Sans-culotte.org

Oh Yeah, There's Still That Other War Going On Too

2006-07-23T11:00:00.000-04:00

And Things Aren't Getting Any Better There Either,

The Latest From Peace Takes Courage: Civil War in Iraq

Watch the WMP or QT version at C&L

Iraq car bombs kill 56 people

Reuters: Car bombs killed at least 56 people in Iraq on Sunday as Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki prepared for a White House visit expected to focus on easing violence that has raised doubts over his reconciliation efforts. ...(more)

Video C&L: Is the Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani pulling out of Iraq?

David Ignatius: "Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is really the most important and powerful personality in Iraq, is signalling the bush administration this week that he is worried the situation in Iraq is spinning out of control. He is the crucial person. If he gives up on this effort-this effort is over. ..."

Iraq prisoner abuse 'routine and organised'

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Take 2 Imodium Anti-Dershoshitz's & Call Me In The Morn

2006-07-23T10:41:00.000-04:00

It's this kind of rationale that leads to the justification for war.

Alan Dershowitz in L.A. Times: Not all civilian deaths 'tragic'

In today's Los Angeles Times, Harvard University Professor Alan Dershowitz has written a column in which he argues that the value of some civilian wartime casualties is less than others. (...)

"The Israeli army has given well-publicized notice to civilians to leave those areas of southern Lebanon that have been turned into war zones. Those who voluntarily remain behind have become complicit. Some — those who cannot leave on their own — should be counted among the innocent victims," wrote Dershowitz. ...(more)

UN envoy: Israel bombing breaks humanitarian law

Half a million Lebanese become refugees

Israeli Soldiers Push Deeper Into Lebanon, Seize Village

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The War on Science

2006-07-22T12:35:00.000-04:00

FDA gets back to business (as usual)

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) just released a survey of 997 FDA scientists, co-sponsored by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility to a total of 5918. (...)

One hundred eighty three scientists in this sample reported they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document." (...)

Forty percent of respondents fear retaliation for voicing safety concerns in public. This fear, scientists say, combines with other pressures to compromise the agency's ability to protect public health and safety. More than a third of the respondents did not feel they could express safety concerns even inside the agency. (...)

Only 47 percent think the "FDA routinely provides complete and accurate information to the public." ...(more)

Related:
WaPo: Top Democrat Finds F.D.A.'s Efforts Have Plunged

In Case You Missed It

2006-07-22T11:58:00.000-04:00

And just because it totally deserves another shout out. ....

Beelzebub's controlling Dick, Dick's controlling Bush, and Bush is fucking up the entire world.
Pictures from Sept 24, 2005 March for Peace, DC

Meanwhile Back in Tikrit, ... LMAO!

2006-07-21T23:01:00.000-04:00

This is frickin hillarious! h/t SadButTrue from the comments.

US Soldiers Ordered to Kill All Military Age Males?

2006-07-21T21:42:00.000-04:00

Soldiers Say Ordered to Kill Young Men
Soldiers in murder case claim they were ordered to 'kill all military age males' in Iraq raid

AP: Four U.S. soldiers accused of murdering suspected insurgents during a raid in Iraq said they were under orders to "kill all military age males," according to sworn statements obtained by The Associated Press.

The soldiers first took some of the men into custody because they were using two women and a toddler as human shields. They shot three of the men after the women and child were safe and say the men attacked them.

"The ROE (rule of engagement) was to kill all military age males on Objective Murray," Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard told investigators, referring to the target by its code name. ...(more)

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Warmongers!

2006-07-21T17:23:00.000-04:00

Britain and US Defy Demand for Immediate Ceasefire

Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Lebanon yesterday, defying a demand by Kofi Annan for an immediate end to fighting on the ninth day of a war that has led to the "collective punishment of the Lebanese people" .

Two countries, the US and Britain, defiantly refused to back the international clamour for an immediate ceasfire between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas. Their ambivalence about civilian deaths in Lebanon has given Israel a powerful signal that it can continue its attacks with impunity.

However, Israel's ground offensive against Hizbollah was blunted when four of its soldiers were reported killed in clashes in south Lebanon. Across the country clouds of smoke appeared as the aerial bombardment continued and the evacuation of foreign nationals, including Americans, was stepped up. Israel said it would allow humanitarian aid to flow into Lebanon as international outrage grew over civilian casualties which are now above 300. ...(more)

The War Via Youtube

2006-07-21T11:45:00.000-04:00

It sure looks a lot different than what we are seeing on Fox/CNN/... et al. I spent some time viewing a bunch of them this morning. Many are particularly hard to watch. Some look to be homemade works of propaganda from both sides of the conflict, and others seem more to present an unvarnished look at what is really going on.

This one seemed a little like one of Ava's videos. I picked it because it has a message of peace. The man with a sling towards the beginning brings up the stark image of David and Goliath, and the little boy with the Anderson Cooper eyes in tears really got to me.

Conflicts in the Middle East documentary Part 1

Watching these shows what a disservice the media does by showing the missiles and the explosions and none of the carnage of war. The networks glorify the heinous face of war, and thus they help perpetuate it.

There are so many videos, literally hundreds if not thousands more from the week old conflict, and many times that about Iraq. If you see any really good ones, about Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah or US-Iraq, or have any thoughts about how these videos might actually help balance governments' attempts to control the flow of information from a war zone, as I think they can, please let me know in the comments.

I want to salute video sites like Youtube for allowing people to share with us this lense into the horrors of war like the world has never seen before. I think the UN or perhaps the Gates Foundation or some other group with the means to be able to do so, ought to flood war zones with video cameras and computer/internet access. Pictures, and even more so video, represent the one true universal language. It is the most powerful medium for peace IMO.

Your thoughts?

Anyone from India: Can You See This?

2006-07-21T00:08:00.000-04:00

In response to the Mumbai train bombing which killed over 180 people last week.

India Censors The Internet

Businessweek's blog: The first case of India censoring the internet has occurred. (...)

Niti Bhan tells me that the Indian government has "has blocked access to blogs hosted by Blogger, Typepad and sites on geocities for the moment,while they claim to be going through hard ip numbers to trace terrorists who they bleieve used these sites to coordinate the Mumbai bombings." ...(more)

h/t Die for the Elite in the comments

[Update] Government Lifts Ban on Websites

Frist Open Thread

2006-07-20T19:12:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I've said before I wasn't going to do open threads around here.
Oh well, I'm a flip-flopper.

What's news?

Welcome to WWIII sponsored by the USA

2006-07-20T17:22:00.000-04:00

House Overwhelmingly Backs Israel in Vote

AP: The House, displaying a foreign affairs solidarity lacking on issues like Iraq, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas.

The resolution, which was passed on a 410-8 vote, also condemns enemies of the Jewish state. ...(more)

Confession: I totally cribbed the title from an A'Blog

commenter Dances with Wolves

Rawstory:
Video: Hezbollah takes BBC into 'wasteland' of southern Beirut
Video: Matthews and Buchanan slam neocons for Mideast 'warmongering'
Matthews and Buchanan. Sometimes these guys make sense afterall.

Report: US Muzzling Hurricane Victims

2006-07-20T12:39:00.000-04:00

I can't believe how far this administration is willing to go to shit all over our Constitutionally protected rights.

AP: Residents of trailer parks set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house hurricane victims in Louisiana aren't allowed to talk to the press without an official escort, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reported.

In one instance, a security guard ordered an Advocate reporter out of a trailer during an interview in Morgan City. Similar FEMA rules were enforced in Davant, in Plaquemines Parish.

FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Rodi wouldn't say whether the security guards' actions complied with FEMA policy, saying the matter was being reviewed. But she confirmed that FEMA does not allow the news media to speak alone to residents in their trailers. ...(more)

Russia to Resume Nuclear Testing?

2006-07-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Bush's disregard for long-standing arms control and disarmament efforts including the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, decades of world progress towards halting the nuclear arms race is unraveling. (h/t Hornet)

Russia Prepared to Conduct Nuclear Tests — Defense Minister

“We proceed from existing reality and keep the test range in constant preparedness, while adhering to all our commitments,” the agency quoted him as saying when asked whether or not Russia would resume testing if countries that have not joined the international treaty banning test explosions and any other nuclear explosions do so.

“Certain large nuclear powers have not ratified the treaty,” Ivanov said. (...)

Ivanov last week announced plans to deploy new intercontinental ballistic missiles, saying that the nation needs a strong nuclear deterrent to protect itself from foreign “blackmail” - a comment referring at least in part to potential pressure from the United States. ...(more)

The "Bush administration's arms control policies began with a refusal to submit a global treaty to ban underground nuclear-test blasts indefinitely for Senate ratification," and a withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Since then North Korea has developed its own nukes and by most accounts Iran is on the way to do so herself, if Iran doesn't have a few already. Venezuela looks to be shopping the idea too, reportedly with help from Iran. Russia and China have begun unprecedented joint military exercises and arms trading to counter the US presence in central Asia, and now just days after the G8 summit in Moscow, Russia begins backpedaling from her commitment to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). How can the US possibly try to force states like North Korea and Iran to abide by the very same treaties that the US withdrew from?

At every turn, Republicans continue to make our world less safe.

Heck of a job, chimpy.

Fueling the Nuclear Fire: Nuclear Policies of the Bush Adminstration

The George W. Bush administration came into office with the clear intention to strengthen US global military dominance, including its nuclear dominance, and it has been true to this major policy goal. Under this administration, military expenditures have increased by some $100 billion to approximately $400 billion annually, and nuclear weapons have assumed a far more central role in US security policy.

The administration’s blatant disregard for the United Nations Security Council and for long-standing arms control and disarmament efforts are clear signs that it is prepared to chart a unilateral course with regard to security issues. It has also signaled its desire to overhaul its nuclear arsenal, developing smaller and more usable nuclear weapons, which could be used as part of the new “Bush doctrine” of preemption. The administration has developed contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against seven other countries and against weapons of mass destruction (WMD) stockpiles of what it considers to be “rogue” states. (...)

Failure to Lead toward Nuclear Disarmament

In sum, Bush’s aggressive nuclear policy has shown scant concern for US treaty obligations, rendering many international arms control measures meaningless.

• Most prominently, the Bush administration has withdrawn from the ABM Treaty to pursue missile defenses and test space-based weapons.

• The Bush administration is not taking seriously, nor attempting to fulfill, US obligations for nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the NPT, nor has it shown good faith in fulfilling the 2000 NPT Review Conference’s 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament - including pursuing the promised “unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals….”

• Washington has made clear that it does not intend to send the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) back to the Senate for ratification. The Bush administration has indicated plans to shorten the time needed to resume underground nuclear testing, and is developing more usable nuclear weapons and contingency plans for their use.

Current nuclear policies by the Bush administration must be viewed as highly provocative to other countries. They suggest that the US reserves to itself the right to use its own weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, as it deems appropriate, while, at the same time, seeking to deny that possibility to other countries. ...(more)

I'm So Sick of All the Death & Destruction

2006-07-19T19:41:00.000-04:00

There are Lives in the Balance

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!

2006-07-19T17:45:00.000-04:00

This from Wonkette:

Value of "George Harris Legacy Loan" to Senate campaign: $10 million

Value of "refurbishments" to Capitol Hill residence: $100,000

Value of Handing in my Resignation Letter: Priceless

Email sent out yesterday afternoon by a Katherine Harris speechwriter.

Where's the Love? :^(

2006-07-19T17:12:00.000-04:00

Dear Lebanese/Palestinian/Arab/Muslim/Christians - Kids,

Die with love.

Yours,
Israeli Kids

7-17-06: Israeli girls write messages on artillery shells being fired into Lebanon.

AP: Lebanese PM: 300 Dead During Onslaught

[UPDATE] The Fucked-up Pictures explained
I linked this so you can make up your own mind, but I must say I don't know to believe this update story more than what the pictures apparently show. There are israeli soldiers that let this take place, at least one right there in the picture, and we're supposed to believe from this account that the kids were tricked by foreign journalists for an anti-israeli photo-op. eh, ok maybe? What do you all think?

Rawstory: GRAPHIC: Images of suffering, death on Arab TV after series of Israeli, Hezbollah strikes

Haaretz: IAF targets top Hezbollah figures in Beirut bunker
Two soldiers killed in clash with Hezbollah inside Lebanese territory

Homeland Security Spent How Much On What?!?!

2006-07-19T12:47:00.000-04:00

NYT: Homeland Security Department Is Accused of Credit Card Misuse

Flat-bottomed rescue boats at double the retail price, $68,500 worth of unused dog booties, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of computers that somehow disappeared and a $227 beer brewing kit.

These are just a few of the questionable purchases that Congressional auditors have found by digging through half a year of credit card records from the Homeland Security Department, including records for the months immediately after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last year.

The audit, by the Government Accountability Office, which is due to be released Wednesday, concluded that the credit card misuse could probably have been avoided had the department completed a long-planned rulebook for its more than 9,000 employees who spent $420 million last year using government-issued credit cards.

Instead, “due to a lack of leadership” at the department, the draft manual has never been finished, creating accounting weaknesses that “leave D.H.S. highly vulnerable to fraudulent, improper and abusive activity,” the audit says.

The result is that in the five months examined, the investigators found that 45 percent of purchases [$190 million] did not have appropriate preauthorization by supervisors and that 63 percent did not include documentation stating whether the goods or services had been received. (...)

One employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is part of the department, spent $7,790 on a 63-inch plasma monitor, which sat for six months, unused, in its original carton.

Another FEMA employee spent $68,442 on the 2,000 dog boots, which were intended to protect the paws of search dogs on rescue operations; the boots ended up in a FEMA warehouse and have not been used.

Auditors also found that officials from Customs and Border Protection spent $2,492 on rain jackets for use at a firing range, even though the firing range is usually closed when it rains. And Secret Service officers spent $7,000 on iPods, which the agency explained were intended to serve as data storage devices, an explanation the auditors found unconvincing. ...(more)

May We Never Forget How Bad it Was

Any Lede With "Reed" and "Concede" is Sweet Indeed

2006-07-18T22:27:00.000-04:00

Reed Concedes Defeat Ga. Lt. Gov Primary

Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, unable to overcome his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, conceded defeat Tuesday in Georgia's Republican race for lieutenant governor.

This may actually be worse for the Democrats to win in November, I'm not familiar (yet) with the details between Casey Cagle(R) and whoever wins the Democratic nod (Jim Martin slight lead over Greg Hecht), but Ralph Reed was slimy as they come. Getting rid of him is reason to celebrate, in any case.

Ava's Still At It

2006-07-18T20:45:00.000-04:00

Had Enough of Rick Santorum?

The 32% Part II
Love Letters from the Right

Can Republican Nutcases Do Anything They Want?

2006-07-18T16:18:00.000-04:00

And Get Away With It?

If this is true, they had better lock her(?) skanky ass up.

Coulter: 'I Sent NYT White Powder'

If you falsely yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater and everyone tramples each other to death, you get sent to jail. So what should be done with Ann Coulter, who has argued that The New York Times should have been blown up by Timothy McVeigh and that Times executive editor Bill Keller should be executed by firing squad?

This was the question one Times source asked on Friday after an employee at the paper of record received an envelope with an X scrawled through it and a suspicious powder inside. "This thing makes all of Ann Coulter's comments a little less funny," said the source. "I wonder if she considers herself at all responsible when lunatics read her columns and she says that we should be killed."

So Memo Pad went and asked her, sending an e-mail to her AOL account. And guess what? She not only responded, but claimed to be the sender of the mysterious powder. ...(more)

She already seems to be getting a pass for flagrant plagiarism. Is there nothing she can't do without paying the normal penalties associated with such actions? It sure seems so. :(

State Dept: No Free Rides, Even if You're Dead

2006-07-18T16:12:00.000-04:00

TPMmuckraker: State Dept.: No Free Evacuations for Dead Americans, Either

Unfuckingbelievabush!

House Committee Subpoenas Abramoff Whitehouse Ties

2006-07-16T01:20:00.000-04:00

This could get really interesting.

Abramoff Lobbying of White House Probed

WaPo: The House Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed the former law firm of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff for records of any contacts he or members of his lobbying team had with the Bush White House.

Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) authorized a subpoena weeks ago to Greenberg Traurig, according to several of the law firm's former clients who have been notified that it is turning over billing records, e-mails, phone logs and other material that reflects efforts to lobby the White House. ...(more)

Really funny pic from onegoodmove (Related Posts)
White House Refuses to Obey Court Order
This Is The Big GOP Ethics Reform?!?
Nobody Knows Jack
It's Time to Bring in the Feds
Independent Study: Abramoff Scandal = Republican Scandal
It's a Republican Scandal. Period.
Delay's House Of Scandal Collapsing
More on Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff
GOPotemkin Reform
GOP Hopes Ney Removal Will Aid Reform
Great New Delay Ad Public Service Announcement!
So Many Scandals, It's Really Hard To Keep Track Anymore
Ralph "Charlatan" Reed
DC (lobbying) Bloodbath!
Republican: (adj) dishonest, criminal, corrupt, fraudulent ...

Here's a View I'm Not Seeing in the US Corp Media

2006-07-15T15:44:00.000-04:00

Haaretz via Truthout.

A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization. The harsher the steps, the more monstrous and stupid they become, the more the moral underpinnings for them are removed and the stronger the impression that the Israeli government has lost its nerve. Now one must hope that the weekend lull, whether initiated by Egypt or the prime minister, and in any case to the dismay of Channel 2's Roni Daniel and the IDF, will lead to a radical change. (...)

The legitimate basis for the IDF's operation was stripped away the moment it began. It's no accident that nobody mentions the day before the attack on the Kerem Shalom fort, when the IDF kidnapped two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from their home in Gaza. The difference between us and them? We kidnapped civilians and they captured a soldier, we are a state and they are a terror organization. How ridiculously pathetic Amos Gilad sounds when he says that the capture of Shalit was "illegitimate and illegal," unlike when the IDF grabs civilians from their homes. How can a senior official in the defense ministry claim that "the head of the snake" is in Damascus, when the IDF uses the exact same methods? ...(more)

This article helps hammer home the point that we don't know what is going on except for what our media reports to us.

I don't know what to make of all of what is going on. The more I hear other's well thought out opinions I find myself sympathetic to the plights of all involved. I really can't pick any side over any other, not totally anyway. I would just wish to stop the senseless self-defeating death and destruction across the board.

Who started what or who wronged who more is incomprehensible and irrelevant at this point. All sides are wrong and are pursuing policies that can only exasperate the situation more. All sides have suffered heavy losses and on their current paths they can only lose more.

Who will be the first to have the courage to stand down and end the cycle of senseless violence?

That's really all that matters now, isn't it?

What's Wrong With Bush in this Pic? Seriously?

2006-07-14T18:03:00.000-04:00

U.S. President George W. Bush, left, and Russian President Vladimir
Putin seen during dinner at the G8 summit site in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday,
July 14, 2006. (AP Photo/ITAR-TASS, Dmitry Astakhov, Presidential Press Service)

Is that a beer? Isn't he looking awful drunk to you? Looks to me like Putin is probably pointing to the trash can so he can hurl, because the chimperor doesn't look like he's going to make it to a bathroom.

No it's not a photoshop job. I saved a full screenshot of the comcast news page here in case they take it down, or rather for when they take it down,

Remember that Killgore appearance where Bush was slurring his words and seemed plastered? C&L has the video.

I have been collecting links to other videos of chimpy exhibiting weird behaviors. Please let me know about any others in the comments. I had a few more but they have since been moved or taken down.

Weird Bush Behavior Videos
Jaw jerking
More jaw jerking.
Weird head jerk
Lip licking
Slurring (drunk?)
Slurring (drunk?) (Ok this one's a parody, but funny. lol)
Some of these are really funny, I know, but he is an admitted alcoholic. Isn't it time more people seriously start asking ...

What's Wrong with George Bush?

Details of Wilsons' Suit against Libby, Rove, and Cheney

2006-07-13T22:08:00.000-04:00

John Dean called for this almost 3 years ago. His advice is definitely worth giving a look now.

Salon: More vicious than Tricky Dick
John Dean says the Bush team's leaks are even viler than his former boss's -- and that Plame and Wilson should file a civil suit.

If the Bush White House is anything like the Nixon White House -- and there is increasing evidence of the similarities -- it will respond to such a lawsuit like a stuck pig. Leaking the name of a CIA official can under no circumstances be considered a part of any potential defendants' official duties, so they will not be given representation by the Department of Justice. ...(lots more)

TPM Muckraker: Copy of Joseph and Valerie Wilson's suit

C&L:

Joe Wilson sent out this statement:

"Robert Novak, some other commentators and the Administration continue to try to completely distort the role that Valerie Wilson played with respect to Ambassador Wilson’s trip to Niger. The facts are beyond dispute. The Office of the Vice President requested that the CIA investigate reports of alleged uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger. The CIA setup a meeting to respond to the Vice President’s inquiry. Another CIA official, not Valerie Wilson, suggested to Valerie Wilson’s supervisor that the Ambassador attend that meeting.

That other CIA official made the recommendation because that official was familiar with the Ambassador’s vast experience in Niger and knew of a previous trip to Africa concerning uranium matters that had been undertaken by the Ambassador on behalf of the CIA in 1999. Valerie Wilson’s supervisor subsequently asked her to relay a request from him to the Ambassador that he would like the Ambassador to attend the meeting at the CIA. Valerie Wilson did not participate in the meeting. As the CIA itself has officially confirmed, Valerie Wilson did not send Ambassador Wilson to Niger and she neither suggested him nor recommended him for the trip. Furthermore, the Ambassador agreed to travel to Niger pro bono with only his travel expenses being paid."

WHO: Valerie Plame Wilson
Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV
Christopher Wolf, Esq.

WHAT: News conference to announce filing of civil lawsuit

WHEN: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:00 AM

There’s a new site called WilsonSupport.

TPMM: Details of Wilsons' Suit against Libby, Rove, and Cheney

As the suit reads, it "arises out of a conspiracy among current and former high-level officials in the White House and actions taken by and on behalf of those officials in 2003 to violate the constitutional and other legal rights" of Valerie and Joseph Wilson.

Because of the administration's "whispering campaign" against the Wilsons, they say that they've suffered "gross invasions of privacy," that they "fear of their safety and for the safety of their children," that Valerie Wilson's career was ended, and that both of them "have been impaired in pursuing professional opportunities." (...)

The complaint details eight causes of action, all surrounding the trio's involvement in outing Valerie Wilson as a CIA agent:

1) Violation of First Amendment Right to Freedom of Speech
2) Violation of Fifth Amendment Right to Equal Protection of the Laws
3) Violation of Fifth Amendment Right to Privacy
4) Violation of Fifth Amendment Right to Property
5) Conspiracy to Deprive Persons of Their Civil Rights
6) Action for Neglect to Prevent Civil Rights Violation
7) Public Disclosure of Private Facts
8) Civil Conspiracy.

Yeah, What They Said ...

2006-07-13T15:52:00.000-04:00

I admit I've been stalling on posting about this topic, all the while I've been glued to each escalation. I'm horrified at what is happening, it is spiraling out of control and no one seems willing to make any concession at all. Some of the latest news:

Israel blasts Lebanon airport, air bases

Israel intensified its attacks against Lebanon on Thursday, blasting Beirut's airport and two Lebanese army air bases near the Syrian border, and imposing a naval blockade. More than 50 people have died in violence following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah militants.

Warplanes punched holes in the runways of Beirut's international airport and two military air bases, attacks that could draw the Lebanese army into the conflict.

Israel's army chief Brig. Gen. Dan Halutz warned that "nothing is safe" in Lebanon and said Beirut itself - particularly Hezbollah offices and residences - would be a target. Maj. Gen. Udi Adam said Israel had hit hundreds of targets and hadn't ruled out sending in ground troops. ...(more)

Hizbollah rockets rain on northern Israel

Hizbollah guerrillas from Lebanon fired barrages of rockets into nearly 20 towns across northern Israel on Thursday, killing one civilian and wounding 42 others in their heaviest bombardment in a decade. ...(more)

You can keep up with the latest here, or watch the networks, who to their credit have been giving this situation a lot of attention, notwithstanding a noticeable pro-israeli bias. I don't mean to take any side by saying that, just that the Palestinian/Hezbollah side of what is going on is under-represented in US media. As to where I stand I'm still muddled. Rather than put both feet in my mouth let me point you to opinions that I have read elsewhere that I for the most part agree with...

Froomkin: Bush the Bystander

The Middle East is exploding and what is President Bush doing about it? Not much.

Here's the transcript of this morning's joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in which Bush sounded more like a bystander on the world stage than the leader of its only superpower. ...(more)

Aravosis: The "other" Middle East: It's near all-out-war between Israel and Hezbollah - where is George Bush?

Where is George Bush? Where is America? Why are the Republicans in Congress and George Bush spending all their time worrying about flags and fags, while North Korea gets closer and closer to nuking us, and the Middle East goes up in flames?

There are serious problems in the world. And the current crop of Republicans running the country are either blind, or simply don't care. ...(more)

And I really liked this last one. Here it is in its entirety...

Josh Marshall: Where's the US?

I think I see the escalation of hostilities in and around Israel a bit differently than some readers. One TPM Reader asked yesterday in heated tones why I hadn't written anything about the "atrocities" Israel was committing in Gaza and southern Lebanon. I take a different view of this. I don't see why Israel should or really can, in the context of withdrawing from occupied territories, sit still while de facto governments to the north and the south kidnap her soldiers. And I say that as someone who thinks Israel should get out of the occupied territories in Gaza and the West Bank and support the establishment of a true Palestinian state not at some vague point in the future but now.

Israel actually faces what the Bush administration has pretended America faces, hostile neighbors using terrorist and irredentist factions as proxies in their conflict with Israel.

But retaliation has consequences. How far does this creeping war creep? Into Lebanon? We're already at that point. Into Syria? We're close. Iran? Maybe not too far in the future. Is it in Israel's or America's interest to acquire more occupied territories? Other than retaliatory bombing or occupation of buffer zones, what the the strategic objectives?

This is spinning out of control very quickly. And we need to think right now about where this leads in a week and a month. For America's interests and Israel's the US can't afford to hold back and watch where this goes. ...(more)

BTW, Josh just went bigTIME with his first article in the mag. Congratulations, Josh. You can support one of the true champions of blogland by checking it out. Besides his powerhouse blog and TPM Muckraker, he's been a columnist over at The Hill for a while now.

OMG! WTF Is Going On At The Pentagon?

2006-07-12T03:08:00.000-04:00

Please do tell me why the Pentagon is googling the search terms "what's really going on in iran?" On second thought, don't. I really hope they aren't trying to find out from my blog what's really going on in Iran. I mean I think I know what's going on, but shouldn't they know for sure? At least enough they don't have to google up my blog for their answer. Please tell me Rummy's not checking sans-culotte for the low-down. ROFL!!!

I wonder. Could this be part of that new $450,000 Air Force Program they just announced to monitor blogs?

Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis

2006-07-11T10:56:00.000-04:00

ROFL!

Orwellian Times We Are a Livin In

2006-07-08T16:29:00.000-04:00

John at Americablog linked to this post over at TeamBIO.org about this article in Newsweek about America's nationalism. This last part really got me.

BIO: Patriotism vs. Nationalism

Orwell really has our current foreign policy dialed with this quote:

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.… The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

Sound familiar? ...(more)

Sounds real familiar.

Too damn familiar.

Orwell said that in 1945.

That's downright scary.

Terrorists?

2006-07-06T15:05:00.000-04:00

The more I learn about this case, the more I'm beginning to think the FBI just framed a bunch of dipshits whose plans were much less the work of an al Qaeda affiliate than they were the product of poverty, stupidity, and one too many episodes of Nickelodeon's Pinky and the Brain.

Paintballers Plotted World Takeover

TPMmuckraker: The ragtag, kooky group, who all belong to a sect "that mixes Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Freemasonry, Gnosticism and Taoism," had plans to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago, prosecutors say.

Well, the judge says the crew is too dangerous to walk the streets before trial. So they'll stay locked up. But more details about the case came out during the hearing. And the more we learn, the less this crew looks like they could have toppled a tree house, let alone the Sears Tower.

That's not to say that they didn't talk up their destructive ambitions. One of them even "made reference to taking over the world," according to the FBI agent on the case.

That said, the group never got their hands on any real weapons. In fact, they apparently trained by shooting paintball guns in the woods. During their raid of the group's Temple, a windowless warehouse, FBI agents found only one knife and a blackjack.

How did the group show up on the FBI's radar? It's unclear, but from the Miami Herald's reporting of the hearing, it sounds like the group's leader, Narseal Batiste, went down to his local 7-11 to "obtain financial and military support." I'm not kidding.

He eventually got a lot of promises from another FBI informant for guns, boots and $50,000 in cash. But the lawyer for one of Batiste's followers says Batiste, who used to "roam the streets" in a bathrobe, was just scamming the informant because he was hard up for money. ...(more)

Is it still too soon for rationally talking about al Qaeda?

2006-07-06T11:58:00.000-04:00

Apparently not. Ken Silverstein @ Harpers tries to step out of the morass..

The Al Qaeda Clubhouse: Members Lacking

The June 30 issue of Newsweek carried a story titled “The Myth of Al Qaeda” by Michael Hirsh, which argues that the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his followers has been long overestimated by the United States. (...)

Meanwhile, Peter Bergen wrote an article in the July 2 Washington Post that paints Al Qaeda as a more potent threat and suggests that despite suffering setbacks after 9/11, the group “may be staging a comeback.” (...)

I'm a fan of Bergen's work on Al Qaeda, but I'm with Hirsh on this one. Al Qaeda Central was and is capable of carrying out deadly actions, and at some point, it's safe to say, it will again try to attack the United States. But the fact that bin Laden hasn't carried out an attack in nearly five years—and he obviously would love to—suggests that an attack on U.S. soil is something that he can’t easily accomplish. Why is that? ...(read on)

It's interesting to see any article that isn't fomenting a climate of fear these days, but especially so at a time when we learn that Bush has went from wanting bin Laden dead or alive, to being not that concerned about him, to actually axing the 6 year old CIA program trying to find Osama sometime late last year.

WTF is going on? These are bizarre times we are a livin.

Has Bush cut and run from the war on terror? Is this an admission of defeat, or is Bush trying to declare victory without ever having caught Osama, Zawhiri or Omar. Was the risk from al Qaeda totally overblown by this administration the whole time? Did they just get lucky on 9-11? Is Osama even really still alive anymore? Who is independently verifying the legitimacy of the bin Laden audio tapes, or do we still have to just take our govt's word for it?

I don't pretend to know what to make of it, but I'll be really glad when real journalists stop spewing this administration's bullshit and start really answering some of these things. IMO, Hirsh and Silverstein have provided a step in the right direction.

The Canary is Dead

2006-07-05T16:54:00.002-04:00

Yet another great video post by Nate

Lieberman Vows to Kiss The Democratic Party Goodbye

2006-07-03T14:30:00.000-04:00

It's official: Lieberman Abandons Democrats

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman announced today he will petition for a place on the November ballot as an "independent Democrat," giving him a chance to stay alive politically should he lose an Aug. 8 primary for the Democratic nomination.

You just gotta check out the "Remember the Kiss" parade float.
Way to go dad!

Video via C&L: Remember the Kiss? Never forget the kiss.

Also:
See Lieberman Jump For Joy at the SOTU

Watch as Bush spins his Iraq message and Lieberman jumps out of his seat faster than anyone else in the place including all of the Republicans.

Vote for Ned N Sted: http://nedlamont.com/

Is It Who Votes That Counts, Or Who Counts the Votes?

2006-06-29T19:11:00.000-04:00

There has been an explosion recently in coverage by the corporate media of the vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines used in US elections, but the blogs remain relatively silent, with the exception being BradBlog and Bev's Black Box Voting.org of course. Gathered mostly from Brad's site, I've put together this collage of recent articles and news videos here. *Note, the videos stand by themselves and are not linked except by this topic to the articles they are positioned next to. Just click on any/all of the pics to view the vids.

WaPo: A Single Person Could Swing an Election
Electronic Systems' Weaknesses May Be Countered With Audits, Report Suggests

The report concluded that the three major electronic voting systems in use have significant security and reliability vulnerabilities. But it added that most of these vulnerabilities can be overcome by auditing printed voting records to spot irregularities. And while 26 states require paper records of votes, fewer than half of those require regular audits.

"With electronic voting systems, there are certain attacks that can reach enough voting machines . . . that you could affect the outcome of the statewide election," said Lawrence D. Norden, associate counsel of the Brennan Center.
"It's not a question of 'if,' it's a question of 'when,' " Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee said of an attempt to manipulate election results
With billions of dollars of support from the federal government, states have replaced outdated voting machines in recent years with optical scan ballot and touch-screen machines. Activists, including prominent computer scientists, have complained for years that these machines are not secure against tampering. But electronic voting machines are also much easier to use for disabled people and those who do not speak English. ...(more)

USA Today: Analysis Finds E-Voting Machines Vulnerable

Most of the electronic voting machines widely adopted since the disputed 2000 presidential election "pose a real danger to the integrity of national, state and local elections," a report out Tuesday concludes.
There are more than 120 security threats to the three most commonly purchased electronic voting systems, the study by the Brennan Center for Justice says. For what it calls the most comprehensive review of its kind, the New York City-based non-partisan think tank convened a task force of election officials, computer scientists and security experts to study e-voting vulnerabilities.

The study, which took more than a year to complete, examined optical scanners and touch-screen machines with and without paper trails. Together, the three systems account for 80% of the voting machines that will be used in this November's election. ...(more)

NYT: New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems

[O]fficials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem.

It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University ...(more)

WSJ: Reversing Course on Electronic Voting
Some Former Backers of Technology Seek Return to Paper Ballots, Citing Glitches, Fraud Fears

Some advocates of a 2002 law mandating upgrades of the nation's voting machinery now worry the overhaul is making things worse.

With the 2006 midterm elections approaching, proponents of the Help America Vote Act are filing lawsuits to block some state and election officials' efforts to comply with the act. ...(more)

What Can You Do? Demand a Paper Trail!

WaPo: How To Steal an Election

It's easier to rig an electronic voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That's because Vegas slots are better monitored and regulated than America's voting machines ...(more)

WaPo: As Elections Near, Officials Challenge Balloting Security
In Controlled Test, Results Are Manipulated in Florida System

As the Leon County supervisor of elections, Ion Sancho's job is to make sure voting is free of fraud. But the most brazen effort lately to manipulate election results in this Florida locality was carried out by Sancho himself.

Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country. ...(more)

WaPo: Sleepover in San Diego?

Votetrustusa.org reports that in the special election in California to replace Duke Cunningham, "volunteer pollworkers were allowed to take Diebold voting machines home as much as two weeks before the election." (I am currently waiting for a response to this report from California's elections board. I'll update the moment I have it.

Given the known security vulnerabilities and the concrete problems that fraud and/or malfunctions have caused [see pp. 9-15], how could this be allowed to happen? ...(more)

Sans must ask: Can we PLEASE get the Carter Center to monitor the '06 election?

Why Is the AP Swapping Articles for Bushco Friendly Ones?

2006-06-28T16:05:00.000-04:00

This may be a bit hard to follow, but bear with me as I try my best to spell it out. This is not the first time I noticed this going on so I feel the need to address it. In this case it started when I read this post over at Moxiegrrrl's site:

But when I clicked on the linked story, the article that appeared bore the same title but was almost completely different. What I got was this instead:

(Because I have no way to know how long these articles will stay up,
I'm using screengrabs. Click on pic for larger view)

The first article that Moxie quoted was hard on Bush, and rightfully so IMO, but the article she linked to read more like the Whitehouse's response. So I googled the opening sentence to see if I could find the article Moxie quoted from...

...and there the article was, listed over and over with the opening sentence showing in each google snippet. So I clicked on the first AP story at WaPo and again, just like Moxie's post, the opening sentence wasn't there. It was the second Bush-friendly AP article again from the same author as the first. I clicked the second one at Newsweek, and the same thing. The AP has had its carriers replace the earlier article altogether at the same URL as the first. This time, unlike the WaPo and Yahoo articles which I could find no mention of having been edited/updated, Newsweek did have "Updated: 12:55 a.m. ET June 27, 2006" on their site. The next link at USA Today had notice of an update too.

What happened to the earlier version, I wondered. After a few more clicks I found the article still existed in its earlier form at the San Diego Union Tribune:

Ok, props to the SDU Tribune for not playing the bait and switch (yet?) with this article, and some credit to USA Today and Newsweek I suppose is warranted for their at least mentioning the article had been updated. I still have some major problems with the whole thing though. First, the Google grabs of the first sentence show the earlier version existed at the same URLs. The second version is hardly an update. It reads more like the Whitehouse's rebuttal to the first. Second, especially in the case of WaPo and Yahoo, the switcheroo seems to violate AP's own policy statement. (H/T to commenter CC @ Moxiegrrrl)

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS STATEMENT OF NEWS VALUES AND PRINCIPLES

CORRECTIONS/CORRECTIVES:
When we're wrong, we must say so as soon as possible. When we make a correction in the current cycle, we point out the error and its fix in the editor's note. A correction must always be labeled a correction in the editor's note. We do not use euphemisms such as "recasts," "fixes," "clarifies" or "changes" when correcting a factual error.

A corrective corrects a mistake from a previous cycle. The AP asks papers or broadcasters that used the erroneous information to use the corrective, too.

For corrections on live, online stories, we overwrite the previous version. We send separate corrective stories online as warranted. ...(more)

Now, no matter what AP's mission statement says, my real beef is this: If I quote and link to an article, just as Moxie did, I should be able to depend that the AP won't switch the article to one with a completely different viewpoint like they did here. It's one thing to issue a correction, but it's quite another to cave to Whitehouse pressure (which seems pretty evident) and change almost the entire article. If they are going to do that they at least need to not replace the earlier version at the same URL, update notice or not, and give the new article it's own digs.

Is the Whitehouse pressuring the AP to make these changes? I have no way to know, but I suspect so. If anyone has any thoughts or any further info what's going on, please do leave me a comment.

Sen Pat Roberts (R-KS), Hypocrite:

2006-06-28T09:57:00.000-04:00

Wants to Prosecute Leakers (Unless They're Republicans).

Senate Intelligence Chief Blasts Media Over Leaks

(Reuters) - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday blasted U.S. media for exposing details of highly secretive intelligence programs and asked the Bush administration for a formal damage assessment.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, asked U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte to report particularly on any damage to President George W. Bush's domestic spying program and another secret program by the Treasury Department that tracks private bank records.

"Numerous, recent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive intelligence programs have directly threatened important efforts in the war against terrorism," Roberts, a staunch White House ally, said in a letter to Negroponte. ...(more)

Roberts joins in calls from chimpyco and other repuke hypocrites to prosecute the NYT but not the Wall Street Journal or the LA Times for exposing the government's spying on thousands of people's bank records even though all 3 papers' stories came out on the same day.

This is the same asshole who prevented an Ethics Committee investigation into Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) for leaking "

Witnesses leery of testifying while Roberts stays on leak investigation
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) has refused to recuse himself from the ethics probe.

The witnesses are reluctant to cooperate with the ethics panel because, they said, the FBI’s investigation focused on Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who at the time was the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, and because Shelby’s former staff director Bill Duhnke and deputy staff director Jim Hensler now serve as Roberts’s top aides on Intelligence. (...)

Roberts’s role on the Ethics Committee may also be compromised by a slip he made during a speech to a group of newspaper editors March 20, 2003, the day after the U.S. strike on Saddam Hussein’s bunker that kicked off the war in Iraq. Roberts told the group that the military used “what we call human intelligence indicat[ing] the location of Saddam Hussein.” Several intelligence experts considered this a serious breach because it revealed “sources and methods” of intelligence collection. ...(more)

Roberts is also the same asshole who has loyally served chimpyco in preventing any oversight of the whitehouse as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Remember phase II?).

Think Progress: Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS): Chairman of the Senate Cover-up Committee

Hypocrite

[UPDATE] Now the House Repukes are actually pushing a bill that condemns the NYT (but not the WSJ or the LAT?) for the story. The fact is, and every government ethics class will tell you the same thing, that if the cloak of secrecy is wrongly used to hide government wrongdoing, you have a moral imperative to leak it to the media. The people have a right to know when their government is violating the Constitution. On the other hand, leaking classified information for personal/political gain, like Shelby and Roberts did, or like chimpyco did when they leaked Valerie Plame's identity, is utterly contemptible.

Scumbags

Another 'Cut and Run' Republican

2006-06-26T18:39:00.000-04:00

Sorry I've been gone so long. I knew I would be gone a week or so but since getting back I've been unable to post to my blog until now. It's a long story so I'll spare you, but I'm definitely back. Look for plenty more posts later as I try to catch back up....

OK, this is funny: This has to do with the bullshit attempt to blame the NYT for publishing a story about the government spying on thousands of people's bank records without a warrant, nevermind that it was also covered by the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal on the same day. Frank Rich delivered a smackdown to David Frum over the attempt to single out the NYT and not the other papers for running the story.

Video via C&L: Bernie Ward smacks down right wing talk show host: He storms off the set!

Ward, on the left, just kept asking Chris Baker if he would have the Government tell newspapers what they can print, and Baker kept repeating the same GOP fear-mongering non sequitur: 'Time of War! New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!' until he short circuited and pulled a page out of Novak's playbook by tearing off his microphone and running home to his mommy in tears.

LMAO!!

Thomas Jefferson on Freedom of the Press

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

"The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823

"The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van Hogendorp, Oct. 13, 1785.

"Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1786.

"I am... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799

"To preserve the freedom of the human mind... and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement." Thomas Jefferson to William Green Munford, 1799.

"No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free, no one ever will. If virtuous, it need not fear the fair operation of attack and defence. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting out the truth whether in religion, law or politics. I think it as honorable to the government neither to know nor notice its sycophants or censors, as it would be undignified and criminal to pamper the former and persecute the latter." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1792.

"Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart. 1799.

"Printing presses shall be subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed and published." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Virginia Constitution, 1783. ...(more)

"Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Party in 1792 as a congressional caucus to fight for the Bill of Rights and against the elitist Federalist Party." Some things never change.

The History of Oil

2006-06-10T10:22:00.000-04:00

Robert Newman has put together this brilliant show that focuses on oil's role in shaping world history over the last century, and where it's headed. It's "a multimedia experience powered by eco-cyclists". Newman's part comedian, part professor, and what you get is the most informative yet very entertaining show I've ever seen.

I'm linking to it through Nate's site as that's where I found it. Nate also includes another video that I too highly recommend watching: Bill Moyers 1987 PBS documentary "A Secret Government." You'll find that a lot of what Newman is talking about is reinforced by Moyers.

Please watch them both, and pass them on. You can also watch them them both on google video here and here, respectively.

Newman pulls no punches and really knows his shit. I fact-checked my way through the movie and compiled this list of links below according to Newman's show's chapters that I hope helps understand his show a bit better. He's British and this show is in the UK, so there may be a joke or two that you might not get. You'll want to know what ASBO means, and who the painter Salvador Dali and the WWI poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are.

Instead of embedded links I've left them full to facilitate anyone who might want to cut & paste them elsewhere. I think this video is all that important, and then some. I totally agree with Nate: "I think if America can get it's mind around something like this. If they can finally stand to view the world outside their ridiculous blinders... They'll be ready to start accepting A LOT more and and willing to start learning more about who their government is and how it works."

Amen to that!

Ch 1 Marching to the Drums (1:39)

Marching to the Drums: Eyewitness Accounts of War from the Kabul Massacre to the Siege of Mafeking Ian Knight (Editor)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1853673722/026-8342092-1104462

“The G8 has today endorsed an American Plan to bring Democracy to the Middle East”

Bush democracy plan
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3478901.stm

G8 Summit 2004
http://usinfo.state.gov/ei/Archive/2004/Jun/09-319840.html

Ch 2 Bringing a Better Democracy (4:39)

Iran- In 1951, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, "the most popular politician in the country," was elected Prime Minister of Iran. His major election plank was the nationalization of the only oil company operating in Iran at that time – British Petroleum.
http://www.doublestandards.org/ciahits.html#iran

The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup - US National Security Archives
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/

Secrets of History: The CIA in Iran by James Risen
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html

14 `enduring bases' set in Iraq: Long-term military presence planned
Chicago Tribune March 23, 2004
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040323-enduring-bases.htm

Ch 3 World War One: An Invasion of Iraq (10:15)

Berlin-Baghdad Railway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I#Berlin-Baghdad_Railwayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin-Baghdad_Railway

The Capture of Basra, 5-21 November 1914
http://www.1914-1918.net/meso_bat1.htm

Ch 4 Thou Shalt Steal Oil (15:41)

November 20, 1945 - Nuremberg War Crime Trials http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/nurem.htm

Ch 5 The Euro Dollar Invasion of Iraq (21:38)

The War To Save The U.S. Dollar
The Americans could live with Saddam until he started selling oil for euros instead of U.S. dollars.
http://www.trinicenter.com/oops/iraqeuro.html

Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,896344,00.html

N. Korea bans U.S. dollars
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/11/23/nkorea.dollar/index.html

The End of Dollar HegemonyFeb 06 House floor speech by Congressman Ron Paul TX (R)http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2006/cr021506.htm

Iran seeks euro-denominated oil market
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20060505-0320-iran-oil-euros.html

Ch 6 Peak Oil (34:34)

THE PARTY'S OVER Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societiesby Richard Heinberg
http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html

Peak Oil primer and links
http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

Zinc Air Fuel Cell Technology
http://www.electric-fuel.com/evtech/index.shtml
http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et1101/et1101s12.html

Ch 7 Earth’s New Diet: No Oil, No Wheat, No Dairy (39:09)

The Oil We EatFollowing the food chain back to Iraq
http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html

Sustainable Table: The Issues: Fossil Fuel and Energy Use
http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/energy/

Who Will Feed China?: Wake-Up Call for a Small Planet (Worldwatch Environmental Alert Series) (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039331409X/103-6293179-0423069?v=glance&amp;amp;amp;amp;n=283155

U.S., Congress, Committee on International Relations, Special Subcommittee on Investigations, Oil Fields as Military Objectives: A Feasibility Study
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/Petroleum/fields.htm

Note: I'll be taking a haitus from the blog for the next week or so. I hope in that time you'll find time to watch both of these vids, and pass them along.

Amazon Fishbowl with Bill Maher

2006-06-04T22:37:00.000-04:00

...and the Dixie Chicks

Nate pointed out Bill Maher's new online show and I thought I ought to share it. While I'm at it he's got another video there too that I'm definitely going to give a post of it's own tomorrow. You can check my comment there to see how much I liked it & where I'll be going with it.

I'm not sure how I feel about Bill Maher doing a regular talkshow format, but I thought he did a really good job with it, and I thought the Chicks were really cool. My only complaint is the long UPS/Goomba commercial that you can't fast forward through. I understand the need for the ads but it was just too long. I almost bailed. I have to say the Dixie Chicks were so worth it though, so there you go.

I just got my Dixie Chicks CD this week. I love it. I'm not really big into country music, and if it hadn't been for the political back-story I can't say I would have ever bought the cd, but I'm glad I did. It's a solid CD. anyone who says it's not country hasn't listened to it. It's country allright, but it's really grown on me already. I'm not sure why exactly but I didn't think I liked "I Hope" the first time I heard it, but now it's one of my faves. My place just about cleaned itself listening to that song today. Damn that's a good song.

. . . .
Cuz our children are watching us
They put their trust in us
They're gonna be like us
So let's learn from our history
And do it differently

[I hope] For more love, more joy and laughter
[I hope] We'll have more than we'll ever need
[I hope] We'll have more happy ever afters
[I hope] We can all live more fearlessly
And we can lose all the pain and misery
[I hope] I hope . . .

If you can spare the $10 bucks this CD's well worth it.
You can order one here.

Ethical Foul? Reid? Or McCain?

2006-06-03T22:32:00.000-04:00

I haven't covered it here yet (I should have. I've been really slack here lately), so in case you aren't already familiar with the latest GOP shill reporting by John Solomon at the AP, I'll bring you up to speed.

Basically, the AP goes with a story with a ton of holes in it trying to make it appear Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid (NV) had done something wrong. It turns out that Reid broke no rules at all. As I will point out, there really isn't much of anything to this supposed scandal of Solomon's, but if there is any impropriety involved, using Solomon's convoluted reasoning I suppose, then McCain is every bit as deep in it, and even more so, than Reid.

In a series of progressively more rediculous fabrications for the AP, John Solomon criticized Reid for accepting tickets to the Oscar De La Hoya-Bernard Hopkins bout, only they weren't tickets. What "Reid and McCain got weren't tickets available to the general public but "credentials" the [Nevada Boxing] commission gives only to public officials hoping to observe the commission's activity."

Solomon repeatedly tries to fault Reid for even accepting the credentials, "only, there is an exception for gifts from governmental agencies (like the Nevada Athletic Commission) in the Senate ethics rules. So there is nothing untoward about Reid having accepted" the credentials, or for McCain having done so either.

Solomon's beef with Reid appears to be that he shouldn't have accepted the gift without paying for it like he claims McCain did, when the Senate had legislation pending that involved the commission. The thing is, it would have been illegal for the commission to accept payment for them.

Recap: There was "nothing untoward" about Reid and McCain accepting the seats because the "credentials are given out to governmental officials and others in order to observe the commission's activity", so, if anything it begs as to how Mrs. McCain was also entitled to such a seat. And since the commission is prevented by law from accepting any money for them at all in any case, McCain's attempted reimbursal, which Solomon apparently feels exhonorate's him completely, actually went to charity because they couldn't accept it...

McCain, who brought his wife to the fight, sent Arum a check for the price of two ringside seats [Bullshit. See below]. Arum said he didn't know what to do with the money.

"Those credentials cannot be sold," he said. "There's no price on them. (They are given to) governors, attorney generals, boxing commissioners of other states. ... It's illegal to accept money for a credential."

Arum said he couldn't accept McCain's money but McCain wouldn't take it back, so Arum donated it to Catholic Charities. ...(more)

Despite Solomon's claim that McCain tried to reimburse the commission for two ringside tickets above, it appears he only tried to reimburse the commission the cost of a single ticket.
Her ticket, but not his?

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted on paying $1,400 for the tickets he shared with Reid for a 2004 championship fight," Solomon wrote. (...)

On the value of the tickets, both Ratner and Arum said the seats that Reid and McCain used for the Oscar De La Hoya fight were worth about $1,400 to $1,500 each. That's why McCain insisted on paying that amount. The commission arranged for McCain's check to be sent to Arum, who cashed it and donated the money to charity. ...(more)

For every reason Solomon is going after Reid, there is even more reason to fault McCain. Both Reid and McCain got their seats for free without reimbursing for them. McCain tried to reimburse for the price of one (his wife's) ticket. What's more, Reid went on later to vote against the interests of the commission on that pending legislation, so Solomon's whole story is a quid without a quo in any case.

How did McCain vote on that bill? I don't know yet, I'm just asking.

Also, as John Aravosis points out, Solomon has quite a history of just making shit up to smear Democrats for the Associated Press. ...

He's done it to Reid before...
and to Ambassador Joe Wilson,
and he's done it to Senator Dorgan.

Solomon appears to have a bad case of Gannon/Miller disease. The AP really needs to have this cyst excised before it spreads.

There Are Snakes on a Plane

2006-06-03T18:00:00.000-04:00

For real.
via Laura Rosen's War and Peace.

It Just Keeps Getting Worse

2006-05-31T23:24:00.000-04:00

U.S. Troops Kill Pregnant Woman in Iraq

:(

A young boy riding a bicycle looks across at a newly-erected warning sign put up Wednesday, May 31, 2006 on a road around 100 metres from the maternity hospital which Nabiha Nisaif Jassim, 35, a pregnant woman and her 57-year-old cousin Saliha Mohammed Hassan, were driving to for Jassim to give birth when they were killed in Samarra, Iraq Tuesday, May 30, 2006. U.S. forces apparently shot to death two Iraqi women, one of them pregnant, when they fired at a vehicle that failed to stop at an observation post in the town, Iraqi officials and relatives said. (AP Photo/Hameed Rasheed) [emphasis mine]

Why did they put up a new sign AFTER the shooting? Also, commenter over at Americablog, cadejo4, points out that the sign they put up "is not a highway checkpoint sign. It is a sign that would be found outside a coalition military base. The blacked-out portion may be the name of the base from which it was yanked. The checkpoint signs look like this:"

Now I don't know for certain that's the case with the signs, but it sounds about as SNAFU as the rest of this botched preventive war. From what I see, this shooting was unfortunate and more than likely avoidable, especially if the checkpoint was so poorly identified that they tried to play musical signs the next day to try and cover that fact up.

Again, I don't claim to be any kind of expert about these things, but it just seems common sense that if you're going to put a checkpoint in front of a hospital you would want to go overboard to let people know you are there. To not take into account that someone might be speeding up to a hospital and might not notice your signs sounds like yet another failure of leadership.

It reminds me of another horrible incident in Tal Afar last year. It also reminds me of the shooting of Sgrena.

:(

I Hope You Are Enjoying This Memorial Day

2006-05-29T16:54:00.000-04:00

Let me leave you with this to help remind us what this day is all about, and to put it in context with the realities we as a nation face today. ...

Sons & Daughters Video
by Chun Pan

Gonzales Threatens To Quit?

2006-05-27T02:32:00.000-04:00

This just sounds like bullshit to me.

Gonzales Said He Would Quit in Raid Dispute

NYT: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member's office, government officials said Friday.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.

The potential showdown was averted Thursday when President Bush ordered the evidence to be sealed for 45 days to give Congress and the Justice Department a chance to work out a deal.

The evidence was seized by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents last Saturday night in a search of the office of Representative William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana. The search set off an uproar of protest by House leaders in both parties, who said the intrusion by an executive branch agency into a Congressional office violated the Constitution's separation of powers doctrine. They demanded that the Justice Department return the evidence. ...(more)

Now, I don't like the damage this scandal is obviously doing to the Dems chances come Nov. But no other member of Congress in either party has been asked to quit or step aside from a committee that their alleged dirty dealings had no bearing on before they were even charged with anything. Also, I have some serious doubts as to whether he's even really guilty of a crime.

First, The setup where they caught Jefferson on tape taking money from an undercover agent and the search of his home where the money was found in his freezer happened almost a year ago, before Katrina. If they have what sure sounds like slam dunk evidence against him, why a year later no charges, when Cunningham has been thrown in jail in less time? Why would they even really need to search for more evidence?

Second, the simple fact that it was an undercover agent giving him the cash stinks of entrapment. They cannot dangle money in front of people to see if they will take it. That's entrapment. It surewouldn't be the first time the FBI overreached in a sting.

Remember John DeLorean?

... On October 26, 1982, DeLorean was arrested for putting up $1.8 million to bring 100 kilos of cocaine into the United States. DeLorean stood to make $24 million from the deal, and he told a confidential informant (CI) for the FBI that he intended using the proceeds to salvage his dream, the DeLorean Motor Company, which faced ruin. (...)

In 1984, DeLorean was acquitted of all charges after a federal judge ruled that the FBI operation had been a clear case of entrapment. ...(more)

I really think chimpyco might have gotten the FBI to entrap Jefferson because they saw all of the repuke scandals coming down the pike, and they wanted a dirty Dem to give them some cover. I think it's possible Jefferson may have even had evidence of his entrapment, and DOJ just came in and stole it.

I'm not just wildly speculating here. That's been Rove's history...

Election-year Investigations
Karl Rove and the FBI

Rove, as all the world knows, has been a longtime Republican political operative in Texas prior to heading to Washington with Bush. During that time, Texas Democrats noticed a pattern that they eventually became somewhat paranoid about: In election years, there always seemed to be an FBI investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. ...(more)

This seems important to this dicussion, don't you think?

Also, NONE of these people had to step down from anything before they were charged with a crime...

The GOP List of Shame
The ever-expanding list of Republicans mired in scandal, just in the past year.

Involving the Abramoff scandal
Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX),
Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH),
Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA),
Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH),
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT),
Rep. Dana Rohrabaker (R-CA),
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX),
Rep. Don Young (R-AK),
Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-CA),
Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
Rep. Steven LaTourette, (R-OH)
Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL)

Scandals besides Jack Abramoff,
Sen Bill Frist (R-TN)
Sen Conrad Burns (R-MT)
Sen Rick Santorum (R-PA)
Sen John Thune (R-SD)
Sen George Voinovich (R-OH)
Gov Taft (R) and Ohio Coingate
Ky. Gov Ernie Fletcher (R)
MS. Gov. Haley Barbour (R)
MO Gov. Matt Blunt (R)
Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Rep Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA)
Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA)
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
Rep Michael G. Oxley (R-OH)
Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA)
Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-CA)
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA)
Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC)
Rep. Katherine Harris ’06 Sen candidate (R-Fla)
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)
Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY)
Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY)
Brian Bilbray House Candidate (R-CA)
Ralph Reed ’06 Lt Gov Candidate (R-GA)
ex-IL Gov. George Ryan Sr (R)
Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to Vice President I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr
HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson
ex-Interior Secretary Gale Norton
Whitehouse OMB Official David Safavian
Whitehouse chief Domestic-policy Adviser Claude Allen
Ex-F.D.A. Comissioner Lester M. Crawford
DHS Chief Financial Officer Nominee David Norquist

Now, if the FBI were to lobby every member of Congress with an illegal quid pro quo that would net them $100K, how many would take it? Given all of the other scandals out there just this year alone, it's a safe bet more than just Jefferson would. Unfortunately our politicians have to spend more time chasing after the money they need to stay in office than they do actually performing the job we elected them to do. We need public campaign financing to fix this problem.

If Congress cannot order searches of the Whitehouse, the Whitehouse cannot order searches of Congress. It's called co-equal branches, because neither branch can be allowed to trump the other. I know this is probably more of an implied principle since this is not decided law yet, but it is very important. Every administrative position at DOJ/FBI serves at the pleasure of the President. The FBI is a tool of the executive branch.

Now, when Hoover ran the FBI, he kept everybody in check because he illegally spied on them. Even Presidents were afraid to mess with Hoover. Hoover was Director of the FBI for almost 50 years.

I think Chimpy is a lot like Hoover. that's why the search of Jefferson's office is so troubling to me.

OK, enough trying to defend Jefferson. If he's guilty, and I don't mean when a court finds him guilty, he knows damn well if he's guilty or not, and if so he needs to step aside now. I don't mean just from the House Ways and Means Committee, I mean, if he knows he's guilty, he needs to quit Congress altogether and get the hell out of my Party.

Nuff said.

We don't know half this story yet. Unfortunately I suspect not only Jefferson, but the whole Democratic Party is going to get the shaft out of this deal when all is said and done.

Hastert Makes the List

2006-05-24T20:16:00.000-04:00

Think Progress:
Speaker Hastert Under Investigation By the FBI Over Abramoff Ties

ABC News reports:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress. ...(more)

Hastert now officially added to the list...

GOP Culture of Corruption Indeed: The GOP List of Shame

World to Bush: FU!

2006-05-23T00:55:00.000-04:00

It's hard to fathom just how bad Bush has fucked up our country. It's waaaay past time we turn this ship of fools around.

An Anti-Bush Alliance

The GLOBE: COUNTRIES large and small are rejecting President Bush's foreign policy by intimidation, and are banding together to counter the US superpower. The next example may come from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional grouping that is considering adding Iran to its membership.

The Bush administration pretended to ignore last year's organization summit, at which the members -- China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan -- called for the United States to withdraw the troops it had stationed in Central Asia for the war that toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan. But the organization's foreign ministers meeting in Shanghai last week discussed a plan to accept four new members: India, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Iran. After that meeting, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov announced that Iran's belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would be attending a summit meeting on June 15 in Shanghai, along with the leaders of China, Russia, and the four Central Asian member states. That should get the Bush administration's attention. ...(more)

WWIII?

Kos Makes Appearance on New Lamont Ads

2006-05-22T22:21:00.000-04:00

Markos "Kos" Moulitzas brings a crowd of Ned supporters with him.

Remember the Kiss? Never forget the kiss.

See Lieberman jump for joy at Bush SOTU.

Bush: Oh Hell No!

2006-05-19T18:32:00.000-04:00

I'm too dam old to hafta be lurnin english.

GOP Culture of Corruption Indeed [Updated]

2006-05-18T12:03:00.000-04:00

Not Good News

2006-05-17T22:52:00.000-04:00

This was first reported almost 2 months ago in foreign media.
BBC NEWSNIGHT REPORT - BROADCAST 03/22/06

Today, Murtha confirms it was true. :(

Lawmaker: Marines killed Iraqis ‘in cold blood’

NBC News: Navy conducting war crimes probe into November violence in Haditha

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.” (...)

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right. ...(more)

NSA's Narus Knows and Sees All

2006-05-16T23:39:00.000-04:00

Ok, it's been confusing to try and follow the USA Today story that the "National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth." As USA Today has it, only Qwest denied the NSA access to the records, but now Verizon and BellSouth have issued denials, or perhaps they're better described as non-denial denials.

The thing is, from what is already known about the NSA wiretapping we can see that the telcos don't need to turn over their records. According to the whistleblower lawsuit against AT&T, which the government is trying to put a stop to altogether, AT&T has allowed the NSA to hardwire into the system to collect the data themselves, and they are able to comb through not only every telephone call, but also every web-browsing session, every email, the works. Do follow me on the few articles (H/T to Hornet)...

Administration cites state secrets in bid to derail spy lawsuit
... The government is taking that position in seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit filed in federal court here against AT&T Inc. over its alleged involvement in the surveillance program adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The federal government is invoking the "state secrets privilege" in arguing that the lawsuit must be thrown out because it threatens to divulge information that is deemed critical to national security. ...

Wiretap Whistle-Blower's Account

Former AT&T technician Mark Klein has come forward to support the EFF's lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged complicity in the NSA's electronic surveillance. Here, Wired News publishes Klein's public statement
... While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal. I saw this in a design document available to me, entitled "Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco" dated Dec. 10, 2002. I also saw design documents dated Jan. 13, 2004 and Jan. 24, 2003, which instructed technicians on connecting some of the already in-service circuits to the "splitter" cabinet, which diverts some of the light signal to the secret room. The circuits listed were the Peering Links, which connect Worldnet with other networks and hence the whole country, as well as the rest of the world.

One of the documents listed the equipment installed in the secret room, and this list included a Narus STA 6400, which is a "Semantic Traffic Analyzer". The Narus STA technology is known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets. The company's advertising boasts that its technology "captures comprehensive customer usage data ... and transforms it into actionable information.... (It) provides complete visibility for all internet applications."

My job required me to connect new circuits to the "splitter" cabinet and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with a technician back East, I learned that other such "splitter" cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

What is the significance and why is it important to bring these facts to light?
Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, web surfing or any other data. ...(more)

What is a Narus? Take a look at what Forbes had to say about Narus in 1999...

Narus knows what you are doing on the network
Forbes: For example, if someone in San Francisco makes a video conference call to New York and London, the probe captures the exact length of the call and then sends a log file, also known as a call data record (CDR) back to the database, which is housed on Narus' servers. The CDR is then used for billing purposes.

Want to know what Narus software can do? It can find out how much time you spent on the network, how many E-mails you sent, how long you played online video games, how many files you uploaded or downloaded and what web sites you accessed. "The idea is that a guy who sends only E-mails shouldn't be billed as much as the guy who is streaming video off the Internet," asks Stone.

Narus' software has the ability to capture thousands of such CDRs simultaneously. Soon it will be able to capture millions of these CDRs in real time, making it ideal for the super-fast fiber optic networks being built by companies like Qwest Communications qwst (nasdaq: qwst) and Level One levl (nasdaq: levl). ...(more)

If the AT&T whistleblower is correct, and it's a pretty safe bet he is because this administration is trying its damnedest to have the whole case thrown out on national security state secrets grounds, then the NSA is capable of monitoring everything we do online and over the phone. That would explain the telco's statements that they have not provided any records to the NSA, they've just opened the entire network & let the NSA gather its own records.

Don't Fall For The Telco Propaganda

2006-05-15T01:57:00.000-04:00

Telcos Seek to Deceive Bloggers with Cartoon

This Ad Is Bullshit!
It's posted on many blogs right now. It's a scam ad, paid for by big Telecommunications Companies like ATT and BellSouth, and it's against net neutrality. Don't let it confuse you.

MyDD: "There is a blogad buy from the Telecom companies on their new negative attack piece on net neutrality. I encourage bloggers who received the ad to link this to this blog post...." (more)

Why Net Neutrality Matters !!

Watch the video,
then sign the petition.

How would the gutting of Network Neutrality affect you?

Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.

Innovators with the "next big idea"—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.

Ipod listeners—A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.

Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their websites and online features to work correctly.

Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets. ...(more)

Save The Internet!

''Simply Put, Rice is a Liar''

2006-05-14T05:09:00.000-04:00

Professor Steve Almond Rocks!

Condoleezza Rice at Boston College? I quit

Open Letter in Boston Globe:

I am writing to resign my post as an adjunct professor of English at Boston College.

I am doing so -- after five years at BC, and with tremendous regret -- as a direct result of your decision to invite Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to be the commencement speaker at this year's graduation.

Many members of the faculty and student body already have voiced their objection to the invitation, arguing that Rice's actions as secretary of state are inconsistent with the broader humanistic values of the university and the Catholic and Jesuit traditions from which those values derive.

But I am not writing this letter simply because of an objection to the war against Iraq. My concern is more fundamental. Simply put, Rice is a liar.

She has lied to the American people knowingly, repeatedly, often extravagantly over the past five years, in an effort to justify a pathologically misguided foreign policy.

The public record of her deceits is extensive. During the ramp-up to the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform. ...(more)

Thank you, Prof. Steve Almond.
That's how to do the right thing.

H/T Chris at Americablog

Jeb Bush '08

2006-05-14T01:44:00.000-04:00

Are you ready to extend the Bush legacy?

Great campaign.
I love it.

lol

Leopold: Rove Informs White House He Will Be Indicted

2006-05-12T23:28:00.000-04:00

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

Details of Rove's discussions with the president and Bolten have spread through the corridors of the White House where low-level staffers and senior officials were trying to determine how the indictment would impact an administration that has been mired in a number of high-profile political scandals for nearly a year, said a half-dozen White House aides and two senior officials who work at the Republican National Committee. (...)

Sources close to the case said there is a strong chance Rove will also face an additional charge of obstruction of justice, adding that Fitzgerald has been working meticulously over the past few months to build an obstruction case against Rove because it "carries more weight" in a jury trial and is considered a more serious crime.

Some White House staffers said it's the uncertainty of Rove's status in the leak case that has made it difficult for the administration's domestic policy agenda and the announcement of an indictment and Rove's subsequent resignation, while serious, would allow the administration to move forward on a wide range of issues.

"We need to start fresh and we can't do that with the uncertainty of Karl's case hanging over our heads," said one White House aide. "There's no doubt that it will be front page news if and when (an indictment) happens. But eventually it will become old news quickly. The key issue here is that the president or Mr. Bolten respond to the charges immediately, make a statement and then move on to other important policy issues and keep that as the main focus going forward." ...(more)

That's certainly been their response to the USA Today NSA datamining story, and CNN/MSNBC has been shilling hard for them too. They keep talking about how the administration has boldly met with the issue head-on, refuting all of the rumors about it being illegal. 9-11 9-11 Terrorist Terrorist,Yadda Yadda... Moving on now he's going to have a speech on immigration.

WTF?

I can't frickin wait to see Turdblossom frogmarched out of the Whitehouse. They can try and spin that all they want.

Brad: On Electronic Voting

2006-05-12T21:32:00.000-04:00

Brad Friedman's latest at Huffington Post:

On Electronic Voting: We Were Always Right, They Were Always Wrong...

The Corporate Media Finally Begins to Notice

On November 20, 2004, in an article about those of us concerned about what happened in the Presidential Election, the New York Times wrote that such concerns were little more than "the conspiracy theories of leftwing bloggers."

What a difference a year and a half makes.

In this morning's NY Times we find this (actually, understated) headline, "New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems".

The "fears," of course, aren't "new" at all. But if that's what the NYTimes needs to do to save face, we're happy to look the other direction and applaud them for finally jumping in to cover what they should have been covering for the last two years. Every damned day.

The article covers the latest -- and most stunning -- security breach yet discovered in electronic voting machines. This time, it's a "feature" that Diebold has implemented on every touch-screen voting machine in the country. A "feature" to make it easier for them (and apparently every fraudster and/or partisan and/or terrorist in the world) to change the operating software in about one minute's time with nobody noticing and with no password necessary.

And there are no simple ways to correct the problem. ...(lots more)

NYT & WSJ Editorials Take on E-Voting Machines

2006-05-12T02:38:00.000-04:00

H/T BradBlog:

New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems

NYT: With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem.

"It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take place on Tuesday. (...)

The wave of high-tech voting machines was prompted by the 2000 election in Florida, which spotlighted the problems of old-fashioned punch card ballots. But the machines that soon followed have spurred division. Here in Chicago, where voters used both touch-screen and optical-scan systems in a March primary, it took officials a week to tally all the votes because of technical problems and human errors, touching off a flurry of criticism over the Sequoia Voting Systems equipment.

In Maryland this spring, the State House of Delegates passed a bill that would have scrapped touch-screen machines, but the Senate last month took no action on the bill, effectively killing the idea. (...)

The new concerns about Diebold's equipment were discovered by Harri Hursti, a Finnish computer expert who was working at the request of Black Box Voting Inc., a nonprofit group that has been critical of electronic voting in the past. The group issued a report on the findings on Thursday.

Computer scientists who have studied the vulnerability say the flaw might allow someone with brief access to a voting machine and with knowledge of computer code to tamper with the machine's software, and even, potentially, to spread malicious code to other parts of the voting system.

As word of Mr. Hursti's findings spread, Diebold issued a warning to recipients of thousands of its machines, saying that it had found a "theoretical security vulnerability" that "could potentially allow unauthorized software to be loaded onto the system." ...(more)

Reversing Course on Electronic Voting

WSJ: Some advocates of a 2002 law mandating upgrades of the nation's voting machinery now worry the overhaul is making things worse.

With the 2006 midterm elections approaching, proponents of the Help America Vote Act are filing lawsuits to block some state and election officials' efforts to comply with the act.

The Help America Vote Act called for upgrading election equipment to guard against another contested outcome such as the 2000 presidential vote. Among the flaws in balloting almost six years ago were antiquated hand-operated voting machines and punch-card ballots that were difficult to read. To redress that, members of Congress pushed for modernization, which could include touch-screen voting machines, on which ballots are cast and recorded solely electronically. At the time, the electronic voting machines were seen as a reliable contrast to the older technology.

The lawsuits -- nine so far -- coincide with a stampede by state and county officials to spend $3 billion allocated by Congress to help pay for upgrades. To comply with the Help America Vote Act, a number of states and dozens of counties purchased touch-screen voting machines. The deadline for spending the money is tied to each state's 2006 primary dates.

Arizona was sued this week over such purchases and Colorado election officials are likely to be sued next week. ...(more)

An otherwise good article, I must take issue with the WSJ editorial where towards the end it says "Despite common charges that the machines lack adequate security, no cases have emerged proving that a hacker or an insider has or could electronically manipulate the vote." That's Bullshit! They have either done no investigating the issue at all before making such a claim, or they are being purposefully deceptive.

I guess I should just be grateful that the Wall Street Journal even mentioned the issue at all.

Youth Sir! No Sir! Movement

2006-05-11T19:17:00.000-04:00

Not Your Soldier!

The Counter Recruitment Campaign to Starve the Beast

Above the Law

2006-05-10T23:37:00.000-04:00

Security Issue Kills Domestic Spying Inquiry
NSA won’t grant Justice Department lawyers required security clearance

AP: The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.

The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.

“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press. ...(more)

There's more...

NSA Has Massive Database of Americans' Phone Calls

USA Today: The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. ...(more)

Sorry Bastards!

White House Refuses to Obey Court Order

2006-05-10T22:32:00.000-04:00

So they finally released the logs of Abramoff visits to the White House, NOT!. This should have been good news, after all it was just reported earlier this month ...

AP: Abramoff was a $100,000 fundraiser for Bush and lobbying records obtained by the AP show his lobbying team logged nearly 200 meetings with the administration during its first 10 months in office on behalf of one of his clients, the Northern Mariana Islands. ...

Now. sure not all of those meetings had to have taken place in the White House, but we can be pretty damn sure it was a lot more than the TWO times they admitted to today, especially when those don't even include at least THREE other times they have admitted to previously. TIME even published a picture of him at one of the events.

This is bullshit. They were court ordered to release the records. It really is going to take the Dems to win back at least one house for there to be any oversight of this administration. McClellen sure wasn't kidding when he said "I wouldn't look at it as a complete historical record of things -- of events here at the White House." I have to expect we'll see them back in court over this. Also worth keeping an eye on is news that the Dems are suing for Ralph Reeds records too...

Democrats seek details on Reed's White House visits
Abramoff's ties targeted in lawsuit
The Democratic National Committee went to federal court Monday to obtain White House logs that show the comings and goings of prominent Republicans with ties to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, including political strategist Ralph Reed. ...

GOP Culture of Corruption Indeed

2006-05-10T18:08:00.000-04:00

Frist Favors Vaccine-Makers Over Public Safety

2006-05-09T12:29:00.000-04:00

Frist and Hastert couldn't even trust to debate in Congress whether the need is greater to the protect the public from vaccine-maker's negligence, or to protect the vaccine-makers from being sued by the public for their negligence. So they surreptitiously slipped a blanket exemption written by the vaccine-makers into the "defense spending bill in December without debate and in violation of usual Senate practice."

Let's be clear what this is all about. Next time you or your kid gets a shot, just know that if the shot has any adverse effects, Frist and Hastert have made sure you can't do shit about it. It's a direct response to this...

Deadly Immunity
June 16, 2005- When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic. ...(more)

Since that story ran, the government and the vaccine companies have flooded the spectrum with countering evidence disputing the relationship between vaccines and autism, not unlike the campaign of mis-information disputing global warming. Seriously, if there is indeed no link, then why did they feel they needed to covertly slip this by us?

Vaccine makers helped write Frist-backed shield law

E-mails reveal private meetings

Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group.

E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers show the organization met privately with Frist's staff and the White House about measures that would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines.

The communications were made public in a report released this week by the group Public Citizen. Its study follows a February story in The Tennessean that Frist, along with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., ordered the vaccine liability language inserted in a defense spending bill in December without debate and in violation of usual Senate practice. ...(more)

Will the Tomatoes Have an 'Irradiated by Depleted Uranium' Sticker?

2006-05-08T20:12:00.000-04:00

San Franciscans Take to
the Streets to Stop the War

The USDA on Iraq: Everything's Coming Up Rosy

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

"The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches, including specific examples of what each agency is doing to aid the reconstruction of Iraq," the May 2 e-mail from USDA speechwriter Heather Vaughn began.

The e-mail [was] sent to about 60 undersecretaries, assistant secretaries and other political appointees (...)

Another attachment "contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips , USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

This scoreboard, of course, will ensure you give it your best shot.

Now, you might still be scratching your heads, trying to figure out how this is going to work when people expect a talk about agriculture issues. Not to worry. The attachments -- which can be viewed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/fedpage -- show how easy it is to work a little Iraq happy talk into just about anything.

There's a sample introduction: "Several topics I'd like to talk about today -- Farm Bill, trade with Japan, WTO, avian flu . . . but before I do, let me touch on a subject people always ask about . . . progress in Iraq." See? Smooth as silk.

So then you talk about how "we are helping the Iraqi people build a lasting democracy that is peaceful and prosperous." If it looks like the audience is with you, try to slip in the old Iraq/al-Qaeda/terrorism link and say Americans are helping build a country "that will never again be a safe haven for terrorists."

Loop suggestion: With the polls showing that only about 40 percent of those surveyed actually still buy the linkage thing, you may want to use some discretion here lest you lose the audience.

The e-mail shows how to weave in a comment that times are tough for Iraqi farmers. "But revitalization is underway. President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq structured on three tracks -- political, economic and security."

Be crop-specific. "The Iraqis have also discussed specific products, like tomatoes, which they are anxious to export into the world community," the e-mail notes. ...(more)

H/T: Idea for title from Pete:
New!
Improved!!!
So DU enriched that pesticides are no longer necessary!
Iraqi Tomatoes® even double as fashionable night lights!

Decision On Rove Near

2006-05-08T01:33:00.000-04:00

Video via C&L:
Shuster: Prosecutors may have more on Rove

Shuster: The tea leaves seem to suggests that Karl Rove is going to get indicted and again these are just tealeaves, but first the judge talked about a resolution of Karl Rove coming soon and again remember, Karl Rove testified for the fifth time and he still has not been cleared. And secondly the body language of Patrick Fitzgerald was astounding. He went to such great lengths to try to avoid mentioning Karl Rove or talking about his status. That in of itself seemed to signal something unique....

...all the other attorney's are talking about evidence and there was evidence mentioned today involving documents and memos of, from Karl Rove to another administration official about Valerie Wilson. If they're talking about documents and memos as opposed to the Stephen Hadley email that Karl Rove wrote, in other words, if there are other emails or documents that would suggest that perhaps prosecutors have an even stronger case to suggest that Karl Rove didn't have memory problems, he was willfully trying to avoid remembering certain things to the grand jury, but we'll see pretty soon I think.

Leopold: Last Question Is Obstruction for Fitzgerald, Rove

Truthout: Hundreds of pages of emails and memos "discovered" by the White House in February and turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald show that Karl Rove played a much larger role in the Valerie Plame Wilson leak case than he had previously disclosed to a grand jury and FBI investigators.

In February, TruthOut was the first to report the existence of the 250 pages of emails from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Office of the President that were written in mid-2003.

Some of the emails and memos were written by Rove, and are part of a growing body of evidence suggesting he lied to the grand jury and the FBI and may have obstructed justice during the course of the investigation. It was following their disclosure that Fitzgerald advised Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, several weeks ago that he intends to indict Rove for perjury and lying to investigators. The lingering question, sources close to the case said, is whether Fitzgerald will add obstruction of justice to the list of charges that he has already drafted against Rove. (...)

Sources close to the case said that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales withheld numerous emails from Fitzgerald's probe, citing "executive privilege" and "national security" concerns. These sources said that as of Friday, May 5, there were still some emails that had not been turned over to Fitzgerald because they contain classified information in addition to references about the Wilsons.

While some news accounts over the past 10 days have reported that Rove's fifth appearance before the grand jury two weeks ago was to clear up testimony as to why he failed to disclose his conversation with Cooper and the email he sent to Hadley afterward, according to sources the bulk of Rove's testimony centered on why he had not disclosed the emails and memos and the larger role he played in the campaign to smear Wilson's reputation. ...(more)

Rove's Time in Limbo Near End in CIA Leak Case

Washington Post: Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is wrapping up his investigation into White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's role in the CIA leak case by weighing this central question:

Did Rove, who was deeply involved in defending President Bush's use of prewar intelligence about Iraq, lie about a key conversation with a reporter that was aimed at rebutting a tough White House critic?

Fitzgerald, according to sources close to the case, is reviewing testimony from Rove's five appearances before the grand jury. Bush's top political strategist has argued that he never intentionally misled the grand jury about his role in leaking information about undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame to Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003. Rove testified that he simply forgot about the conversation when he failed to disclose it to Fitzgerald in his earlier testimony.

Fitzgerald is weighing Rove's foggy-memory defense against evidence he has acquired over nearly 2 1/2 years that shows Rove was very involved in White House efforts to beat back allegations that Bush twisted U.S. intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to sources involved in the case.

That evidence includes details of a one-week period in July 2003 when Rove talked to two reporters about Plame and her CIA role, then reported the conversations back to high-level White House aides, according to sources in the case and information released by Fitzgerald as part of the ongoing leak investigation.

Additionally, one former government official said he testified that Rove talked with White House colleagues about the political importance of defending the prewar intelligence and countering Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. It was Wilson who accused Bush of twisting intelligence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear material from Africa. The official refused to be named out of fear of angering Fitzgerald and the White House. ...(more)

Don't Forget Our Veterans

2006-05-07T14:26:00.000-04:00

Powerful Message by TomSongs

Also, if you've not already heard Tomsongs' "BushWhacked", please do check it out too.

From their failure to commit the resources to Afghanistan necessary to fulfill that mission, then instead sending 10 times that # of troops to Iraq for a war based on lies, and now cutting back on the benefits that these soldiers most certainly earned and were promised, on every measure what Bush and the GOP-led Congress has done is reprehensible.

Vets May Be Denied Health Care

AP: At least tens of thousands of veterans with non-critical medical issues could suffer delayed or even denied care in coming years to enable President Bush to meet his promise of cutting the deficit in half - if the White House is serious about its proposed budget.

After an increase for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing by leaps and bounds, White House budget documents assume a cutback in 2008 and further cuts thereafter.

In fact, the proposed cuts are so draconian that it seems to some that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better. More realistic numbers, however, would raise doubts as to whether Bush can keep his promise to wrestle the deficit under control by the time he leaves office. ...(more)

The Commander-in-Thief and his rubber stamp Republican accomplices have screwed us all, but none of us more so than our men and women in uniform. Perhaps nowhere is that more obvious than in the fact that there are 50 veterans now running as Democrats this November. Visit their website.

How many vets are running for the GOP? (cue the crickets)

It's really no wonder why.

"...A Protest Against [the War] is a Terrorist Act"

2006-05-06T20:29:00.000-04:00

Spies Among Us

Despite a troubled history, police across the nation are keeping tabs on ordinary Americans

US NEWS: Since 9/11, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have poured over a half-billion dollars into building up local and state police intelligence operations. The funding has helped create more than 100 police intelligence units reaching into nearly every state.

To qualify for federal homeland security grants, states were told to assemble lists of "potential threat elements"--individuals or groups suspected of possible terrorist activity. In response, state authorities have come up with thousands of loosely defined targets, ranging from genuine terrorists to biker gangs and environmentalists. (...)

Many of the nation's new intelligence units are dubbed "fusion centers." Run by state or local law enforcement, these regional hubs pool information from multiple jurisdictions. From a mere handful before 9/11, fusion centers now exist in 31 states, with a dozen more to follow. Some focus exclusively on terrorism; others track all manner of criminal activity. Federal officials hope to eventually see 70 fusion centers nationwide, providing a coast-to-coast intelligence blanket.

The problem, skeptics say, is that no one is quite sure what the new rules are. "Hardly anyone knows what a fusion center should do," says Paul Wormeli of the Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute, a Justice Department-backed training and technology center. (...) Most federal funding for the centers now comes from the Department of Homeland Security, but DHS also requires no intelligence standards from its grantees.

At the state level, regulations on police spying vary widely, but a general rule of thumb comes from the Justice Department's internal guidelines that forbid intelligence gathering on individuals unless there is a "reasonable suspicion" of criminal activity.

Suspicion of spying is so rife among antiwar activists, who have loudly protested White House policy on Iraq, that some begin meetings by welcoming undercover cops who might be present. (...) In at least one case, an apparent undercover officer incited a crowd by faking his arrest. In Fresno, Calif., activists learned in 2003 that their group, Peace Fresno, had been infiltrated by a local sheriff's deputy--piecing it together after the man died in a car crash and his obituary appeared in the paper.

The California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, a $7 million fusion center run by the state Department of Justice, also ran into trouble in 2003 when it warned of potential violence at an antiwar protest at the port of Oakland. Mike Van Winkle, then a spokesman for the center, explained his concern to the Oakland Tribune: "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act." ...(more)

How far are we from some sort of minority report govt? Somebody needs to realize that these types of intrusions into our privacy will eventually result in a backlash. Just like current Bush foreign policy, this tactical overreach can only result in strategic failure. At some point, a big brother government will start turning otherwise peaceful people into the very terrorists they thought they were protecting them from.

People should not be afraid of their governments.

V

Why Do You Keep Lying Rummy?

2006-05-04T21:44:00.001-04:00

Video via C&L: Rummy called out in Atlanta!

Ray McGovern, who was in the CIA for twenty seven years asked him why he lied about the run-up to the Iraq war. Rumsfeld then proceeded to lie to McGovern to cover up his earlier statements about WMD's being in Iraq.
RUMSFELD: ...it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.
McGOVERN: You said you knew where they were.
RUMSFELD: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and...
McGOVERN: You said you knew where they were. Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words. ...(more)
ThinkProgress: Of course, Rumsfeld did say he knew where the WMD were. From ABC’s This Week, 5/4/03:
STEPHANOPOULOS: And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?
SEC. RUMSFELD: …We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

The man who called out the liar was on PBS Newshour just last week.
I really like this guy. :)

Video via Veredictum: Ex-CIA Analyst Ray McGovern Encourages Whistleblowing on War Crimes

Ray McGovern says that the "war of aggression" on Iraq, the secret "black" prisons, torture, rendition and other activities are "war crimes". The American people deserve to know when crimes are being committed by their government. McGovern says:
" That's the reason these prisons are overseas, because there is U.S. law, 18 U.S. Code 2441, the War Crimes Act, which forbids these activities, torture, rendition, putting people, disappearing people, and so forth. And so that's why these things are created overseas.

But my point is: This is not American. This is not the country that we serve. And when we see this happening, somebody has to speak out. "

Iraqi Soldiers Rip Off Their Clothes in Protest

2006-05-04T21:44:00.000-04:00

C&L has the video from Hardball of Iraqi soldiers protesting over their new assignments at a graduation ceremony.

I saw this on the Daily Show last night. It's just crazy.

It kind of reminds me of the new documentary SIR! NO SIR!, about the thousands of US soldiers who eventually refused to fight in Vietnam and helped to end the war.

Why Net Neutrality Matters

2006-05-03T21:53:00.000-04:00

This short video I ran across over at Nate's site provides the simplest explanation I've seen yet why this really matters. If Net Neutrality is not preserved by law, your internet provider will have the right to limit where you can go on the net. When you go to use Google, or try to visit a Blogger website like this blog, you may not be able to do so if your ISP doesn't want you to. Want to use an internet phone company like vonage? Not if your ISP wants you to use their internet phone service instead. Get the picture now? This is really F'ed up!

They can slow down your access, or firewall it off so you can't get there. ISP's will be able to use this ability to try and make (read 'extort') companies like Google to pay them to allow their customers access, or your ISP might redirect your browser to a similar company's site like Yahoo, or develop their own site and limit you to using it. In fact, this is already beginning to happen, and it will get worse if we don't step up now.
Watch the video,
then sign the petition.

How would the gutting of Network Neutrality affect you?

Google users—Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.

Innovators with the "next big idea"—Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the "slow lane" with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.

Ipod listeners—A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.

Political groups—Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay "protection money" for their websites and online features to work correctly.

Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets. ...(more)

Save The Internet!

How About Finishing One Thing Before Starting Another?

2006-05-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

As Bushco keeps pushing for another war with Iran, someone needs to remind them that they haven't even finished job 1 in Afghanistan yet. I don't give a rat's ass how many #2's they claim to have gotten, not while Osama, Zawhiri, and Omar are still chilling in a cave somewhere planning and orchestrating more attacks.

NYT: Building on a winter campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations and the knowledge that American troops are leaving, the Taliban appear to be moving their insurgency into a new phase, flooding the rural areas of southern Afghanistan with weapons and men. (...)

The fact that American troops are pulling out of southern Afghanistan in the coming months, and handing matters over to NATO peacekeepers, who have repeatedly stated that they are not going to fight terrorists, has given a lift to the insurgents, and increased the fears of Afghans. ...(more)

Insurgent Violence Flares in Afghanistan

VOA News: Violence continues to escalate in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, a provincial governor escaped an apparent assassination attempt outside his office in the Northeast. A day earlier, suspected Taleban gunmen killed a senior judge outside a mosque in Western Afghanistan.

The latest attacks are fueling concerns that the Taleban has regrouped and is gaining ground throughout the country.

In Southern Afghanistan, officials say many militants no longer bother trying to keep their presence hidden, and openly challenge local authorities.

In the capital, Kabul, NATO officials warn of increased suicide bombings to come, after suspected Taleban insurgents launched four suicide attacks in 48 hours. ...(more)

While we're at it, it's a good time to bring up this video again...

See what's really going on in Afghanistan

Video via David Edwards' blog

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Why CEOs Should Never Wage War

I Can Totally Relate to This Guy...

2006-05-02T15:42:00.000-04:00

One down,...

Brad: The report didn't specify, but the machine in question, and in the photos, was a Diebold AccuVote TSx (touch-screen) system. Look, people, those machines don't work anyway! Even when they're not smashed! ...(more)

[Update] Correction: The guy was twice as mad as earlier reported. 2 Down

More probs in Ohio today: E-VOTE MELTDOWN: Voters Given Paper Ballots as Machines Break Down in Ohio...

What Happened To Mission Accomplished?

2006-05-02T13:11:00.000-04:00

Watch this video. As if things weren't already bad enough in Iraq, chimpyco's belligerence continues to make it worse. Now we have Iraqi officials threatening to unleash waves of suicide bombers against the US troops...

VIDEO - Iraqi Officials Pledge Suicide Bombers to Stop Attack on Iran

The City Council of Al-Basra has vowed that it will "do everything in their power" to prevent U.S. forces from launching an attack on Iran from Southern Iraq. The Council said that it wanted to maintain a good relationship with neighboring countries. The Council believes that Iran has a right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

The head of Basra's City Council stressed their resolve to stop any attack by saying, "I assure you when we talked about martyring that it wasn't a slip of the tongue. Iraqis are known for their willingness to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of their principals."

This nonsense by the GOP about attacking Iran right now over their nuclear program needs to stop. Time out! It's got a lot more to do with Chimpy's low poll numbers, Bolton's 5 point insanity plan to help him recover from them, and Rove's scheme to make this years election about national security. Josh Marshall calls them on it:

The White House is now telling us that engineering a confrontation with Iran is a key part of their plan to resuscitate the president's dismal approval ratings in time to survive election day. (...)

With respect to what's coming on Iran, what is in order is a little honesty, just as was the case with the Social Security debate a year ago. The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.

This is a powerful message because it is an accurate message. We have many challenges overseas today. Chief among them, as one of the Democrats' senate candidates puts it, is "refocusing America's foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened." The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.

Go to his heart. Go to his weaknesses. Though the realization of the fact is something of a lagging indicator, the man is a laughing stock, whose lies and failures are all catching up with him.

To the president the Democrats should be saying, Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy. ...(more)

Touché

However, it occurs to me that we never caught Osama bin Forgotten, al Zawahri, or Mullah Omar for that matter, before we went into Iraq.

Perhaps it should be more like Hoping 3rd Time's a Charm is Definitely Not Foreign Policy!

Electronic Voting Switch Threatens Mass Confusion

2006-05-02T12:17:00.000-04:00

If you thought the 2000 election dispute was a mess, you aint seen mothing yet. Thanks to the HAVA Act '02, which was passed specifically because of what happened in Fla, every State will now be voting on electronic voting machines that are neither secure nor reliable. Magnify what happened in Fla times 50, and you'll be in the ballpark for what to expect...

This comes to us via Brad Blog:
As John Gideon asked in today's Daily Voting News, why is it that the Financial Times of London is reporting on our nation's electoral meltdown this year, while the national mainstream media in America couldn't seem to care less?

Financial Times: The last three election cycles in the US have been marked by controversy not only about candidates, but also about the fairness and accuracy of the voting process. And as voters head to the polls today for primaries in some jurisdictions, the coming cycle promises more of the same.

With about 8,000 separate election authorities managing approximately 175,000 polling places and perhaps as many as 150,000 different ballot forms that include choices for everyone from senator to dogcatcher, American elections are complex even when all goes well. But this cycle sees many states and smaller jurisdictions making last-minute efforts to switch to electronic voting, and early signs of trouble are appearing. (...)

After the 2000 presidential election made “hanging chad” a sure laugh line for television comics, Congress passed the “Help America Vote Act”, or Hava.

The law promised states funding to replace old voting technology with computerised systems.

The new systems fall into two categories – optical scan systems, in which voters mark paper ballots that are read by computer scanners, and direct recording electronic (DRE) systems in which voters touch computer screens or push buttons to mark their ballots.

But delays in setting standards, insufficient funding for Hava, and lack of technical expertise among the nation’s election administrators have election experts predicting the 2006 election will not run smoothly.

Last September, the US Government Accountability Office issued a report with a litany of potential flaws in the reliability and sec-urity of electronic voting and warned that steps needed to ensure voter confidence in the integrity of the vote were unlikely to be in place in time for the 2006 election. ...(more)

Shhhhhh! Don't Tell Anyone About This OK?

2006-05-02T03:35:00.000-04:00

Allright, if you promise to keep it a secret, then click to view it.

Is this part of the new and improved freedom?....

House Poised to Grant Arrest Powers to CIA, NSA

The House version of the 2007 intelligence authorization bill would grant CIA and NSA security personnel the authority to make arrests for "any felony" committed in their presence, no matter how remote from the foreign intelligence mission it might be, the Baltimore Sun reported today. ...(more)

I don't think I like it one bit, especially when the CIA has been turned into partisan operation.

h/t: Gaia :)

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Bush Declares May 1, Law Day

2006-05-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

Today is Law Day?!?!?! WTF?!?! Oh, the irony!

Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. ...(more)

btw, As almost always, you can click on the pics for more.

Cheney exempts his own office from reporting on classified material

As the Bush administration has dramatically accelerated the classification of information as "top secret" or "confidential," one office is refusing to report on its annual activity in classifying documents: the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

A standing executive order, strengthened by President Bush in 2003, requires all agencies and "any other entity within the executive branch" to provide an annual accounting of their classification of documents. More than 80 agencies have collectively reported to the National Archives that they made 15.6 million decisions in 2004 to classify information, nearly double the number in 2001, but Cheney continues to insist he is exempt. ...(more)

Lawbreaker-in-Chief Declares Law Day
by SusanG at Dkos:
From the White House: Law Day, U.S.A., 2006
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

America's legal system is central to protecting the constitutional principles on which our Nation was founded. As we observe Law Day, we celebrate our heritage of freedom, justice, and equality under the law.

This year's Law Day theme, "Liberty Under Law: Separate Branches, Balanced Powers," honors the wisdom of the separation of powers that the Framers of our Constitution established for the Federal Government. ...(more)

Suddenly, Out of Nowhere, The Truthiness Appeared

2006-04-30T20:35:00.000-04:00

See the entire performance here at You Tube: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

C&L has video from it too.

[Update] Send Stephen Colbert a thank you.

Mark Smith, the Whitehouse AP correspondent who intro'd Stephen, couldn't have given more fair a warning for what was to follow, and chimpy's face right after he says this is priceless:

"Mr President usually you and the politicians are the ones in the crosshairs at this dinner. Tonight, no one is safe."

Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Not Amused?

E&P: A blistering comedy “tribute” to President Bush by Comedy Central’s faux talk show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close. (...)

Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged the Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, “and reality has a well-known liberal bias.”

He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. “This administration is soaring, not sinking,” he said. “If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.” (...)

I really liked the hand gesture he offered to Scalia, and I must say, to Scalia's credit, he laughed heartily. Chimpy, on the other hand, wasn't taking it so well.

He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought " Valerie Plame." Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean... he brought Joseph Wilson's wife." He might have "dodged the bullet," he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't there.

Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, “photo ops” on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, "if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail." (..)

Those seated near Bush told E&P's Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had quickly turned from an amused guest to an obviously offended target as Colbert’s comments brought up his low approval ratings and problems in Iraq.

Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.

“This was anti-Bush,” said one attendee. “Usually they go back and forth between us and him.” Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy. “You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert,” he reported. ...(more)

USA Today had a piece on it too:Bush, Celebrities Attend Press Corps Dinner

Just as he so often brags about, Stephen Colbert definitely has balls. I don't even know how he manages to walk. The man needs a wheelbarrow. He was really showing them off earlier this week on his show....

Colbert shakes up Bill Kristol over PNAC ties

Earlier this week on his show, Colbert caught Bill Kristol completely off guard when he confronted him about PNAC. You never see anyone in the corporate media bring up the group founded by Kristol, Cheney, and Rumsfeld that openly made plans to invade Iraq since back when Clinton was still the President.

C&L has the video.

H/T to STOP George from the comments at Bradblog for the Colbert .gifs

Peace Takes Courage

2006-04-30T00:18:00.000-04:00

This story really hits home to me. I don't know Ava personally but her videos have always meant a lot to me. I've been linking to nearly every video she's made ever since the 3rd day of this blog.

15-yr-old gets death threats for anti-war video

MA Liberal at Dailykos: It seems that a young woman by the name of Ava Lowery, a 15-year-old from Alabama has been getting death threats for a powerful video she produced called "WWJD" (What Would Jesus Do)

So Ava made a video about it.

Now, that's courage. How is it that people can be so filled with hate? Nothing bad had better ever come to Ava.

I ♥ this girl.

Fitzmas Time In The City?

2006-04-28T05:13:00.000-04:00

Prosecutor Weighs Charges Against Rove in Leak Case

NYT: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case, is expected to decide in the next two to three weeks whether to bring perjury charges against Karl Rove, the powerful adviser to President Bush, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.

With the completion of Mr. Rove's fifth appearance before the grand jury on Wednesday, Mr. Fitzgerald is now believed to have assembled all of the facts necessary to determine whether to seek an indictment of Mr. Rove or drop the case. ...(more)

Now, before I go getting my hopes too far up (as if they're not already), let's take a step back and take a look at why Rove might have been testifying before the GJ for a 5th time. At first glance there appears to be a glaring contradiction between Leopold's reporting that Rove testified after having received a "target letter", and Rove's atty's claim that:

AP: Rove "testified voluntarily and unconditionally at the request of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to explore a matter raised since Mr. Rove's last appearance," Luskin said in a statement. "Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges."

Over at the Whiskey Bar, Billmon serves up a sobering dose of reality that seemingly reconciles that connundrum:

... I know Rove thinks he can tapdance his way out of anything, and Luskin may have every bit as high an opinion of his client's cleverness as the Evil One does himself. But still, given the stakes, and Patrick Fitzgerald's won-loss record, it seems to me Luskin is skating close to the edge of malpractice, if not over it. Being the guy who helped the president's brain get himself indicted is not a good way to boost your future billable hours.

Unless, of course, Rove wasn't there in the role of possible target, trying to fast talk his way out of an indictment, but rather in the role of a cooperating witness, delivering on his end of a plea bargain. (...)

This is precisely what Raw Story (which is compiling a pretty good record of its own in this case) said was in the process of going down last month:
Karl Rove, Deputy White House Chief of Staff and special adviser to President George W. Bush, has recently been providing information to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the ongoing CIA leak investigation, sources close to the investigation say.
According to several Pentagon sources close to Rove and others familiar with the inquiry, Bush's senior adviser tipped off Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to information that led to the recent "discovery" of 250 pages of missing email from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. (...)
Karl Rove has described his three and a half hour meeting with a grand jury as grueling, and is more worried about being prosecuted than ever, MSNBC is reporting.
The movie is The French Connection, and the scene is the one in which Popeye Doyle and his partner bust into a junkie bar, looking for a lead on the big shipment that's supposed to be hitting town. They rough up the regulars a bit, then Doyle picks one out and takes him back to the men's room -- for what we assume will be a private skull cracking session. But, when the door closes, we learn that the junkie is actually a snitch. Doyle finds out what the guy knows, and then, as he's getting ready to leave, asks him: "OK, where do you want it?" The junkie points to his eye and Doyle slugs him -- hard enough to draw blood. So the others won't get suspicious, you see.
It looks to me like Karl is showing off his bruises.

OK, I just threw out what I thought were a few of the tastiest morsals to Billmon's argument. You really should go read the whole thing. It's pretty damn compelling IMO.

Jane's not buying it though:

... Fitzgerald has quite a bit on Rover. Some think this is an indication Rove has flipped; I’m with Digby who thinks it’s more likely due to this:
Rove was no lawyer but he carried a kind of preturnatural confidence in court cases. Like in his high school debates, he always felt better than anybody in the room. He could beat anybody with the strength of his argument or the weight of his will. When a team of blue-chip lawyers in a tobacco case grilled Rove for a deposition some years earlier, he was not just confident, but arrogant, fending off their questions with playful insults. On the stand in the Kay Bailey Hutchison trial, he was masterful in frustrating the prosecution. Now he had a former U.S. Attorney General in his cross hairs, and as Rove sat at the table in the federal courthouse, he turned his head slowly and looked over at the defense table with the thin sliver of a smile. It was a dark smile, determined, and there was not mistaking the message: You are my enemy and you will pay.(Bush’s Brain p. 190)
Of course, as many others have noted, as far as the rats are concerned, it’s all about the 2006 election. They will do anything, say anything, sell anybody out and devote all their energies to stalling shamelessly to make sure Democrats never get subpoena power and start investigating their sorry asses. ...(more)

Huh? Now I'm not so sure what to think. That last paragraph though, especially "it’s all about the 2006 election", that much you can be sure of. It sure seems to me that throwing Cheney under the bus would be just about the best thing they could do to that end.

We'll just have to wait with bated breath and see how this thing plays out.

Rove About To Exit Stage Left?

2006-04-26T12:00:00.000-04:00

ThinkProgress: Rove Meeting With Special Prosecutor About Leak Case

John King, CNN’s political correspondent, just reported:
CNN is told by three force sources familiar with the investigation that this morning Karl Rove, the president’s deputy chief of staff and top political adviser, is meeting with his attorney and is to meet this morning — if it is not already under way — with the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. ...(more)

[Update] video via C&L: MSNBC/CNN Reports: Rove to testify

It's too soon to know, but I'm getting the impression Rove's days are numbered, and that the number is considerably less than the 999 days left in chimpy's Presidency. AP has more.

CIA Leak Prosecutor Goes to Grand Jury

AP: Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald early Wednesday went before a federal grand jury looking into the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.

It is believed to be only the second session the prosecutor has had with the grand jury which is examining questions left unanswered in the Plame affair. The only other time Fitzgerald was seen going before the new panel was Dec. 7. (...)

Fitzgerald's unfinished business includes White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, who was under investigation when the previous grand jury that indicted Libby expired. ...(more)

[UPDATE] Leopold reports that Rove is testifying because he was named as a target ...

Truthout: Target Letter Drives Rove Back to Grand Jury

Why We Fight

2006-04-24T15:42:00.000-04:00

I posted the trailer to this movie a while back. Now that it has aired on BBC, you can watch the whole thing online and even download it, thanks to Information Clearinghouse.

Why We Fight

What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.

Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life?

This is a very important movie. It's 1:40 minutes long. If you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to make time to watch it. You won't be disappointed.

Progress in Iraq?

2006-04-24T10:38:00.002-04:00

I haven't written much about Iraq lately, or much about Iraq at all really. It's hard to know where to begin.

Well, for starters, things sure aren't getting any better in Iraq. Eight US soldiers and dozens of Iraqis were killed over the weekend, and car bombs again rocked Baghdad monday morning, as work began on forming a new government there.

I wish that type of news was surprising, but sadly, those type of stories have become more and more frequent. Of course, as the Whitehouse would like you to know, all of what is happening in Iraq isn't bad. It's just mostly bad. There is always the National Review if you only want to hear the good news...

Iraq finally has a new prime-minister designate, Jawad al-Maliki. Maliki lived in exile during Saddam's reign, fleeing Iraq after a death sentence was placed on him. He has been active since returning to Iraq, working on de-Baathification and on the country's new constitution.

As much of the reporting on his appointment makes clear, it isn't known what kind of leader Maliki will be, but we should be encouraged by the fact that both Sunni and Kurdish political leaders have said they will support him.

In his first public speech, Maliki said that private militias will not be allowed, and must disband or join with the army.

Even with all of that success in Iraq, it's apparent the US isn't planning on leaving Iraq anytime soon. If it's not because of the oil (yeah right), then I don't understand. I mean Saddam is gone, they have a government, and there were no WMD's, so why are we committing ourselves to being there for another decade?

US forces planning for the long haul in Iraq
The US armed forces are planning to stay in Iraq for at least a decade, a media report claimed on Monday, quoting military strategists.

A report in Newsweek said that the 38 square kilometres mini-city and airport Balad was the evidence that American forces were preparing for the long haul.

They might be laying the groundwork for a decade of occupation, but I really don't believe the American public, or the world, will put up with 10 more years of this shit...

Stolen Away

As criminal gangs run amuck in Iraq, hundreds of girls have gone missing. Are they being sold for sex?
No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. A Western official in Baghdad who monitors the status of women in Iraq thinks that figure may be inflated but admits that sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam, has become a serious issue. The collapse of law and order and the absence of a stable government have allowed criminal gangs, alongside terrorists, to run amuck. Meanwhile, some aid workers say, bureaucrats in the ministries have either paralyzed with red tape or frozen the assets of charities that might have provided refuge for these girls. As a result, sex trafficking has been allowed to fester unchecked.

"It is a problem, definitely," says the official, who has heard specific reports from Iraqi aid workers about girls being kidnapped and sold to brothels. "Unfortunately, the security situation doesn't allow us to follow up on this." The U.S. State Department's June 2005 trafficking report says the extent of the problem in Iraq is "difficult to appropriately gauge" but cites an unknown number of Iraqi women and girls being sent to Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Persian Gulf countries for sexual exploitation. Statistics are further made murky by tribal tradition. Families are usually so shamed by the disappearance of a daughter that they do not report kidnappings. And the resulting stigma of compromised chastity is such that even if the girl should resurface, she may never be taken back by her relations. ...(more)

Abuses found in hiring at Iraq bases

Violations of laws on human-trafficking prompt U.S. military's order for change
The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of laws against human-trafficking and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr. ordered that contractors be required by May 1 to return passports that have been illegally confiscated from laborers on U.S. bases after determining that such practices violated U.S. laws against trafficking for forced or coerced labor. Human brokers and subcontractors from South Asia to the Middle East have worked together to import thousands of laborers into Iraq from impoverished countries.

Two memos obtained by the Tribune indicate that Casey's office concluded that the practice of confiscating passports from such workers was widespread on American bases and in violation of the U.S. anti-trafficking laws. ...(more)

First off, props to Gen Casey for apparently trying to get to the bottom of this problem. Why do they need to bring in forced or coerced labor from other countries when putting Iraqis to work is clearly needed to win the hearts and minds? Somehow I don't think the hearts and minds are going to be won as long as young women are being shipped out as sex slaves and shipping in slave labor.

I have to wonder if anything will really change though. Haliburton has frequently been cited for human trafficking abuses, and instead of stopping the practice they just lobby against it so that nothing ever gets done. Perhaps you remember this story from last December.

U.S. stalls on human trafficking

Pentagon has yet to ban contractors from using forced labor
Chicago Tribune: A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.

The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.

Just sickening. The US should nationalize the defense industry altogether. All of the Haliburtons and Dyncorps should be absorbed by the Pentagon. These companies don't bring the price down for the taxpayer, they extort the Pentagon and the taxpayer. Our military and our leaders have become puppets to these corporate behemoths. Watch Why We Fight.

Then there's this story.

Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails

Top General's Pledge To Protect Prisoners 'Not Being Followed'
Last Nov. 13, U.S. soldiers found 173 incarcerated men, some of them emaciated and showing signs of torture, in a secret bunker in an Interior Ministry compound in central Baghdad. The soldiers immediately transferred the men to a separate detention facility to protect them from further abuse, the U.S. military reported.

Since then, there have been at least six joint U.S.-Iraqi inspections of detention centers, most of them run by Iraq's Shiite Muslim-dominated Interior Ministry. Two sources involved with the inspections, one Iraqi official and one U.S. official, said abuse of prisoners was found at all the sites visited through February. U.S. military authorities confirmed that signs of severe abuse were observed at two of the detention centers.

But U.S. troops have not responded by removing all the detainees, as they did in November. Instead, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, only a handful of the most severely abused detainees at a single site were removed for medical treatment. Prisoners at two other sites were removed to alleviate overcrowding. U.S. and Iraqi authorities left the rest where they were.

This practice of leaving the detainees in place has raised concerns that detainees now face additional threats. It has also prompted fresh questions from the inspectors about whether the United States has honored a pledge by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that U.S. troops would attempt to stop inhumane treatment if they saw it. ...(more)

Forced labor, kidnappings and sex slaves, and torture. Is this the freedom and democracy chimpy has been pitching? Are these just unintended occurrences, perhaps enabled by an incompetent leadership, or are these things all part of the actual plan? You know, the old Orwellian say they're doing one thing but then do exactly the opposite, kind of like the Clear Skies, Healthy Forests, and No Child Left Behind?

:(

Manipulating the Intelligence: Macro

2006-04-23T17:52:00.001-04:00

David Corn: Is there now a partisan loyalty oath at the CIA?

Buried in the Washington Post article on the firing of Mary McCarthy at the CIA...

The White House also has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials.

Hmmm?

Not surprisingly, Josh some choice words to add...

CIA officers don't work under the same civil service rules as most government employees. But I still don't think this sort of political purge activity is permitted.

Not that we should be surprised about this. When Porter Goss took over as DCI he brought over with him a number of GOP political operatives. Take the CIA head of Public Affairs Goss installed: Jennifer Millerwise Dyck. She was a flack from the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign. Before that she worked for Goss on the Hill. And before that she worked for Ari Fleischer at the House Ways and Means Committee. ...(more)

I take no comfort knowing that our CIA is becoming a partisan operation. Even more so that they have been doing the same thing at the State Dept. I guess now the Whitehouse will be able to get their manipulated intel through without a dissenting opinion now. That ought to come in handy so they can bomb Iran.

The underlying issue here isn't about the leak of classified material, it's about government wrongdoing. This administration has bent/broken the rules and scoffed at any checks on its power from day one, and they've gotten away with it only because they have enjoyed a just as corrupt ever compliant Congress. In order to keep the whole thing out of the public arena, they just classify whatever the hell they're doing as secret.

McCarthy knew that the proper channels for whistleblowing this type activity do not exist, especially under this administration. This administration doesn't give a rat's ass about the law, and they go after anyone who tries to expose it. That should be obvious to everyone by now.

These are just a few of the whistleblower cases I know about under this administration, but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet there are hundreds if not thousands more that we don't get to read about:...

Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford

Bunnatine Greenhouse

Russell Tice

Stephen Heller

Tommy Ray Hook

Richard Convertino

Sibel Edmonds

And we all know what happened to Joe Wilson when he tried to call this administration to account.

Mary McCarthy knows how the system works. She also knows the deck has been stacked by this administration. The checks in our system of checks and balances are gone, and our Republican dominated government is morally bankrupt. When she saw first hand how the Bush administration was violating the Geneva convention using secret prisons, and she did what was morally the right thing to do. Our government leaders cannot be allowed to break the law by classifying their law-breaking as secret.

It may have been a fireable offense what Mary McCarthy did, but it was absolutely the moral thing for her to do. That fact played no small part in earning one of the reporters she leaked to, Dana Priest at the Washington Post, a Pulitzer Prize for national security reporting.

Our government needs more Mary McCarthys.

Let's Impeach the President

2006-04-23T15:56:00.000-04:00

Huffington Post has video of an interview with Neil Young talking about his upcoming protest album, "Living With War" and the song "Let's Impeach the President."

The cd will be free to stream over the internet sometime over the next week. I'm really looking forward to hearing it and seeing what kind of a reaction it will get.

Our Right To Free Speech Is Gone

2006-04-22T01:32:00.000-04:00

Reuters: A heckler from the Falun Gong spiritual movement who disrupted a White House appearance by Chinese President Hu Jintao was charged on Friday with harassing, intimidating and threatening a foreign official...

And Condi & Cheney Snoozed Through The Whole Thing

Is it really too much to ask that they stay awake on the job?

Uh-oh. This is bad

2006-04-22T00:31:00.000-04:00

This is very bad.

Dear Mr President

2006-04-21T22:38:00.000-04:00

OMG, Awesome song by Pink.

I....♥♥.....♥♥
...♥......♥......♥
....♥............♥
......♥........♥
...........♥...it!!

It totally blew me away.

h/t Joe at Americablog:
"You have to see it. Seriously."

Dixieland Band

2006-04-21T20:14:00.000-04:00

Freeway Blogger

I just pre-ordered the new Dixie Chicks CD.
It was only $10, well $13 with S&H.
You can order one here.

Listen to their new song
"Not Ready To Make Nice"

Or watch the video.

4/20 NPR is "Celebrating Stoner's Day"

2006-04-20T22:12:00.000-04:00

Listen to the episode on Morning Edition,

Did everyone get a cyber-hit of the conspiracy Weed?

I didn't mean to skip anybody. There's plenty to go around.

lol

I Have a Dream...

2006-04-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

Grand Jury Hears Evidence Against Rove

By Jason Leopold

Truthout: Just as the news broke Wednesday about Scott McClellan resigning as White House press secretary and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove shedding some of his policy duties, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald met with the grand jury hearing evidence in the CIA leak case and introduced additional evidence against Rove, attorneys and other US officials close to the investigation said.

The grand jury session in federal court in Washington, DC, sources close to the case said, was the first time this year that Fitzgerald told the jurors that he would soon present them with a list of criminal charges he intends to file against Rove in hopes of having the grand jury return a multi-count indictment against Rove.

In an interview Wednesday, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove remains a "subject" of Fitzgerald's two-year-old probe.

"Mr. Rove is still a subject of the investigation," Luskin said. In a previous interview, Luskin asserted that Rove would not be indicted by Fitzgerald, but he was unwilling to make that prediction again Wednesday.

"Mr. Fitzgerald hasn't made any decision on the charges and I can't speculate what the outcome will be," Luskin said. "Mr. Rove has cooperated completely with the investigation."

Fitzgerald is said to have introduced more evidence Wednesday alleging Rove lied to FBI investigators and the grand jury when he was questioned about how he found out that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA and whether he shared that information with the media, attorneys close to the case said.

Fitzgerald told the grand jury that Rove lied to investigators and the prosecutor eight out of the nine times he was questioned about the leak and also tried to cover-up his role in disseminating Plame Wilson's CIA status to at least two reporters.

Additionally, an FBI investigator reread to jurors testimony from other witnesses in the case that purportedly implicates Rove in playing a role in the leak and the campaign to discredit Plame Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence lead to his wife being unmasked as a covert CIA operative. ...(more)

Must See Gore's Award Winning Film...

2006-04-20T00:42:00.000-04:00

An Inconvenient Truth
See the trailer

Washington Post: Boring Al Gore has made a movie. It is on the most boring of all subjects -- global warming. It is more than 80 minutes long, and the first two or three go by slowly enough that you can notice that Gore has gained weight and that his speech still seems oddly out of sync. But a moment later, I promise, you will be captivated, and then riveted and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a handbasket. ...(more)

Rolling Stone Nails Chimpy Hard

2006-04-19T22:01:00.000-04:00

This is a really long great forward-looking take on the Bush Presidency's place in history. You need look no further than the cover to see where this is going. Even though this is a very long post, I have actually edited most of the article out. If you have more time, please do read the whole thing.

The Worst President in History?

BY SEAN WILENTZ

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history. (...)

How does any president's reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance. (...)

THE CREDIBILITY GAP

No previous president appears to have squandered the public's trust more than Bush has. In the 1840s, President James Polk gained a reputation for deviousness over his alleged manufacturing of the war with Mexico and his supposedly covert pro-slavery views. Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois congressman, virtually labeled Polk a liar when he called him, from the floor of the House, "a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man" and denounced the war as "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception." But the swift American victory in the war, Polk's decision to stick by his pledge to serve only one term and his sudden death shortly after leaving office spared him the ignominy over slavery that befell his successors in the 1850s. With more than two years to go in Bush's second term and no swift victory in sight, Bush's reputation will probably have no such reprieve. (...)

More than half the country now considers Bush dishonest and untrustworthy, and a decisive plurality consider him less trustworthy than his predecessor, Bill Clinton -- a figure still attacked by conservative zealots as "Slick Willie." (...)

BUSH AT WAR (...)

No other president -- Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War -- faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president's own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies -- including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill -- suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president's supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security. The wise men who counseled Bush's father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, "There is a higher Father that I appeal to."

All the while, Bush and the most powerful figures in the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were planting the seeds for the crises to come by diverting the struggle against Al Qaeda toward an all-out effort to topple their pre-existing target, Saddam Hussein. In a deliberate political decision, the administration stampeded the Congress and a traumatized citizenry into the Iraq invasion on the basis of what has now been demonstrated to be tendentious and perhaps fabricated evidence of an imminent Iraqi threat to American security, one that the White House suggested included nuclear weapons. Instead of emphasizing any political, diplomatic or humanitarian aspects of a war on Iraq -- an appeal that would have sounded too "sensitive," as Cheney once sneered -- the administration built a "Bush Doctrine" of unprovoked, preventive warfare, based on speculative threats and embracing principles previously abjured by every previous generation of U.S. foreign policy-makers, even at the height of the Cold War. The president did so with premises founded, in the case of Iraq, on wishful thinking. He did so while proclaiming an expansive Wilsonian rhetoric of making the world safe for democracy -- yet discarding the multilateralism and systems of international law (including the Geneva Conventions) that emanated from Wilson's idealism. He did so while dismissing intelligence that an American invasion could spark a long and bloody civil war among Iraq's fierce religious and ethnic rivals, reports that have since proved true. And he did so after repeated warnings by military officials such as Gen. Eric Shinseki that pacifying postwar Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of American troops -- accurate estimates that Paul Wolfowitz and other Bush policy gurus ridiculed as "wildly off the mark." (...)

BUSH AT HOME

Bush came to office in 2001 pledging to govern as a "compassionate conservative," more moderate on domestic policy than the dominant right wing of his party. The pledge proved hollow, as Bush tacked immediately to the hard right. Previous presidents and their parties have suffered when their actions have belied their campaign promises. (...) But no president has surpassed Bush in departing so thoroughly from his original campaign persona.

The heart of Bush's domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts -- a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush's father once ridiculed as "voodoo economics." Bush crowed in triumph in February 2004, "We cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket." The claim is bogus for the majority of Americans, as are claims that tax cuts have led to impressive new private investment and job growth. While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush's tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services. The lion's share of benefits from the tax cuts has gone to the very richest Americans, while new business investment has increased at a historically sluggish rate since the peak of the last business cycle five years ago. (...)

The monster deficits, caused by increased federal spending combined with the reduction of revenue resulting from the tax cuts, have also placed Bush's administration in a historic class of its own with respect to government borrowing. According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever -- with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush -- sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that "prosperity is just around the corner" -- insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place! (...)

The one noncorporate constituency to which Bush has consistently deferred is the Christian right, both in his selections for the federal bench and in his implications that he bases his policies on premillennialist, prophetic Christian doctrine. (...) The White House's sectarian positions -- over stem-cell research, the teaching of pseudoscientific "intelligent design," global population control, the Terri Schiavo spectacle and more -- have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls "the first religious party in U.S. history." (...)

The Bush White House's indifference to domestic problems and science alike culminated in the catastrophic responses to Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had long warned that global warming was intensifying hurricanes, but Bush ignored them -- much as he and his administration sloughed off warnings from the director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit. (...)

PRESIDENTIAL MISCONDUCT

Virtually every presidential administration dating back to George Washington's has faced charges of misconduct and threats of impeachment against the president or his civil officers. (...)

The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. Yet that mighty advantage has not prevented the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges stemming from an alleged major security breach in the Valerie Plame matter. (...) It has not forestalled the arrest and indictment of Bush's top federal procurement official, David Safavian, and the continuing investigations into Safavian's intrigues with the disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, recently sentenced to nearly six years in prison -- investigations in which some prominent Republicans, including former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed (and current GOP aspirant for lieutenant governor of Georgia) have already been implicated, and could well produce the largest congressional corruption scandal in American history. It has not dispelled the cloud of possible indictment that hangs over others of Bush's closest advisers. (...)

History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. There has always been a tension over the constitutional roles of the three branches of the federal government. The Framers intended as much, as part of the system of checks and balances they expected would minimize tyranny. (...)

Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president's powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious "signing statements," which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn't bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases -- using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush's violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.

Bush's alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. "I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president," Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton's efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. "No man is above the law, and no man is below the law -- that's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country," Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. (...) In the face of Bush's more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening. (...)

Bush has failed to confront his own failures in both domestic and international affairs, above all in his ill-conceived responses to radical Islamic terrorism. Having confused steely resolve with what Ralph Waldo Emerson called "a foolish consistency . . . adored by little statesmen," Bush has become entangled in tragedies of his own making, compounding those visited upon the country by outside forces.

No historian can responsibly predict the future with absolute certainty. There are too many imponderables still to come in the two and a half years left in Bush's presidency to know exactly how it will look in 2009, let alone in 2059. There have been presidents -- Harry Truman was one -- who have left office in seeming disgrace, only to rebound in the estimates of later scholars. But so far the facts are not shaping up propitiously for George W. Bush. ...(more)

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Feingold & Progressive Patriots

2006-04-19T17:39:00.000-04:00

Check out the video (WMP) that Feingold and the Progressive Patriots Fund put together about Bush and the NSA wiretapping scandal.

Then you can visit their website, & sign the petition.