January 12, 2004

  • Support the lawsuit of 911 widow Ellen Mariani. 911forthetruth.com.
  • Bush's opposition for the Republican nomination for president could be an irritating thorn in his side, John Buchanan, 911 Truth Candidate, is being well received in New Hampshire, a state that is small enough that a candidate can get out and meet substantial numbers of people and old-fashioned grassroots democratic political action can have an effect. Buchanan is bringing up the issues Bush has not yet had to face about 911. Concord Monitor.
  • Wesley Clark: "I think the two greatest lies that have been told in the last three years are: You couldn't have prevented 9/11 and there's another one that's bound to happen..." Clark said a Clark administration would protect America. "If I'm president of the United States, I'm going to take care of the American people," Clark told the Concord Monitor editorial board. "We are not going to have one of these incidents." Concord Monitor
  • Kevin Phillips, author of Wealth and Democracy, interviewed on Buzzflash, discusses his new book "American Dynasty" about the Bush crime family. "Well, the consorting with shady, nasty characters goes back quite a long way. As I mentioned, George H. Walker was playing games in Germany and Russia in the 1920s, and the U.S. government was trying to stop some of what he was doing. By the 1930s, you had Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current President, who was, for some time, a director of several companies that had relationships with Germany after it had gone under the control of the Nazis. You can't really say what was involved in those relationships, but he was a director of something called the Union Banking Corporation, which was connected to the Thyssen steel interests in Germany. Certainly there were questions about whether it was a world bank and a money laundry, and when you see some of those connections, you have to say: well, all these ties to BCCI and the rest of these operations -- rogue S & Ls that were tied to the Contras in Florida and what-have-you -- well, it's a family treasure at this point... In terms of the obvious big scandals to which President Bush senior was connected -- we're talking about the October surprise in 1980, in which the Republicans were said to have had relations with Iran to keep the American hostages held in Iran from being freed in time for the election [in order to help Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush get elected]. Then you go to Iran-Contra, where Iran would be supplied with arms in order that Iran use its influence for hostages being held in Lebanon in 1984, and for a while after that. And then Iraqgate was the involvement of George H.W. Bush, in building up Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. Now all of these things were becoming issues during the presidential term of George H.W. Bush. And when he was defeated in 1992 -- and it was an amazing rejection of a President who had a 90 percent job approval rating at the end of the first Iraq war -- but as people began to see all of these things, as they talked about, it became just a devastating counterpoint: that he had been involved in illicit arms deals, and in building up Saddam Hussein, perhaps stealing the 1980 election. These are all major, major things. But he was defeated in 1992. And at that point, people just said: Aw, well, he's gone. Well, he was gone, but his son is back."
  • Another great Buzzflash interview: Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic candidate advocating withdrawal from Iraq.

    GOOD LINKS

    January 13, 2004

    How I Spent My Lunch Break

  • "War Lies Unravel" by William Rivers Pitt on Truthout.
  • Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon insider, expresses her outrage at the Bush administration's ravaging of the armed services. American Conservative.
  • Bush was demanding a reason to invade Iraq in January 2001. "It makes clear that hints of a link between Saddam and the 11 September attacks, repeatedly made by administration officials in the run-up to the war but never substantiated, were a political convenience, not the driving motivation behind the invasion. And it also poses a considerable challenge to the official version of history, which has sought to portray Mr Bush as undergoing a near-religious conversion after 11 September from a meek peacetime leader to a man with a global mission to stamp out evil." The Independent.
  • According to The Guardian, "The US presidential race is already remarkable for one thing - people are reasserting their political power. Dean's bid for the Democratic nomination is more than just an electoral campaign. It has all the attributes of a movement -- a bottom-up surge of like-minded, motivated people who have discovered they all have something in common and are now mobilising in order to act on it. Around the country strangers are meeting in towns and cities in their tens and twenties, donating money in $10 and $20 bills and coming away with not just posters and badges but "to do" lists. 'Participation in politics is increasingly based on the chequebook, as money replaces time,' argued Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. Dean has managed to get people giving time and money.
  • "American anger finds a prophet," says the Toronto Star.
  • "A Study Published by Army Criticizes War on Terror's Scope," says The Washington Post. "The report, by Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is 'near the breaking point.'"
  • The 9/11 Commission's getting an extension could be "a political headache for Bush if the final 9/11 report is issued in the summer," says New York Daily News. "Kean, a Republican, has said the report will name names and point to failures in the Bush administration. The White House proposed greenlighting the extension if the commission would agree to release the report after the November election, but then officials pulled back the offer, Newsweek reported yesterday."
  • Overextended pilots may quit military, says the Sydney Morning Herald. "'There is no question that the force is stretched too thin,' said David Segal, director of the Centre for Research on Military Organisation at the University of Maryland. 'We have stopped treating the reserves as a force in reserve. Our volunteer army is closer to being broken today than ever before in its 30-year history.'"
  • The administration's reaction to Paul O'Neill's ratting on them? To try to intimidate and harass him, of course. What would you expect? The Treasury Department is "probing" him. Associated Press.

    January 14, 2004

    The Nerve

    The nerve of Newsweek to write "Refereeing in Hell -- GIs are dying. Rival factions are turning on each other. After freeing Iraq, can we keep it from coming apart?" The stinking lies that are implicit and perpetuated in that statement are enraging.

    Let's be real, here. The U.S. isn't refereeing anything. The U.S. is an invader, an aggressor. This Civil War you speak of as if the US just stumbled into it as it was "freeing" Iraq is because of the U.S. You tear a country down, pulverize it with bombs, terrorize, restrict, and kill the people, force them into a state of chaos where they have to fight for every inch of survival, and then act as though you are "refereeing" while you are "freeing." This sets the stage for Americans to pull out in such a way as to leave the country "bombed back to the stone age" as George Senior promised. They got their oil, what do they care what happens to those people, to their culture -- the culture of the country where western civilization is often said to have begun.

    Don't play games. The U.S. didn't free anyone, or eliminate any threats or weapons of mass destruction, or even eliminate any tyrants the regime didn't previously prop up. The U.S. achieved its objective of turning Iraq into an American base, a beachhead in the Middle East. At least it has achieved that temporarily. Because the Arab world also understands this fact clearly, is as determined to thwart it as the neocons are to carry it out. And in the long-run, they may prove to be much more powerful in their home region.

    Newsweek should be ashamed of itself.

    Here are some links that caught my eye today...

  • Soros pins hope on defeating Bush. Atlanta Journal Constitution
  • Soros turns up heat on Bush. World Net Daily
  • Secret arrests after 9/11 will stay secret. Miami Herald
  • Bush struggles for support in Latin America. Forbes

    January 15, 2004

  • Well, that does cast a different light on things. According to The Center for Public Integrity, General Wesley Clarke is a registered lobbyist.
  • How would you feel? " U.S. soldiers in Iraq are killing themselves at a high rate despite the work of special teams sent to help troops deal with combat stress, the Pentagon's top doctor said Wednesday." See Yahoo
  • Yippee! The forces are rallying! Jimmy Carter offers help to Dean. Reuters.

    January 16, 2004

    Time For Them To Go

  • Senator Kennedy gave a blockbuster speech at the Center for American Progress in D.C: "Nowhere is the danger to our country and to our founding ideals more evident than in the decision to go to war in Iraq," he said. "Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill has now revealed what many of us have long suspected. Despite protestations to the contrary, the President and his senior aides began the march to war in Iraq in the earliest days of the Administration, long before the terrorists struck this nation on 9/11."

    The times are unprecedented, and there is a single-minded activism rising up among the population at large. The movement is becoming visible by the actions of people who are well known. More famous people have taken emphatic political stands than at any time in living memory. The reaction is representative of the extremity of the danger the world now faces. We see powerful endorsements coming early in the season. A sense of determination from all quarters. But it's not all self-serving, competing for the spoils of power. It's not just politics as usual. There is widespread agreement on one thing. Bush has to go.

    There is a power in the land that is stirring, an equal and opposite reaction to a drive of a particular faction to take over the world and establish an autocratic world government. Ted Kennedy could be yet to make his real mark in history. Kennedy is one of the visible ones, but for everyone, it is a time for heroic acts. It is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. These are the times that try men's souls, that force acts of courage and leadership from men and women who would rather sit back and enjoy the fruits of life.

    Check out Kennedy's whole speech at Truthout. It's quite a piece of work. There's a lot of information in it. It's a recent history lesson. It seems that politicians are sensing that people are ready to hear some things they were deaf to before. Families are being hit by the death of a son or daughter who were in the reserves to pay for career training, who signed up to defend their country, but not to fight wars that are about nothing but whatever "president" Bush says they are. "What's the difference?" he said, whether there were really weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as he screamed for months, or whether it was all a crock of shit. People are waking up to this when they lose a family member to a fiasco without even a coherent vision statement.

    Others are losing their livelihoods, their support systems and their financial well being as a result of the corrupt practices of the very corporations who finance the politicians' careers and in turn get all the government's mechanisms of power to work for them. The discontent is spreading, and with it, the awareness of the ride America has been taken for.

    The time has come when public awareness of the catastrophes of corruption and fanaticism of Bush and the Neocons is reaching critical mass. People are now talking openly about things they were afraid to whisper about two years ago. The fairly obvious questions about the failure of defense on 911, about the phony war in Iraq are beginning to find a receptive audience. Across middle America people are being thrust into a clear awareness that the government has been hijacked by high criminals and we are all in danger.

    Thus Spake Kennedy:

    I believe that this Administration is indeed leading this country to a perilous place. It has broken faith with the American people, aided and abetted by a Congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price, even the price of distorting the truth. On issue after issue, they have moved brazenly to impose their agenda on America and on the world. They have pursued their goals at the expense of urgent national and human needs and at the expense of the truth. America deserves better.

    The Administration and the majority in Congress have put the state of our union at risk, and they do not deserve another term in the White House or in control of Congress.

    I do not make these statements lightly. I make them as an American deeply concerned about the future of the Republic if the extremist policies of this Administration continue.

    By far the most extreme and most dire example of this Administration's reckless pursuit of its single-minded ideology is in foreign policy. In its arrogant disrespect for the United Nations and for other peoples in other lands, this Administration and this Congress have squandered the immense goodwill that other nations extended to our country after the terrorist attacks of September 11th. And in the process, they made America a lesser and a less respected land.

    Also check out "The North Adams Transcript" " -- Kennedy an ally to family of killed soldier."

  • The Real War -- For a picture of the awful truth, see "Detained, Bludgeoned and Electrocuted into a Coma" by Dahr Jamail. See also "Hideous Evidence US Military Tortures Iraqis With Electricity" also by Dahr Jamail.
  • The Vise of Terror (The US Needs a Saner Leader) -- Blacklisted Journalist.
  • More on the Bush-Hinckley-World Vision connection, see Spitfire List of For The Record programs by Dave Emory. Young John Hinckley was a member of the American Nazi party, founded by George Lincoln Rockwell, but this is one of many striking aspects of this crime that never surfaced in mainstream stories about Hinckley. The young Nazi became a lone nut.

    THINGS TO SHARE

    PIECES OF LIFE

    January 17, 2004

  • Dr. Wayne Dyer endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president. Click to listen. When was the last time Wayne Dyer made a political endorsement? This is not politics as usual. This is going to be a time when people are not going to want to sit it out on the sidelines.
  • Gore said Bush was a "moral coward" who abandoned the public interest to accommodate his financial contributors. Newsday did make one factual error, however, in saying that Gore "lost" the election to Bush in 2000.
  • Go Gore! New York Times columnist Bob Herbert interviewed Gore when he was in Manhattan to give a talk at the Beacon Theater. Now that Gore is no longer a candidate for president, he no longer has to strive to appear like "someone you'd like to party with," and can go ahead and be a "wonk" or a "know it all" and can actually teach a few of us a few things. And who cares what the media say about him? Gore is the man he should have been in 2000, not trying to please so much anymore, just saying what he has to say. A bitter defeat, not in the polls obviously, has tempered him. He too has a contribution to make and is apparently not holding back.

    January 18, 2004

  • A note from John Judge:

    Compare this quote to the article excerpted below. Enough said? JJ

    "Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

    --James Madison - 4th President of the US - 1793

    Now here's the article, published on Thursday, January 15, 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle Cheney's Grim Vision: Decades of War by James Sterngold

    LOS ANGELES -- In a forceful preview of the Bush administration's expansionist military policies in this election year, Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday painted a grim picture of what he said was the growing threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack in the United States and warned that the battle, like the Cold War, could last generations.

    Cheney devoted the half-hour speech to a frightening characterization of the war on terrorism and the new kind of mobilization he said it demanded. He sounded the alarm about the increasing prospects of a major new terrorist attack and the extraordinary responses that are required. While many of his remarks echoed past comments by the president and senior officials, Cheney struck a surprisingly dour note and suggested only an administration of proven ability could manage the dramatic overhaul necessary for the nation's security apparatus. Cheney said Bush was establishing, as Truman had, a new structure for a new long-term war and spreading the military into new areas of the globe. "On Sept. 11, 2001, our nation made a fundamental commitment that will take many years to see through," Cheney said.

  • On Sept. 11, 2001, I was watching live coverage of ongoing catastrophe on a New York TV station at the moment World Trade Center 7 collapsed. It went down as smoothly as the smoothest controlled demolition ever. It took moments and it was flat as a pancake. It was never impacted by a Boeing 747, like the other buildings that came down like perfect demolitions. It was one of so many things that day that defied logic, was incomprehensible. Now over two years later it remains incomprehensible, but in a different way, as the official explanation of the uninvestigated crime of 911 crumbles bit by bit. See serendipity.li for some interesting recent developments in that little mystery. "In a stunning and belated development concerning the attacks of 9/11 Larry Silverstein, the controller of the destroyed WTC complex, stated plainly in a PBS documentary that he and the FDNY decided jointly to demolish the Solomon Bros. building, or WTC 7, late in the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001," writes Jeremy Baker.

  • Wesley Clark: "I think we're at risk with our democracy. I think we're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame." See the New York Times

  • John Buchanan, the Republican running against Bush in the primaries on the 911 Truth platform. See New York Press.

    THINGS TO SHARE

    January 19, 2004

    Imperial Media

  • CBS "rejected" MoveOn.org's anti-Bush ad for the SuperBowl. Even though MoveOn was ready to pay the bucks, CBS made a decision that it didn't want that anti-Bush ad from that grassroots organization that has created enough political and financial clout to go up against the Big Guys. Who are the CBS decision makers if not The Big Guys themselves? To make sure there is no doubt of that fact, CBS has made this political decision, based on the presumption that it's a private company and can do anything it wants.

    But it forgets that the media channel itself is only licensed to CBS. The airwaves are a public resource, a commons. Corporations who control these airways have squirmed their way out of the requirement that they devote a certain amount of their broadcast time to public service programming. The public needs to reclaim the public airways and pull out the corporate agents who are in control at the FCC and are now presiding over a party to divvy up to a handful of corporations the small bit of the media market that is not already controlled by them.

    Also you won't see a lot of coverage of this event in the corporate media. Check out Google News. Not a trace of it. Do a search. You see a couple of links to subscription-only papers. This bit of information is not seeing any light in terms of news coverage either. That, after all would defeat the purpose of suppressing the ads in the first place. It's all like one big phone company. If you don't like it take your business elsewhere, but there is no elsewhere. A cartel consisting of several megacorporations owns practically the entire media business.

  • A CBS poll finds Bush approval numbers sinking after a short bounce after the capture of Saddam Hussein. That week, the week of December 20, Bush's approval ratings shot up to 60%. Only a few weeks later they have dropped 10%. Another CBS report showed that 45% said they would vote for a Democrat and 43% said they would vote for Bush.
  • Ken Lay told his lawyer "to express to the public at large the sense of betrayal that he feels relative to what occurred yesterday." What occurred was that former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, which will send to him to prison for up to 10 years and cost $24 million in restitution. Lay, according to his lawyer, of course had no knowledge of any wrongdoing. The former chief executive was "betrayed." The fact that he can't make a direct statement about it but has to allude vaguely to a "sense of betrayal" indicates the lack of force of his conviction, i.e., hes telling a big lie. See the Fair & Balanced Fox News.
  • Clark, via Michael Moore, addresses the questions about Bush's military service and brings them into the mainstream spotlight. SFGate.
  • Commondreams does a quick inventory that shows that Republicans routinely compare their enemies to Hitler, but when it happens the other way, they become haughtily indignant, as if such an insult is beneath them.
  • John Dean gives an analysis of how Bush is stretching presidential powers and five cases in front of the corrupt Rhenquist court are likely to sustain Bush's overreaching. Findlaw.
  • Eric Schmidt in the New York Times reports that the Iraqi resistance is becoming increasingly sophisticated and effective in downing U.S. helicopters. This is a rapidly eroding situation for Bush. If the election were over, he could invoke marshall law, a draft, and he could do what he pleases. But even with many layers in place all the way up to the Supreme Court to fake elections, Bush still has to have a tiny bit of respect for the power of the people in an election, even a fake one. Between now until the election, the situation could become an increasingly worse nightmare. Now you have a resistance, representing people who have the right on their side of being wrongly invaded, who have the passion of protecting their homeland against an aggressor, who greatly outnumber U.S. troops, who have more to lose or win than U.S. troops who just want to go home, and they are gaining momentum against the U.S. presence there.
  • The ever-bizarre Bush told the press secretary of the Canadian Prime Minister, "You got a pretty face." Then he repeated it, according to The Globe and Mail. "You got a pretty face," he said again. "You're a good-looking guy. Better looking than my Scott anyway."
  • U.S. death toll in Iraq reaches 500, half a thousand. That doesn't count many more who have been wounded and maimed, and thousands of Iraqis who have died for an invasion justified by lies. See Globe & Mail, Pakistan Daily Times,
  • Senator Edward Kennedy writes in the Washington Post, "A Dishonest War."
  • The money that Schwarzenegger's buddy Ken Lay stole from California will be paid back to the state by taking healthcare services from poor children. See New York Times, WSWS
  • Clark: Was Bush's march to war criminal? SFGate
  • Washington Post's review of Kevin Phillips American Dynasty: "Kevin Phillips asks the question that seems to have occurred to no one else: How did these people get so entitled? How is it that a family in no way distinguished by genuine accomplishment, moral and/or political conviction or exceptional intelligence has managed to lay claim as a matter of right to the American presidency, and how is it -- this is the real puzzler -- that the American people seem to have acquiesced in this presumption? How did we manage to put ourselves in the hands of a family that clearly believes it has dynastic stature, with all the privileges and entitlements attendant thereto, and behaves accordingly?" And in addition: "The Bushes have nothing to commend them to the public save rank ambition. Other than accumulating a certain amount of money and achieving a measure of what passes for aristocratic social position in this country, the Bushes have achieved nothing of distinction and appear to believe in nothing except their own interests."
  • Under Bush, the rich get richer, the poor get the picture -- Washington Post.
  • The Institute of Medicine released a report saying, "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage." The social costs of this lack of health insurance more than justify the creation of a national health care system, says the report.

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