Sandra Day O'Connor Warns of Dictatorship

What must Sandra Day O'Connor have been thinking over these past few months, as one Republican after another praised her service, speaking about her in glowing terms, all the while salivating at her departure?

Here is (thanks to links from Poetic Justice through Huffington Post to Raw Story linking to NPR) what she thinks about them.


Supreme Court justices keep many opinions private but Sandra Day O’Connor no longer faces that obligation. Yesterday, the retired justice criticized Republicans who criticized the courts. She said they challenge the independence of judges and the freedoms of all Americans. O’Connor’s speech at Georgetown University was not available for broadcast but NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg was there.

Nina Totenberg:

In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.”

But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

And then she took aim at former House GOP leader Tom DeLay. She didn’t name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case. This, said O’Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress’ onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O’Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O’Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.

It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn’t help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn’t name him, but it was Texas senator John Cornyn who made that statement, after a Georgia judge was murdered in the courtroom and the family of a federal judge in Illinois murdered in the judge’s home.

O’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms, recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges, stripping the courts of jurisdiction and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for decisions that political leaders disagree with.
I, said O’Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
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Either we listen to the warnings by patriots like Dwight Eisenhower, Cindy Sheehan, John Murtha, and Sandra Day O'Connor, and we act on them, or we are doomed to the fate worked on us by men like Delay, Cornyn, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush.

Listen up, America, or surrender.

In The Name of God

Watch This Video

Thanks to Poetic Justice.

Read his poem from March 10, "Undone Trembling."

Persuasion Needed for 2006, Not Impeachment

Lots of people are talking about impeachment.

Garrison Keillor proposes it, saying "Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence."

We see articles almost every day by very thoughtful people on AlterNet, CommonDreams, Truthout, Buzzflash and other websites and blogs advocating impeachment.

In my home state of Vermont, five towns (we just had town meeting day) voted to impeach Bush. Lewis Lapham at Harper's magazine has editorialized in favor of impeachment. And, of course, Rep. John Conyers has been leading the effort in Congress to demand the House of Representatives investigate impeachable offenses by the President. The list goes on and on. There are alot of people working on this issue. Way too many.

No doubt there are sufficient reasons to believe that this administration has committed impeachable offenses which need to be investigated. No doubt the alleged offenses committed by this Bush/Cheney government far exceed the alleged offenses the Republicans used to stampede the Congress into impeaching Bill Clinton and put him on trial in the Senate.

"No one died when Clinton lied" pretty much sums up the difference between the two cases. But I worry that this campaign to impeach Bush looks a little too much like "tit for tat," that too many Americans are going to feel like it is partisan revenge. Let's put away the nuclear option for now and persuade Americans why we must overturn Bush's control of Congress. There are enough good and justifiable reasons to do so. We need persuasion, not impeachment. We need to win in November, not feel moralistic and virtuous.

A letter to the International Herald Tribune says that if Bush were the CEO of a corporation, he'd have been out of the job a long time ago. Wishful thinking, at best. Bush is the CEO of the United States government and he has delivered astounding profits and benefits to the corporate syndicate that owns and operates this country, otherwise known as the shareholders of the government. Bush's allies in Congress appreciate all he has done for their clients. They are not going to impeach Bush.

The Senate can't even get one committee to hear evidence about alleged illegal wiretapping by the NSA. Does anyone really believe that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and United States Senate are going to impeach George Bush and then put him on trial with this current Congress?

Stand up, go directly to the House and Senate candidate you can support, give money, make calls, get your friends together to work with you, walk the precincts, get out the vote, register people, put up signs, host fundraisers, talk to undecided voters, talk to Republicans who have concerns about Bush, persuade, persuade, persuade.

America Crashes into the Race Issue

"The majority of whites are probably genuinely convinced that America is a color-blind society, and that equal opportunity is a reality."

Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes about Crash, the Oscar winner for Best Movie, and contends that it deserved to win because it forces both blacks and whites to confront our racial stereotypes. He claims what makes the picture unique is the black perceptions of the stereotypes. He says:

If many whites think racial equality is a reality, that's more proof to many blacks that whites are in deliberate racial denial. But many whites don't claim blacks are treated equally simply to mask their racial hostility to blacks. They no longer see "Whites only" signs and redneck Southern cops unleashing police dogs, turning fire hoses on and beating hapless black demonstrators. Whites turn on their TVs and see legions of black newscasters and talk show hosts, topped by TV's richest and most popular celebrity, Oprah Winfrey.

He expands on this with more descriptions of black successes and then offers an alternate view of the world of white people:

On the other hand, many blacks erroneously assume that whites live an Ozzie-and-Harriet life of bliss and are immune to personal and social angst. They are puzzled when middle-class whites shoot up their suburban schools, and neighborhoods, bludgeon their children in their homes, use and deal drugs, have high suicide rates and commit bizarre anti-social acts. They don't hear and see whites' pain.

While I understand he is writing solely about the complexity of black-white relations, Hutchinson does leave out the Latino and Asian characters in the film who also are victims of racial stereotyping and conflict. He doesn't actually come out and say it, but my conclusion is that whites and blacks, along with Latinos and Asians --poor, low income, and middle class -- are both being subjected to common pressures by a world that is not very generous to them, a corporate and political world that inflicts pain on them in ways that ought to unite them.

Hutchinson concludes:

A mix of economic slippage, political cynicism and personal alienation, not blind racial hatred drives much of white anger toward blacks. An equal mix of personal alienation, false perception and distrust drives much of black anger toward whites. That's the not-so-subtle message of "Crash."

There is a compelling interest for the ruling corporatocracy to keep us divided, preserving as many racial, social and religious divisions as possible. As long as we are not united in our opposition to corporate economic and political hegemony, we will be fighting the wrong battles.

Frist Threatens to "Restructure" Senate Intelligence Committee

Senator Bill Frist is doing all he can to make certain the Senate Intelligence Committee doesn't do all it can to investigate alleged illegal intelligence activities of the Bush administration. Frist thinks that "oversight" and "threat assessment" have nothing to do with potential wrongdoing in the intelligence activities conducted by this administration. As Bush lapdog, there is nothing that this administration could do that would justify Frist supporting any investigation by the US Senate. He understands that the last thing Republicans need between now and November is an investigation of these potentially explosive issues. Of course, Frist's motivations have nothing to do with politics.

"I am increasingly concerned that the Senate Intelligence Committee is unable to carry out its critically important oversight and threat assessment responsibilities due to stifling partisanship that is exhibited through repeated calls by Democrats on the committee to conduct politically-motivated investigations," wrote Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in a March 3 letter to Minority Leader Sen. Harry Reid. Language in Frist's letter clearly threatens to "restructure" the committee if it does not behave the way he believes it is supposed to behave.

Instead of looking into illegal intelligence activities, which one would think is a germane issue for this committee, Frist wants the committee to turn a blind eye and take up matters relating to the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran, the military buildup of China, and Islamic radicalism. And there is the familiar refrain from Republicans when they get into trouble: while the Democrats want to undertake "politically motivated" witch-hunts, the Republicans want to continue to defend this country from evil.

"I agree with Senator Frist," Senator Reid replied, "the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has been bogged down by partisanship."

"When faced with strong evidence that the Bush Administration has misused intelligence..., time and again the Senate Intelligence Committee has ducked its responsibilities and refused to hold the Administration accountable. The recent record of the Republican-controlled committee is most notable for its abdication of authority and responsibility," Sen. Reid said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to vote on March 7 (today) on a proposal by Senator Rockefeller to conduct an investigation of the NSA warrantless surveillance activity. After having felt the uncomfortable and uncompromising strong-arm of the White House, Republican Senators and members of the Committee, Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel, have vowed to vote with the Democrats to make sure the hearings happen. The open question then will be whether Senator Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Committee, will find ways to work with Frist and other Republican leaders to delay and even effectively stop the hearings, or whether he will acquiesce to the will of the majority of the Committee and hold the hearings.

The ultimate question: Just how far will Frist and the White House go in trying to sabotage any hearings? If the Majority Leader decides to restructure the Committee, how long will that take and what consequences will that have for Senate "oversight" and "threat assessment."

[Thanks to Federation of American Scientists -- Secrecy News]

Fake Virginity

Perhaps the ultimate in Orwellian rewriting of history is the relatively new surgical technique known as hymenorraphy (hymenoplasty), or hymen repair surgery. It takes 45 minutes to perform and recovery for women takes six weeks. The surgery is particularly popular in cultures where there is a social and religious imperative for brides to have an intact hymen before marriage. There are a dozen or so American medical clinics and physicians who offer the procedure and it costs anywhere from $2000 to $5000.

For most women who don't sit around all day preserving the status of their hymens, living sedentary lives careful not to place any stress on their groins, the odds of their having intact hymens by the time they marry are not good anyway, even if they have never had sexual intercourse. Research has shown that many women, through normal ordinary physical activity, -- not to mention the increased numbers of young women around the world involved in sports, yoga, dance, horsebackriding, etc. -- tear or rupture their hymens long before they are betrothed. Tampon use is another frequently cited cause for lack of intact hymens.

In cultures governed by strict religious and social beliefs and practices, it can be a matter of life and death for a young woman whose hymen is not intact. To varying degrees, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Judaism all have formalized beliefs and teachings regarding virginity.

In India and Egypt, for instance, husbands or family members of either the husband or the bride sometimes feel justified to murder the bride if it is discovered that she has no hymen. Although outlawed in most countries, and condemned by religious authorities as well, there are cultural and social compulsions that drive male members of some families to punish their brides or daughters, sometimes fatally. No questions asked, just death. In some rare cases, more than one member of the family joins in.

Happily, however, in 1996, the English medical journal, The Lancet, reported that there was an 80% decrease in the death of brides in Eygpt because of the availability of hymen repair surgery. How fortunate that young women in Egypt don't have to die because they have lost their hymen sometime during their youth, in most cases through no fault of their own. They can now undergo corrective surgery, because of a patriarchal demand that they be pure and clean, judged only by the physical health of their hymens.

In countries like Egypt and Turkey, the procedure is very expensive and is out of reach for most poor women, who, of course, continue to be the women most often suffering the consequences. Because the consequences of not bleeding during first sexual intercourse on the marriage night can be so severe, many hymenoplasty procedures, especially in Muslim and Hindu countries, involve the attachment of a small sack of red liquid to simulate bleeding so that the husband can be reassured of his bride's virginity on his wedding night.


Naturally, there is no test to determine whether a man is a virgin before marriage, nor any requirement, social or otherwise that he be a virgin. The hymen, by the way, is named after a man, a mythical one at that, but nevertheless a male. Hymenaeus is the Greek god of weddings and marriage. He leads the wedding procession and prepares the marriage feast. He is the brother of Priapus, the bastard son of Aphrodite (the father is unknown) and the god of virility and fertility. In many parts of the world, marriage, therefore, is definitely a male event. Priapism in today's sexual lingo is both a medically defined long-term, painful erection, but also has become a sign of tremendous male virility -- the never-ending erection. Look out, girls!

Women are murdered around the world for many reasons -- failing to conceive, failing to conceive males, failing to submit to prostitution, failing to obey a husband or male family member, failure to provide a large enough dowry. Not having a hymen is yet another way women fail in the eyes of the patriarchy. And how fortunate for some physicians, who now have yet another way to make money off of women's "imperfections."

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Here's a Wikipedia entry about "honor killings" that has many sources and other links, as well as a list of some countries that explicitly and implicitly permit or forgive or punish lightly men who murder their wives.

Troops Want to Come Home in 2006

From Zogby International, from the Le Moyne College/Zogby Poll

Released: February 28, 2006

Results:

-- 72% of the troops say they would like to see an end to US involvement in the war in 2006;

-- just one in five troops want to heed Bush call to stay “as long as they are needed;”

-- while 58% say the US mission is clear, 42% say U.S. role is hazy;

-- a plurality believes Iraqi insurgents are mostly homegrown;

-- almost 90% think war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11, most don’t blame Iraqi public for insurgent attacks;

-- a majority of the troops oppose use of harsh prisoner interrogation;

-- a plurality of troops pleased with their armor and equipment.

The Global Idiot Smiles Superciliously

Of emergency funding for a program that provides energy assistance (home heating) to the elderly, Trent Lott stood up and said, according to Bob Geiger: "What is it we are not going to give people for free? Is there any limit? Is there any limit to the amount of money?" asked Lott, adding snidely "I thought we were having global warming."

From Evan Derkasc

A Chilling Story

If you did not hear or see this on Democracy Now! , read the interview here with a Veteran's Affairs nurse in New Mexico who was investigated by the FBI for sedition for writing a letter criticizing the Bush administration's failures with the Katrina response and with its Iraq war policy. Her letter to a local alternative newspaper, written by her at home, calls on the American people to "act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit."

She goes on to describe how intimidated she has felt by this action, and how her co-workers feel the intimidation, too. The logical conclusion to this kind of government response would be to investigate every American who writes about or speaks about acting forcefully to remove this President. Acting forcefully for most Americans is organizing to vote, promoting a groundswell for impeachment, letter writing campaigns about Bush's lies and deception, mass exposure of the Bush/Cheney government's illegal actions, speaking out in every forum available to bring light on this corrupt government, and writing in every newspaper, blog, magazine, and other vehicle available about the need to replace this government with one that supports the American people.

I hereby declare myself among the millions of other Americans, including members of Congress who want to act forcefully to remove this President through impeachment. I further declare that I want to act forcefully to remove Republican members of Congress in November 2006. Furthermore, I want to act forcefully to overthrow the corporate rule that has undermined and limited our democracy. Bring it on, FBI. Come investigate me and millions of other Americans for SEDITION.

Here's the real crime:

This Bush/Cheney government can't protect our ports because it's spending billions waging war in Iraq, but it does have the personnel and time to investigate some Veteran's Affairs nurse in New Mexico for speaking out against them.

[Thanks to AlterNet]

Parade Magazine Warns America

Almost 34 million Americans receive Parade Magazine as inserts in their Sunday newspapers. Somehow I missed this front-page article Are They Taking Away Our Freedoms?.

It is well worth reading and considering that what is usually an inoffensive newspaper stuffer that usually features movie actors on the cover, stories about heroic police officers, and photo contests involving pets, has warned Americans that their freedoms are eroding because information is being increasingly withheld from them by their government.

One highlight:

There are more than 4,000 people scattered across the federal government with the authority to classify documents, from those in the Pentagon and CIA to the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency. In 2004 alone, 15.6 million documents were classified—about 125 documents a minute—costing more than $7 billion of your tax dollars.

The article contains a sample list of some of the information that is classified or "restricted." Here is one example:

Thousands of boxes of documents captured in Iraq. Many of these came from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Service and may contain information on insurgents fighting today. For the most part, they remain unclassified. Nevertheless, the new office of the Director of National Intelligence is resisting their release and examination, even though some experts believe they could help our forces in Iraq as well as point to what U.S. intelligence got right and wrong before the war.

It's a big thing that this normally neutral and innocuous national magazine has explicitly warned the American people about such an erosion of their freedoms.

Anonymous Speaks

The thing I like least about Blogger is that people get to post comments anonymously. I would much prefer to have a dialogue with people who have the courage of their convictions sufficient to identify themselves, especially when they write in opposition to your ideas.

I recently wrote a piece entitled Denying the Holocaust and Satirizing Muhammad which resulted in the following comment on an entirely different post, but which responded directly to this one.

Anonymous said:

I just read an article where you referred to Irvin's [sic] views as 'hideous'..... here is the reality... as I see it and I've been investigating the subject for about a month .... even though the allies captures tons of Nazi documents and intercepted secret communications... there is zero documentary evidence of a 'final solution'.... there is zero physical evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz (there is one gas chamber 'reconstructed' by the Soviets) and zero evidence of bodies at Treblinka ... all there is forced confessions and survivor testimony ... much of which is absurd on its face ... e.g. Elie Wiesel's 'Night' which has no mention of gas chambers although he was at Auschwitz.. he says the Nazis killed the Jews by burning them in pits.. absurd on its face....

This guy has been investigating the "subject," I presume he means the Holocaust, for a whole month and he is such an expert now that he can declare there is zero documentary evidence of a 'final solution'....zero physical evidence of gas chambers at Auschwitz...and zero evidence of bodies at Treblinka." He also claims that it is "absurd on its face" that Nazis killed Jews by burning them in pits." On this last one he is probably closer to the truth because the Nazis usually shot people in the back of the head and pushed them into pits before burning them.

Here is my response to Anonymous' comment:

To Anonymous -- As opposed to Austria, in this country you can say something as evil and stupid as you have and not be prosecuted for it. You don't even have to remain anonymous to say such things. You can use your real name. But I understand why, after having written what you did, that you might not want to identify yourself. It's ok, anonymous, Americans put up with your kind of hateful garbage all the time.

Now, in response, Anonymous, employing every ounce of his vast intellectual prowess, has responded to me by peppering my blog with one repeated comment, as follows:

You're an idiot.

That's it. That's the sum total of his cognitive and forensics skills.

But the whole point of my piece, in the first place, was that Anonymous is a prime example of the concept of free speech and how we tolerate almost anything in this country, no matter how immature and ignorant.

"A Corporate Citizen of Florida"

In response to a letter from Rep. Henry Waxman to Florida Governor Jeb Bush about his involvement in a no-bid selection of Carnival Cruise Lines, based in Florida, as supplier of three cruise ships to house refugees from Katrina, one of his spokespeople, Russell Schweiss, responded this way:

"The governor's involvement was merely facilitating contact with a corporate citizen of Florida that was seeking to provide immediate housing relief," Schweiss said. "Any assertion the governor had to do with any contracting negotiations or further action by FEMA is unfounded."

Don't you just love the use of "corporate citizen" in this context? It's like Jeb Bush had a whole bunch of "citizens" to choose from and he chose this one so this particular "citizen" could get in on the action, in the amount of $236 million of taxpayer money. The fact that this "citizen" has been a solid corporate donor to his campaign made little difference in his choice, of course. The fact that Carnival is a convicted corporate citizen criminal bore little influence on the decision either.

Carnival Cruise Lines has lied about its involvement in housing the Katrina victims being revenue neutral. In fact, during this time when normal paying passengers would be aboard, there would be an additional 800 employees that Carnival would normally be paying whom they are not paying while the refugees are aboard. So Carnival is actually making additional millions in profit. Did anyone think Carnival was doing this out of the goodness of its heart?

There were probably not many cruise lines that might have been able to benefit from the taxpayer money, but the least the government could have done is gotten some bids from other cruise lines, other so-called "corporate" citizens, on behalf of the American taxpayer, all of whom are also "citizens," last time I checked.

The Last Refuge of A Scoundrel

Chickenhawk Cheney, who gets more bellicose and snarling as he gets older, has issued a challenge to Washingtonians, Democrat and Republican alike. Here is what he said when he addressed the 46th Annual American Legion Conference in Washington yesterday:

Here in Washington, if any believe America should suddenly withdraw from Iraq and stop fighting al Qaeda in the very place they have gathered, let them say so clearly. If any believe that America should break our word and abandon our Iraqi allies to death and prison, let them make it known. If any believe that America should be safer -- or would be safer with men like bin Laden and Zarqawi in charge of Iraq, let them try to make that case.

This is the core of the Bush/Cheney government's argument. Quitting is cowardly, leaving Iraq would be a disaster, stopping our fight against Al-Queda in Iraq would be surrender, breaking our word and abandoning Iraq would be sentencing them to death and prison, America will be very unsafe if bin Laden and Zarqawi take over in Iraq. If you disagree with any of this, you are a cowardly, anti-American supporter of terror and you probably applauded after 9/11.

The direct message of Cheney's challenge is that he and Bush are the only ones who know how to protect us, and that any and all critics should just shut up.

This is the last refuge of this administration. Everything else around them is wreckage of their bumbling incompetence and greed, and they are making their last stand with their American flags on their lapels and their incessant war speeches.

This is what must be thrown back into Cheney's face at every opportunity:

1. You shut up, you fake patriot;
2. No one is advocating surrendering to Al-Queda;
3. No reasonable critics are advocating "sudden" withdrawal from Iraq;
3. You lied about reasons for the invasion of Iraq;
4. You lied about al-Queda being in Iraq;
5. You are wasting our troops and our country's future in Iraq;
6. You are fighting the wrong war on terror;
7. You are bankrupting America;
8. You are guaranteeing our country's future dependence on Saudi Arabia for oil;
9. You are ignoring the fact that the largest opposition, by far, to the US presence in Iraq is Iraqi, not al-Queda;
10. Only 18% of the American people support you, Cheney;
11. America will be safer when you are gone.
12. We have had enough of you. Go shoot something.

There, you want someone to speak up, Mr. Cheney? That's what people in Washington need to say to you, you phony, flag-waving, small-minded bully.

Bush: Don't Know Much About Nuttin'

This is directly from the official White House transcript and records the conversation between President Bush and a student at Kansas State University who wanted to know about the $12.7 billion in cuts in the education budget and how that was going to help "our" futures.

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Q Hi, I just want to get your comments about education. Recently, $12.7 billion was cut from education, and I was just wondering how that's supposed to help our futures? (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Education budget was cut -- say it again. What was cut?
Q Twelve point seven billion dollars was cut from education, and I was just wondering how is that supposed to help our --
THE PRESIDENT: At the federal level?
Q Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: I don't think that -- I don't think we've actually -- for higher education? [LAUGHTER] Student loans?
Q Yes, student loans.
THE PRESIDENT: Actually [LAUGHTER], I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We're not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren't going to be cut off the program. We're just making sure it works better. Part of the reconciliation package, I think she's talking about. Yes, it's a reform of the program to make sure it functions better. It is -- in other words, we're not taking people off student loans, we're saving money in the student loan program because it's inefficient. And so I think the thing to look at is whether or not there will be fewer people getting student loans. I don't think so. And, secondly, on Pell grants, we're actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget.
But, great question. I think that the key on education is to make sure that we stay focused on how do we stay competitive into the 21st century. And I plan on doing some talking about math and science and engineering programs, so that people who graduate out of college will have the skills necessary to compete in this competitive world.
But I'm -- I think I'm right on this. I'll check when I get back to Washington. But thank you for your question. (Applause.)

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The official White House transcript leaves out several places where there is not applause, but actual laughter [which I have inserted]. Bush's discomfort with the question is obvious and his turning behind him to someone there to help him out is pretty funny. He is literally tongue-tied so he asks the student to repeat the question. It's as if no one ever told him he might get a question about education cuts if he went to a university to speak. Bush finally gathers himself and delivers a stream of gobbledygook about making the student loan program more "efficient," the standard word used by corporate hatchet men to justify cutting people's jobs, eliminating their livelihoods, and shrinking their opportunities. Our hatchet-man-in-chief ends by saying he'll check it all out when he gets back to Washington, like cutting the education budget is not something he really knows much about. Is it really all that important?

Perhaps the oddest thing he said, without meaning to be funny, was:

And I plan on doing some talking about math and science and engineering programs, so that people who graduate out of college will have the skills necessary to compete in this competitive world.

I can imagine how reassured American students must be that the hatchet-man-in-chief turned professor-in-chief is actually going talk about math, science and engineering. If they listen hard to George Bush, maybe they'll have enough credits to graduate.

If you want to see and hear what actually happened at the January 23rd event, here is video of it. [Thanks to MediaChannel.org]

Anti-Semitism

Here is a transcript from Iranian TV which featured a seminar on how the Jewish Walt Disney company created the cartoon Tom & Jerry as a public relations ploy to erase the European view that Jews were like "dirty mice."

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Some say that this creation by Walt Disney will be remembered forever. The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon. It is still shown throughout the world. This cartoon maintains its status because of the cute antics of the cat and mouse, especially the mouse.
Some say that the main reason for making this very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was prevalent in Europe.
[...]
If you study European history, you will see who was the main power to hoard money and wealth, in the 19th century. In most cases, it is the Jews. Perhaps that was one of the reasons which caused Hitler to begin the anti-Semitic trend, and then the extensive propaganda about the crematoria began... Some of this is true. We do not deny all of it.

Watch Schindler's List. Every Jew was forced to wear a yellow star on his clothing. The Jews were degraded and termed "dirty mice." Tom and Jerry was made in order to change the Europeans' perception of mice. One of terms used was "dirty mice."

I'd like to tell you that... It should be noted that mice are very cunning...and dirty.
[...]

No ethnic group or people operates in such a clandestine manner as the Jews.
[...]
Read the history of the Jews in Europe. This ultimately led to Hitler's hatred and resentment.

As it turns out, Hitler had behind-the-scene connections with the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion].

Tom and Jerry was made in order to display the exact opposite image. If you happen to watch this cartoon tomorrow, bear in mind the points I have just raised, and watch it from this perspective. The mouse is very clever and smart. Everything he does is so cute. He kicks the poor cat's ass. Yet this cruelty does not make you despise the mouse. He looks so nice, and he is so clever... This is exactly why some say it was meant to erase this image of mice from the minds of European children, and to show that the mouse is not dirty and has these traits.

Unfortunately, we have many such cases in Hollywood shows.

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The Wall Street Journal reports that just outside Paris, France, Ilan Halimi, a 23-year old Jewish man, was kidnapped, tortured, stabbed, and brutalized for 24 days by Muslim men who invited Muslim neighbors in to torture him while they talked on the phone with the family about a ransom and while his screams could be heard by the family in the background. Although some French authorities tried to classify the crime as simply a case of kidnapping for ransom money, it quickly became apparent that he was targeted precisely because he was Jewish. There have been other attempted kidnappings of Jews in France, and one other Jewish man was murdered because he was Jewish. [Thanks to A.B.]

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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.

Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist (1623 - 1662)

Staring Into the Abyss: Two Perspectives

William F. Buckley, not known as a flame-throwing lefty, pinko, tree-hugging kind of guy, has stated the obvious: "One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed."

Buckley presses on with inexorable logic: "Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols."

On the other hand, we have National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley yesterday expounding on how well everything is going in Iraq. Appearing on many of the Sunday TV talk shows, Hadley delivered the Bush message yet again: "It is a time of testing for Iraqis... They've stared into the abyss a bit, and I think they've all concluded that further violence, further tension between the communities, is not in their interest."

On the same Fox News website page reporting on Hadley's remarks, we have three headlines:

"Baghdad Curfew Continues as Violence Persists"

"Sectarian Attacks Surge Despite Curfew in Iraq"

"14 Commandos Bodies Found"

Hadley's casual rumination that the Iraqis have "stared into the abyss a bit" reminds me of the story of the guy who has jumped off the Empire State building and being asked, as he plummets to the ground, "How are things going?," he answers: "So far, so good." I am surprised Hadley didn't say, "We are moving forward."

In William F. Buckley's eyes, two basic postulates about Iraq, put forward by the Bush government, have gone wrong, and Hadley is perfect example of blind adherence to these. The first failed premise, says Buckley, is that "from the beginning, ... the Iraqi people, whatever their tribal differences, would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom." The second Bush "postulate" says "that the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymakers to cope with insurgents bent on violence."

While Buckley is unapologetic about Bush's overall foreign policy, he concludes that Iraq is a "defeat" the President must swallow. He claims that Bush can do so without bringing ruin to the rest of his efforts in the world.

Yet on February 24, at a press briefing at the White House, Hadley said this in response to a question about Iraq:

"Obviously, the destruction of the Golden Mosque, and then the subsequent attacks on Sunni religious sites is very troubling. And the President has been very strong in condemning it. It's a testing time. It's a difficult thing that Iraq is trying to do, to go from 30 to 40 years of tyranny, where sectarian groups were largely repressed and oppressed, to those groups now to try and establish an inclusive democracy, where they all can live comfortably in a unified state."

During those years Hadley talks about, Saddam Hussein killed Kurds and Shiites precisely because of their sectarian identity. And yet, Hadley holds firm to his hope that these sectarian groups, in response to American liberation, would want or be able to create an "inclusive democracy" in a comfortable "unified state." This is the kind of delusional thinking that has formed the basis of the failed Bush policy and which is bankrupting the American people.

Staring into the abyss, Hadley continues to say "so far, so good," while William F. Buckley says it is time to cut our losses.

Dear Lee Scott:

My modest advice for Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart.

Dear Lee Scott:

Pay your employees higher wages, give them better benefits, improve their working conditions, permit union organizing, and you will have a more effective workforce and a better company.

Do the smart thing. Make your company an example of the best in America when it comes to worker treatment. Demand from your foreign suppliers that they improve their worker's living and working conditions. Use your huge financial clout for good, not for exploitation and greed.

Talk to Ray Anderson at Interface, the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, about how you can take another path, a path that respects your workers and earth's resources and makes Wal-Mart a sustainable company.

If you continue with your present policies, your company will ultimately fail because it cannot sustain itself based on taking from the earth and humanity and giving nothing in return. Don't be shortsighted. Your place in history can be one of virtue and good, or it will be one of avarice and injustice. I fear your business soul is on the road to iniquity and degradation if you don't do the smart and good things. You may lose your job trying, but you will set and example others will follow.

I have no doubt you will ignore this advice, but you will remember me and everyone else who has given it to you when the time comes for you to be judged by history and, I am sure in your own eyes, by your maker.

Sincerely yours,

Stephen McArthur

Free Speech as Skank, Sleaze and Hate

In line with two of my last blog entries, let's take a look at hate-monger Ann Coulter's exercise of free speech. Here are some of the things she has said:

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. (after 9/11)

We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice [John Paul] Stevens' crème brulée.

Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do.

Isn't she advocating the assassination of a Supreme Court Justice?

If I were to declare that someone should blow up the White House, wouldn't I be investigated by the Secret Service? Wouldn't I be guilty of advocating the assassination of the President of the United States? I think that is a crime.

Why is it not a crime for Ann Coulter to suggest that someone kill a Supreme Court Justice?

Or is this free speech, protected by the Constitution?

Where do we draw the line?

Congress's Disgraceful Bankruptcy Law Punishing Good Americans

The Congressional do-gooders who passed the punitive and contemptible bankruptcy law last year probably will not care that all signs are now pointing to how the law is actually serving to punish good Americans who are in trouble through no fault of their own.

Somehow those feckless Senators and Representatives thought that millions of ne'er-do-well Americans were jacking up huge debts by running amok with credit cards and then capriciously trying to duck their responsibilities by getting out of paying for their immaturity and immorality. Those Senators and Representatives thought it high time that all those people be punished for their bad behavior. While it is true that there are some people who behave badly with their money and look for the easy way out, they really are in a small minority.

Despite many warnings about how punitive the law would turn out to be, it was passed and now Americans who are in trouble are paying for it. They are being punished because they have lost their jobs or suffered business reversals, had catatastrophic medical events, or had a spouse die. According to a recent study, almost 80% of Americans who are filing for bankruptcy are suffering because of one or more of those adverse developments in their lives. The United States Congress has made the lives of those Americans even more miserable.

Tha National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, which conducted the study by surveying 61,000 potential bankruptcy filers at six national credit counseling agencies, says:

(T)he credit counseling requirement under the new law, designed to steer debtors who could repay their debts into a debt management plan [DMP], simply imposes new costs and time burdens on individuals who can ill afford either – and clearly are not the people for whom a DMP is feasible...

The study found that only 3% of those people who are potential filers actually have the means to pay back even some of their debts.

Will any of those who voted for the banckruptcy law even notice? Does it matter at all to any of them that Americans who lose their jobs, have medical crises, or lose a spouse need our help, not a slap in the face?

Free Speech in Texas

Just this week, in Houston, Texas, we have had a new challenge to our right of free speech.

A Houston police officer publicly criticized Houston police regulations with regard to police chases which he thinks endanger the public. He was muzzled and assigned to a desk job. A US District Court Judge has ruled in favor of the police department and told the officer he needs to shut up. The judge's ruling is being appealed on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

Where is the line that a democratic society can draw that would effectively define what this police officer can or cannot say? If he had spoken about the policies privately, would it have gained his criticism any more credibility or acceptance? Does the issue of public safety override in this case? Is this police officer essentially a whistleblower, speaking up against all these wild and dramatic car chases that have become mesmerizing events on television? If we muzzle his speech in this case, are we not muzzling our right to know what government does that may or may not be in the public interest?

Police forces are para-military organizations that run on a chain of command basis, and I know they must have discipline in the ranks. But isn't this a case where the ability to exercise free speech is imperative? If we cannot allow individual police officers to question such a major police practice, one that certainly impinges directly on the public safety, then how will we ever obtain knowledge and information about such practices and their faults? If a woman police officer spoke out about egregious gender discrimination within a police department, would she be guilty of insubordination or should she be allowed her exercise of free speech? Is it any different that a police officer believes these highly publicized chases are endangering the public?

It's not like there is some kind of wild revolt happening within police departments around the country. This is a very specific criticism made by an officer about a very specific practice. If he considers it an illegal order to chase a suspect to the point of threatening the safety of the public, then he should have the right to say so. In the same way, a soldier has the right to refuse an illegal order if he believes it is wrong.

Denying the Holocaust and Satirizing Muhammad

Austria has just convicted a man for denying the Holocaust and sent him to jail for three years. There are now other Austrians objecting, saying the sentence was too lenient, and he should go to jail for ten years.

Using the same logic of justice, the Danish cartoonists who have defamed Muhammed should have their hands cut off or be beheaded.

Yes, there is substantial difference between going to jail for three years and being beheaded, but the end result is the same -- muzzling free speech.

I believe that denying the Holocaust is hideous and trying to inflame anti-Semitism by doing so is reprehensible. But I do not believe that someone who publicly claims the Holocaust did not happen should be prosecuted and jailed.

I remember almost 30 years ago being incensed when the ACLU defended the right of the National Socialist Party (the American Nazi party) to hold a rally in Skokie, Illinois, a community heavily populated by Nazi concentration camp survivors. A national debate swirled around these events, but the courts of the United States all agreed that the American Nazis had a right to march.

It made my stomach turn, but I was faced with the reality that I had to support their right to march or I could, some day, be surrendering my right to march to some tryant just like the Nazis who would prevent me from marching if they were in power.

European silence in the face of this conviction in Austria is shocking, especially while they are defending the right of the cartoonists in Denmark to satirize anyone they please. How is it different for the present-day Austrian government to send someone to jail for saying something the government does not permit, than for the Nazi-ruled Austrian government of 1942 to jail someone for saying something it didn't permit back then?

I don't want to paint the Austrian courts as tryannical; I do understand how Austrian history drives the Austrian law against Holocaust denial. But where do you draw the line? How can Austrians support the Danish cartoonists' rights to publish their cartoons allegedly defaming Muhammed (I assume millions of them do), but at the same time support a law in their own country which denies freedom of speech about the Holocaust? Where does the line get drawn? What about people who proclaim that the Pope is the devil? What about people who promote the idea that the world is flat? How about Muslims who believe that non-Muslims are infidels? How about born-again Christians who believe and proclaim publicly that as a non-born again Christian I am going to burn in hell for an eternity? Do they have that right to say that about me?

I know we have to have some reasonable restrictions on free speech, such as not being able to yell "fire" in a theater when there isn't one, but if we let the tyrants choose whom to jail or execute because they are saying things we oppose, then we have already given up our democratic rights to those who do not support the idea of free speech under any circumstances.

NOW Statement on South Dakota Abortion Law

South Dakota Ban on Abortion Signals Pitched Court Battle Over Roe v. Wade

Statement of NOW President Kim Gandy

In passing a law today that bans all abortions except when the life of the woman is at stake, South Dakota legislators gave right-wing zealots what they have been waiting for since the 1992 Casey decision: another shot at Roe v. Wade. That landmark decision recognized a woman's fundamental right to privacy in deciding whether to continue her pregnancy.

By a vote of 50-18 in the House and 23-12 in the Senate, state lawmakers virtually assured a legal battle that will reach the Supreme Court. And given the current breakdown of the High Court, whose two newest justices have a history of opposition to women's rights, the outcome could well be a reversal of Roe.

Every Senator who did not filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Sam Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor will share responsibility for what follows.

The Corporation

At the end of the film The Corporation, Ray Anderson, Founder and Chairman of Interface, the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, tells a group of business people that we need another industrial revolution, that the first industrial revolution got it wrong, and that we need to get it right this time around. He tells these business people that we have created a world in which corporations are all behaving in ways that are unsustainable for the planet and that our very future is at stake.

Anderson is one of the leaders of a small green revolution among corporations, a pioneer with a passion for changing the world's corporate culture away from a merely profit-driven exploitation and waste of earth's resources and toward a corporate sustainability that, at the very least, does no harm, but which, at best, begins to reverse the adverse environmental and social consequences of corporate abuses.

The Interface website describes its motivations this way:

Inspired chiefly by Paul Hawken's treatise, The Ecology of Commerce, Ray heightened the company's awareness and led changes in technology in an effort to move toward being environmentally sustainable. Admittedly, Interface is not there yet; however, the company is developing processes and technologies to get it there. What this means, primarily, is learning to harness solar, wind, biomass and other forms of green energy and providing raw material needs by harvesting and recycling carpet and other petrochemical products, while eliminating waste and harmful emissions from its operations. Ray believes that if Interface, a petro-intensive company, can get it right, it will never have to take another drop of oil from the earth. The philosophy guiding Ray's passion for this cause is simply that it is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing, too.

Corporations have taken over every part of our daily lives and constitute an unelected center of power that impinges on every thing in our lives. From the corporate control of our media -- what we see, hear, and read -- to what we eat -- agribusiness controlling the production, distribution, and quality of our food, what chemicals are used in that production without our knowledge and against our will, we have little choice but to ingest their products. From the pharmaceutical companies that control the quality and prices of medical discoveries paid for in large part through taxpayer subsidies, and which, at the same time, are buying patented control and ownership of the genetic code of human life to the corporations in every industry that have bought and paid for influence in every strata of our national, state and local legislatures and governments.

Using what is perhaps one of the most terrible mistakes of history, namely the Supreme Court decision that established the corporation as a "person," the corporation has aggrandized for itself a series of "rights and privileges" that have helped it avoid citizen oversight and control. It has become a power in and of itself that has acquired rights (such as free speech) that were intended for human citizens of the United States. Like individual citizens, corporations are allowed to own property, pay taxes, exercise certain Constitutional rights like free speech, enter into contracts, and otherwise behave as if they were a person. One of the few things they cannot do is become a citizen and vote. Of course, I would argue that their intensive and overwhelming financial involvement in the electoral process makes this last point irrelevant.

As such, corporations have become immune to the normal controls that would require them to work in the "public interest," the original intent of the laws governing the chartering of corporations over 150 years ago. Today, the "public interest" is so low on the list of priorities for corporations as to make it invisible. In everything corporations do --whether it is inventing new drugs to cure disease, publishing newspapers to provide us information, giving money to candidates for public office, producing a new pesticide, building a new factory, hiring new employees, establishing workplace safety standards, setting new wages for workers -- corporations make decisions based on one overriding thing: profit.

And, moreover, they are required by law to make a profit, first and foremost.

Jeff Milchen of ReclaimDemocracy says:

Because maximizing return to shareholders is legally required of corporate officers, profit must be the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. Profit necessarily takes precedence over community well-being, worker safety, public health, peace, environmental preservation, and national security.


What Ray Anderson is doing is "the smart thing," but it is also the tiniest of things in comparison to what needs to be done. The vast majority of corporations have yet to experience Ray Anderson's personal revelation and conversion, and the likelihood of their doing it on their own, like Anderson, is pretty slim. It is going to take citizen action unlike any we are seeing now, the overthrow of corporate dominated national and state legislatures, the repeal of old laws and court decisions, the passage of new laws, and a media that is an ally of this kind of citizen action.

How we get to that point is the challenge we face. But it needs to begin this coming November. If you are not involved in any campaign for a candidate that will work toward this end, get involved. If you don't have the time, donate money. If you are broke, write letters to the editor about why these changes need to happen and why new people need to be elected to make these changes.

If you suspect that I have just had the opportunity to watch the film, The Corporation, you would be right. It is a film every American should watch. It will confirm what most Americans feel in their gut, know in their hearts, and understand in their heads about how corporations have become an undemocratic and unacceptable presence in their lives.

Buy the DVD here.

I have also created a list of excellent links on the left side of this blog under the heading Overthrowing Corporate Rule.

Quote Contest Answer

Here's the quote again.

If you’re going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that’s currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military when it’s there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?”


THE ANSWER:

Dick Cheney, April 13, 1991, New York Times interview, explaining why the Bush I administration did not pursue ‘regime change’ during the Gulf War.

As of today (February 23, 2006), almost three years after the invasion, these questions are as relevant as they were fifteen years ago.

Iran's Gasoline Supplies to the Rescue in Iraq

CorpWatch, in an exclusive report from Pratap Chatterjee, reveals that gasoline supply into Iraq is being curtailed by many of its suppliers because of unpaid bills. Trucking companies and supplier countries are simply refusing to deliver gasoline to Iraq. While American and Iraqi officials are trying to blame the problem on terrorism and the insurgents, trucking company personnel say it is actually corruption, mismanagement, and "common criminal activity" that are causing much of the crisis.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which together supply half of Iraq's domestic consumption needs, have cut off supplies of gasoline to Iraq, because of non-payment. The Iraqi government is now negotiating with Iran to supply gasoline.

The report from CorpWatch describes problems with the supply of gas from Kuwait:

The supply from Kuwait is also drying up. Lloyd-Owen International (LOI), a Florida-based company, had arranged to truck in 1.3 billion liters of gasoline from the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation to gas stations throughout Iraq over the last 19 months. On February 2, Alan Waller, chief executive officer of LOI, stopped supplies to Baghdad because of payment arrears. By this weekend, Iraq's imports had plummeted from the previous norm of 12 million liters a day to three million.In a strongly worded letter he emailed to this weekend to Thomas Delare, the economic counselor at the United States embassy in Baghdad, Waller wrote: "The government of Iraq is unwilling to pay what is correctly owed us or even meet to discuss and that we cannot get any assistance from the U.S. administration in order to help. As such, I can only step back and pull all my international staff out of Iraq for their own safety and let the Iraqi people deal with the situation in their own way."

In 2003, LOI replaced Halliburton as a major supplier of gasoline to Iraq because the Halliburton price was judged by the US military as too high. How high was it? Halliburton was charging $2.65 a gallon to purchase and deliver gasoline, while local suppliers in Iraq were charging 96 cents per gallon. LOI, in 2004, offered to deliver gasoline for 18 cents per gallon "compared to the premium that the military had paid Halliburton previously."

The likelihood of LOI getting paid is not good. The likelihood of the corruption and theft that is happening with supplies of gasoline in the country is equally bad. The US government simply is unable to help American companies who are not being paid.

And while gasoline lines get longer and supplies continue to dwindle, Baghdad is looking increasingly to Iran to help bail it out. As CorpWatch concludes:

Indeed this subject was discussed as far back as last July [2005] when Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari visited Tehran, a prospect that mystifies Waller given the ongoing political disputes between Iran and the U.S. government."Due to payment issues and the fuel problems the U.S. backed government of Iraq is now seeking to purchase and import fuel from Iran, and Najaf is the new Iranian capital of Iraq," Alan Waller, chief executive officer LOI, wrote on February 4th [2006], to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

At a time when the United States and Iran are headed for a showdown on the nuclear issue, our client next door is going hat in hand to Tehran looking for a reliable gasoline supplies for the Iraqi economy. One of the great ironies of the American occupation in Iraq continues to be how it has influenced marked improvements in relations between Tehran and Baghdad, once mortal enemies.

Quote Contest

One of my favorite quotes about Iraq:

If you’re going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you’ve got Baghdad, it’s not clear what you do with it. It’s not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that’s currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it’s set up by the United States military when it’s there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?”

Tell me who said this and when he said it.

Bonfires of the Insanities

Iraqi oil is being consumed, but not in ways that make any sense. It is being bombed, exploded, burned, leaked, and wasted in huge amounts because the United States and Iraqi forces cannot and have not been able to protect the pipelines, the refineries, and other installations.

In 2003, before the invasion, we heard how the United States was planning to protect the oil fields from any Saddam Hussein attempt to sabotage them, as he did with Kuwaiti oil fields in 1991. We were somehow able to do that. No oil fields burned. It was widely believed that Iraq's oil reserves, reportedly the second largest behind Saudi Arabia's, would be its salvation, the fuel for its reconstruction after the war.

Last year, we heard about the formation of Iraqi oil battalions, organized to protect the oil infrastructure from the insurgents. A former Sunni Ba'ath leader was put in charge of this task, a ploy some in the American leadership regarded as one good way to obtain Sunni cooperation in the reconstruction of Iraq. As we will learn, that was probably a huge mistake.

Most of the press reports of attacks by insurgents in Iraq focus on the car bombings and roadside bombs that kill American military, Iraqi police, and innocent civilians. What we don't hear much about is that there is, on average, an attack on the Iraqi oil infrastructure every other day. Last year, 186 attacks killed 47 engineers and 91 police and security guards, resulting in as much as $10 billion in lost oil revenues for Iraq. Just this January, insurgents blew up the pipeline supplying oil to Turkey.

Reuters reports:
That means another month of exports grinding along near one million barrels per day, robbing Iraq, which sits on the world's third biggest oil reserves, of badly needed revenue to rebuild. "We were hoping to improve the rate (of exports) to 1.3 million bpd this month, but that is out of the question now," a senior Iraqi oil official told Reuters. Poor security has left oil workers and facilities vulnerable to attack. There is little or no strategic planning, investment is scarce and much of Iraq's infrastructure is old and damaged.

The sad fact remains that post-war Iraqi oil production still lags behind the rate of pre-war oil production under Hussein and, last month, hit a post-war low.

Now, we hear on NPR's All Things Considered from the former head of the Iraqi Oil Ministry, Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, that it is precisely those military battalions assigned to protect the oil resources of Iraq that are probably behind the destruction and sabotage. Sixteen battalions are assigned to protect 5000 miles of Iraqi oil pipeline and infrastructure, and according to NPR correspondent Anne Garrels, they are "useless," at worst, they are linked to the sabotage. Garrels reports that in some places these battalions are "ghosts," basically not where they ought to be. The battalions are also riddled with informers, facilitating attacks and disrupting repairs.

The American and Iraqi military leadership has not dealt adequately with this problem, and the American and Iraqi political leadership seems to be ignoring it. It is the elephant in the room that no one seems to want to confront. Sixteen Iraqi military battalions that are essentially active allies of the insurgency and a bulwark against the successful reconstruction of Iraqi oil resources arfe pretty hard to ignore, but the American and Iraqi leaderships apparently have no idea how to deal with this reality.

As these pipelines burn, and the bonfires are lit at refineries, and as newly repaired sections of the pipeline explode from new sabotage, there seems to be a level of insanity inherent in a policy of looking the other way. Refusal to confront this severe problem could be fatal. How can we expect any semblance of Iraqi recovery if the country's major source of income is repeatedly and permanently crippled?

Saudi Dies With a Smile on His Face

Watching this videotape of an Iraqi preparing to commit a suicide bombing, presented by the Shura Council of the Mujahaddin in Iraq, conveys some sense of the religious and personal fervor of the commitment these men and women have to defending Islam against the infidel.

There seems to be an almost never-ending supply of willing, smiling young men like this, giving up their lives to defend Islam against the infidel.

The translation is by The Middle East Media Research Institute.

NBC Puts On 2-Week Commercial for US Power

Reprinted with permission

*******************************************
by Pierre Tristam

About half the readers of this site are from outside the United States, which means that among those of you who chose to watch the Olympics’ opening ceremonies from Turin Friday, about half of you were lucky enough not to be subjected to NBC’s nauseating production. But I’m not so sure you should count your blessings. Watching an American production of a world sporting event these days may be embarrassing. It is simplistic. It is supremacist. It is promotional to the core. But it is also instructive. NBC covers the Olympics the way American neocons do foreign policy: The world is 95 percent America, 3 percent water, and 2 percent everything else.

America’s projection onto the world is mostly as an emblem of force, preferably unrivaled. What world does exist outside its borders is reduced to elementary-school simplicities (“1.3 billion Chinese!” and how to say Turin in Italian). Above all, it’s reduced to the presumption that the rest of the world is either a by-stander, an enabler or a threat to American hegemony—what America’s Republicans, who have more in common with Charles DeGaulle than with Abraham Lincoln, would call American greatness (even as that greatness is right now pulling an Algerian rug from under its booted feet, with Iraqi weaving).

That’s how NBC projects its Olympic coverage. All the world’s a spectator to American prowess and dominance. You get the sense that none but American athletes are in these competitions, just as the Bush White House gives the sense that all the world is collateral for American foreign policy. NBC has been trained for the task. The same people who brought us the Iraq war as show business and “The Rescue of Jessica Lynch” as truth, and who keep bringing us coverage of the White House as public relations, now bring us the Olympics as a two-week commercial for American power.

The introduction set the tone. The announcer, speaking in the cadences of a Vietnam War documentary, gave a Travel Channel-synopsis of Turin’s Alpine character, with cinematography spectacular enough to make you wonder why it was so maliciously abbreviated. He swept over Turin’s architecture and summed up its two thousand year history in twelve seconds or so (about the length of any world history lesson in White House briefings). He intoned about this or that athlete from another country, the one whose body was “stitched together after twelve surgeries” or the one who single-handedly convinced his no-snow African nation to endorse a winter Olympic federation so he could compete. He made you feel that, well, maybe there is a world out there after all.

But then the music changed — from conventionally upbeat to Rambo-martial. Instinctively you knew what was up, for having been on the receiving end of similarly ominous soundtracks for the last four years every time a news show substituted nationalistic bombast for reporting: The subject switched exclusively to American athletes. It was no longer sport, but war. It was no longer competition, but defiance, whether it was about the athlete who “has converted his body into a bullet” or the one from New Hampshire who has taken his state motto and, somewhat inexplicably, turned it into his Olympic promise: “Live free or die.” If this weren’t enough, the announcer trumped up a little bit of divine right when he claimed that “the royalty of American figure skating” was making its return, lord knows from what genesis — Tonya Harding? Nancy Kerrigan? The eternally unfulfilled promise of Michelle Kwan? Naturally, Kwan was NBC’s very first Olympic interview, though not word one about the four Olympians who’d already been booted out for doping up, among them Zach Lund, the American sledder who made a gold medal seem like his entitlement.

What’s imperial gold to America sounds tinny to much of the world, and of course even to much of America, judging by the other inescapable parallel in this story: Bush’s anemic approval ratings—and NBC’s: “Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony was the worst-watched in at least a decade,” went one report. There’s a lesson there, but America’s powers that beam, from the presidency down to its media farmhands, aren’t learning it for being too self-absorbed. To the self-deluded, approval doesn’t matter anymore.

In 2001, the whole world called itself American in solidarity with the attacks the country sustained. It didn’t last, because President Bush couldn’t pass up the opportunity to answer fanaticism with fanaticism, alienating the world along the way. That the world’s pronounced tendency to hate America almost as much as it hates Iran seems only to reinforce his conviction that the only country that matters is America. He said as much in an interview with Bob Woodward in early 2002: “At some point,” Bush said of the war on terror, “we may be the only ones left. That’s okay with me. We are America.” NBC’s Olympic coverage revels in that unilateral view. It should be alienating to anyone but the most hardened, modern version of America-Firsters. But we keep watching because we don’t have a choice, or because the instructive element is worth the attention, or because there are always a few surprises, like NBC’s uncharacteristic decision to show the entire parade of nations, cutting not a single one of the eighty participating countries even when it went to commercial. Not bad.

But that was the sort of exception that proved the rule, a bone thrown to Bob Costas, the eminently qualified (and worldly) Olympic anchor since the late 1980s. His talent was ruinously snubbed Friday by NBC’s decision to stick him with a an escort for the evening, the way the Pentagon sticks reporters with escorts in war zones: Costas’ shadow was none other than Brian Williams, the NBC News anchor and recent replacement for Tom Brokaw. It was half publicity stunt half conceit. NBC wants to give Williams exposure in his new role. Williams wants to give himself gravitas. And NBC’s Olympic coverage wants to seem au courant, hip to the sporty and the newsy.

Instead, Williams’ comments — about Italy providing the third-biggest contingent in Iraq (he did not mention that Italy was withdrawing its troops over the next several months), about China having an iffy environmental record, about Iran threatening Israel, about Danish athletes potentially triggering demonstrations over the Muhammad cartoons — had the feel of a mortician distributing his calling card at a wedding. It wasn’t just intrusive. It was obscene for its self-promotion and redundancy, and for what it took away from the athletes while inferring that they somehow reflected their nations’ policies. The Olympics may be all about promotion, politics, profiteering, marketing, drugs and corruption outside the playing fields. But within them, for those brief moments that athletes hold the stage, they remain about sport for sport’s sake. With obvious exceptions — the U.S.-U.S.S.R. hockey match at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics come to mind — they remain exclusively about the athletes and their individual frailties and triumphs. Not their nations’. Leave it to NBC to demolish that one last redeeming illusion. It was bound to, having demolished all others.

For here’s another one of those ironies of American technological supremacy and “freedom”: We were not allowed to watch the opening ceremonies live, the way most of the rest of the world did. We won’t be allowed to watch most of the fortnight’s marquee events live, either. NBC packages them for prime-time viewing, between 8 and 11 p.m., to suit advertisers and best reap its $613 million investment in broadcasting rights to these games alone. So it goes with freedom’s might. When dividends are at stake, freedom is reduced to a pretty slogan (which NBC made much use of in its descriptions of “ Torino” as the birth-place of Italy). We are now treated to news anchors who, like one local specimen for NBC’s WESH-2 in Orlando, said he “can’t wait to see what happens tonight” — a newsman saying this — even though the opening ceremony was several hours old and its glittery pictures and accounts were all over the Internet.

If the Pentagon is always fighting the last war, the television networks are always broadcasting the previous decade’s Olympics. The distortions are nevertheless in perfect alignment with the American presumption that time zones don’t exist outside the United States, that time itself is an exclusively American luxury others abide by. To watch the Olympics on NBC, like watching the news on any American network, is like shopping in a mall or gambling in a casino: It’s a world onto its own where clocks don’t intrude and windows on the world are non-existent, for fear of distracting the consumer from his primordial duty: to buy what’s being dished out efficiently and uncomplainingly. And then to celebrate his luxurious imprisonment with canned patriotism, for let’s not forget the flag-raising ceremonies disproportionately detained by the Star Spangled Banner.

To reword Tacitus’ famous phrase about Roman armies, they created a monopoly and called it free enterprise. And it is this sort of mentality that pretends to be bringing freedom (and free enterprise!) to the world.

Pierre Tristam is an editorial writer and columnist at the Daytona Beach, Florida., News-Journal, and editor of Candide’s Notebooks. Reach him at ptristam@att.net.
© 2006 Pierre Tristam

CBS News Discovers Global Warming

A friend of mine who has worked as an editor and writer and activist and naturalist in the world of ornithology and the environment sent me this. He is on the list this was originally sent to. I think it's great that CBS 60 Minutes is taking the time to do a story about global warming. I find it interesting how the "background" to the 60 minutes piece begins with "There's been a debate burning for years on the causes of global warming." While it's true that scientists have been debating the causes, what's been more disturbing about this story is the number of political leaders who deny its very existence. Here's the email from CBS News.

From: Sanders, Robin [mailto:SandersR@cbsnews.com]

Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 4:13 PM

To: webmaster@greenhousenet.org; help@greenhousenet.org

Subject: 60 MINUTES' "Global Warning"

Good afternoon. My name is Robin Sanders, and I work at CBS News. I wanted to let you know about a story that "60 Minutes" will be airing this Sunday on climate change and global warming. It's an incredibly interesting piece, and we're trying to get the word out beforehand to as many people aspossible who might have a particular interest in this subject. To that end,we were wondering if you might consider sending out an email to yourlistserve and/or posting something on your website. The story will bebroadcast on CBS stations on at 7:00 ET/PT on Sunday, February 19. Further details will be posted on our website, <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/08/60minutes/main13502.shtml>which you're welcome to link to from your own site. Below, you'll find a short write-up about the piece. Please don't hesitateto call me if you have any questions. My phone number is 212-975-7598;email is sandersr@cbsnews.com. Best,Robin SandersCBS News 60 Minutesphone: 212-975-7598email: sandersr@cbsnews.com

"GLOBAL WARNING"

There's been a debate burning for years on the causes of global warming. But according to scientists, the debate is over. New evidence shows man is contributing to the warming of the planet, pumping out greenhouse gases that trap solar heat. And, they say, the North Pole, which has been frozen for 100,000 years, is in the process of melting. Much of this new data was compiled by American scientist Bob Correll, who led a study called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. According to the study, the seas are rising, hurricanes will be more powerful (like Katrina) and polar bears may be headed toward extinction. So what does the melting Arctic look like? Scott Pelley recently traveled North with Correll to see first hand. His report will air on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Feb. 19, 7PM ET/PT on CBS.

Death of an Artist

I haven't been writing because a friend of ours has been dying of pancreatic cancer. She has been a friend and fellow professor with my wife, Rickey, at Vermont College, Union Institute and University. I was lucky to know her.

She passed last night at home with family and friends. Only a little while before she died, Hannah, her ten year old daughter, who has been struggling as only a child can with this kind of unreal thing, came to her and sang.

Charlotte Hastings was a woman of great strength, independence, and generosity. She was an artist of amazing breadth, a professor and mentor, and a woman of big laughs and unbridled humor. She started and was involved with artist cooperatives in New York City and Vermont, and has had shows all over the country. But her humility never allowed her to brag about such things.

Inquisitive to the end, wondering how she could beat these vicious cells that she could only imagine inside her, metastasized, it was not until five days before she died that she accepted the inevitable, stopped eating, and let go.

So many people were around her through these last days -- family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, fellow artists -- but it wasn't really until this last week that she fully understood how many people would be there to give support and comfort to her husband Brad, and, especially, her beautiful daughter, Hannah. I think that is what finally gave her peace and concession.

As I was looking through some of Charlotte's works of art, I was captured by the one above, her husband and daughter, pointing, reaching out to a beautiful, fanciful bird flying off in the opposite direction. It is such a stark picture of them in this last week, a poignant and prophetic work she completed in 2003, perhaps the year that deep inside her the cancer was laying its seed.

Here is a link to her work and here is a link and here also to some of her words about herself and her art.

Here is Charlotte, in her own words, summing it all up:

Art isn't about talent. It's about loving yourself enough to cultivate your inner sensibilities, your intellectual and political awareness, your visual acumen, until process takes over and begins to make the kind of decisions that determine what will happen in your life.

Imagine This Guy as Senator

Mackubin Thomas Owens, contributing editor for the National Review, and a professor at the Naval War College, writes about his friend, Jim Webb, who has just announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Virginia to oppose Republican Senator George Allen in November. Owens warns the Republicans that this guy is one serious contender.

Owens starts with a short history of how, in the 1980s, significant numbers of Democrats, unhappy with the leftward drift of their party, voted Republican and began a political shift that culminated in an "electoral lock" on the House and Senate in 1994. He lays the blame for the Democratic loss, in part, on what he calls "the central idea of the Democrats" wanting to "adjudicate the distribution of resources among competing claimants." He uses the recent Alito hearings to elaborate on the Democratic Party's weaknesses saying: "Democrats have eschewed rhetoric as a means of persuading the electorate, preferring instead to grandstand in an effort to appease the left-wing interest-groups that constitute the base of the Democratic party. The party's only hope for returning to power is to throw off the shackles imposed by Moveon.org, the Daily Kos, People for the American Way, NARAL, and the like."

He believes the candidacy of Jim Webb may be the beginning of this hope.

Owens lists Webb's credentials which are truly impressive:

-- a 1968 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy;
-- a Marine officer in Vietnam, wounded twice, and awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star;
-- attended Georgetown Law School and later served as counsel to the House Veterans Committee;
-- author of six novels, including Fields of Fire, arguably the best novel there is about Vietnam;
-- during the Reagan administration, served as an assistant secretary of Defense and secretary of the Navy.

In a fit of propagandistic hyperbole, Owens characterizes Webb as a guy who stood on the front lines defending Vietnam war veterans against those who did not serve in Vietnam, all of whom are painted, by Owens, as slanderers who denigrated the veterans as dopeheads, baby-killers, and war criminals. Owens is perplexed that Webb would choose the Democratic Party as his affiliation since these slanders were most at home there.

His answer is, in part, because of the Iraq war. He believes Webb is angry at the Bush administration for its disregard for military service and its attacks on John Murtha. Owens also believes Webb is running as a Democrat because he believes the Iraq war has weakened us in the long run in our conflict with China.

He quotes a piece Webb wrote in the New York Times in January:

[I]n recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha. The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who have thus far decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

Owens basically portrays Webb as a tough guy who won't take any crap from anyone, Democratic or Republican. He quotes Webb after he resigned as secretary of the Navy in 1988 after clashes with Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci: "It's no secret that I'm not a person who wears a bridle well."

Owens worries that Webb is a harbinger of things to come. He worries about losing the Scots-Irish back to the Democrats. He cites Webb's 2005 book, Born Fighting. Webb wrote in his book:

[The Scots-Irish shape our culture] more in the abstract power of emotion than through the argumentative force of law. In their insistent individualism they are not likely to put an ethnic label on themselves when they debate societal issues. Some of them don't even know their ethnic label, and some who do know don't particularly care. They don't go for group-identity politics any more than they like to join a union. Two hundred years ago the mountains built a fierce and uncomplaining self-reliance into an already hardened people. To them, joining a group and putting themselves at the mercy of someone else's collectivist judgment makes about as much sense as letting the government take their guns. And nobody is going to get their guns.

Owens maintains that these are "red state" voters who are "family-oriented, take morality seriously, go to church, join the military, and listen to country music. They strongly believe that no man is obligated to obey the edicts of a government that violates his moral conscience. They once formed the bedrock of the Democratic party — from Andrew Jackson until Vietnam — but have been moving to the GOP ever since"

Owens ends on this note:

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Webb called the Scots-Irish in America the "the secret GOP weapon."

But the Republicans cannot take this group for granted. Commenting on a statement that Howard Dean made during the Democratic primaries, Charles Krauthammer opined that Dean was campaigning for the "white trash vote" by pandering to the "rebel-yelling racist redneck."
In the Wall Street Journal, Webb called this "the most vicious ethnic slur of the presidential campaign," noting dryly that Krauthammer "has never complained about this ethnic group when it has marched off to fight the wars he wishes upon us." Jim and I disagree on a number of topics — the Iraq war being an obvious instance — but the Republicans can't afford to lose such people.
*************************

After I read Owens' piece, I decided to visit the Webb for Senate website. I was not prepared at all for what I found there. In fact, I was ready for some kind of Republican in sheep's clothing. Apparently, Mackubin Thomas Owens has not read Jim Webb's website.

Here are the four major things Webb says he is going to concentrate on during his campaign:

1. Refocusing America's foreign and defense policies in a way that truly protects our national interests and seeks harmony where they are not threatened;

2. Repairing the country's basic infrastructure, which has eroded badly over the past decade, and developing more creative ways to assist disaster-stricken areas such as those in New Orleans and along the Gulf coast;

3. Reinstituting notions of true fairness in American society, including issues of race, class, and economic advantage; and

4. Restoring the Constitutional role of the Congress as an equal partner, reining in the unbridled power of the Presidency.

All four of these sound remarkably like the kinds of issues MoveOn.Org focuses on. I read about these issues all the time on progressive and liberal blogs, and on websites like AlterNet, CommonDreams, Buzzflash, People for the American Way, Common Cause, and others.

When was the last time you heard a Republican talk about "race, class, and economic advantage"? How about a Democrat? Race? Didn't we take care of that in the 1960s? We have a classless society, don't we? Economic advantage? What the hell is that? "Reining in the unbridled power of the Presidency?" Who does this guy think he is, the ACLU?

And most astonishingly, he seems to believe that we Americans can do alot better by fighting the real war against terror while we seek (oh my god, I can't believe he actually used the word) "harmony" where our national interests are not threatened.

His website actually uses the word ethnography and he quotes Tom Wolfe.

Here is how his website sums him up, and how I will conclude:

Imagine a Senator who has made a point never to take money for lobbying the government, and who has declined to sit on corporate boards, other than in a pro bono status for non-profit enterprises. Someone who has given thousands of hours pro bono on behalf of America's veterans and those Vietnamese who fled their homeland after the Communist takeover in 1975. Indeed, imagine a Senator who writes his own books.

The Big Bang Theory Replaced by Big Bible Smacking You in the Head

The cover of the program at a two-day event in Wayne, NJ where former high school biology teacher and creationist Ken Ham trained, among others, 2300 elementary students to reject everything science teaches in favor of the exclusive word of God as found in what he believes is the inerrant Bible.

If Ham has his way, we will have a nation of deluded idiots drooling over every word of his Bible while Chinese science and technology take over the world.

Read more here.