May 8
White House Still Blocking Information about 911
And other links from early May 2003
The White House is still blocking the 911 report. How can they get away with this? It's criminal! The country should be up in arms! Pity the poor little lambs that trust these criminals. The worst disaster/violent crime in US history and NO INVESTIGATION! The public is not allowed to know about what was discovered by the closed-door investigation of Congress. What is this? Can anyone justify this? In America, the information about the perpetration of the greatest crime is kept from the people? See Miami.com. A Canadian observer says the US agenda is becoming clear. See The Star. "This is the way the war ends: not with the jubilation of the liberated but with the whimpering of ragged children." See The Age. Big bucks Pioneers paved Bush's way. See Washington Post. Krugman on the phony Top Gun photo op. See New York Times. Howard Zinn: "My country the world". See Tom Paine. The US State Department chafes at the Canadian concern with civil liberties. See Canada.com. Why doesn't the media talk about the incongruousness the AWOL Bush playing dress-up in soldier clothes? See Chicago Tribune. DJs suspended for playing Dixie Chicks. See Billboard. com/. Patriot Act Defeated in Florida's largest County. See marchforjustice.com. Senior German diplomat says US turning into a police state. See Commondreams.org/. Filmmakers fear Patriot Act. See StAugustine.com/. CNN says Bechtel tied to bin Laden. See CNN/Money/. Graham opens campaign saying Bush ignored homeland security to "settle old scores". See New York Times/. Bush was a buffoon dressed up as a soldier. Who is he kidding? We know he got pushed ahead of a waiting list of hundreds for the plum job in the Guard because of his Dad, then was grounded because he didn't take a physical, then put in for a transfer and never showed up for his weekend soldier duties. He's got a lot of damn gall putting on a uniform like that and wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on a photo op. Do people really believe this crap? I guess people who don't read may. Bush should be extremely humble when it comes to the military, in view of the fact he has ordered so many to die but was a real dove when it came to his own involvement in Vietnam. The pretender even has the cheek to talk about Vietnam in terms of what "we" learned. Are people going to put up with this? See Yahoo/. Utne Reader: How to Win Back America. This is a reasonable, pragmatic plan for getting Bush and the bums out of the White House and back to Crawford. See Utne Reader/.
May 10, 2003
How Long Can The White House Keep the Lid on 911?
The CIA Intelligence Report given to President Bush, July, 2001 -- 60 Days Prior to 9/11 -- said, "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning." Now Bush may use executive privilege to keep information about 911 secret. For some excellent review and analysis of these issues see tomflocco.com.RIFFS
May 10, 2003
Dan Kennedy of the Boston Phoenix takes a look at the workings of the GOP attack machine. A grave error by Associated Press, changing the text of an Iraqi sign from "we will kick you out" to "we will kill you." The difference was material, since the latter could be construed as a threat and might make it sound like the soldiers who shot a bunch of unarmed Iraqis were acting in self defense. See thememoryhole.org for the picture and the erroneous quote. According to an Associated Press report, Al Qaida is "completely reorganized" and plans an attack on the US on the scale of Sept. 11. news.findlaw.com Now the Imperialists are out in the open. "If people want to say we're an imperial power, fine," said Bill Kristol of Project for a New American Century. Most Americans are caught off guard by empire status, says Jay Bookman. READINGS
May 10, 2003
The White House is still blocking access to documents from an brief, secret investigation into 911 that was conducted by Congress. Some members of the commission -- appropriately outraged -- are pushing for a showdown. Stay tuned to this very important struggle. See MSNBC. A simplistic, mythical heroic narrative has been superimposed over the Bush drive for power by the corporate media. See Le Monde Halliburton disclosed that it bribed Nigerian officials. It's having an "internal investigation", firing "several" who shall remain nameless. See Reuters Watch the Bush cronies in their all-out grab for Iraq's oil fields. See LA Times. Some in Congress are giving Bush some flak over the exorbitant Top Gun publicity stunt. See Truthout Bob Herbert says Bush budget chaos is about to create shock and awe in New York City. See New York Times. Martin Luther King III and Greg Palast look at the Florida voter roll purge and its larger historical implications. See Sunspot. The NeoCons running Bush's foreign policy are followers of a whacko named Strauss, who believed in perpetual war, manufacturing threats to unite people because people are wicked and can only be united by pitting them against other people. See ipsnews.net. Ashcroft's attack on civil liberties is a mad attempt to push America back to medieval times. See Time. Paul Krugman says Bush's next tax cut will finish a job of destruction on the economy that the first one started two years and many thousand job losses ago. See Sunset in the Economy How a Colorado group is protesting the Patriot Act. See Daily Camera. Ted Rall on how to beat the Republicans. Get mean! See Yahoo. The US is introducing a resolution to the UN Security Council acknowledging its authority to govern Iraq, among other things. See Yahoo. Independent congressman from Vermont Bernie Saunders is introduc the Freedom to Read Protection Act to counteract the Patriot Act's granting the right to the FBI to monitor the books you read. See The LA Times. Let's try a return to faith in the Constitution. It worked for 200 years. Don't let the Bushitzkies destroy it. See Green Bay Press Gazette. The corporate media still tiptoes carefully to avoid telling the story of Bush going AWOL, even when he pushes the hypocrisy in everyone's faces with his ludicrous game of pretending to be a soldier. See The Daily Howler. A UK television commission is investigating Fox news' bias. See The Guardian, and The Guardian. Election odds. Can Bush be beaten? Definitely. See The Guardian. Bush buddy Perle attended a Defense briefing, then gave a seminar on investing in war. Can anyone anymore say "conflict of interest"? See Capitol Hill Blue. The war, as told to us. The fairy tale version. See The Washington Post. They've destroyed practically everything else, why not let them wipe out whatever credibility the Nobel Peace Prize has left. Bush and Blair were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their invasion of Iraq. Mass murder and plunder are worthy causes for humanity. Perhaps they can be sainted next. See Yahoo. The Neoconservatives have all the clout in the Bush administration. See JSOnline. LINKS
May 11
Helen Thomas! We love you! Helen says, "Dissent is a great American tradition". "Should critics of the U.S. attack on Iraq hang their heads now that the United States has won the Second Persian Gulf War?," she asks. "Absolutely not! People who opposed the attack on Iraq never had any doubt that the United States -- the world's lone military superpower -- would roll over a pitiful Third World country. That wasn't the point. Instead, it was a question of why should the U.S. military kill thousands of innocent Iraqis, maim thousands more and ruin their country to take out one man. All of that, for questionable U.S. motives..." The New Yorker's John Cassidy says, "Economics has never been the Bush family's thing." NEWSWATCH
May 12, 2003
Bush called September 11, 2001, "an interesting day." Interesting indeed when you trace his movements that day through the public record and his own garbled statements. For an eye-opening review of the day's activities for the boy prince, see Center for Cooperative Research. For a quick, easy-to-read graphic representation of Bush's military career, see Mother Jones. The Washington Post reports that "Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq." When inspectors found "chemical weapons filter and carbon dioxide scrubbers, and a decontamination shower, a senior officer said, "Is it evidence of weapons of mass destruction? No. It's probably evidence of paranoia." KRON.com in Oakland, California, reports that students at Oakland High who were discussing the war in Iraq were turned into the Secret Service by a teacher for comments they made about Bush. The Secret Service came and interrogated the students. According to KRON radio, "When one of the students asked, 'do we have to talk now? Can we be silent? Can we get legal council?' they were told, 'we own you, you don't have any legal rights.'" The Observer reports that James Woolsey, former CIA boss and an adviser to Bush, is "a director of a US firm aiming to make millions of dollars from the 'war on terror'." The firm is Paladin Capital. Its mission: "to invest in companies with immediate solutions designed to prevent harmful attacks, defend against attacks, cope with the aftermath of attack or disaster and recover from terrorist attacks and other threats to homeland security". According to Detroit News reports that "This week, Cheney was in Dallas to deliver a speech as part of a Southern Methodist University lecture series sponsored in part by the Dallas Morning News. Either at the request of the university or the vice president's office -- no one knows which -- SMU announced that the event was off the record. Reporters could attend the speech, but not write about it." Same game, different names. Saddam Hussein's henchmen are back in power in Iraq, this time under the US instead of Saddam. Saddam was one of the US boys in the first place, so it's only a small shift in policy with the US totally in control of the puppet regime. Instead of Saddam as "our sonofabitch" there will be some other thug. See the LA Times. Radical cheerleaders. See Observer.