George
Orwell Bush says that an attack on the US by Iraq could cripple the
economy. Are there still people out there who believe this clown? A
country 6000 miles away, that the US beat decisively in a conflict twelve
years ago destroying much of its military might, and which has been
further crippled by years of sanctions, inspections and bombings, poses a
threat to the country with the world's largest military by far, protected
by two giant oceans? George W. Bush is the biggest threat to the US
economy and world peace.
posted by Bob at 3:38
PM
"Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a number out of my hat!"
"Again?"
"Oooh: $50 to $60 billion for a war in Iraq!"
"Gee, Mr. Daniels, Mr. Lindsey said it would cost a lot more!"
"That's why Mr. Lindsey doesn't hang his hat here anymore,
Rocky."
(
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/politics/31BUDG.html)
posted by Bob at 10:16
AM
Rangel calls for draft: Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY)
writes
in the NY Times today that Congress should reinstate the military
draft. He says that neither the administration nor Congress would be in
such a rush to go to war if their own children were likely to be involved
(he says that there are only a few officers and one enlisted soldier
currently in the armed forces who are children of members of Congress).
Rangel is a dove who voted against the Iraq war resolution in October, so
this is clearly a ploy to get the public more involved in opposing the
war. I hope that it at least makes George W. Bush think about the prospect
of having his twin daughters go through bootcamp: he wouldn't get any
sleep at all! ("But Daddy, that awful man made me do
pushups!
(Sob.) And not only do I have to wear these horrible boots, I have to
shine them! Do something, Daddy!") Six months stationed in Saudi
Arabia or Kuwait might open their eyes a bit, too.
However, it's a high-stakes game. I'm guessing that the Bushies will
downplay it, saying that "our all-volunteer military does a wonderful
job and is quite capable of dealing with all of the challenges facing
it." They might embrace it, though, thanking (i.e. blaming) the
Democrats for introducing the idea, seeing it as a way to accelerate their
plans for global empire. This would then put other Democrats in the
awkward position that Rangel is trying to put Bush and the other
Republicans in: seeming to be protecting their own children from military
service by opposing the draft.
At this point, things are getting bad so quickly that this is probably
a useful strategy: Rangel's bill will be hard to ignore, and if things go
well it will mobilize a large portion of the country that has been either
silent or stupidly flag-waving to this point.
posted by Bob at 9:14
AM
Too little, too late? The Washington Post ran an
article
yesterday describing the major role that the US, under the Reagan and Bush
Sr. administrations, played in the buildup of the Iraqi military and its
development and use of chemical and biological weapons. It mentions Donald
Rumsfeld's key meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983, offering him US
support even though it was known at the time that Iraq was using chemical
weapons. It also mentions something rarely covered in the US media, that
the Kurds gassed in northern Iraq in 1988 were probably collaborating with
Iran. So while not justifying the gassing, it makes the "gassed his
own people" claim dubious at best. The article describes how the US
government allowed and even encouraged the sale of chemical, biological
and "dual-use technology" (items that could be used in a nuclear
program) by US firms. It even dares mention the infamous meeting of US
ambassador at the the time April Glaspie with Saddam in July of 1990:
When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with
Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she
assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations,"
according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush
is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the
father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an
economic war against Iraq."
Unfortunately, the article refrains from mentioning the so-called
"green light" that Glaspie gave Saddam when she stated that the
US had no opinion on the Iraq-Kuwait dispute. While Saddam did not tell
her that he was planning on invading Kuwait a week later, he certainly
must have been surprised at the vehement "worse than Hitler"
response from someone who had "no opinion" and who "wanted
better and deeper relations." Unless, of course, as many in the
Middle East believe, Saddam has been a US agent all along, providing a
ready excuse for the ever-increasing military presence in the region.
Saddam has stayed alive and in power, either with US help or due to US
reluctance (or whatever it was that stopped Desert Storm from storming
Baghdad in 1991), while the Iraqi people pay again and again and again:
war with Iran, Gulf War, sanctions, no-fly zone bombings, Desert Fox, and
now, probably, Gulf War II.
I don't know what the truth is, but I am quite sure that what the
Bushies are telling us is lies, just as it was in 1990. Saddam is not a
threat to the US: he's a convenient ongoing excuse.
posted by Bob at 12:53
PM
Sending the troops in: While Iraq continues to jump through every
hoop that Bush throws in its path, the buildup of forces continues. Even
if, as I sincerely hope, they don't see combat, the expense of just
sending them there is enormous. Meanwhile, back home, the states are
facing massive budget deficits which will cause cutbacks in schools,
hospitals, welfare, roads...you name it. George W. Bush should be
impeached for flagrant dereliction of duty: worst president ever, leaving
his wimpy daddy in the dust.
posted by Bob at 8:04
PM
Bin Laden, Shmin Laden: This is what the Afghan war was all about:
Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Turkmenistan on Friday signed a framework agreement for a
$ 3.2 billion gas pipeline project passing through the three countries.
What an amazing coincidence that the Bonn conference of a year ago picked
Hamid Karzai to be Afghanistan's president, and Karzai made this pipeline
a priority, well ahead of establishing any sort of control over
Afghanistan. Thanks again to
Polizeros
for the link.
posted by Bob at 7:48
PM
If it ain't broke...Huey recycles last year's predictions for the new year
in
Boondocks.
posted by Bob at 12:38
PM
Gag! I just saw an ad on TV for Bowflex (a home gym device), with two
US Army soldiers, apparently active, doing the pitch. They say something
like "We needed to stay in top physical and mental shape in
Afghanistan, so we took the Bowflex with us." There is a huge American
flag in the background, and martial drums going throughout. Maybe some
pilots can do ads for speed next.
posted by Bob at 11:14
PM
We've got convicted felons who didn't do the time in high-ranking posts in
our government (John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter), but other
convicts
who have served their time aren't allowed to even visit their mothers!
Fourteen years in jail is not enough punishment for this kinder, gentler
nation of compassionate conservatives. Ex-cons can't live in public housing,
can't hold certain jobs, and aren't allowed even to vote in many states.
Most grew up in rough neighborhoods, did something stupid when they were
teens (or got framed), somehow survived several years in America's brutal
prison system which is a giant training camp for crime, and when they get
out they are third-class citizens with very few rights. What a recipe for
failure!
posted by Bob at 10:51
PM
Air
Force bombs house in Texas: Just a friendly reminder that no one is
safe.
posted by Bob at 10:38
PM
Jobless
benefits end for 820,000: Compassionate conservatism at work; actually,
laid off.
posted by Bob at 1:39
PM
Yemeni man set free in Michigan:
U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Pepe said prosecutors didn't prove Mohamed
Alajji willfully intended to defraud the government when he applied for
multiple Social Security cards. Although Alajji faced possible fraud
charges, the government's true reason for having him detained was that it
believed he was a terrorist threat.The ruling came after a six-hour
preliminary exam to determine whether the government had probable cause to
charge Alajji. Pepe ordered Alajji's immediate release.
Maybe there's still hope for justice in this country.
posted by Bob at 1:36
PM
Stop the presses: I agree with President Bush!
President Bush is "deeply" troubled by efforts to clone human
beings and wants Congress to ban the practice, the White House said Friday
after a French scientist claimed her company had produced the first clone. (
CNN)
I don't know about you, but I get awful chills when I see the words
"Bush" and "clone" in the same sentence. Brrrrrrr!
posted by Bob at 8:08
PM
Go
to class, or go to jail: The INS has arrested several Middle Eastern
college students in Colorado for not enrolling in a minimum of twelve hours
of classes.
posted by Bob at 7:57
PM
Proof? We don't need no stinkin' proof! Ted
Rall points out that 15 months after 9/11, the Bush administration
hasn't provided any proof that Osama, al Qaeda and the Taliban were actually
behind the attacks, even though Colin Powell and Condi Rice promised us
evidence. Rall says there are three logical explanations:
Al Qaeda and the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. Possible, but
unlikely. Who else would have done it?
What with the war and all, the Bushies simply forgot to write up a
report. Impossible. If proof existed, the Administration would have released
it to make people like me shut up.
The evidence is circumstantial at best. Now we're talking. More likely
than not, American intelligence strongly suspects bin Laden et al. but can't
prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
As a matter of fact, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted in a speech
last April that he has no evidence: "In our investigation, we have not
uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the
treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and
elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot. The
hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind."
So, as Rall points out, we've killed 3500 civilians and 10,000 Taliban
soldiers in Afghanistan without any evidence. And it's on to Iraq, based on
allegations of a crime, possession of weapons of mass destruction, of which
the US is the world's leading violator. And we are given no evidence that
Iraq is not obeying the UN resolutions, outside of Rumsfeld's
"obviously they aren't."
posted by Bob at 11:40
AM
Are Americans really this stupid? George W. Bush was named their
"most-admired man" by 28% of Americans in a
CNN
poll, far more than any other (Jimmy Carter was second with 9%).
Just a brief reminder about how W got where he is, on the off chance that
one among those 28% might be reading this blog (chances are, they read
nothing at all). I've been meaning to make a cartoon out of this, but I'm
not really much of a cartoonist. So I'll just make it a little dialogue
between the wealthy corporate powers-that-be and our thought-challenged
president:
(1986)
Harken Execs: Well, Mr. Bush, your little Spectrum Oil Company has
had some rough times lately. How 'bout we buy it out for much more than it's
worth and give you a place on the Harken board? It pays really well, and you
don't have to do anything.
W: Cool!
Harken Execs: Oh, and say "Hi" to your father the
Vice-President for us, won't you?
(1990)
Harken Execs: Well, George, we all know Harken stock is going in the
tank in a few months, but because we like you so much, we've arranged a
secret buyer for your stock so you can cash in now while the price is still
high. Go buy a baseball team or something, and say "Hi" to your
dad in the White House, okay?
W: Excellent!
(1997)
Co-owners of the Texas Rangers: You know, Governor Bush, we've been
glad to have you on our team as we've grabbed private land at taxpayer
expense to build this fancy new ballpark. Never mind that the Rangers never
win anything: your work is done here. Here's your ownership share in the
Rangers back, and an extra twelve million for being such a swell guy. Don't
forget about us back at the governor's mansion, or if you ever move to a
bigger house--in Washington, say.
W: Cool!
(August 2000)
Republican Party Leaders: Well, George, we've paid an ungodly amount
of money and slandered a war hero to buy you the nomination for president,
overcoming your obvious lack of qualifications. Don't you forget who paid to
get you here!
W: Don't worry--I love you guys!
(December 2000)
Supreme Court: Mr. Bush, since you came in such a close second in the
election, we're awarding you the presidency! Of course, some of us wouldn't
be here if it weren't for your dear old dad--say "Hi" to him, will
ya?
W: Cool!
(September 2001)
American Public: President Bush, since you happened to be vacationing
in Texas while intelligence about a massive terrorist attack sat on your
desk unread, leading to the worst attack on American shores since the Civil
War, we're giving you this gigantic mandate to do whatever insane things
pass through that little mind of yours. Kill, maim, or detain innocent
people anywhere in the world, destroy the constitution, destroy the
environment: whatever you want.
W: God bless America.
(November 2002)
American Public: Mr. Bush, in less than two years you have taken a
nation that was wealthy, confident, and at peace, with a budget surplus, and
turned it into one which is struggling, afraid, at war, and broke.
Therefore, we're giving you Republican control of both houses in Congress.
W: Excellent! You ain't seen nothin' yet. Let's roll!
Moral to the story: Nothing succeeds like failure.
posted by Bob at 10:44
PM
Bad
year for retailers: Good! Buying worthless imported crap from
community-destroying big-box stores is supposed to be good for the country.
It isn't. A bad retail season is the opposite of the Bush tax cuts--it hurts
the rich the most. When manufacturing and retailing return to being local
concerns, employment will rise and pollution will fall. A "good"
retail season would have meant more money for the world's richest family
(Wal-Mart's Waltons), along with increased high-interest debt for much of
the working class. Buy local, buy used, don't buy at all: it's GOOD for the
country!
posted by Bob at 7:26
PM
Update from the "War of Terrorism":
According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have
witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs
and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in
tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into
walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of
sleep. The tone of intimidation and fear is the beginning, they said, of a
process of piercing a prisoner's resistance. -- from the
Washington
Post.
Read the whole article for a reminder of what the "land of the free
and home of the brave" is doing to mere suspects detained in our name.
posted by Bob at 7:15
PM
Big Sister (Kroger) is watching: I've already torn up my Kroger Plus
card and boycotted that Orwellian grocery chain for many months now. And now
they're introducing
fingerprint
checkout. So some geeky programmers (completely different from totally
cool programmers like my brother and me) will have access to your name,
address, credit card number and fingerprint on the Kroger computers. If
you'd like to be framed for some terrible crime, you'll be well positioned.
Even if Kroger's computer people are completely honest and well-intentioned,
they could be blackmailed or extorted into sharing that information, and not
just by Ashcroft and Poindexter. Go to the
CASPIAN
web site for more on Supermarkets' invasion into our privacy, and stay
away from Krogers!
posted by Bob at 6:11
PM
Big Brother (the FBI) is watching ... (from a letter to the editor in
the
Bellingham
(Washington) Herald)
The FBI now can get our list of library books, e-mails, telephone
records and so on. When I was worried about an overdue book after the
library closed, I called the FBI for help.
"Please check on a book for me, will you," I told the agent.
"What? Do you think we work for you?"
"Is Bernard Lewis's book on the Middle East overdue?" I
pleaded.
"Well, okay, I'll look it up. Hey, you've also checked out 'Lawrence
of Arabia.'"
"It's a great book," I protested.
"Did you see the movie, too?"
"Yes," I said.
"Have you checked out the video - never mind, I'll check. Yeah, just
last week."
"Honest," I replied, "I wanted to see the restored
version."
"A doubtful story. And, yes, you're overdue on the book."
"Darn," I said. "I guess I'm not getting my mail on
time."
"Mail? Well, let me check. Nope, no card from Bellingham library,
but your long-distance phone bill shows you've called Mahoud's Diner. Who's
Mahoud?"
"He's a great cook and what are you doing with my phone bill?"
"Just checking. By the way, you are behind in the phone payment.
Want me to pay it from your credit card?"
"You've got my credit statement?"
"Of course. There, I charged it on your card."
"Thanks," I said. "What a service."
"Saved you a penalty. Anything else we can do for you?"
"Yes," I replied. "Did my neighbor pay cash for his new
car?"
"What! Do you think we spy on people?"
Lyle E. Harris
Bellingham
posted by Bob at 12:24
PM
What logic and compassion couldn't do, impending bankruptcy accomplishes
quickly: Michigan, along with many other states, is eliminating harsh
mandatory sentences for drug crimes. Fiscal emergencies are forcing states
to find ways to cut costs, and the outrageous expense involved in locking up
non-violent offenders for ten or twenty years is a compassionate and logical
place to start. From the
NY
Times.
posted by Bob at 11:23
AM
Rooting Out Evil: Mission USA
In the new year, Rooting Out Evil will be sending a team of volunteer
weapons inspectors into that greatest of rogue nations, the United States of
America.
We have selected the US as our first priority based on criteria provided
by the Bush administration. According to those criteria, the most dangerous
states are those run by leaders who:
1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.
The current US administration fulfills all these criteria. And so, again
following Bush’s guidelines, Rooting Out Evil is demanding that his
administration allow immediate and unfettered access to international
weapons inspectors to search out their caches of chemical, biological, and
nuclear weapons.
If they refuse to comply, we will assemble as many volunteer weapons
inspectors as possible at a major border crossing between the US and Canada
and attempt to cross into the US on a mission of peace. We will be greeted
on the US side by Americans who favour true global cooperation, an end to
weapons of mass destruction, and a regime change in the US at the next
election.
Go here to sign up as a
volunteer inspector and lend support, in person or in spirit, to our
Canadian friends trying to bring a little sanity across the border.
posted by Bob at 9:55
AM
Look out Coke and Pepsi, here comes...
Don't drink idiotic anymore, drink committed. -- Motto for
Mecca
Cola, which gives ten percent of either revenues or profits (my French
isn't that good) to Palestinian causes, ten percent to European causes.
According to an
Indonesian
blogger, Mecca Cola is selling out in Europe.
posted by Bob at 12:18
AM
Protest! It's good for you!
Taking part in protests and demonstrations can be good for your physical
and mental health, a new British study suggests. -- from
Reuters.
posted by Bob at 11:44
PM
Don't you hate it when good columnists go bad? I was ticked off
yesterday when I read
Nicholas
Kristoff's op-ed from yesterday entitled "In Praise of
Snowmobiles," but couldn't quite form a coherent rant about it. Well, I
think I can, now.
Kristoff praises the Bush administration for allowing snowmobiles in
Yellowstone National Park. He says that the new four-stroke snowmobiles are
much quieter and less polluting than the two-stroke variety, and I'm sure
that's right. But Kristoff claims that "when the roads are closed in
winter, the only alternative to snowmobiles is snow coaches, which are like
vans on treads." This is a lie: Yellowstone is open to cross-country
skiing and snoeshoeing, according to its web
site. He makes another statement which is true, but still ridiculous:
"It's pretty clear that without snowmobiles very few Americans will get
the thrill of seeing Yellowstone in winter." Ridiculous, because even
with snowmobiles, very few Americans will see Yellowstone in winter. I
couldn't find the numbers for snowmobile rentals in Yellowstone, but I would
hazard a guess that the number of Americans partaking in this is far below
the number of Americans who will get the thrill of seeing Iraq this winter.
Kristoff claims that animals don't run from the newer, quieter snowmobiles
because he saw some. Well, Nick, you didn't see the ones that did run, now
did you?
We have boxed nature into tiny little corners in this country, and now
Bush and his publicist Kristoff think that it's okay for us to use our
expensive toys to trample around even in those little corners. Rather than
allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone, we should be eliminating them, along
with SUV's and cars in general, from more and more places, so that Americans
won't have to go to Yellowstone to experience nature.
posted by Bob at 11:07
AM
I hope that, somewhere, Bing Crosby is happy:
Merry Christmas, everybody!
posted by Bob at 9:20
AM
Republican Logic:
See if you can follow the logic behind a proposal to cut taxes on dividends:
Republicans close to the White House said there were several reasons why
officials were attracted to the idea of letting taxpayers exclude about half
of all dividend income from taxes. Eliminating all taxes on corporate
dividends would drain so much money from the Treasury — about $300 billion
over 10 years, according to some estimates — that President Bush would
have no room for other tax cuts. Reducing dividend taxes by about half, to
about 20 percent for people in the top tax bracket, would not only reduce
the drain on revenue to the Treasury but also bring dividend taxes in line
with those on capital gains. (
NY
Times)
It's sort of like a doctor explaining to you why he is amputating your
left arm by saying "if I amputated both arms, you would be in really
bad shape." That is, they are comparing their stupid idea to an even
stupider idea, rather than to the already stupid enough status quo. Another
comparison, which I'm surprised Bush hasn't used already: "We have to
attack Iraq because if we attacked Atlanta I would probably lose
votes."
You know, you Republican corporate drones, you could also bring dividend
taxes in line with those on capital gains by raising both to 90%, which
would mean that those who make money by having money would have to pay more
taxes than those who make money by working.
posted by Bob at 8:06
AM
Just say NO to Joe
With Gore dropping out, Senator Joe Lieberman is now considered one of the
favorites for the Democratic nomination for president. A good choice, if
you're trying to make Bush look too liberal. This guy is a super-hawk, a
shill for the insurance companies, a co-inquisitor with Lynne Cheney in her
witchhunt for "un-patriotic" Americans. Progressives need to make
it clear to the Democrats that we're all going Green if this polite monster
is going to be the Democratic nominee in 2004. From the
NY
Times:
"I think the party is open to a different kind of Democrat," he
said. Mr. Lieberman said that while he "may be more conservative, more
pro-defense, more pro-security than a lot of Democrats are," for the
most part, he was "in tune with the mainstream of my party."
Mr. Lieberman sponsored the Homeland Security Act, and was at Mr. Bush's
side last fall as he pushed through a Congressional resolution authorizing
the use of force in Iraq. By noting that he had also voted in favor of the
first resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, in 1991, Mr.
Lieberman drew an unstated contrast with other Democrats in the race like
Representative Richard A. Gephardt and Senator John Kerry, who opposed that
resolution.
posted by Bob at 4:54
PM
Thom Saffold, a fellow member of the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace and
publisher of the Street Wall Journal sent the following message to our
group:
Friends,
Today I am ashamed to be a Christian. Tomorrow will be worse.
The center of my spiritual life is Jesus, a/k/a the rabbi, Yeshua bar Yusef
who--according to Himself--was NOT the Son of God, but came "to give
[humanity] the power to become the sons and daughters of God"; can you
imagine how different the world would be if we recognized that all
people--regardless of our differences--are truly sons and daughters of the
Creator? We might actually relate to and treat everyone else as our sisters
and brothers, even if they were Muslim, even if they were Iraqis.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of Yeshua in Beth-lehem, the city
of bread, a town under military occupation, governed by a corrupt and
hypocritical king, backed by the Empire of Rome. The infant Yeshua grew into
a man who embraced the finest teachings and characteristics of Judaism/the
faith of the Hebrew people and became known as the Prince of Peace. His
radical philosophy of equality of all people (including women, eunuchs, and
the poor), of the necessity of resistance to injustice (he made it a
condition of discipleship), commitment to what we call creative nonviolent
direct action/civil disobedience, and devotion to love--even love of
enemies--got him crucified, but also inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
The Church, beginning in the Third Century when it sold out its principles
to Constantine in return for worldly power, has consistently perverted
Yeshua's message and meaning, despite the fact that a few each century (like
Dr. King and many of the civil rights activists) have rediscovered His
essential message and sought to manifest it. The Church, in response, has
tended to kill such "heretics," of course.
And so it is that tomorrow, good Christian Church folk in nearly all the
churches in our area will sing Christmas carols about the Prince of Peace
and Bethlehem, and IGNORE their responsibilities as followers of Yeshua.
They will be ignorant of (or is it, rather, out of callousness) the fact
that the real, live, flesh-and-blood people of Bethlehem are today living
under a brutal military occupation, run by a corrupt and hypocritical
government backed by the Empire of Corporate America.
The overwhelming majority of these Christians (apparently "Christ"
has NOTHING to do with Yeshua!) will celebrate their holiday by engaging in
a consumeristic orgy and then eat too much, and go to bed feeling very
self-satisfied. They will NOT be organizing or demonstrating or committing
acts of civil disobedience to stop Bush's insane vision of total, unending
war, or to stop US funding of Israel's cruelties. And after tomorrow, they
will continue to be blind to the reality of what's happening in the world,
and to the true meaning of their faith.
posted by Bob at 3:01
PM
It looks like the Sierra Club leadership has finally decided to oppose
war--sort of. It has signed on with other groups, including the NAACP and
NOW, in a watered down anti-war message. According to the
press
release,
The new group, Win Without War, represents millions of
Americans and seeks to prevent bloodshed and loss of life on all sides by
slowing the Bush Administration's apparent rush to war so that U.N. Arms
Inspectors have time to carry out their mission.
While I would have preferred a stronger statement, it is good to see that
the pressure
put on the Sierra Club leadership by the Utah and San Francisco area
chapters had some effect. Who knows, maybe I had a little impact, too. When
I read about the objections raised by local chapters to the Club's apparent
support of war (which, admittedly, was just as watered-down as this new
opposition), I had a Sierra Club fundraising request on my desk. I wrote
"No more $ until oppose war" on the form (there wasn't room for
complete sentences) and put peace signs all over the envelope, and mailed it
back without a donation. I mean, you can recycle until the
genetically-modified cows come home and you will do less to preserve the
environment than stopping just one "little" war. So I'm glad to
see the Sierra Club tiptoe over the line from mildly supporting war to
mildly opposing it. I've got another envelope on my desk now; I'll give them
something now. I mean Bush hates the environment almost as much as he hates
Iraq, and the Sierra Club is the biggest environmental group out there.
We've got to keep pushing them not to sell out.
posted by Bob at 2:58
PM
Molly Ivins on
Bush's new economic team:
According to The Wall Street Journal, "In Dec. 2000, nine months
after he took over, Mr. Donaldson told investors that the company's problems
with skyrocketing medical costs were finally under control and projected
rosy 2001 earnings, driving Aetna's stock price up.
"It turned out that Aetna's system for calculating costs was out of
whack (oops!). In April, four months after Mr. Donaldson's upbeat
predictions, Aetna announced that earnings would be 'significantly lower'
than expected, driving its stock price down by 18 percent in one day.
"Mr. Donaldson had retired 10 days before the profit warning.
Aetna's board months earlier had set his compensation for his 10 months of
service as CEO in 2000 at a $1 million salary, a $6 million bonus and more
than $11 million in restricted stock and options." Our kind of guy.
...
But what a payoff on the investment! A mere $5.9 million in campaign
contributions over 13 years and they got $164 million in the last four years
in tax rebates without ever paying taxes. I'm telling you, this guy Mr. Snow
is a genius, and I have perfect faith that as the Bush team moves ahead to
cut more taxes for the rich, fight a $200 billion war and increase defense
spending, the books at Treasury will balance nicely. It all makes perfect
sense to me.
posted by Bob at 2:28
PM
One of five technically
legal signs that can be posted in a library to warn patrons of
intrusions on their privacy. Politics
in the Zeros has more.
posted by Bob at 1:52
PM
Harboring Terrorists
Most controversially, at the request of Jeb, Mr Bush Sr intervened to
release the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and then
granted him US residency.
According to the justice department in George Bush Sr's administration,
Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of
firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. He was also
implicated in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane flying to Havana from
Venezuela in which all 73 civilians on board were killed...Bosch now lives
in Miami and remains unrepentant about his militant activities, according to
Bardach. -- from a Guardian
article about the book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami
and Havana, by Ann Louise Bardach. Read the whole artice; it will give you a
good idea of the criminal nature of the whole Bush clan. Probably a good
idea to read the book, too, but I haven't done that yet (reserve requested
at the library).
I may have been wrong months ago when I said that the biggest mistake
this country ever made was readmitting Texas to the Union after the Civil
War. Florida may have been even bigger. When you've got a chance to lose
corrupt Bush-voting cesspools like these, you've got to take advantage. Or,
to paraphrase Trent Lott, if the Navy hadn't pulled George H. W. Bush out
of the Pacific after his plane went down in WWII, we wouldn't have had all
these problems. No October Surprise, no Iran-Contra, no "read my
lips", no Panama invasion, no Gulf War I, no Gulf War II, no World War
III.
posted by Bob at 11:21
PM
Plane Crashes in Iran, Killing 46
The report said the plane was carrying aerospace experts from the
Ukraine. The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said there were 46 victims,
most from Ukraine. It was not immediately clear why the plane crashed.
-- from
AP.
I should have you trained well enough by now to read between the lines of
that one.
posted by Bob at 4:45
PM
Two
Wars? No Problem, says Rumsfeld. Happy Holidays. Rummy says we can take
on Iraq AND North Korea at the same time.
Asked about Baghdad's assertions that it is complying fully with the
United Nations, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "Well, they obviously aren't."
That's what passes for proof in the Bush administration. Obviously.
posted by Bob at 3:59
PM
Promise Breakers
PLA
points out how the Bushies broke their promise to the 9/11 families on the
makeup of the commission investigating 9/11. The families had been promised
that they could pick one of the five Republican members of the commission:
they picked former senator Warren Rudman. But all five Republican places are
now filled: former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, Fred Fielding, a former White
House lawyer, former Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington and John Lehman, former
Navy secretary. No Warren Rudman.
The reason the families wanted to pick Rudman was that they wanted six of
the ten commission members to be independent of the White House, thereby
increasing the likelihood that key administration figures like Attorney
General Ashcroft, CIA Director Tenet, and even W himself might be
subpoenaed. Clearly Bush is more dedicated to his cult of secrecy than he is
to keeping a promise to victims of his own administration's incompetence.
Absolute, total sleazebag.
PLA further suggests that the promise made to moderate Republican
senators Chaffee, Snowe and Collins that the porkbarrel provisions added to
the Homeland Security bill would be revisited in the new congress in
January. Those provisions included the incredibly sleazy protection of
drugmaker Eli Lilly from lawsuits over thimerosal, the mercury-containing
vaccine additive which may be linked to autism. (PLA
is the father of an autistic child and blogs on the issue a lot.)
posted by Bob at 3:48
PM
US jails Arabs who comply with new law
-- Headline from an
article
in a South African newspaper.
posted by Bob at 2:32
PM
The United States administration has dismissed as a stunt Iraq's offer
to admit CIA agents to assist United Nations arms inspectors. A White
House official said the burden of proof rested with President Saddam Hussein
to show that he was not developing weapons of mass destruction. On Sunday,
Iraq said it was ready to answer any questions raised by the US and UK
governments on its weapons declaration to the UN. An adviser to the Iraqi
leader, General Amir al-Saadi, said all available information had been
provided. He invited CIA personnel to direct arms inspectors to any suspect
sites. But the White House official rejected the offer, saying Baghdad
appeared "not to have made the strategic choice" to renounce
weapons of mass destruction. "While we have not given up on disarming
Iraq through the United Nations, we are now entering a final phase in how we
compel Saddam Hussein to disarm," the official told Reuters news
agency. -- from
BBC
{SARCASM}Ari Fleischer added that the administration believed that the
Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri in 1945 was "all hat and
no cattle," and that the burden of proof is on Japan to show that it
has stopped fighting World War II. He also said that it is "way past
time" for Great Britain to recognize American independence, and that
Paraguay had better come clean about its ladder to Saturn or "face the
consequences."{/SARCASM}
The Iraqis have called Bush's bluff, but it looks like Bush will insist
on knocking the table over before anyone sees the cards. This is soooooo
embarrassing! Why did we elect this clown? (Oh, right, we didn't.)
posted by Bob at 2:18
PM
Last month the Jordanian government asked the Israeli government to
formally renounce any idea of mass expulsions. Sharon's government refused.
The first transfer in 1948 was replete with massacres large and small.
This one would be even more violent. Palestinians are much more determined
not to leave now. On the Israeli side their Prime Minister is a man who has
personally led the slaughter of Palestinians for 50 years and who has never
suffered any long term political reverses because of it.
Let me lay out a possible scenario, the U.S. invades Iraq, a huge bomb
goes off in Israel and the the IDF moves into action. Village after village
is marched to the Jordanian border. The Jordanian Army refuses to let
Palestinians cross the border and the IDF bombards them until they retreat.
Then the Palestinians are driven across the border.
Impossible? A nightmare? Well, who would stop Sharon? Bush might if he
thought it harmed the pulverizing of Iraq. If the war's going well, however,
would he even lift a finger? -- from Stanley
Heller.
posted by Bob at 11:59
AM
Michigan
Democrats and Republicans claim to agree that sprawl is bad. Let's hope
they're serious about this: with the state, like every state, facing a
budget crisis, I hope they use taxes to discourage sprawl. A big increase in
the gas tax and hefty property tax surcharges on greenfield development
could make existing communities relatively more attractive to developers and
commuters.
At the root of the problem, as I see it, is that communities on just
about every scale are in competition with each other, to just about
everyone's detriment. Indonesia and Bangladesh takes jobs from Mexico which
went there from the US fifteen years ago. Alabama gives Hyundai $126 million
in corporate welfare so they'll locate a plant there instead of in Kentucky
(Michigan? Forget about it!). People looking for a house are lured to new
subdivisions in Livingston County because of low land costs, lower taxes,
low gas prices, and no tolls on the highways, to the detriment of Ann Arbor
and metro Detroit, despite their existing housing and infrastructure.
Competition has its place, but the government must not only provide a level
playing field (which it rarely does); it must prohibit competition which is
generally bad for the public welfare. Sprawl is one such form of
competition. While the farmer may get more for his land than he would
otherwise, and the developer makes a lot of money, and many of the people
who buy houses there will at least claim to be happy, the overall impact of
sprawl on society is negative, so it should be stopped.
posted by Bob at 11:11
AM
The violence was triggered by a Palestinian uprising for statehood that
began in September 2000. -- That's
Reuters'
summation of the Israel-Palestine conflict: a simple
blame-it-on-the-Palestinians. Ignore the ongoing and increasing occupation
and the humiliation and inconvenience it causes, the arrests of Palestinian
leaders, the killing of civilians. Ignore Sharon's many provocations.
I've been remiss in not giving more attention to the Palestine situation.
I tend to rant about what I read in the paper, and this isn't getting much
attention anymore. Maybe the Trent Lott thing was intentional just to keep
focus off of this brutal issue until the troops are in place and it's a new
moon over Iraq. But the fact is that there is a brutal occupation going on
in the West Bank and Gaza, and there is talk of relocating the Palestinians
(again); basically, ethnic cleansing. Many people in the Ann Arbor Area
Committee for Peace are justifiably outraged over this issue and the fact
that the US continues to support Israel monetarily and militarily. Of course
there is some blame to be placed on the suicide bombers, but this isn't too
far removed from blaming the guy in Tienamen Square who faced down the
Chinese tanks. The Israelis have the power, which means they have the power
to choose between peace and war. The Palestinians are left with a choice
between dying or dying while fighting.
So every day, while the Republicans are picking a new senate leader and
Bush tells more lies about Saddam's lies, people are being killed in
Palestine by US-funded bullets, bombs and grenades.
posted by Bob at 9:54
PM
In most cases, it is apparent that the INS arrested men who were simply
waiting for approval of their green card applications, or those with minor
visa problems caused by incompetence in the agency itself, which has been
plagued by an inept bureaucracy for years. In but one example, the San Diego
Union Tribune reported on July 27, 2002 that the agency recently failed
to process more than 200,000 change of address forms and then
unceremoniously dumped them in the largest underground records facility in
the world – an abandoned mine near Kansas City – putting hundreds of
thousands at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation for failing to report a
change of address. -- from the
ACLU.
(Emphasis added)
posted by Bob at 9:16
PM
Oh give me a home
Where the poppy seeds grow
And Russians and Taliban played
Where never is heard
A woman's word
And the sky's filled with contrails all day.
In their apparently infinite lack of compassion, the INS
is deporting a 29-year-old Texas woman to her native Afghanistan, which
she left when she was 15. She works in a restaurant in Texas, and is
currently the primary caregiver for her elderly mother. Having no male
relative to watch out for her in Afghanistan, she will have no rights and
will be lucky to survive even a year. Thanks to Ampersand
for the link.
posted by Bob at 8:59
PM
Airport security
insanity: Airport cops feel up guy's pregnant wife, guy objects, gets
arrested. Ugly story from George Bush's America.
posted by Bob at 6:45
PM
How did this guy get into the Bush administration?
He's actually going after the monsters of the highway: (from the
NY
Times)
"The theory that I'm going to protect myself and my family
even if it costs other people's lives has been the operative incentive for
the design of these vehicles, and that's just wrong," said Dr.
Runge, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (known by its abbreviation and pronounced NIT-sa), in a
recent interview.
"Not to sound like a politician, but that's not compassionate
conservatism."
Now Dr. Runge's agency is reviewing several safety issues involving sport
utility vehicles that could have wide-ranging implications for motorists and
automakers. Detroit's Big Three, especially, derive a lopsided share of
their slim profits from these vehicles.
Intent as he is on attacking the dangers of S.U.V.'s, Dr. Runge is still
part of an administration that is not enamored of regulation. Yet he says
that if he cannot address this nettlesome problem, his agency has little
purpose.
posted by Bob at 6:27
PM
ABC's 20-20 show last night featured a segment on
US Air Force pilots
being required to take speed for long flights. The two pilots
responsible for killing four Canadians, and wounding eight others, were both
wired on speed when they dropped the lethal bomb. While our government is
running ads blaming teenagers for funding terrorism and killing children
because they smoke some pot, they are at the same time pushing uppers on the
pilots of the most lethal machinery anywhere, all to make Afghanistan safe
once again for producing heroin.
posted by Bob at 12:06
AM
A couple of more things about last night's concert: it was a sellout of about
400 people paying on average about $10 per ticket. Thanks to
the
Ark for hosting the event and to the musicians and everyone else who made
it possible. To use some current terminology in a more pleasant context, it
was a "dual use" experience. Not only did the event raise thousands
for the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace, the songs re-invigorated us and
inspired us to carry on.
posted by Bob at 2:20
PM
So what is Gore's withdrawal from the 2004 race really about? While his
recent criticisms of Bush policies and call for universal health care weren't
likely to persuade many of the minority Bush voters to vote for him next time,
they also wouldn't have cost him many of those who voted for him in 2000 and
were very appealing to Nader voters like me, and especially to the majority of
voting-age Americans who don't vote at all. The millions of people working
low-wage jobs who have opted to buy food rather than health care for
themselves and their children would have had a great incentive to get out and
vote for the candidate who would make it unnecessary for them to make that
awful choice.
As the WSWS
points out, the mainstream media has been lavish in their praise of Gore
for dropping out. I've been disturbed by the large numbers of editorial
cartoons that I've seen which show either donkeys celebrating or elephants
crying over Gore's announcement. This is shear nonsense. Aside from Hillary,
Gore is better known than any other potential Democratic candidate. With his
apparent new approach to telling it like it is rather than what his advisers
said, he was easily the Dems best chance to beat Bush--again. My guess, as the
WSWS suggests, is that it was becoming clear that Gore wasn't going to get the
financial backing of the corporations if he pursued a populist agenda. A more
sinister thought is that he was threatened with attacks such as anthrax
letters to his family if he didn't withdraw. If Gore had persisted with his
attacks on Bush militarism, his call for universal health care, and had
returned to his previous interest in protecting the environment (his sellout
on this issue in 2000 is why I voted for Nader instead (and don't blame me,
Gore still won Michigan)), he would have been well on his way to becoming our
44th president.
Actually, I think his withdrawal makes him in some ways even more appealing
as a candidate. I think maybe Lincoln was the last president we've had (well,
perhaps Eisenhower or Carter) who wasn't just drooling over the prospect of
being president. The result has been that most candidates, no matter how
well-intentioned when they started, have sold their souls to get elected. Gore
did this in 2000, and it worked until the court-ordered coup threw him out.
But now it seems as though he is trying to buy his soul back, and if he
succeeds he would be an excellent candidate for 2004. Maybe we should start a
"draft Al" campaign in either the Democratic or Green parties.
posted by Bob at 1:30
PM
I chased Osama all across Afghanistan
From Kandahar to Tora Bor'
Now it's onward to Iraq
Another televised attack
But I ain't marchin' anymore...
-- Corndaddy, from the song "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" which was
performed at the concert last night and is on the CD I'm listening to now.
posted by Bob at 10:58
AM
Click
here for details.
posted by Bob at 1:15
AM
Excellent, excellent, excellent concert! I went to
The
Ann Arbor Musicians for Peace Benefit Concert at the Ark in downtown Ann
Arbor. I'm listening to the CD now as I write this (it's available at the
downtown Borders (at least)--the title is "Tell it, Think it, Speak it,
Breathe it."). The musicians were wonderful, some singing original songs,
others doing classic anti-war songs like "For What It's Worth,"
"Down by the River," and "One Love." Proceeds from the
concert went to our very own Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace. Check out the
concert
web page for
details on the artists and how you can purchase a CD (if you're in Ann Arbor,
Borders is probably the easiest way to get the CD; if you're related to me,
check your mail; otherwise call one of the numbers on the concert page).
posted by Bob at 1:12
AM
Ann Arbor's own military unit.
I'm not going to question the people at the
406th
Corps Support Battalion: I probably went to high school with some of them,
and I wish them all a healthy and fairly boring 2003 (no long trips abroad,
for example). Well actually, I do have one question for them, but I think I'll
ask my readers first (the two groups are probably mutually exclusive). The
question is: what does the motto "First Without Demand" mean? One
year free subscription to this blog for the most creative answer.
posted by Bob at 12:54
AM
In
America, power isn't earned; it's inherited. Former Alaska senator and new
governor Frank Murkowski has just appointed his 45-year-old daughter and
fellow Republitron Lisa Murkowski to join Washington's neposquad, joining the
sordid ranks of government officials who are there because they chose their
parents, siblings or spouses carefully: Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton,
Elizabeth Dole, Michael Powell, Evan Bayh, John Rockefeller, John Dingell, and
of course the ultimate crime of nepotism, George W. Bush himself. (I'm sure
there are many others that I've missed.)
posted by Bob at 4:44
PM
A jury in Oregon found that Wal-Mart managers had required employees to work
overtime without pay, violating Federal labor laws. Wal-Mart is a true force
of evil in this country, using its immense size and purchasing power to
destroy downtowns, shut down American factories by buying from overseas
sweatshops, and lower labor standards for workers. May they lose again, and
again, and again...And don't you dare shop there!
posted by Bob at 4:26
PM
Just one more
thing to worry about. Just as with the anthrax case, the biggest danger to
this country from biological weapons, intentional or unintentional, comes from
within this country. All sorts of nasty stuff is stored and/or experimented
with at Plum Island in New York, Fort Dietrick in Maryland, the CDC in
Atlanta, and numerous industrial and academic labs around the country. In
addition, we've got untested genetically-modified organisms infecting crops
and other plants, threatening the food supply. Whatever Saddam has hiding
under his bed is nowhere near as dangerous to Americans as the stuff in our
own backyard.
posted by Bob at 2:53
PM
Merry Christmas, lads, it may be your last. Tony
Blair tells British troops to get ready for war. Bloody fool.
posted by Bob at 2:45
PM
Immigrants
being released. The feds still won't give precise numbers of those
arrested or released, but the article seems to indicate that most of those
arrested were being released. Let's hope so. Even so, it's a very nasty slap
in the face for people attempting to comply with government orders.
posted by Bob at 2:27
PM
Though only the United States and Russia are known to store the virus, U.S.
intelligence long has suspected that Iraq and North Korea also possess illicit
amounts. While those in government and in public health circles believe
chances of a smallpox attack on America are small, the news of the vaccination
program is a stark reminder to everyone that the threat of terrorism where
we live and breathe is real nonetheless. -- from an
Ann
Arbor News editorial.
No! The vaccination program is evidence that our warmongering government
wants us to believe that the threat of terrorism is real so they can continue
with their agenda of domination and repression, abroad and at home.
posted by Bob at 12:57
PM
In Michael Moore's book
Downsize
This! and his movie
The
Big One he shows a photo of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building
after it was destroyed by a truck bomb, and a photo of a Buick plant in his
hometown of Flint, Michigan as it was being demolished by General Motors. The
two pictures are nearly identical, and Moore asserts that the death toll may
be similar as well. While 158 people were killed in Oklahoma City in a very
short time, the economic devastation caused by GM's abandonment of Flint would
lead to suicides, drug abuse, domestic violence, and health problems which
might eventually match or exceed the death toll from Oklahoma. It continued
last night, with
five
killed in shootings in the Flint area.
posted by Bob at 12:48
PM
Lott
quits leadership post, but will stay in Senate. Worst outcome for those of
us hoping for a Republican crash and burn.
posted by Bob at 11:13
AM
from
Paul Conrad.
posted by Bob at 10:54
AM
posted by Bob at 10:46
AM
More
on the immigrant roundups. Atrios
has lots of rants about this.
posted by Bob at 4:45
PM
A fellow member of the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace posted this--it's
excellent:
How dare the supporters of war call themselves the supporters of the
troops? Exactly what rights of the troops do they support?
They support the right of poor young people to put their lives in danger in
order to get a college education.
They support the right of the troops to be shipped off with no notice to
fight pointless, undefined, unwinnable and imperialist wars.
They support the rights of the troops to be exposed to undisclosed toxins,
both of US and enemy government creation, to be given undisclosed medical
treatments, supposedly for their benefit, and to be given the runaround when
they try to claim they have suffered ill health affects from any of the above.
They support the right of the troops to be killed and injured.
And when the war is over, they support the right of the troops to be
homeless, addicted and traumatized.
Those who oppose the war support the right of the troops not to be shipped
off to die for US oil interests. Again, how dare they tell us that we don't
support the troops?
posted by Bob at 4:26
PM
More on the mass detentions of immigrants:
Lawyers reported crowded cells with some clients forced to rest standing
up, some shackled and moved to other locations in the night, frigid conditions
in jail cells — all for men with no known criminal histories...
Some, [a lawyer] said, were hosed down with cold water before finding places
to sleep on the concrete floors of cells. -- from the
LA
Times.
This is Bush's America. It sucks.
posted by Bob at 4:05
PM
Why are the Bushies so interested in a war with impoverished, demolished Iraq
when another charter AOE (axis of evil) member is admittedly actively pursuing
weapons of mass destruction? The answer is hidden in plain sight:
posted by Bob at 3:43
PM
"Material
breach!" says escaped convict and ambassador to the UN John
Negroponte. Secretary of State Powell will supposedly say this isn't a trigger
for war, which basically means that the weather will be cool in Iraq for a
while and we're going to send many more troops over there before IWC day.
(That's Imperialist-War-Crime Day.) I once had a boss who was kind of like the
Bush administration. No matter what you gave him, it wasn't what he wanted. It
wouldn't surprise me if the administration didn't look at the Iraqi documents
at all: the script said a)ask Iraq to tell all; b) rush the process; c) reject
whatever they deliver; d) go to war.
And another thing! How is Bush supposed to convince the ten
non-permanent members of the UN Security Council that the Iraqi document was
incomplete when he is withholding two-thirds of it from them?
posted by Bob at 3:39
PM
Congratulations to Oakland, CA and Flagstaff, AZ for passing resolutions
opposed to the criminal USA Patriot Act on Tuesday. There are now
twenty
localities which have passed such resolutions. Ann Arbor was the first!
posted by Bob at 1:01
PM
The vaccine is made from a live virus, vaccinia, a relative of smallpox. It
is administered with a special needle that creates an open sore. For three
weeks the virus is highly contagious and can cause infection, either in the
person who received the vaccine or other people in close contact. -- from
a
NY Times
article about two hospitals refusing to join Bush's smallpox vaccination
program.
C'mon, guys, who wouldn't want a little live virus put into them,
especially one that creates an open sore and is highly contagious? All for a
disease which was eradicated from the planet 25 years ago. At best, this
smallpox plan is just another scare tactic, like the color alert system. At
worst, it is a plan for genocide, either by innoculating those they want to
protect and then releasing smallpox on the rest, or by simply administering
lethal injections, something which W had no qualms about in his governor days.
posted by Bob at 10:38
AM
My kind of world leader: check out the sign that
South
Korea's new president is making with his hand:
posted by Bob at 10:21
AM
Roundup in California
Hundreds of Muslim immigrants have been arrested and locked up in overcrowded
conditions in the last few days. Many had come forward voluntarily to register
with the INS. According to
Reuters:
The arrests were part of a post Sept. 11 program that requires all males
over 16 from a list of 20 Arab or Middle East countries, who do not have
permanent resident status in the United States, to register with U.S.
immigration authorities.
Monday was the deadline for men from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Sudan.
News of the mass arrests came first in southern California, which is home to
more than 600,000 Iranian exiles and their families.
...
INS spokesman Arcaute said those arrested had violated immigration laws,
overstayed their visas, or were wanted for crimes. The program was prompted by
concern about the lack of records on tourists, students and other visitors to
the United States after the Sept. 11 hijack plane attacks on New York and
Washington.
Islamic community leaders said many of the detainees had been living,
working and paying taxes in the United States for five or 10 years, and had
families here.
"Terrorists most likely wouldn't come to the INS to register. It is
really a bad way to go about it. They are being treated as criminals and that
really goes against American ideals of fairness, and justice and
democracy," Khan said.
The Iranian protesters said many of those detained were victims of official
delays in processing visa and green card requests.
Might as well ship the Statue of Liberty back to France--it doesn't mean
anything here anymore. This gets more and more like the Nazis every day.
More on this: LA
Times (registration required); the story hasn't made the front web pages
of the NY Times or the Washington Post.
posted by Bob at 9:37
AM
Lack of money is forcing states to do what compassion and logic could not:
reduce
their prison populations.
posted by Bob at 6:58
AM
I got my first hate mail yesterday. Those who have been following the
blog closely know that local peace activists, including me, lobbied the Ann
Arbor City Council to pass a resolution opposing war in Iraq, which they did
on December 2. In the Sunday, December 8 Ann Arbor News the editorial staff
wrote a brief "Talk About Town" article which put down the council
for passing the resolution, citing a person "at the water cooler"
saying he just wished council would get his leaves picked up. The writer(s)
snidely concluded by suggesting that the White House doesn't care what the Ann
Arbor City Council thinks, and that the council should stick to
"local" issues.
Along with several others, I sent a letter to the editor objecting to this
piece:
To the Editor:
As a member of the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace who attended the City
Council meeting on December 2, I take exception to the "Skip Iraq, Get
Leaves" article in Sunday's "Talk About Town." First, there was
nothing "aggressive" about our support for the resolution: we
assertively exercised our rights as citizens to contact our elected
representatives and express our wish that Ann Arbor speak out against war.
About 100 of us showed up to show our support, but no one was threatened into
anything. No one expressed any displeasure at Mike Reid's thoughtful statement
or vote against the resolution. And no one from the “water cooler" or
elsewhere showed up to express opposition to the resolution.
As for the remark about council member Herrell and her colleagues being a
non-issue at the White House: well, that’s our point. Our national
government IS ignoring us. War in Iraq has been estimated to cost $200
billion. Ann Arbor’s contribution in taxes will be approximately $70
million, money which the city could use to improve leaf collection (which
isn’t really much of a problem, no matter what the water cooler gang says)
or for other, more important services.
Michigan voted for Gore. Both of our Senators voted against Bush’s war
resolution in October, as did Representatives Rivers and Dingell. Our voices
don’t seem to have gotten through yet, but we’re going to keep expressing
our support for peace in any way we can, and we thank City Council for its
vote.
This was printed in last Sunday's (12/15) paper. On Tuesday I received a
nasty letter from a Dennis Smith of Belleville, Michigan. I don't have the
patience to re-type it, bad spelling and all, so I have scanned it. You can
read it: page
1; page
2 (you may need to save the images and open them in an image editing
program to be able to read them--the pictures themselves are clear, but they
appear very small in some browsers).
I tell you, my cat understands the issues better than this yahoo, and she's
much nicer. Dennis Smith of Belleville is one child who was definitely left
WAY behind in school, and worse, he doesn't care. It is scary to think how
many millions of morons like Dennis there are in this country.
I told the staff person of our organization about the letter; she said she
and one other member had received similar letters, although theirs were more
threatening. We are going to compare the letters tomorrow to see if they all
came from the same source.
posted by Bob at 10:23
PM
Do the people of this country have any idea what this country is supposed
to be about? A CNN QuickVote poll shows 61% believe the US is justified in
denying attorneys to detainees in the war on terror. Go to
http://www.cnn.com/
and try to set the record straight (the poll is near the bottom right of the
page).
posted by Bob at 9:44
PM
More on the morons
at ProdiGene, who are so excited about making corn produce drugs and other
products that they risk making corn useless as food. Just say NO to GMO's!
posted by Bob at 3:09
PM
Excellent
article
which brings all of the reasons to oppose war in Iraq into clear focus. A
sample:
[Debunking the argument that] Saddam's acquisition of "weapons of
mass destruction" (WMD) would threaten U.S. and world security
This is untenable nonsense, first, because the United States is well able
to defend itself and has overwhelming retaliatory capability, and even Israel
would threaten a level of retaliation that precludes Saddam's using those
weapons offensively against it even if he had them.
What is more, he has no delivery systems that would allow him to reach U.S.
targets. He has used WMD in the past, but only when the United States supplied
him with and protected his use of such weapons (against Iran, a U.S. enemy),
the United States even going so far as to prevent condemnation of Saddam's
methods in the Security Council (for details see the Labour Party
"counter- dossier," Sept. 21, 2002: http://www.traprockpeace.org).
Saddam did not use WMD during the Persian Gulf War, because he knew that if
he did so U.S. retaliation would be severe. CIA head George Tenet testified
before a Senate Committee in early October that the probability of Saddam's
using WMD in "the foreseeable future" was "low," except as
a desperation move if attacked. In short, even if Saddam Hussein did possess
WMD, he could only use them as a means of self-defense, unless he directed
them against a U.S.-approved target, as in the 1980s.
posted by Bob at 11:43
AM
Intrigue in the Senate:
Cogent
Provacateur has lots of interesting facts and thoughts about the upcoming
Senate LOTTery. Who'll be the Republican leader? Who'll be the Democratic
leader? Who'll be Republicans, Democrats, or Independents? Is there a slight
possibility that a little real democracy could happen?
posted by Bob at 10:24
AM
At Clear Channel Communications, the nation's largest radio chain, only one
of the five people on its compensation committee is free of potential
conflicts. The committee has retained — indeed, sweetened — pay packages
that guaranteed raises for the chairman, L. Lowry Mays, and his two sons,
regardless of company performance. The sons have severance agreements that
entitle them to 14 years of salary, bonuses, benefits and stock options if
they quit because the board fails to choose one of them to succeed their
father as chief executive. Clear Channel said the committee met existing
federal guidelines for independence. -- from the
NY
Times. Of course, if Clear Channel hadn't practically monopolized the
radio business they might need to put their money into areas more productive
than guaranteeing that the CEO's vile offspring are multi-millionaires for
life. And, if they had competition, that competition could be talking about
this nonsense night and day.
posted by Bob at 6:53
AM
I'll have to tell you, when the President lines up on something, when he's
the power behind something, so many of our guys run to the pole, lower the
flag and basically do what he thinks. Frankly, we need to be looking at the
substance of things to see if there is something there worth fighting for. If
there is, then we ought to take the President on.
Dang! That guy tells it like it is! Thanks to John
Ashcroft for that timely advice! Here's another choice Ashcrotch quote in
light of the rush to pass the despicable USA Patriot Act:
I spent four hours debating the bill without yielding the floor and
signaled my willingness to do so for an extended period of time. When they
realized they were not going to be able to carry this through at the high
velocity they wanted (you know, velocity is the enemy of reason) they
fell back.
posted by Bob at 3:27
PM
Still looking?
So let's review - when the NYSE was being run by Donaldson, one of his
executives asked that a discussion of a questionable trading practice be kept
from the SEC, the same organization that Donaldson is now being proposed to
reform.
When Bill Donaldson comes up for Congressional approval someone should say,
"Hey, Bill. How can you run the SEC if it was the SEC that censured the
organization you were running for not complying with SEC rules?" --
from the NY Post, of
all places, thanks to MaxSpeak for the
link.
Let's face it. The Bushies are going to be unable to find nominees for
government posts who agree with their philosophy who are not tainted by
bribery, corruption, shady dealings, or racism, because that is their
philosophy.
(PS--I like MaxSpeak because he put me on his blogroll!)
posted by Bob at 2:58
PM
Exiles,
criminals and spies meet to form puppet government to be imposed on Iraq.
The democracy talk, as I'm sure my readers are well aware, is all a crock.
This is an oil and power grab, pure and simple, and the long-suffering Iraqi
people, like the long-suffering Afghan people, will be suffering a lot longer.
posted by Bob at 1:43
PM
Missile
Defense:
Welfare for the defense industry. Daddy Bush's Carlyle
Group will make out like the bandits they are on this one. As usual with W,
logic is nowhere to be seen:
Tuesday, he cited the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America as
evidence that the country faces ``unprecedented threats'' and needs the
anti-missile shield.
Nineteen guys with boxcutters hijack four airliners. How in the world is
this ridiculously expensive boondoggle going to stop that? But Bush has allies
on the hill:
Rep. Duncan Hunter, the likely next chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee, lauded the decision to proceed on missile defense.
"Today, the United States cannot stop a single ballistic missile
headed for an American city,'' said Hunter, R-Calif., who chairs Armed
Services subcommittee on military research and development. ``The consequences
of such an attack would be devastating, and the danger continues to grow as
nations such as North Korea, Iraq, and Iran continue to develop, purchase, and
sell advanced ballistic missile technologies.''
These guys are nuts. Just absolutely, completely out of their tiny little
minds.
posted by Bob at 1:34
PM
If Lott didn't see the storm coming, it was in part because it was so slow
in building. The papers did not make note of his comments until days after he
had made them. But the stillness was broken by the hum of Internet "bloggers"
who were posting their outrage and compiling rap sheets of Lott's earlier
comments. It took a few more days before Democrats denounced Lott and demanded
a censure. -- from
CNN,
thanks again to
Polizeros
for the link.
Gee, now I wish I'd been harder on Lott, so I could take some of the
credit! Good going, bloggers!
posted by Bob at 12:00
PM
I've added two new books to my
books
page:
Blue
Gold and
Suburban
Nation. Highly recommended.
posted by Bob at 11:16
PM
I'm trying a little urban improvement:
a pedestrian shortcut to downtown--
(Click on picture for details)
posted by Bob at 10:51
PM
AAA uses some of its membership dues to lobby against environmental standards.
Go
here to complain, whether you're
a AAA member or not.
posted by Bob at 3:23
PM
Thanks to Sanjay for the head's up!
posted by Bob at 12:08
PM
Pentagon
Debates Propaganda Push in Allied Nations. Rather than try to improve our
image abroad by improving our behavior, Rummy and others at the Pentagon think
that lying would be the better approach. It seems to work on our people here.
posted by Bob at 8:25
AM
So Gore is out for '04, just when I was starting to like him. We're left with
a miserable list of Republicrats: Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Daschle, Gephardt,
Edwards, Dean, and the worst of all, Lieberman (I absolutely detest him). With
these horrible choices, even if we succeed in getting rid of Bush, we still
lose. The Democrats had better start pushing Kucinich or Feingold or I'm going
to have to go Green.
posted by Bob at 8:22
AM
Political ad-makers take over all of TV advertising: the latest
Doonesbury.
posted by Bob at 11:34
AM
Intelligence officials said the presidential finding authorizing the agency
to kill terrorists was not limited to those on the list. The president has
given broad authority to the C.I.A. to kill or capture operatives of Al Qaeda
around the world, the officials said. -- from the
NY
Times. This isn't good, since
the CIA definition of "Al Qaeda
operatives" is "whoever we capture or kill." In other
words, the CIA is now authorized to kill you, since if they kill you then you
were al Qaeda scum. Think of all the money saved on extraditions, lawyers, and
due process in general. And this applies to any person in the world. Sounds
like an act of terror to me.
posted by Bob at 8:40
AM
Homework Assignment:
- Add your name to the letter from Representatives Kucinich, Conyers and
others to President Bush asking him to quit interfering in Venezuela. You
can go here
to do this--scroll down to just below where the representatives signed and
click on "add your own comments." (A search for "add your
own comments" works as well.) If you don't know why this is needed,
read the text of the letter and/or go to the Narco
News web site.
- Send an e-mail to your senators and representative asking them to add
their names to the Kucinich letter.
- Send letters or e-mail to German leaders letting them know that there
are lots of us here in America opposed to war in Iraq. Apparently W has
been suggesting that German opposition to war is somehow
"anti-American." Here are the addresses:
- President Gerhard Schroeder
Willy Brandtstr. 1
11012 Berlin
Germany
internetpost@bundeskanzler.de
Foreign Minister Josef Fischer
Auswärtigesamt
Werderscher Markt 1
10117 Berlin
Germany
poststelle@auswaertiges-amt.de
Two great comics from Kirk
Waters of the Toledo Blade:
posted by Bob at 9:08
AM
Bush
girls gone wild! Only $19.95!
posted by Bob at 8:35
AM
This is definitely good news. I mean it was possible (and may have happened)
that O'Neill, Lindsey, and even Harvey Pitt could have been replaced by people
even worse. In Kissinger's case, this isn't possible, at least since Nixon
died.
By the way, W, we do have a Nobel-prize-winning former president who would
be excellent for the job.
[Later addition:] No, George, I don't mean your Dad. There's isn't a Nobel
Prize for Being a Wuss. I'm talking about Jimmy Carter. I realize you were
drunk through most of his presidency, but if you have the slightest interest
in appearing fair in appointing the chairman of this committee (no sign of
that yet, unfortunately), Carter would be ideal.
posted by Bob at 7:51
PM
Bush's
new economic advisor attacked by the right for being too much of a fiscal
conservative:
Stephen Moore, president of a conservative lobbying group, the Club for Growth
wasn't happy about Stephen Friedman's appointment since he was
a board member and donor to the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group
that has long annoyed White House officials by warning relentlessly about the
danger of federal deficits.
"How in the world can he sell a program that he has never shown any
inclination of believing in?" Mr. Moore asked on Tuesday on the Web site
of the National Review. "The Concord Coalition represents the Chicken
Little deficit-reduction myopia that was once the rage in the Republican
Party."
Amazing: A Republican being attacked by other Republicans for being too
fiscally conservative. But Friedman has promised to be a good "don't tax,
then spend" Bushie.
posted by Bob at 4:06
PM
The gift for someone who has everything--except brains:
a
talking George W. Bush doll.
According to the article, The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace
ordered two cases but sold them out within days, said spokeswoman Arianna
Barrios. Heaven forbid.
posted by Bob at 1:47
PM
What is really behind this smallpox
vaccination that the Bushies are pushing? Is there even a hint of a
threat out there, or is it, as I suspect, something far more sinister?
Smallpox was eradicated 25 years ago, and supposedly the only remaining
viruses are at the CDC in Atlanta and in a secure lab in Russia. So is it the
CDC or Bush's good buddy Pooty-poot who's going to attack us? Would there be
any easier path to a highly targeted un-natural selection than a vaccination
program? (Flag on lapel: gets green bottle. Peace button: gets red bottle.)
posted by Bob at 12:45
PM
Bush was campaigning on welfare money. By "on," I don't mean
he was advocating increasing it (yeah, right), or even decreasing it. He was
spending it! Because he babbled a little bit about welfare reform while
campaigning for candidates trying to eliminate it, Bush decided he could get
welfare to help pay for his trip:
On stealing from the poor to give to the rich: In an act of reverse
Robin Hood effrontery, the president helped defray some of the cost of his
nonstop campaigning with an accounting trick that allowed him to dip into the
coffers of the Office of Family Assistance by piggy-backing campaign
appearances onto trips ostensibly made to talk about welfare reform. That's
right, money meant to assist poor families was used to help elect politicians
who believe that, even with all the problems facing this country, cutting
taxes for the rich should be job one. -- from Arianna
Huffington.
posted by Bob at 12:24
PM
In the Should Be None of Our Business department: U.S.
Urges Early Elections in Venezuela.
posted by Bob at 11:49
AM
I've had a link to
Cogent Provacateur
in my list of blogs since I read some fine articles he wrote a few months ago.
Then he disappeared from the blogiverse for a while, so I was thinking of
replacing him on my list. Well, he's back! In
this
article he explains how John McCain is in an extremely powerful position
at the moment, given Lott's troubles and the Landrieu victory in Louisiana.
There's a chance that Republican senator Lincoln Chaffee might switch parties
soon. The threat that McCain might go with Chaffee is what gives him the
power. If both Chaffee and McCain switched, Democrats would be back in control
of the Senate. Since the Democrats desire this and the Republicans fear it,
both parties may be willing to do whatever McCain wants. Cogent Provacateur
suggests that McCain may be able to pick senate leaders for BOTH parties. How
about the seemingly reasonable Lugar or Shelby on the Republican side, and
maybe Feingold for the Democrats? Anyhow, read CP's
article;
it's very interesting.
posted by Bob at 11:43
AM
Racism: Alive and Well in America. Employers were found to be 50% more
likely to call applicants with typical white names than those with typical
black names, even when the resumes were equivalent. From the
NY
Times, via
Alas, a blog, who
got it from
CalPundit.
I'll leave finding out how CalPundit found out about it up to you.
posted by Bob at 10:51
AM
No good coverup is complete without follow-through: According to the
NY
Times, the FAA is developing a system to avoid fuel tank explosions like
the one that was blamed for the destruction of TWA 800 in 1996. The Times
article mentions nothing of the hundred-plus eyewitnesses who saw a missile
headed towards the 747 before the explosion or the massive secrecy surrounding
the investigation. While there are certainly some conspiracy nuts out there,
I've read enough about this one to believe that the plane was destroyed by a
surface-to-air missile. See
twa800.com
for a whole lot more.
posted by Bob at 9:52
AM
Here's some of
Ted
Rall's latest op-ed:
As Americans begin their third year of Supreme Court-ordered political
occupation, Bush has just signed an impressive new executive order. You may be
surprised to learn that it grants him the right to order your execution. No
judge, jury or lawyer. No chance to prove your innocence. One stroke of Bush's
pen, and bang--you're dead.
Not even your American citizenship, according to Bush, will save your life
if and when he decides to kill you. The only reason you're reading this right
now--instead of meeting the Entity Formerly Known as God--is that neither Bush
nor one of his "high-level officials" has yet signed a piece of
paper declaring you an "enemy combatant." Once they do the
paperwork, Administration officials assert, they have the right to murder you.
Bush's secret assassination directive surfaced on Dec. 3, when reporters
asked about the Nov. 3 Central Intelligence Agency rub-out of alleged Al Qaeda
operatives riding in a car in Yemen. Langley fired a Hellfire missile from a
remote-controlled Predator drone into the vehicle, blowing up several men. The
CIA later discovered that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, had
inadvertently been killed in the inferno.
"No constitutional questions are raised here," asserted National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, stretching credulity more than usual.
Officials claim that a loophole in Bush's order authorizing the CIA to
"covertly attack Al Qaeda all over the world" validates Derwish's
murder. Since this sneaky directive makes exception neither for Americans nor
American soil, these guys say, you and I have no more rights than the
now-deceased, not-presumed-innocent Kamal Derwish.
posted by Bob at 9:15
AM
-- from
Slowpoke.
posted by Bob at 9:07
AM
-- from
Mike Thompson.
posted by Bob at 9:04
AM
-- from
Boondocks.
posted by Bob at 9:02
AM
This one was predicted: U.S. officials believe Iraq's declaration of
its weapons of mass destruction program omits many details about its program
and is "far, far, far short" from being a complete report, according
to one senior U.S. official. -- from
CNN.
In a few weeks, Iraq was told to document everything going on in the country
that might possibly relate to chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. There
was absolutely no possible way to do this, especially when you are being
graded by someone who has already written an 'F' on your report card. Imagine
how long it would take to prepare such a report in the US. Ashcroft would be
blocking every Freedom of Information request, corporations would be screaming
about confidentiality, and Cheney would be busy replacing every true statement
with a lie. Even the never-ending "war on terror" would be done
sooner. Even the investigation into the Wellstone crash. Florida might even
have a fair election before that report ever saw the light of day.
posted by Bob at 8:54
AM
Feeling a little frustrated, as I am, about how things are going? Print out
the "Smiling White Faces" picture below and pin it to your
dartboard. Very therapeutic.
posted by Bob at 8:41
AM
Is it possible Bush is planning on taking on his entire "axis of
evil" at once?
CNN
reports that "Iran has secretly been constructing large nuclear
facilities -- sites that could possibly be used to make nuclear weapons."
The US has also
expressed
concern over North Korea's restarting of a nuclear plant which has been
closed for eight years. I've also been hearing rumors about possible military
action against Iraq. Are we looking at another Bush trifecta?
posted by Bob at 8:39
AM
Of course there's never enough parking! If you gave everyone free pizza,
would there be enough pizza? -- One of the great quotes from the book
Suburban
Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. Here's
more:
To what extent is automobile use a "free good? According to Hart
and Spivak, government subsidies for highways and parking alone amount to
between 8 and 10 percent of our gross national product, the equivalent of a
fuel tax of approximately $3.50 per gallon. If this tax were to account for
"soft" costs such as pollution cleanup and emergency medical
treatment, it would be as high as $9.00 per gallon. [Probably a lot more
if wars for oil are included--Bob] The cost of these
subsidies--approximately $5000 per car per year--is passed directly on to the
American citizen in the form of increased prices for products or, more often,
as income, property, and sales taxes. This means that the hidden costs of
driving are paid by everyone: not just drivers, but also those too old or too
poor to drive a car. And these people suffer doubly, as the very transit
systems that they count on for mobility have gone out of business, unable to
compete with the heavily subsidized highways.
posted by Bob at 8:30
AM
Smiling White Faces
Funny, George doesn't seem too upset with Trent in this picture, taken the day
after Lott's infamous remarks. The
Washington
Post report was the first I could find about Lott's remarks, and the
article came two days after the fact. Lott's remarks were made at the party
for Thurmond at the Capitol on Thursday; the next day, the Post
reported
on the party. It quoted Lott as telling Thurmond that his 89-year-old mother
"has a crush on Strom," but makes no mention of the offending
remark. Not until the next day, after the party at the White House, did the
Post report the remarks.
posted by Bob at 11:33
PM
Blogger Overload: There is so much bad stuff going down today that
there aren't enough hours in the day to rant about them. So I'll just present
the headlines:
- Bush
pushes 'Faith-based' Initiative
- Smallpox
Shots Will Start Soon
- North
Korea to Reopen Nuclear Plant Over Oil Cutoff by U.S.
- 5
Unarmed Palestinians Killed by Israelis in Gaza Strip
- Retail
Sales in November at Highest Level in 3 Months
- And there's still that Iraq thing, that Homeland Security Thing, that
Total Information Awareness thing, the Shadow Government thing, the Yucca
Mountain thing, the water in California thing, the unlawful combatant
thing, the global warming thing, the diamond thing, the GMO thing, etc.,
etc., etc.
posted by Bob at 1:30
PM
The
World
Socialist Web Site on the seizure of the Iraq UN documents:
Anyone who believes that Washington would not stoop to forgery to make its
case for war is ignorant of American history. In the last Persian Gulf War,
the administration of Bush senior launched its attack after having claimed
that satellite photos had shown a quarter of a million Iraqi troops massing on
the Saudi border. In fact, the photos had clearly shown that Iraqi forces were
already withdrawing from Kuwait. The resolution approving the US buildup in
the Vietnam War was passed after government officials falsely claimed US Navy
ships were subjected to an unprovoked attack by Vietnamese gunboats in the
Gulf of Tonkin.
{Update, 10:15 AM EST} More from WSWS:
Among the material that is to be edited out of the declarations turned over
to the temporary members of the Security Council are lists of weapons
manufacturers which supplied the regime in Baghdad and government officials
who negotiated these arms deals. This information would make it plain that
government officials and corporations in both the US and Britain aided and
abetted Iraq’s development of chemical and biological weapons programs when
it was at war with Iran in the early 1980s. It is feared that such revelations
would undercut the attempt to whip up hysteria over the alleged existence of
such programs today.
posted by Bob at 9:52
AM
From a
NY
Times editorial calling for Trent Lott to be replaced as Senate majority
leader:
No one has put more effort than George W. Bush into ending the image of
the Republican Party as a whites-only haven.
The sad thing is, it's probably true. Between Saddam bashings, fundraisers,
vacations and naps, George has probably put in a solid half-hour's effort into
improving the racial image of the Republican Party during the last two years,
at least ten minutes longer than any other Republican.
But I'll admit, I still haven't cracked on the Lott issue. I asked my niece
if she thought that I was too lenient on Lott when I said we should let this
drop after he apologized, and she said I was. I mean, I'd love to see Lott
gone, and the stuff he said was awful, but I still hate to see politicians
afraid to say anything controversial in public. I mean, if he had been more
careful in choosing his words, we would never have had this insight into his
racist character. If he loses his job, the other racists in Congress will be
much more careful about what they say, and they will be harder to spot. We
should be interested in protecting free speech, and that means we should argue
with people who say things we don't like, not fire them. Besides, Trent's
statement easily wiped out George's half-hour of effort at improving the
party's racial image. And who would they replace him with? Mitch McConnell,
maybe?
posted by Bob at 9:41
AM
Anti-personnel land mines. Aargh!
The Pentagon is preparing to use anti-personnel land mines in a war with
Iraq, despite U.S. policy that calls for the military to stop using the mines
everywhere in the world except Korea by 2003.
To prepare for a possible war with Baghdad, the Pentagon has stockpiled
land mines at U.S. bases in countries ringing Iraq, according to Pentagon
records. The decision to make the mines available comes despite a recent
report by the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm,
concluding that their use in the 1991 Gulf War impeded U.S. forces while doing
nothing to impair Iraqi forces. -- from USA
Today.
Do you think maybe Bush's real goal is to be the worst war criminal of
all time?
Feeling very, very frustrated and depressed right now. Our insane fuhrer is
talking about using nukes and landmines against a country 6000 miles away
which hasn't done us any harm and seems to be bending over backwards trying to
avoid war. And polls still show the majority of Americans approve of this
half-witted maniac. People who can't locate Iraq on a map but who are sure
that Saddam is lying and that Iraq is a threat. People like Bush.
Sorry, frustration making me incoherent...random rants...neurons
crossing...sparks flying...got to shut off the computer, go to bed, return to
my ranting duties tomorrow.
posted by Bob at 11:26
PM
Regarding
the ship headed for Yemen that had Scud missiles on it: The Spanish
Defense Ministry considers the vessel a "pirate ship" operating
illegally.
Those Spaniards are quick learners! They use two warships to intercept an
unarmed vessel on the high seas, take its cargo, and then accuse the victim of
this piracy of being the pirate. Very Bushian, Spain!
posted by Bob at 4:18
PM
I double-posted something and tried to remove it, but Blogger lets you change
something but never delete it. Hmm...
posted by Bob at 3:08
PM
Some cool links:
From my new e-mail friend in Canada:
From my niece in California:
Men in Hats
comic strip which rivals Red Meat for bizarreness. (Bizarresticity?) A sample:
George W. Bush as a boy, perhaps?
posted by Bob at 12:58
PM
And another thing! (I remember thinking this last night, but somehow it
escaped my Wolf Blitzer rant.) Wolf says "U.S. military forces have been
called into action...to liberate Afghanistan from its Taliban and al Qaeda
rulers." This convenient rewriting of history is almost complete--as I
recall, the stated goal of the nasty Afghanistan campaign was to kill or
capture Osama bin Laden, break up his organization, and prevent Afghanistan
from being a haven for terrorists. The barely concealed reason sold to the
public was revenge. The highly concealed reason was to establish a military
presence in the area as a key to gaining control of Caspian oil and gas
resources. Since Osama got away, al Qaeda seems to be as active as ever, and
the Caspian oil and gas are still a pipeline dream due to the resurgence of
the warlords, the story has been conveniently changed. According to the
Bushies, and aided by spineless "journalists" like Wolf, the further
destruction of the poorest country on earth was to "liberate" it
from the Taliban and al Qaeda. My reading on the situation in Afghanistan is
this: for the average Afghan citizen, not much has changed in 25 years, except
who is trying to kill you. First it was the Russians, then the mujahadeen,
then the warlords, then the Taliban, then the Northern Alliance, then the
Americans, and now it's the warlords again. Afghanistan has been
"liberated" pretty much the same way the World Trade Center
was--kill lots of people and send the rest running, with just a pile of rubble
left behind.
posted by Bob at 10:52
AM
Nuclear sabre rattling: The Bush administration
is
indicating that it may retaliate against any attack on US forces involving
so-called weapons of mass destruction with nuclear attacks. This explains why
they are so insistent on linking nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons
together under the WMD label; they can claim that a nuke killing a million
Iraqis is a proportionate response to a mustard-gas shell that kills 50
American soldiers. They hit us with WMD's, we hit them with WMD's. I'm all for
the banning of all three kinds of weapons called weapons of mass destruction,
but the label is pure nonsense. Many of our larger bombs, such as "daisy
cutters" and J-DAM's, are capable of killing dozens or even hundreds of
people at a time, so they certainly deserve the WMD label. Small chemical
weapons like mustard gas artillery shells are almost certainly incapable of
being so deadly unless used in large numbers, and when they are used on a wide
scale their users run a significant risk of poisoning themselves. Most
biological weapons would be largely useless on a battlefield: making your
enemy sick a week from now doesn't do much to save your life right now. The
weapons which are clearly in a league of their own are nuclear bombs: they
destroy anything and everything within a huge radius of ground zero. Lumping
chemical and biological weapons with nuclear weapons under the WMD label is
highly deceptive and extremely dangerous, and this recent statement shows why.
posted by Bob at 10:25
AM
Here goes another hour or two of your life spent chuckling:
http://www.markfiore.com/animation.html.
I'll try to get you a charge number for this.
posted by Bob at 8:54
AM
Would a "Liberal Media" ask such a stupid question?
Wolf Blitzer
on CNN starts his online commentary with this:
Over the past two decades, almost every time U.S. military forces have
been called into action to risk their lives and limbs, it's been on behalf of
Muslims, whether to assist the Afghan mujahadeen or freedom fighters during
the Soviet invasion of the 1980s; to liberate Kuwait following the Iraqi
invasion in 1990; to help Somali Muslims suffering at the hands of a warlord
in Mogadishu; to help Muslims first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo who faced a
Serb onslaught; or more recently, to liberate Afghanistan from its Taliban and
al Qaeda rulers.
So why is the U.S. military despised by so many Muslims?
Well, for starters, it has a lot to do with the fact that Americans are so
arrogant and naive as to ask such a ridiculous question. In the first Gulf
War, Somalia and the recent war in Afghanistan, most of the people we killed
were Muslims. The mujahadeen killed thousands, many of them Muslims, and
helped to create the chaos in Afghanistan that made the Taliban possible. Many
of these mujahadeen became the core of al Qaeda. I'll confess an unfortunate
ignorance about the details of the Bosnia and Kosovo campaigns, but I think
that it is safe to say that in none of these cases that Wolf mentions was the
US fighting primarily "on behalf of Muslims." It was more protecting
or grabbing for oil, maneuvering against the Soviets, or trying for whatever
geopolitical benefits Clinton hoped to gain by intervening in Bosnia and
Kosovo (again, I am fairly ignorant on that issue). To think that Muslims are
going to thank us for stomping all over their holy lands in order to kill
other Muslims is near Bushian arrogance.
Wolf goes on to say that the only possible reason he can find is our
support for Israel in their subjugation of the Palestinians. He continues:
In the process, the United States gets virtually no credit for helping
Muslims, and even when President Bush goes out of his way to express support
for Muslims -- as he did the other day during a visit to a Washington mosque
-- his actions are dismissed as window dressing.
Imagine that: George went all the way to Washington to visit a mosque, and
those ingrate Muslims still aren't happy about our having tens of thousands of
troops and hundreds of deadly aircraft stationed all over the middle east,
ready to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis at a moment's notice. W's actions
most certainly are (very cynical) window dressing, done knowing that media
pawns like Wolf Blitzer will suggest that they are substantive policy which
will address the legitimate grievances of a billion of the world's citizens.
posted by Bob at 8:44
PM
It takes a while to run down the dirt on all of the sleazy Bush appointees,
unless you have someone else do it for you! MaxSpeak
lists
the "qualifications and accomplishments" of John Snow, W's nominee
to be the new Treasury Secretary. Here's just one of many items:
Under an
employment agreement signed last year, Snow may receive severance benefits
worth millions of dollars if he left the company to "fulfill an
appointment to public office." He's probably got a similar severance
package for when he leaves Treasury, such as a place on the board of the
Carlyle Group.
posted by Bob at 4:49
PM
"Honey, I paid to have a woman's hands chopped off in Sierra Leone so you
could put this diamond on your hand." "Oh, darling, how wonderful of
you!" Diamonds are Forever, and so are the
deaths
they finance.
posted by Bob at 3:56
PM
Surgeon General's Warning: The corn flakes you are eating may contain
one or more of the following:
* AIDS vaccine gp120 -- a glycoprotein
* Blood-clotting agent -- Aprotinin
* Trypsin - Digestive enzyme that can be used in leather tanning or to produce
insulin.
* Industrial adhesive Laccase -- an enzyme derived from a fungus
Biotech bonehead Prodigene Corporation has been testing
genetically-modified (GM) corn which produces these products, and some of it
has jumped the fence and gotten into commercial corn crops in Iowa and
Nebraska. See Vegan
Blog for details. Thanks to Polizeros
for the link.
posted by Bob at 2:32
PM
Trent
Lott eats a little Jim Crow: In case you missed it (easy enough, given how
the mainstream media ignored it), Lott made the following remark at Senator
Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party: "I want to say this about my
state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of
it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had
all these problems over all these years." The thing is, when Thurmond ran
for president in 1948, the only plank in his platform was "segregation
forever, equality never." So Lott's statement seems to say that the
country would have been a lot better off with a blatantly racist president who
would never have allowed civil rights legislation or school desegregation to
happen. Now I'm probably willing to cut Lott a tiny bit of slack on this one:
when you're attending a birthday party for some old coot, no matter how nasty
he was, you feel a little compelled to say something nice about him. So Trent
didn't think too clearly about implications and tried to come up with
something nice to say about Thurmond (we've got to realize that that's a
pretty difficult task), so he blurted out the nonsense quoted above. Besides,
Trent says mean-spirited things just about every day which have a greater
impact on people than this. However, I am glad that others, like Al Gore and
Jesse Jackson, have jumped all over Lott. Last night, Lott apologized:
"A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I
embraced the discarded policies of the past," Lott said in a statement.
"Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who
was offended by my statement."
With that, I say, let it drop. There are lotts of good reasons to throw
Lott out of the Senate, but I don't think that one retracted statement should
be one of them. Public figures in the past twenty years or so have gotten into
more trouble by saying one or two controversial sentences than they do by a
lifetime of bribe-taking and shady dealing. Think of the German minister who
compared Bush to Hitler, or Jimmy the Greek. While I agree that words do
matter, by jumping on controversial statements we cause public figures either
to talk in public without saying anything (Tom Daschle, for example), or not
to talk in public at all (Dick Cheney). Better to question someone if he says
something outrageous, and if he properly clarifies or apologizes, leave it at
that.
posted by Bob at 12:52
PM
Bush to
pick William Donaldson to replace Pitt at SEC. Donaldson was one of the
founding partners of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, a New York investment
banking firm. The Times article doesn't give much background, except for this
interesting tidbit:
He served during 1975 as counsel to U.S. Vice President
Nelson Rockefeller. Before that, he was U.S. undersecretary of state under
Secretary Henry Kissinger from 1973 until 1975.
So I did a quick google search and came up with the following:
Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, now a part of Credit Suisse First
Boston, handled
at least one Enron partnership, Whitewing Management LLP. Jeanmarie
McFadden, a spokeswoman for Credit Suisse, declined to comment. Officials at
Lehman Brothers, J.P. Morgan Chase and Salomon Smith Barney, Citigroup's
securities unit, Deutsche Bank and CIBC also declined to comment. -- from siliconinvestor.com.
High-flying risk takers
DLJ probably won't be offended if you call it junky - the firm has profited
enormously from underwriting junk bonds (high-yield debt) at a time when other
banks thought the category was dead for good. In fact, when the fiefdom of
junk bond czar Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert imploded in 1991, DLJ
zoomed in and scooped up Drexel's best and brightest, unlike other firms, who
shied away from scandal. Today, DLJ is the perennial leader in junk bond
underwriting. In 1999, the firm was No. 1 among all underwriters of high-yield
debt, lead-underwriting $17.5 billion in junk bonds. -- from excite.
Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette is one company that turns the phrase
“big business” into a totally inadequate understatement: they boast total
capital of over $3.46 billion and total assets of over $55.56 billion. DLJ is
involved in every facet of commercial finance endeavor ranging from investment
banking to stock brokering to asset management to institutional equities to
emerging markets to any other imaginable aspect of commercial financial
operation. The many separate businesses that comprise DLJ fall into three
groups: Financial Services, Capital Markets and Banking. -- from researchpapers.net.
Good pick, George. You're sure to restore confidence in the market by
hiring Mr. Junk Bond (shaken and stirred).
posted by Bob at 11:47
AM
Raising the bar on arrogance. Unbelievable!
Deputy Russian Ambassador Gennady Gatilov said the United States had
taken the council's lone copy to Washington where it would make duplicates for
distribution to the four other powerful council members. -- from the NY
Times.
The US has the only copy of Iraq's report on weapons! Once again, the
Bushies are just daring the rest of the world not to trust them. I sure don't.
The US is supposed to make copies for the other four permanent members of the
UN Security Council, while the other, non-permanent members get censored
copies.
There are many amazing things about the Bush administration: its continual
lack of concern for appearances may be the most amazing. They continually
accuse others of actions that they themselves are clearly guilty of, they make
statements that could easily be turned around against them, they are brash and
arrogant, all apparently comfortable knowing that no major media outlet or
world leader is going to point out the obvious. Taking the only copy of such
an important document into private possession, even briefly, is so incredibly
arrogant that it leaves me gasping. Even the slightest desire to appear honest
and aboveboard would have led to the documents being immediately copied in the
presence of representatives of all Security Council members, so that if any
question arose over key passages that independent verification would be
available. Also, I suspect that most Security Council members have better
Arabic translators than the US does. Even if the Bushies are not blatantly
criminal in altering the documents before copying them, this still leaves the
possibility that they will select key passages from the documents to release
to the press as reason to go to war before the other countries have an
opportunity to review and possibly refute the US interpretation.
Update (about 9:40 PM EST; part above was posted about 4:30): the NY Times
has clarified
its article, sort of, so I'll try to clarify mine. Apparently, the inspectors
still have the original document submitted by Iraq. The inspectors had
originally intended to review the document for several days, possibly
censoring certain sections of it, before releasing copies to Security Council
countries. The Bushies, anxious to get their war on, didn't want to wait that
long, so they pressured the inspectors into giving them a copy. As best as I
can tell, the US is the only Security Council member that currently has a
copy, but is supposed to make copies for the other four permanent Security
Council members (Britain, France, Russia, China). The ten non-permanent SC
members will only see edited versions at a later time.
It still seems, however, that the Bush administration will be reviewing the
document in detail at the same time as the inspectors do, and before any other
member of the security Council. While this probably removes any suspicion of
actually altering the document, it still allows the administration to
orchestrate the PR at a minimum. It also raises the possibility that they have
been bluffing on having evidence, but can now use this document to
"create evidence." For example, the Iraqis might state that at some
location they have shells which formerly contained mustard gas, but from which
the mustard gas and detonators have been removed. The administration can point
the inspectors to that site, claiming that these shells are chemical weapons,
since the gas and detonators could be replaced quickly. There might be traces
of gas in the shells, and they could claim this as evidence as well. I don't
know if this is actually the plan, but I'm certainly not the only one who is
going to suspect it. The appearances are bad, and any "discoveries"
of forbidden weapons will be tainted by suspicion, as opposed to if the
inspectors had found the weapons without US orchestration.
So while I may have been overly alarmist, I think the basic premise is
correct: the US is attempting to hijack the interpretation of the documents in
order to go to war.
posted by Bob at 4:30
PM
Judge
rules that Cheney doesn't have to turn energy task force records over to GAO.
While I think that it is reprehensible and inexcusable for the Veep from the
Deep to conduct important public business in secret, I also think that there
is a proper response on the part of Congress: "We won't pass anything
without knowing where it came from." And Cheney's energy plan speaks for
itself: accelerated assault on the environment for the benefit of energy
companies. So far, Congress hasn't passed much of it, and it should stay that
way. Even more than most vice presidents, Cheney deserves to be ignored. And,
as I've
said
before, if they won't tell you what you ask for, just assume the worst.
posted by Bob at 4:10
PM
The Navy knows which side its bread is buttered on: Presenting
the USS George H.W. Bush nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which, along
with the USS Ronald Reagan will soon be patrolling the waters of the world,
changing regimes at will. Honoring the dishonorable: a longtime American
tradition.
posted by Bob at 2:07
PM
Merry-go-round: Turkish government officials have indicated that
their
support for a war on Iraq may depend on the US helping Turkey gain admission
to the European Union. (I guess the Miss World crown wasn't enough.) They
suggest that Bush make a few phone calls, twist a few arms. How's this for a
scenario? W makes the calls, and France, Germany and other EU countries agree
to support Turkey's entry into the EU--on condition that Bush drop his Iraq
war plans. With any luck, this would cause Bush's head to explode.
posted by Bob at 1:14
PM
The cost of a war in Iraq has been estimated at between $100 and $200
billion. How much is $100 billion?
- Three times what the federal government spends on K-12 education.
- Enough to provide health care to all uninsured children in the US for
five years.
(
source)
That's leaving a whole lot of children behind so we can go kill other
children.
posted by Bob at 1:03
PM
A few weeks ago, I quoted from an editorial that was in the Salt Lake Tribune
(unfortunately, my link to the article doesn't work anymore). The author had
an interesting prediction for what might happen if Mary Landrieu were
re-elected to the Senate from Louisiana, which she was on Saturday.
Prediction: There is a 50-50 chance that McCain and Chaffee will switch
parties and a similar chance that McCain will become the Democratic standard
bearer in 2004.
It will be very interesting if this is correct, since it would give the Senate
back to the Democrats again.
posted by Bob at 11:08
AM
Technical Difficulties: http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com/.
Check it out! (Make sure your speakers are turned down low.)
Steve Osborn, a member of our Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace, posted
the following reply to the "Technical Difficulties" animation:
"Technical difficulties" . . . I think there's some truth to
that. Following closely the news, especially foreign news on public radio
sources, I gain the impression that the Administration is HEARING the many
criticisms, and for various reasons is now seeking (without saying so) to
DELAY any war with Iraq, and to MINIMIZE any conflict that might take place.
The UN, our Allies abroad, Arab nations, and certainly Iraq as well, are
taking steps that amount to the same drive to delay and minimize any war.
Surely the squabbles that will be developing over weapons inspections and
questions about what they find will have that effect, too. To delay and
minimize would be great opportunity for PEACE: just push those efforts
farther, and it can amount to NO WAR at all. Only trouble is, it isn't really
peace, either. But maybe it provides TIME during which real peace efforts can
grow. Quote me, if it helps, from my recent letter-to-editor:
The US is certainly powerful enough to NOT LET SADDAM DRAG THE WORLD INTO
WAR (as the President seems to imply when he says the choice is up to Saddam),
regardless of the outcome of weapons inspections or arguments, or Saddam's
games. Already the world's superpower, the US has the ability to get WHATEVER
FUTURE WE MIGHT CHOOSE TO PREPARE FOR, with its power, great resources of
diplomacy (if we'd use them) and reserves of good will still left for us in
some parts of the world. So let's be preparing for peace to come, not war
which no one wants and which even yet can be stopped, whatever Saddam's choice
might be. Let's claim the choice for peace as OURS to make.
I think Steve may have a point: The Iraqis have said that they don't have
WMD's, and the war hasn't started yet, so far as I've heard. Is it possible
that W could be smart enough to declare victory at this point and bring the
troops home? Use some of that old Dubyatalk, such as: "Since Mr. Saddam
Hussein has decided to change his evil ways and disclose these disclosures, I
think it is a sign that the regime change has changed. This was what we were
goaling for all along." I doubt it, but if so, that's great.
posted by Bob at 8:57
AM
Adding on to secure, undisclosed location? Bunker-buster tests? Cheney's
dinner didn't agree with him? Secret
explosions occuring at the Veep from the Deep's mansion. The Post said
neighbors have several theories about what the project might involve. One is
that the government is building a security bunker for Cheney. Another is that
it is digging tunnels to spy on nearby embassies. Still another is that a
helicopter hangar is being built.
posted by Bob at 11:02
PM
ACLU anti-Ashcroft TV ad! View
it here, requires Real Player.
posted by Bob at 8:28
PM
Less than two weeks after Thanksgiving,
Miss
Turkey becomes Miss World. Do you think is one of those "behind the
scenes" things that the Bushies did to get Turkey's support for war on
Iraq? I think it's possible, although she is very pretty.
I refuse to comment on whether the founders of any major religions would
consider marrying her. I will say, however, that Jesus wouldn't drive at
all--he'd take the bus!
posted by Bob at 12:25
PM
Ten Reasons for Hope, from
Bernard
Weiner. Mostly based on the hope that more and more people will come to
the realization that "this time Bush has gone too far."
posted by Bob at 12:41
AM
The water showdown begins, and it doesn't look like tax cuts are going
to solve this problem. According to
this
article California's share of Colorado river water is going to be cut back
significantly at the end of the year:
Assistant Interior Secretary Bennett Raley told the Imperial Irrigation
District Thursday that his office is determined to reduce the state's overuse
of Colorado River water quickly so other Western states can get their full
entitlement. "I'm not here to tell you what to do," he said.
"But doing nothing is not an option. The (Interior) secretary is going to
enforce the law of the river."
Southern California must quickly decide how to allocate the water between
the farmers of the Imperial valley and the industries and residents in the
LA/San Diego area. I remember driving across the desert in California years
ago where the highway parallels the aqueduct which carries water from the
Colorado River to LA. There must be huge losses to evaporation in that
high-temperature, low-humidity environment. I'm not familiar with the whole
history there, but the politics behind such a massive subsidization of one
area over another must have been, and continue to be, incredible. The sheer
arrogance required to take on such a massive engineering project to benefit
one location at the expense of another is staggering. I am reminded of the
story of the Chicago River, which back around 1890 used to flow through
Chicago and into Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, the river served as the main
sewer for Chicago, which fouled up the Lake Michigan water that Chicagoans
were drinking and trying to swim in. Rather than treat the sewage properly or
come up with a reasonably environmentally sound plan, Chicago decided to
reverse the flow of the river! With a lot of digging they were able to connect
the Chicago River to the Des Plaines river a few miles inland. The Des Plaines
flows to the Illinois river, and eventually to the Mississippi. So rather than
have their sewage wash up on their own beaches, it now flowed the other way,
down to Peoria (which had far fewer representatives in the Illinois
legislature than did Chicago). To some extent I find large engineering
projects to be fascinating, but many, maybe most, have been done strictly to
benefit some powerful group of people at the expense of some other, less
powerful group, not to mention the environment. Dams flood some areas to
benefit others; freeways destroy cities to benefit suburbs; and aqueducts take
water from where it was supposed to be to where those in power want it.
People have poured lots of money into developing both the cities of
southern California and the agriculture of the Imperial valley. They're not
likely to give up what they've built without a fight. This is going to be real
ugly, and those of us in states that have adequate water have to be ready for
states that don't trying to take it from us.
As usual, when it comes to water issues, Politics
in the Zeroes is the place to go for more information.
posted by Bob at 12:12
AM
I just watched the HBO movie "Live From Baghdad" about CNN's
coverage of the (first) Gulf War culminating in the live reporting during the
first night's bombing by Bernard Shaw. Peter Arnett, and John Holliman. Pretty
well done, I'd say. Michael Keaton did a good job playing a brash CNN director
in this apparently close-to-the-facts movie. Hopefully there won't be a need
for a sequel.
posted by Bob at 11:40
PM
Excellent
Op-Ed
from USA Today (thanks to Sanjay for sending me the link). Excerpts:
Imagine a place where in two short years a budget surplus has been
magically transformed into a deficit. A place where millions of people are
jobless, many of them laid off in the past 24 months. Homelessness is steadily
increasing, millions of children go to bed hungry and terrorists have recently
attacked, killing thousands. Then imagine that this country's king decides to
deny government workers scheduled raises and new government workers civil
service protection, but confers upon the appointed members of his court
bonuses of up to $25,000. This is the America we all live in.
...
As so many of us struggle to make ends meet, afraid that it may be our job
eliminated in the next round of layoffs, Bush is using our tax dollars to
award his political appointees, many of whom already make more than $100,000 a
year. Exactly what have they done so well? Couldn't be the economy, justice
system, environment, equal protection. The administration says many of those
rewarded are involved in counter-terrorism activities. Funny; I haven't been
able to find one person who feels safer now than he or she did a year ago.
posted by Bob at 3:41
PM
Ari says size doesn't matter
From
CNN:
Mohammed Aldouri, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, said the report
will contain a "very huge" amount of information as demanded by U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1441, adopted unanimously in November, calling for
Iraq to disclose its weapons of mass destruction programs and to disarm.
It will have "all the information they need," Aldouri said
Friday.
But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer reiterated the Bush
administration's warning not to trust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who he
said has a proven record of lying to the United Nations.
"Sometimes one of the best ways to hide or to deceive is to come out
with such a voluminous document that it makes people miss the things that
aren't in there," he said. "Just because Iraq turns over a phone
book to the United Nations doesn't mean that nobody inside Iraq has an
unlisted phone number."
"We won't be fooled ... into thinking that the size alone dictates
that Iraq has complied," Fleischer said.
Ari knows whereof he speaks. Much of the repressive crap in the USA Patriot
Act went unread and unnoticed until it was too late. Most people in Congress
didn't read it before voting for it. An excellent way to hide and deceive, two
of the very few things that the Bush administration is good at.
posted by Bob at 9:17
PM
'Tis the Season for some New Words to Old Tunes
Jingle Bells
Spread out through the fields
Where tiny children play
Some blow up right now
Others hide in prey
Where they’ll all end up
The pilots never know
But one thing seems for certain that
One day those bombs will blow. Hey!
Cluster bombs, cluster bombs,
Cluster bombs away
Oh how sick it is to drop
The cluster bombs that way, Oh!
Cluster bombs, cluster bombs,
Cluster bombs away
Kids will die or lose an eye
So George can have his way.
We Three Kings
We three kings of Washington are
Bearing bombs and tanks from afar
Killing, maiming, regime cha-a-nging
So we can drive our cars. Oh-oh…
Cars to work and cars to school
Cars to go to swimming pools
Cars polluting, drive-by shootings
SUV-driving fools.
We are Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush
We have all the buttons to push
Mass destruction, re-election
By kicking Saddam’s tush. Oh-oh…
Cars to shop in, cars for love
Cars to run down peacenik doves
Oil guzzling, global sizzling
All for the cars we love.
Little Drummer Boy
Here they come again kaboom-ba-boom-boom!
B-52’s again kaboom-ba-boom-boom!
They carpet bomb again kaboom-ba-boom-boom!
Knock out our water again kaboom-ba-boom-boom!
We’ll drink sewage again kaboom-ba-boom-boom!
This is our doom.
The First Noel
The first Gulf War the president did say
Unto gullible media like the heads on Today
That Saddam was a threat and must be put away
So they bombed and they killed but Saddam’s there today
Gulf War, Gulf War, Gulf War, Gulf War
Does anyone know what we really fight for?
And now, in the White House, there’s a new Bush at play
He says the same crap about Saddam Hussein
That he’s evil that he’s bad that he threatens us all
That more Iraqis must die so we can have their oil
Gulf War, Gulf War, Gulf War, Gulf War
Does anyone know what we really fight for?
Twelve Days of Christmas
On the 12th day of Christmas my government gave to me:
12 months in jail
11 degrees warming
10 less amendments
9 crappy judges
8 more toxins
7 unlawful combatants
6 GMO’s
FIVE BRAND-NEW WARS!
4 01 k’s
3 Henry K’s
2 jobs left
and a Department of Homeland Security!
posted by Bob at 12:29
PM
Trent Lott is blocking the 9/11 victims' family members' choice for a
Republican representative on the commission investigating the terror attacks,
according to the
New
York Times. The family members, with the support of Republican senators
McCain of Arizona and Shelby of Alabama, are requesting that former New
Hampshire senator Warren Rudman fill one of the five Republican slots on the
commission. They feel that Rudman is independent enough to avoid pressure from
the White House on key votes in the commission and would be willing to vote
with the five Democrats. Apparently Lott agrees, and doesn't want that to
happen. I think he's afraid that the commission will subpoena the president
and ask him the dreaded question: "What do you know, and when will you
ever know it?"
posted by Bob at 10:06
AM
From an
article about the Norwalk virus on cruise ships:
Last month, 150 people became ill from Norwalk infections after eating
in a Salt Lake City restaurant called the Chuck-A-Rama.
If you eat at a place called "Chuck-A-Rama," what do you expect?
posted by Bob at 6:55
AM
Ted
Rall calls George W. Bush a liberal, in that he is changing things very
quickly. W ran as a "compassionate conservative," which couldn't be
farther from the truth. One good point that Rall makes is that W is actually
raising taxes for most Americans: The budget crises facing almost every state
and local government in the country will result in higher taxes at those
levels. And most state income and sales taxes are flat rate, not progressive,
so these affect poor and middle-class people as much as rich people, while W's
federal tax cut went mainly to the rich.
posted by Bob at 12:04
AM
Just in case you haven't noticed, our president is a blithering idiot.
"For the sake of peace, he must disarm. There are inspectors inside
the country now and the inspectors are there not to play a game of hide and
seek. They're there to verify whether or not Mr. Saddam Hussein is going to
disarm," the president said. -- from
AP.
Funny, I thought they were there to inspect for weapons. I have been
opposed to war with Iraq for several reasons: The casualties it will cause to
Iraqis and to our military personnel, the possibility that it will spill into
a larger war, the likely increase in terrorism, the continued overuse of
automobiles made possible by US control of Gulf region oil fields, the blatant
deception and hypocrisy of the Bushies (claiming it is part of the war on
terror, attacking Iraq when Pakistan is more dangerous and Saudi Arabia more
guilty), the renewed brain-dead jingoism of the American public, and probably
a couple of other reasons I can't recall now. But there is one additional
reason climbing my list which I should probably be ashamed of, but I don't
seem to be right now. Bush wants this war so bad that he is going to cry if he
doesn't get it. And I really, really, really want him to cry.
posted by Bob at 11:01
PM
Bob's fearless prediction: Remember how Harvey Pitt announced his
resignation at about 7 pm on election day? I predict that his replacement as
Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission will be announced on the
same day as the war against Iraq starts for real. (If we peaceniks somehow
stop it, Pitt will remain at SEC at least until the next election day.) And
it's going to be bad, very bad. Rudy Giuliani? Jeffrey Skilling? Donald Trump?
Jack Welch? Michael Milken? Neil Bush? What's Charles Keating up to these
days? After the Kissinger thing, I wouldn't rule out any of them. And because
of the war, it won't be front page news anywhere, and it won't even make the
crawl on CNN or FoxNews.
posted by Bob at 12:56
PM
Calling up
the reserves! "Activating reserves is significant because it will
affect every community in America, and it sends a signal that the president
is serious," a senior military official said. Let's see a show of
hands: Anyone who has thought at any time in the past ten months that George
Worthless Bush isn't serious about going to war with Iraq?
posted by Bob at 12:45
PM
While I'm a member,
I've had my doubts about the Sierra Club for a while.
Their glossy magazine often features articles on fuel-guzzling adventures to
Nepal or Siberia, and at one of our local group meetings a member described
his recent kayak trip in Greenland. He flew to Iceland and hired a pilot to
fly him to Nowhere Fjord on the edge of Nothing province in frigging
Greenland. I saw his slides: there is NOTHING in Greenland, and he wasted a
lot of fuel to confirm it. The Sierra Club continually compromises on
important environmental issues, taking a "moderate" stance against
radical right-wing corporations and government officials. The result is that
the environment gets ruined ever so slightly slower than it would have without
Sierra Club input. If we're lucky. Now,
the
Sierra Club is threatening to kick out its Utah chapter for taking a stance
opposed to war in Iraq!
I get letters asking me to join liberal/humanitarian/environmental groups
and/or contribute money daily. I give money to lots of them, but I think the
Sierra Club will be left out next time. No group can say it is protecting the
environment if it doesn't oppose war. Thanks to Polizeros
for the link.
posted by Bob at 11:29
AM
WSWS
raises questions about the bombing and missile attack in Kenya. One
interesting point is that the Israeli airliner may have been equipped with
anti-missile decoys and used them, explaining why it escaped. This also raises
the question of who actually was responsible, since Bush and Sharon have been
quick to link the attack to al Qaeda in a fairly obvious attempt to link the
US "war on terrorism" with the Israeli war with the Palestinians.
The article leads into all sorts of dark corners, such as allegations that
Israel's Mossad intelligence service had framed Libya in the bombing of a
disco in Berlin in 1986, which led to US retaliation against Libya, which was
supposedly the motive for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scottland in
1988. I chased that trail a ways, and a
Time
Europe article suggests that more likely had Iranian, Lebanese, or Syrian
roots than it did Libyan, and that a CIA hostage-release team on the flight
may have been the main target. I wish I had more time to chase this stuff
down! The general impression I get is that most of what we "know"
about world events is propaganda from the CIA, Mossad, and who knows who else.
US attacks on Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan,
and Iraq again all seem to be facts, but the real reasons for them are hidden
in a deep fog far removed from the stated reasons.
posted by Bob at 11:08
AM
W's
Christmas wish: from Mike Thompson.
posted by Bob at 10:54
AM
Congress Rewards Corporate Tax Evaders With Our Money: Arianna
Huffington (which would be a great name for a character in a children's book)
spotlights
the provision of the Gestapo (aka Homeland Security) bill which allows
corporations that have moved their headquarters offshore to avoid taxes to bid
for Homeland Security contracts.
posted by Bob at 4:20
PM
NAFTA = DEATH
NAFTA-required tariff reductions in January will put many thousands of Mexican
farmers out of business. They will be forced to compete with US agribusinesses
producing cheap food supported by direct Federal subsidies and indirect
subsidies from artificially cheap water and oil. Of course, once Mexican
farmers are out of business, the US firms will be able to raise the prices
while still enjoying the subsidies. Many more Mexicans will be competing for
the low-wage jobs in the maquiladoras along the US border, lowering costs for
US-based industry even further. The whole process is brutal and ultimately
unsustainable, but as long as profits for the next few quarters look good,
neither the corporations nor their lackeys in the Senate and the Bush
administration seem to care.
posted by Bob at 3:51
PM
News on Padilla isn't that good after all:
U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey ruled that supposed (rumored? alleged?)
"dirty bomber" Jose Padilla can finally meet with lawyers. But he
also said that the president's "commander in chief" hat and a few
precedents from World War II trump the bill of rights when it comes to our
liberties:
"The president ... has both constitutional and statutory authority to
exercise the powers of commander in chief, including the power to detain
unlawful combatants, and it matters not that Padilla is a United States
citizen captured on United States soil,'' Mukasey wrote. -- from the
NY
Times.
Judge Mukasey was appointed
to the District court by President Reagan in 1987. He has been
involved in many of the secret detention cases since 9/11.
posted by Bob at 3:27
PM
Russia and India oppose unilateral action and threats
Russia and India have supported efforts to ensure Iraq has no weapons of
mass destruction but have expressed concern about possible U.S. military
action. Putin and Vajpayee, in a wide-ranging joint declaration, urged efforts
to spur Iraq to cooperate with international inspectors searching for weapons
of mass destruction. "Both sides strongly oppose unilateral use or threat
of use of force in violation of the U.N. charter as well as interference in
the internal affairs of other states,'' they said. "A comprehensive
settlement of the situation...is possible only through political and
diplomatic efforts in strict conformity with the rules of international law
and only under the aegis of the United Nations.'' -- from
Reuters
via NY Times.
Hey George, those are two REALLY BIG countries with plenty of weapons of
mass destruction. Both are far more concerned about another WMD club member,
Pakistan, than they are about a few barrels of mustard gas that Saddam might
have hiding under his bed. Both clearly have their own agendas and are happy
to use your "war on terrorism" nonsense to support the suppression
of rebels within their borders, but you are playing with serious fire if you
ignore what these countries have to say.
posted by Bob at 1:34
PM
Kick 'em while they're down. This is probably the start of Michael
Moore's next movie: The US Department of Housing and Urban Development is
withdrawing
most of the $1.3 million in Community Development Block Grants for Flint,
saying they didn't file paperwork on time. If you've seen Moore's films
"Roger and Me" and "The Big One" then you know that Flint
has been devastated in the last twenty years by the departure of most of the
General Motors factories in the city. GM moved the plants not because they
weren't making money in Flint, but because they could make even more in
Tennessee, Texas, Mexico, and elsewhere with cheap non-union labor. These
moves have been aided and abetted by the "free-trade" policies of
the Reagan, Clinton, and both Bush administrations, with no regard for the
well-being of the people of Flint. Now the small amount of Federal aid to the
many poor people in Flint is being cut. Compassionate conservative, my
ashcroft.
posted by Bob at 11:55
AM
Federal
Court says Padilla can meet with lawyers. You can bet that Ted Olson and
the Constitution Demolition Crew will be immediately appealing this decision,
enabling them to keep so-called "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla
locked up without rights for a few more months. To review the case: Padilla, a
US citizen, was arrested in May in Chicago, and has been held without charges
or access to lawyers since then in a Navy brig.
posted by Bob at 11:45
AM
Cartoons you won't see here: Any of the thousands of stupid drawings
showing a smiling Saddam Hussein leading dumb-looking UN inspectors past
poorly-disguised rockets and barrels. Frankly, as a deceiver George W. Bush is
much more adept than Saddam, and as a dupe the US public is much more gullible
than the UN inspectors. So all you right-wing cartoonists can draw your own
conclusions without me.
posted by Bob at 11:36
AM
from
Joe Heller in Green
Bay.
posted by Bob at 11:11
AM
from
Mike
Peters of Dayton.
posted by Bob at 11:00
AM
Turning the tables on Poindexter: SF
Weekly's Matt Smith suggests that people use their sources to look closely
into the lives of Admiral John Poindexter, his wife and neighbors, to make a
point about Poindexter's office of "Total Information Awareness" in
the Pentagon.
This site
follows through with detailed maps locating Poindick's house and names and
phone numbers for his neighbors.
I think maybe similar attention is due to some of the others who are making
America a scarier place to live: Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Ted Olson,
Michael Powell, Henry Kissinger, etc. Maybe we buy them gift memberships in
the socialist and communist parties, give donations to Islamic charities in
their names, subscribe them to radical publications, etc. Maybe create web
pages that link their names with al Qaeda, terrorism, Iraq, and so on. Nothing
illegal or false, just an attempt to make their names show up in google
searches or in all sorts of strange places in the "Total Information
Awareness" databases. A web page that says simply "Paul Wolfowitz,
Richard Perle, Ted Olson, Michael Powell and Henry Kissinger are probably not
members of al Qaeda, nor are they working for the government of Iraq."
Place a few hundred thousand such pages all over the Internet and many
searches for "al Qaeda" or "Iraq" will mention their
names. Hey, this blog is a start!
On the flip side, our best protection from TIA is probably not in trying to
hide but in trying to be overly visible. Don't be afraid to check out library
books on Islam or ones which have a radical message: just check out a lot of
them, and throw in some right-wing crap (Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson) and
some off-the-wall stuff from time to time. You don't have to read it--just
drop it in the book return on your way out of the library. Find a right-wing
website and click on all of the links, following their links. Again, you don't
have to read the crap, but anyone reviewing where you've been on the web will
be confused. (Well, he visited "Bob's Links and Rants" forty-seven
times, so he's probably a left-wing pinko, but then again he visited
"George W. Bush is God" fifty-one times, so maybe he's okay.) Make
investigating YOU a difficult and tedious task.
This is really more an idea I'm throwing out there rather than a
suggestion: what do you think? Are we better off paying cash for everything,
web surfing anonymously on public computers only, and in general making
ourselves as invisible as possible? Or do we follow my idea above and make
ourselves so visible in so many ways that we overload their system, making any
attempt to figure us out from their databases difficult? Or just go on as we
have been and take our chances that we don't get that knock on the door at 3
am or have our lives otherwise destroyed by the new Gestapo?
posted by Bob at 10:45
PM
Hillary worried about SAM's: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
sent
letters to Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and NY Governor George
Pataki asking for increased security against portable surface-to-air missiles
like those fired at an Israeli airliner in Kenya last week. The CNN article
also quotes James Kallstrom, director of New York State's Office of Public
Security, about SAM security issues.
This is bizarre, to say the least. A SAM was most likely to blame for the
explosion of TWA 800 in 1996, regardless
of what the FBI said. The FBI's investigation was headed by none other than
James Kallstrom, and the conclusions it reached were based much more on
political pressure from the Clinton administration than on evidence which
included over 100 eyewitnesses who saw something like a missile heading toward
the plane shortly before it exploded. I also think that a SAM is one of the
most likely causes of the crash of American flight 587 in November 2001. Of
course, al Qaeda probably has access to plenty of Stinger SAM's that we
provided them back in the '80's when we called them "freedom
fighters" instead of "terrorists." In reality, their methods
haven't changed, only their targets.
posted by Bob at 11:23
AM
We're headline news on Common Dreams! Ann Arbor's passage of an
anti-war resolution is the
top
story on the Common Dreams
website today.
That's my knee behind the crossed-legs-with-boots holding the sign.
posted by Bob at 10:49
AM
Washington Post accuses Ashcroft of breaking the law:
Today, at the Justice Department, some laws are more equal than others. One
36-year-old U.S. law can be broken, it seems. Attorney General John D.
Ashcroft, who is sworn to enforce all laws, has told federal employees that
they can bend -- perhaps even break -- one law, and he will even defend their
actions in court. That law is known as the Freedom of Information Act. --
from the Washington Post.
This secrecy crap is all nonsense. The government insists that its
intrusions into personal privacy shouldn't bother people who "have
nothing to hide," but then Ashcroft and the other Bush Obscurians try to
hide all of the public's business from the public. They claim the information
could be of use to terrorists: it would probably be of much more use to the
public in preventing terror attacks. It's our information--give it to us!
Ashcroft may well be the scariest "human" being since Hitler. (And
don't tell me to tone down the hyperbole--I already did! I was tempted to say
Ashcroft is the scariest person ever, period.)
posted by Bob at 11:13
PM
Bush and Cheney have itchy trigger fingers. "In the inspections
process, the United States will be making one judgment: Has Saddam Hussein
changed his behavior of the last 11 years? Has he decided to cooperate
willingly and comply completely, or has he not? So far the signs are not
encouraging," the president said. -- from the
NY
Times. I'm losing track, but wasn't the goal two weeks ago to
"disarm" Saddam? And a month or two ago it was regime change. Now
it's "change his behavior." The excuses change constantly: what Bush
wants doesn't. It was war then, it is war now. Whatever Saddam does or doesn't
do hasn't and won't affect this in the slightest. Only political resistance
here at home has delayed the war until now, and only a huge resistance effort
can stop it now. Get your city council to join Ann Arbor in passing a
resolution. Go to a protest march. Write congress--again. Start your own blog.
Do whatever you can to stop the madness here and now.
posted by Bob at 10:55
PM
Good News!!!!
Ann Arbor just became the 22nd city in the nation to pass a resolution
opposing war in Iraq. I just returned from the city council meeting where the
resolution was passed by a 7-1 vote. I was one of probably 50 people from the
Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace there supporting the council. Newly-elected
council member Kim Groome, for whom I campaigned (thank you very much), was a
co-sponsor of the resolution. I'm an Ann Arborite and proud of it!!
There was some discussion as to whether this was an appropriate action for
a local government to take. The general opinion was that it is a local issue
since taxes from Ann Arbor which go for war will not come back to benefit Ann
Arbor; that Ann Arborites who serve in the armed forces may be casualties of
the conflict; and that the possible increase in terrorist attacks resulting
from the war may impact here as well. The resolution was worded as support for
our congressional delegation, Senators Levin and Stabenow and Representatives
Rivers and Dingell, all of whom voted against the Iraq war resolution in
October. No opposition to the resolution was expressed from the public, and
even the one council member who voted against it said he basically agreed with
what it said but did not feel that it was an appropriate local issue.
posted by Bob at 9:41
PM
As we recover from Thanksgiving feasts, we should recall the true meaning of
Thanksgiving: military victory, commercialism, and football. See
this
article to find out how much your teachers lied to you about this
gluttonous holiday. An excerpt:
The Confederate Congress proclaimed separate thanksgiving observations
in July 1861 and again in September 1862, after the First and Second Battles
of Bull Run. And it wasn't just the South. President Lincoln similarly set
aside days of thanksgiving in April 1862 and August 1863 to commemorate the
important Union victories at Shiloh and Gettysburg. These ad hoc decrees fell
in some cases on Sundays (a common day for religious observance) and in other
cases on Thursdays. Lincoln declared yet another Thanksgiving Day in 1863, for
the last Thursday in November—and it has been celebrated annually in late
November ever since. In his proclamation he drew attention to affairs both
national and international:
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has
sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression,
peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws
have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except
in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly
contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
It was not until 1931, when President Herbert Hoover made his proclamation,
that any of the presidential declarations of thanksgiving mentioned the
Plymouth Pilgrims and the 1621 harvest festival as a precursor to the modern
holiday. By this time, yet another willfully amnesiac reinvention of
Thanksgiving was under way.
posted by Bob at 4:38
PM
Good article on growing anti-war movement from the
Washington
Post.
Many of those speaking out against an attack on Iraq represent large
numbers of Americans, including John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO
(with 13 million members); the National Council of Churches (which represents
36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations, with 50 million members); and the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops (the leadership arm of 65 million
Roman Catholics).
posted by Bob at 3:54
PM
We're Number One!
RESOLVED AGAINST PATRIOT ACT
Eugene, Oregon is the 15th local government in the United States to pass a
resolution opposing the USA Patriot Act.
1. Ann Arbor, Mich.
2. Denver
3. Amherst, Mass.
4. Leverett, Mass.
5. North Hampton, Mass.
6. Cambridge, Mass.
7. Carrboro, N.C.
8. Boulder, Colo.
9. Madison, Wis.
10. Berkeley, Calif.
11. Alachua County, Fla.
12. Takoma Park, Md.
13. Santa Fe, N.M.
14. Santa Cruz, Calif.
15. Eugene
And tonight, Ann Arbor will hopefully become the 22nd city to pass a
resolution opposing war in Iraq. The Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace will
have a large contingent at the City Council meeting to help the council
members decide how to vote.
posted by Bob at 2:21
PM
Politics in the Zeros
ideas
for peace:
- Help create a Palestinian homeland that all the players can live with.
Note I said "help create", not "force everyone with the
barrel of a gun". There will be no peace in the Mideast until there
is a Palestinian homeland. If we genuinely work towards this goal, and
mean it, we defuse huge amounts of tension and hostility.
- Price gas at $4-5 a gallon. Europe already does this. Use the money to
move as fast as possible to high mpg cars and renewable energy. That way
we won't need outside oil nearly as much. Plus we will no longer have a
reputation for being energy pigs.
- Stop sticking our nose in everyone's business. North Korea has nukes?
Let China deal with it - if they choose to. They are next to North Korea
and have far more at stake than us. It is not our problem. China has been
around several thousand years more than us. I'm guessing they can deal
with it. Maybe better than we can.
- Repeat the above logic for the multitude of other countries we insist on
telling what do to. If they need help, let them ask. Then be helpful, not
imperial.
- Apologize for the blind idiocy of our foreign policy that has aliented
most of the planet.
posted by Bob at 12:33
PM
Thirteen die in Michigan Terrorist Attack. Whoops, sorry, that would be
front-page national news.
Thirteen people shot by sniper in Michigan.
Sorry, wrong again. That too would make headlines.
At
least 13 killed in holiday crashes statewide. Yeah, that's the story.
It's a minor story on the Ann Arbor News and Detroit Free Press web sites, and
there is nothing to be seen about the nationwide auto carnage from the weekend
on the CNN or NY Times websites. The nationwide death toll must have been in
the hundreds--probably about the same as the death toll from Bali, Kenya, the
snipers, and the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon combined, but it doesn't rate as
a news story because it happens all the time. And "Gulf War II: This Time
It's For Oil (Again)", if "successful" will enable this carnage
to continue for a few more years by keeping gasoline prices low.
posted by Bob at 12:00
PM
Got Crap?
Shoppers like these did their best to negate the effects of "Buy Nothing
Day" efforts, supporting the global economy of pollution, waste, and
exploitation. Way to go, ladies. Save those bags--you'll be hauling most of
that crap out to the curb in a few weeks, about the time the bills arrive. CNN
refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving as "Black Friday." They
don't say why, but apparently a whole lot of crap went out the doors on this
most recent Black Friday.
posted by Bob at 11:30
AM
More red meat: Back in March,
Paul
Krugman quoted an environmentalist who said that the push to drill for oil
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was "red meat for the right."
That is, the benefits of drilling, even for the oil companies, are minimal,
but the Bushies push for it just to piss off environmentalists for the
enjoyment of right-wingers. You've got to believe this was one of the main
reasons for selecting Henry Kissinger to chair the 9/11 investigation.
posted by Bob at 11:21
AM
They did not die in vain: Ted
Rall's tribute to 9/11 victims.
posted by Bob at 10:53
AM
Last things first: The
Hyatt
Kabul, backed by your tax dollars (including terrorism insurance). Thanks
to
Politics in the Zeros for the link.
posted by Bob at 11:40
PM
Another item not to buy: bottled water. Huge multinational corporations
like Vivendi, Suez (both French), CocaCola and Pepsi are using their obscene
profits from bottled water to fund their quests to privatize the world's
water. Pepsi's Aquafina and Coke's Dasani brands are basically filtered tap
water with a few chemicals added, and are not necessarily cleaner or safer
than tap water. Their prices, however, are sometimes 10,000 times that of tap,
and their packaging contributes to pollution in both its manufacture and
disposal. If your tap water tastes bad or seems unsafe, work the local system
to improve it, buy a filter or boil it if you have to, but don't give your
money to companies that want to monopolize control of the world's water.
(Source:
Blue
Gold, a book by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke.) Companies like Monsanto,
Cargill, ConAgra and Archer-Daniels-Midland want to control the world's food
supply, and the four corporations mentioned above, along with a few others,
want complete control over our water. If they control our food and our water,
they control us. The Bush administration is doing everything it can, which is
a lot, to assist these monsters. We must make sure that we don't aid them by
buying their bottled water. (I'm going to have to give up my Diet Coke
addiction, too, which will be much harder for me than giving up meat was.)
posted by Bob at 11:32
PM
If you want to get to the bottom of something, you don't appoint Henry
Kissinger. If you want to keep others from getting to the bottom of something,
you appoint Henry Kissinger. --
Maureen
Dowd's latest column. I guess I feel the same way about this as I do about
Veep from the Deep Cheney's refusal to turn over information about his energy
plan task force. If they are this intent on hiding the facts, they must be
bad. Let's just assume the worst, get on with the impeachments, and re-ratify
the Constitution.
By the way, by "assume the worst," here's what I mean: "Mr.
Bush and Mr. Cheney, since you have refused to provide us with any information
regarding your 'energy task force' or your actions/inactions prior to 9/11/01
which may have contributed to the loss of almost 3000 lives, we will assume
that the 'energy task force' consisted of the two of you, Ken Lay of the Enron
Corporation, and Osama bin Laden of the al Qaeda organization. We assume
that you met to plan the attacks of 9/11 as a means to establish a massive US
military presence in southwest Asia and the Middle East in order to control
the massive quantities of oil and natural gas in the region, and as a way to
restrict civil rights in this country and gain complete political control.
Now, we don't know these things to be facts, but given the massive coverup of
information that should be public that you have undertaken ever since you
arrived in Washington, this scenario seems as likely as any other. You have
one week to produce every document that we have asked for and to open up the
file cabinets at the White House and the Pentagon. Otherwise, we will start
impeachment proceedings and begin preparing for criminal and civil actions as
well. So what are you waiting for! Run! Go get those documents and bring them
here! NOW!"
posted by Bob at 9:13
AM
Parallel
Legal System: The Bushies are apparently formalizing the "enemy
combatants" system for disappearing people they don't like. Once again,
Ted Olson is at the center of it, arguing that if the president says so that
certain people, even American citizens, have no rights at all. Decades, even
centuries of laws, protections and procedures have been overturned in less
than two years thanks to our un-elected president and his useful sidekick
Osama bin Laden.
posted by Bob at 11:38
PM
They've gone too far this time! If there's anything that's more of a sign of
the decay of our culture than the latest "fad" toys like
"Tickle Me Elmo" it's the "Chicken Dance," the basically
obscene flapping and wiggling spasm which seems to be a favorite of
thinness-challenged women at sporting events. Now Fisher-Price says:
"Let's
do both!"
That's right--it's "Chicken Dance Elmo." And people were lined up
outside Walmarts and Targets yesterday morning at 5 am hoping to get one (or
more). Might as well just hand the keys to the White House over to al Qaeda;
this culture is done.
posted by Bob at 9:25
AM
Ted
Rall on Poindexter's Total Information Awareness.
posted by Bob at 9:02
PM
Millions expressed their support for sweatshop labor, low-wage jobs and
environmental destruction today by shopping early and often.
I think that picture can be engraved on America's tombstone.
posted by Bob at 8:59
PM
Just Say NO! to GMO's: CNN
reports that "GM mutants as toxic as parent plants," to quote
the cool headline (I like it when mainstream media uses "GM",
"mutants" and "toxic" in the same headline!). The report
says that a study at the University of North Carolina shows that the offspring
of genetically-modified canola cross-pollinated with natural (non-GM) canola
inherit the insecticide characteristics of the GM plants. The study supports
claims by Canadians and others that GMO's spread their bizarre traits
throughout nature, creating "superweeds" which are unnaturally toxic
to insects. This can very quickly lead to huge imbalances in the ecology, not
just by killing certain insects, but also by allowing plants that they eat to
grow out of control, and by depriving birds, frogs and other animals that eat
the insects of food. The sneaky, cynical, and absolutely immoral methods used
by Monsanto and their Republican lackeys to push GMO's on the world as quickly
as possible are already having disastrous consequences, and it will get much
worse unless it is stopped very soon.
posted by Bob at 10:34
AM
Bushies turn Karzai's security over to flesh-peddling, drug-running,
missionary-killing, peasant-poisoning campaign contributors. Dyncorp, a
private military organization, is now guarding Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
Dyncorp was implicated in a prostitution ring in Bosnia, narcotics trafficking
in Columbia, shooting down a plane carrying a Baptist missionary and her
daughter in Peru, and spraying peasants in Ecuador with toxic chemicals. See
Body
and Soul for details.
posted by Bob at 11:00
PM
The bill requires the federal government to pay 90 percent of the cost of
an attack by foreign terrorists after losses are greater than $10 billion, up
to a total of $100 billion. The government will pay a smaller amount for
losses less than $10 billion. -- from the
NY
Times. So the government is going to war with Iraq, at the cost of $100 to
$200 billion, which will greatly increase the likelihood of terror attacks,
for which the government may pay another $100 billion. Meanwhile, the Bushies
are
requiring
that schools deemed "failing" offer transfers to
"better" schools, even if those schools are already full. According
to the article, 8600 schools were identified as failing last summer. Let's do
the math: Say $200 billion for a combination of Gulf War II and the resultant
terror attacks divided by 8600 failing schools--that's
over $23 million per
school. Assuming say 500 students per school, that's $46,500 per student,
or about the cost of one teacher for a year. Or one teacher for a class of
twelve for an entire twelve-year education. Of course, with that much
education, a lot of Americans might
know
where Iraq is and wonder why Bush is so worried about it.
posted by Bob at 3:26
PM
A new Pentagon strategy aimed at luring terrorists into committing acts of
terrorism has been recommended to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld by the
Defense Science Board (DSB). The "DSB Summer Study on Special Operations
and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism" claims that since
the global war on terrorism "requires new strategies, postures and
organization," it was advocating the creation of a super-Intelligence
Support Activity, called the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group
(P2OG)."
...
The organization "would launch secret operations aimed at 'stimulating
reactions' among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction
-- that is, for instance, prodding terrorist cells into action and exposing
themselves to 'quick-response' attacks by U.S. forces."
...
In Pamela Hess' piece called "Panel wants $7bn elite counter-terror
unit" -- written before the official release of the DSB report -- she
claims the report also advocated "tagging key terrorist figures with
special chemicals so they can be tracked by laser anywhere on Earth; creating
a special SWAT team to surreptitiously find and destroy chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons all over the world; and creating a 'red team' of
particularly diabolical thinkers to plot imaginary terror attacks on the
United States so the government can plan to thwart them."
The team would be made up of 100 counter-terror specialists in information
operations, psychological operations, computer network attack, covert
activities, signal intelligence, human intelligence, special operations forces
and deception operations and have at least $100 million at their disposal. --
from Working
for Change.
How sick is that? How can we find "terrorists" if they never
blow anything up? We'd better provoke them! And that "red team"
is going to feel pretty let down if they spend $100 million coming up with
exotic terror plots and never get to use them. Maybe they use them on other
countries to "provoke" terrorists out of hiding. Maybe they sell the
plans to the highest bidder, or have a mole amongst them to sneak the plans to
Osama. Or maybe they decide that there would be great political benefit, not
to mention excitement, in executing some of their scenarios in this country
themselves.
posted by Bob at 2:26
PM
Bush in the bush: "He, he! He'll never find me here!"
Cop in the foreground: "25107, 25108, 25109...I don't want to find him!
Why should I stop counting? 25110, 25111..."
posted by Bob at 2:08
PM
Right-wing media gets
Gored. Tom
Tomorrow says he's beginning to like the new Al Gore, and I'm beginning to
agree with him. Gore appears willing to call an elephant an elephant, even
though that elephant may have the ability to totally crush his chances for
2004:
"The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are
some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel
of the Republican Party," said Mr. Gore in an interview with The
Observer. "Fox News Network, The Washington Times, Rush
Limbaugh—there’s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy
ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican
administrations and the rest of the media …. Most of the media [has] been
slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this fifth column in their
ranks—that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points
into the definition of what’s objective as stated by the news media as a
whole."
posted by Bob at 1:59
PM
I have jokingly said that Bush would probably appoint Ken Lay to succeed
Harvey Pitt at the SEC. But now he's put
Henry
Kissinger in charge of the 9/11 investigation. Has the moron no shame?
It gets worse:
Bush did not set as a primary goal for Kissinger to uncover mistakes or
lapses of the government that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
Instead, he said the panel should try to help the administration learn the
tactics and motives of the enemy.
This is NOT what the families of 9/11 victims and many others have been
calling for. They want to know why our government missed or ignored clues
leading up to 9/11. I want to know if any of the failure to stop the
attack was intentional. To have Henry Frigging Kissinger study the tactics and
motives of the enemy does not begin to answer these questions; it just
provides more excuses for continued military aggression around the world.
A glimmer of hope:
[Fleischer] said Bush does not envision testifying before the panel.
But Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., a leading advocate of the commission, said
it is likely Bush will be asked to address the panel.
``I would be surprised if this commission, in pursuit of the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them God, did not want to speak
with this president and high officials of this administration and previous
presidents and high officials in previous administrations,'' Lieberman said.
Getting Bush to testify under oath would be a major accomplishment. He's so
used to lying by now that he would perjure himself in half a minute.
Unfortunately, I don't trust Lieberman (or any other prominent Democrat) to
seriously push for Bush to testify.
posted by Bob at 11:43
AM
First they came for the Muslims, and I didn't speak
up because I wasn't a Muslim.
Then they came to detain immigrants indefinitely
solely upon the certification of the Attorney General,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an immigrant.
Then they came to eavesdrop on suspects consulting
with their attorneys, and I didn't speak up because I
wasn't a suspect.
Then they came to prosecute non-citizens before
secret military commissions, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a non-citizen.
Then they came to enter homes and offices for
unannounced "sneak and peek" searches, and I didn't
speak up because I had nothing to hide.
Then they came to reinstate Cointelpro and resume
the infiltration and surveillance of domestic
religious and political groups, and I didn't speak up
because I had stopped participating in any groups.
Then they came for anyone who objected to
government policy because it aided the terrorists and
gave ammunition to America's enemies, and I didn't
speak up because...... I didn't speak up.
Then they came for me....... and by that time no
one was left to speak up.
- Stephen Rohde, a constitutional lawyer and
President of the ACLU of Southern California, who is
indebted to the inspiration of Rev. Martin Niemoller
(1937): http://www.janrainwater.com/htdocs/Rohde.htm
posted by Bob at 11:36
AM
GEORGE Bush's top security adviser last night admitted the US would attack
Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons. Dr Richard Perle stunned MPs
by insisting a "clean bill of health" from UN chief weapons
inspector Hans Blix would not halt America's war machine. Evidence from ONE
witness on Saddam Hussein's weapons programme will be enough to trigger a
fresh military onslaught, he told an all- party meeting on global security.
-- from the
Mirror
in England.
Richard Perle may the nastiest of the nasties plotting Bush's eternal war
strategy. A former British cabinet minister expresses surprise at Perle's
statement. I've been convinced that this was the case for some time now. My
only surprise is how openly Perle states it.
posted by Bob at 10:20
PM
It takes one to pardon one!
A female turkey pardons President Bush for being such a moron.
posted by Bob at 4:27
PM
from
Don
Wright in Florida.
posted by Bob at 12:02
PM
I don't trust this at all. The Bushies are pushing this huge
smallpox
vaccination plan, even though the only known smallpox viruses in the world
are at the CDC in Atlanta and under the control of Bush's buddy Putin in
Russia. Just as with anthrax, the most likely source of a smallpox attack on
the US is from within the US. The vaccinations can be used to protect their
friends while the disease weeds out the opposition, or they could end up being
simply lethal injections. Even if the Bushies' intentions are strictly
honorable, a massive vaccination program like this would be an ideal method
for a terror attack. Keep that needle away from me!
posted by Bob at 11:03
AM
KEEP BIG BROTHER'S HANDS OFF THE INTERNET
By
Senator
John Ashcroft
No foolin'. In '97, Ashcrotch was in favor of freedom of speech on the
Internet. Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link.
posted by Bob at 12:10
AM
The
new Miranda warning:
You have the right to confess. You have no right to an attorney. Anything you
say or don't say or that we just made up may be used against you in a court of
law, a military tribunal, or never.
Ted Olson and the rest of the Constitution Demolition Crew are
supporting Oxnard California police who assert that the Miranda ruling
does not include a "constitutional right to be free of coercive
interrogation," but only a right not to have forced confessions used at
trial. In other words, your government thinks it's okay for cops to
basically torture you for information so long as they don't use what you say
against you.
Police can hold people in custody and force them to talk, so long as
their incriminating statements are not used to prosecute them, U.S. Solicitor
Gen. Theodore B. Olson and Michael Chertoff, the chief of the Justice
Department's criminal division, say in their brief to the court. It
"will chill legitimate law enforcement efforts to obtain potentially
life-saving information during emergencies," including terrorism alerts,
if police and FBI agents can be sued for coercive questioning, they add.
Beatings and torture are never legitimate law enforcement efforts, and
Olson and Chertoff should be thrown out of their offices so fast that we'll
hear the sonic boom here in Michigan. In the case coming before the Supreme
Court next week, an Oxnard cop repeatedly tried to get a statement out of a
man who had been shot five times and was being treated in the hospital. Recall
that Ted Olson was the same lawyer who argued before the same Supreme Court
two years ago in a successful attempt to stop vote recounts in Florida and
give the White House to George W. Bush. And that same Supreme Court is still
headed by William Rehnquist who in 1990 argued that the right against
self-incrimination in the 5th Amendment was a "trial right." Police
cannot violate this right when they force someone to talk, since "a
constitutional violation occurs only at trial."
I don't have the whole text of Rehnquist's 1990 opinion, but it sounds like
he was saying that it's okay for the cops to beat a confession out of you, as
long as it's before the trial. Now maybe he's still saying that the confession
can't be used in court against you, but even so it's too late for you. With
your confession in hand they will almost certainly be able to scare you into a
plea bargain before you ever get to trial. They could also use your coerced
confession to find other witnesses willing to incriminate you, whether you are
in fact guilty of something or not. I think the basic gist of most of this is
that if you get arrested for whatever reason, your life is almost certainly
ruined. You are presumed guilty, and the cops are free to use whatever means
they want to get you to say whatever they want. And if none of that works the
president can just call you an "enemy combatant."
Probably time to quote from the Declaration of Independence again:
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal:
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on
such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed will
dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are
more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by
abolishing to forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design
to reduce them under absolute despotism, It is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security.
Hey, you Homeland Security drones, I didn't say that, Thomas Jefferson did!
But I certainly agree with him.
posted by Bob at 11:23
PM
posted by Bob at 8:13
PM
Listening to what Osama said:
This
article says that it is just as important to hear the message in OBL's
statements as it is to know if it is really him. He is threatening to
retaliate
for our future actions, starting with war in Iraq. Continued aggression on our
part assures continued aggression on his. A cautious, restrained approach may
not guarantee our safety from future attacks, but the wreckless approach being
pursued now certainly guarantees that we won't be safe any time soon, if ever.
posted by Bob at 6:50
PM
As a matter of both foreign and environmental policy, it makes a lot more
sense to lay rail, promote renewable energy and get serious about conserving
oil. We subsidize the hell out of the oil bidness with innumerable tax breaks,
loopholes and support programs. For heaven's sake, why not support renewable
energy, instead? Why should we ask our military to die for cheap oil when the
rest of us aren't even being asked to get better mileage? -- from
Molly
Ivins.
posted by Bob at 2:31
PM
President Bush's spokesman (sorry Ari) praised Saudi Arabia on Monday as a
"good partner in the war on terrorism.'' -- from
AP.
Ari is probably right on this one.
Without the Saudis, the war on terrorism
would have been neither possible nor necessary.
posted by Bob at 2:18
PM
Media consolidation, restricted access: AOL
Time-Warner is considering restricting access to the online version of
Time magazine to AOL customers only. The Internet has been the one bright spot
for information as control of radio, TV and print media have been
consolidating into fewer and fewer hands. That these same corporations are now
controlling many of the delivery and content providers of the Internet means
that the wide-open choices currently available on the Internet are going to be
restricted more and more. Instead of practically unlimited access, we will
have a few channels to choose from, just like cable TV. Somehow I don't think
any of the big ISP's (AOL, Comcast/AT&T, Time-Warner Cable) will be
featuring the "Bob's Links and Rants" channel. Of course, I won't
have much to say then because I won't have access to the World Socialist Web
Site, Common Dreams, other blogs, and many of my other sources.
posted by Bob at 1:43
PM
Chess Champions on peace:
But offense comes first. Baghdad remains the next stop but not the last. We
must also have plans for Tehran and Damascus, not to mention Riyadh. The
tactics will vary, but the goal--total defeat of terrorism--is clear. Once
American ground troops are in Iraq, the message must go out to all terrorist
sponsors that this game is up. --
Garry
Kasparov
I applaud the act. F**k the U.S. I want to see the U.S. wiped out. --
Bobby
Fischer on the 9/11 attacks.
Hmm...seems like such a quiet, cerebral game. Bobby Fischer's story
is especially pathetic. He has been living in various places overseas since
playing in a rematch with Boris Spassky in 1992 against the express wishes and
laws of the Bush I administration. As for Kasparov, I'm not sure why former
Soviet chess masters are advising the US government on foreign policy, but
it's still a semi-free country, I guess (Kasparov lives in the US now).
posted by Bob at 12:56
PM
Not waiting for their Washington bureaucracy to be completed, the Gestapo is
already
taking
names. W claims (falsely) that the terrorists "hate us for our
freedoms." Is this why he is so intent on taking those freedoms away? As
this goes on, it will be harder and more dangerous to take a stand against
this repression. We need to mobilize as many as we can to speak out as soon as
possible, or we'll end up just like the Soviet Union.
Speak now or forever
live in fear.
posted by Bob at 12:39
PM
Where is this?
- Nigeria
- Bethlehem
- Haifa
- Columbus, Ohio
The correct answer is Columbus, Ohio, where Ohio State fans showed true class
in celebrating another squeak-by win by
burning
cars and rioting in the streets. And don't think I'm just picking on
Buckeye fans because I'm from Ann Arbor. I chewed out Michigan fans last week.
It's just a brutal, overhyped game, folks!
posted by Bob at 12:30
PM
These then are the self-appointed liberators of Iraq—advocates of
imperialist aggression and germ warfare, former war criminals and corrupt
union bureaucrats. Nothing could provide a clearer indication of the criminal
character of the war of aggression that Washington is preparing. -- from
the
WSWS.
posted by Bob at 11:31
AM
The Bush health care plan:
Ted
Rall again!
posted by Bob at 8:48
AM
Hey guys! While you've been swatting at flies in Afghanistan, the Philippines
and elsewhere, the 800-pound gorilla has been tossing turds at you the whole
time! The joint congressional committee investigating 9/11 says that the FBI
and CIA
did not aggressively pursue leads that might have linked the
terrorists to Saudi Arabia, according to
an
article in today's NY Times. The article seems to indicate that the lack
of pursuit of leads leading to Saudi Arabia occurred both before 9/11 and
since. Just further evidence that the "war on terrorism" is just a
cover for carrying out oil grabs and imperial conquests. But the gorilla
shouldn't be too complacent. Once Iraq is under US control, the Bushies will
have much less need for Saudi oil or support. They will then begin their
demonizing of Saudi Arabia, and they won't have to lie nearly as much,
especially about terrorist connections.
By the way, there is a word to describe the "support" that the
security council and NATO have given to Bush recently. The word is
"appeasement." That NATO's capitulation took place in Prague is
ironic, although I guess Munich would have been more so.
posted by Bob at 8:36
AM
I must confess, I just don't get
this
one. A paper in Nigeria said that that if the Prophet Mohammed were alive,
he would consider marrying one of the Miss World contestants. And over 100
people are dead because of this. I mean, isn't this sort of along the lines of
"What would Jesus drive?" I don't know that much about Islam, but
the paper's suggestion might be a little silly or every so vaguely
blasphemous, but to kill people over it? I mean, take a chill pill! And if
anyone is offended by what I'm saying, remember that I confessed up front that
I don't get it. And please don't kill anyone over it!
posted by Bob at 9:58
PM
Hu's
on first? Hilarious!
posted by Bob at 7:43
PM
posted by Bob at 1:43
PM
Canada's prime minister has refused to accept the resignation of his
communications director for calling Bush "a moron." While the story
is
headline news in Canada, I find nothing at all
about it on the CNN, NY Times, or Washington Post websites. Hit a little too
close to home, I guess. Can't let that particular idea become a part of the
public debate. (Tonight on the O'Reilly factor: Is the President a Moron?
We'll look in depth and have a lively discussion on the topic, and will be
taking your calls.) By comparison, the comment from a German cabinet member a
few months about Bush using methods that Hitler used got a lot of play. To a
reasonable person, of which there seem to be precious few these days, the
Canadian remark is more of an insult than the German one. Any national leader,
no matter how good or absolutely stupefyingly atrocious, will by necessity end
up using some of Hitler's methods: delegating authority, giving speeches, etc.
There is no reason, however, why a national leader has to be a moron. We're
just lucky, I guess.
According to the CBC,
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who is accompanying Bush in Prague,
dismissed the comment as coming from "somebody who obviously doesn't
speak for the Canadian government." Right, Ari. The Prime Minister's
communications director doesn't speak for the Canadian government. Of course,
Ari is someone who obviously doesn't speak for the American people.
posted by Bob at 1:11
PM
"There is nothing new here," said Eric Ruff, a spokesman
for Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, "and what is new is better."
-- from the
NY
Times in an article about Bushie approval for drilling two new gas wells
in Padre Island National Seashore. A line worthy of W himself.
posted by Bob at 12:49
PM
O Canada!! A top Canadian official
called
W a "moron" at the NATO summit. Politics in the Zeros has
more.
posted by Bob at 11:31
PM
A medical examiner in Minnesota has determined that the pilots in the crash of
Sen. Paul Wellstone's plane were killed by the impact, according to
AP.
Actually, from reading the article it appears that he arrived at this
conclusion by ruling out just two other possibilities: they were killed by the
fire (no soot in windpipes) or they were shot (no bullet holes). While I am
somewhat encouraged that he at least considered the possibility of foul play,
I don't see that he ruled out my
poison
gas theory or something else that quickly incapacitated the pilots.
Neither does it rule out some sort of sabotage which caused the plane to lose
its radio and control systems at the same time. The fire would likely destroy
all evidence of poison and make finding evidence of sabotage very difficult.
Maybe I'm going overboard with the conspiracy stuff, but from what I've read
about TWA 800 and American flight 587 the results of investigations into
mysterious, high-profile air crashes are affected much more by politics than
by evidence (see
twa800.com for
MUCH more on this). And one of the best senators has been replaced by Dick
Cheney's hand-picked minion, giving control of the Senate to the Republitrons,
and even the temp appointed by Jesse Ventura not only voted for the Homeland
Security bill, he also voted to keep the pork in it. I don't think anyone can
doubt what Wellstone would have thought of that.
One further note: the article states that "NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm
said the medical examiner's report does not affect the board's
investigation." Huh? You're investigating a crash and you don't care
how the pilots died? That only makes sense if you already know what your
conclusions are going to be. I remember when AA 587 crashed in New York
(11/12/01). Around noon, three or so hours after the crash, Ari Fleischer
answered a reporter's question by saying he didn't know if it was a terrorist
attack or not; too early to tell. (A rare seemingly reasonable answer from Ari.)
About an hour later, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a statement
saying it wasn't terrorism. And that has been the official line ever since, no
matter what the evidence shows or witnesses say.
posted by Bob at 9:05
PM
Welcome to the
American Gestapo. Article from Common Dreams.
posted by Bob at 3:07
PM
Sources told CNN
it's still unclear whether the incident was an individual act or linked to
terrorism. -- Two US soldiers were shot by a cop in Kuwait. I've read
several definitions of "terrorism," but apparently neither CNN or
their "sources" are familiar with them. Generally, the definition
says that terrorism is an act of violence against civilians for political
purposes and/or to foment fear in the general population. So there is no way
that this was terrorism, even if the "cop" was Osama bin Laden
himself. The attack was on soldiers, and while it almost certainly had a
political motive it is unlikely to cause fear among the general population.
And, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether it was an individual act or
not. I may be being a bit too picky on semantics, but this is one of those
Orwellian methods being used so commonly these days. By never being clear
about what is meant by "terrorism" the powers that be are able to
manipulate it endlessly for their own purposes, which they have, big time.
posted by Bob at 2:08
PM
Most 18-24 year-old Americans can't locate Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a
map. 30% can't find the Pacific Ocean. Read the dismal stats and take the
quiz yourself at the
National
Geographic web site. Of course, most 18-24 year-olds didn't vote in the
election, either. Which is worse, ignorance or apathy?
Let's do both, dude!
posted by Bob at 1:17
PM
From
CNN:
Sharp and "shrill" commentary from some talk show hosts has led
to increased threats against public officials, Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle said Wednesday, counting himself among those who have received such
threats.
...
Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, asked about Daschle's comments, said he
didn't know of any threats. "I've found people to be pretty upbeat and
very generous and kind, even when they don't agree with everything I
say," Lott, R-Mississippi, said.
Well, that's an easy one to explain. You see, the people who disagree with
Lott are a whole lott nicer than those who agree with him. And how could Rush
find anything to complain about with Daschle? He's voted with Bush on just
about every important issue. But I forget: being unreasonable and irrational
is a key ingedient to Rush's success--and Bush's.
posted by Bob at 12:47
PM
"You saw it on the news, now see how it really was." -- An ad
for a new ABC TV movie about the coal miners in Pennsylvania who were rescued
a few months ago.
P.L.A.
(another blog) points out that this quote shows exactly what ABC thinks of its
own news department.
posted by Bob at 10:08
AM
Bob Herbert's
latest column describes the massive fiscal crisis facing state governments
throughout the country. Neither state Republicans nor the Bush administration
seem willing to address this issue. What does it really mean? Further loss of
local control. The Bushies will be treating bankrupt states the same way the
World Bank treats Argentina--restructuring. In order to get any federal money,
states will be forced to lay off workers, lower wages, sell public utilities
and other functions to transnational corporations. "We've got all these
wars to fight: we can't afford to bail out both Michigan AND Ohio. Which one
is willing to give in to our requests more completely? Which one has arrested
the most terrorists this month? Which one has repealed the most environmental
and labor laws? Which one has the Republican governor?" (uh-oh)
posted by Bob at 9:21
AM
from
Bruce
Plante.
posted by Bob at 8:50
AM
from
Steve Benson.
posted by Bob at 8:45
AM
Ted Rall!
posted by Bob at 8:37
AM
Bumper stickers for
SUV's. I sent the guy running the website an e-mail a challenge to sticker
one of
these.
posted by Bob at 10:33
PM
It's deja vu all over again. In November 1990, President Bush went to
Prague to make his case for going to war against Iraq. In November 2002,
President
Bush went to Prague to make his case for going to war against Iraq. The
excuses are just as bad, the rhetoric even more muddled, the real reasons
still the same: oil and world domination. At least this time it's not quite as
much our fault: we actually elected the first President Bush.
Trying to spread the fear, Bush said: "For terrorists and terrorist
states, every free nation is a potential target, including the free nations of
Europe." Terror bombings have been an occasional, but in reality very
rare, element of life in many countries. Only in countries which actively
pursue military means to "wipe out" terrorism does it rise to be a
weekly or daily fact of life (Israel and Palestine, Britain and Northern
Ireland). Everything that Bush has done since September 11 has put us at
greater risk of terrorist attacks, and I think he knows it. He does not want
to end terrorism; he is pursuing the global capitalist agenda, and he doesn't
care who gets hurt in the process.
posted by Bob at 10:18
PM
Announcing the
Who's More Paranoid Than Me? Contest:
Manufacturers
are planning to put tiny radio-frequency ID tags (RFID) on every item they
produce. These 96-bit tags are "somewhere between the size of a grain of
sand and a speck of dust" and may cost less than 1 cent to produce. Like
UPC's on steroids, these will differentiate between each different item on the
shelf, not just every type of item. Everything you buy will be linked to you,
assuming you use a credit card, a supermarket "bonus" card, or
happen to be wearing or carrying anything that has already been linked to you.
Anytime you walk near a scanner your identity and everything you are wearing
or carrying will be identified. And scanners will be all over: stores,
airports, highways, stadiums. I'm guessing that the only manufactured products
that they're not planning on identifying are guns and bullets.
So anyway, the contest is for readers to come up with the scariest
scenarios for how these things might be used. E-mail your suggestions to me at
bob@goodsells.net. Probably every
response will be posted, and the winner will have the joy of knowing that he
or she didn't come in second.
posted by Bob at 6:33
PM
VietNam was the last time Americans were allowed to see what REALLY happens
in a war. And because of the draft it happened to THEM. If you think about it,
this means that no one under about 45 really understands that war is anything
other than a TV show. It's like the meat in supermarkets - it comes in a nice
clean package.
THIS is why the public thirsts for war. Much of the public sees this as a
TV show. Clean. Sanitary. No REAL death. No REAL gore. It's just another TV
show. Like the meat in the supermarket. -- from the No
War Blog.
At age 44 3/4, I'm pretty close to understanding, maybe. But I think he's
mostly right. I remember during Gulf War I. I was a teacher in a high school
back then, and my students and I all arrived bleary-eyed after long nights
watching Wolf, Peter and Bernie explain the war to us on CNN. And you watched
half-hoping that something exciting would happen, only half-knowing that it
meant real people being killed and wounded. Actually, though, Vietnam was just
a TV show to most Americans, too. The show may have been more graphic and
closer to the truth than we've had since, but it was still a show. I'd say
that unless you were in the military, you'd probably have to be over 150 years
old as an American to really understand war. The Civil War was the only
large-scale war fought where most of the action occurred in America. Few
Americans have experienced anything like what Afghans, Iranians, Iraqis,
Chechens, Somalis, Rwandans, Congolese and Timorese, to name a few, have
experienced in the past 25 years. Huddling in the basement as shells explode
around your house and wounded soldiers pound on the door begging for aid, but
you're not sure whose soldiers they are and what they might do to you if you
let them in. Trying to stay in others' footprints because you're less likely
to step on a mine. Having all of your means for getting food, water and
information disrupted. Having your pulse jump to 200 every time you hear the
sound of an airplane. Stuff like that.
posted by Bob at 1:06
PM
Two unusual but cool hobbies meet by the bay in California:
Kite aerial photography meets shopping cart sculpture. See http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/gallery/gal168.html
for more.
posted by Bob at 11:06
AM
A Byrd in the
Senate is worth more than two Bushes in the White House.
posted by Bob at 10:10
AM
Before the Gestapo (aka Homeland Security) bill passed, this was the
message:
"The terrorists are not going to wait for a process that goes on days,
weeks or months," said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican
leader. "We need to get this done, and we need to do it now." --
from the
NY
Times yesterday.
Now that the bill has passed, they're willing to admit the obvious
truth:
Bush administration officials acknowledged today that the Department of
Homeland Security would need years to organize itself fully and that the
logistics involved in merging 22 agencies and nearly 170,000 government
workers into a giant new bureaucracy could threaten to divert the
department from its central mission of safeguarding the American public from
terrorist attacks. -- from today's NY
Times.
Of course, they are still ignoring that this is an enormous and expensive
effort directed against a problem, terrorism, which has killed maybe 3500
Americans in the last ten years. September 11 was spectacular and horrible,
but terrorism ranks way, way down on the list of causes of death in this
country. Less expensive efforts could probably save many more lives which are
being lost to gun violence, AIDS, and poor nutrition. Or to turn the whole
thing around, one simple step could increase revenues and decrease
expenditures while saving many lives, with hardly any increase in bureaucracy.
A $5 per gallon tax on gasoline would reduce fatalities from accidents,
pollution, and global warming by causing people to drive less. It would save
billions of dollars that wouldn't need to be spent on wars to maintain the
flow of oil. And without the wars, the threat of terrorism would be reduced as
well. Unfortunately, simple, effective, and decent proposals are not in vogue
these days, probably because there is nothing in a gas tax for ExxonMobil or
General Motors.
posted by Bob at 10:07
AM
Gestapo
Bill Passes. Thanks to courageous Michigan senator Carl Levin for being
one of only nine to vote against it. Only nine! The Senate doesn't like us,
folks. The House hates us. The President ignores us. They all love that
campaign cash that poured in from the corporations, and that's who they
represent now.
posted by Bob at 12:09
AM
So many places not to shop, so few things to buy: Office
Max is notifying authorities of suspicious copying jobs. Maybe we should
organize a "Make Office Max Look Stupid(er)" campaign. We make up a
flier that looks subversive but has fine print in it to make it actually some
super-patriotic nonsense. We get people dressed as Arabs to go to every Office
Max in the country and ask to make 25 copies of the flier, and see how many
times the cops get called.
posted by Bob at 11:14
PM
You won't believe this:
Unfortunately, Dave
Barry was not making this up:
Cobra, the new generation commercial based security and reconnaissance
vehicle is in production and available from Ibis Tek. Configured to the
customer’s requirements, the Sport Utility Vehicle is outfitted with a
Thales AFV Systems’ Stabilized Weapon and Reconnaissance Mount - SWARM.
The SWARM stores in the vehicle until required giving the vehicle a
nondescript and nonthreatening appearance during normal operation of the
vehicle. At the push of a button at the control station located at the
passengers seat the remote weapons station is deployed and ready to fire in 10
seconds.
The Cobra and its sister vehicles Viper and Python are designed for
multiple functions including VIP escort, reconnaissance, security patrol,
Homeland Defense, and special (clandestine) missions. (see http://www.ibistek.com/pdf/cobra/cobraflyer.pdf
for all the details.)
This bundle of joy is brought to you by the Ibis
Tek Corporation of Butler, Pennsylvania, home state of Homeland Security
Director Tom Ridge. It features a retractable roof-mounted machine gun
controlled by a panel on the SUV's dashboard. So be careful which soccer mom
you cut off when dropping your kids off at school.
posted by Bob at 3:59
PM
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to
smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams -- Mary Ellen
Kelly. Like the Jefferson quote below, this one comes from
Sam
Smith's quote page. Beware: once you go there, it's hard to get out.
posted by Bob at 2:33
PM
The country is headed toward a single and splendid government of an
aristocracy founded on banking institutions and monied incorporations and if
this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few
will be ruling and riding over the plundered plowman and the beggar . . . I
hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth
the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge
our government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country. I
sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing
armies. -- Thomas Jefferson.
posted by Bob at 1:58
PM
Pork Barrel Security: The
Senate defeated an amendment to the "Homeland Security" bill
which would have removed the pork-barrel crap thrown into it by House
Republicans last week, such as the provisions allowing the new Gestapo to buy
from US companies which have moved their headquarters offshore to avoid taxes,
and the one exempting Eli Lilly from being sued for causing autism in
children. So if, as expected, the Gestapo bill passes the Senate tonight, it
won't be simply terrible. It will be really, really, really terrible. Might
want to call those senators one more time to tell them that you don't want
John Ashcroft peeking in your windows. And that when corporations poison
children, they should be made to pay.
And, from the same article:
"The terrorists are not going to wait for a process that goes on days,
weeks or months," said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Republican
leader. "We need to get this done, and we need to do it now."
Right, Trent. Don't want to keep those terrorists waiting.
posted by Bob at 1:42
PM
First moderately positive thing I've read in a while, from the
Salt
Lake Tribune.
Prediction: There is a 50-50 chance that McCain and Chaffee will switch
parties and a similar chance that McCain will become the Democratic standard
bearer in 2004. The odds of a Landrieu victory in Louisiana are much higher.
Read the whole article
for a quick pick-me-up, and maybe we should be sending money to Louisiana?
Thanks to Tom
Tomorrow for the link. I'm not a huge McCain fan since he's been way too
much of a hawk, but he seems to be a real, thinking person, unlike anyone in
the current administration.
posted by Bob at 12:24
PM
Homer, how could you? Homer J. Simpson has been spotted
shilling
for serial animal murderer and artery clogger, Burger King. C'mon, Homer,
don't have a cow, man! We are expecting a statement from daughter Lisa at any
moment.
More from the land of the Whopper: At the bottom of Burger King's BK
VEGGIE™ Burger web page is this lovely disclaimer: "Burger King
Corporation makes no claim that the BK VEGGIE™ Burger or any other of its
products meets the requirements of a vegan or vegetarian diet." So what
exactly is in a BK VEGGIE™ Burger, anyway?
posted by Bob at 11:16
AM
The spoils of war: Paul
Krugman's latest.
posted by Bob at 9:41
AM
from
Boondocks.
posted by Bob at 9:03
AM
Official story: Osama Lives
White House spokesman Scott McClellan confirmed these conclusions and said
the audiotape "is a reminder that we are at war on terrorism."
"It's a reminder that we need to continue doing everything we can to go
after these terrorist networks and their leaders wherever they are. And we
will," he said. -- from
CNN.
Bob's expert analysis: Polling and focus groups have shown that the
majority of Americans are immune to the argument that Osama's continued
existence and freedom demonstrates that W's "war on terror" is a
failure. Instead, Karl Rove and the brownshirts in the White House find that
having Osama out there is useful for continuing their own reign of terror.
Just as with the tax cuts, the argument is "Since it isn't working, we
need to do even more of it." It wouldn't surprise me if the CIA made the
tape (and then fired the guy doing the Osama impression for being gay) and had
it delivered to al Jazeera. If Saddam does prove to be a pushover, the Bushies
will need Osama as a backup until they can get the hate machine geared up for
Iran or North Korea.
This may be a sign of overconfidence. If things do start to turn against
the Bush war machine, we can use their own quotes against them in arguing that
the Afghanistan war was a failure. And it was. One brutal regime has been
replaced by several at war with each other, the heroin is flowing again, and
many thousands of people have died. But according to the maniacs who started
the madness, they failed to accomplish their main objective. Whether Osama is
still alive or not is still a tossup, but the Bushies have decided that he is
more useful "alive" at the moment.
posted by Bob at 8:48
AM
It's our only planet, and every mile we drive contributes to its
destruction. An oil tanker carrying 800,000 gallons of oil just
broke
in two off the coast of Spain, threatening a major ecological disaster.
Every trip to the gas pump gives more money to Exxon-Mobil or one of the other
evildoers, who then use it to make campaign contributions to Bush or one of
the other evildoers, who then continue to start wars around the world to keep
the gas flowing at the pump. Remember:
Friends Don't Let Friends Drive.
(A bumperless sticker)
posted by Bob at 7:29
AM
Another victory for Ashcroft, another loss for us:
Court
Overturns Limits on Wiretaps to Combat Terror. It's already bad; it's
getting worse; there's no end in sight. Worst attorney general ever.
posted by Bob at 12:01
AM
True
Cost Groceries: from the fine folks at
Adbusters.
Speaking of Adbusters, join millions of people escaping the consumer
culture by celebrating Adbusters' eleventh Buy
Nothing Day on the Friday after Thanksgiving (11/29). Don't you dare chase
all those ads from the Thursday paper to those 7 am sales to buy worthless
crap for family and friends, proceeds going to the further destruction of our
home planet. Stay home, visit friends, sing, dance, play, but DO NOT SHOP!!
Contemplate interesting and creative ways to celebrate the holidays without
driving all over to buy silly gifts. Read a book, or write one. DO NOT SHOP!!
Read everything on the Adbusters web page for further inspiration. Count your
blessings. But NO SHOPPING!! And don't get all preachy, either.
PS: Here's a quick guide to making the most of Buy Nothing Day. Sleep in
until 8. Start by not shopping at Wal-Mart. Probably the best place to start
your non-shopping. Then don't buy anything at the GAP, and proceed to not
buying any diamonds (people WILL kill for those rocks) or Nike shoes. Follow
this up by not buying any of the holiday crap lining the aisles at K-Mart,
Office Depot, or Best Buy. When you're done, roll over and sleep another hour
until 9. Then do whatever you want. Just DON'T SHOP!
posted by Bob at 11:15
PM
Michigan
Coach Has Safety Concerns: I guess U of M's football coach Lloyd Carr
agrees with me about the caliber of football fans these days.
If we can't protect the students, the players, the coaches, then we
shouldn't be playing. It's just a matter of time before we have somebody
seriously injured. Um, Lloyd, what about the referees?
posted by Bob at 6:11
PM
More from Woodward/60
Minutes:
And at one time, the CIA offered a Taliban commander $50,000 to defect and
he asked for time to think it over. And then they dropped a bomb on him in his
area. — And then they went back and said, the offer now which used to be
$50,000 is now $40,000. — And he said "I accept."
Your government: mob tactics gone global.
Politics in the
Zeros draws several scary conclusions from the 60 Minutes interview.
posted by Bob at 4:07
PM
Quote of the Day, from W himself:
President Bush: "I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's
the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to
explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody
an explanation." (from Bob Woodward via
60
Minutes).
That, in itself, explains a lot. Bush thinks he doesn't have a boss, so he
doesn't have to explain anything. Well, Shrub, we're your boss, the
American people, and we want to know why you're doing all this crap. And STOP
IT!!!
posted by Bob at 3:59
PM
Winner of the creepy logo contest:
John Poindexter and the Information Awareness Office. (Read
William
Safire's column from last week for info on the IAO.)
posted by Bob at 12:31
PM
Here's a quote I found on Sam Smith's wonderful
quote
page:
I don't know whether to kill myself or go bowling -- Thomas Sharpe
After seeing Michael Moore's latest movie, I'm imagining that there was an
answer to that quote:
Let's do both! -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (Columbine
killers who went bowling at 6 am the day of their rampage).
Sorry, that was sick and tasteless, but when I saw that Sharpe quote...
posted by Bob at 11:08
AM
Tom Tomorrow
cites
several articles about the "success" of W's first war, Afghanistan.
(Massive sarcasticons here. Is there an e-mail shorthand for sarcasm, along
the lines of :-), :-(, or LOL? If not, could someone make one up for me? I
would use it a lot.)
posted by Bob at 10:56
AM
"Liberal" Nancy Pelosi voted for the Homeland Security Department
bill. The
WSWS
summarizes the numerous dangers to civil rights included in this fascist
nonsense. And the Democratic "leadership" is quietly selling our
country. I saw Pelosi talking with Tim Russert on Meet the Press yesterday (
transcript).
Here are some choice quotes from Pelosi:
- Suffice to say, we stand should-to-shoulder with the president in the
fight against terrorism.
- My concern was what going into Iraq, what the impact of that would be on
the war on terrorism, which is a clear and present danger.
- I don’t question a decision of the president of the United States on
his timing or the priority he gives a threat.
- MR. RUSSERT: But if the president decides to go unilaterally or with the
British and the Turks without U.N. approval, you would support the
president? REP. PELOSI: Yes, I would support the president.
- I’m very excited to follow in the footsteps of Dick Gephardt, who has
been a tremendous leader for our party, and I know his contribution to our
country has much more to come yet.
Most of the rest is such doubletalk that I can't find quotes that say
anything at all. Pelosi is our hope for getting our country back? I'm afraid
not.
posted by Bob at 9:53
AM
States and cities are going broke, kids are hungry, water shortages appearing
everywhere, and our government's number one priority is
to
destroy further a poor country on the other side of the planet. Massive
mobilizations of equipment and personnel, ill-advised bribes and promises to
foreign governments (including Axis of Evil charter member Iran). Expenses in
the billions. Plus the billions more for "homeland security" that
this cowboy foreign "policy" requires. Struggling to find a
conclusion, I'll make it multiple choice:
- How many domestic problems could be fixed completely with this level of
effort and expense?
- We could buy all of the world's HIV patients all of the medicine they
need for a fraction of this money, even at the drug companies' inflated
prices.
- This money could fund hundreds of sewage and water treatment plants
around the world, saving millions from dysentery, cholera and other nasty
diseases.
- Worst president ever.
(Hint: there are no wrong answers.)
posted by Bob at 9:21
AM
Mandatory Loyalty Oath in Pennsylvania schools?
CNN
reports that the state senate passed a bill that all students in public
and private school must either recite the "Pledge of Allegiance" or
sing the National Anthem every school day. I'd have to choose the National
Anthem, because it really doesn't say anything--just one big question: Hey
Jose, is that flag still there, man? Plus those "rockets red glare"
and "bombs bursting in air" are a much more accurate description of
our country these days than is "liberty and justice for all."
posted by Bob at 10:05
PM
The only thing warnings this vague are good for is providing political
cover in case of disaster. They offer no specific information about the
location, timing or method of attack, and are all but useless to the average
citizen, or even to local law enforcement officers. If there is another terror
strike, however, we can be sure that the White House, Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency will be quick to remind everyone
that they saw it coming this time and did their best to prevent it. --
from a
NY
Times Editorial.
I think the Times is partly right on this one: CYA is a major part of the
warnings. But I think that the main reason for them is to maintain or increase
the fear, the terror if you will, in the country. By keeping us afraid, they
keep us docile, and keep many of us voting Republican, and many more of us
from voting at all. The Times ends the editorial with this: The danger of
the present system, apart from the sowing of generic fear, is that people will
stop paying attention. That's exactly what the terrorists want. I say that
the purpose of the present system is the sowing of generic fear, and is
a form of terrorism as bad as any other.
posted by Bob at 9:54
AM
from
Slowpoke,
a great weekly strip from Jen Sorensen.
posted by Bob at 9:35
AM
Get your repression all lined up early: US
Agencies are tracking Iraqis here in the US in case they decide to try to
terrorize our country when we start (continue) terrorizing theirs.
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is departing as chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview this week that
American intelligence agencies, in particular the F.B.I., had failed to
consider the full range of threats that might stem from a war with Iraq.
Mr. Graham said that beyond threats from Al Qaeda, American intelligence
agencies had not adequately assessed threats posed by other Middle Eastern
terror groups that are likely to be inflamed by a war with Iraq, among them
Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"I think we make a mistake when we assume that the threat is only Al
Qaeda," Mr. Graham said. "There are a lot of terror groups out
there, some of them with a large presence in the United States, who shouldn't
be dismissed because in the past they have not attacked in the United
States."
Wouldn't it be a easier, and a lot nicer, just to call off the war? Or is the
plan just to continue with serial wars around the world, provoking the
occasional terror attack, giving the Bushies the green light to lock up or
deport more and more of the nonwhite population in America? It's hard to tell
the difference between a North Korean and a South Korean, and a lot of white
Americans can't distinguish between Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, and
Vietnamese. It sounds more and more like we are fighting wars to provoke
terror rather than to suppress it.
posted by Bob at 8:51
AM
The worst and the best: Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan are a
study in contrasts (much like this blog is a study in cliches). The city is
mostly liberal, with a city council willing to pass living wage ordinances and
political statements like opposition to war with Iraq (I hope). The University
has world-famous experts on every conceivable subject, is a hotbed of
research, and is a place where lectures and discussions on the latest topics
take place daily.
And then there are those seven Saturdays every fall when UM has a home
football game. Giant SUV's, most with two car flags (most have two UM flags;
some have one UM and one US), invade the city hours before the game. They park
and set up "tailgate" parties where they consume mass quantities of
dead animals and alcohol. I had the dubious privilege yesterday of joining
that mob at the game when I was given a ticket by someone at work. It's a
spectacle, for sure, 110 thousand people sitting on cold bleachers to watch
the game, the bands, and the banner-towing planes advertising "adult
entertainment." It's also a cure for any sneaking suspicions you may have
about there being hope for humanity. Aside from preppy and obnoxious, there
are very few attitudes prevalent among the 110 thousand. There were several
drunks in the seats around me, one of whom said something about every 20
seconds, all of which were variations on the theme of "Wisconsin
sucks." Michigan won (yay) and I didn't see any players carted off never
to walk again, so I guess it was a success. But it is scary that the most
popular non-TV entertainment in Ann Arbor is one in which people spend $40 and
up to go be total jerks for four hours.
On the other hand, the best entertainment in town started several hours
later. This was the Amazin' Blue
a capella singing group. While the football players use their considerable
talents in smashing each other, the students in Amazin' Blue use their
abilities to brighten the world with music. And while I'm pretty sure that I
wasn't the only one who was somewhat miserable at the football game, and
certainly not the only one who was glad when it ended, there is no doubt that
no one at the Amazin' Blue concert was at all unhappy until it ended. So I
experienced the worst and best of Ann Arbor in a ten-hour period. And I'm
almost thawed out.
posted by Bob at 8:34
AM
A government lawyer argued that bird lovers benefit when the military kills
birds because "bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird
than they do spotting a common one." -- from the LA Times via
Politics
in the Zeros. Your government: making nature rare so you'll appreciate it
more. It's more than bad enough when the government isn't zealous in pursuing
the protection of the environment and human rights. It is downright criminal
when
they are zealously pursuing the destruction of the environment and
human rights. Maybe we can pass an initiative to have all lawyers who have
been appointed by the Bushies be declared enemy combatants.
posted by Bob at 10:40
PM
The United States currently faces as grave a threat to its founding
principles of democracy, equality and justice as it has seen in more than two
centuries. Al Qaeda isn't the danger, though the seeds for future terrorism
are being planted today by American foreign policy. The peril derives from a
remarkable coalescing of a shortsighted, ill-tempered president advised by
authoritarian ideologues, a frightened, passive populace, a lazy, compliant
media and the abdication of meaningful political opposition in order to temper
those leaders' most extreme impulses. That lethal combination has led to a
vicious right-wing power grab, curtailed civil liberties and led to the U.S.
being viewed by other nations as an out-of-control rogue state which needs to
be appeased because of its arsenal rather than respected for its good sense.
We survived the Civil War, so we can probably endure two more years of
George W. Bush's assaults on the our way of life. But who knows how much
damage a "Republican" victory in 2004 would do to core American
values--make no mistake, this obscene junta isn't the patriotic, sane
Republican Party of Eisenhower, Reagan or the first President Bush.
...
Whether a liberal or a centrist strategy is chosen isn't as important as it
would be if the opponent were less dangerous. What matters is getting George
W. Bush the hell out of Al Gore's house.
-- from Ted Rall
posted by Bob at 10:17
AM
WTO and CIA are the real terrorists of the world today! -- Chant
from WTO protesters in Sydney, Australia, reported in the
NY
Times.
posted by Bob at 9:39
AM
Gore already was making political news. On Wednesday night, he told a New
York audience he has "reluctantly come to the conclusion" that the
only solution to the "impending crisis" in health care is a "single-payer
national health insurance plan" for all Americans. -- from the
Washington
Post. Interesting development--maybe Gore is becoming a Democrat
(reluctantly).
posted by Bob at 8:19
AM
And if, one caller queried, no weapons of mass destruction were found by
U.N. weapons inspectors inside Iraq?
"What it would prove would be that the inspection process had been
successfully defeated by the Iraqis," [Rumsfeld] said. "There's no
question but that the Iraqi regime is clever, they've spent a lot of time
hiding things, dispersing things, tunneling underground."
from CNN.
There you have it. If the inspectors find weapons, we're going to war. If they
don't find weapons, we're going to war. Rummy promises that it won't be World
War III.
"I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five
days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that,"
he said in an hourlong interview for Infinity Broadcasting.
I don't know about that. Sounds like trying to do a controlled burn at a
fireworks factory. Rummy also threw in a whopper, which CNN was good enough to
point out:
"The president has not suggested that that is going to be
needed," Rumsfeld said, although President Bush has said many times that
military force will be used to make Iraq comply.
While CNN on TV is almost unwatchable these days, I'm starting to like
their web site. They have a lot of stories I don't find on the NY Times, and
they seem to be willing to point out when the Bushies are stretching the
truth. Meanwhile, the Times is throwing in gratuitous insults at Argentina and
deceptive praise of Bush ("served in the Texas Air National Guard during
the Vietnam War").
posted by Bob at 10:48
PM
My niece has her own blog now!
Check
it out!
posted by Bob at 7:15
PM
I'm reposting my "Night Before Baghdad" poem with a minor
modification due to the honorable anti-war votes of Senators Boxer and Levin.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of others to take their place. I gave the
"honor" to Senators Feinstein and Schumer as their votes were
probably most at odds with the desires of their constituents (Feinstein
admitted as much):
The Night Before Baghdad, by Bob Goodsell
'Twas the night before Baghdad, and through the White House
Not a Bushie was thinking, not even his spouse
The war maps were hung by the table with care
In hopes that Dick Cheney soon would be there.
The prez he was nestled all snug in his bed
While visions of 2004 danced in his head
With Condi on keyboard and Colin on bass
Rummy on vocals sang "Bush won't lose face!"
When out in the Rose Garden came such a noise
It had to be Rummy's destructive war toys
But what to our wondering noses we smelled
But a six-foot-six driver on one giant camel.
"Tell me," said Condi, "is that a llama?"
"No, token black woman! That is Osama!"
He hopped off his camel and gathered his rifle
Clearly this was someone with whom we won't trifle.
He walked to the door and went in front of us
He asked to be taken to the Oval Office
The Senate had some of its members in there
And when he arrived he gave them a scare.
"Out Daschle! Out Feinstein! Out Smiling Joe Lieberman!
Out Lott! Out Hatch! Out Schumer! Out Clinton!
You're self-serving pawns of the corporate swine
Selling your souls to the Bush-Cheney line.
"I wanted a war 'twixt Islam and West
You've given me everything! Thanks, you're the best!
Thanks Condi, thanks Rummy, and thanks Colin, too!
And when he wakes up, please thank W!"
He went to the warroom and smiled at the plans
"The hated Saddam is soon a dead man!
The world in turmoil will be fertile ground
For radical Islam to be spread around!"
And flipping a finger toward one and all
He laughed so hard that it shook down the wall
It made so much noise that the prez left his sack
And came down to ask "Is it time to attack?"
And back to the garden Osama did go
No chicken hawk stopped him as he walked out the do'
Not Rummy, not Condi, not one of the staff
Stopped Osama bin Laden or his terrible laugh.
Then George Bush the Senior entered the room
By reading his lips we all sensed the gloom
"You've tried your best, George, I'll give you that, son
But make no mistake: the terrorists have won."
posted by Bob at 2:08
PM
Paying only the interest on the loan is not enough to avoid Argentina
entering into default -- a move that relegates it to a club of debt deadbeats
that includes Iraq and Zimbabwe. -- from the
NY
Times, showing extreme callousness to one of the largest victims of
globalization to date. Argentina has repeatedly swallowed the painful medicine
prescribed by the World Bank, the IMF, and the US government (pretending for
the moment that there is some difference between the three), only to find
itself in its worst economic crisis yet. And the supposedly liberal
"newspaper of record" chides it for being a "debt
deadbeat," and not on the editorial page, either. And I wonder why Iraq
might have defaulted. Could it be that the world's most powerful country has
bombed, blockaded and threatened it for twelve years running?
As was the case I
discussed on Monday about Bush's "serving during the Vietnam
war", the nasty little sentence I quoted above ended the Times' article.
Were these sentences perhaps tacked on by editors? Who suffers if Argentina
pays off the debt? Millions of Argentines. Who suffers if they don't? Huge
transnational banks. Whose side is the Times on? Reread the quote above.
posted by Bob at 1:46
PM
Daschle
Questions Progress in War on Terrorism: A little late, Tom. The election
was last week.
posted by Bob at 11:58
AM
Thirteen members of the Security Council were opposed to this resolution or
deeply skeptical, but Washington used intense pressure and eventually bent
them to its will. The U.S. used hardball diplomacy of the type deployed to
gain the first Gulf War resolution in 1990. The Secretary of State at that
time, James Baker, later described in his autobiography how he lined up votes
for resolution 678: 'I met personally with all my Security Council
counterparts in an intricate process of cajoling, extracting, threatening,
and occasionally buying votes. Such are the politics of diplomacy."
-- a quote within a quote within a quote: James Paul, executive director of
the Global Policy Forum quoted in the Institute for Public Accuracy's
critique
of the latest UN resolution. Thus we have threatened and bought the votes of
the Security Council to enforce the resolutions that we threatened and bought
the votes for twelve years ago.
posted by Bob at 10:56
AM
posted by Bob at 10:34
AM
More bad news from the
NY
Times article on the Homeland Security bill:
- The bill, approved 299 to 121, would reverse an earlier measure and
allow American companies that have moved offshore in order to evade taxes
to contract with the Homeland Security Department. It would also extend
protection against liability suits for airline screening companies and
many other businesses that contract with the department, and adds a
similar provision protecting the makers of smallpox vaccines. Great.
After the government gives me a near-lethal injection, I won't be able to
sue the drug company that made it.
- Republican House members elected Representative Tom DeLay of Texas,
formerly the majority whip, to the new post of majority leader in the next
session. The Exterminator, the most evil man in Congress, gets
promoted.
- Senate Democrats also held their leadership elections today,
unanimously choosing Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota as chairman of
the caucus. Thanks for helping W get us into this mess, Tom. Here's
two more years to see how much more of the world you can flush down the
toilet.
- Senators also voted 58 to 36 not to block their annual pay raise,
which would increase their salaries by 3.1 percent to $154,700 to $150,000
next year. They'll probably pay for it with new tax cuts for the
rich.
- In one last-minute addition, Representative Dick Armey, Republican of
Texas, inserted a provision that was apparently intended to protect Eli
Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, from lawsuits over thimerosal, a
mercury-based vaccine preservative that some parents contend has caused
autism in their children. An Armey of one. Government should be
protecting people from the giant corporations, not the other way around.
Yup. All of that crap in one article.
posted by Bob at 10:06
AM
Can't pull the wool over Kofi's eyes: Annan said the United States
is "seen to have a lower threshold" for determining what constitutes
a material breach, something that he warned could be interpreted as "a
flimsy or hasty attempt to go to war." Concern that the United States
would be quick to attack was among the reasons it took so long to get a
resolution approved by the council, he said. -- from
CNN.
To me, the scariest part of Clinton's Lewinsky affair was the lengths to
which he appeared willing to go to deny it. He was the perfect target for
blackmail: the most powerful man in the world with a secret he doesn't want to
get out. Who knows what deals he may have made during the year he tried to
cover it up. Our current situation is even scarier: W appears willing to do
just about anything to get his war with Iraq. We may not know for 25 years, if
we ever do, what he gave away to get the votes of Russia, China, France,
Mexico, and Syria(!!) for the latest Iraq resolution. We do know that he has
basically sold out the hopes of rebels in Chechnya and in China's western
provinces for support from the US. W's fanatical devotion would be scary even
if it were for an honorable cause; one should never want anything this badly.
That it is for a criminal and incomprehensible cause such as war with Iraq
just boggles the mind.
posted by Bob at 9:44
AM
Why are these men smiling?
They have just sold us down the river by helping "President" Bush
create a Department of Homeland Security, our very own Gestapo. The bill has
already passed the House, and is expected to pass the Senate by tomorrow. Here
are some of the lowlights, from
CNN:
- Creates a Cabinet-level department out of all or parts of 22 agencies --
including Customs, INS and the Transportation Security Administration --
with about 170,000 workers and a $37 billion budget.
- Grants the president flexibility to hire and fire workers, but gives
unions a chance to challenge new rules.
- Approves a plan to allow pilots to carry guns in cockpits.
- Drops a provision to create an independent commission to investigate
intelligence surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
And read what
William
Safire has to say about the worst part of the bill:
Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription
you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail
you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you
make, every trip you book and every event you attend — all these
transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department
describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
To this computerized dossier on your private life from commercial sources,
add every piece of information that government has about you — passport
application, driver's license and bridge toll records, judicial and divorce
records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime paper
trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance — and you have the
supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about every U.S.
citizen.
And this from Richard Nixon's old speechwriter. Imagine what Paul Wellstone
would say. Basically, the bill says that we'll never really know what went
wrong that allowed 9/11 to happen, since that would make most of the other
fascist provisions of the bill unnecessary. Perhaps an independent
investigation would have discovered that the Bush administration knew what was
coming and ignored it since it would give them the green light they needed to
grab Afghanistan, Iraq, and who knows where else. The recommendation might
have been that impeachment was the only step needed to improve our security.
To amend an old saying: Truth is the first casualty of Bush. And the next time
you fly across the country, the government may be reviewing your travel plans
and everything else you've ever done and decide to arrest you at the arrival
gate. That is if your pilot hasn't shot you first.
posted by Bob at 9:00
AM
Lest we have any hope that Saddam's acceptance of the UN resolution means
there won't be a war:
U.S.
Scoffs at Iraq Claim of No Weapons of Mass Destruction. I'm starting to
wonder if the "inspectors" might actually smuggle WMD's
into
Iraq, just like a redneck cop "finding" a bag of pot in a hippie's
car. "Well, lookie here! Does that look like a chem-ee-cal weapon to you,
Fred?" "It shore 'nough does, Elroy. I think we done caught us a
cheater, un huh. Ol George 'll sho be innersted in seeing this, yessiree."
posted by Bob at 10:07
PM
F.C.C.
Approves Merger of Comcast and AT&T -- just in case anyone still
doubts for whom the government works. This is seriously bad stuff. More of our
money goes to a tiny number of extremely rich people who will continue to
limit our access to information. That Colin Powell's son Michael is the FCC
Chairman is beyond scary. It's only a matter of time before our Internet
access is limited to approved sites: maybe just a few dozen channels owned by
three or four corporations, just like cable TV. Read my blog while you still
can! I have begun planning my "message in a bottle" blog for the
future.
As I said yesterday about the proposed CNN-ABC News merger, there is
already way too much media consolidation. The only debate that should be going
on now is how quickly and into how many thousands of pieces these monsters
should be broken up.
posted by Bob at 4:22
PM
Iraq
accepts UN resolution. Sorry, George. Maybe you can enjoy that
PlayStation
2 those guys bought for you in the meantime. I'm sure Dick and the gang
will come up with some excuse for you to pulverize Iraq soon.
posted by Bob at 11:52
AM
Automakers
ecstatic over Republican Congress. No need to worry about fuel economy or
pollution now. Just get rich while destroying the planet.
posted by Bob at 10:15
AM
Bad news overload:
Don't worry about OBL, though. Our military leaders are hot on his trail:
Speaking today in West Palm Beach, Fla., Gen. Tommy R. Franks, chief of
the U.S. Central Command, said he did not know where bin Laden was, but was
sure the al Qaeda leader was "having a bad year." Even his
5-year-old granddaughter asks him about bin Laden's whereabouts, Franks said.
"I tell her, I don't know," he said. "But if he's alive, we'll
certainly get him." Of course, it will have to wait until we're done
killing 5-year-old granddaughters in Iraq in the name of peace. The world is
"having a bad year."
posted by Bob at 9:58
AM
Gestapo go-ahead: Congressional "leaders" have
worked
out a deal so that the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security
("Ministry of Love" or "Miniluv" in Newspeak) can proceed,
possibly as soon as Friday. Always a tower of principled strength,
"Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, said he disagreed with the
plan but would not block its passage. His staff released a schedule showing
how the bill could be approved as soon as Friday." Way to stand up for
our freedoms, Tom.
The agreement gives the Bush administration a free hand to jettison
Civil Service rules in promoting and firing workers in the new agency and
allows the president to exempt unionized workers from collective-bargaining
agreements in the name of national security.
Wonderful. Not only are unions flushed further down the toilet, it looks as
though the Bushies will have full power to hire and fire agency employees. So
some border cop or Coast Guard officer who takes the Constitution a little too
seriously can be out of work on a moment's notice, and good luck finding
another decent job in this economy. Doubleplusungood! (Reminder:
Orwell's "1984" is pretty much required reading for understanding
this blog. It is also required reading for understanding what the Bushies are
doing. You can probably still buy a copy at a used book store that won't show
up on an FBI computer somewhere.)
posted by Bob at 9:12
AM
Viagra lockdown: I work in a building on the edge of the University of
Michigan's North Campus in Ann Arbor. Most of the buildings in the immediate
neighborhood are a part of Pfizer's world headquarters and research
facilities. As you are probably aware, Pfizer is one of the world's largest
drug companies, and its most famous product is Viagra. (They are in the
process of merging with Pharmacia, makers of Rogaine, so they will soon have
the aging men market cornered.) Anyhow, there has been a big increase in
security at Pfizer's buildings recently, especially the big one across the
street. Two or three months ago armed guards showed up at every driveway, and
now they have put big steel sliding gates across at least one driveway. I
wonder what's up over there. Doesn't exactly give me that warm, fuzzy feeling;
it's more that cold, clammy one. The place already looks like the compound of
a Bond villain.
Also, if you saw any of Liddy Dole's victory speech in North Carolina,
you'll realize why Bob Dole needs Pfizer's most famous product, and lots of
it. Just think--in one house, a senator-elect and a senator-erect.
posted by Bob at 3:34
PM
Vigilante
Vegetarian: He's famous for his subway connection, but he's no Jared.
"I
think a quarter of the world's problems would be solved if most people would
become vegetarians," he says. Still, he's not the ideal veggie
spokesperson, since he's Bernard Goetz, the infamous subway vigilante.
posted by Bob at 3:04
PM
Bechtel (boo!!!) vs Bolivia (yay!!!). Bechtel
is suing Bolivia for $25 million it claims it lost in its effort to
privatize the water system of Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city. The
case goes before a secret World Bank court, somewhere, sometime. Top secret,
you know. Can't let anyone know who is responsible for stealing their water
and selling it to the highest bidder. Globalization along the lines of NAFTA,
the World Bank, the WTO, and the proposed FTAA is a crime of immense
proportions against humanity.
posted by Bob at 10:57
AM
A year later, still no explanation, except "it wasn't terrorism."
American
Airlines Flight 587 crashed one year ago today shortly after taking off
from JFK Airport in New York. Although several
witnesses
saw what looked like explosions or fires on the wings, the official line
so far is:
The crash was caused by large movements in the rudder. Probably
the pilot's fault. We'll let you know. Sometime. Maybe. For sure we'll let you
know before we tell you why Wellstone's plane crashed. Don't hold your breath.
I'll repeat my suggestion that I made months ago: The timing and conclusions
of the crash investigation have much more to do with politics and propaganda
than they do with the evidence. A second terror attack in New York two months
after 9/11 might have made the Bushies appear more incompetent than resolute.
By failing to issue a report on this crash, they can use it to support their
next war.
Well, what do you know? Turns out it was a missile after all.
Launched by terrorists from (take your pick) Iraq/Iran/North
Korea/Cuba/Colombia/Saudi Arabia/Syria/China. This shall not stand. Huff.
Puff.
posted by Bob at 10:07
AM
Oh joy.
It
is now apparently up to Saddam Hussein whether World War III starts this week.
Of course, even Saddam's most abject capitulation to Bush's demands is
unlikely to prevent Bush from finding some excuse for war. And while
capitulation at this point would probably save the lives of many Iraqis, it is
probably at least as dangerous to Saddam personally as letting the war happen.
Once the well-armed "inspectors" authorized by the UN resolution go
into Iraq, chances are good that they will be searching for Saddam at least as
much as they are for weapons. If they find him, he will be either arrested or,
more likely, assassinated. I may be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure that
is how Saddam sees it. If so, will he put the well-being of the Iraqi people
ahead of his own? As I said yesterday, there doesn't seem to be much of a
chance for anything good to come out of this.
posted by Bob at 9:53
AM
From the WSWS:
The commentators fail to ask the obvious question: who and what has made it
possible for a president who lost the popular vote and was undemocratically
installed in office, and who is widely derided as ignorant and inarticulate,
to exercise such supposed power?
posted by Bob at 6:53
AM
Not that there was much hope for peace left, but it looks like the last faint
glimmer is fast disappearing:
Iraqi
parliament condemns U.N. resolution on weapons inspectors. Anything left
to hope for? How about minimal casualties on both sides, combined with a major
disruption in oil supplies leading to price increases and shortages, causing
major political damage to the Bushies? About the best I can come up with at
this point. There really seems to be no desirable outcome possible now.
posted by Bob at 3:12
PM
The Senate is
planning to quickly pass the establishment of a Department of Homeland
Security. Unfortunately, we probably don't have much chance of stopping
this domestic gestapo now that the Republitrons are in charge, but we should
still put up a fight.
Write,
call, or e-mail your senators today and let them know that you don't want
America to be a police state.
posted by Bob at 2:41
PM
Bush served as a Texas Air National Guard pilot during the Vietnam War. --
The NY Times ends its
article
with this single sentence, with no explanation that Bush never went to
Vietnam, and that he was AWOL from the Air National Guard for a year. The
Times' quote implies that W actually fought in Vietnam. My sister got married
in 1967, and I brought snacks to guests at the reception. So I guess I can say
that I served during the Vietnam War, too. Oh liberal media, wherefore art
thou?
posted by Bob at 11:47
AM
Bush said a new regime "would bring deliverance" for Iraq's
citizens. "We have no territorial ambitions. We don't seek an empire. Our
nation is committed to freedom, for ourselves and for others. We and our
allies have fought evil regimes and left in place self-governing and
prosperous nations," he said.
Oh yeah? Where? Is he going back to World War II with Germany and Japan?
Have any of our many military interventions since resulted in
"self-governing and prosperous nations?" In many of them, we fought
WITH evil regimes (Vietnam, El Salvador, Afghanistan). The truth is, Bush
probably doesn't know the history, and he doesn't care. Worst president ever.
posted by Bob at 11:37
AM
A thrilling first-person action game. Become a member of the world's
premier land force; trained and equipped to achieve decisive
victory—anywhere. Earn the right to call yourself a Soldier, letting the
enemies of freedom know that America's Army has arrived...
That's right, you can download a
free first-person shoot-em-up game, "America's Army," from the US
Army website.
posted by Bob at 10:51
AM
Whitewater in Arkansas again! Subsidized
rice
farmers in Arkansas want the Federal government to pay for diverting water
from the White River to irrigate their crops, since they have almost
completely drained the large aquifer under their farms. Arkansas gets about 50
inches of rain per year, enough for decent crop yields without irrigation.
Sustainability without further attacks on the environment is the only
reasonable option, one unlikely to get consideration from our current
"government."
As I've ranted about before, water is the BIG ISSUE for the 21st century.
Corporations are already grabbing up as much as they can, while more and more
fresh water is polluted by chemicals and animal feed lots or depleted by
irrigation and global warming. While we can live without oil, and in many ways
life would be more pleasant, we can't live without water, and there are
shortages occurring throughout the world, including within the US. A
responsible government, something we haven't had for a long time, would put an
immediate stop to frivolous and wasteful uses of water: golf courses, suburban
lawns, feed lots, and many others.
The "Politics in the Zeros" weblog has an ongoing
page of water-related stories and links.
posted by Bob at 10:12
AM
Somehow this one slipped under my radar until now, but...
Aaaaaarrrrgh!
Still
more media consolidation? CNN and ABC?The implications are staggering.
This Week with Wolf and Cokie? Puff the Media Dragon, sung by Peter, Paula and
Barbara? Christiane Amanpour and Mickey Mouse live on location at George H.W.
Bush Air Force Base in suburban Baghdad? And there are already ties between
Disney (ABC) and GE (NBC) through MSN (Microsoft). The Soviet Union had Tass
and Pravda; soon we will have only CNN-ABC-MSNBC and CBS-Fox to choose from,
each trying to outdo the other in crime and war coverage.
Media consolidation is one of the main problems in the country and world
today, but instead of taking steps to reverse it, it is being allowed, even
encouraged, to continue.
posted by Bob at 9:59
AM
Ain't no stoppin' us now:
By February or March, the U.S. media will likely be flooded with dire
warnings about the threat to the world from Iran. Israel's American lobby will
turn its guns from Iraq to Iran. "Links" will surely be
"discovered" between Iran and al-Qaida. The cookie-cutter pattern
that worked for whipping up war psychosis against Iraq should work just as
well against Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia - and win the next national election.
--
Eric Margolis
from Toronto says that Iran is the real target of the Iraq war for both the US
and Israel. The case against Iran should be easier to make than that against
Iraq, since there will actually be some truth to the "supports
terrorism" charges and since Iran's weapons of mass destruction program
is further along than Iraq's, not having been hampered by 11 years of
inspections, sanctions and bombing. While targeting Iran doesn't make sense to
me, having it as the main target provides a better explanation for the first
two W wars, especially Afghanistan. Of course, 9/11 provided the excuse for
Afghanistan, although 9/11 could have been used with at least as much
justification as a reason to attack Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Germany, or Florida.
These would have been politically more difficult, since
of these only
Florida has leadership as evil as the Taliban, but lots of Americans have
parents and grandparents living there, so bombing Tampa instead of Kandahar
would have been a tough sell. The fact that Afghanistan had no military with a
chance of competing with the Pentagon also contributed to the decision. But
seen in the light of creating an Iran on Afghan-Iraqi bread sandwich, the
choices of Afghanistan and Iraq as the first two W wars makes more sense. Sure
don't make it right, though.
posted by Bob at 9:28
AM
From the prologue to
The
Post-Corporate World by David Korten:
In the Post-Corporate World I refine the analysis to argue that
the problem is not the market as such but more specifically capitalism, which
is to a healthy market economy what cancer is to a healthy body. Cancer occurs
when genetic damage causes a cell to forget that it is part of a larger body,
the healthy function of which is essential to its own survival. The cell
begins to seek its own growth without regard to the consequences for the
whole, and ultimately destroys the body that feeds it. As I learned more about
the course of cancer's development within the body, I came to realize that the
reference to capitalism as a cancer is less a metaphor than a clinical
diagnosis of a pathology to which market economies are prone in the absence of
adequate citizen and governmental oversight. Our hope for the future is to
restore the health of our democracies and market economies by purging them of
the pathology.
When dealing with a cancer of the body, containment is rarely an adequate
strategy. To become healthy, one needs a curative regime designed to remove or
kill the defective cells. Some combination of surgical removal with measures
to weaken the cancer cells and strengthen the body's natural defenses is
likely to be appropriate. There is a strong parallel to the task now before
us. Curing the capitalist cancer to restore democracy, the market, and our
human rights and freedoms will require virtually eliminating the institution
of the limited-liability for-profit public corporation as we know it to create
a post-corporate world through actions such as the following:
- End the legal fiction that corporations are entitled to the rights of
persons and exclude corporations from political participation;
- Implement serious political campaign reform to reduce the influence of
money on politics;
- Eliminate corporate welfare by eliminating direct subsidies and
recovering other externalized costs through fees and taxes;
- Implement mechanisms to regulate international corporations and finance;
and
- Use fiscal and regulatory policy to make financial speculation
unprofitable and to give an economic advantage to human-scale,
stakeholder-owned enterprises.
I have no illusions that removal of the capitalist cancer will be easily
accomplished. Rarely is cancer in any of its manifestations easily cured.
On the other hand, I see no realistic prospect for the amicable coexistence of
life and capitalism. They represent ways of being and valuing as antithetical
to one another as the coexistence of cancer cells and healthy cells. Any
seeming accomodation between them is inherently unstable and most likely to be
resolved in favor of the cancer. On a small and crowded planet with a finite
life-support system, our choice as a species is basically between life after
capitalism and severe global-scale social and environmental collapse.
posted by Bob at 5:19
PM
Oh
Boy More Fear And Gluttony / Darkness falls across the land, flowers wilt, the
GOP takes full, and frightening, control -- from Mark Morford, SF Gate.
As noted crusty and ruthless and largely unpleasant former Clinton
adviser James Carville observed just after the election, "The American
people just don't have a clue as to what's coming."
If you are female, gay, bisexual, atheist, black, immigrant, poor,
progressive, intellectual, open minded, open hearted, if you hold alternative
views, dress funny, dance, enjoy sex, read seditious literature, believe in
peace and funky spirituality and don't particularly care for a sneering angry
self-righteous well-armed anti-everything deity, you are about to find out.
The hard way. And so is everyone else.
If that's not depressing enough, you can read the whole
article.
posted by Bob at 4:15
PM
Pentagon
Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans:
Headed up by convicted Iran-Contra conspirator Admiral John Poindexter,
"The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast
electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for
terrorists around the globe — including the United States." Well, I'll
make it easy for you,
Poindexter. I'm a member of the Sierra Club,
Amnesty International, the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and the League of American
Bicyclists. I voted for McCain and Nader in 2000, I supported numerous
Democrats in the 2002 elections, and not only do I believe that George W. Bush
is our worst president ever, I write about it incessantly on the web. These
activities are not illegal,
Poindexter, unlike your Iran-Contra
shenanigans. But right now I'm a lot more afraid of dying in prison, uncharged
and unrepresented, than I am of being killed by any terrorist (except maybe
Bush).
How is it that Jeb Bush and Florida won't let convicts who have served
their time (five years for a few ounces of marijuana, for instance) even vote,
while his brother George allows convicts like Poindexter, Elliot Abrams
(director of the National Security Council’s office for democracy, human
rights and international operations), and John Negroponte (ambassador to the
UN) to have high positions in government? Poindexter, by the way, didn't go to
prison because he testified against the other two, who didn't go to prison
because Poppy Bush pardoned them.
BTW, read what a
Canadian Member of Parliament had to say about W's appointment of Abrams
last year.
posted by Bob at 8:55
AM
Mr. Hussein has proven to be a vicious adversary, and senior
administration officials have mounted a campaign to warn Iraq's military
commanders that they will be charged with war crimes if they unleash weapons
of mass destruction. This week, Mr. Bush hinted at another concern, that the
Iraqi government would purposefully sacrifice its population to stain an
American military victory with civilian blood. -- from an abominable
NY
Times article worthy of the worst of Nazi or Soviet propaganda. The US is
planning an unprovoked act of agression against Iraq, and is preparing to
blame Iraqis if US forces kill Iraqi civilians, which they undoubtedly will.
And the Times just spouts this nonsense as if it were logical and obvious.
Hussein a vicious adversary? The "Mother of all battles" in 1991
caused approximately the same number of US casualties as the Somalia campaign
against a few disorganized warlords. And several of the casualties were
friendly fire. Iraq was formidable and vicious against Iran, but they had the
help of US arms and intelligence back then. Our planes have been bombing Iraq
regularly for years now, and I don't think any have been shot down. The US is
planning on stomping on a country that was crushed in 1991 and has had no
opportunity to recover since. This sounds like the Michigan football coach
saying "We're not looking past Rice, they've got some great athletes over
there" before Michigan fries Rice 56-3. Except we're adding that "If
they do try to beat us, not only will we crush them on the field, but we're
going to rape their cheerleaders and shoot their coaches after the game."
At the very least, the Times could insert a sentence like this: "War
appears imminent now that Mr. Bush's campaign of lies, distortions and
intimidation has given him approval from the US Congress and the UN Security
Council to proceed with this criminal endeavor."
posted by Bob at 11:36
PM
Estimates ranged from 450,000 to 1 million. I think it's about time for
marches this big here.
Take to the streets. Repeat as needed.
posted by Bob at 10:02
PM
Getting to the heart of the matter: President Bush is a liar. --
from
Eric
Alterman. Alterman wonders why the press is so reluctant to point out the
lies of presidents, and especially why lies leading us into war are seen as
less important than lies about sex.
posted by Bob at 7:52
PM
Birds of a feather:
and
Reporter: Mr. Bush, did you know about 9/11 before it happened?
W: Iraq!!
Reporter: What about all those innocent civilians killed in Afghanistan?
W: Iraq!!
Reporter: Tell us about your Harken stock sale.
W: Bbbbbbbbbb...
Reporter: Who did the vice president talk to to come up with that insane
energy policy, anyway?
W: Iraq!!!!
Reporter: And whatever happened to Osama bin Laden?
W: Iraq. (waddle, waddle)
posted by Bob at 7:33
PM
UN resolution on
Iraq: a cynical cover for US aggression -- from the WSWS.
Executive
summary: The terrorists have won. Osama bin Laden and George WW III Bush
have gotten pretty much everything they could have hoped for from the UN. Life
is going to seriously suck for the foreseeable future, and not just in Iraq.
posted by Bob at 6:15
PM
Ain't no stopping a bad idea: SUV's. Reality TV shows. Those silly
"Whatever on Board" diamond-shaped signs back in the '80's. Car
flags. Suburbs. Republicanism. The chicken dance. This country is an ideal
medium for growing bad ideas, like old bread is for mold. While good ideas
like universal health care and public funding of campaigns go nowhere, an
incredibly stupid idea like going to war with Iraq just won't die. Killing
Iraqi people to save them, using weapons of mass destruction to eliminate
them, and burning huge amounts of fossil fuels to steal even more. It's
criminal, it's insane, it's exceedingly dangerous to everyone. Its main
proponent is an inarticulate ne'er-do-well who bought and cheated his way into
the world's most powerful job. He has made his case using obvious lies and
ridiculously inflammatory logic. In a sane world, this idea would have died
stillborn, sort of like Hillary's 1993 health care plan. Unfortunately, this
world is far from sane, the bad idea has grown from a single virus to a
life-threatening disease, and the mayhem is about to begin. May God, Allah,
Mother Nature, and the Great Pumpkin help us all.
posted by Bob at 8:24
AM
Politics in the Zeros has started a
voting reform page, leading off with
an
article on "Instant Runoff Voting" (IRV). I'm frequently amazed
at how many Americans seem to accept that choosing between the lesser of two
evils on the first Tuesday of November is a good enough approximation to
democracy. There are many ways, both simple and complex, to improve the system
so that it more accurately reflects the "will of the people." IRV is
one way. Proportional representation is probably a better way, since it leaves
a lot fewer people unrepresented. A combination of the two could easily be
worked out. Polizeros promises an article on proportional representation soon.
posted by Bob at 2:49
PM
British
court objects to Gitmo detentions: Of course, the picture below is a
fitting illustration for this story as well.
posted by Bob at 2:20
PM
What this blog is like:
Thanks to the
Politics in the Zeros
blog for that pic!
posted by Bob at 2:15
PM
United Nations, United States, United Airlines, United Fruit, what's the
dif? The latest
Bushisms:
"I need to be able to move the right people to the right place at the
right time to protect you, and I'm not going to accept a lousy bill out of the
United Nations Senate."—South Bend, Ind., Oct. 31, 2002
(I was in South Bend the very next day, and I didn't say anything nearly
that stupid, but Bush's candidate won anyway. This world sucks.)
"John Thune has got a common-sense vision for good forest policy. I
look forward to working with him in the United Nations Senate to preserve
these national heritages."
"Any time we've got any kind of inkling that somebody is thinking
about doing something to an American and something to our homeland, you've
just got to know we're moving on it, to protect the United Nations
Constitution, and at the same time, we're protecting you."—Aberdeen,
S.D., same day (Thanks to George Dupper.)
You've just got to know that the Democrats had to be awfully
resourceful to avoid coming up with campaign rhetoric that could beat this
nonsense.
posted by Bob at 1:35
PM
U
of M punishes itself for basketball scandal, including the "Fab
Five" era:
The group, and Webber specifically, was involved in one of the most
memorable plays in N.C.A.A. basketball history — and one of the most painful
for Michigan fans. In the 1993 championship game against North Carolina,
Michigan was trailing by 2 points with 11 seconds left when Webber called a
timeout, but the Wolverines had none to take. That resulted in a technical
foul and an automatic change of possession. The Tar Heels won by 77-71.
So, if you look real hard, you can find a silver lining in this cloud. Since
Webber shouldn't have been there, the game never happened, so
he couldn't
call a timeout he didn't have because there are no technical fouls in
non-games. Michigan fans can stop pulling their hair out over that one
now.
Still looking for a silver lining in Republican control of Congress. Nothin'
yet...
posted by Bob at 11:54
AM
The
UN Security Council just passed the Iraq resolution. Bush probably
gave Massachusetts to France, Alaska to Russia and Hawaii to China to buy
their approval. This would totally bum me out, except that I'm already there.
posted by Bob at 10:32
AM
With the Hummer "People told me, `I can protect my family. If
someone bumps into me, they're dead.' People love this feeling." One
female H2 buyer told him: "I have three kids in the car with me and no
one is going to look at me as a soccer mom." -- from the
NY
Times. If there is a more perfect symbol for everything that is wrong with
America than the Hummer, it is George W. Bush. Or vice versa. I guess the
perfect symbol of the moral bankruptcy of America would be George W. Bush
driving a Hummer.
posted by Bob at 9:29
AM
I've added a link to
PR Watch in the
frame on the right (-->). They do a good job of spotting propaganda put out
by governments and corporations. Of course that's pretty much like spotting
water from a sinking boat, but most people in this country seem to be
blissfully unaware of it (hence the election results). If you know someone who
seems ready to have his or her eyes opened a little to the lies being told,
but not quite ready to have them pried wide open by blogs like this one, point
them to
PR Watch.
posted by Bob at 9:16
AM
Distrust of government was an atmospheric factor, as was cynicism about
politics. Events to follow will reinforce both attitudes. This reflects the
GOP's asymmetric advantages. They gain power by disparaging government; once
in government they make sure it's inefficient and ineffective. They believe
(and want everybody to believe) politics is merely a commodity market for
preferential treatments, and a corrupt market at that. No qualms and no ideals
to interfere with message development ... "All's fair in the war of
words". Dem's tend to see governance as productive, and communication as
information-sharing. Cynicism is a one-sided advantage.
-- from the
Cogent Provocateur
blog.
posted by Bob at 8:28
AM
In the opening moments of the news conference, Mr. Bush cast the
confrontation as one that pitted "the civilized world" against a
murderous tyrant. -- from the
NY
Times. It looks like the civilized world doesn't have much of a chance
against Bush, at least in the short run.
posted by Bob at 12:20
AM
Krugman:
Into
the Wilderness.
posted by Bob at 12:13
AM
Build
up the Gestapo and expand the War on Everything: Now that the checks have
bounced and the balances have all tipped over, W is ready to speed up his
agenda of repression, greed, and war. I've been reading the post mortems on
the Democrats' sorry excuse for a campaign, trying to figure out what to do
next. Can the Democratic party be saved? Is it worth saving? If they are
committed to choosing among Republicrats like Daschle, Edwards, Hillary
Clinton, Lieberman, Kerry or Gore for their 2004 presidential candidate, I'm
inclined to jump straight to the Greens and make an all out push for
progressive Democrats like Kucinich, Feingold and Barbara Lee to jump ship as
well. Let the Republicrats either join their buddies in the Republican party
or just simply disappear from public life. None of them offers any hope of
addressing the major disasters facing the world. If we have to be stuck with a
two-party system, let's make the Republicrats be one and the Greens be the
other. And then let's help the Greens sweep the Republicrats out of office in
2004 and forever more.
posted by Bob at 4:53
PM
Can't Gitmo
Satisfaction. Just because the "detainees" at Guantanamo Bay
have been there for eleven months now rather than one or two doesn't make
their imprisonment any less illegal or immoral. It makes it that much more so.
I'm ashamed that my country is continuing to do this.
posted by Bob at 2:00
PM
Bowling for Columbine: I saw
Michael Moore's latest movie last night. It is scary, thought-provoking, and
funny. The theater was sold out, but, unlike Sunday, we got there while
tickets were still available. I had seen clips from the movie on the Donahue
show earlier, so there weren't many surprises. The main question the movie
leaves you with is: Why are Americans so much more likely to shoot each other
than citizens of almost any other country on earth? Moore debunks many of the
common explanations offered by Charlton Heston and others in the movie: we
have a history of war (but Germany and Japan have far fewer gun murders); we
watch too much violent TV and play violent video games (the Japanese have us
at least tied on this one); our population is ethnically diverse, we have a
lot of poverty, and there are lots of guns around (all three apply at least
equally to Canada, where gun violence is very rare). The comparisons with
Canada are especially interesting, since they seem so much like us in many
ways, but they live with less fear and more compassion. In any case, the movie
is wonderful and I highly recommend it. If you're in the Ann Arbor area,
tonight is the last night "Bowling for Columbine" is playing at the
Michigan Theater. Check
here
for showings in your area.
One other note of interest (at least to me). I had pointed out before that
there were connections between Gulf War I and pretty much every terrorist
attack against the US since then--the first WTC attack, Oklahoma City, the
African embassy bombings, the Cole, and 9/11 of course. I also noted that John
Allen Muhammed, one of the sniper suspects, was a Gulf War I vet. In
"Bowling for Columbine" they mentioned that the father of Eric
Harris, one of the Columbine shooters, was a bomber pilot in Gulf War I.
Violence begets violence, and the cities of this country are going to be more
like Jerusalem than Toronto after Gulf War II starts in earnest. And I'm not
sure that terrorism (as the Bushies like to call the small-scale warfare of
our enemies who don't have countries) is our main concern. Our naked
imperialistic grab for the world's resources will not go on for long without
waking the Russian bear and the Chinese dragon, and 9/11 will be recalled, by
those of us who survive, as a quaint little incident by comparison. Of course,
I hope I'm wrong.
posted by Bob at 10:50
AM
The Democrats did not provide a single reason for the oppressed layers of
the population to rally to their support.
This is the real source of the Republican victory, not mass support for Bush
and his right-wing program. The picture presented by the media of a people
enthralled by their war-time leader is absurd. Working people in America have
not suddenly and unaccountably decided that they passionately desire war, tax
cuts for the wealthy, handouts to corporate interests, and the destruction of
jobs and public social services. -- from the World Socialist Web Site:
US
midterm election: the meaning of the Democratic debacle.
posted by Bob at 7:13
AM
A defiant Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, said: "We're not
going to go away. We may not be in the majority, but we're going to fight just
as hard for the things we believe in now as we have before." -- from
the
NY
Times. Oh great. A lame, wet-noodle effort to fight back by continuing to
appease Bush. That's how you lost the "majority" part of your title,
Mr. Daschle.
posted by Bob at 11:49
PM
Dirty tricks at the polls:
this
blog has a long list of election day shenanigans.
posted by Bob at 11:19
AM
Aaaargh!!!!!!
Except for here in Michigan, yesterday was pretty much a total disaster. The
idiots have won. Even
Harvey
Pitt's resignation can't brighten the day, since with the Republitrons
controlling the Senate there will be no stopping W from appointing someone
even worse. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new head of the SEC,
Ken Lay! Coleman's win in Minnesota proves that crime does pay. And Democrats
selling out on the Iraq war resolution wasn't a great election strategy, its
total immorality aside. Of those who voted for war, Senators Carnahan and
Cleland are out, while the re-elections of Johnson and Landrieu are still in
doubt. While Senators Baucus, Biden, Harkin, Kerry and Rockefeller were
re-elected after voting for war, Senators Durbin, Levin and Reed were
re-elected after voting against it. The only senator who voted against war who
won't be returning is Paul Wellstone, and they had to kill him to accomplish
that. Vote for war: between 2 and 4 out of 9 Democratic incumbents rejected by
voters. Vote against war: 3 of 3 Democratic incumbents returned to Senate by
voters. Mr. Daschle's "leadership" has led him out of the Senate
majority leader position.
Once again:
Aaaargh!!!!!!
posted by Bob at 9:49
AM
Taking it to the streets! 4:20 am, election day, 2002. The dark steets
of South Bend, Indiana. Agent Bob and his team of guerilla Democrats are
sneaking onto doorsteps and putting Jill Long Thompson door hangers on
unsuspecting door handles. The goal: Maybe three of the two-hundred or so
hangers will remind someone to vote, giving Jill a two-vote victory, thereby
giving the Democrats a one-vote majority in the House, hopefully returning the
country to some semblance of sanity. The hope is slim: lots of people won't
see the hangers until tomorrow; many will have been turned off by the attack
ads and decided not to vote; some may even be upset that Agent Bob and the
Guerillas were lurking on their porches at 4:20 am and decide to vote for the
Republican out of spite. Even if Jill gets elected, chances are slim that all
of the other close House races will go Democratic, and even if they do, many
Democrats, Jill included, have staked out positions close to 20 in the
left-right scheme (see next post below). But Agent Bob knows that if Jill wins
by a small number of votes and the Dems take the House by one vote, he will be
one agent who is very happy that he went to South Bend and got up at 3:30 on a
cold November morning.
And to borrow a schtick from Dave
Barry: "Agent Bob and the Guerilla Democrats" would be a great
name for a rock band.
posted by Bob at 7:26
PM
Metaphor Alert!
Remember "pick a number," a method for picking who bats first or
some other either/or decision? To pick a winner between two people, a third
person says "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 100." He then
asks one of the two to take a guess and then the other, with the closest guess
winning. At some point in your childhood you perhaps were impressed when the
guessing went like this. A: 19. B: 20. B has realized that by picking 20 that
he now has an 80% chance of winning, since any number between 20 and 100 will
be closer to 20 than 19. I wish I could say that I figured this out myself and
used it before seeing anyone else do it, but at least I recognized it when it
happened. It seemed pretty brilliant at the time, but I realize now that its
success depended on certain assumptions. The first assumption is that all
numbers between 1 and 100 are equally likely. If the person picking the number
was a three year old who could only count to 30 (he's heard rumors of 100, but
doesn't know anything about it), 18 is probably a better guess for B than 20.
The second assumption is that there are only two contestants. If a third
person C is involved, 60 is probably a better guess than 20.
So, if haven't already seen where this metaphor is leading, allow me to
(metaphorically) beat you over the head with it. The person picking the number
represents the range of political positions in the American public--1 is far
right, 100 is far left. A is the Republicans, B is the Democrats, and C is the
Greens or other third parties. Both A and B have realized that their chances
are improved by not allowing C to pick a number, so they do everything they
can (which is a lot) to prevent that from happening. B, the Democrats, think
they are pretty smart, picking 20 to the Republicans 19, figuring everyone to
the left of 20 will vote Democratic. The problem is that by debating between
19 and 20 and excluding anyone who would pick higher numbers, the voting
public has become like the kid who can only count to 30. Many are deceived
that the Democrats are actually liberal, while others are up in the 70's and
80's, from which no real difference between A and B is discernable, so they
don't vote at all. The Democrats, considering themselves brilliant by picking
20, have actually put themselves at a disadvantage by helping the Republicans
reduce it to a game of 1 to 30. And any Democrat who starts to figure this out
gets killed in a plane crash.
posted by Bob at 7:11
PM
Control
of House Expected to Stay in Hands of G.O.P. Can't let this happen!
I'm heading back to South Bend to volunteer for Jill Long Thompson in her
close congressional race, so no more blogging 'til probably tomorrow night,
which will hopefully be a victory blog. If we fail then the idiots win! (see
picture below)
posted by Bob at 9:40
AM
David Horsey, Seattle
Post-Intelligencer.
posted by Bob at 12:54
PM
from
Steve Benson.
posted by Bob at 12:50
PM
Battle cry:
This battle will determine whether our families pay $1.60 for a
gallon of gas--or $2.20! --from Ted Rall's
latest
cartoon. For it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? I don't know
and don't give a damn, we're gonna beat Saddam. For it's five, six, seven,
open up the tailgates--whoopee! We all gotta drive.
At what price?
posted by Bob at 12:44
PM
"One way to make sure our judges get approved on a timely basis is to
change the leadership in the United States Senate," Bush said at a rally
yesterday morning. -- from the
Washington
Post
. So if you want judges who will rule in favor of polluters and corporate
crooks while declaring the rest of us enemy combatants without rights, stay
home on Tuesday and let W get his way. But if you want to see at least a
glimmer of hope for the future, do everything you can in the next three days
to make Tuesday's vote a clear referendum against Bush and his evil ways. Find
a close race near you and volunteer (I went to South Bend, Indiana yesterday
to work for Democrat Jill Long Thompson), or
make
some phone calls to get out the vote in Oregon. Show Bush that the
majority of us are voting against him--again.
posted by Bob at 9:27
AM
Among unanswered questions are why the plane made a slow turn to the south,
away from the airport, and why it descended at a steeper-than-normal angle,
before crashing into the woods. Witnesses have said the plane seemed to be
flying low and sounded like it might be in trouble. Investigators have said
the plane's last known airspeed was 85 knots, close to stall speed. from
AP
via NY Times. I'd say that these facts are completely consistent with my
poison
gas theory or something else that incapacitated the pilots quickly. I'll
have to reinstall Flight Simulator on my computer and try preparing for a
landing--flaps and gear down, trying to line up on the runway, and then just
stop controlling the plane and see what happens. I think that a slow
continuation of an already-started turn, followed by a stall leading to a
steep dive to a crash, is a realistic possibility. The scenario of the
Wellstone crash seems inconsistent with a major mechanical failure. If there
was engine trouble, the pilots would have radioed in a mayday and asked for
help in locating a road or field to land on if they couldn't make it to the
airport. If they lost directional control of the plane, as the wide turn might
suggest, they would have responded by adding throttle to gain altitude and buy
time, and they would have radioed in the situation. The airliner that crashed
in Iowa in 1989 lost most directional control (ailerons and rudder), but used
different throttle settings on the left and right engines to steer the plane,
with some success, towards an airport. It certainly seems to me that
Wellstone's plane simply lost its sense of direction--that is, the pilots were
incapacitated somehow. And it is hard to imagine that happening to both pilots
at the same time unless foul play was involved. An alternative to the poison
gas would be a suicide terrorist among the staff or the pilots.
posted by Bob at 12:54
AM
Given the close connections between Bush and members of his administration
with Enron and other corporations involved in multi-billion dollar looting and
swindling, it is perhaps not surprising to find “Enron methods” being
transferred from the sphere of business to politics. Enron and the other
corporate looters developed a method of accounting known as “backing in”.
Instead of objective facts being brought together and reported in the balance
sheet, the accountants started from the figures they wanted on the balance
sheet and then worked back to make the accounting “facts” fit that
outcome. The same method—outright lying—is being used on a daily basis to
prepare for war against Iraq. -- from
The
WSWS.
posted by Bob at 11:06
AM
Ted
Rall weighs in on the possible assassination of Wellstone.
posted by Bob at 9:27
PM
Ever wanted to be a telemarketer, but just never felt the time was right?
Well, there are some good democrats out in Oregon who might not actually fill
out and return their ballots, which might allow Senator Smith to remain
Senator Smith, which might make Trent Lott the Senate Majority Leader, which
would certainly make this an even scarier and more unpleasant world in which
to live. Frankly, I hate cold-calling people, but I made a bunch of calls to
Oregon this afternoon on behalf of Democrat Bill Bradbury. You can too! Go to
http://www.moveon.org/keepfighting/standup.html
and sign up to help with the get-out-the-vote calls (actually, in Oregon they
are send-in-the-vote calls). If you've got extra minutes on your cell phone
like me, it may not cost you any extra, and it might keep some Antonin Scalia
clone off the Supreme Court. It might keep us out of war with Trinidad AND
Tobago (I know, we have no good reasons for going to war with either Trinidad
OR Tobago, but that's not stopping us in Iraq, is it?). So why just let
Oregonians hand out candy tonight? Give 'em a call, tell 'em to vote for
Bradbury! (The website has complete scripts for you and gives you twenty names
and numbers to call at a time.)
posted by Bob at 8:28
PM
Football Team Added to List of Terrorist Groups
Secretary of State Colin Powell announced today that the Oakland Raiders have
been placed on the State Department's list of organizations with ties to
terrorists. Raiders' General Manager Al Davis and quarterback Rich Gannon have
been arrested, and are believed to be on their way to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said that at first he was shocked to hear that
one of his teams was a front for terrorism, but when he heard that it was the
Raiders he said "Well, yes, I guess I can see that." In a video
released on al Jazeera TV in the Middle East, former Raider Jack Tatum was
seen talking about the many terrorist activities of the Raiders. "People
assumed I was called 'Assassin' because I hit receivers real hard," said
Tatum. "And compare pictures of Sirhan Sirhan and John Hinckley with old
Raider team photos--I think you'll discover something very interesting."
Tagliabue said that the remaining Raiders would be allowed to continue playing
through the remainder of the season, but that any team losing to them or
referee favoring the Raiders with a call would also be added to the State
Department's list. Sources wouldn't confirm that one of the Raiders' acts of
terror was picking the candidates in California's gubernatorial election.
posted by Bob at 5:14
PM
Ron Eibensteiner, the state Republican chairman, accused his opponents of
exploiting
a tragedy for political gain, and called on local television stations,
which broadcast the service live, to provide his party equal free air time. --
from the
NY
Times. I swear, Republicans know no shame. They've been exploiting three
tragedies for political gain throughout the campaign. One past tragedy: the
September 11 attacks. One future tragedy: war on Iraq. And one ongoing
tragedy: the Bush presidency. W gives
free
rides in Air Force One to Republican candidates and forces the war
resolution vote before election day, and Republicans complain that Democrats
use a memorial service for political gain. They just lost one of their best
senators in a plane crash. I'm pretty sure that Wellstone would have liked
that his death served as a rallying cry rather than an occasion for wailing
and gnashing of teeth. I hope that Democrats keep control of the Senate and
gain control of the House; that they remember what they are supposed to stand
for (what Wellstone stood for) and start to act like a real opposition party;
and that they get those impeachment proceedings started right after they have
repealed USA Patriot and the war resolution. I hope Jeb and Katherine lose in
Florida. Amen.
posted by Bob at 11:28
PM
Military Training
and Violence "The result is we have become a nation full of people
who are going to make others feel their pain. Whenever you feed death and
violence and destruction to your children, you reap what you sow in about 15
years," he added. -- retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former Army
Airborne Ranger infantry officer and West Point Academy psychology and
military science professor, quoted in the article linked to above.
posted by Bob at 2:40
PM
Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom you can decide
you don't much care for. Is the person who prescribes your eyeglasses
qualified to do so? How deep will you be buried when you die? What textbooks
are your children learning from at school? What will happen if you become
seriously ill? Is the meat you're eating tainted? Will you be able to afford
to go to college or to send your kids? Would you like a vacation? Expect to
retire before you die? Can you find a job? Drive a car? Afford insurance? Is
your credit card company or your banker or your broker ripping you off? It's
all politics, Bubba. You don't get to opt out for lack of interest. --
from
Molly Ivins.
I, for one, am trying to make up for lost time. To be sure, I have voted in
most elections since 1976, frequently for the wrong candidate, as I found out
later. But this year I've hit the streets, made the calls, written the checks,
and blogged away. My newfound activism can be traced most directly to one
politician whose speeches and policies have inspired me like no other. I wish
I could say that it was Paul Wellstone or Dennis Kucinich, but in fact it was
none other than George W. Bush. Fear and loathing are powerful motivators.
I had vague feelings listening to Reagan and Clinton that they were lying,
but I didn't really believe that they were rotten to the core. The elder Bush
was certainly disturbing, but he at least seemed to possess some intelligence.
Currently I think that he is and was pure evil, but I recall that I didn't
think that back when he was president. But this Bush so clearly has no
morality or compassion and lies constantly in pursuit of bizarre and dangerous
policies, and every time he opens his mouth you realize what a moron he is.
His speeches after 9/11 convinced me that there is something very wrong with
the world today, and George W. Bush represents the core of it. Since then I
have read books, magazines and thousands of web pages to find out more about
what's wrong and what I might do about it. This blog is my attempt to share
what I've learned and what I believe. There is no more important cause in the
world today than stopping the Bush-Cheney war on everything.
posted by Bob at 2:28
PM
What we don't know will hurt us: And, frankly, there is a piece
of information which is still classified which I consider to be the most
important information that's come to the attention of the joint committee.
We hope that it will be declassified. I think it is an important part of our
judgments as to where our greatest threats are and what steps we need to do to
protect the American people here at home. -- Chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham (D-FL), quoted from
Face
the Nation.
posted by Bob at 10:18
AM
The Halloween Truth Man: Excellent
Boondocks comic!
posted by Bob at 9:00
AM
Name that war: Norman
Solomon writes about the pretentious names given to recent military
adventures: "Just Cause" in Panama (just 'cause we can);
"Desert Storm", aka Gulf War I; and "Enduring Freedom" in
Afghanistan, where they have been enduring freedom for over a year now. So
while we try to stop Gulf War II, you can bet that W's PR folks (aka the
administration) are hard at work coming up with a name for it. Here are some
suggestions for them:
- Operation Oily Residue
- Operation Infinite Deception
- Operation Arrogant Imperialism
- Operation Oedipal Redemption
- Operation Tolerating Liberty
Any suggestions from the audience?
posted by Bob at 8:52
AM
U.S.
Would Seek to Try Hussein for War Crimes (washingtonpost.com): It takes a
war criminal to know a war criminal, I guess. The article doesn't mention
prosecuting the many Americans who aided and abetted the various crimes
mentioned, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush I, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin
Powell. It also fails to mention prosecution for the greatest war crime of
all: unprovoked pre-emptive strike on a sovereign nation.
posted by Bob at 7:56
AM
And That's the Way It Is:
“The threat from the White House is to go in anyway,” Cronkite
said. “Our only ally would probably be Great Britain. That is not good
enough. I see the possibility if we do that of really setting forth World War
III.”
...
“They applauded as Hitler closed down the independent newspaper and
television stations and only gave them his propaganda,” Cronkite said.
“When they did not rise up and say, ‘Give us a free press,’ they became
just as guilty.”
posted by Bob at 12:14
AM
Just in case it comes up, I don't want
Dick
Cheney to come to my funeral, either.
posted by Bob at 10:53
PM
One fact is not in dispute: the Russian government used poison gas
against its own citizens. This, of course, is one of the main accusations
levelled by the US and other governments against the Iraqi regime of Saddam
Hussein to justify Washington’s plans for an invasion and occupation of the
Persian Gulf nation. Not surprisingly, this bitter and tragic irony has been
passed over in silence by the Bush administration and virtually every media
outlet. from the
WSWS.
posted by Bob at 4:40
PM
Kachoong! Kachoong! Kachoong! Kachoong! 24
starts tonight! It's probably more a part of the problem than part of the
solution, and some of the money goes to Rupert Murdoch and the other criminals
at Fox, but "24" is a way cool show. And seeing somebody else be the
president sure feels good. I'll have to watch "The West Wing"
sometime.
posted by Bob at 4:35
PM
Once again, a picture says a thousand words:
From the
Daily KOS blog.
posted by Bob at 1:49
PM
It's all about the price of
oil -- a song from Billy Bragg.
posted by Bob at 1:08
PM
Only 8,000 U.S. soldiers are currently stationed in Afghanistan--less than
three percent of the 300,000 the Army says that it needs to properly
"Marshall Plan" the country--and most of those are traipsing through
the mountains near Khost in search of Al Qaedans who fled for Pakistan in
2001. Actual "peacekeeping" is limited to Kabul; the vast majority
of Afghans live under the same feudal warlords whose brutality led to the rise
of the Taliban in the mid `90s. Rape, robbery and violent clashes are routine.
We did Afghanistan on the cheap, and it shows. The place is such a mess
that the main objective of the American invasion--building a trans-Afghan
pipeline to carry landlocked Caspian oil and gas to the Indian Ocean--will
likely never be realized.
We won the war but we lost the peace. Will we do the same thing in Iraq?
Count on it. -- from Ted
Rall.
posted by Bob at 12:41
PM
Bush
signs voting bill.
Wish it were retroactive.
posted by Bob at 12:27
PM
Do I have all the answers to the world's problems? No, I do not. And
neither do you. But I know when I'm being treated like a mushroom--i.e., kept
in the dark and fed a steady diet of bu**sh**--and it's utterly clear that
that's what's happening now. We must set the bar a hell of a lot higher before
we instigate a bloodbath whose outcome is extraordinarily uncertain--and right
now, that bar seems to be about two inches off the ground. -- from Tom
Tomorrow's
blog
(Asterisks added by me both to try to keep this a family show and because it
clearly demonstrates that you can't spell "bu**sh**" without
"bush.")
posted by Bob at 11:56
AM
The
World
Socialist Web Site raises questions about the Wellstone crash. In the
context of the Carnahan crash two years ago and the anthrax letters to
Senators Daschle and Leahy last year, the idea that the crash was
murder/assassination doesn't seem far-fetched. And none of the initial reports
provide any information to rule it out. The apparent lack of any distress call
or mayday seems most suspicious to me. Obviously I don't have enough facts to
prove anything, but it seems as though something that incapacitated the pilots
would be consistent with the facts available. Perhaps a capsule of poison gas
released as the plane descended through a certain altitude, or set off by
remote control, caused the pilots to lose consciousness as they were preparing
to land. The plane then continued in a turn they had begun and eventually
crashed pointing away from the airport. A bomb or missile is also a
possibility, although either would be much more obvious to observers on the
ground and would leave more evidence in the wreckage. A gas would either be
destroyed by fire or dispersed by the wind long before investigators could
detect any traces of it. Of course, investigators can conclude whatever they
want to conclude, regardless of evidence, as they showed in the
TWA
800 investigation.
posted by Bob at 11:32
AM
At the Pentagon today, the department's spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke,
declined to identify the detainees by name or nationality, even after
Afghanistan and Pakistan said they were receiving repatriated prisoners.
"We've said all along, we have no desire to hold large numbers of these
people for a long period of time," Ms. Clarke said.
"If we can go through all those factors, determine someone doesn't
have intelligence value, is not a real threat to the United States or our
friends or allies, and we think there will be a proper handling on the other
end, then we'd like to get rid of some of these people. So we're
working a lot of those issues with countries, but it takes time." --
from the NY
Times. No hearings, no trials, no contacts with families. Just grab 'em in
Afghanistan, whisk them half a world away for ten months, then get rid of
them. Lack of liberty and injustice for all.
posted by Bob at 12:00
AM
What a Difference
Four Years Makes: Why U.N. inspectors left Iraq--then and now -- FAIR
looks at quotes from many major news sources about the withdrawal of weapons
inspectors from Iraq in 1998. In '98, all of the sources said that the
inspectors withdrew or were ordered out by the UN. In 2002, the same sources
all claim that the inspectors were "kicked out" by Saddam Hussein.
Thanks to
Tom Tomorrow for the
link.
posted by Bob at 5:59
PM
President Vladimir V. Putin said today that Russia was prepared to strike
at international terrorist groups and the countries that harbor them,
explicitly echoing the arguments that President Bush made after the terror
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to declare a war on terrorism...
Russian officials have said, so far without providing evidence, that the
theater takeover was organized and planned with the help of Islamic extremist
groups abroad.
Mr. Putin ordered Russia's military to draft new doctrine that would adapt
its forces and tactics to counter the threat from terrorism both internally
and externally, presaging sweeping changes for a military that has been slow
to change. -- from the NY
Times.
Wonderful. Another nuclear-armed cowboy declaring war on anyone he decides
is a terrorist, and on any country he decides is harboring them. What if Putin
determines what is probably the case, that is that the Chechen rebels are
supported by Saudis and Pakistanis? Will the Russians be bombing Islamabad and
Riyahd? Perhaps this is the start of Putin's ploy to counteract Bush's oil
grab in Iraq (see William
Safire's optimistic and scary predictions for the Iraq war if the Russians
vote against it in the Security Council for a scenario where Russia, China and
France are left out in the cold). Control of Saudi Arabia would certainly keep
Russia in the superpower sweepstakes. And Bush's Afghanistan and Iraq rhetoric
has given Putin all of the justification that he needs. Bush has already
agreed with Putin to call the Chechen rebels "terrorists." He has
argued that countries not only have the right to attack terrorists and those
who harbor them, but that countries must do so or face consequences from the
US.
Putin will probably have a much easier time coming up with actual evidence
of Saudi involvement in Chechnya than Bush has had coming up with evidence of
either weapons or terrorism in Iraq. He says, "Look Georgie Porgie
(remember, W calls him Pootie-Poot), these guys are terrorists, you said so
yourself. Here's the evidence of support from the Saudis. You said we had to
go after terrorists and those who harbor them. I'm with you, Georgie
Porgie, not against you. Therefore, I have no choice but to invade Saudi
Arabia. I know you understand." In the less likely scenario, Bush agrees,
saying "you're right, Pootie-Poot, go ahead," at which point both
the US and Russia are hit with terror campaigns unlike anything anyone has
seen so far, and China attacks Taiwan and other neighbors (Malaysia,
Indonesia, Phillipines, South Korea, Japan) so as not to be left out of the
superpower game, and World War III begins in earnest. In the more likely
scenario, Bush decides Pootie-Poot isn't his friend after all, makes up some
lies to counter Russia's evidence, sends more troops to defend Saudi Arabia,
and World War III begins in earnest. The rhetoric and actions of the Bush
administration have made the world a more dangerous place than ever, and I
fear we are nearing the precipice.
It is politically very dangerous to appear to be defending terrorists, but
we have to put a stop to the idea that terrorism is worse than other
forms of military action. Osama bin Laden, the Palestinians, and the Chechens
would all prefer, I'm sure, to begin with stealth bomber attacks on radar
installations followed up by F-16's and B-52's, than to have to blow
themselves up in order to inflict damage. But they don't have these weapons,
and they have been backed into a corner by those who do. They have been given
the choice (or at least they perceive it this way) of either just dying or
dying for their cause. So-called terrorist attacks are the only types of
attacks they can launch. I don't think they are right to do so, but they are
no more wrong than we are to bomb Iraq. Killing people with explosives is bad,
no matter how they are delivered.
posted by Bob at 5:46
PM
What a disaster. Russia used gas to knock out the Chechen rebels
holding hostages in a Moscow theater, but killed at least 115 of the hostages
with the gas, and most of the rest (646) are in the hospital, many in critical
condition. It looks like Putin screwed up big time on this one.
posted by Bob at 10:02
PM
The press doesn't count, starting with the Quote of the Day:
"Here I'm not being spit on, people aren't throwing tomatoes at me and
Joan Baez isn't singing," said protest veteran Dot Magargal, 77, from
Media, Pa. -- from the
Washington
Post article about yesterday's peace rally in DC. The post article is
quite exuberant about the DC rally, estimating the turnout at 100,000 and
saying that it was probably the largest anti-war rally in Washington since the
Vietnam era. The Post appears to have gotten its numbers from rally
organizers, who might tend to be optimistic. Meanwhile, the
NY
Times downplays the turnout, saying it was "thousands" and
"fewer than hoped for" by organizers.
CNN
says there were "tens of thousands" without citing a source.
Meanwhile, I was in downtown Ann Arbor yesterday participating in our own
march and rally. The Ann
Arbor News covered the rally. Their article states: "Ann Arbor police
estimated about 2,500 people attended the demonstration, but others said the
crowd seem not quite so large. One participant put the number at 700 or
800." The reporter doesn't comment further on the size of the crowd.
How hard can it be to get a good estimate of crowd size? In Ann Arbor it
would have been simple. The march started in a well-defined space and
proceeded linearly to another well-defined space. A single photo from above
(the top floor of the grad library, for example) would have included most of
the crowd. From such a photo you could easily get an almost exact count within
half an hour (less than that with copies and more people to count), or a good
estimate in five minutes. Alternatively, counting people as they pass by a
certain point on the march for a minute and multiplying by the number of
minutes for the entire crowd to pass would also give a good estimate. In DC it
would have been harder, especially the last method, but the resources on hand
would have been greater. A few photos taken nearly simultaneously from the top
of the Washington monument or somebody's news helicopter could have been used
to get a decent estimate. We should see discrpancies between say 89 thousand,
97 thousand and 103 thousand, not huge disparities between thousands, tens of
thousands, and 100 thousand.
posted by Bob at 12:32
PM
Scumbag change?
[Ahmed] Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress
(INC), is front man for the latest incarnation of a long-time neoconservative
strategy to redraw the map of the oil-rich Middle East, put American troops --
and American oil companies -- in full control of the Persian Gulf's reserves
and use the Gulf as a fulcrum for enhancing America's global strategic
hegemony. -- from
The
American Prospect. Chalabi has been indicted for bank fraud in Jordan,
among other things, but he appears to be the leading candidate to be Iraq's
own Karzai. He's already making deals for Iraq's oil.
posted by Bob at 11:21
AM
Right on top of things: I don't know who writes the headlines for AP articles
on the NY Times website, whether the headlines come with the articles from AP
or the Times add them. Whoever it is should at least read the first two
paragraphs before writing the headline. Here are the first two paragraphs from
the
latest
article about the Wellstone crash:
Federal investigators today sorted through the wreckage of a plane crash
that killed Senator Paul Wellstone and seven others, but efforts to determine
the cause of the crash could be hampered by the absence of a cockpit voice
recorder.
Carol Carmody, the acting chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety
Board, said in a news conference here that the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air
A100 was not required to have a voice recorder under F.A.A. regulations, and
was not equipped with one.
And the headline? Cockpit Voice Recorder Is Focus of Search for Cause of
Crash. Fortunately, the rest of the article does not substantiate the
headline's claim that investigators are combing the woods of Minnesota for a
recorder they know doesn't exist. It does say that the investigation may take
many months, for reasons I can't begin to understand. Unless, of course,
investigators are under orders to make sure that the investigation takes many
months, just like it did for TWA 800 and like it has for AA 587.
posted by Bob at 10:14
AM
Fighting over the sniper suspects: Maryland, Virginia, Alabama and the
Feds all want a crack at Muhammad and Malvo. Some seem to be arguing that they
should be charged in a jurisdiction most likely to give them the death
penalty, probably Virginia or Alabama. Just the option of the death penalty in
any jurisdiction skews the proceedings, making it more likely that the
suspects will cop a plea to save their lives (like John Walker Lindh). While
the circumstances of their arrest certainly make them look guilty, we should
remember that this is still America, sort of, and they should be presumed
innocent until proven guilty. The presence of the death penalty increases the
chances that they will scared guilty to save their lives rather than proven
guilty. The death penalty also guarantees a harsher jury to try the case, if
it gets that far, since jurors opposed to the death penalty are not allowed on
juries in capital cases. And if somehow these guys have been framed, the
injustice of their incarceration would be made irreversible by executing them.
Of course, with their pictures plastered all over the papers and CNN, the
chances of their getting a fair trial anywhere on the planet are basically
zero at this point.
posted by Bob at 8:10
AM
Jeb
endorses his opponent--well, sort of. I guess it's fair game since Jeb
has been running negative ads against McBride, but it is unlikely to increase
civility in politics. Pols will be careful about saying anything nice about
anyone if they fear that it will be used against them. I hate to see any
candidate's generosity, honesty or candor used against him or her--even Jeb's.
posted by Bob at 7:16
PM
To paraphrase my favorite Harry Truman quote:
The only new things in the
world are the Bush lies that haven't been uncovered yet. Many,
including
me, noted that it supposedly took the Bushies twelve days to reveal what
they knew about North Korea's nuke program and speculated that it was delayed
because of the Iraq war resolution. Well, it turns out that they have known
about NK's nuke program and Pakistan's involvement for
much
longer.
posted by Bob at 5:26
PM
Paul Wellstone, 1944-2002
Unfortunately, my paragraph below was the last one about Wellstone's chances.
Senator Wellstone
died
in a plane crash this morning. Am I sad? Very. Am I suspicious?
Absolutely. This stuff is supposed to happen in Colombia and Pakistan, not the
US. Let's have the Canadian authorities investigate this one--I don't want
anyone who works for George W. Bush involved.
posted by Bob at 4:52
PM
Anti-war vote hasn't hurt Wellstone. This
Reuters
report says that the Senator's chances for re-election may have improved
since he voted against Bush's Iraq war resolution. I'm going to Minnesota next
week to volunteer for his campaign, just to make sure. I chewed out another
online organization yesterday. A couple of weeks ago I discovered that the
supposedly anti-war Council for a Livable World was still collecting donations
for several candidates who voted for the Iraq war resolution. And now there's
MoveOn. MoveOn.org had conducted a major campaign to call and write members of
Congress prior to the war resolution votes on October 10, but now that the
votes have been cast, MoveOn is still raising funds for several who voted for
war, including Senators Harkin, Carnahan and Johnson. I don't see how we can
expect these Republicrats to oppose Bush on other wars, or environmental
issues, or Supreme Court nominees, if they fail to vote against an
unnecessary, unjustified, and just plain evil war. MoveOn brags about
Wellstone's vote, but doesn't mention the votes of Harkin, Carnahan and
Johnson. You'd think there would be somebody out there you can trust!
posted by Bob at 11:10
AM
Krugman!
Krugman! Krugman! How can you tell when George W. Bush is lying? His smirk
is moving.
posted by Bob at 12:22
AM
[What would I] do in Bush's shoes? Easy: I'd honour Kyoto. Join the world
court. I'd stop subsidising earth rapers like Monsanto, Dupont and Exxon. I'd
shut down the nuclear power plants. So I already have $200bn saved from
corporate welfare. I'd save another $100bn by stopping the war on
non-corporate drugs. And I'd cut the defence budget in half so they'd have to
get by on a measly $200bn a year. I've already saved half a trillion bucks by
saying no to polluters and warmongers.
Then I'd give $300bn back to the taxpayers. I'd take the rest and pay the
people teaching our children what they deserve. I'd put $100bn into
alternative fuels and renewable energy. I'd revive the Chemurgy movement,
which made the farmer the root of the economy, and make paper and fuel from
wheat straw, rice straw and hemp. Not only would I attend, I'd sponsor the
next Earth Summit. And, of course, I'd give myself a fat raise. -- Woody
Harrelson, quoted
in the Guardian. He's no idiot, even though he used to play one on TV.
posted by Bob at 10:09
PM
The other Gulf War syndrome? Chief Moose may be trying to pull a rabbit
out of a hat (again?), but it looks as though the sniper(s) may have been
caught. John Allen Muhammad and his stepson were
arrested
early this morning at a Maryland rest stop. So, with all appropriate caveats
that this may be another wild moose chase, let me point out that CNN says that
Muhammad is a veteran of our last Bush war against Iraq. So was Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh, who had been a top-notch soldier and patriot before
participating in the brutal slaughter of the Gulf War. Osama bin Laden (you
remember, that guy who actually did attack us) started his anti-American jihad
because of the stationing of hundreds of thousands of US troops in Saudi
Arabia (largely on false pretenses--the supposed huge number of Iraqi troops
on the Saudi border were a complete fiction) and their failure to depart after
the war was over (then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had promised the Saudis
that US troops would not be there a minute longer than necessary). As noted
left-wing pacifist Pat Buchanan pointed out,
the
price of empire is terrorism. The last Bush war against Iraq was at least
partially responsible for every large-scale terrorist attack on the US since
then, and possibly the sniper attacks as well. How much more can we expect
from another one with even less justification and almost no support from the
Islamic world?
posted by Bob at 9:33
AM
Our choice for president in 2000, Bush or Gore, was terrible (I voted for
Nader). Our choice for vice-president was even worse: evil incarnate Dick
Cheney versus weasel incarnate
Joe
Lieberman.
posted by Bob at 2:40
PM
Just because we did it once doesn't mean we'll do it again:
Officials on Wednesday also urged any witnesses to come forward without
fear of potential problems with their immigration status, despite authorities
detaining two men on Monday in a white van and turning them over to federal
authorities for deportation proceedings.
"We just have concerns that some people in the immigrant community didn't
come forward,'' Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose said Wednesday.
He said witnesses' immigrant status is not the concern of the sniper task
force. -- from AP
via NY Times . They managed to get out of the train car alive, evade the
vigilantes in Arizona, and now they're going to be dumb enough to take the
word of Chief Moose that he won't use the sniper hunt to round up any more
"illegal" immigrants? Chief Moose must think they're complete
idiots. And I'm not making fun of his name. Neither is Natasha.
posted by Bob at 2:06
PM
Where have all the dollars gone? Gone
to bombing everywhere. When will we ever learn?
Bush noted the many tasks being placed on the military's shoulders:
``bring justice to agents of terror ... liberate a captive people on the other
side of the Earth ... prepare for conflict in Iraq if necessary ... serve in
many places far from home and at great risk.''
Are "liberate a captive people" and "conflict in Iraq"
two separate things in W's tiny little mind? If so, what captive people is he
talking about? Is he already planning the next war while the current one in
Iraq is still in the occasional bombing phase?
posted by Bob at 12:25
PM
Coyote Ugly.
Hey Mexicans! We stole Arizona and California from you fair and square back in
the 1840's. Just because our multi-national corporations have forced you off
your land and NAFTA hasn't provided enough slave-wage jobs for all of you is
no excuse for you to try to sneak back onto your land. We've got
vigilantes
out there in the desert to make sure you
don't
get far.
What exactly does it say on the Statue of Liberty? Does America stand for
anything anymore? (Anything good, that is?)
posted by Bob at 11:26
AM
More sniper speculation, since you're probably not getting enough from TV:
- The attacks are completely calculated, and there is very little element
of thrill-seeking to the killings. They are designed to create maximum
terror for the public, not to satisfy the killer's bloodlust. If this were
someone who decided to play a video game for real, he would have fretted
for days or weeks before shooting his first victim, and then probably
retreated in fear for a week or two before the desire to regain the thrill
took hold. I would expect this type of killer to increase the rate of
killing until he got careless trying to shoot too many people in one day,
which would lead to his arrest or death. But this guy (sorry for the
sexist assumption) did his big killing spree at the beginning to get
attention, not thrills, and has spaced out the killings ever since to
extend the terror and minimize his chances of being caught.
- The sniper is a terrorist. I don't know if he's domestic or foreign,
part of some group like a right-wing militia or al Qaeda or acting on his
own, or if he has any coherent political agenda. But I'm sure that his
main goal is to spread terror throughout the population, which I think is
the best definition of a terrorist. He had nothing against any of his
victims--his real targets are the millions in the area who are scared to
go outside or buy gas.
- The cops have become much too predictable with their dragnets following
the shootings. The sniper could easily use this against them. Cars backed
up for miles on freeways are sitting ducks. Imagine, for example, the
sniper driving away from his latest shooting, parked in the middle lane of
the highway with thousands of others. He pretends to have car trouble, out
of gas maybe, grabs a gas can from the trunk, and starts walking for the
nearest exit. Five minutes later he blows up his car by remote control,
starting a fire in the middle of the traffic jam. Okay, I've scared myself
now.
posted by Bob at 9:43
AM
Where's the beef? All gone by recall time. Check out Stephanie
McMillan's
Minimum
Security cartoon on meat recalls.
posted by Bob at 9:00
AM
General Anthony Zinni places Iraq way down on the priority list:
The question becomes how to sort out your priorities and deal with them in
a smart way that you get things done that need to be done first before you
move on to things that are second and third. If I were to give you my priority
of things that can change for the better in this region, it is first and
foremost the Middle East peace process and getting it back on track. Second,
it is ensuring that Iran's reformation or moderation continues on track and
trying to help and support the people who are trying to make that change in
the best way we can. That's going to take a lot of intelligence and careful
work.
The third is to make sure those countries to which we have now committed
ourselves to change, like Afghanistan and those in Central Asia, we invest
what we need to in the way of resources there to make that change happen.
Fourth is to patch up these relationships that have become strained, and fifth
is to reconnect to the people. We are talking past each other. The dialogue is
heated. We have based this in things that are tough to compromise on, like
religion and politics, and we need to reconnect in a different way. I would
take those priorities before this one.
My personal view, and this is just personal, is that I think this isn't No.
1. It's maybe six or seven, and the affordability line may be drawn around
five.
-- from Salon.
posted by Bob at 4:26
PM
Monopolizing the food supply--and proud of it! I've seen several ads on
TV lately for Conagra Foods bragging about how many different food brands they
own. Hunts, Healthy Choice, Orville Redenbacher, etc., etc., etc. I checked
their
website to see which brands
are owned by Conagra. Want to buy some popcorn? Maybe you prefer Act II or
Jiffy Pop to Conagra's Orville Redenbacher. That's fine with Conagra--they own
all three brands! A little margerine for your popcorn? Choose between Blue
Bonnet, Parkay and Move Over Butter--they're all Conagra. Hot dogs? Armour,
Ekrich and Hebrew National are all Conagra. Check some of the other major food
companies: Kraft (Philip Morris), Coca Cola...the variety of colorful packages
in the supermarket aisles hides the fact that you really have very few
competing products from which to choose. This means higher prices and less
real choice for you. It also means that these huge conglomerates are able to
put the squeeze on farmers, forcing the few remaining independents into the
jaws of the likes of Cargill, ADM and Monsanto. The number of people who have
any say in what these corporations do is tiny, but they are basically
establishing a monopoly on food production. And if somebody controls your food
supply, he controls you.
And Conagra and the others are not only evil enough to pursue this goal,
they are brazen enough to brag about it on TV.
posted by Bob at 3:15
PM
Sniper Hyper
British news website Ananova
reports
that a top marksman from the French army deserted while vacationing in the US.
There is speculation that he is of Yugoslav origin.
Thanks to the Politics in the Zeros
blog for that link. Polizeros also questions
why the wounded sniper victim from Saturday (outside the Ponderosa near
Richmond) has not been identified, while every other victim, including the FBI
anti-terror agent, has been publicly identified. The Ponderosa shooting is the
one that began the cryptic phone-tag.
That's my snipe hype du jour. I stand by my previous assertion that the
sniper threat is minor compared to the daily carnage from ordinary shootings
and car wrecks, but it's hard not to get caught in all the speculation, y'know?
posted by Bob at 2:01
PM
Tabloid headline spotted:
Iraqi Submarine in Lake Michigan, Awaits Orders.
I think it was the "Weekly World News" that featured that one. I
guess security must be pretty lax on the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Welland
Canal if an Iraqi sub was given a lift at the many locks between the Atlantic
and Lake Michigan. Is the "Weekly World News" the place Ari
Fleischer used to work? For a sample of WWN journalism, check out "
India
and Pakistan Shouldn't Nuke Each Other." Opinions expressed are
absolutely NOT those of this blog, although I do agree that they shouldn't
nuke each other.
posted by Bob at 10:23
AM
Bombs
away--again. While the UN debates war on Iraq, the war on Iraq continues.
posted by Bob at 10:06
AM
According to
Arianna
Huffington, Scott Burns, co-creator of the "Got Milk?" campaign,
has prepared two ad scripts that parody the "I fund terrorism"
anti-drug ads:
The first one feels like an old Slim Fast commercial.
Instead of "I lost 50 pounds in two weeks" the ad cuts to different
people in their SUVs: "I gassed 40,000 Kurds," "I helped hijack
an airplane," "I helped blow up a nightclub," and then in
unison: "We did it all by driving to work in our SUVs."
The second, which opens on a man at a gas station, features a cute kid's
voice-over throughout: "This is George." Then we see a close up of a
gas pump. "This is the gas George buys for his car." Next we see a
guy in a suit. "This is the oil company executive who makes money on the
gas George buys." Close up on Al-Qaeda training film footage: "This
is the terrorist organization supported by money from the country where the
oil company does business. " It's followed by footage of 9/11: "We
all know what this is." And it closes on a wide shot of bumper to bumper
traffic: "The biggest weapon of mass destruction is parked in your
driveway."
I think that raising the federal gasoline tax is the most straightforward way
to break our addiction. This letter to the NY Times from a fellow Michigander
offers an interesting approach:
To the editor:
Thomas L. Friedman ("Drilling for Freedom," column, Oct. 20)
convincingly explains that Middle East tyrannies will end when their oil
revenues decline. The United States can help this happen by consuming less
fuel.
The only way the United States can reduce fuel use is to increase the fuel
tax. Adding a nickel per gallon every month until the United States buys its
last barrel of imported oil would cause no more than minor disruption of the
economy. Yet fuel use would decline almost immediately.
Our political process refuses to discuss a tax increase, the only measure
that can work. We are like a 300-pound patient asking a doctor how to lose
weight but insisting that the answer must not mention eating or exercise.
LEONARD EVANS
Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Oct. 20, 2002
Leonard must be really popular with his neighbors, since Bloomfield Hills is
home to many very wealthy auto execs.
posted by Bob at 9:39
AM
Little known fact: The letters in "Ari Fleischer" can be
rearranged to spell "Fear rich lies" and "I relish farce."
Fleischer denies it.
posted by Bob at 9:05
AM
posted by Bob at 8:43
AM
Bush lies--
Washington
Post. It's good to see him finally get the national recognition that he
deserves.
posted by Bob at 6:56
AM
Goodbye, Goofy. My sweet and beautiful calico cat, who has been with me for
over 16 years, died today.
Goofy: 1986-2002.
posted by Bob at 11:06
PM
Dennis Kucinich! I went down to campus this afternoon to hear Rep.
Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) talk about peace and global justice. He spoke for
about 30 minutes without any script or notes, and then answered questions
eloquently for another 45 minutes. (Try that, W, I dare ya!) Someone asked him
whether he would leave the Democratic party, given the wholesale sellout of
leaders like Daschle, Gephardt and Lieberman. He responded that Gephardt
"led" by ignoring the members of the House Democrats, 2/3 who voted
against the war resolution. He said for now he says he is a Democrat, but sees
his role as a missionary. Anyhow, if you get a chance to hear Kucinich speak
sometime, don't pass it up. Hopefully, I shook the hand of our next president
today.
posted by Bob at 2:56
PM
A nation returning to its senses:
posted by Bob at 10:53
AM
No Methodists to His Madness: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are
supposedly United Methodists, as, technically, so am I (haven't gone to church
in several years). And what does the UM Church think of war with Iraq? "
Without
any justification according to the teachings of Christ," according to
Jim Winkler, head of social policy for United Methodists. See this
Guardian
article for details.
posted by Bob at 10:40
AM
Universal Health Care--one state at a time. There's a
proposal
on the ballot in Oregon for a Canadian-style single-payer system.
posted by Bob at 9:59
AM
A Common Misconception:
(From the
Doonesbury
website)
posted by Bob at 9:03
AM
Poison Ivy League: The WSWS has an
interesting
article about the ties between Harken Energy (W's old company), Enron, and
Harvard University. "Two current members of the Bush
administration—chief economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey and US trade
representative Robert Zoellick—are also involved in the Enron-Harvard
nexus." W himself got an MBA from Harvard, putting to rest any possible
claims of academic standards there. The article suggests that Harvard was the
mystery purchaser of W's Harken stock, allowing him to get the millions to
purchase his share of the Texas Rangers. And I did a quick search of Carlyle,
too. Twenty of Carlyle's 71 partners and directors have Harvard degrees.
posted by Bob at 6:53
PM
The Carlyle Director of the Day for today is Kesuke Shizunaga of Japan. I
don't have any serious dirt on Mr. Shizunaga, but I highlight him today to
show the international flavor of the Carlyle Group. While so many members of
the Reagan, Bush I and Clinton administrations were supposedly working to keep
or make America competitive in international markets, they were quietly
preparing themselves a place on the Carlyle board where they could collude
with Mr. Shizunaga and others from around the world the strip the earth and
the vast majority of its population of their wealth for the benefit of
themselves and the other members of the ruling class. Isn't this vaguely, or
not so vaguely, treasonous?
Kensuke Shizunaga
Managing Director
Japanese Buyouts
Tokyo, Japan
Mr. Shizunaga is a Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, where he focuses
primarily on Japanese investment opportunities. He is based in Tokyo.
Prior to joining Carlyle in June 2001, he was a General Partner responsible
for buyout investments at Schroder Ventures K.K. There, he played a key role
in closing management-led buyout transactions and executed a trade sale to
exit one of the buyout investments. Mr. Shizunaga has nearly 20 years of
experience in a broad range of corporate finance and M&A transactions,
advising primarily large Japanese and non-Japanese industrial companies and
financial institutions. At Lehman Brothers, where Mr. Shizunaga spent more
than 11 years, he was a Managing Director and head of Investment Banking in
Tokyo.
Mr. Shizunaga has a B.A. in political science from Waseda University and an
M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.
posted by Bob at 12:59
PM
Back for its second consecutive day, our popular new feature:
The Carlyle
Director of the Day! Yesterday,
we featured Clintonista Willam Kennard, who as chairman of the FCC allowed and
encouraged the continuing monopolization of broadcast, cable and internet
media. Today's Director of the Day is a true power broker whose connections
with big oil and energy companies, including Enron, are truly impressive.
Ladies and gentlemen, let me present a man who needs no introduction, but
probably an alibi and several dozen good lawyers--David Leuschen! (resume is
from the Carlyle Group's
website.)
David M. Leuschen
Managing Director – Riverstone Holdings
New York, New York
Mr. Leuschen is a founder and Managing Director of Riverstone Holdings. He
has extensive M&A, financing and investing experience in the energy and
power sector.
Prior to founding Riverstone, Mr. Leuschen was a Partner and Managing
Director at Goldman Sachs and founder and head of the Goldman Sachs Global
Energy & Power Group. Mr. Leuschen joined Goldman Sachs in 1977, became
head of the Global Energy & Power Group in 1985, became a Partner of the
firm in 1986 and remained with the firm until leaving to found Riverstone.
Mr. Leuschen was responsible for building the Goldman Sachs energy and
power investment banking practice into one of the leading franchises in the
global energy and power industry. Mr. Leuschen served as Chairman of the
Goldman Sachs Energy Investment Committee, where he was responsible for
screening potential private equity capital commitments by Goldman Sachs in the
energy and power industry. Further, Mr. Leuschen was responsible for
establishing and managing the firm’s relationships with senior executives
from leading companies in all segments of the energy and power industry
including Amerada Hess, Anadarko, Apache, BP Amoco, Chevron, Cross Timers, ENI,
Enron Oil and Gas, Kinder Morgan, Koch Industries, Kuwait Petroleum, Lasmo,
Mobil, Phillips, PDVSA, Union Pacific Resources, Santa Fe International,
Transocean Sedco Forex, Unocal, and many others.
Mr. Leuschen received his A.B. degree from Dartmouth and his M.B.A. from
Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business.
The Carlyle Group: the ruling elite's answer to democracy!
posted by Bob at 9:04
AM
I'm going on vacation from Monday October 28 through Tuesday November 5
(election day). My original plan was to go to Minnesota to help the Wellstone
for Senate campaign, but I've e-mailed and called them (left a message) and
they haven't gotten back to me. Either they don't need my help, or else they
need help so desperately that they don't have time to answer e-mails and phone
calls. While I really want Wellstone to win, I'm a bit concerned about taking
a bus or train to St. Paul and showing up at campaign headquarters only to be
told that they've got more volunteers than they know what to do with. A more
appealing alternative, temperature-wise, would be to go to Florida to help
McBride beat Jeb, with maybe a side trip to Arkansas or North Carolina to work
a day or two for the Democratic candidates there. I've been getting e-mails
from the MoveOn PAC about volunteering for various campaigns, although some of
them are for candidates who voted for the war resolution, like Tom Harkin in
Iowa. I'm thinking of getting a Greyhound Discover pass so I can do some
sightseeing and reading along the way (maybe some ranting, too!).
So, in another desperate attempt to elicit feedback from my audience, I ask
you for your advice: Where do you think I should go?
posted by Bob at 2:54
PM
Lock him up, if you can find him!
Repeatedly
ignoring court orders, the Veep from the Deep won't let us know with whom
he met to come up with the assault on planet Earth known as the Bush Energy
Policy. Since he won't tell us, let's assume that it was Ken Lay, Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Congress should then burn any remaining copies of
the policy document to heat the capitol this winter, and throw a lock on the
undisclosed location, not letting Cheney out until he's voted out of office in
2004.
posted by Bob at 1:20
PM
After my off-hand reference to the
Carlyle
Group (below), I decided to check out their web site again. Many of the
names of Carlyle partners and directors are very familiar: James Baker, John
Major, Arthur Levitt, Frank Carlucci. Other names didn't jump out at me (I've
only been a voracious news reader for the past year or so), so I decided to
check out the bios of some of them. So, starting today and going until at
least today, I present a new feature:
The Carlyle Director of the Day!
Today's director is William E. Kennard:
William E. Kennard
Managing Director
US Buyouts – Global Telecommunications and Media Group
Washington, DC
William E. Kennard joined The Carlyle Group in May 2001 as a Managing
Director in the Global Telecommunications and Media Group. He is based in
Washington, DC.
Before joining The Carlyle Group, Mr. Kennard served as Chairman of the
U.S. Federal Communications Commission from November 1997 to January 2001.
During his tenure, he implemented the Telecommunications Act of 1996,
designing policies that created an explosion of new wireless phones, brought
the Internet to a majority of American households, and resulted in billions of
dollars of investment in new broadband technologies. He also shaped the
outcome of the most significant communications mergers in history, such as
AOL-Time Warner, Worldcom-MCI, CBS-Viacom, Verizon-GTE and SBC-Ameritech.
Mr. Kennard served as the FCC’s general counsel from December 1993 to
November 1997. Before serving in government, Mr. Kennard was a partner and
member of the board of directors of the law firm of Verner, Liipfert,
Bernhard, McPherson and Hand.
Mr. Kennard graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University and received
his law degree from Yale Law School.
Media consolidation is one of the major obstacles to real democracy in this
country today, and not only does Carlyle mention Kennard's involvement in
making it a reality, they brag about it. When you realize the connections that
Carlyle's other directors have (most major governments, oil, weapons, finance,
and communications), you get the idea that if they are not currently the real
world government, they intend to be. And while their web site doesn't have a
"future directors" page, you can bet it would include George W.
Bush, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle,
and, if they last that long, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. And you can bet
that the current directors who previously "served" in the Reagan,
Bush I or Clinton regimes were well aware of their opportunities to become
fabulously rich directors of the Carlyle Group if they, like Mr. Kennard,
steer policy in the direction Carlyle prefers. The piddling six-figure incomes
we taxpayers pay them while in government pale by comparison. And don't forget
that George Bush Senior and Osama bin Laden's father are (or at least were)
major investors in Carlyle.
posted by Bob at 1:07
PM
Florida touchscreen voting system demonstrated:
http://jeb02.com/touchscreenvotingdemo.html
posted by Bob at 12:22
PM
In case you're not scared enough already. I'll confess that I've read
most of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan thrillers, from
Hunt for Red October
through
The Bear and the Dragon. I won't claim that they are great
literature, and they are too jingoistic for my current tastes, but the themes
of several of them are enough to scare the bejeebers (sp?) out of anyone. (If
you are planning on reading one of his novels soon and don't want me to ruin
the ending for you, close your eyes and scroll down a bit.)
On September 11, one of the first things I recalled was the ending of
Clancy's Debt of Honor where a Japanese 747 pilot crashed his plane
into the US Capitol during a presidential address to congress. After that, it
boggled my mind when Condi Rice claimed that no one could have imagined that
the terrorists would crash planes into buildings. Then when the anthrax scare
came along, I remembered Clancy's Executive Orders, in which either
Iran or Iraq (I don't recall which right now) used terrorists to disperse
weaponized Ebola virus at car and boat shows around the US.
And now, as there is talk of widespread smallpox vaccinations (against a
disease for which there have been no reported cases in 25 years), I recall the
plot of Rainbow Six. In that book, a group of superevil dudes,
including some high-placed US government officials, plan the ultimate
bio-terror attack. Recognizing the fundamental limitations of bio-weapons (if
they are too lethal, victims die before having much chance to spread the
disease; if they are not lethal enough, well, then they're not lethal enough),
these guys plot a two-stage attack. Introducing the weaponized virus in a way
to ensure an initial rapid disbursement (at the closing ceremonies of the
Olympics), they are prepared to provide large doses of the vaccine throughout
the world to deal with the resulting panic. But they have made the vaccine
itself lethal, so many millions more are killed by the vaccine than would have
died directly from the virus. (In the book, they intend to wipe out most of
the planet's population.) And while a world-wide conspiracy of that order is
probably far-fetched (with the possible exception of the Carlyle
Group), a bio-terrorist would probably be able to do much more damage by
infiltrating a rushed, wholesale vaccination program than through most other
possible methods of biological attack. I doubt if there is any more effective
method of applying a bio-weapon than direct injection. And don't forget, our
president killed hundreds by lethal injection while he was governor of Texas.
So I guess I'm saying that I won't be anywhere near the front of the line for
smallpox vaccination.
posted by Bob at 11:38
AM
Ever want to check out one of those exotic locales described in the New York
Times travel section?
That's
where I'll be this weekend!
posted by Bob at 9:41
AM
In what I guess is good news, there are hints that our "government"
may
be willing to accept a UN Security Council resolution which calls only for
the return of inspectors to Iraq (to which Iraq has already agreed) without
including the consequences provision that the Bushies have been insisting on
for the last month or so. This could mean that the French, Russians and
Chinese have actually gotten Bush to agree to what he has said he wanted
(Iraqi disarmament) instead of what we all know he really wants (kaboom!). The
bad news is that this may be because of what has happened and/or been revealed
to us in the last week: the bombing in Indonesia, the disclosure of the North
Korean nuclear program, and now
the
claim that Pakistan supplied NK with nuclear technology. And these things
mean that the Bushies may want to start at least three other wars before Iraq.
They have been making threatening noises about Indonesia's failure to root out
terrorism, recalling Bush's threat from last year: "If you don't do it,
we will." And after all they have been saying about Saddam's alleged
weapons program, you have to expect a bellicose reaction to the NK situation
and the Pakistani assistance. So Iraq may be W's fifth war instead of his
second.
posted by Bob at 11:51
PM
Quote of the day:
He would probably be a better Democrat than I am.
-- Democratic Sen. John Breaux (La.), quoted in
Roll
Call. Breaux was talking about Senator Lincoln Chafee, the only Republican
in the Senate to vote against the Iraq war resolution. No doubt Breaux is
right--he voted for the resolution. Chafee hints that there is a slight
possibility that he will leave the Republican party if it slides farther to
the right (unfortunately, I think this is still possible), joining Sen.
Jeffords of Vermont in the Republicans Anonymous Caucus and twelve-step
program. (Step 1: Recognize that there is a higher power than Dick Cheney.)
posted by Bob at 1:42
PM
Tiny
shred of common sense invading the insanity at the White House?
posted by Bob at 1:25
PM
** GIVE PEACE A CHANCE ***
An Address at the University of Michigan by
Congressman DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OH)
Anti-War Leader of the Progressive Caucus
MONDAY OCTOBER 21st, 12:30 PM
Anderson Room D, Michigan Union (first floor)
====================================
US Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat of Ohio, is a dynamic,
visionary leader of the Progressive Caucus of the congressional Democrats.
He leads opposition to war in Iraq and promotes an alternative vision to
increase our national security and well-being. He prioritizes public
service, peace, human rights, workers' rights, and the environment. His
advocacy of a Department of Peace seeks not only to make nonviolence an
organizing principle in our society, but also to make war archaic.
Sponsored by U of M College Democrats, Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace,
Meggido Peace Project, and Correlates of War research project in the U of M
Political Science Department.
Please distribute widely!
(from the Peace Events mailing list)
posted by Bob at 11:29
AM
Looking for a growth industry to invest in? Look
here.
posted by Bob at 11:21
AM
At least
somebody
is happy with Bush:
Mr. Sharon heartily praised Mr. Bush. "We never had such
relations with any president of United States as we have with you,"
Mr. Sharon said as he and Mr. Bush met reporters briefly in the Oval Office.
"And we never had such a cooperation in everything as we have with the
current administration."
posted by Bob at 11:16
AM
Warning or Threat? In Washington, President Bush warned European and
Arab nations that are resisting a confrontation with President Saddam Hussein
that "those who choose to live in denial may eventually be forced to live
in fear." (from the
NY
Times.) W continues:
"If Iraq gains even greater destructive
power, nations in the Middle East would face blackmail, intimidation or
attack," he said in the East Room, flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney,
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
They are already facing blackmail and intimidation from the Bush
administration. And Bush should go talk to some of his neighbors in the DC
area about living in fear.
posted by Bob at 11:09
AM
Saddam
in a Landslide! Florida Ballots Not Yet Counted. (from The Washington
Post) Saddam demonstrates that his election-rigging capabilities are superior
to W's.
posted by Bob at 10:54
AM
Smart Growth America has published a
report
on sprawl in America. I've just started looking at it...maybe some
comments to follow.
posted by Bob at 10:44
AM
If you've been watching closely, you'll notice that I added a link to
Politics
in the Zeros recently in my blog link section (over there -->). Highly
recommended if you live in California and/or are interested in water issues,
or are just looking for a(nother) good blog to read.
posted by Bob at 10:33
AM
North
Korea. I'll start out by saying that I have no real idea what is going
on here. To summarize what's in the newspaper articles: The US has suspected
the North Koreans of developing nukes for years. Then, about two weeks ago,
the US presented NK with evidence showing that they do have a nuke program. NK
initially denied it, but then admitted to having the program the next day.
Then last night the Bushies decide to tell us about it. Here are my
speculations:
- The twelve day delay was due to the Iraq war resolution. The Bushies
didn't want Congress to consider that we might be picking the wrong fight.
- The North Koreans, already a charter member of the axis of evil, saw
that lack of evidence didn't stop Congress from approving the war
resolution. Once the Iraq war is over, a lack of evidence clearly wouldn't
be enough to stop Bush from repeating the process against NK.
- In light of the last point, NK may well be bluffing. Noting that Bush
has focused on Saddam and Iraq, rather than the much more dangerous (and
much more involved with terrorism) Musharraf and Pakistan, may well have
convinced them that having nukes is an effective deterrent to the might of
the American empire. So whether they've actually got nukes or not, they've
decided that they're better off if we think they do.
- This could all just be dog-wagging from the Bushies, pushing the
envelope farther out there. Make war with Iraq seem more mainstream as war
with North Korea is debated.
As I said, this is all speculation on my part. Please
send
me your ideas and comments on what is going on here.
posted by Bob at 8:57
AM
The war resolution that Bush just signed requires him to report to Congress
within 48 hours of any military action. Now what good does that do? If I'm in
Congress, the last thing I'm going to want to do after two long days of
avoiding protesters and ducking phone calls from constituents irate about our
illegal war is to go into the house chambers to listen to W repeat the same
old lies about Iraq and add some new ones about how well the war is going. And
then to have to kill what little is left of my soul by caving in to peer
pressure to stand and applaud the moron thirty times! What sadist/masochist
added that provision to the resolution?
posted by Bob at 1:50
PM
Results of Informal White Van Survey: While riding the bus and walking
today, I was on the lookout for white vans of the type being talked about in
the DC-area sniper case.
Official results:
- There are a lot of white vans, and quite a few with ladder racks.
- There are also lots of white Mitsubishi-style small commercial trucks
like the composite photo shown in the press last week.
- Margin of error: +/- quite a few.
So while the cops say they have more eyewitnesses to Monday's shooting in
Falls Church, I'd have to say that seeing a white van in the area is not much
to hang your hat on. In a place with lots of traffic like the DC area, there's
almost always a white van in the area. And as Lester Yesterday pointed out to
me, the sniper could just wait until a white van drove into view before
shooting.
posted by Bob at 1:37
PM
Huh?
The American ambassador, Ralph C. Boyce, delivered the latest warning to
President Megawati Sukarnoputri and her top advisers just a day before the
bombing and gave her a deadline of Oct. 24 to act, the officials said. --
from one
NY Times article today.
But U.S. Ambassador Ralph C. Boyce said a Wednesday report in The New
York Times that he warned Megawati of an imminent attack the day before the
bombing was ``imprecise, to say the least.'' He did not elaborate. -- from
the other
NY Times article on the Bali bombing.
So the Times has two articles on today's website about the Bali bombing,
one of which sort of contradicts the other. And just like Boyce, the Times
does not elaborate. But even if the Times report was completely imprecise, to
say the most, the statements from Bush, Fleischer and Powell all make it clear
that the administration blames Megawati and her government for not acting on
information that they had in advance of the bombing. Sounds vaguely
familiar to me, somehow.
Maybe one of the scariest things about the Bushies (there are so many scary
things it's hard to choose) is how oblivious they seem to how much their
criticism of others applies so directly to themselves. It may be that they
just don't realize it, since their knowledge of history is limited and they
are blinded by their own self-righteousness from seeing the planks in their
own eyes. ("How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the
speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own
eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will
see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." -- Jesus
Christ, someone Bush supposedly listens to, quoted in Luke 6:42.) Or it may be
that they are fully aware of it, and just don't care. My guess is that it's
both. For Bush and Ashcroft it's the first: they just don't see it. For
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Rove and most of the rest of them the second
explanation applies: They just don't care. It's like the old joke: "Which
is worse, ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care." Whaddya
know, we've got a government loaded with both.
posted by Bob at 9:44
AM
REMINDER: A fool and his money are soon elected. (From the
Ironic
Times)
posted by Bob at 11:03
PM
"Our economy has been hit from all directions including 9-11, scandals
on Wall Street, job losses on Main Street and the threat of future conflict in
Iraq,'' Gephardt said in the latest of what is likely to be a steady stream of
economic proposals from possible Democratic candidates for president.
"Yet the administration proceeds along serenely as if everything is fine
-- playing politics with the economy and denying the disastrous consequences
of their actions,'' the Missouri Democrat said.
Well, y'know, DICK, that if you didn't vote for every insane war and
police-state bill the "president" asks for, we'd have a little money
left over. You have zero credibility with me, Mr. Wannabe Speaker.
posted by Bob at 4:50
PM
The Empire Strikes Out: Good
op-ed
piece from Utah, of all places.
posted by Bob at 2:08
PM
A day late and a dollar short, but this cartoon deserves posting:
from
http://www.cartoonista.com/
See the Lying
Media Bastards blog for a good Columbus Day rant.
posted by Bob at 1:15
PM
Is this CNN? As you can probably tell from the links, I read more
articles from the New York Times than from any other source. But I
occasionally check out CNN.com, and frequently find interesting and important
stories that the Times seems to have missed entirely. An example is
this
article on Illinois' review of death penalty cases. Too bad the CNN that's
on TV is usually just the martial fodder you would expect to see on Winston
Smith's telescreen. (That's yet another
1984 reference; if you haven't
read it, read it! It's a fairly short book, and so applicable to what's going
on today.)
posted by Bob at 12:47
PM
An innovative response to the obesity problem: Fried
Twinkies. I kid you not.
posted by Bob at 12:38
PM
W is "
sick
to his stomach" about the sniper attacks, but not sick enough to
do
anything about it. With "gun fingerprinting," it seems almost
sure that the sniper would have been tracked down by now. Trust Bush to be on
the wrong side of everything.
posted by Bob at 12:27
PM
Why Bush used Taft-Hartley to keep the ports open: so kids would find
these
toys under the tree on Christmas. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men? Not
hardly.
posted by Bob at 12:02
PM
I serve as the Senior Senator from California, representing 35 million
people. That is a formidable task. People have weighed in by the tens of
thousands. If I were just to cast a representative vote based on those who
have voiced their opinions with my office - and with no other factors - I
would have to vote against this resolution. -- Senator Diane Feinstein,
attempting
to defend her indefensible support of the Iraq war resolution.
posted by Bob at 11:51
AM
NAFTAcide:
Eleven
bodies found in a train car in Iowa. The car crossed the border from
Mexico in June, sat in Oklahoma for four months, and was just opened for
cleaning in Iowa when the bodies were found. I shudder just thinking about it.
I mean, we're all going to die and would like to postpone it as long as
possible. But when my time comes, I certainly hope it's a plane crash or
sniper's bullet instead of being trapped in a boiling train car with the
bodies of friends and family members decaying around me. That Mexicans are
willing to risk their lives this way just for the hope of getting some
miserable low-wage job in the fields or the slaughterhouses speaks volumes
about the benefits of "free trade" for Mexico. And still, many
Americans feel more contempt than compassion for "illegal"
immigrants, and press for the government to make the barriers ever higher.
Free trade, free movement of capital, captive labor.
posted by Bob at 10:30
AM
``We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al-Qaida to do his dirty
work, to not leave fingerprints behind,'' Bush said Monday at a rally for
Michigan's GOP candidates. ``This is a man who we know has had connections
with al-Qaida. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use al-Qaida
as a forward army,'' Bush said later at a Dearborn, Mich. fund-raiser."
from the
NY
Times.
W continues to push the envelope. Lies build upon lies. I think the plan is to
get the lies so far out there that his critics (like me) will be tricked into
actually accepting his previous lies, at least rhetorically, to counter his
newer, more outrageous ones. He is looking for "criticism" of his
policies that sounds like this: "Well, we know Saddam is pure evil, that
he has zillions of weapons of mass destruction, that his nuke will be ready by
Thursday and in Manhattan by Saturday, that he is the greatest threat to world
peace ever, but we really aren't sure that he was directly responsible for the
bombs in Bali." Sorry, W. No dice from me. I think that the only time
W has told the truth since he was appointed president is when he has misspoken
(about half of the Bushisms).
The New York Times, that supposed bastion of liberalism, comments on W's
baseless claim of a Saddam-al-Qaida link with just one sentence: "Bush
has not provided concrete evidence of a link between al-Qaida and
Saddam." They then continue to print his lies.
posted by Bob at 9:00
AM
Things aren't necessarily as they appear:
Check
this out!
posted by Bob at 4:49
PM
Bush Admits "War on Terror" is a Complete and Utter Failure
Well, that would be my headline for this AP
story. A couple of choice Bushisms from the article:
- I think the free world must realize that no one is safe -- that if you
embrace freedom, you're not free from terrorism.
- Those of us who love freedom must work together to do everything we can
to disrupt, deny and bring to justice these people who have no soul.
posted by Bob at 3:34
PM
President George W. Bush and Indonesia's defense minister blamed al Qaeda
and its extremist allies on Monday for the massive bomb attack that killed
more than 180 people at a nightclub on the resort island of Bali. In
Washington, President Bush said, "I think we have to assume it's al Qaeda.
They are trying to intimidate us, and we won't be intimidated." Bush
offered U.S. help in finding the perpetrators. -- from the
Washington
Post.
I wonder if George knows what happens when you assume. Of course, he's already
there. He's ready to spread some more death and destruction around before
anyone knows what really happened in Bali. To paraphrase the comic store guy
from the Simpsons: "Worst president ever!"
posted by Bob at 2:18
PM
Junior Bush league: ''Why do young people read newspapers? Two
words: not Britney Spears.'' -- from an eighth-grader's critique of a
Dave
Barry column.
posted by Bob at 12:24
PM
Anti-war
movement gets a little press, although it seems to imply that it's a
California thing. Well, both of Michigan's senators voted against the war
resolution, something California can't claim.
posted by Bob at 12:18
PM
Kuwait said 15 men have confessed to helping plan the Oct. 8 shooting. -- from
the
NY
Times.
Fifteen? Fifteen men to "plan" two guys with rifles in a jeep? They
probably also confessed to the World Trade Center attacks, shooting Lincoln,
and betraying Christ. Those Kuwait interogators are good.
posted by Bob at 11:17
AM
Here's a copy of an e-mail I just sent to Senators Lieberman, Daschle,
Kerry, Clinton and Edwards, and Representative Gephardt:
Senator/Congressman ___:
You are frequently mentioned as a candidate for the presidency in 2004. I just
want you to know that your vote giving our current President the authority to
start a pre-emptive war has convinced me that you are not fit to be president,
and I will never vote for you. Last week's vote was probably the most
important vote of your Senate career, and you could not have gotten it more
wrong. The blood of thousands from the upcoming war will be on your hands.
We've got two years. We've either got to take the Democratic Party away
from the Republicrats listed above or get a viable third party going. I
haven't researched it thoroughly, but it seems as though Senators Feingold and
Wellstone and Representatives Lee and Kucinich could form a core on which to
build. We'll be fighting the Republicrat control of government and media, but
the declining economy and rising body counts may contribute to a Peace party,
or at least a peace takeover of the Democratic party.
posted by Bob at 10:38
AM
The
turkey's out of the bag: Since May, actually, and the listeria that
goes with it. Good luck to all you meat eaters out there: you're going to need
it. That turkey sub you have for lunch today may be recalled in January: Maybe
your heirs can win a suit against the meat packer.
posted by Bob at 9:45
AM
If there are two involved, I would have to lean towards a conspiracy.
-- A quote from the
brilliant Jim Kallstrom, who headed the FBI's
investigation of the TWA 800 explosion off Long Island in 1996. Unfortunately,
in that investigation he repeatedly denied that 1+1=2 and concluded that the
fuel tank blew up on its own, no matter how many (100-200) eyewitnesses saw a
missile heading towards the plane. Quoted in a NY Post
Op-Ed
piece (of #$%@) about the shootings in the DC area.
posted by Bob at 9:36
AM
Excerpts from the
NY
Times article on the bombings in Indonesia:
In Washington, President Bush condemned the attack as ``a cowardly act
designed to create terror and chaos'' and offered U.S. help in finding the
perpetrators. ``The world must confront this global menace, terrorism,'' he
said.
U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce told The Associated Press that it was not
possible yet to pin the Bali attack on al-Qaida, but noted that increasing
evidence in recent weeks has confirmed al-Qaida's presence in Indonesia and
reaching out to local extremists...``In recent weeks, we have been able to put
an end to a year of speculation as to whether al-Qaida might be in Indonesia,
or relocating to Indonesia, or using Indonesia as a base of operations, after
the fall of Afghanistan,'' Boyce said.
Bush said the United States has offered Indonesia assistance ``to help
bring these murderers to justice,'' and a senior White House official said
U.S. investigators already were at the scene.
I guess I should give our government officials the benefit of the doubt.
The Times article may not have reported everything that Bush and Ambassador
Boyce had to say. But it is striking that nowhere in the article is there any
hint of an expression of sympathy for the victims or a mention of offers of
humanitarian aid. It is all "we told you so, we know who did it even
before the investigation has begun, and if you don't get them, we will."
I certainly hope our government didn't have anything to do with the bombing
(including foreknowledge without warning the Indonesians), but this immediate
harsh response certainly makes me wonder. It is similar to the Bushies
immediate glee when the short-lived coup happened in Venezuela in April.
posted by Bob at 10:12
PM
I went to hear Rita Lasar of
Peaceful
Tomorrows speak last night. Her brother died in the WTC on 9/11/01 as he
stayed with a paraplegic friend waiting for help to arrive. Rita was aghast
when President Bush started using her brother's heroism as a reason for
bombing Afghanistan, and more recently Iraq. She and several other relatives
of 9/11 victims traveled to Afghanistan last winter and met with relatives of
victims of the US bombing campaign. She and the other members of Peaceful
Tomorrows have been lobbying Congress and the President to pursue peace as the
surest way to avoid more 9/11's. They get positive responses from audiences
around the country, but are mostly ignored by the major media. The Ann Arbor
News, however, did
cover
Lasar's talk at Pioneer High School (my alma mater).
posted by Bob at 9:18
PM
I have updated my
books
page, adding a few new books that I have read recently and one old book,
1984,
which is required reading for anyone trying to understand the Bushies or my
complaints about them.
posted by Bob at 11:55
AM
The Bush administration's frustration with the Indonesian government's
reluctance to recognize the extent of terrorism in the country boiled over
with last night's carnage.
"We hope this sends a message to the Indonesians that terrorism is not
just an American problem, but an Indonesian one as well," a senior
administration official said. -- from the
NY
Times. Is that the type of message that Bush received from Ariel Sharon
and Tony Blair after 9/11? Instead of sympathy, shock or outrage, our
government is saying "See? We warned you. Now you've got it too."
Sounds more like the messages Osama sent us in his video tapes. Makes you
wonder who is really behind the Indonesia bombing. (Can you spell
"CIA?") The point being, apparently, that the brutal regime in
Indonesia, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Timorese
(using American weapons), has not been brutal enough for the likings of the
Bush administration. If they are not careful, the Bushies are thinking, real
democracy might break out and prove a hindrance to "free trade."
posted by Bob at 9:45
AM
A few headlines from the Washington Post:
More than two dozen vehicles crashed on a foggy highway Friday, killing at
least seven people in a pile of charred and twisted metal. At least 34 others
were injured, several critically.
I'll bet you can guess which was the main headline, and which were small items
at the bottom of the web page. I'll also bet that the sniper victims and/or
their families get monetary donations orders of magnitude greater than
