We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.
Facing record deficits, the City Council voted December 14 to shut all three of Salinas' libraries, including the branches named after Steinbeck and labor leader Cesar Chavez. The blue-collar town of 150,000 could become the most populous U.S. city without a public library.
José Piñera, Augusto Pinochet's former labor minister, has spent recent years in self-imposed exile at the Cato Institute extolling the virtues of the privatization of Chile's Social Security system. Last week, the New York Times op-ed page allotted him abundant space for his now familiar rap about why the United States should follow Chile's model of pushing workers to depend primarily on personal investment accounts for their retirement income. But notably, he provided no facts or figures about what the upshot has been in Chile since it began privatization in 1981.
About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should be required to register their location with the federal government, and 26 percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies. Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising. About 22 percent said the federal government should profile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslim or have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans...
The survey...showed a correlation between television news-viewing habits, a respondent's fear level and attitudes toward restrictions on civil liberties for all Americans. Respondents who paid a lot of attention to television news were more likely to favor restrictions on civil liberties, such as greater power for the government to monitor the Internet. Respondents who paid less attention to television news were less likely to support such measures. "The more attention paid to television news, the more you fear terrorism, and you are more likely to favor restrictions on civil liberties," says Nisbet.
...Here there's another scam that you should keep your eyes on. What's called 'trade' in economics is a very odd notion. So, for example, if Ford Motor Company moves parts from Indiana to Illinois for assembly and then moves them back to Indiana, that's not called trade. But if Ford Motor Company takes parts made in Indiana and moves them across the border to Mexico--where you can get much cheaper labor and you don't have to worry about pollution and so on--and they get reassembled in Mexico, and then get sent back to Illinois for valuation, that's called 'exports and imports.' It never had anything to do with the Mexican economy, or in fact any economy; it was all internal to the Ford Motor Company, but it's 'exports and imports.' So how big an element is all that? Well, about 50% of US trade. So about 50% of what's called 'US trade' is internal to individual corporations...
If agreements like GATT increase what's called 'trade,' what it actually does is increases investor rights. That is, it increases the power of transnational corporations. You have to look pretty closely to figure out what the effect is on trade in any meaningful sense. For example, it may increase cross-border operations, but decrease trade in a meaningful sense of trade--meaning something that's not under the control of a kind of corporate mercantilism.
The...posting brings up questions about the Iraqi brothers who run the IraqTheModel site. It points out that the views of the brothers are celebrated in the right-leaning weblogging world of the US, even though opinion polling shows that their views are far out of the mainstream of Iraqi opinion. It notes that their choice of internet service provider, in Abilene, Texas, is rather suspicious, and wonders whether they are getting some extra support from certain quarters.
Contrast all this to the young woman computer systems analyst in Baghdad, Riverbend, who is in her views closer to the Iraqi opinion polls, especially with regard to Sunni Arabs, but who is not being feted in Washington, DC.
As Chile's strongman from 1973, when he overthrew Salvador Allende, an elected civilian president, to 1990, General Pinochet presided over a purge of political opponents and the creation of a police state. But he also laid the foundations for what has become Latin America's most stable and promising economy - all, as the general's supporters have claimed, without ever stealing a dime.
There's nothing strange or mysterious about how Social Security works: it's just a government program supported by a dedicated tax on payroll earnings, just as highway maintenance is supported by a dedicated tax on gasoline...
But since the politics of privatization depend on convincing the public that there is a Social Security crisis, the privatizers have done their best to invent one.
The bottom of a laptop can reach temperatures of over 100 degrees. Put it near the scrotum? Dr. Sheynkin and his colleagues did. They found that simply holding the legs together in a laptop support position for an hour raised the scrotal temperature by almost four degrees. Adding the laptop for that hour raised the temperature by five to six degrees.
It makes sense, in any system of domination and control, to try to change it as far as possible within the limits that the system permits. If you run up against limits that are impassable barriers, then it may be that the only way to proceed is conflict, struggle and revolutionary change. But there is no need for revolutionary change to work for improving safety and health regulations in factories, for example, because you can bring about these changes through parliamentary means. So you try to push it as far as you can.
People often do not even recognize the existence of systems of oppression and domination. They have to try to struggle to gain their rights within the systems in which they live before they even perceive that there is repression. Take a look at the women’s movement. One of the first steps in the development of the women’s movement was so-called “consciousness raising efforts”. Try to get women to perceive that it is not the natural state of the world for them to be dominated and controlled. My grandmother couldn’t join the women’s movement, since she didn’t feel any oppression, in some sense. That’s just the way life was, like the sun rises in the morning. Until people can realize that it is not like the sun rising, that it can be changed, that you don’t have to follow orders, that you don’t have to be beaten, until people can perceive that there is something wrong with that, until that is overcome, you can’t go on.
What is the meaning of blue states vs. red states? As this article in Fortune indicates, there is a strong correlation between the red & blue electoral map and the fiscal map showing the federal gravy train. Citizens of some states pay more in taxes than they receive back from the federal government through grants, benefits, and subsidies. The imbalance for California, for example, reached $50 billion in 2003. New York and Illinois are other "donor" states. Alabama is the biggest "winning" state, reaping in a net of $100 billion between 1991 and 2001. The "winner" states during the same period received nearly $1 trillion more in federal benefits than they paid in taxes. "The huge gaps are driven by higher average incomes in the "donor" states, plus subsidies for farms, oil, mining --- "extractive" industries that skew red....The heist is more impressive considering that the winners have only a third of the U.S. population."
An open letter to diversity@cbs.comSign the petition.
Dear CBS,
The irony of juxtaposing your statement on diversity with your decision not to air the advertisement from the United Church of Christ is staggering. You seem to have no problem with giving hate-mongering Christians--those who misquote the Bible to condemn gays--plenty of airtime through inviting them to speak on your news programs, and selling their PACs advertising during the election season, but a simple advertisement that argues that perhaps Jesus wasn't a bigot is too controversial for you to air. How do you sleep at night?
I have wrestled with myself today as to the type of letter I should write to you. I wanted to make it respectful, to tactfully suggest to you that you reconsider your opinion, but I'm tired. I'm tired of hate being promoted as a moral value in this country while loving one's neighbor is depicted as a perversion. You have clearly cast your lot with the hateful bigots in this country. May you enjoy their company.
You can inform your other advertisers that there will be one less viewer for "CSI." My hope is that I'm not alone, and there will be economic consequences for you in refusing to run the ad.
You are cowards. Plain and simple. There is no diplomatic way to say it; there are no euphemisms. You are the Cowardly Broadcasting System. At least you don't need to change your call letters.
Sincerely,
Lorraine Berry
Letter will be sent to NBC later today. nbcshows@nbc.com
Turning to other areas, overwhelming majorities of the public favor expansion of domestic programs: primarily health care (80%), but also aid to education and Social Security. Similar results have long been found in these studies (CCFR). Other mainstream polls report that 80% favor guaranteed health care even if it would raise taxes – in reality, a national health care system would probably reduce expenses considerably, avoiding the heavy costs of bureaucracy, supervision, paperwork, and so on, some of the factors that render the US privatized system the most inefficient in the industrial world.
Public opinion has been similar for a long time, with numbers varying depending on how questions are asked. The facts are sometimes discussed in the press, with public preferences noted but dismissed as "politically impossible." That happened again on the eve of the 2004 elections. A few days before (Oct. 31), the NY Times reported that "there is so little political support for government intervention in the health care market in the United States that Senator John Kerry took pains in a recent presidential debate to say that his plan for expanding access to health insurance would not create a new government program" – what the majority want, so it appears. But it is "politically impossible" and has "[too] little political support," meaning that the insurance companies, HMOs, pharmaceutical industries, Wall Street, etc. , are opposed.
In a move that has been unsuccessful elsewhere in the U.S., 17 workers at a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. automotive-service department have taken the first step to unionize at the world's largest retailer. The National Labor Relations Board planned a hearing tomorrow to consider the workers' request to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. Union officials argue the workers in the Wal-Mart Tire & Lube Express are separate from the store and eligible for independent union representation. Wal-Mart officials disagree. "With approximately 400 associates in that particular facility, we feel that more than 17 associates should have a say on such an important matter," said Christi Gallagher, a spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Ark., company. Efforts to unionize Wal-Mart stores in the U.S. have failed, while in Canada, a government agency this year certified workers at a Quebec store as a union and told the two sides to negotiate. Wal-Mart has said it may have to close that store.
"I vote Christian. And I believe that he is pro-life, pro-family, pro-Israel, strong national defense, faith-based initiatives for the poor, et cetera. And George Bush fits the criteria for all of them. John Kerry met little or none of those criteria." -- Jerry Falwell
Temporary workers will no longer be able to bargain for job benefits as part of a unit with permanent employees, the National Labor Relations Board has ruled, reversing a Clinton-era precedent.
The School of the Americas (SOA) - renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001 - is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers located at Fort Benning, Georgia. During its 56 years of existence, the SOA has used U.S. tax dollars to train more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage war against their own countries' civilians. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced into exile by those trained at this "School of Assassins."
Please support HR 1258, a bill to close, investigate, and prevent another cosmetic remake of the SOA.
If there's no pain, there's no gain. To fix Social Security without raising taxes, benefits promised for the future must be cut. The president's Commission on Strengthening Social Security found a clever way of doing that. It proposed adjusting the initial benefit given to new recipients each year by the rate of price inflation, instead of by the rate of wage inflation. That enabled the commission to claim correctly that future recipients would receive exactly the same benefit, adjusted for inflation, that today's recipients receive.
Dispensing with legislative niceties like holding hearings or full and open debate, President Bush and the Republican Congress have used the cover of a must-pass spending bill to mount a disgraceful sneak attack on women's health and freedom.
America is the greatest damned mass of foolish, ignorant peasantry the world has ever produced. Not once before in the human race's mutable existence has there been a nation of such monumental idiocy; and what's more astounding is that history has given these dopes self-determination. In the exercise of this self-determination, America (if we are not so skeptical but as to actually believe the tally) has chosen to let George W. Bush lead it for another four critical years, and we are at once given a demonstration of our extraordinary mass moronism, and of the stunning depth of our ancestors' genius.
Every viewpoint is a view from a point, and that includes the viewpoint from the side of George Bush, from the side of Michael Moore, and I would like to propose a third: the viewpoint from the side of the poor and excluded in any system. If we are to be people transformed by the Biblical text, it is always from this deliberate bias that we must read reality...
From the very beginning and throughout the Bible, God’s privileged one is consistently the enslaved instead of the supposed free, the outsider instead of the insider, the sinner instead of the righteous, the wounded instead of the healthy, the lay instead of the clergy, the poor instead of the rich. I dare you to try to disprove that. It is the “theme of themes,” so consistent and so demanding, that it has been ignored and avoided throughout most of Christian and Jewish history.
The true Biblical text will always be a subtext in history.
The Right seems largely incapable of any self criticism, as we see personified in Rush Limbaugh, or George Bush who cannot think of any mistakes he made his first two years in office. That, of itself, puts their ideology totally outside the prophetic and Jesus tradition. The Right is usually the glorification of self interest, while frequently hiding behind the language of religion and patriotism.
Abortion is a serious moral issue, but the prospect of making abortion illegal is also a serious moral issue, and I think it's important to have no illusion about its effects. It's not going to stop abortions. What it will do is increase health risks to poor women who cannot afford to have the procedure done safely. Having said that, women will continue to do with their bodies what they want; they are their bodies after all.
For any woman to face unwanted pregnancy is a tragedy no matter what way we want to look at it. There is no obvious solution besides trying to avoid the situation in the first place. But it happens, and has always happened. And women have always pursued abortion in response, legally or not. Roe Vs. Wade is important in guaranteeing that no woman has to lose more than she already is in pursuing an abortion--namely, her own life. I think a moral perspective on abortion dictates that we look not only at the objectionable acts we oppose but also at the practical effects of how we oppose them. I don't think any moral person would argue that losing both the mother and the child is an acceptable risk for trying to save the child.
I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
[The Pope] said, if you read the text later, he said to the President, "Thank you very much for the medal, but you know that you and I disagree on this Iraq thing. I have told you three times." That's in the text.
The religion threw Galileo into house arrest for two or three years. Why? Not because of his science, that's silliness. Because of his theology. The theology taught that we were the center of the universe. We were God's rational and best creatures. When the little telescope, when he handed the Pope a telescope and said, "Look, we're not the center," they wouldn't even pick up the telescope. That's dogmatism. And that's what we have to be very careful of.
What is uniquely alarming in the United States today, among all the democracies and in our own history, is that a president of the United States is explicitly on the side of antimodernism. Never before has an American chief executive worked deliberately to foment a fundamentalist absolutism that is ultimately tribal, theocratic, antiscientific, and incompatible with pluralist democracy.
"The smell, the sight, it's something you never forget," Sarra told a packed lecture hall Tuesday night at the University of Notre Dame. "If people want to support this war and think it's a good thing, they need to take a second look."
For Sarra, 32, one look was enough.
After he shot an innocent Iraqi woman because he thought the package she was hiding was an explosive, he "freaked out." He began to question the war and wondered why U.S. soldiers, his buddies, were getting killed in Iraq.
“Donna Frye is a populist, grassroots candidate, and she’s completely upset the race between the old male Republican guys,” Roger Hedgecock, a San Diego radio talk show host and a former Republican mayor, told USA Today. “No matter what happens, it looks like this thing is going to a lawsuit.”Donna Frye still faces lawsuits; visit her webpage to help.
Republican legal challenges have failed: US District Judge Irma Gonzalez refused to stop the city from certifying the election results on the ground that “write-in” candidates — those, such as Mrs Frye, whose names have to be written on the ballot by voters — were not legitimate.
Contrary to election night reporting, the youth vote was a real phenomenon, though the data indicates a reason the right wants you to think otherwise: "Under-30 voters came through in big numbers this year, with more than 20 million casting a ballot for president...[t]he turnout bested their 2000 showing by more than nine percentage points...[t]he AP's exit polls found that under-30s favored Kerry over Bush, 55 percent to 44 percent."
Bring ‘em on: Air strikes, artillery fire, ground fighting continue in Fallujah.
Bring ‘em on: Heavy fighting breaks out in Baquba.
Bring ‘em on: Insurgents attack police stations, ING base near Suwayrah, seven ING soldiers and police killed.
Bring ‘em on: Heavy fighting continues in Ramadi.
Bring ‘em on: Six ING soldiers killed as insurgents storm two police stations in Mosul.
Bring ‘em on: Insurgents seize and destroy governor’s mansion in Mosul.
Bring ‘em on: US air strikes reported near Baquba.
Bring ‘em on: Oil wells ablaze near Kirkuk.
Bring ‘em on: Insurgents destroy main highway bridge near Beiji.
Bring ‘em on: Insurgents attack Polish embassy in Baghdad.
Bring ‘em on: Central Baghdad hotels under rocket fire.
Speaking of the world seeing the strength, grace & decency of our country, I can’t help noticing that we haven’t heard a word from Rummy on the subject of the prisoner execution in Fallujah. Or from Bush. Or from anyone with a familiar name. That incident badly needs a name, to help ensure it doesn’t get swept under the rug. Pending somebody offering a better name, I suggest the alliterative Murder in the Mosque, with apologies to T.S. Eliot. Also, we still haven’t heard from any US member of Congress willing to go on record against the summary execution of wounded prisoners. There was a time when such a shooting bothered people just a little.
Before the assault on Fallujah...
"If they do not turn in al-Zarqawi and his group, we will carry out operations in Fallujah," [US-selected Iraqi "interim" Prime Minister Iyad] Allawi told the interim National Council on Wednesday. "We will not be lenient."
After the assault on Fallujah
"We never expected them to be there. We're not after Zarqawi. We're after insurgents in general," [Marine Major General Richard] Natonski[, who designed the ground attack,] said.
The reports are that Margaret Hassan may have been murdered. Watch the very politicians that spent their lives killing the people she tried desperately to save weep crocodile tears for her, as they read eulogies from teleprompters.
I believe this picture of her that's been making the rounds dates from the sanctions era... [She] opposed those sanctions vociferously -- don't expect either Bush nor Blair, who supported those sanctions to mention that fact.
This is urgent: Please urge your members of Congress to restore overtime pay.
They have a chance to save overtime pay this week as they vote on 2005 spending bills. Some of those budget measures have amendments that would restore overtime pay for the 6 million workers who stand to lose it under President George W. Bush's overtime pay take-away.
Your continued action to restore overtime pay is extremely important now. Help us make sure President Bush and his allies in Congress know the president's re-election doesn't mean he can cut our paychecks. We're going to keep fighting this overtime pay cut until we win.
Responsible Wealth (responsiblewealth.org) says, "Everyone on the Forbes 400 owes their wealth partly to a taxpayer-financed inheritance of public research and contracts; public schools and universities; communications, transportation and other critical infrastructure; and myriad government institutions from the Federal Reserve and the courts to the Treasury, Defense and Commerce Departments."
I am outraged by US war crimes in Fallujah, and am more outraged by the lack of outrage that I encounter here in the US, and the silence of the corrupt and tyrannical Arab governments (and I am not excluding any one government; I include them all: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, puppet Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Yemen, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc). All are scared of the US government, and are willing to butcher their people to win points with Bush.
Whenever you hear the word "democracy" in relation with the Middle East, especially from the mouth of Israelis or Americans, place it between quotation marks. They mean something else by it.
NBC aired the report of the shooting of the injured and unarmed Iraqi man. But NBC had to preface it with a "context" report that all but justified the killing.
Somebody was talking about how the Arab world would receive a female secretary of state. Give me a break or a potato. I really hate it when some American male pontificates about sexism of Arab/Muslim men. I say: excuse me? You are giving lessons in feminism?
They talk about [the] "window of opportunity" now presented by the death of Arafat. What kind of bankrupt policy it is that is predicated on the death of one man?
The United Nations' high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, said today that she was concerned that the rules of war intended to protect civilians and combatants had been violated in Falluja during the fighting between American-led forces and insurgents...
The number of Iraqi casualties has not been officially announced. The Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has said he does not believe any civilians were killed in the offensive, which has left more than 1,200 insurgents dead, according to a Reuters report.
Since 1982, under a consent decree with the federal government, the fund has been run by prominent Wall Street firms and monitored by a federal court and the Labor Department. There have been no more shadowy investments, no more loans to crime bosses. Yet in these expert hands, the aging fund has fallen into greater financial peril than when James R. Hoffa, who built the Teamsters into a national power, used it as a slush fund.
Whoever is allowing the marines or any American soldiers "rest" on that "plush red carpet" with their shoes, uniforms and machines guns is insane. Does anyone understand anything about religious feelings in general or about Islam in particular? Have they spent even half a day watching a documentary or two about Islam and noticed that people carefully and respectfully take their shoes off before entering a mosque, where they will kneel and put their head on that carpet? (Those "plush red carpets", by the way, are prayer rugs, or"sajjade." And you don't step on them with your combat boots, especially inside a mosque, and smile for the cameras unless you really want to fight to the death with up to a billion people.)
In the weeks leading up to Palestinian President Yassir Arafat’s death American politicians and pundits have repeatedly called on the Palestinian people to use the opportunity of his passing to transform the intifada from a violent uprising into a non-violent, democratic and pragmatic program for achieving independence. This is very good advice, needless to say, except for one small problem: Palestinians have been trying to build such a movement for the last two decades, and the Israeli Government, IDF and American policy-makers have done everything possible to make sure it could not be heeded.
The New York Times devotes its op-ed page today to the death of Arafat. For the Israeli point of view, Benni Morris (who is now candid about his support for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) writes, and Jimmy Carter writes the American perspective. For the Palestinian perspective, the New York Times has an article by the...Jordanian King, of all people. As if there is anybody who is more despised by Palestinians than the Jordanian royal family. There is also a sinister and nasty obituary of Arafat in the Times today by anti-Arab fanatic (and Iraqi WMD fabricator) Judith Miller.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer announced a $2.6 million settlement Wednesday with Texas-based Diebold Elections Systems, seeking to end a lawsuit that alleged the company made false claims about one of its electronic voting systems.
The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org.
In the space of seven days, an online market of dark ideas surrounding last week's presidential election took root and multiplied.
The death of Yasser Arafat is a good time to bring up one of my favorite subjects: geopolitical generosity.
After the peace talks at Camp David ended in 2000 without an agreement, everyone in the US media starting talking about how Arafat had inexplicably turned down Israel's "generous offer." For instance, here's Charles Krauthammer:
At Camp David, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an astonishingly generous peace with dignity and statehood. Arafat not only turned it down, he refused even to make a counter offer!
At the time, I didn't know exactly what had happened at Camp David. But hearing about Israeli generosity, I thought -- oh man, the poor Palestinians. That's because of what I call the Iron Law of Generosity: whenever one group of people talks about being "generous" to another, it means they're BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF THEM.
Take Andrew Jackson. Here's what Jackson said in a famous address to Congress in 1830...
Questions are swirling around whether the election was conducted honestly or not. We need to know--was it or wasn't it?
If people were wrongly prevented from voting, or if legitimate votes were mis-counted or not counted at all, we need to know so the wrongdoers can be held accountable, and so we can prevent this from happening again.
Members of Congress are demanding an investigation to answer this question. The decision on whether or not there will be an investigation could come as soon as Monday. Join us in supporting the call for one now, at:
http://www.moveon.org/investigatethevote/
You can’t ignore the election. It’s there. But it’s designed as a method of essentially marginalizing the population. There’s a huge propaganda campaign to get people to focus on these personalized extravaganzas, and make them think ‘That’s politics.” Well, it isn’t.
Two California cities, Oakland and San Leandro, just adopted a better way for local elections, called ''instant runoff voting.'' Under it, voters rank the candidates 1, 2, 3 in order of preference. Voters thus could support both a Nader and a Gore, both a Buchanan and a Bush, or any other combination.
If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the count is over and that candidate wins. If not, the last-place finisher is eliminated. Ballots cast for that candidate are counted for voters' next choice, until someone has a clear majority. Australia and Ireland have used the system for decades.
Among the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians who turned out last Tuesday to vote their opposition to George W. Bush's and his "moral" agenda, Tony Campolo is a uniquely credible voice. Like most of those blamed for putting the White House in Republican hands for another four years, Campolo is an evangelical Christian."[Bush proposed cutting] 500,000 after-school slots for tutoring children in the city in order to nurture this tax relief for the rich. This is a moral issue. If we're gonna be concerned about biblical issues, we have to ask ourselves the question: Is it right to give money to the rich at the expense of services to the poor? And I'm dealing with the question of healthcare for the elderly. The Bible says we're supposed to take care of the elderly, and I find that in today's world we have people who are trying to choose between buying medicine and buying food. And this is no exaggeration. It's a moral issue. When the president of the United States promises to deliver, as he has, complete medical coverage for every man, woman and child in Iraq, I have to ask the question: Can't you provide complete medical coverage for every man, woman and child here in the States?"
EPA is paying families in Jacksonville, Florida (Duval County) who “spray or have pesticides sprayed inside your home routinely” to study the resulting chemical exposure in their infant children. The study, called the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study or CHEERS, pays participating families $970 for participating throughout the entire two-year study period. Families who complete the study also get to keep the camcorder they are provided to record their babies’ behavior. In addition, families are given bibs, t-shirts and other promotional items. The families are recruited from public clinics and hospitals. EPA selects infants based upon pesticide residue levels detected in “a surface wipe sample in the primary room where the child spends time.”See also The Washington Post
Ashcroft, in a five-page, handwritten letter to Bush, said, "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved."
On "Grab That Gun" (Mint), Deborah Cohen's guitar melodies are as hooky and sad as Katie Sketch's vocals, forming an awkward reply to each chorus. Comparisons to the Smiths and Joy Division are easy, but Ms. Sketch's lyrics have a remarkable way of being aloof without sounding arrogant. Anchored by a pumping Hammond organ, the songs on "Grab That Gun" are often quirky and unconventional, a record for daydreaming about breaking hearts and basement suites in the winter. We wish we had had this intelligent and subtle music in high school, when we needed something to explain what we would be feeling through most of our 20's.
A senior CIA counterterrorism official has defied orders to stop publicly criticizing the U.S. government's response to Al Qaeda, complaining that no one has been held accountable for failures that helped lead to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and warning that management problems continue to put Americans at risk.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA and former chief of its Osama bin Laden operation, acknowledged Monday that he might be putting his job in jeopardy by discussing details of a memo in which he cited 10 examples of the agency's failures against Al Qaeda.
Right-wing conservatives are demanding that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) be prevented from chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee because of published comments regarding likely anti-choice Supreme Court nominees. Specter remarked in a press conference on Wednesday that nominees who would attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade would be too conservative to be confirmed.
Dear Mr. Nader,
I am writing to you concering voter fraud in Ohio and New Hampshire. Evidence is coming forth that Republican districts cheated by falsifying voter returns in these two states. Although John Kerry has conceded, you could still challenge those results and influence a very close and very crucial election.
Please do not let your spirit of democracy, justice and truth die with this election. Chllenge the results in those states you were on the ballot!
Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.
A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.
A 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS crew in Iraq shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein was in the area where tons of explosives disappeared, and may have videotaped some of those weapons.
The principal advocacy group for families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks blamed President Bush and a group of House Republicans on Wednesday for the failure of Congress to approve a bill to enact the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission and overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies.
The International Atomic Energy Agency publicly warned about the danger of these explosives before the war, and after the invasion it specifically told United States officials about the need to keep the explosives secured, European diplomats said in interviews last week. Administration officials say they cannot explain why the explosives were not safeguarded, beyond the fact that the occupation force was overwhelmed by the amount of munitions they found throughout the country.
Some people associate the decision to go to war as a ‘strength’. How strong do you need to be to commit thousands of your countrymen and women to death on foreign soil? Especially while you and your loved ones sit safely watching at home. How strong do you need to be to give orders to bomb cities to rubble and use the most advanced military technology available against a country with a weak army and crumbling infrastructure?
A lot of what passes for political dialogue in this country is just blatant lying. The government has an advanced degree in it, as governments typically do. I suppose our system works so the politically active sector of the population focuses wholeheartedly on the (not subtle) lies of the other side, rarely questioning their own; there are only two choices, after all. In the meantime, the rest of the population (50%--maybe more?) doesn't even participate. That leaves us with relatively small numbers of very vocal liars dominating the American political system.
The head of Iran's security council said Tuesday that the re-election of President Bush was in Tehran's best interests, despite the administration's axis of evil label, accusations that Iran harbors al-Qaida terrorists and threats of sanctions over the country's nuclear ambitions.
How wide is the gap between we Iraqis and America? For me, one of the benefits of this war is that it has brought American people here. We used to imagine the American through the movies: a superhuman, devoid of faults. But the war revealed the American to be simply an ordinary person, like all of us. He could be kind-hearted, peaceful and polite, or he could be vicious, aggressive and brutish. He could be intelligent and witty, or he could be unintelligent or average.
Yet in my own personal experience here, I can truthfully say I have never encountered or heard of noble attitudes from American soldiers towards Iraqi people. I am sorry: I have wished to meet an understanding, tender soldier. I would have written something nice about him. But I never have.
A lot of you have been asking about my background and the reason why my English is good. I am Iraqi- born in Iraq to Iraqi parents, but was raised abroad for several years as a child. I came back in my early teens and continued studying in English in Baghdad- reading any book I could get my hands on. Most of my friends are of different ethnicities, religions and nationalities. I am bilingual. There are thousands in Iraq like me- kids of diplomats, students, ex-patriots, etc.
As to my connection with Western culture... you wouldn't believe how many young Iraqi people know so much about American/British/French pop culture. They know all about Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt, Whitney Houston, McDonalds, and M.I.B.s... Iraqi tv stations were constantly showing bad copies of the latest Hollywood movies. (If it's any consolation, the Marines lived up to the Rambo/ Terminator reputation which preceded them.)
But no matter what- I shall remain anonymous. I wouldn't feel free to write otherwise. I think Salam and Gee are incredibly brave... who knows, maybe one day I will be too. You know me as Riverbend, you share a very small part of my daily reality- I hope that will suffice.
So where does the valium fit in? Imagine through all of this commotion, an elderly aunt who is terrified of bombing. She was so afraid, she couldn't, and wouldn't, sit still. She stood pacing the hallway, cursing Bush, Blair and anyone involved with the war- and that was during her calmer moments. When she was feeling especially terrified, the curses and rampage would turn into a storm of weeping and desolation (during which she imagines she can't breathe)- we were all going to die. They would have to remove us from the rubble of our home. We'd burn alive. And so on. And so forth.
During those fits of hysteria, my cousin would quietly, but firmly, hand her a valium and a glass of water. The aunt would accept both and in a matter of minutes, she'd grow calmer and a little bit more sane. This aunt wasn't addicted to valium, but it certainly came in handy during the more hectic moments of the war.
Satellite images show entire buildings have been dismantled without any record being made, said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog.
Some days ago, the media announced that a computer disk containing information about US schools was found in Iraq. The implication was that Al-Qaeda was in Iraq (which, without any time component, suggests they had been there pre-invasion), and that it was poised to attack US schools a la Beslan. And yet how quietly was the story laid to rest? So quietly that it took a person who trolls every media clearinghouse a day and a half to read that FBI Agent William Evanina said "There's no terrorism threat to these schools."
In the president’s world, accountability and punishment aren’t for the folks who make the mistakes. They’re for the people who recognize the mistakes or, God forbid, admit them. And when the president had a chance to come up with any mistakes he might have made in four years as president the one that instinctively popped into his mind were the times he’d appointed folks who turned out to be from the second category, rather than the first.
Arcata is calling on Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to be impeached for having "planned, prepared, initiated and waged ... wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq ... in violation of numerous international laws," including the U.N. Charter, Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Accords and the U.S. Constitution.
Most of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are likely to be freed or sent to their home countries for further investigation because many pose little threat and are not providing much valuable intelligence, the facility's deputy commander has said.
"A question I answered today at an appearance before the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) regarding ties between al Qaeda and Iraq regrettably was misunderstood. I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al Qaeda and Iraq."
- Donald Rumsfeld
I would favor a draft if it were a fair system. I don't think there's anything wrong with the idea that people contribute equally to something like the national defense. People will fight for things they believe in. If, however, people feel their leaders haven't provided the justification for war, they'll be less inclined to endorse it. If they feel it's immoral, they'll resist in the ways we saw during the Vietnam War, making it impossible for the government to pursue the war past a certain point (I think a fair draft could have ended it earlier). A draft presumes that everyone has a duty to defend their nation, but it also encourages popular opposition to misadventures that too frequently don't fall under that description.
U.S. workers are paying more for health insurance and receiving less than they were four years ago and the situation is particularly acute in several states important in the presidential race, said a consumer group that has been critical of President George W. Bush.
I can't seem to decide what is worse--when Bush speaks in the name of Iraqi people, or when Allawi does. Yesterday's speech was particularly embarrassing. He stood there groveling in front of the congress--thanking them for the war, the occupation and the thousands of Iraqi lives lost... and he did it all on behalf of the Iraqi people. It was infuriating and for maybe the hundredth time this year, I felt rage. Yet another exile thanking the Bush administration for the catastrophe we're trying to cope with. Our politicians are outside of the country 90% of the time (by the way, if anyone has any news of our president Ghazi Ajeel Al Yawir, do let us know--where was he last seen or heard?), the security situation is a joke, the press are shutting down and pulling out and our beloved exiles are painting rosey pictures for the American public--you know--so everyone who voted for Bush can sleep at night.
A new poll in 35 countries suggests that people around the world would prefer Democratic challenger John Kerry as US president over George W Bush.
With the latest Detroit convictions overturned, Ashcroft has not convicted a single person of terrorism since 9/11.
If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate--he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run--and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.
Belarus’ authoritarian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has proposed abolishing presidential term limits so he can remain in power. He has drafted a referendum on the subject, to be voted on during parliamentary elections next month. Lukashenka is in his second term, which under the country’s constitution would be his last. But he insists that, given the recent horrifying hostage crisis in neighboring Russia, Belarus needs stability above all else. “In the referendum you will vote for the security of the country, for the life and health of your children and grandchildren,” he said. Lukashenka has ruthlessly suppressed the political opposition, and international observers said the 2001 presidential election that gave him a second term was rigged.
"The fact is, we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq," said Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees.
Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.
A group of activist Sept. 11 widows said Tuesday they will campaign for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, charging the Bush administration stonewalled their efforts to uncover intelligence failures leading up to the attacks and took the nation into a misguided war in Iraq.
Republicans always rant about big government, but government has grown under every single Republican administration since WWII and continues to grow under this one. We are a party of big government whether we want to admit it or not. Handouts will always be popular with their recipients. If you have a way to actually make Republicans reduce the size of government, I'm all for it, but until then, tell the truth.
A new public television program called The Journal Editorial Report, featuring writers and editors from the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, will debut tonight on public television stations around the country. The show joins Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, hosted by conservative CNN pundit Tucker Carlson, and a planned program featuring conservative commentator Michael Medved as part of what many see as politically motivated decisions to bring more right-wing voices to public television.
The Bush administration wants to trim the Federal Aviation Administration's budget for buying new air traffic control equipment at a time when more planes are in the air.
A Pentagon contractor that has been entrusted with handling the unsealed absentee ballots of military and civilian voters overseas was sued two years ago by a Tennessee business that accused it of fabricating information and other fraudulent behavior involving an overdue bill, according to federal court records.
...The only “crisis” Social Security faces is posed by its enemies, who have created a phony one to provide the moral and intellectual basis for weakening and destroying a highly successful and completely viable system. It is Social Security’s very success that upsets ideologues of the market and their corporate backers, as an efficient and effective government-managed poverty reduction program suggests that marketization of everything may not be in the public interest and that the government can serve ordinary citizens well. If acknowledged, Social Security’s success might justify its extension to a program to universalize medical insurance and control medical costs by a national medical budget policy, highly desirable—even urgent—and widely used elsewhere, but threatening to powerful insurance and medical profession interests. Of course privatization of Social Security would be a huge bonanza to the securities industry, which has pumped money into the Cato Institute and elsewhere to foster claims of a crisis.
The White House asserted that progress was being made in Iraq. "You know, every step of the way in Iraq there have been pessimists and hand-wringers who said it can't be done," Scott McClellan, the chief White House spokesman, said at a news briefing. "And every step of the way, the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi people have proven them wrong because they are determined to have a free and peaceful future."
Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency has fewer experienced case officers assigned to its headquarters unit dealing with Osama bin Laden than it did at the time of the attacks, despite repeated pleas from the unit's leaders for reinforcements, a senior C.I.A. officer with extensive counterterrorism experience has told Congress.See also:
Hitler took note of Native Americans, indigenous people of the Americas, specifically within the area of the U.S. and Canada. He used the treatment of native people, the policies and processes that were imposed upon them, as a model for what he articulated as being Lebensraumpolitik, the politics of living space. In essence, Hitler took the notion of a drive from east to west, clearing the land as the invading population went and resettling it with Anglo-Saxon stock, primarily, as a model by which he drove from west to east into Russia, displacing, relocating, dramatically shifting or liquidating populations to clear the land and replace it with what he called "superior breeding stock," meaning Germanic peoples. It was essentially the same process, and he was very conscious of the fact that he was basing his policies in the prior experience of the Anglo-American population, or Nordic population, as he called it, in the area north of the Rio Grande River.
President Bush has vowed to make tax reform a centerpiece of a second term, but an internal Treasury Department study in late 2002 warned that any fundamental simplification of the nation's tax system would "produce windfall winners and losers," would likely lower taxes for the rich, and could have devastating political consequences for its champions.
The core question to be addressed is this: is the continuing presence of US military forces in Iraq part of the solution or part of the problem?
It astonishes me to hear people say that no comparison can be drawn between what’s happening in Iraq, and the failed "democratization" of Vietnam nearly 40 years ago. I believe the parallels are striking and unmistakable. For one thing, the Vietnam conflict ramped up in exactly the same fashion as Iraq, with an escalating involvement but never a clear plan of engagement or a plan for withdrawal.
Missing today from national and local agendas is anything remotely resembling the progressivism that spurred the successful evolution of U.S. cities in the last century. Sometimes dubbed "sewer socialism," this program for development started at the municipal level and aimed to repair the legacy of the Industrial Revolution.
I think a close examination of US foreign policy is in order if we want to understand why murderers like bin Laden enjoy wide sympathy in the Middle East--even among people who don't agree with his tactics. The US is perceived as propping up corrupt dictatorships throughout the region--regimes which ordinary Arabs suffer under daily. Generally, moves towards representative government are blocked by the US as being "anti-democratic," meaning they preclude access to markets and resources on behalf of American businesses and investors. A passing familiarity with American foreign policy reveals a very consistent record of undermining popular, democratic movements (Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, El Salvador, the Philipines, etc., etc.) in favor of dictators who will protect US business interests in their countries at the expense of their own populations. The state department calls it "democracy" because it preserves private property rights for the people who matter.
Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, is urging government insiders to provide similar classified documents about the invasion of Iraq.
Costa Rica is asking the United States to remove the Central American country from a list of coalition members supporting the war in Iraq.
The war wasn't necessary. It was successful for the Americans and they have the oil reserves now.
I hope the Americans learnt a lesson from all of this and I hope they do not think that everything will be just fine now.
It won't, because the people of Iraq and the whole world saw what happened. People have lots of hatred inside them now--which is not helpful for the future of the world.
- 18 year old Ozgur Yazici, from Turkey
...I don't think Islamic radicals care very much about our elections; certainly not about our "democracy," which they, contrary to hating us for, probably don't even acknowledge as reality. These are things that have a much greater significance to American audiences than Muslim ones. No doubt the idea that anyone would hate you for your "greatness" is naturally appealing--even if it fails to explain why Bin Laden never targeted the US before we happened to open our first military base in his home country during the first Gulf War. Weren't we just as free and spectacular before Desert Storm as we were after?
President Bush failed to carry out a direct order from his superior in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1972 to undertake a medical examination that was necessary for him to remain a qualified pilot, according to documents made public yesterday.
...The story of exactly what came to pass between the New York Police Department and the nearly 2,000 people who were arrested last week continues to unfold, and the resulting narrative may affect history's view of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's performance during the Republican National Convention....
Scores of protesters and their lawyers have relayed stories about people being separated from their medications, contracting rashes from the dirty floor and other maladies that they said went unaddressed for hours.
Yesterday, on CNN's Inside Politics, Jesse Jackson delivered a blistering attack on the Kerry campaign for running away from the Democratic base and the issues it cares about. Jesse cited, among other things a daylong West Virginia Rainbow/labor "Invest in America" jobs rally at which Jesse spoke at yesterday, that he said drew 30,000 folks with a raft of entertainers like Willie Nelson and Judy Collins.. Jesse was furious that Kerry had ducked the rally, even though he was campaigning only 30 miles away. Jesse sneered at the inadequacy of the Kerry campaign's much-publicized "shakeup" and its whitebread, retread Clintonista imports, snarling that "it can't be just a vanilla shake."
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has said a vote for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry could make a terror attack on the US more likely.
...Last year, the 29-year-old legal secretary from Tel Aviv picked up a newspaper and read about Zakariya Zubeidi, the Jenin leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the group responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shootings. Ms Fahima decided she would ask Mr Zubeidi why he killed Jews.
The Pentagon plans to end a contract given to Halliburton to provide US troops in Iraq with logistical support, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Speaking to Aljazeera.net on Thursday, the director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, Sami Awad, said the demand from Palestinians to learn how to practise passive resistance was greater than his six trainers could provide.
AMY GOODMAN: What did you do exactly?
KRIS HERMES: Well, we sat on the floor in the New York delegation area and when Andrew Card began to speak, we blew whistles, stood up on the chairs, and chanted and held signs. There was a banner that was attempted to be unfurled, and then proceeded to be assaulted by Young Republicans.
In the early days of the rise of corporations, conservatives were opposed to them because they undermined both individual liberty and competition in the marketplace. Those who today carry the banner of conservatism are a different sort entirely. They support a concentration of wealth and political control among a corporate elite, which is antithetical to freedom of the individual, a free market and democracy. The corporate state is closer to the formula of fascism than to democracy.
For $2.4 trillion, guess what word—other than "a," "and," and "the"—occurs most frequently in the acceptance speech George W. Bush delivered tonight.
The word is "will." It appears 76 times. This was a speech all about what Bush will do, and what will happen, if he becomes president.
As most Americans began the Labor Day holiday weekend, federal health officials held a late-afternoon briefing to announce that the 42 million disabled and elderly Medicare beneficiaries will be hit with the largest premium increase in 15 years.
