfettered corporatism, fueled by capital greed, directed by callous rich white men. The only candidate who shares this view with me is Ralph Nader. I have taken some curious delight lately in watching Nader actually doing some of the the things I suggested to Kucinich -- I called it the Committee of the Vote count; he calls it the Democracy Activist Corps. He has used the third parties to get on various ballots, and rallied the resources of Republicans who can't bring themselves to vote for the sophmoronic Bush or the elitist, get-in-front-of-the-parade Kerry. Here's my posting of October 28, 2003, followed by a Nader release yesterday. Dan Scanlan -- Here's the strategy: 1) Dennis Kucinich seeks (and wins) the Democratic nomination by convincing Democrats to vote for him in the primary election. During the campaign, he chastises the Democratic Party for its numerous sins and works to improve it by speaking strongly against its dependence on corrupt corporate cash, its penchant for war and its failure to tend to, or remember, its own progressive vision, and its failure to keep the nation's airwaves unfettered by corporate constraints. 2) The Green Party nominates Dennis Kucinich, even though he is a Democrat. There is precedence for this -- Ralph Nader was not a Green Party member. By so doing, the Green Party says that it values the end result -- the taking back of the country from the international corporate cartels -- and is not mired in knee-jerk party politics at any expense. 3) Renegade Republicans nominate Dennis Kucinich for the Republican ticket, and introduce a proposal to allow non-Republicans to vie for the nomination. The nation has a history of this. It is only unusual in our time. 4) Dennis Kucinich seeks the nominations of the American Independence Party, the Natural Law Party, the Peace and Freedom Party and other small parties. 5) Kucinich, individuals and groups develop and use a vocabulary that highlights the fact that the nation is at a crossroads that demands quick, exciting, unusual and strong moves to save it for the benefit of all and for our posterity, and by extension, the well-being of the planet itself. This vocabulary gives voice to the fact that there is room for all in the tug toward survival. Greens and Democrats pulling in concert, for starters, followed by other parties and organizations. The vocabulary becomes its own media and causes the corporate news industry to scramble for new relevance. 6) Dennis Kucinich creates a Committee of the Vote Count which is comprised of a wide variety of citizens, from high school age to elders, who are skilled in law and computer technology and who donate their time and skills to correct the flawed vote count in this country. The vocabulary makes it clear that counting is the first and simplest of computer functions and that secret and proprietary vote-counting software is fundamentally corrosive to American democracy and an affront to common sense. The verifiability of the vote count becomes a major campaign issue. The Kucinich campaign will be -- and will be seen and celebrated as -- a multi-pronged, multi-party, unifying American experience that is actually capable of returning the country to the folk. This enumeration of a strategy leaves out hot-button and other issues since it is aimed at roots. Nader For President 2004 P.O. Box 18002 - Washington, DC 20036 - www.votenader.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For Further Information: August 12, 2004 Kevin Zeese 202.265.4000 Nader Urges Florida: Protect Voters from Paperless Electronic Voting and Stop Abusing Voter Registration Washington, DC: Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader visited Tampa, Florida today to address two issues of importance in the upcoming election - paperless electronic voting, which limits the confidence voters will have that their vote is counted correctly; and efforts to limit the number of African-American voters through manipulation of registration rolls. Regarding electronic voting, Nader noted that some of the most populous counties in Florida will be voting with paperless electronic voting machines this November. Nader noted that the Miami-Dade County Republican Party sent out a mailer this month urging Republicans to vote by absentee ballot in order to avoid the paperless voting machines, warning that the machines do not have a paper ballot in case a recount is necessary. Nader announced two actions on electronic voting: 1. "I am offering my campaign as a vehicle for individual democracy activists who
Re: Stan Goff article
http://www.counterpunch.org/goff08132004.html This is a long, well-researched article that takes on John Kerry's environmentalist platform but goes much deeper into broader questions of oil depletion, global warming, etc. It cites Mark Jones extensively as well as Henry Liu. Highly recommended. This article is a keeper. Thanks, Louis, for pointing to it. Dan
Re: One Iraq veteran
Title: Re: One Iraq veteran A young friend, about 20 or so, spent time in Iraq during his on-going 4 year enlistment in the Air Force. He's now stationed in the states but will go back to Iraq in February. The conversation with him was depressing. . The spin is frightening. Gene Coyle The following Other Voices column appeared in this morning's Grass Valley CA The Union... The Union, Grass Valley CA http://www.theunion.com Mother sees tough side of Iraq war Susan and William Porter August 12, 2004 Last year I sent my son to war. During the seven months he was in Iraq, he experienced fierce combat, lost friends to death and injury, saw and did things that no human being should ever have to see or do - things he'll have to live with for the rest of his life. He was barely 18 years old. It was the worst seven months of my life. Every morning I woke up grateful that no one had come knocking on my door during the night. The crunch of tires on gravel or headlights shining through the window caused the entire family to hold its breath until the unknown vehicle passed by our drive. Each and every day was a struggle to maintain some sense of order and sanity while knowing my child was in harm's way. Sleep was something to do only when the body gave out and couldn't stay awake any longer. It wasn't until he was back on U.S. soil last September that I was able to get a full night's sleep and not flinch every time I heard a car drive down the lane. My peace was short-lived. He was home less than a month before the battalion was told they'd be going back. For the better part of a year, I've been living with the dread of going through this nightmare again. His deployment draws near. Sometime in the next month or so, I'll be sending my son to war for the second time. Recently I nailed a John Kerry poster and a yellow ribbon to a tree on my property. Nailed it securely. As an American, I have the right of free speech, and as the mother of a Marine, I've more than earned the right to my opinion that the current leadership of this country has got to change. Within a matter of days, the sign was missing, stolen by someone who has no respect for the rights and freedoms my son has sworn to protect. I have a few questions for this person, so quick to show his support of Mr. Bush. How many letters and care packages have you sent to Iraq to show your support for the troops? How many letters of condolence have you written to the over 900 families who've lost a son or daughter, father, brother, mother, sister in this idiotic war? How many mothers have you comforted with your words and actions of support? Your behavior leaves little doubt as to your character. Do you really think violating my rights, trespassing on my property and stealing from me exemplifies the values and moral clarity your party is so quick to claim?
Re: ABK Comrades!
Title: Re: ABK Comrades! on other hand, nader's folks are pretty disingenuous re. reps who were apparently working to help him get on ballot, You might want to verify your source. Here's what Nader has to say about it... Ralph Nader Responds to Terry McAuliffe False Statements on Republican Support Tells Him to Stop Democratic Dirty Tricks Challenges Kerry-Edwards to Debate August 6, 2004 Terry McAuliffe, Chairman Democratic National Committee 430 S. Capitol St. SE Washington DC 20003 Dear Mr. McAuliffe: I am writing in response to your letter of August 6, 2004 which contains numerous falsehoods. If you had not approved the actions of these Democratic officials I would assume that your dirty tricksters are misleading you. But since you have approved of this tasteless adventure, it is more likely that you are intentionally spreading false information and need to be saved from further recklessness by veracity. The falsehoods include: - You asserted that: Signatures for the most part are being gathered by Republicans. This is absolute fiction. We have many volunteers and signature gatherers working across the country gathering signatures on behalf of Nader-Camejo. Republican support, as I am sure you are aware is greatly exaggerated (as in Nevada where claims of Republican support are laughably false) and, in any event, contrary to our approach (as in Michigan where we do not need any signatures thanks to the Reform Party endorsement). - State parties are merely checking to make sure we play by the rules. You are able to invoke opposition using the rigged statutes that your Party and the Republicans enacted together in many states, but the actions of your underlings have gone further than that, e.g. spoiling ballot access conventions in Oregon, using taxpayer funded employees in Illinois to check signatures and more. - Waiting for me to disavow any financial or organizational help from Republicans or Republican groups. I have always said we reject organizational help from any major Party. As for individual contributions, I'll bet our major donations from individual Democrats far exceed major donations from individual Republicans in part because they want your Party to be pulled toward more progressive programs and away from its corporate grip and its corporate and corporate executive contributors. Look at your recent Convention's corporate hospitality suites and the at least $40 million in corporate contributions to your Party's coronation, for example. Besides, don't you want us to garner Republican votes? - Aligning with the kind of right-wing, Pat Buchanan conservatives such as the Reform Party. Sadly, today's Reform Party is more progressive than the Democratic Party on many issues. They want an immediate withdrawal from Iraq not a continued quagmire occupation; they sincerely want statehood for Washington, DC; they want to withdraw from trade agreements that undermine our sovereignty and weaken environmental, labor and consumer protections; they want to truly protect the environment and support organic farming; they oppose the constitutionally abusive Patriot Act; they want election reforms that will create a more robust democracy including open debates and voting on weekends so America's workforce can vote more easily; they want a crackdown on corporate crime and an end to corporate welfare, and they demand reduction of the huge deficit that is a tax on our children. However, your false claims about inappropriate Republican support should not cloud the actions of your Party, its lobbyists, law firms and underlings. As you can see from the enclosed article in The Los Angeles Times, we are very concerned about this nationwide effort to prevent voters from having a real choice. When I announced my candidacy, John Kerry said he would take my voters by taking my issues. Do you lack confidence in Senator Kerry? If you were confident in him, you would not be harassing, litigating and dirty tricking us from being on the ballot. You would not be trying to deny voters from making their own choices. Your letter fails to disavow these actions. Do you support these dirty tricks? Your Party has received millions of dollars from known wealthy Republicans hedging their bets - a tradition that wealthy Democrats also follow for Republican Presidential candidates. Please send me the names of those Republicans and the amount of their contributions. Moreover, kindly admit as soon as possible that your letter contained false statements and do not repeat them. I expect that you will have enough confidence in the debating capabilities of Senator John Kerry and Senator John Edwards to have the two party created and controlled Commission on Presidential Debates* open its doors to me and my vice presidential nominee, Peter Miguel Camejo. Polls indicated Californians believed Camejo did the best during the California gubernatorial recall debate last year. Sincerely, Ralph Nader cc: Senator John Kerry Senator
nader goes southwest
Title: nader goes southwest Nader Presidential Campaign Announces Southwest Airlines as its Unofficial Campaign Airline Based on several years of experience with an upstart airline from Texas, the Nader Presidential campaign announces Southwest Airlines as its unofficial campaign airline. "George W. Bush has his Air Force One to under-reimburse for campaign trips. John Kerry has his leased Boeing 757 to tour the country. But we have Southwest Airlines and its entire fleet of aircraft at our disposal," declared independent Presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. "Frugal tickets, pleasant, responsive people, with humor and a desire to say yes, and very interesting passengers to converse with combined, for us, to make this selection," he added. All passengers fly coach on Southwest, as befits a Presidential campaign for the people. No one at Southwest Airlines was contacted about this announcement. Nader had a good word for Southwest Airlines founder, Herb Kelleher. "Mr. Kelleher has demonstrated that the lowest paid chief executive, now chairman of the Board, of any major domestic airline, has produced better service, lower fares, and more profits, in dollars, than the top largest three airlines combined over the past three years. This record comes because he cares about his employees and passengers far more than the kind of compensation packages, contingent stock options, and golden parachutes demanded by his counterparts," said Nader. "'Pay less, get more' is the reverse of so many big corporate CEOs in recent years, who paid themselves more and gave less, if they did not collapse their company (Enron, WorldCom, etc.) outright," Nader declared. In return, the Nader campaign asks nothing more than the ear of management for any signs of airline deterioration that should be reversed. Oh, one more request - keep the roasted peanuts coming. Pretzels just don't do it. http://www.votenader.com/media_press/index.php?cid=146
Re: [Marxism] Jonathan Schell on the DP's prowar stance
Moveon began in protest of the Clinton impeachment. It began as a letter that took a life of its own. Michael, I'd like to know more about this. I've been asked to perform at a benefit for MoveOn and need to decide. (I don't want to help fund a Kerry front.) Dan Scanlan
never mind
Title: never mind Moveon began in protest of the Clinton impeachment. It began as a letter that took a life of its own. Never mind, Michael, about more on this. I found what seems to be the whole story at http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=MoveOn/History. Dan
Re: [Marxism] Jonathan Schell on the DP's prowar stance
On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, Dan Scanlan wrote: Moveon began in protest of the Clinton impeachment. It began as a letter that took a life of its own. I'd like to know more about this. I've been asked to perform at a benefit for MoveOn and need to decide. There's an extensive profile of the MoveOn and their history in the current LA Weekly: http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/37/features-bernhard.php Michael Thanks, this is a helluva story. I only wish MoveOn wasn't giving Kerry such an undeserved pass. What they are trying to do Nader has been doing for the past 40 years. They're in front of the wrong parade. Dan
Ha!
Ha! You think you're just going to leave the country when things get bad? Think again. U.S. TO IMPLANT ID TAGS IN PASSPORTS The U.S. State Department plans to implant electronic ID chips in U.S. passports to allow computer face-recognition systems to match facial characteristics of the digital passport photo on the chip against a photo taken at the passport control station and against photos on government watch lists. The change is planned despite warnings that face-recognition technology has a high error rate. Critics suggest using fingerprint identification instead, as a more reliable technology. The new passports are scheduled to enter use in 2005. Washington Post, 6 August 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43944-2004Aug5.html
get stoppo
Ashcroft Orders Libraries To Destroy Copies Of Laws Federal Statutes On Asset Forfeiture May Not Be Published, In another move towards federal tyranny, the Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered the American Library Association to destroy all copies of the federal laws on asset forfeiture and to deny access to those laws to the general public. The unprecedented move, in which US citizens would be unable to read or know the text of the laws they are expected to obey, was another stage in the growing power of President George W Bush. The American Library Association has refused the request of the Justice Department to destroy copies of the law, and made the following statement: Statement regarding DOJ request for removal of government publications by depository libraries The following statement has been issued by President-Elect Michael Gorman, representing President Carol Brey-Casiano, who is currently in Guatemala representing the Association: July 30, 2004 Statement from ALA President-Elect Michael Gorman: Last week, the American Library Association learned that the Department of Justice asked the Government Printing Office Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the Department has deemed not appropriate for external use. The Department of Justice has called for these five these public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library. The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA). ALA has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the withdrawn materials in order to obtain an official response from the Department of Justice regarding this unusual action, and why the Department has requested that documents that have been available to the public for as long as four years be removed from depository library collections. ALA is committed to ensuring that public documents remain available to the public and will do its best to bring about a satisfactory resolution of this matter. Librarians should note that, according to policy 72, written authorization from the Superintendent of Documents is required to remove any documents. To this date no such written authorization in hard copy has been issued. Keith Michael Fiels Executive Director American Library Association (800) 545-2433 ext.1392
Re: Whither the Fed?
... and make the next POTUS John Kerry a weak president without a big mandate at the same time.) Is there a subtle flaw here? If either Kerry or Bush is elected they will have a big mandate. It just won't be from the people, but the corporate purchasers. I fear the people's mandate can no longer be given through the present electoral process. Dan Scanlan -- --- Don't Kerry Bush for the corporate facists! VOTE NADER! -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
questions for Leno to ask
http://ArnoldWatch.org Weblog August 6, 2004 2:00 pm Questions Jay Leno Should Ask Arnold Tonight Jay Leno has a tradition of using viewer-contributed material on the air. In honor of Governor Schwarzenegger's return to Leno tonight to mark the one year anniversary of his historic announcement that he would run for Governor, Arnoldwatch.org has sent in these questions for Leno to ask Arnold: 1. Arnold, last year you said that you're rich enough that you don't need anyone else's money. Now that you are raising campaign cash twice as fast as Gray Davis, does that mean youíre not as rich as you thought? 2. You said you would be the sunshine governor and we all thought that meant you would open up government records. But you made 250 state employees sign secrecy agreements when they met with lobbyists to revamp government, and you created a charity, which does not disclose its donors that campaign finance experts recently called a political slush fund. Why didn't you just tell the public what you really meant by sunshine governor -- that you'd always have a tan. 3. You said youíd sweep special interests out of Sacramento. But youíve taken more than one million dollars each from the auto industry, insurers, and HMOs, and $5 million from real estate and investment king pins. How do they define special interests in Austrian dictionaries? Anyone without campaign cash? 4. You're supposedly holding a big fundraising party in Napa this weekend...any chance you'll tell us where it is? 5. You call legislators girlie men. Donít you wear more make up than all the female politicians in Sacramento combined? Read More at http://www.ArnoldWatch.org -- --- Don't Kerry Bush for the corporate facists! VOTE NADER! -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Let The Voter Beware
Title: Let The Voter Beware Los Angeles Times August 6, 2004 COMMENTARY Democratic Party Should Live Up to Its Name Nader deplores political skulduggery aimed at keeping him off the ballot. By Ralph Nader Though the Democrats have the right to robustly oppose my independent presidential campaign, they don't have the right to engage in dirty tricks designed to deny millions of voters the opportunity to choose who should be the next president. But that's what is happening. Across the country, the Democratic Party, state Democratic partisans, corporate lobbyists and law firms are making an unprecedented effort to keep the Nader-Camejo ticket off the ballot. It's a sordid, undemocratic tactic, an affront to voters and a threat to electoral choice. We are the only serious candidates calling for a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. We're the only ones highlighting how corporate control of the federal government has prevented healthcare for all Americans and how it has stymied passage of a wage that full-time workers can live on, as well as focusing on a host of other crucial but ignored issues. The so-called pro-choice Democrats do not want voters to have a political choice; they want them stuck with only two candidates. Democrats and corporate lobbyists conducted training sessions during the Democratic convention to plan a national campaign to keep Nader-Camejo off the ballot in as many states as possible. Participants were told that the most effective way to discourage people from signing our ballot-access petitions was to spread the rumor that the GOP supports our campaign in hopes of diverting Democratic voters. That's untrue. We estimate that less than 10% of the individuals contributing $1,000 or more are Republicans, while exit polls from 2000 show that nearly 25% of Nader voters were registered Republicans. The real meddling in our campaign has come not from Republicans but from Democrats, with, as a Democratic National Committee official told me, the DNC's approval. This includes: * Spoiling our ballot access convention in Oregon by filling the auditorium with Democrats to undermine the convention by swelling the numbers and then not signing the petitions. * Hiring corporate law firms to block our ballot efforts with litigation on frivolous technical grounds. In Arizona, 1,400 signatures were challenged because the signatories, although giving their complete address, did not include the name of their county. We could not afford to pay defense counsel and incur delays. * Trying to exclude thousands of signatures in Illinois because the signatories had moved since registering to vote - even though they still lived in Illinois and even though they were still registered voters. * Inappropriately using state employees, contractors and interns who work for Illinois' Democratic speaker of the state House to review and challenge signatures on our ballot access petitions. Not only are these efforts an attempt to deprive voters of choices in 2004 but, unless repulsed, they will set a precedent for undermining future third-party and independent candidates. Historically, non-major party campaigns have brought major paradigm shifts in the United States. For example, it was the Abolitionist Party that challenged the pro-slavery Whig and Democratic parties in the 1840s. Abraham Lincoln was the most successful third-party candidate, winning election when he criticized slavery. Other third-party candidates brought the issues of women's right to vote, trade unions, ending child labor, the 40-hour workweek, Social Security, Medicaid and Progressive-era reforms into the electoral arena. Since the 19th century, barriers to getting on the ballot have actually increased, with candidates given less time to collect the tens of thousands of verified signatures required in state after state. And apparently, even these statutory barriers are not enough for the Democratic Party operatives. It is incumbent on Democratic nominee John Kerry to put a stop to it. He should realize that obstructing ballot access in this manner is a violation of civil liberties. -- --- Don't Kerry Bush for the corporate facists! VOTE NADER! -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
new bushism
from msnbc. A new 'Bushism': We're gonna get us The Associated Press Updated: 1:24 p.m. ET Aug. 5, 2004 WASHINGTON - President Bush offered up a new entry for his catalog of Bushisms on Thursday, declaring that his administration will never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people. Bush misspoke as he delivered a speech at the signing ceremony for a $417 billion defense spending bill. Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we, Bush said. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. No one in Bush's audience of military brass or Pentagon chiefs reacted.
interesting reading
More land for the military than for Hawaiians Two-part series by Winona LaDuke in Indian Country Today: Part One http://www.indiancountry.com/?1090938578style=printablestyle=printable Part Two http://www.indiancountry.com/?1091536055style=printablestyle=printable
nader to lobbyist
Title: nader to lobbyist Nader Tells Toby Moffett: "Stop making false statements concerning allegations of Republican support." Rebuts False Allegations of Republican Support Describes Moffett As a "Corporate Lobbyist," Not a Nader's Raider Moffett is Part of the Problem of Corporate Control of Government Urges Kerry/Edwards to Debate Nader/Camejo on the Issues August 5, 2004 Anthony J. (Toby) Moffett The Livingston Group 499 South Capitol St SW # 600 Washington, DC 20003 Dear Mr. Moffett: I am writing to request that you stop making false statements concerning allegations of Republican support for the Nader/Camejo Campaign. I have said repeatedly that I am seeking votes and support from Republicans who support my candidacy, but not from Republicans, organized or otherwise, seeking to use my campaign for manipulative purposes. As you well know, your Democratic Party has taken many millions of dollars from favor-seeking Republicans hedging both sides of the party aisles. In fact, 2000 exit polls showed that approximately 25% of those who voted for the Green ticket were registered Republicans. Over the years I have worked with individual Republicans on issues of mutual concern - e.g. securities fraud, environmental protection, corporate crime, and corporate welfare. In addition, many people supporting our candidacy in 2004 supported President Bush in 2000, including members of the Reform Party. Indeed, many people who supported President Bush in 2000 are not happy with the Patriot Act's undermining of the Constitution, the fabrications and lies that led to war, the record budget deficits, the sovereignty infringing trade agreements, outsourcing of jobs, and a host of other issues. So, it is not surprising that 5% of our major donors are Republicans. Regarding support from Republicans helping to get Nader/Camejo on the ballot: the three most common claims come from Michigan, Nevada and Oregon - all three are false. In Michigan, our campaign turned in our signatures to protect our rights in court because we have been endorsed by the Reform Party, which has a ballot line. The signature-gathering campaign by others was not consistent with our strategy, and we had nothing to do with it. In Nevada, there were unsubstantiated allegations that Steve Wark helped our campaign get on the ballot. However, we have never had any contact with Mr. Wark, never received any donations from him, and neither has our signature gathering firm. This is a story that is unsubstantiated, and, as best we can see, completely false. In Oregon, the most important activity of a major party was the Democrats spoiling our ballot access convention by organizing and sending Democrats in - to fill out the auditorium, undermine the convention by swelling the numbers, and then not sign the petitions. While there was talk of Republican support in the media, we saw no evidence of it on the ground. It is amazing that the media still describes you as a Nader's-Raider - Toby, that was thirty years ago. Today, you are a corporate lobbyist with a firm whose clients are military contractors, telecom giants, and industry trade associations. You were a former vice president with Monsanto and now are a partner with Robert Livingston, a reactionary Republican who was about to serve as the Speaker of the House until he resigned. If the media focused on who you really are - a corporate lobbyist - it would not be surprising that you oppose our candidacy , since our focus is challenging the corporate domination of Washington, DC and its erosive impact on domestic and foreign policy. While Nader/Camejo would be happy to debate your candidates - John Kerry and John Edwards - on the issues, I reject your falsehoods, which are part of a coordinated Democratic dirty tricks campaign to keep Nader/Camejo off the ballot. Stop knowingly misleading the public and stop trying to undermine democracy by limiting the choice of voters to two candidates representing, in varying degrees, two corporate political parties. Sincerely, Ralph Nader
Re: Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior
What in the hell would a weak anti-depressant drug be? A Democrat for president? Dan
Re: Jon Stewart versus Ted Koppel
embedded like a suppository I'm stealing this. Dan
Re: testing
Title: Re: testing there's no need to read this. How does the format look? Somewhat staid, but it flowed nicely. Scanlan
War or resistance? Demos go for war
Title: War or resistance? Demos go for war The great unmentionable at the Democratic convention: Kerry's antiwar past By David Walsh 30 July 2004 One of the most striking and dishonest features of the Democratic Party convention and nomination of Senator John Kerry this week in Boston has been the concerted effort to excise the moral high point of its presidential candidate's career: his outspoken repudiation of and opposition to the Vietnam war in the early 1970s. Other than a relatively fleeting reference in the video biography presented Thursday night, which concentrated on his military career, almost no mention was made during four days of the convention of Kerry's antiwar activity. There is a farcical element to this. Everyone in the Democratic Party hierarchy, every delegate and every member of the media is aware of Kerry's record, but no one can mention it-his career is being "sanitized," in the eyes of the political and media establishment. What does this falsification of history-that it must deny past opposition to one of the greatest criminal enterprises of the twentieth century-say about the Democratic Party as a whole? The various glowing tributes paid him at the convention simply skipped over the period during which Kerry actively opposed the Vietnam War in the national political arena. Headline speakers at the Democratic Party national convention have referred repeatedly to Kerry's record of service in Vietnam, including his various medals. Former Vice President Al Gore told his audience that Kerry "showed uncommon heroism on the battlefield of Vietnam." Former President Jimmy Carter observed, "When our national security requires military action, John Kerry has already proven in Vietnam that he will not hesitate to act." New York Sen. Hillary Clinton declared that "we need to take care of our men and women in uniform who, like John Kerry, risk their lives." Her husband and former President Bill Clinton waxed pseudo-eloquent on the subject of Kerry's record: "During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current president, the vice president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going too, but instead, he said: Send me." There was no let-up on the second day of the Democratic convention. Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts referred to Kerry as "a war hero"; Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt asserted that "John Kerry defended our freedom at the barrel of a gun"; Barack Obama, Democratic candidate for the US Senate from Illinois, gushed about Kerry's "heroic service in Vietnam." Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate's wife, pointedly told the crowd that her husband had "earned his medals the old-fashioned way, by putting his life on the line for his country." On July 28 Kerry made his entrance into downtown Boston by ferrying across its harbor in the company of a dozen members of the US navy swift boat he commanded during the Vietnam War. The stunt was intended one more time to remind the public of Kerry's war record and, more generally, to associate him with the military. That evening the celebration of the military reached new heights with the unprecedented appearance on the stage of the convention of twelve retired generals and admirals, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Gen. John M. Shalikashvili and Admiral William J. Crowe), a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander (Gen. Wesley Clark) and a former director of the CIA (Admiral Stansfield Turner). Shalikashvili was given a prominent time-slot for his remarks to the convention. The same night Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina began his acceptance speech by once again paying tribute to Kerry's military record: "For those who want to know what kind of leader he'll be, I want to take you back about 30 years. When John Kerry graduated college, he volunteered for military service, volunteered to go to Vietnam, volunteered to captain a swift boat, one of the most dangerous duties in Vietnam that you could have. As a result, he was wounded, honored for his valor." In preparation for his address to the convention July 29, according to the Bloomberg news service, Kerry was "surrounding himself" with his former crewmates and veterans of the Vietnam War "to make his case that he is qualified to lead the campaign against terrorism and manage the war in Iraq." There is an objective logic to politics and to the political atmosphere the Democratic Party has created at its national gathering. Many antiwar Democratic voters and "left" liberals may be telling themselves that the flag-waving glorification of militarism will be jettisoned when and if Kerry takes office, that it is necessary as a campaign tactic to defuse Republican attacks, etc., but they are deluding themselves. The political physiognomy of the next Democratic administration is being prepared at this convention: pro-war, militarist and
Nader says why
Title: Nader says why Ralph Nader, featured in special Democratic Convention edition of The Hill, sending a clear message to the corporate political duopoly. The Hill June 29, 2004 OP-ED I'm staying in the race. Here's why. Get used to it. By Ralph Nader Washington, DC is corporate-controlled territory. You can see it in Congress, the regulatory agencies, the Departments, the presidency - corporations rule the nation. The power of corporate influence affects every aspect of our domestic policy as well as our foreign policy, pushing the United States into wars in countries with resources the corporate engine needs and into trade agreements that weaken U.S. sovereignty and undermine environmental, labor, and consumer rights. The mass concentrations of power, privilege, wealth, technology, and immunity have placed their rampaging global quest for maximum profits in the way of progress, justice, and opportunity for the very millions of workers who made possible these corporate profits but who are falling behind, excluded, and expendable. Their labors have gone unrequited as these unpatriotic corporations abandon our country and shift industries abroad, along with what is left of their allegiance to our country and community. As a result, jobs are being shipped overseas to China, where a despotic regime forbids trade unions from negotiating fair wages. This loss of jobs leads to a downward spiral in wages in the United States, where today one out of four full-time workers is now paid less than $8.75 an hour - less than an individual, and certainly a family, can live on. Lobbyists from Wal-Mart and McDonalds ensure that living wage legislation goes nowhere in Congress. Corporatism has turned federal and state departments and agencies into indentured servants for taxpayer-funded subsidies and budget-busting lucrative contracts. Middle-level and top-level corporate executives become mid-level and top-level government regulators and then return to their corporations. The superficially regulated become the regulators and then become the regulated again. Through their revolving-door officials, thousands of Political Action Committees, donations from executives, day-to-day lobbying by trade associations, company lobbies, and corporate law firms, corporations dominate the actions of government. There has been a resistant corporate crime wave that has looted and drained trillions of dollars from millions of workers, their pensions, and from small investors. Has the President supplied the required law enforcement resources for action? Scarcely. Has Congress investigated this massive crime wave and demanded action? Barely. As CNN's Lou Dobbs reports regularly, very few of these bosses have been brought to justice and jail. Corporate tax contributions as a percent of the overall federal revenue stream have been declining for fifty years: once 30% of our income, they now stand at 7.4%, despite massive record profits. President Harry Truman first proposed universal health care in 1955. We still don't have it. Instead we have a wasteful health care system - where 25% of the costs are spent on redundant and unnecessary bureaucracy because it is built on inefficient profit-driven health insurance industry - and an increasingly bill-gouging network of HMO's and hospitals. The United States spends far more on health care than any other country in the world but ranks only 37th in the overall quality of health care it provides, according to the World Health Organization. The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not provide universal health care. More than 44.3 million Americans have no health insurance, and tens of millions more are underinsured. Each year, 18,000 people die in the U.S. because of lack of health care, according to the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine. Why doesn't the government face up to this issue? Because the healthcare sellers and health insurance industries have donated to politicians to ensure the outcome. A recent highlight of corporate influence over government was the prescription drug bill. The bill was a big profit maker for the drug companies. They invested $150 million in lobbying the government and in return got a $400 billion drug bill. Once again, the corporations win - the people lose. In a few years investigative journalists will report how many people died because they could not afford life-saving medicine. The U.S. military-industrial complex continues to build for Soviet-era enemies that no longer exist. The defense budget, which now accounts for half of the operating spending of the federal government, is driven by weapons procurement for million dollar missiles, expensive airplanes costing tens of millions each, and atomic submarines costing much more. How are these decisions made? The weapons industry comes forward with plans and ideas and then coordinates a lobbying campaign on Congress. Presently, global corporations are bent on
more nader to moore
Title: more nader to moore Hey Michael, Where's Your Past? The saga of Michael the Second continues. From a stalwart collaborator before huge rallies in our 2000 Nader/LaDuke campaign to a puzzling sidelines posture, to an endorsement of Wesley Clark, you have perplexed more than a few of your admirers. Now you have declared in the June 24, 2004 issue of USA Today that you hope to have a significant impact on the 4 to 6% who now say they are going to vote for Ralph to vote for Kerry. Wow! That's a long way from Michael of Flint and Michael of Washington, DC. You are some traveler. On The Charlie Rose Show last Thursday you repeated the false statement that I promised to avoid the close states in 2000 and therefore you broke away from the campaign in the last month and urged a vote for Gore. Strange - you were berating Democrats before nearly 10,000 people at our MCI Rally on November 5 - two days before the election. If you would like to see a copy of the tape of your speech let me know. And, you campaigned with us in some of those close states. I have called you on this false assertion regarding the close states yet you keep repeating the falsehood. Our 2000 Campaign was a 50 state run, (and I campaigned in all 50 states) from the beginning, a point repeated again and again, even though I spent 28 days in California and only 2 in Florida. In my last message to Michael the Second I mistakenly believed that your views had not changed, with an exception or two, It's that your circles have changed. Too much Clinton, not enough Camejo, I observed. Now on The Rose Show you, the great freedom fighter, urged us to withdraw, urged rejection of the opportunity for millions of Americans to vote for a candidacy of their choice and a good agenda for their future. So the anti-war Michael supports the pro-war Kerry; the anti-Patriot Act Michael supports the pro-Patriot Act Kerry; the pro-tax on corporations Michael supports the low tax on dividends and capital gains Kerry. What ever happened to the great resister? Do you think any of the corporate lobbies are quaking in anticipation of a Kerry win, e.g. the military industrial complex (to use Eisenhower's warning phrase), the pharmaceutical, nuclear power, banking, securities, insurance, petrochemical, agribusiness, biotechnology, real estate and fossil fuel industries. The corporate government in Washington is the permanent government - as you well know. Oh well, we thought we knew ye, Michael. At least while you mingle with the people born to the purple and other nouveau riche, you'll still wear your working clothes and keep your cap on real tight as you bend to the wind. Best wishes for future films, Ralph Nader
toward compassion
Subject: FW: politically correct TO SPEAK ABOUT WOMEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT: 1. She is not a BABE or a CHICK - She is a BREASTED AMERICAN. 2. She is not a SCREAMER or a MOANER - She is VOCALLY APPRECIATIVE. 3. She is not EASY - She is HORIZONTALLY ACCESSIBLE. 4. She is not a DUMB BLONDE - She is a LIGHT-HAIRED DETOUR OFF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY. 5. She has not BEEN AROUND - She is a PREVIOUSLY ENJOYED COMPANION. 6. She is not an AIRHEAD - She is REALITY IMPAIRED. 7. She does not get DRUNK or TIPSY - She gets CHEMICALLY INCONVENIENCED. 8. She does not have BREAST IMPLANTS - She is MEDICALLY ENHANCED. 9. She does not NAG YOU - She becomes VERBALLY REPETITIVE. 10. She is not a Tramp - She is SEXUALLY EXTROVERTED. 11. She does not have MAJOR LEAGUE HOOTERS - She is PECTORALLY SUPERIOR. 12. She is not a TWO-BIT Hooker - She is a LOW COST PROVIDER. HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT MEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT: 1. He does not have a BEER GUT - He has developed a LIQUID GRAIN STORAGE FACILITY. 2. He is not a BAD DANCER - He is OVERLY CAUCASIAN. 3. He does not GET LOST ALL THE TIME - He INVESTIGATES ALTERNATIVE DESTINATIONS. 4. He is not BALDING - He is in FOLLICLE REGRESSION. 5. He is not a CRADLE ROBBER - He prefers GENERATIONAL DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS 6. He does not get FALLING-DOWN DRUNK-He becomes ACCIDENTALLY HORIZONTAL. 7. He does not act like a TOTAL ASS - He develops a case of RECTAL-CRANIAL INVERSION. 8. He is not a MALE CHAUVINIST PIG - He has SWINE EMPATHY. 9. He is not afraid of COMMITMENT - He is MONOGAMOUSLY CHALLENGED 10. He is not HORNY - He is SEXUALLY FOCUSED. 11. It's not his crack you see hanging out of his pants. It's REAR CLEAVAGE -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Kerry's a better choice for some conservatives
The Right Wing's Deep, Dark Secret Some hope for a Bush loss, and here's why By John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge (Los Angeles Times, July 28) -- One of the secrets of conservative America is how often it has welcomed Republican defeats. In 1976, many conservatives saw the trouncing of the moderate Gerald Ford as a way of clearing the path for the ideologically pure Ronald Reagan in 1980. In November 1992, George H.W. Bush's defeat provoked celebrations not just in Little Rock, where the Clintonites danced around to Fleetwood Mac, but also in some corners of conservative America. Oh yeah, man, it was fabulous, recalled Tom DeLay, the hard-line congressman from Sugar Land, Texas, who had feared another four years of misery fighting the urge to cross his party's too-liberal leader. At the Heritage Foundation, a group of right-wingers called the Third Generation conducted a bizarre rite involving a plastic head of the deposed president on a platter decorated with blood-red crepe paper. There is no chance that Republicans would welcome the son's defeat in the same way they rejoiced at the father's. George W. is much more conservative than George H.W., and he has gone out of his way to throw red meat to each faction of the right: tax cuts for the anti-government conservatives, opposition to gay marriage and abortion for the social conservatives and the invasion of Iraq for the neoconservatives. Still, there are five good reasons why, in a few years, some on the right might look on a John Kerry victory as a blessing in disguise. First, President Bush hasn't been as conservative as some would like. Small-government types fume that he has increased discretionary government spending faster than Bill Clinton. Buchananite paleoconservatives, libertarians and Nelson Rockefeller-style internationalists are all furious - for their very different reasons - about Bush's war of choice in Iraq. Even some neocons are irritated by his conduct of that war - particularly his failure to supply enough troops to make the whole enterprise work. The second reason conservatives might cheer a Bush defeat is to achieve a foreign policy victory. The Bush foreign policy team hardly lacks experience, but its reputation has been tainted - by infighting, by bungling in Iraq and by the rows with Europe. For better or worse, many conservatives may conclude that Kerry, who has accepted most of the main tenets of Bush's policy of preemption, stands a better chance than Bush of increasing international involvement in Iraq, of winning support for Washington's general war on terror and even of forcing reform at the United Nations. After all, could Jacques, Gerhard and the rest of those limp-wristed continentals say no to a man who speaks fluent French and German and has just rid the world of the Toxic Texan? The third reason for the right to celebrate a Bush loss comes in one simple word: gridlock. Gridlock is a godsend to some conservatives -it's a proven way to stop government spending. A Kerry administration is much more likely to be gridlocked than a second Bush administration because the Republicans look sure to hang on to the House and have a better-than-even chance of keeping control of the Senate. The fourth reason has to do with regeneration. Some conservatives think the Republican Party -and the wider conservative movement -needs to rediscover its identity. Is it a small government party, or does big government conservatism make sense? Is it the party of big business or of free markets? Under Bush, Western anti-government conservatives have generally lost ground to Southern social conservatives, and pragmatic internationalists have been outmaneuvered by neoconservative idealists. A period of bloodletting might help, returning a stronger party to the fray. And that is the fifth reason why a few conservatives might welcome a November Bush-bashing: the certain belief that they will be back, better than ever, in 2008. The conservative movement has an impressive record of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Ford's demise indeed helped to power the Reagan landslide; Poppy Bush's defeat set up the Gingrich revolution. In four years, many conservatives believe, President Kerry could limp to destruction at the hands of somebody like Colorado Gov. Bill Owens. When the British electorate buried President Bush's hero, Winston Churchill, and his Conservative Party, Lady Churchill stoically suggested the blessing in disguise idea to her husband. He replied that the disguise seemed pretty effective. Yet the next few years vindicated Lady Churchill's judgment. The Labor Party, working with Harry S. Truman, put into practice the anti-communist containment policies that Churchill had championed. So in 1951, the Conservative Party could return to office with an important piece of its agenda already in place and in a far fitter state than it had been six years earlier. It held office
Nader to Kucinich
Title: Nader to Kucinich Dennis, We Thought We Knew You! By Ralph Nader http://www.votenader.com Dennis Kucinich has decided to endorse the Kerry-Edwards Campaign. Of course, since Dennis is a committed, life-long Democrat this is not a big surprise. But, in doing so he also urged Nader supporters to join Kerry-Edwards saying: There is a place within the Democratic Party for everyone, including those who may be thinking of supporting Ralph Nader. Sorry Dennis, but most Nader supporters would find it very difficult to support the Kerry-Edwards ticket. Here are ten reasons why there is no place in the Democratic Party for people who hold to their principles and progressive programs: 1. Kerry-Edwards supports the war in Iraq. The only promise that John Kerry makes regarding Iraq is that he will manage the war better than Bush. He voted for the war and will send more troops to Iraq if needed. He recently told The Wall Street Journal that he would keep the troops in Iraq longer than George Bush. 2. Unlike Senator Feingold, Kerry-Edwards undermines the Constitution and civil liberties in the U.S. They voted for the Patriot Act - an overly aggressive assault on our Constitution. John Kerry, a former federal prosecutor, has not often distinguished himself as a strong friend of civil liberties. Kerry supported the Clinton crime bills, including the expansion of the federal death penalty in 1996 legislation. 3. John Kerry represents corporations and the wealthy, not the working majority. When John Kerry met with major donors he promised them he was not a redistributionist Democrat - despite massive corporate welfare programs, and the vast rich-poor divide that exists in the U.S. today. The Washington Post reports that has received more money from corporations and their lobbyists than any other senator. For example, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that during this election cycle, Kerry took in $3,321,382 from the health care industry. Also, Kerry has received $7,568,630 from the finance, insurance and real estate industries. His anemic plan for the working poor is to raise the minimum wage to a mere $7 per hour by 2007 - when over $8 would bring the purchasing power up to that of 1968! He's called for even more corporate tax cuts as a prime part of his jobs program, despite record corporate profits and shrinking corporate responsibility for carrying their fair share of the tax burden. 4. Kerry-Edwards does not promise health care for all. Forty-five million Americans don't have health insurance and more and more can't afford to keep it. The U.S. spends more on health care per capita than any other country - 25% of our expenditures go to duplicative overhead caused by health insurance-based health care. John Kerry does not replace this system with a universal health care program; he builds on this faulty system by paying the catastrophic care health insurance costs of businesses - but tens of millions will remain without health care under his plan. 5. Kerry-Edwards supports the drug war. John Kerry was the lead sponsor of Plan Colombia, the devastating militaristic approach to addiction. The plan sprays herbicides in the rain forests of Colombia, poisons the land of peasants, uses the military against peasant farmers and spreads coca cultivation in the region. Domestically, Kerry has supported crime bills that have resulted in the United States becoming the leader in incarceration in the world. 6. John Kerry continues to support WTO and NAFTA. These trade agreements that are spurring the sending of jobs overseas to Communist China, India and other poor countries undermine the sovereignty of nations by putting profit of corporations before laws enacted by nations. As a result, environmental, labor, and consumer protection laws are undermined by trade agreements. But Kerry is not calling for withdrawal from and renegotiation of these agreements. 7. John Kerry supports testing instead of teaching and does nothing to make college more affordable. Kerry supported George Bush's No Child Left Behind law, that emphasizes high stakes, high frequency, multiple choice standardized formal tests and, through their narrow domination, undermines teaching. He initially supported subsidizing college education but has now backed away from that promise. 8. The Democratic Party is undermining U.S. Democracy with John Kerry's quiet blessing. The Nader/Camejo Campaign is facing an unprecedented attack to obstruct its ballot access in numerous states with dirty tricks. Through harassment of petitioners, efforts to spoil ballot access conventions, use of state workers to challenge our signatures and employing corporate law firms to challenge our ballot access the Democratic Party is weakening the vibrancy of our democracy and trying to limit the choices of voters--with the full approval of the Democratic National Committee. The Democrats are doing nothing to energize our democracy by making it easier for a
American know how
Title: American know how 200 Female U.S. Soldiers RAPED in Iraq by U.S. Troops Miles Moffeit / Denver Post, 2004-07-15 Rape kits call attention to assaults By Miles Moffeit Denver Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 14, 2004 - Sexual-assault organizations across the country are shipping rape-evidence collection kits to each member of Congress in hopes that more of the investigative tools will end up in the war zone to help troops who are victimized. That move is in response to growing concerns among victim-rights leaders and several lawmakers that not enough kits are available to help soldiers. Nearly 200 U.S. women soldiers have sought assistance from civilian rape-crisis agencies since the war started, saying they were assaulted by fellow troops. Many have reported their cases were mishandled, in part because of inadequate forensic and medical treatment. We've got to get more attention on this issue, said Rita Smith, director of the Denver-based National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. If we send people into an unsafe environment, they need to be protected. Pentagon leaders have declined to discuss whether a shortage of the collection kits exists, with a spokesman saying only that there are rape kits available in theater at three combat-support hospitals. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and other women lawmakers say Defense Department officials need to be more candid about whether supplies are adequate to serve victims. But all members of Congress, which oversees the military, must understand how crucial the kits are in investigating cases and preserving evidence, according to leaders of state sex- assault coalitions. Part of the thought process is that most people have never seen them or understand why they should be used, said Kristen Houser, vice president of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence. When you say 'rape kit,' it doesn't mean a lot to some people. The presence of these kits in their offices, we hope, will help wake some people up. A rape kit generally consists of testing supplies for blood and other bodily fluids - swabs and combs to collect DNA evidence left on the victim's body following a rape. If evidence is collected from a victim rapidly enough, it can bolster the chances for prosecution. The word from Capitol Hill, so far, is that the mailing effort is bound to make a statement. It's an effective tool in establishing whether a sexual assault happened, said Angela de Rocha, spokesman for Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., who has worked on behalf of Air Force Academy cadets to ensure their cases are properly investigated. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., who has led a legislative effort to draft uniform policies for the handling of sexual assault cases in the military, said a massive effort to educate the military is needed over the short term and long haul. If we don't create a climate where women feel comfortable reporting their crimes to the military, they'll never come forward to get the rape kit, Slaughter said. That needs to happen. -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Re: How Mass is Mass Media?
Kenneth Burke repeats a conversation in which one party says, I'm a Christian, and the other party replies, Yes, but who are you a Christian AGAINST? according to one observer, the following sign was seen at the DP convention. Which Way Would Jesus Vote? Only evidence available is who he threw out of the temple. He wouldn't attend either one of the corporate orgies. Dan Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Kevin Phillips on the election
How Kerry Can Win By Kevin Phillips (The Nation, July 15) -- John Kerry can win, given George W. Bush's incompetence, and White House strategists realize that. All the Democrats need to do is to peel away some of the Republican unbase -- the most wobbly members of the GOP coalition. The caveat is that not many Democrats understand that coalition or why it has beaten the Democrats most of the time since 1968. Nor do most understand the convoluted but related role of Bill Clinton in aborting what could have been a 1992-2004 (or 2008) mini-cycle of Democratic White House dominance and in paving the way for George W. Elements of this shortsightedness are visible in both the party and the Kerry campaign. While attempts to harness Anybody but Bush psychologies and to attract voters without saying much that is controversial might win Kerry a narrow victory, this strategy would be unlikely to create a framework for successful four- or eight-year governance. Deconstructing the Republican coalition is a better long-term bet, and could be done. The result, however, might be to uncage serious progressive reform. Republicans, in contrast, have been successful in thinking strategically since the late 1960s. From 1968 until Bill Clinton's triumph in 1992, Republicans won five of the six presidential elections, and even Jimmy Carter's narrow victory in 1976 was in many respects a post-Watergate fluke. The two main coalitional milestones were Richard Nixon's 61 percent in 1972 and Ronald Reagan's 59 percent in 1984. The two Bushes, notwithstanding their dynastic achievement, represent the later-stage weakness of the coalition, which would have been more obvious without the moral rebukes of Clinton that were critical in the 1994 and 2000 elections. In the three presidential elections the Bushes have fought to date, their percentages of the total national vote have been 53.9 percent (1988), 37.7 percent (1992) and 47.9 percent (2000) -- an average of 46.5 percent. Keep in mind that in 1992, Bush Sr. got the smallest vote share of any president seeking re-election since William Howard Taft in 1912, while in 2000, the younger Bush became the first president to be elected without winning a plurality of the popular vote since Benjamin Harrison in 1888. The aftermath of 9/11 created transient strength, but the essential weakness of the Bushes was palpable again by mid-2004. Strategizing on behalf of a family with more luck and lineage than gravitas, the principal strategists for each Bush president -- Lee Atwater for [Bush] number 41 and Karl Rove for number 43 -- have necessarily been Machiavellian students of the Republican presidential coalition and how to maintain it. After helping to elect [Bush] 41 in 1988 because Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis was an Ivy League technocrat unconvincing as an occasional populist, Atwater observed that the way to win a presidential election against the Republicans is to develop the class-warfare issue, as Dukakis did at the end. To divide up the have and have-nots. Since then, the focus on keeping Republicans together has evolved and intensified. Despite the Republican weakness evident in 1992 and Bush's second-place finish in 2000, Rove is notable for his preoccupation with the GOP base, which he presumably thinks of in normal majoritarian terms. However, in the case of Bush's running for election or re-election, it is also useful -- and the Democrats of 2004 would find it particularly worthwhile -- to focus on the GOP's unbase. This, in essence, is the 20-25 percent of the party electorate that has been won at various points by three national anti-Bush primary and general election candidates with Republican origins: Ross Perot (1992), John McCain (2000) and, in a lesser vein, Patrick Buchanan (1992). Most of the shared Perot-McCain issues -- campaign and election reform, opposition to the religious right, distaste for Washington lobbyists, opposition to upper-bracket tax biases and runaway deficits, criticism of corporations and CEOs -- are salient today and more compatible with the mainstream moderate reformist Democratic viewpoint than with the lobbyist-driven Bush administration. Perot and Buchanan's economic nationalism (anti-outsourcing, anti-NAFTA) and criticism of Iraq policy under the two Bushes is also shared by many Democrats. Taking things somewhat further, these members of the unbase of the Republican presidential coalition ought to be the Democrats' key target because (1) they have some degree of skepticism about Bush and (2) they are the segment of the GOP coalition most logically open to recruitment for a progressive realignment, short-term or otherwise. That is the way small or large realignments work: by wooing the most empathetic part of the current coalition. In 1992, when Perot drew 19 percent of the November vote, George Bush Senior got only about 80 percent of the Republican vote. Most of the unbase
It's a soldier's life
EDITOR'S CHOICE: JUST ADD URINE Chicken cooked in urine Sir? Food scientists have developed a dried food ration that military troops can rehydrate by adding the filthiest of muddy swamp water, or even by peeing in it. The idea is to reduce the amount of water soldiers trekking for miles have to carry. Developed by the same organisation that created the indestructible sandwich, the new rations can lessen a soldier's load by 3.1 kilograms...MORE http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns6185 Will the Bush administration declare battalion bullion an organic protein, and allow Halliburton to charge soldiers extra for the tinkle? Dan Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
intramural cynicism
Title: intramural cynicism From the Denver Post: Bill Clinton defended his embattled national security adviser Tuesday as a man who always got things right, even if his desk was a mess. Clinton said he has known about the federal probe of Berger's actions for several months, calling this week's news a nonstory. I wish I knew who leaked it. It's interesting timing, he added. ... In an interview with The Denver Post, Clinton questioned the timing of the Berger flap less than a week before the Democratic National Convention and two days before a presidential commission is slated to release its final report on the Bush administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. From Dan Scanlan, If anyone should know of manipulating the American sheeple, its Clinton. It's the timing, stupid. Put your blue dress on and bomb Afghanistan and The Sudan. Let me gloat. From the same article: Clinton derided the Bush administration for its move this month to give states the opportunity to allow millions of acres of national forests to be opened up for logging, energy development and road building. The plan could affect 4.3 million acres of federal land in Colorado. This decision will doubtless make some economic interests happy, he said. By giving 100 percent of it back to the states, they really put it all at risk. ... There is no national policy here except to let the developers persuade whatever governors and state legislatures they can persuade. It's like saying these are state forests, not national forests. Clinton's administration designated or expanded 22 national monuments and banned road building and development in 60 million acres of national forest. He called his record on the environment one of the least appreciated or sort of best parts of my eight years. Differences between the environmental and energy policies of presidential challenger John Kerry and Bush are among the starkest in this year's election, he added. One of the things the American people will have to decide in this election is whether they want a strong environmental policy, said Clinton, who is using his book tour partly to plug Kerry, a fellow Democrat. The choice, I'd say, is pretty clear. - When Clinton expanded the 22 national monuments etc. at the very end of his administration (at the same time he was pardoning major contributors, as I recall) I suggested in writing that he was merely setting the stage for claiming to be an environmentalist sometime in the future, knowing damn well that the following administration could and would easily overturn his meaningless executive order. It didn't mean shit then and it sure doesn't mean shit now -- except that it affords a glimpse into the cynical and callous manipulations of our company store-bought style of politician, of which Clinton and Kerry are poster-child models. Dan Scanlan
Re: oops factor
And I'm wondering, ... if others have had something like this experience with their credit cards. In the meantime, you can find me in the barter economy. Gil I don't use credit cards, but I do have to register my domain name every year. A month ago I received an invoice in the mail for the next year's registration for $25. I dutifully sent it in. Fortunately, the company that billed me also sent me an email asking me to verify my payment and change of registrar. Huh? I had no idea I had changed registrars. I went back through my records (email archives actually) and realized that I had been suckered into changing providers and that the yearly rate had gone from $15 to $25 with my new provider. After several email attempts, I finally got through to someone who took my threat of filing mail fraud charges seriously and they say they are returning my payment. In emails with my old provider, it seemed to me they weren't as pissed off about as I was. Dan
more oops
Has any economist calculated the savings to the companies and costs (in real time x burden) to the consumer inherent in automated telephone keypad negotiations, automated 411 calls, and muzak assisted telephone holding patterns? Dan Scanlan
oops factor
Checking Your Bill for a New Charge Called 'Oops' By David Pogue (SF Chronicle, Dec. 4, 2003) -- Every few years, economists identify another mutant variation of inflation to keep them awake at night. In the 1980s, it was stagflation. Three years ago, it was deflation. And now, meet the economic specter of the new millennium: stealth inflation. That's when phone companies and just about anybody else who sends you a bill manages to extract more money from you without actually raising their rates. Phase 1 of this program was the proliferation of miscellaneous fees -- for regulatory assessment, handling, restocking, and so on. According to Business Week, newly concocted fees will generate $100 million for hotels this year, $2 billion for banks, $11 billion for credit-card companies -- and an average of 20 percent extra on every phone bill. Recently I may have stumbled upon Phase 2. Attracted by the superior coverage of Verizon's wireless network, I signed up for a new cellphone. The $60 package included unlimited night and weekend calling and 800 anytime minutes. A few days later, a welcome letter congratulated me on my new 700-minute plan. I called customer service. It was supposed to be 800 minutes, yes? The phone representative explained that what I signed up for was the 700-minute plan, with a 100-minute bonus. The welcome letter didn't reflect the bonus, but I would see it on my monthly statements. All right, no problem. All I'd lost was the 25 minutes on the phone with Verizon. Yet when the first statement arrived, Verizon had charged me 25 cents for every minute over 700. I called the 800 number again; the representative apologetically credited me the 100 minutes. Cost to me: another 25 minutes. When the same error cropped up on the next month's statement, my wife mentioned that she had gone through precisely the same ritual with MCI long-distance a few months earlier. In fact, after reviewing our records, we discovered at least seven cases in the last few years when a service company (including at least three phone companies) overbilled us and didn't correct the mistake until we turned ourselves into human pit bulls. All right, mistakes happen. But over and over and over again? Now, I'm not much on conspiracy theories. But in the weekly Circuits e-mail newsletter (nytimes.com/circuits) I floated a theory that all this might be part of a pattern of passive-aggressive robbery perpetrated on the premise that a certain percentage of customers won't notice, or won't bother to protest. A tidal wave of responses poured in -- over 1,200 in the first four days. Because the comments were made by e-mail or as online postings, many of the correspondents did not respond to requests for elaboration or fuller identification. But the volume of the responses made it clear that I had struck a chord. My experience with cellphone companies, airlines, and Internet providers has been so overwhelmingly dominated by 'mistakes' that I can't believe that it amounts to anything less than an insidious new business model developed to prey upon busy lives, said Jeremy Cohen, a 25-year-old music student in Cambridge, Mass. A posting on nytimes.com offered a similar lament: They've cut to the bone to increase their bottom line. They train their frontlines to blow people off, and give them no authority to make amends for problems. In previous eras, this was known as thievery. Now it's just the way things are done. Not surprisingly, the companies in question deny that there's anything fishy going on. We're not in business to part people from their money for a service that they don't get, said Mark Siegel, an ATT Wireless spokesman. Are there mistakes from time to time? Yes. But is it the conscious act of some cabal, a secret group of people sitting in a smoke-filled room? No way. On the other hand, would P.R. people even know about such a program? The people who would really know what's going on are the actual phone representatives -- and I heard from them, too. I can't speak for all the cellphone companies,'' wrote a two-year customer-service veteran at one of the big carriers, but the idea that we would intentionally overcharge customers is just plain wrong. Any time someone calls an 800 number, the company is charged, staff has to be paid and call-centers have to be maintained. Where I work, we try to find ways to prevent customers from calling in. It would not make financial sense to do things that would purposely cause customers to call in. That's a convincing argument; in fact, a Cingular spokeswoman told me that the industry-average cost per customer-service call is about $7. Yet the whole idea behind stealth inflation is that customers don't call in, that the overbilling will go unnoticed, perhaps masked by the dizzying complexity of the modern monthly statement. Verizon Wireless, for example, doesn't even provide
Re: Kerry/Edwards: Divorced from Gay Marriage
also, Kerry and Edwards were the only senators who abstained from voting on the Federal Marriage Amendment) Chicken-hearted donkeyducks.
Corrine Brown
Title: Corrine Brown FL Congresswoman Corrine Brown Censured re 2000 election coup d'etat speech http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/top... Florida Congresswoman, concerned about the integrity of the 2004 elections, especially in her home state of Florida, speaks from floor of the House re 2000's coup d'etat We were told to get over it. We will NOT Get over it House members voted her out of order and had her words stricken from the record Watch a video clip of her House speech -- now stricken from the record: http://www.firstcoastnews.com/video/player.aspx?aid=27805bw= ( Watch it quickly before it too is scrubbed. ) Here's my own letter to her... -- U.S. Representative Corrine Brown 2444 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 Fax: (202) 225-2256 Dear Rep. Brown, I applaud your brave stance and clear statement of fact on the floor of the House of Representatives today in which you referred to the presidential election of 2000 as a "coup d'etat". You are absolutely correct. It was exactly that and I feel that you speak for millions of Americans whose own voices have been rendered inert. Please be assured that there are many of us who stand with you and who are ashamed, as I am, of my own dismal representative (John Doolittle of California, who was shown in Fahrenheit 9/11 running away from accountability). Thank you for speaking for us. When the history of this era is written, your name and efforts will be on the positive side of the ledger. Stay strong, Dan Scanlan
Monkey see, monkey do
Title: Monkey see, monkey do Monkey see, monkey do: Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings. As of 7:30pm EDT, December 7, 2000, 152 people have been executed during Bush's tenure as governor. This makes Texas Governor George W. Bush the most-killing Governor, in the history of the United States of America
Just in time for the election?
Title: Just in time for the election? WAR WITH CHINA: Just in time for the election? Sailing Toward a Storm in China U.S. maneuvers could spark a war. By Chalmers Johnson LOS ANGELES TIMES July 15, 2004 Los Angeles Times -- Quietly and with minimal coverage in the U.S. press, the Navy announced that from mid-July through August it would hold exercises dubbed Operation Summer Pulse '04 in waters off the China coast near Taiwan. This will be the first time in U.S. naval history that seven of our 12 carrier strike groups deploy in one place at the same time. It will look like the peacetime equivalent of the Normandy landings and may well end in a disaster. At a minimum, a single carrier strike group includes the aircraft carrier itself (usually with nine or 10 squadrons and a total of about 85 aircraft), a guided missile cruiser, two guided missile destroyers, an attack submarine and a combination ammunition, oiler and supply ship. Normally, the United States uses only one or at the most two carrier strike groups to show the flag in a trouble spot. In a combat situation it might deploy three or four, as it did for both wars with Iraq. Seven in one place is unheard of. Operation Summer Pulse '04 was almost surely dreamed up at the Pearl Harbor headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Command and its commander, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, and endorsed by neocons in the Pentagon. It is doubtful that Congress was consulted. This only goes to show that our foreign policy is increasingly made by the Pentagon. According to Chinese reports, Taiwanese ships will join the seven carriers being assembled in this modern rerun of 19th century gunboat diplomacy. The ostensible reason given by the Navy for this exercise is to demonstrate the ability to concentrate massive forces in an emergency, but the focus on China in a U.S. election year sounds like a last hurrah of the neocons. Needless to say, the Chinese are not amused. They say that their naval and air forces, plus their land-based rockets, are capable of taking on one or two carrier strike groups but that combat with seven would overwhelm them. So even before a carrier reaches the Taiwan Strait, Beijing has announced it will embark on a crash project that will enable it to meet and defeat seven U.S. carrier strike groups within a decade. There's every chance the Chinese will succeed if they are not overtaken by war first. China is easily the fastest-growing big economy in the world, with a growth rate of 9.1% last year. On June 28, the BBC reported that China had passed the U.S. as the world's biggest recipient of foreign direct investment. China attracted $53 billion worth of new factories in 2003, whereas the U.S. took in only $40 billion; India, $4 billion; and Russia, a measly $1 billion. If left alone by U.S. militarists, China will almost surely, over time, become a democracy on the same pattern as that of South Korea and Taiwan (both of which had U.S.-sponsored military dictatorships until the late 1980s). But a strong mainland makes the anti-China lobby in the United States very nervous. It won't give up its decades-old animosity toward Beijing and jumps at any opportunity to stir up trouble - defending Taiwan is just a convenient cover story. These ideologues appear to be trying to precipitate a confrontation with China while they still have the chance. Today, they happen to have rabidly anti-Chinese governments in Taipei and Tokyo as allies, but these governments don't have the popular support of their own citizens. If American militarists are successful in sparking a war, the results are all too predictable: We will halt China's march away from communism and militarize its leadership, bankrupt ourselves, split Japan over whether to renew aggression against China and lose the war. We also will earn the lasting enmity of the most populous nation on Earth. Chalmers Johnson's latest book is The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan, 2004).
Galbraith
A cloud over civilisation Corporate power is the driving force behind US foreign policy - and the slaughter in Iraq JK Galbraith Thursday July 15, 2004 The Guardian At the end of the second world war, I was the director for overall effects of the United States strategic bombing survey - Usbus, as it was known. I led a large professional economic staff in assessment of the industrial and military effects of the bombing of Germany. The strategic bombing of German industry, transportation and cities, was gravely disappointing. Attacks on factories that made such seemingly crucial components as ball bearings, and even attacks on aircraft plants, were sadly useless. With plant and machinery relocation and more determined management, fighter aircraft production actually increased in early 1944 after major bombing. In the cities, the random cruelty and death inflicted from the sky had no appreciable effect on war production or the war. These findings were vigorously resisted by the Allied armed services - especially, needless to say, the air command, even though they were the work of the most capable scholars and were supported by German industry officials and impeccable German statistics, as well as by the director of German arms production, Albert Speer. All our conclusions were cast aside. The air command's public and academic allies united to arrest my appointment to a Harvard professorship and succeeded in doing so for a year. Nor is this all. The greatest military misadventure in American history until Iraq was the war in Vietnam. When I was sent there on a fact-finding mission in the early 60s, I had a full view of the military dominance of foreign policy, a dominance that has now extended to the replacement of the presumed civilian authority. In India, where I was ambassador, in Washington, where I had access to President Kennedy, and in Saigon, I developed a strongly negative view of the conflict. Later, I encouraged the anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy in 1968. His candidacy was first announced in our house in Cambridge. At this time the military establishment in Washington was in support of the war. Indeed, it was taken for granted that both the armed services and the weapons industries should accept and endorse hostilities - Dwight Eisenhower's military-industrial complex. In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual planes to tens of millions each. Such expenditure is not the result of detached analysis. From the relevant industrial firms come proposed designs for new weapons, and to them are awarded production and profit. In an impressive flow of influence and command, the weapons industry accords valued employment, management pay and profit in its political constituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political funds. The gratitude and the promise of political help go to Washington and to the defence budget. And to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam and Iraq, to war. That the private sector moves to a dominant public-sector role is apparent. None will doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the present-day economy. Once in the US there were capitalists. Steel by Carnegie, oil by Rockefeller, tobacco by Duke, railroads variously and often incompetently controlled by the moneyed few. In its market position and political influence, modern corporate management, unlike the capitalist, has public acceptance. A dominant role in the military establishment, in public finance and the environment is assumed. Other public authority is also taken for granted. Adverse social flaws and their effect do, however, require attention. One, as just observed, is the way the corporate power has shaped the public purpose to its own needs. It ordains that social success is more automobiles, more television sets, a greater volume of all other consumer goods - and more lethal weaponry. Negative social effects - pollution, destruction of the landscape, the unprotected health of the citizenry, the threat of military action and death - do not count as such. The corporate appropriation of public initiative and authority is unpleasantly visible in its effect on the environment, and dangerous as regards military and foreign policy. Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a corporate commitment to weapons procurement and use nurtures this threat. It accords legitimacy, and even heroic virtue, to devastation and death. Power in the modern great corporation belongs to the management. The board of directors is an amiable entity, meeting with self-approval but fully subordinate to the real power of the managers. The relationship resembles that of an honorary degree recipient to a member of a university faculty. The myths of investor authority, the ritual meetings of directors and the annual stockholder meeting
Hawking black hole
Title: Hawking black hole NewScientist.com Hawking cracks black hole paradox 19:00 14 July 04 Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. After nearly 30 years of arguing that a black hole destroys everything that falls into it, Stephen Hawking is saying he was wrong. It seems that black holes may after all allow information within them to escape. Hawking will present his latest finding at a conference in Ireland next week. The about-turn might cost Hawking, a physicist at the University of Cambridge, an encyclopaedia because of a bet he made in 1997. More importantly, it might solve one of the long-standing puzzles in modern physics, known as the black hole information paradox. It was Hawking's own work that created the paradox. In 1976, he calculated that once a black hole forms, it starts losing mass by radiating energy. This Hawking radiation contains no information about the matter inside the black hole and once the black hole evaporates, all information is lost. But this conflicts with the laws of quantum physics, which say that such information can never be completely wiped out. Hawking's argument was that the intense gravitational fields of black holes somehow unravel the laws of quantum physics. Other physicists have tried to chip away at this paradox. Earlier in 2004, Samir Mathur of Ohio State University in Columbus and his colleagues showed that if a black hole is modelled according to string theory - in which the universe is made of tiny, vibrating strings rather than point-like particles - then the black hole becomes a giant tangle of strings. And the Hawking radiation emitted by this fuzzball does contain information about the insides of a black hole (New Scientist print edition, 13 March). Big reputation Now, it seems that Hawking too has an answer to the conundrum and the physics community is abuzz with the news. Hawking requested at the last minute that he be allowed to present his findings at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation in Dublin, Ireland. He sent a note saying 'I have solved the black hole information paradox and I want to talk about it', says Curt Cutler, a physicist at the Albert Einstein Institute in Golm, Germany, who is chairing the conference's scientific committee. I haven't seen a preprint [of the paper]. To be quite honest, I went on Hawking's reputation. Though Hawking has not yet revealed the detailed maths behind his finding, sketchy details have emerged from a seminar Hawking gave at Cambridge. According to Cambridge colleague Gary Gibbons, an expert on the physics of black holes who was at the seminar, Hawking's black holes, unlike classic black holes, do not have a well-defined event horizon that hides everything within them from the outside world. In essence, his new black holes now never quite become the kind that gobble up everything. Instead, they keep emitting radiation for a long time, and eventually open up to reveal the information within. It's possible that what he presented in the seminar is a solution, says Gibbons. But I think you have to say the jury is still out. Forever hidden At the conference, Hawking will have an hour on 21 July to make his case. If he succeeds, then, ironically, he will lose a bet that he and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena made with John Preskill, also of Caltech. They argued that information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden, and can never be revealed. Since Stephen has changed his view and now believes that black holes do not destroy information, I expect him [and Kip] to concede the bet, Preskill told New Scientist. The duo are expected to present Preskill with an encyclopaedia of his choice from which information can be recovered at will. Jenny Hogan
Turkey Shoot
Title: Turkey Shoot TURKEY SHOOT by Dan Scanlan (P)resident George W. Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and their many cohorts are perfectly correct to fear a terrorist attack relevant to the coming November elections. They will be attacked by terrorists -- American terrorists, the kind that go to the ballot box. The case can be made that despite the social engineering of the Vietnam era draft, that despite the propaganda of the CIA-infiltrated press of that era, despite the heavy-handed government response to protestors, despite the carnage, when the American citizens turned terrorist, the War in Vietnam ended. When plain old American young men who had been knowingly sent to their deaths by elite, wealthy politicians began "fragging" their commanding officers, the war wound down. No longer could the United States send draftees into the jungle without the risk of officers getting shot in the back by their own men. This fragging, of course, could only work its way up the line of command right to the White House. And it did. (Despite the lack of coverage.) (Of course, I don't advocate shooting anybody, with the possible exception of he who gives me a gun and orders me to kill others, a situation I fortunately have never had to endure. I talk here of the vote.) It seems to me that the American people approach a place where it will begin firing back, instead of holding back (often less than half bother to vote). This is what the Bush White House and its corporate sponsors and cheerleaders fear (the Washington Post just editorialized in favor of studying election postponement). They're about to get blown off the face of the electoral map, fragged by the very people they treasonously dragged into the mire of war and seduced by sedition. Even with a House of Representatives full of chickenhawks afraid to impeach, the comeupance is coming up. And they tremble. And trembling right beside them is John Kerry and his wannabes, the corporate fallback team. Their backs are turned on the American people. Gives the voter a real turkey shoot. All we have to do is show up. I intend to and I'll vote Nader.
Re: Coziness with the Saudis is a bipartisan phenomenon
speaking of the Saudis, they regularly behead murderers, etc. So the beheading of captives by Iraqi insurgents isn't as shocking to people in the Middle East as it might be to us Amurricans. If Halliburton collects enough of the nubs, should it be taxed for additional capital gains?
Re: Kucinich delegates fold like a cheap suitcase
kucinich folks have to make decision at some point re. that They should be told to leave the Democratic Party and joing the Green Party. -- Yoshie er, might you mean the Nader/Camejo campaign? Dan Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Re: An editorial worth repeating
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/07/04 2:44 PM Monthly Review, Feb. 2001 The Nader Campaign and the Future of U.S. Left Electoral Politics by The Editors In our view, the Nader campaign was the electoral side of the mass organizing that produced the extraordinary demonstrations in Seattle in 1999 and in Washington, DC, and at the two national political conventions in 2000. More than electoral, I'd say. Nader maintained the largest resource center in Seattle during the WTO protests, including computer stations for press and organizers, the largest array of pamphlets, brochures, buttons, stickers, posters, books, etc. He conducted dailing press briefings and end-of-day recaps for the press. His organizations were evident everywhere -- in the Fair Trade office, which had a direct link to Nader's headquarters, and in the Independent Media Center. His organizations were the major resource providers for the activists. No doubt about it. The easy thing to forget about Nader is that electoral politics and the Green Party are just two of the many prongs of his civic thrust. Dan Scanlan
election oversight
sent by Women's Int'l League for Peace Freedom (WILPF) URGENT: Sign on to Call for UN Election Observers for the US Elections Dear Colleagues, On Thursday, July 1, 2004, eight members of the US Congress sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations asking for UN oversight of the US presidential elections in November. A copy of that letter is reproduced below. We are informed that there will be further sign- ons from members of Congress this week. MADRE, the Women of Color Resource Center and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom support their efforts. We are writing now to urge your organization to sign the following letter supporting this courageous and historic request aimed at helping to protect the right of every person to vote as enshrined in human rights treaties ratified by the United States, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 25) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (article 5) not to mention the U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act of 1965. Please support the efforts of these members of Congress to ensure accountable, transparent, free and fair elections in November by signing your organization onto the following letter no later than July 12. Please email the official support of your organization and the appropriate contact information to WILPF at [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Please also contact your members of Congress and tell them you support the request. Sincerely, Mary Day Kent Executive Director WILPF * * * Letter of Support for U.S. Congress Members' Request for UN Monitors in 2004 Presidential Election: The Honorable Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations Honorable Secretary-General Kofi Annan, We the undersigned organizations are writing to express our support for the request made by members of the U.S. Congress for United Nations observers to monitor the U.S. presidential election on November 2, 2004. The 2000 presidential election was plagued by allegations of widespread voter disenfranchisement, particularly in the state of Florida. The allegations included irregular and wrongful purging of voter registration lists and questionable practices and policies relating to balloting, counting and certification procedures. These allegations have been largely confirmed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bi-partisan federal agency. The Commission also found that the disenfranchisement fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters. In a race with the narrowest of margins, every single vote that was counted, or not counted, had a clear and profound impact on the election. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision which halted the re-counts in Florida and which suggests that post-election relief will be very difficult to obtain. Recently, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued another report which found that adequate steps have not been taken at the state and federal levels to ensure that similar concerns do not arise in the 2004 presidential election. We are also very concerned about both the old methods as well as the new electronic technology to be used in some states and precincts. They present different but urgent problems which are not being adequately addressed domestically and which threaten the right of every person to vote and have his or her vote counted in free and fair elections. We urge you to give serious consideration to the request by our Congress members and offer the necessary electoral assistance to the United States in advance of and during the presidential election. Sincerely, Vivian Stromberg Executive Director, MADRE Linda Burnham Executive Director, Women of Color Resource Center Mary Day Kent Executive Director, Women's International League of Peace and Freedom * * * * * Letter from Members of the U.S. Congress to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Requesting Election Monitors to Assist with 2004 U.S. Presidential Election July 1, 2004 The Honorable Kofi Annan Secretary-General United Nations New York, NY 10017 Dear Mr. Secretary-General: We the undersigned Members of Congress hereby request the Electoral Assistance Division of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs to send election observers to monitor the presidential election in the United States scheduled for November 2, 2004. We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy. As you may know, the 2000 presidential election was steeped in controversy. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan federal agency, investigated widespread allegations of voter disenfranchisement and questionable practices in the state of Florida relating to the purging of names from voter registration lists, methods of balloting, and the independence of counting and certification procedures. In a report released in June 2001, the Commission found that the electoral process in Florida resulted in
Re: An editorial worth repeating
Louis wrote... Maybe he should have proposed John McCain as his running-mate instead of Peter Camejo. I'm sure that would have gotten him a clean bill of health from the Nation Magazine, Salon.com, commondreams.org and alternet.org just as it got John Kerry. Nader has not sought the endorsement of any media that I know of. He wrote a scathing attack on The Nation a while back recalling for it its long history of fairness toward progressive causes and accusing it of abandoning that history. That's no way to get a clean bill of health. A few weeks back he openly chastised Michael Moore not for the content of his movie but for Moore's catering to Democrat big-wigs instead of progressives when he premiered it. I suspect Nader chose Camejo because he's true and such a clear expositor of a long view that is congruent with his own. And because the choice honors the many Latinos who live in and help keep this country running. Not unlike his choice of Winona LaDuke four years ago. When the bruhaha over Moore's movie has come and gone, I reckon Nader still will be plugging along pestering the Democrats to decorporatize, willing to once again take the blame for causing the corporate bench team (the Democrats) to lose their part of the game to the first stringers (the Republicans). Bush will lose the election because he's done his job. Now it takes a Democrat to clean up and implement. Kerry will be to W. as Clinton was the H.W. I don't think Nader's insight will be fully appreciated until after a few more cycles of this crap, if we survive that long. Dan
Moore review
Fahrenheit On The Brain Who cares if Moore's flick is flawed, shameless propaganda? At least it makes America think By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Wednesday, July 7, 2004 Oh my God but Michael Moore is infuriating. He has made a massively flawed quasi-documentary that treads dangerously close to excessive propaganda, a movie that never lets BushCo have the slightest hint of breathing space (not that they really deserve it), and he zooms his camera in on the distraught faces of weeping mothers and tormented soldiers and holds the lens there far too long, making you go, OK OK, enough already with the misery porn and the emo-manipulation. Moore takes numerous cheap shots and finds far too many easy targets among the political elite, and he cleverly edits his footage to make the various politicians he skewers appear even more vacuous and slithery and alien and sad than they normally might, which is already quite a lot, I mean oh my God what the hell is wrong with Dick Cheney I mean the man is pure sneering vileness incarnate just by opening his tiny black eyes. Shudder. Fahrenheit 9/11 is packed with missed opportunities. It argues obvious points far too weakly and never really digs very far, or very coherently, into the sinister underbelly of How It All Really Works. And Moore never lays sufficient blame on the weak-kneed Demos, all of whom voted for BushCo's war and all of whom basically rolled over and begged for scraps when the GOP war machine steamrolled in and demanded the nation cower in fear so they could attack a wimpy volatile hate-filled pip-squeak nation that dared to threaten its global petrochemical interests. However. Fahrenheit 9/11 is also shockingly stirring and thought provoking, the first major film of its kind to ever smack down a sitting president and his heartless, hawk-filled administration so successfully, so clearly, so shamelessly. It is propaganda made fresh, inspired, explosive, irrefutable. And you know it's working. After all, when's the last time a documentary filmmaker became the target of the full force of the GOP spin machine? When's the last time anyone made any sort of attempt to seriously question, in public, fearlessly, unapologetically, in a mass-media format, the blatantly oily warmongering of a current administration? When's the last time a documentary -- not to mention one seriously calling into doubt the snide motives of our government's call to war -- was the No. 1 movie in the nation while the war was still under way? Never, that's when. This, then, is the fabulous thing about Moore's flick. Sure, most of what the movie reveals might seem painfully obvious to anyone who follows the news with any sort of intellectual dexterity. And, yes, most of what Moore uncovers about everything from BushCo's appalling Saudi oil connections and his administration's whorelike corporate favoritism and the stealing of the '00 election you've heard a thousand times before. But no one has yet strung these facts and events together in any substantive way in the popular media. No one has had the casual nerve to show how deep and far back BushCo's Saudi ties actually run (hint: way, way back), letting us know who it is who really signs Bush's paycheck (hint: it ain't the taxpayers). No one has so successfully put a package together that can actually be successfully digested by the average American citizen, the vast majority of whom, it must be noted, blithely believe the major media spin and Fox News' alarmism and never really question their government, never get to hear any sort of smart, anarchic message, never see the dank underbelly revealed in any substantive, comprehensible, entertaining, humorous, intelligent way. And, for this, you have to fall down in front of Moore's film in abject thanks. After all, we're Americans. We tend to forget very quickly how it was just after BushCo was elected, or just after 9/11, or just after the war on Iraq was declared. We forget how thoroughly the GOP-fueled fear saturated the country's air like a rank perfume, how rabid patriotism was our national drug, how violent warmongering was forced upon us like some sort of mandatory, painful surgery, the only option for a heartbroken, exhausted nation. Take a moment. Try to remember. Remember how timid and appallingly pro-war the media was during the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Remember Ashcroft's vicious USA Patriot Act. Remember the orgasmic glee of the embedded reporters who were allowed to ride on big scary tanks and speed across the desert in big impressive convoys of U.S. killing machines, as meanwhile, just outside the camera's range, thousands of mutilated corpses of babies and women and other innocent civilians lay in the rubble as the real war raged on, just out of the American public's view. And remember how you thought, oh my God, something is so not right about this. Something is terribly unsound
Re: DONKEY. ELEPHANT. CHICKEN?
NY Press, July 7, 2004 DONKEY. ELEPHANT. CHICKEN? Right on!
Re: FW: New column in Salon: Length matters -- on the duration of unemployment
If so, let me remind you that newspapers are not so different from politicians. They exist to sell advertising. What goes on the page in between the ads is not so very important. I thought the function of news was to keep the ads from bumping into one another. Dan Scanlan
piercing
I just heard that Kerry is going to get his nipples pierced because Bush has a Dick Cheney.
Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Green party
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/02/04 7:44 PM On Nader's site, a major push is for impeachment of the current Resident. in Chief. In my mind this is the only viable defensive action available to the American people at the moment. When Bush gets his second term, even that avenue will be gone -- in his mind (which hears God telling him to go to war), Bush will have been given permission to do whatever he wants. And his is the closest stuck-up finger to nuclear holocaust. Dan Scanlan recall that late henry gonzalez (dem congressman from west texas) filed numerous articles of impeachment against bush the first... while you've not intended it, above comment re. bush second term could be seen by some as reason to vote for kerry (or any dem at all)... michael Aye, there's the rub. I've been writing the Kucinich campaign/congressional office nearly every day to urge him to introduce Articles of Impeachment. As a congressman it's his damn job. In his speech introducing the impeachment he can bring up Gonzales' impeachment articles against Reagan and Bush and draw new attention to pappa Bush's interference in the BCCI/CIA/Saudi Bush family scandal investigation. It's completely relevant to today's mire. It may not go anywhere but it may help expand the national discussion and break through the media shellac. And Kerry might have to comment on it. Dan
like father, like son
Title: like father, like son U.S. Representative Henry Gonsalez (Democrat, Texas), introducing articles of impeachment against George H.. W. Bush. (Could it be used today by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich without alteration?) January 16, 1991 Mr Speaker, it is with great sadness, yet great conviction, that I introduce today a Resolution of Impeachment of President Bush. At a time when our nation is deeply divided over the question of war, we find ourselves on the brink of a world war of such magnitude that our minds cannot fully comprehend the destruction which is allowed to be leveled. The position we are in is a direct result of the actions of one man and the reaction to another. The Iraqi people are as opposed to war as are the American people, the difference is that the Iraqi people have no choice but to support their country's leader, but the American people not only have the right to oppose and speak out in disagreement with their President, but they have the responsibility to do so if our democracy is to be preserved. Today I exercise this constitutional right and responsibility to speak out in opposition to war in the Middle East and in support of removal of our nation's chief executive. When I took the oath of office earlier this month, as I had numerous times before, I swore to uphold The Constitution. The President's oath was the same - to uphold the Constitution of The United States. We did not pledge an oath of allegiance to the President, but to The Constitution which is the highest law of the land. The Constitution provides for removal of the President when he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, including violations of the principles of The Constitution. President Bush has violated these principles. My resolution has five articles of impeachment. First, the President has violated the equal protection clause of The Constitution. Our soldiers in the Middle East are overwhelmingly poor white, black, and Mexican American. They may be volunteers technically, but their volunteerism is based on the coercion of a system that has denied violable economic opportunities to these classes of citizens. Under The Constitution all classes of citizens are guaranteed equal protection, and calling on the poor and minorities to fight a war for oil to preserve the lifestyles of the wealthy is a denial of the rights of these soldiers. Article II states that the President has violated the Constitution, federal law and the United Nations Charter by bribing, intimidating and threatening others, including the members of the United Nations Security Council, to support belligerent acts against Iraq. It is clear that the President paid off members of the U.N. Security Council in return for their votes in support of war against Iraq. The debt of Egypt was forgiven; a $140 million loan to China was agreed to; the Soviet Union was promise $7 billion in aid; Colombia was promised assistance to its armed forces; Zaire was promised military assistance and partial forgiveness of it's debt; Saudi Arabia was promised $12 billion in arms; Yemen was threatened with the termination of support; and the U.S. finally paid off $187 million of its debt to the United Nations after the vote the President sought was made. The vote was bought, and it will be paid for with the lives of black and Mexican-Americans. Article III states that the President has conspired to engage in a massive war against Iraq employing methods of mass destruction that will result in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom will be children. No civilian lives have yet been lost, that we know of, but when we start using the weapons of mass destruction that are in place for this war, there is no doubt that thousands of innocent civilians will lose their lives. As killings occur, the principles laid down in the Nuremburg trial will be applicable. Their deaths will not only be a moral outrage, but they will constitute a violation of international law. Article IV states that the President has committed the United States to acts of war without congressional consent and contrary to the United Nations Charter and international law. From August, 1991, through January.1991, the President embarked on a course of action that systematically eliminated every option for peaceful resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis. Once the President approached Congress for a declaration of war, 500,000 American soldiers' lives were in jeopardy-rendering any substantive debate by Congress meaningless. The President has not received a declaration of war by Congress, and in contravention of the written word, the spirit, and the intent of the views of Constitution had declared that he will go to war regardless of the views of Congress and the American people. Congress abdicated its responsibility, but the President violated the Constitution. I am dismayed with the Congressional leadership, but I am frightened by the President's unwillingness to uphold his oath of
billionaires for bush
Come join the BILLIONAIRES FOR BUSH for a Bush Birthday Bash George Bush has given so much to the Billionaires that we just had to give something back. So on Tuesday, July 6th, from 5:00 to 7:30PM at a bucolic location on the north side of Santa Monica Boulevard between Canõn and Rodeo Drives in Beverly Hills, the Billionaires for Bush will be wishing our favorite Cancer a Happy Birthday. Among our birthday gifts for our beloved leader will be the state of Ohio (thanks to Wally ODell, chairman of Diebold), Florida (thanks to Georgies own brother Jeb), the Bill of Rights (with everything but the 2nd Amendment crossed out), and all those missing Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. We will greet rush hour traffic with our joyful revelry, chanting Four More Wars! and More Money, Fewer Hands! Put on your Billionaire attire - your power tie and top hat or evening gown and pearls (or any combination thereof) and come out and celebrate with the Billionaires. Whether you're a War Profiteer, a Corporate Polluter, a Clear-Cutting Timber Baron or a Merged Media Magnate, you're welcome at the party. Have your chauffeur park the Stretch Hummer at one of the metered spaces at the parks in that neighborhood, or one of the paid parking lots South of Santa Monica. We will be setting up at 4:30PM, but you are welcome to come and join us whenever you're able to leave the boardroom that evening. And check us out online at: www.billionairesforbush.com Run for the hills, here come the Billionaires!
Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Green party
Title: Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Gre Michael Hoover writes... however, color me a cynic as i've a hunch that the sum of the parts that you describe add up to less than suggested... green party will experience 'growing pains' if it is to have substantive longevity ,,, perhaps cobb will do for green party what buchanan did for reform party, in any event, cobb will receive any less media coverage, public attention, and votes than did nader, and if there's anyone left afterwards, they can get down to the difficult job of building a party... Michael, thanks for the discussion. Some comments... I suspect the Green Party will be irrelevant in this election cycle and may not rebound from its failure to follow the more dangerous road, i.e., asserting what it believes (expressed fairly well by Nader, Camejo, Zinn and others) rather than emotive trembling in the fear of a second Bush administration. Numerous Greens jumped ship in the 2000 election and voted Democratic at the last minute. What a waste. Even though Gore won, neither he nor any Democratic Senator protested the count. They elected Bush and then fostered every one of his programs, regardless of how nasty. When the Green Party voted Cobb as its banner carrier, it basically endorsed Kerry. (Nader, by the way, wasn't seeking the nomination of the Green Party, but its endorsement. They gave it to Kerry.) Nader is a very intelligent person, a master mega-politician and, I believe, an exemplary citizen. Damn! He gave up sex for civic service. Here's a peephole through which I gather some of my current analysis: While many criticise Michael Moore's movie either for or against based on its content, Nader wrote a letter to Moore asking him why he abandoned his buddies when he premiered the film. Moore had surrounded himself with Democratic honchos. Nader chastised him for allowing the existence of his film to give credence to Democrats by association. What happened, Nader wrote (paraphrasing from memory), to your battle against the Democrats who sent the Flint MI jobs out of country, pushed through NAFTA and GATT, bombed Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq, ended welfare as we know it, and protected the interests of the wealthy alongside the shenanigans of the Republicans? Why didn't you invite your friends, the people who stood with you when you were unfairly fired from Mother Jones? When you were attacked for speaking out at the Oscars? Dude, Nader wrote*, where's my buddy? I suspect Moore's joined the celebrityocracy. My point here is that Nader is more apt to instigate a course correction than take over the ship. That's exactly what he did with the Green Party. I predict that a new party will emerge from the remnants of the Green Party, it will be underground, it will be resistant and it will not be given to lengthy intellectual discussions or playing house with electoral politics. On Nader's site, a major push is for impeachment of the current Resident. in Chief. In my mind this is the only viable defensive action available to the American people at the moment. When Bush gets his second term, even that avenue will be gone -- in his mind (which hears God telling him to go to war), Bush will have been given permission to do whatever he wants. And his is the closest stuck-up finger to nuclear holocaust. As long as we're still talkingwhere I personally differ with Nader is that I don't think the American electoral process is redeemable, whereas he seems to think so. I believe we need a new constitution (if we survive the peril), one that is truly based on equal rights for all and that takes into account high speed mass communication, so that the rule is one media outlet and one vote per person. Let every voice, not just some, be heard loud and clear. Dan Scanlan * http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=54
bush vent
Title: bush vent A good site for venting. http://www.spankbush.com/index.asp?ref=593949
bushites and nader
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/30/bush.nader/index.html Bush allies illegally helping Nader in Oregon Complaint filed with Federal Election Commission Wednesday, June 30, 2004 Posted: 8:19 PM EDT (0019 GMT) America Votes 2004 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Efforts by two conservative groups to help President Bush by getting independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in the key battleground state of Oregon prompted a complaint to the Federal Election Commission Wednesday by a liberal watchdog group. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said phone banks encouraging Bush supporters to attend a Nader nominating convention last Saturday amounted to an illegal in-kind contribution to the Nader campaign by the Oregon Family Council and Oregon Citizens for a Sound Economy. Bush's re-election campaign and the Oregon Republican Party were also named in the complaint for allegedly participating in the effort. The complaint alleges the groups worked together to promote Nader and siphon potential votes away from Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said the two groups, though non-profit, are still considered corporations, and corporations are strictly prohibited from making contributions to political campaigns. While the Bush campaign had no immediate comment, Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese called the allegations absolute nonsense. We didn't work with any Republican groups or any corporations or non-profits trying to get people to come to our event, Zeese said. We reached out to our constituency and got our people out there. To get on the ballot, the Nader campaign has to get the signatures of 1,000 registered voters in one day or submit 15,000 signatures statewide. On Saturday, Nader supporters held a convention in Portland to try to get the necessary signatures. While more than 1,100 people attended, the signatures are still being verified, so it is unclear if the effort was successful. Whether Nader gets on the ballot in Oregon could be critical in deciding which candidate carries the state and its seven electoral votes. In 2000, Democrat Al Gore beat Bush by less than 7,000 votes in the state. Published polls show Bush running neck-and-neck with Kerry, with Nader drawing 3 percent to 5 percent of the vote. The Oregon Family Council is a conservative Christian group that opposes same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Oregon Citizens for a Sound Economy is the state chapter of a national anti-tax group headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Both groups openly admit they urged supporters to show up at the Nader event. We called about 1,000 folks in the Portland area and said this would be an opportunity to show up to provide clarity in the presidential debate, said Matt Kibbe, president of CSE, who denied the the calls were coordinated with either the Bush or the Nader campaigns. Kibbe said Nader forces John Kerry to explain where he is on things.'' In its complaint, CREW also charged that the state GOP encouraged the Oregon Family Council to make the phone calls, which it said amounted to illegally conspiring with an outside group to evade a ban on state parties using soft money to send out public communications. What the Oregon Republican Party could not do directly, it could not do indirectly, the complaint said. CREW also cited comments by Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt that campaign volunteers, though not paid staffers, may have made phone calls from the campaign's office. The costs of those calls, including the preparation of phone lists and scripts, should have been reported to the FEC as an in-kind contribution from the Bush campaign to Nader, which would be illegal if it amounted to more than $5,000, the complaint said. Sloan also told CNN that she is convinced the phone banks were coordinated between the Bush campaign, the Oregon GOP and the two groups, saying it can't be a coincidence ... that they're all making the same phone calls at the same time. However, she said it is unclear whether the Nader campaign was involved. If Ralph Nader gets on the ballot, he would pull thousands of liberal votes that would otherwise go to Kerry and perhaps cause President Bush to lose the election, read one script for the phone campaign, which CREW cited in its complaint. CREW has previously filed complaints against both the Nader and Bush campaigns, alleging illegal assistance from tax-exempt corporations. Zeese, noting that the group has never moved against a Democrat, called it a partisan organization, and he accused Democrats of trying to interfere with the Nader signature drive. Democrats have been trying to persuade Nader supporters not to back his independent bid this year, arguing that it will help Bush by dividing the liberal vote in closely fought states.
election concern
Title: election concern Voting official seeks process for canceling Election Day over terrorism Friday, June 25, 2004 BY ERICA WERNER ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON - The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission. Such guidelines do not currently exist, said DeForest B. Soaries, head of the voting panel. Soaries was appointed to the federal Election Assistance Commission last year by President Bush. Soaries said he wrote to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in April to raise the concerns. ``I am still awaiting their response,'' he said. ``Thus far we have not begun any meaningful discussion.'' Spokesmen for Rice and Ridge did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Soaries noted that Sept. 11, 2001, fell on Election Day in New York City - and he said officials there had no rules to follow in making the decision to cancel the election and hold it later. Events in Spain, where a terrorist attack shortly before the March election possibly influenced its outcome, show the need for a process to deal with terrorists threatening or interrupting the Nov. 2 presidential election in America, he said. ``Look at the possibilities. If the federal government were to cancel an election or suspend an election, it has tremendous political implications. If the federal government chose not to suspend an election it has political implications,'' said Soaries, a Republican and former secretary of state of New Jersey. ``Who makes the call, under what circumstances is the call made, what are the constitutional implications?'' he said. ``I think we have to err on the side of transparency to protect the voting rights of the country.'' Soaries said his bipartisan, four-member commission might make a recommendation to Congress about setting up guidelies. ``I'm hopeful that there are some proposals already being floated. If there are, we're not aware of them. If there are not, we will probably try to put one on the table,'' he said. Soaries also said he's met with a former New York state elections director to discuss how officials there handled the Sept. 11 attacks from the perspective of election administration. He said the commission is getting information from New York documenting the process used there. ``The states control elections, but on the national scale where every state has its own election laws and its own election chief, who's in charge?'' he said. Soaries also said he wants to know what federal officials are doing to increase security on Election Day. He said security officials must take care not to allow heightened security measures to intimidate minority voters, but that local and state election officials he's talked to have not been told what measures to expect. ``There's got to be communication,'' he said, ``between law enforcement and election officials in preparation for November.'' http://www.freep.com/news/latestnews/pm20449_20040625.htm
Re: bushites and nader
Louis wrote... That's nothing in comparison to Gore inspiring more than 200,000 registered Democrats in Florida to crossover and vote for George W. Bush in the last election. The Democrats should not worry about the tiny number of Democrats who vote for Nader. They should try to figure out how to get Democrats to stop voting in massive numbers for Republicans. Bravo!
Re: the Democratic Leadership Council wing of the Green party
Michael Hoover wrote.. i posted comments yesterday about why electoral campaigns are not good vehicles for building mass movements, above article reflects those remarks... have never understood green party's desire for nader, he stiffed them in 96 by refusing to campaign, his 'party of person' campaign in 2000 failed to reach 5% minimum in votes to qualify greens for matching funds in 04... of course, he's a non (even anti) party guy and always has been, a 'common cause' type, he's never been a member of green party, his prez campaigns have not been about building a green party... Dan Scanlan writes As a longtime Green activist with both a long term view and a quick knee I have got to disagree. Nader's campaigns for President have been strategic for long term betterment. For 35 years he turned down pleas to run for president. He refused to do so because his work is in the trenches of government -- committee meetings, hearings, seminars, study groups, lobbying, the creation of legislation and the testing of it in courts. Only when American legislators were totally purchased by corporations and the doors to chambers of lawmaking were shut to the people did Nader agree to run for president. And then mainly to hammer away at the barricades erected against citizen participation in their own government. From this perspective, it becomes easier to see how Nader has used the electoral and party-building processes to work toward his ultimate goal of greater citizen participation in government. When he entered the race in 1996, the Green Party was in shambles. Actually, there were two competing factions of the Greens: The Greens/Green Party USA, non-profit organization; and numerous disconnected state and local Green party organizations who were intent on the electoral process. They fought all the time and it was very nasty, time consuming and downright boring. I hated the meetings. Not until Ralph Nader entered the race to carry the Green Party banner forward (there really wasn't a Green Party national political party per se at the time) did the chaotic green-feeling reservoirs of folks merge. Although several turf wars continued throughout the campaign -- I'm-greener-than-you-pissing-matches, actually -- numerous progressives rallied behind the voice of Nader. The 1996 campaign did not end the in-fighting of the green people. But after the election, delegates from 13 official state Green Parties (i.e., certified by the appropriate Secretaries of State) met at Middleburg VA at the farm estate where John F. Kennedy and his family lived while he was President, and created the Association of State Green Parties. Following the green tradition of finding consensus at meetings, the non-political faction was allowed to address the assembly after it voted to create the Association. (I was there as a non-voting delegate from California since the California Green Party had not yet achieved ballot status and I was one of the three people who wrote the draft mission statement for the Association founding.) The following day, Nader addressed the association and his main concern was that so much energy had gone into squabbling about stuff that didn't matter. He both congratulated the activists and chastised them for not focusing on the task, namely, getting more active in the actual machinery of government -- the hearings, the party storefronts, the lobbying for legislation, creating reports, etc. It is undeniable that when Nader, who refused to either join the Green Party or actively campaign or solicit funds but agreed to run for president as a Green Candidate, got through with the election and its immediate aftermath, people in the United States who had concern for the environment, who properly feared corporatism and who felt disenfranchised by government, actually had a place to go to do their work. Green Party activists were energized by the 1996 campaign. Since Nader did not campaign, we had to do it. At the Founding Convention of the ASGP there was table after table of homemade campaign materials -- buttons, brochures, hold-your-nose clothespins, bumper stickers (Bill and Bob Make Me Want to Ralph), posters, etc. It was a do-it-yourself campaign. It was coordinated entirely by volunteers by email. When Nader showed up on the floor at both the Democratic and Republican conventions the press pretty much ignored him. (Pacifica Radio interviewed him and I taped it, transcribed it and posted it on the Internet. Years later I took it down and immediately got an email from a high school kid who was researching the campaign and who wondered what had happened to it.) In the 2000 campaign, Nader nursed along the Green Party in another growth spurt. Although he still did not join the Green Party, he actively campaigned for its nomination and worked to get on the ballot in all 50 states. He knew he could not win. That is a given, perhaps even today. But the thrust of his campaign was to increase the awareness of the corrupting
nader to moore
Title: nader to moore Ralph Nader letter to Michael Moore: http://www.votenader.org/why_ralph/index.php?cid=54
nasty Ashcroft
OP-ED COLUMNIST Noonday in the Shade By PAUL KRUGMAN E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon ó a cyanide bomb ó big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building. Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused dirty bomber, didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened. Incidentally, if Mr. Ashcroft's intention was to keep the case low-profile, the media have been highly cooperative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage. At this point, I have the usual problem. Writing about John Ashcroft poses the same difficulties as writing about the Bush administration in general, only more so: the truth about his malfeasance is so extreme that it's hard to avoid sounding shrill. In this case, it sounds over the top to accuse Mr. Ashcroft of trying to bury news about terrorists who don't fit his preferred story line. Yet it's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he praised Southern patriots like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist? More important, is Mr. Ashcroft neglecting real threats to the public because of his ideological biases? Mr. Krar's arrest was the result not of a determined law enforcement effort against domestic terrorists, but of a fluke: when he sent a package containing counterfeit U.N. and Defense Intelligence Agency credentials to an associate in New Jersey, it was delivered to the wrong address. Luckily, the recipient opened the package and contacted the F.B.I. But for that fluke, we might well have found ourselves facing another Oklahoma City-type atrocity. The discovery of the Texas cyanide bomb should have served as a wake-up call: 9/11 has focused our attention on the threat from Islamic radicals, but murderous right-wing fanatics are still out there. The concerns of the Justice Department, however, appear to lie elsewhere. Two weeks ago a representative of the F.B.I. appealed to an industry group for help in combating what, he told the audience, the F.B.I. regards as the country's leading domestic terrorist threat: ecological and animal rights extremists. Even in the fight against foreign terrorists, Mr. Ashcroft's political leanings have distorted policy. Mr. Ashcroft is very close to the gun lobby ó and these ties evidently trump public protection. After 9/11, he ordered that all government lists ó including voter registration, immigration and driver's license lists ó be checked for links to terrorists. All government lists, that is, except one: he specifically prohibited the F.B.I. from examining background checks on gun purchasers. Mr. Ashcroft told Congress that the law prohibits the use of those background checks for other purposes ó but he didn't tell Congress that his own staff had concluded that no such prohibition exists. Mr. Ashcroft issued a directive, later put into law, requiring that records of background checks on gun buyers be destroyed after only one business day. And we needn't imagine that Mr. Ashcroft was deeply concerned about protecting the public's privacy. After all, a few months ago he took the unprecedented step of subpoenaing the hospital records of women who have had late-term abortions. After my last piece on Mr. Ashcroft, some readers questioned whether he is really the worst attorney general ever. It's true that he has some stiff competition from the likes of John Mitchell, who served under Richard Nixon. But once the full record of his misdeeds in office is revealed, I think Mr. Ashcroft will stand head and shoulders below the rest.
Re: Nader/Camejo
the radio news says that Ralph Nader has chosen Peter Camejo as his vice-presidential running mate. Camejo is good, but I don't think they should start measuring the White House for new carpets yet... They couldn't afford it anyway --there's so much crap swept under the current rug it will take a revolutionary device to pull it up. Dan Scanlan
extra money
Title: extra money One of the biggest problems facing Afghanistan's first elected post-Taliban government will be the country's illicit cultivation of opium poppies, which satisfied almost three-fourths of the world's opium demand last year. The trade, 20 times that during the Taliban's last year, brought in $2.3 billion, more than half Afghanistan's gross domestic product. Experts expect plantings to be bigger this year to a record level. (http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040615_980.html) Looks like the Bush family is back in the heroin business again.
Ray Charles, Ronald Raygun
Title: Ray Charles, Ronald Raygun In the early sixties I saw Ray Charles perform at the Hollywood Bowl. He fell off the piano bench. Aides came out, dragged him backstage and a few minutes later he returned and finished the show. Years later he said getting off cigarettes was harder than getting off heroin. The thing I always liked about Ray Charles was the fact that he was always who he seemed to be. He may have been screwed up emotionally and personally from time to time but he literally sang his way out of it, bull-dogging his way through meter and convention. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan was never who he seemed to be. The drooling press made up accolades like Teflon President and charming and the great communicator. But he was a lying front man for corporate interests even when I was bringing him into my heart as a child when he was the host of Death Valley Days and GE Theatre. By college I got it -- his job was to lie for people who couldn't lie very well. He was really good at it. Ray Charles was a victim of the drug culture. Reagan implemented it. His administration brought crack cocaine to East LA in order to fund his illegal war against the elected Sandinista government of Nicaragua with the (beneficial to corporate planet grabbers) side effect of slapping down people of color trapped in ghettos defined by white rich folks. In 1988 a fire, the 49er Fire, if was called, raged through my neighborhood in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The fire was accidentally set by a mentally retarded adult who burned his toilet paper. The burning paper got away from him and despite his frantic efforts to put it out the fire raged for days and burned out hundreds of homes. In a cosmic bit of irony, the fire raged right up to the hamlet of Smartsville, right to the boundary of property owned by the President Ronald Reagan, where it was doused. Reagan always got the lucky breaks. (When he was deregulating the beef and other food industries, he himself would only eat meat from Sheldon's organic farms.) Reagan was the guy who said (on the behalf of car dealers in Los Angeles and other myopic rich corporados who sponsored his rise to political fortune) that us plain folks ought not put up the money for people living off the government programs for people who are mentally ill or otherwise incapacitated. He spent his own later years in the dismal darkness of Alzheimer's Syndrome with round-the-clock care provided by the public largesse, a largesse he campaigned against for others all his store-bought political life. As a person whose own father died of Alzheimer's and who came face to face with the loss of a whole life's work due to the insensitivity of Post Reagan California, I am dismayed that Reagan died so soon. He should have lived longer in the agony of his own doing. Reagan's pioneering influence is this: With a subservient, drooling media, one can get elected to the highest offices of government by running against the need for the highest offices of government. He set the standard that Bush W. and Das Gropenator try to live up to today.. When Reagan was running against the hapless Jimmy Carter (in many ways the first re-incarnation of Bill Clinton) and negotiating behind the scenes with the Iranians who were holding Americans hostage, I sang a song about the situation as I saw it at the time. Of course, we now know the situation was far, far worse than I had imagined -- and I had imagined the worst. In 2001, a client of the Nevada County (CA) Mental Health Department, the brother of a Sacramento police officer, a mentally ill person with an arsenal in his home, walked into the mental health department and started firing. He then went to a local restaurant, reloaded, and fired again. Three people were killed, others maimed and traumatized for life. It seemed to me that the terror felt by my community when the shooting occurred -- schools and businesses closed, the streets emptied, folks hung by their radios -- was one and the same as the terror felt by the community when it was on fire years before. I wrote a song about it -- about how we treat our mentally impaired citizens and the damage we suffered because of how we treat them. It is one thing for a lying, evil scoundrel like Ronald Reagan to sell his soul to the corporate monsters. It is entirely a different moral issue for us citizens to succumb to the emerging celebrityocracy and give our moral well-being over to it. Shame on us, Ray Charles. Ronald Reagan. I'm a patriot-- but I'll pick my own day of mourning. Dan Scanlan Grass Valley CA Country-pickin' 'flation ©1979 Dan Scanlan There's this country-pickin' 'flation Runnin' round the nation Keepin' people poorer than they are. They got a presidential 'lection Cause such consternation By pittin' Georgia peanuts 'gainst That Hollywood candy bar. And I'm lookin' Haggard, a walkin' Travis T. No Cash is Parton my wallet, and Chet that'd Hoyt Autrey. I've stuck
old news, new take
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1231978,00.html The Guardian - June 5, 2004 I have been in torture photos, too The Abu Ghraib images are all too familiar to Irish republicans by Gerry Adams News of the ill-treatment of prisoners in Iraq created no great surprise in republican Ireland. We have seen and heard it all before. Some of us have even survived that type of treatment. Suggestions that the brutality in Iraq was meted out by a few miscreants aren't even seriously entertained here. We have seen and heard all that before as well. But our experience is that, while individuals may bring a particular impact to their work, they do so within interrogative practices authorised by their superiors. For example, the interrogation techniques which were used following the internment swoops in the north of Ireland in 1971 were taught to the RUC by British military officers. Someone authorised this. The first internment swoops, Operation Demetrius, saw hundreds of people systematically beaten and forced to run the gauntlet of war dogs, batons and boots. Some were stripped naked and had black hessian bags placed over their heads. These bags kept out all light and extended down over the head to the shoulders. As the men stood spread-eagled against the wall, their legs were kicked out from under them. They were beaten with batons and fists on the testicles and kidneys and kicked between the legs. Radiators and electric fires were placed under them as they were stretched over benches. Arms were twisted, fingers were twisted, ribs were pummelled, objects were shoved up the anus, they were burned with matches and treated to games of Russian roulette. Some of them were taken up in helicopters and flung out, thinking that they were high in the sky when they were only five or six feet off the ground. All the time they were hooded, handcuffed and subjected to a high-pitched unrelenting noise. This was later described as extra-sensory deprivation. It went on for days. During this process some of them were photographed in the nude. And although these cases ended up in Europe, and the British government paid thousands in compensation, it didn't stop the torture and ill-treatment of detainees. It just made the British government and its military and intelligence agencies more careful about how they carried it out and ensured that they changed the laws to protect the torturers and make it very difficult to expose the guilty. I have been arrested a few times and interrogated on each occasion by a mixture of RUC or British army personnel. The first time was in Palace Barracks in 1972. I was placed in a cubicle in a barracks-style wooden hut and made to face a wall of boards with holes in it, which had the effect of inducing images, shapes and shadows. There were other detainees in the rest of the cubicles. Though I didn't see them I could hear the screaming and shouting. I presumed they got the same treatment as me, punches to the back of the head, ears, small of the back, between the legs. From this room, over a period of days, I was taken back and forth to interrogation rooms. On these journeys my captors went to very elaborate lengths to make sure that I saw nobody and that no one saw me. I was literally bounced off walls and into doorways. Once I was told I had to be fingerprinted, and when my hands were forcibly outstretched over a table, a screaming, shouting and apparently deranged man in a blood-stained apron came at me armed with a hatchet. Another time my captors tried to administer what they called a truth drug. Once a berserk man came into the room yelling and shouting. He pulled a gun and made as if he was trying to shoot at me while others restrained him. In between these episodes I was put up against a wall, spread-eagled and beaten soundly around the kidneys and up between the legs, on my back and on the backs of my legs. The beating was systematic and quite clinical. There was no anger in it. During my days in Palace Barracks I tried to make a formal complaint about my ill-treatment. My interrogators ignored this and the uniformed RUC officers also ignored my demand when I was handed over to them. Eventually, however, I was permitted to make a formal complaint before leaving. But when I was taken to fill out a form I was confronted by a number of large baton-wielding redcaps who sought to dissuade me from complaining. I knew I was leaving so I ignored them and filled in the form. Some years later I was arrested again, this time with some friends. We were taken to a local RUC barracks on the Springfield Road. There I was taken into a cell and beaten for what seemed to be an endless time. All the people who beat me were in plain clothes. They had English accents. After the first initial flurry, which I resisted briefly, the beating became a dogged punching and kicking match with me as the punch bag. I was forced into the search position, palms against the walls, body at an acute angle, legs well
Re: odd bodkins on Reagan
Dan and the rest of the list, please do not send graphics to the list. It takes up enormous bandwidth. It fills up mailboxes and puts an inordinate cost on some people outside the United States. Just send a URL. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Sorry Michael. The artwork's not yet on the web. Dan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
url for odd bodkins
Title: url for odd bodkins The Odd Bodkins cartoon on Reagan is at http://www.coolhanduke.com/bodkins.html Dan
Reagan
You've seen one dead president, you've seen them all.
quotable bush
The Quotable Bush I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein. -- President Bush, meeting Iraqi amputees at the White House on May 25.
eleciton
Right now Dennis has more power than John Kerry -- he can introduce articles of impeachment in the House. And he should. Step up to the plate Dennis!! We can't wait for the November fraud. Dan Scanlan Grass Valley IMPEACHIMPEACHIMPEACHIMPEACH
Re: A US General: I Don't Care If They Are Innocent
General Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, reported that some Iraqis had been held for several months for nothing more than expressing 'displeasure or ill will' toward the American occupying forces Two weeks ago I was detained for almost two hours in the Albuquerque NM airport for expressing the same thought. Iraq is a test run for shutting down the American people. Dan Scanlan November's too late. Impeach now.
Kissinger telcons
Sender: The National Security Archive [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: NSARCHIVE [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Update: Read the Kissinger Telcons To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Security Archive Update, May 26, 2004 READ THE KISSINGER TELCONS Five years after the National Security Archive initiated legal action to compel the State Department and the National Archives to recover the transcripts of Henry Kissinger's telephone calls from his private collection at the Library of Congress, the National Archives today released approximately 20,000 declassified pages (10 cubic feet) of these historic records, spanning Kissinger's tenure from 1969 to August 1974 as national security adviser and then secretary of state to President Nixon. To celebrate the public recovery of this previously sequestered history, the National Security Archive today posted The Kissinger Telcons, the 123rd electronic briefing book in the Archive series. One highlight of the posting are ten Kissinger telcons obtained by Archive senior analyst Dr. William Burr. All ten will be officially released today, but we found copies in other, previously released, Nixon administration files, and are providing them here as a sampler of things to come. These records feature conversations with President Nixon, Motion Picture Association president Jack Valenti, and Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, among others. Later today, the Archive will post additional telcons from the new release. Today's posting also includes the full text of the finding aid to the Kissinger telcons collection, created by the Nixon Presidential Materials Staff of the National Archives and Records Administration; the National Security Archive's legal complaint (written by Lee Rubin and Craig Isenberg of the Mayer Brown law firm) and correspondence that persuaded the government to recover the telcons from Kissinger; and a side by side comparison of a Kissinger telcon and a Nixon tape of the same conversation. Please use the following link to read the Kissinger telcons: http://www.nsarchive.org __ -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
how many
Title: how many How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a light bulb? The answer is seven: 1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be replaced. 2. One to attack and question the patriotism of anyone who has questions about the light bulb. 3. One to blame the previous administration for the need of a new light bulb. 4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs. 5. One to get together with Vice President Cheney and figure out how to pay Haliburton Industries one million dollars for a light bulb. 6. One to arrange a photo-op session showing Bush changing the light bulb while dressed in a flight suit and wrapped in an American flag. 7. And, finally, one to explain to Bush the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.
correct
Title: correct HOW TO SPEAK ABOUT WOMEN AND MEN AND BE POLITICALLY CORRECT: (new 2004 version) WOMEN: 1. She is not a BABE or a CHICK - She is a BREASTED AMERICAN. 2. She is not a SCREAMER or MOANER - She is VOCALLY APPRECIATIVE. 3. She is not EASY - She is HORIZONTALLY ACCESSIBLE. 4. She is not DUMB - She is a DETOUR OFF THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY 5. She has not BEEN AROUND - She is a PREVIOUSLY ENJOYED COMPANION. 6. She is not an AIR HEAD - She is REALITY IMPAIRED. 7. She does not get DRUNK or TIPSY - She gets CHEMICALLY INCONVENIENCED. 8. She does not have BREAST IMPLANTS - She is MEDICALLY ENHANCED. 9. She does not NAG YOU - She becomes VERBALLY REPETITIVE. 10. She is not a SLUT - She is SEXUALLY EXTROVERTED. 11. She does not have MAJOR LEAGUE HOOTERS - She is PECTORALLY SUPERIOR. 12. She is not a TWO BIT WHORE - She is a LOW COST PROVIDER. MEN: 1. He does not have a BEER GUT - He has developed a LIQUID GRAIN STORAGE FACILITY. 2. He is not a BAD DANCER - He is OVERLY CAUCASIAN. 3. He does not GET LOST ALL THE TIME - He INVESTIGATES ALTERNATIVE DESTINATIONS. 4. He is not BALDING - He is in FOLLICLE REGRESSION. 5. He is not a CRADLE ROBBER - He prefers GENERATIONALLY DIFFERENTIAL RELATIONSHIPS 6. He does not get FALLING DOWN DRUNK -He becomes ACCIDENTALLY HORIZONTAL. 7. He does not act like a TOTAL ASS - He develops a case of RECTAL CRANIAL INVERSION. 8. He is not a MALE CHAUVINIST PIG - He has SWINE EMPATHY. 9. He is not afraid of COMMITMENT - He is MONOGAMOUSLY CHALLENGED 10. He is not HORNY - He is SEXUALLY FOCUSED. 11. It's not his crack you see hanging out of his pantsIt is MALE CLEAVAGE
Corporate orgasm?
okay, while we're on the subject of answering rhetorical questions, can corporations attain orgasm? Yes, with a stroke of luck on the floor. Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
Reporters' abuse
The story below heightens, once again, my concern that the electoral, political, social and sexual abuse of the people of other countries by the US government most of my life will eventually turn on the American people who, in the main, have so quietly acquiesced in the wrongdoings of the government. The Florida voting fiasco was, to me, the coming home of our destruction of the electoral process in other countries, especially Latin and South America. Today Reuters' reporters, tomorrow Sy Hersch? Dan Scanlan -- Reuters staff abused by U.S. troops in Iraq By Andrew Marshall BAGHDAD, May 18 (Reuters) - U.S. forces beat three Iraqis working for Reuters and subjected them to sexual and religious taunts and humiliation during their detention last January in a military camp near Falluja, the three said on Tuesday. The three first told Reuters of the ordeal after their release but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence they had been abused, and following the exposure of similar mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Two of the three said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anus and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture. All three said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. They said they did not want to give details publicly earlier because of the degrading nature of the abuse. The soldiers told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them and forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods. The U.S. military, in a report issued before the Abu Ghraib abuse became public, said there was no evidence the Reuters staff had been tortured or abused. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of ground forces in Iraq, said in a letter received by Reuters on Monday but dated March 5 that he was confident the investigation had been thorough and objective and its findings were sound. The Pentagon has yet to respond to a request by Reuters Global Managing Editor David Schlesinger to review the military's findings about the incident in light of the scandal over the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Asked for comment on Tuesday, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said only: There are a number of lines of inquiry under way with respect to prison operations in Iraq. If during the course of any inquiry, the commander believes it is appropriate to review a specific aspect of detention, he has the authority to do so. The abuse happened at Forward Operating Base Volturno, near Falluja, the Reuters staff said. They were detained on January 2 while covering the aftermath of the shooting down of a U.S. helicopter near Falluja and held for three days, first at Volturno and then at Forward Operating Base St Mere. The three -- Baghdad-based cameraman Salem Ureibi, Falluja-based freelance television journalist Ahmad Mohammad Hussein al-Badrani and driver Sattar Jabar al-Badrani -- were released without charge on January 5. INADEQUATE INVESTIGATION When I saw the Abu Ghraib photographs, I wept, Ureibi said on Tuesday. I saw they had suffered like we had. Ureibi, who understands English better than the other two detainees, said soldiers told him they wanted to have sex with him, and he was afraid he would be raped. Schlesinger sent a letter to Sanchez on January 9 demanding an investigation into the treatment of the three Iraqis. The U.S. army said it was investigating and requested further information. Reuters provided transcripts of initial interviews with the three following their release, and offered to make them available for interview by investigators. A summary of the investigation by the 82nd Airborne Division, dated January 28 and provided to Reuters, said no specific incidents of abuse were found. It said soldiers responsible for the detainees were interviewed under oath and none admit or report knowledge of physical abuse or torture. The detainees were purposefully and carefully put under stress, to include sleep deprivation, in order to facilitate interrogation; they were not tortured, it said. The version received on Monday used the phrase sleep management instead. The U.S. military never interviewed the three for its investigation. On February 3 Schlesinger wrote to Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying the investigation was woefully inadequate and should be reopened. The military's conclusion of its investigation without even interviewing the alleged victims, along with other inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the report, speaks volumes about the seriousness with which the U.S. government is taking this issue, he wrote. ABUSE SCANDAL The U.S. military faced international outrage this month after photographs surfaced showing U.S. soldiers
repugs schedule
TENTATIVE REPUBLICAN CONVENTION SCHEDULE New York, NY 6:00 PM Opening Prayer led by the Reverend Jerry Fallwell 6:30 PM Pledge of Allegiance 6:35 PM Burning of Bill of Rights (excluding 2nd amendment) 6:45 PM Salute to the Coalition of the Willing 6:46 PM Seminar #1: Iraq Stratergies?Voodoo/DooDoo WMD 7:30 PM First Presidential Beer Bong 7:35 PM Serve Freedom Fries 7:40 PM EPA Address #1: Mercury?It's what's for dinner! 8:00 PM Vote on which country to invade next 8:10 PM Call EMT's to revive Rush Limbaugh 8:15 PM John Ashcroft Lecture: The Homos are after your Children!! 8:30 PM Round table discussion on reproductive rights (MEN ONLY) 8:50 PM Seminar #2 Corporations: The Government of the Future 9:00 PM Condi Rice sings Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man 9:05 PM Second Presidential Beer Bong 9:10 PM EPA Address #2 Trees: The Real Cause of Forest Fires 9:30 PM Break for secret meetings 10:00 PM Second prayer led by Cal Thomas 10:15 PM Lecture by Carl Rove: Doublespeak made easy 10:30 PM Rumsfeld demonstration of how to squint and talk macho 10:35 PM Bush demonstration of trademark deer in headlights stare 10:40 PM John Ashcroft demonstrates new mandatory Kevlar chastity belt. 10:45 PM Clarence Thomas reads list of Black Republicans 10:46 PM Third Presidential Beer Bong 10:50 PM Seminar #3 Education: A Drain on our Nation's Economy 11:10 PM Hillary Clinton Piñata 11:20 PM Second Lecture by John Ashcroft: Evolutionists: The Dangerous New Cult 11:30 PM Call to EMT's to revive Rush Limbaugh again. 11:35 PM Blame Clinton 11:40 PM Laura serves milk and cookies 11:50 PM Closing Prayer led by Jesus Himself 12:00 PM Nomination of George W. Bush as Holy Supreme Planetary Overlord
Re: repugs schedule
bumper sticker seen yesterday: [picture of US flag] These Colors Don't Run the World. I saw one in Albuquerque this last week that showed Rumsfield, Bush, Cheney and Powell and had the legend, Don't swap horsemen in the middle of the apocalypse.
Re: Building a Movement That Outlasts the Occupation
If the media is actually willing to report this story, what good does it do for the left to say Ah, that's nothing, think about the prisons in the U.S., and the School of the Americas, etc.? The left has the responsibility to address and expose the long-range systemic ills. It's encouraging that the corporate press is interested in this story. But the hoopla will fade as quickly as the hoopla over the final episodes of Friends if the left doesn't hold the context. Frenzied exposure in the media of these kinds of horrors clouds other issues. I think a case can be made that the college turmoil over Nixon's bombing of Cambodia and the exposure of the Mi Lai slaughter didn't have as much to do with ending the Vietnam War as did the fact that US draftees were fragging their commanding officers, despite widespread media coverage of the first two and none of the last. The media still allows a faux-issue like the Vietnam Syndrome to be discussed as though it were meaningful because the left failed to address the larger, systemic issue, namely, the placing of one younger, poorer segment of the population in coerced jeopardy by another richer, older, whiter (but exclusive) segment. Fragging was a direct attack on that system by its very victims. The current media attention is really about getting caught and not about the fact that this kind of shit is what us Americans have built into our basic structure. Fragging made the draft (temporarily) obsolete. But the club of induction (Gen. Hershey's phrase for social engineering by the draft) was replaced by the club of economic betterment (my phrase for joining the military to get out of poverty). We've always got to give space for the corporate media to do the right thing. But we shouldn't let up on the long-range task of pushing for a more meaningful discussion (and correction) of the underlying systemic ill. The first step to recovery is, alas, admitting that we ain't who we pretend to be. Dan Scanlan
Re: Building a Movement That Outlasts the Occupation
Max wrote... At the risk of a round of raspberries I'll tell my Cambodia story. Raspberries are good for you. Thanks for the story. Dan Scanlan
Re: graduation speakers
So at graduation yesterday, Loyola Marymount University had the well-known scholar, philantropist, and Catholic, Goldie Hawn. I guess she gave what people expect, a funny speech with some commencement-speech profundities (which differ from real profundities). She got an honorary degree, though she never graduated from college. She was very nice, taking time to shake hands with a lot of the profs. However, I didn't get a chance to ask whether or not she was going to make a movie about Jesus (as last year's graduation speaker did). I understand that Grand Canyon University gave an honorary degree to Alice Cooper this year. I'm hoping that next year, we'll give one to Ozzie Ozbourne or Jessica Simpson. JD Wow. Goldie and I have the same Alma Mater! Cool. But I do have mixed feelings about a star who made her mark on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, the television program that rescued Richard Sock it to Me Nixon by poking fun at him, which made him palatable to certain American voters, i.e., those who think Bush W.'s verbal gaffes, Gerald Ford's klutziness, Bubba Clinton's failure to inhale and Ronald Reagan's mixing up of film events and real ones qualify them for national political leadership. I feel like a redwood today -- a little pithy. Dan Scanlan
Re: Building a Movement That Outlasts the Occupation
Yoshie posted... So the correct line is straight-forward: investigate the brass, the CIA, the civilian DoD leadership, and the contractors. Any problems in those areas are much more important than the perverse behavior of some individuals on the front lines. Indeed, activists ought to seize this moment of division in the right-wing ranks and exacerbate a legitimation crisis for the George W. Bush administration, rather than letting the right sacrifice individual soldiers -- victims turned victimizers on a small scale -- who are expendable in their eyes to protect the biggest war criminals of all: Inside the White House, several of Mr. Bush's aides have argued that he has little choice but to make them public. Sooner or later, they say, the images will leak out, prolonging the pain, fueling Iraqi and Arab suspicions of a Pentagon-orchestrated cover-up, and giving new life to calls for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's removal. Comment What's new? Shrub killed 152 folks on death row while governor of Texas, including the mentally retarded and those whose attorneys slept in court. His daddy bulldozed innocent bystanders into mass graves in Panama. His idea of heros -- NYPD -- jammed a toilet plunger up the ass of an arrestee. The Pentagon-orchestrated School of the Americas has taught torture techniques to third world salivators most of my adult life. The American Indian surely doesn't see anything new in the torture of home folks by Christian invaders. Personally, I'm looking for the connection between the exposure of American torture and the final installment of Friends. Dan Scanlan
Impeach
Title: Impeach "Dirty pool," says Kerry Kucinich of Ohio Launches Impeachment Bill in House Several House Republicans join effort, say shame is "too much to carry" WASHINGTON - The United States House of Representatives was thrown into a flurry of scrambled activity today when Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced a bill that would begin the impeachment of President George W. Bush. He was joined by three other Democrats and three Republicans. "Although I've been busy on the campaign trail for many months," Kucinich said at a press conference following the filing of the bill, "I've been in touch with the House enough to know that there is a swelling of shame on both sides of the aisle because of the nasty, nasty role the United States has been playing internationally under this depraved administration. It has got to stop." Kucinich cited the haphazard voting mechanisms in use around the country as one element of his decision to impeach the President. "We've become a nation of tattered ballots and dangling chads and although we have more computer programmers than any other nation, we have no way to inspect and verify the nation's electronic balloting systems. This is a grave danger to our elections and thus, our democracy," Kucinich said. "We have no way to inspect these electronic vote counting machines because the corporations that have developed the machines will not allow public scrutiny of them. They get away with this because President Bush is in collusion with them. As we saw in the last election, Bush was the only benefactor of the failure of the counting mechanisms. Democracy and the American people were the losers." Kucinich said his experience on the campaign trail showed him that "clearly the big media, the corporations and the administration are in cahoots on many dangerous levels. "We've become a nation under siege. We've become a Congress under siege. We act out of fear and not vision. We've become this way because it has been designed that way by President Bush, his father before him, and by the corporations that own them." Kucinich did not leave his own Democratic fellows without blame. "For the most part," he said, "my fellow congresspersons are in the same scramble for the same money that has corrupted Bush and his cronies. This has got to stop. November is too late. We must impeach the President now. We have no choice. None." http://www.coolhanduke/pist.html -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com attachment: P03230530
work comp deal
http://ArnoldWatch.org Weblog April 14, 2004 7:45 pm The Real Workers' Comp Deal by Doug Heller ArnoldWatch hears that the real deal in Sacramento has nothing to do with the language of the workers' comp bill itself but with a political agreement on another measure. Tipsters tell us that in exchange for Democratic support on Arnold's version of the workers' comp law, Arnold will agree not to fight to overturn SB 2 -- the 2003 law mandating that many California businesses provide health insurance to employees. SB 2 will be on the November ballot as a referendum. In addition to keeping the Action Hero out of the health care fight, the deal would keep the threatened workers' comp initiative off the ballot. This would allow the labor unions and Democratic Party supporters of SB 2 to focus all their money on winning the health care referendum in November, without having to spend cash on workers' comp. Of course, the Chamber of Commerce, which led the drive to repeal SB 2 will also be able to focus its resources on the SB 2 fight. Arnold knows that it will be much easier for the Chamber of Commerce to defeat SB 2 at the ballot without his help, than it will be for him and the Chamber to get the voters to pass their confusing, overreaching and extremely long workers' comp initiative. For Arnold, this deal provides one sure victory for him and gets him out of a dicey debate in November. If, instead, Arnold had to fight for the workers' comp initiative, he would be stuck trying to defend a proposal that, according to its official title Permits injured employee treatment only by employer-approved physician. Limits right to obtain second medical opinion. Arnold knows that forcing Californians to go to the company doctor with no second opinion will be even harder to sell than Red Sonja. Unfortunately, the real beneficiaries of this ultra-insider deal are not California businesses or injured workers but Arnold's insurance company donors. In the reportedly 177 page workers' comp proposal that will be voted on before anybody has time to even read the whole thing, insurance companies, which have spiked premiums to historic levels, are not regulated at all. Read more at http://www.arnoldwatch.org
Re: John Kerry statement on Iraq
A Strategy for Iraq By John F. Kerry While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. Apparently, he doesn't know me. Dan Scanlan
Re: religion and US politics
[how many electoral votes does the Holy Spirit have?] You'll have to take this up with the Supreme Court. Dan Scanlan
Re: American flags
My Navajo friend, a well-educated former Catholic priest, tells me that his family's stories include many in which his ancestors were led to believe that if they stand around the flagpole when the federal troops come in they would be safe. A ploy, of course, to get them all in one place where they could be easy targets. The flurry of flags after 9/11 struck me as belligerant, Pavlovian and rude -- if not commercial. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon as military targets aren't necessarily the American people, are they? In many ways the American people are innocent, dumbfounded bystanders, rallying around a flag believing there's some safety in it. Proyect's remarking about flag pins stopping conversations makes me wonder if the peace pin on my own lapel halts conversations the same way. I wear it because I think it's important that people see something other than flags, that there's another side. Dan Scanlan -- --- IMPEACHMENT: BRING IT ON NOW! NOVEMBER COULD BE TOO LATE. -- END OF THE TRAIL SALOON Alternate Sundays 6-8am GMT (10pm-midnight PDT) http://www.kvmr.org I uke, therefore I am. -- Cool Hand Uke I log on, therefore I seem to be. -- Rodd Gnawkin I claim, therefore you believe. -- Dan Ratherthan Visit Cool Hand Uke's Lava Tube: http://www.coolhanduke.com
one to watch
Title: one to watch from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/mar2004/meji-m24.shtml Citing killing of civilians, lies: US soldier refuses to return to Iraq By Jeff Riley 24 March 2004 A Florida National Guard soldier returned to his base of deployment at Fort Stewart, Georgia, to face charges for desertion after refusing to return to duty in Iraq to serve as, in his words, "an instrument of violence" in an "oil-driven war." The incident has provoked disquiet within the military establishment, feeding concern over the morale of US occupation troops. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a 28-year-old native of Nicaragua, turned himself in to military authorities at Hanscom Air Force Base, outside of Boston, on March 15, seeking conscientious objector status. He spent five months on the run after serving in Iraq from April 2003 until last October, when he came home on two-week's leave and refused to return for redeployment October 16. Among his reasons for going AWOL, he said, were his witnessing of incidents in which Iraqi civilians were killed by US troops. Mejia is one of about 7,500 troops who fail to return to their units each year from a force of about 1.4 million. There have been about 600 soldiers who have gone AWOL from obligations in Iraq in particular, but he is believed to be the first to give himself up. Hours before handing himself over, Mejia gave a press conference at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, Massachusetts. He issued a statement to the press, in which he declared: "I'm saying no to war. I went to Iraq-I was an instrument of violence-and now I've decided to be an instrument for peace. My conscience-I could not continue to do the things that I was doing in Iraq. This war, I'm completely against it because it's an oil-motivated war. I don't think that any soldier who ever signed to be in the military, signed to go halfway across the world to invade and occupy a nation to take their oil or any other natural resource We were all lied to when we were told that we were looking for weapons of mass destruction or we were going to fight terrorism." Mejia is now awaiting a decision from commanding officers on the charges that he will face. If his application for CO status is denied, he faces a court-martial that could carry a sentence of five years imprisonment for desertion and an additional five years for "missing a movement to avoid hazardous duty." This would be followed by a dishonorable discharge that would end all benefits for the eight-year veteran and possible deportation. Referring to the potential penalties for his action, Mejia stated, "I'm prepared to go to prison because I'll have a clear conscience Whatever sacrifice I have to make, I have to go there." Camilo Mejia moved from Nicaragua to the US when he was 18 to live with his mother, Maria Castillo. He is the son of Carlos Mejia Godoy, the renowned singer from Managua and former cultural minister for the Sandinista government, whose music and poetry symbolized the struggle of the Nicaraguan people against US military intervention in that country. Mejia joined the military one year after arriving in the US. He later explained that he did so because "I wanted to be part of this nation, and the military was at the very heart of the United States. I was very young and was just starting to form my identity, values and principles." He served three years of active Army duty and was a National Guard infantryman for five years, which helped to pay his college tuition. He was entering his final semester as a psychology student at the University of Miami when his unit, C Company, 1-124 INF of the 53rd Infantry Brigade, was called up for pre-mobilization combat training in Fort Stewart. Mejia described training at Fort Stewart, where he served as a squad leader, in terms of a sped-up assembly line "merely intended to make our unit deployable." He explained: "A soldier is not supposed to deploy if he or she doesn't pass a physical exam. I knew a soldier whose hearing had been impaired after many years' service in the artillery. But this didn't matter; they checked the 'pass' box for hearing on his medical form. Another requirement was that we qualify with our rifles. After several attempts at the firing range, many soldiers still couldn't qualify but they were all judged to be qualified." In describing the war in Iraq, Mejia drew attention to what he said was the callousness of the commanding officers and their disregard for the lives of both US troops and Iraqi civilians. In a statement to the Associated Press, he described an ambush on his squad in the central Iraqi town of Ar Ramadi last May that began with a bomb exploding in front of their lead Humvee. "Prior to this attack I had briefed my squad on what I understood to be Standard Operating Procedure, which was that if we were ambushed we should haul ass while returning fire with our weapons," he said. "Following the blast, bullets rained down on us from both sides of the road as
not good for gander
=== THE DAILY MIS-LEAD http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23197 === BUSH MARKETS BURMESE PRODUCTS; EVADES OWN TRADE BAN According to a new report, President Bush's official campaign is selling clothing made in Burma - a country whose goods Bush banned for sale in the U.S. because of their awful human rights, narcotics and sex trafficking record. According to Newsday, the merchandise sold on www.georgewbushstore.com includes a $49.95 fleece pullover, embroidered with the Bush-Cheney '04 logo and bearing a label stating it was made in Burma, now Myanmar. (1) The decision by the president's campaign to defy its own embargo directly contradicts the president's pledge to enforce existing trade laws. Just this week the president said Americans need to be treated fairly and pledged to make sure the playing field is level on trade. (2) But his decision to market Burmese textile products evades laws that prevent American workers from having to compete with Burmese workers who have no minimum wage, human rights or labor protections. Since Bush was elected, thousands of textile jobs have been lost -- particularly in the South - and many have questioned whether the Administration is adequately enforcing trade laws. (3) On top of evading his own trade laws, the president's effective endorsement of Burmese goods means his campaign is marketing products from a country the State Department has repeatedly condemned for human rights abuses (4) and that the Treasury Department has cited for laundering money from illegal narcotics dealers (5). Just last year, the president told the United Nations it needed to more seriously address international sex slavery, saying, there's a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable. (6) But his own campaign is now marketing products from a country that experts cite as one of the leaders in international sex trafficking. (7) Sources: 1. Bush campaign gear made in Burma, Newsday, 03/18/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23198. 2. President Discusses Health Access, 03/16/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23199. 3. 4,000 textile jobs lost in 2003, Charleston Post and Courier, 01/14/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23200. 4. Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Burma, US Department of State, 02/25/2004, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23201. 5. States News Service, 03/04/2004. 6. President Bush Addresses United Nations General Assembly, 09/23/2003, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23202. 7. Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation: Burma/Myanmar, http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23194. Visit Misleader.org for more about Bush Administration distortion. -- http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=2010620l=23195
Re: Nader
Louis wrote I was no Dean supporter, but at least with Dean you would have had a fight. Kerry is just too much of a centrist and a patrician to really mix it up. It seems to me that Kerry's anti-war activities in the early 70's was a safe deviation into sense, to steal from Alexander Pope. Dan Scanlan
Nader
I've never heard Nader speak, so I don't know if he's boring or not. But what was all that I heard in 2000 about large groups of college-age kids being excited by Nader? inquiring minds want to know. I was able to catch him in Middleburg VA at the founding of the Associated State Green Parties in 1996, and in Sacramento and Chico CA in 2000. He's very compelling, funny and scholarly, in my opinion. When he's finished, you get the sense it is only because time ran out, not because he ran out of things to say. Dan Scanlan
Re: FW: Today's Papers: Putin
The Russian word for irony is ironiya. The word for iron is zheleznoye. So no pun. I wasn't sure if I smelt one or not. Scanlan
more proud to be American
An article from the Christian Peacemaker Teams' newsletter, Signs of the Times http://.www.cpt.org Iraq: Retribution - The Order of the Day In hopes of gaining greater access to detainees held by U.S. forces, three Iraqi human rights lawyers from the Organization of Human Rights (OHR) tried to open conversations with Colonel Nate Sassaman at the military base near Balad on Jan. 12. They asked CPTers (Christian Peacemaker Team members) to accompany them. During the meeting, the lawyers raised concerns about abusive actions on the part of soldiers from Sassaman's unit last November. (His troops opened fire on a car carrying six Iraqi civilians, which then burst into flames. When one passenger tried to escape from the car, a solder chased him down and threw him back into the burning vehicle. All six Iraqis died in the attack.) The day right after the Jan. 12 meeting, Sassaman's unit staged a pre-dawn raid in the village of one of the OHR lawyers, Mohannad, who was present at the meeting. Mohannad, his five brothers and about 15 others were detained. Later that morning, Mohannad's father and OHR lawyers Sami Al Azawi, who also attended the meeting, went to see Colonel Sassaman about the detainees. Sassaman refused to deliver the epilepsy medications or warm clothes they brought for those in detention. Mohannad and his brothers were released at 9:00 p.m. that same night. They will not discuss the details of their detention publicly for fear of further reprisals from U.S. soldiers.
embedded journalists
Title: embedded journalists U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny By Robert Pear The New York Times Monday 15 March 2004 WASHINGTON, March 14 - Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines. The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8. The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting. But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government. Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia. Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The pharmacist says the new law helps you better afford your medications, and the customer says, It sounds like a good idea. Indeed, the pharmacist says, A very good idea. The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television story package. In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details. The reporter then explains the benefits of the new law. Lawyers from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, discovered the materials last month when they were looking into the use of federal money to pay for certain fliers and advertisements that publicize the Medicare law. In a report to Congress last week, the lawyers said those fliers and advertisements were legal, despite notable omissions and other weaknesses. Administration officials said the television news segments were also a legal, effective way to educate beneficiaries. Gary L. Kepplinger, deputy general counsel of the accounting office, said, We are actively considering some follow-up work related to the materials we received from the Department of Health and Human Services. One question is whether the government might mislead viewers by concealing the source of the Medicare videos, which have been broadcast by stations in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states. Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source. Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said there was nothing nefarious about the television materials, which he said had been distributed to stations nationwide. Under federal law, he said, the government is required to inform beneficiaries about changes in Medicare. The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector, Mr. Keane said. Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools. But Democrats disagreed. These materials are even more disturbing than the Medicare flier and advertisements, said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. The distribution of these videos is a covert attempt to manipulate the press. Mr. Lautenberg, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and seven other members of Congress requested the original review by the accounting office. In the videos and advertisements, the government urges beneficiaries to call a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-MEDICARE. People who call that number can obtain recorded information about prescription drug benefits if they recite the words Medicare improvement. Documents from the Medicare agency show why the administration is eager to advertise the benefits of the new law, on radio and television, in newspapers and on the Internet. Our consumer research has shown that beneficiaries are confused about the Medicare Modernization Act and uncertain about what it means for them, says one document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to
Makes a fellow proud to be an American
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=14042696method=full; siteid=50143 Mar 12 2004 WORLD EXCLUSIVE Mirror.co.uk MY HELL IN CAMP X-RAY By Rosa Prince and Gary Jones A BRITISH captive freed from Guantanamo Bay today tells the world of its full horror - and reveals how prostitutes were taken into the camp to degrade Muslim inmates. Jamal al-Harith, 37, who arrived home three days ago after two years of confinement, is the first detainee to lift the lid on the US regime in Cuba's Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta. The father-of-three, from Manchester, told how he was assaulted with fists, feet and batons after refusing a mystery injection. He said detainees were shackled for up to 15 hours at a time in hand and leg cuffs with metal links which cut into the skin. Their cells were wire cages with concrete floors and open to the elements - giving no privacy or protection from the rats, snakes and scorpions loose around the American base. He claims punishment beatings were handed out by guards known as the Extreme Reaction Force. They waded into inmates in full riot-gear, raining blows on them. Prisoners faced psychological torture and mind-games in attempts to make them confess to acts they had never committed. Even petty breaches of rules brought severe punishment. Medical treatment was sparse and brutal and amputations of limbs were more drastic than required, claimed Jamal. A diet of foul water and food up to 10 years out-of-date left inmates malnourished. But Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees. Prisoners who had never seen an unveiled woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies. The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation. Jamal said: I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away. I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother. It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block. Jamal added: The whole point of Guantanamo was to get to you psychologically. The beatings were not as nearly as bad as the psychological torture - bruises heal after a week - but the other stuff stays with you. HE was talking from a secret location after being reunited with his family. The website designer, a convert to Islam, had gone to Pakistan in October 2001, a few weeks after September 11, to study Muslim culture. He accidentally strayed into Afghanistan - believing he was being driven to Turkey - and was arrested as a spy, perhaps because of his British passport. He was held in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and fell into US hands. Now Jamal bears the scars of Guantanamo. He stoops into a hunch as he walks because the shackles that bound him were too short. As a punishment, inmates would be confined so tightly they would be forced to lie in a ball for hours. During lengthy interrogation, they would be tethered to a metal ring on the floor. Jamal said: Sometimes you would be chained up on the floor with your hands and feet actually bound together. One of my friends told me he was kept like that for 15 hours once. Recreation meant your legs were untied and you walked up and down a strip of gravel. In Camp X-Ray you only got five minutes but in Delta you walked for around 15 minutes. Jamal said victims of the Extreme Reaction Force were paraded in front of cells. It was a horrible sight and it was a frequent sight. He said one unit used force-feeding to end a hunger strike by 70 per cent of the 600 inmates. The strike started after a guard deliberately kicked a copy of the Koran. Rice and beans was the usual diet and the water was filthy. Jamal added: In Camp X-Ray it was yellow and in Delta it was black - the colour of Coca-Cola. We had it piped through with a tap in each 'cage' but they would often turn the water off as punishment. They would shut off the water before prayers so we couldn't wash ourselves according to our religion. The food was terrible as well, up to 10 years out-of-date. They would open a hatch and shove it through a section at a time. We had porridge and something they called 'like-milk', which was disgusting and 'like-tea' and a piece of fruit. The fruit had been frozen and pounded with chemicals. An apple might look red but there was waxy white stuff all over it and inside it would be black and brown. They would play tricks on people by denying them things - you might be the only person on your block who didn't get any bread. I prided myself on never asking them for anything. I
froth and leering
Bush's disturbing sleeping disorder By Hunter S. Thompson The national news was crowded with big stories this week, and most of them turned out to be somehow joined at the hip with major league Sports -- especially Football and its sinister connections with tainted money and naked women. It was shocking. This is horrible news, I said to Anita, as Janet Jackson's tortured right nipple was rubbed in our face for the 55th time in three days. Nobody remembers the final score in Houston, but we ALL witnessed the shameless quasi-naked sight of that breast and SM-style nipple shield. More evidence that the President may be losing the fight. It was like having football and porno all at once, with no holds barred ... Or that's what they said on TV, anyway. CBS News Wizard Ed Bradley called it a magic moment for show business. But not in the White House. George Bush went out of his way to announce formally that he went to sleep long before the end of the first half. What kind of all-American boy would say a stupid thing like that while he's running for re-election? Only a fool would deliberately insult the whole Football Nation, at a nervous time when polls show his Job Approval Rating plunging below 50 percent for the first time since he took office in January of 2001. That is like stabbing yourself in the back while you're preparing to fight for your life on a street corner. It is dumb, and so is the dingbat who told Bush to say it. Many things are disturbing these days. We live in ugly times, and some people and institutions are losing their grip. The list is long, from Janet Jackson to Howard Dean to the city of Boston and the disgusting sex scandal at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Some people got rich from it all, but not many. A-Rod and the Yankees were big winners, along with George Steinbrenner; and the surging Presidential ambitions of Mass. Sen. John Kerry, who already leads George Bush (the younger) in most Presidential polls. And this is only the middle of February. We still have six months to kill before Election Day, and that is a lifetime in a business where the difference between living and dying is usually a matter of hours. This is no time for the leader of the free world to be falling asleep at massively-popular sporting events. He is already trailing heavily in polls among football fans and young males who would do anything to see a naked female nipple during halftime at the Super Bowl. That is a hell of a lot of eligible voters to insult when your chances of living in the White House this time next year are less than 50-50. Was he drunk? Does he fear the sight of an uncovered nipple? Was he lying? Does he believe in his heart that there are more evangelical Christians in this country than football fans and sex-crazed yoyos with unstable minds? Is he really as dumb as he looks and acts? These are all unsatisfactory questions at a time like this. Is it possible that he has already abandoned all hope of getting re-elected? Or does he plan to cancel the Election altogether by declaring a national military emergency with terrorists closing in from all sides, leaving him with no choice but to launch a huge bomb immediately? All these things are possible, unfortunately, in a White House that is drowning in it's own failures. Desperate men do desperate things, and stupid men do stupid things. We are in for a desperately stupid summer. But so what? March Madness is just around the corner; and after that comes the Stanley Cup and the long-running NBA playoffs. It's really not so bad at all, is it.
observations on corporate
Seems to me that the relevance of personhood for corporations is that corporations are granted the rights of free speech that are given to corporeal beings (individual humans), but they are not expected to exhibit the responsibility for their speech or actions in the same way as humans. True, corporations are comprised of individuals acting in consort, and are not fictional. But they are not real in the sense of individual humans, either. When was the last time that the management, directors, shareholders, vendors and lawyers of a corporation incarcerated en masse for murder or treason? Dan Scanlan
