September 23, 2004 | Washington Post [Page A04] by Jonathan Weisman Congressional negotiators beat back efforts yesterday to expand and preserve tax refunds for poor families, even as they added $13 billion in corporate tax breaks to a package of middle-class tax cuts that could come to a vote in the Senate today.
Brendan
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[ Will this further endear the U.S. to the Middle East? –BL ] 21 Sept. 2004 | Haaretz by Aluf Benn The United States will sell Israel 5,000 smart bombs for $319 million, according to a report made to Congress a few weeks ago. The funding will come from the U.S. military aid to Israel, and the bombs range from airborne versions, guidance units, training bombs and detonators. The bombs are guided by satellite, in a system already in the Israel Defense Forces arsenal. The guidance unit receives a signal from a satellite, correcting the bomb’s course to the target. The […]
[ From the piece: If you want to build a bomb, you simply sign the treaties, join the IAEA, then use your entitlements to do what they were designed to prevent. –BL ]
21 September 2004 | New York Times by JAMES GLANZ BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 – Iraqi officials in charge of rebuilding their country’s shattered and decrepit infrastructure are warning that the Bush administration’s plan to divert $3.46 billion from water, sewage, electricity and other reconstruction projects to security could leave many people without the crucial services that generally form the backbone of a stable and functioning democracy. Under the plan, which was proposed last week and would require approval by Congress, the money would pay for training and equipping tens of thousands of additional police officers, border patrol agents and […]
[ Well put, Batch. –BL ] 18 Sept. 2004 by Nathaniel Batchelder, Oklahoma City Peace House EVERYTHING AT STAKE: People I admire most include Ralph Nader and folks committed to the Greens. Because I and they are aligned on so many issues, I pray they consider the high regard underlying my words: Elections are not ?OPINION SURVEYS? to separate the righteous from the less. Elections determine WHO will sit in the seats of power for 2, 4, or 6 years, thus WHO we get to LOBBY for all the things we believe in. The voter?s choice is ALWAYS: someone better or […]
[ From the piece: … even some conservative bloggers have marveled at Buckhead’s detailed knowledge of the memos and wondered whether that suggested White House involvement. –BL ] GOP Activist Made Allegations on CBS Memos: An Atlanta lawyer who helped get Clinton disbarred is the blogger who called them fakes by Peter Wallsten September 18, 2004 | Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON — It was the first public allegation that CBS News had used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush’s Air National Guard service — a highly technical explanation posted on the Web within hours of airtime, citing proportional spacing […]
[ As the Guardian reports bad news for Bush in the draft report from the U.S.-appointed Iraq Survey Group (below), it also reports (17 Sept. 2004) that, according to the National Intelligence Estimate Even the best-case scenario for Iraq is a political, economic and security situation described as tenuous…. At a hearing to discuss the White House’s requests to divert more than $3bn from aid [for Iraq] to security, senators of both main parties lambasted the lack of progress on the ground. So far less than $1bn of the $18.4bn allocated has been spent…. Referring to the lack of overall […]
16 Sept. 2004 | Guardian by Ewen MacAskill and Julian Borger in Washington The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.
16 Sept. 2004 | United Press International by Mark Benjamin WASHINGTON — Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. The Pentagon said most don’t fit the definition of casualties, but a veterans’ advocate said they should all be counted. In addition to those evacuations, 32,684 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan now out of the military sought medical attention from the Department of Veterans Affairs by July 22, according to VA reports obtained by UPI. The number of those visits to VA […]
16 Sept. 2004 | Misleader.org Vice President Cheney has regularly attacked the national security credentials of Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), calling him weak on terrorism. But according to a new report, it was Cheney who actually did business with terrorist countries and traveled abroad to attack America’s counter-terrorism efforts in the 1990s. As The American Prospect documents, Cheney oversaw Halliburton’s effort to do business with Iraq and Iran in the 1990s, despite American sanctions against those countries. During his time as CEO, he oversaw Halliburton’s $73 million worth of business with Saddam Hussein.1 This, despite his claim that he had […]
September 19, 1999 | The Observer [London] by Ed Vulliamy in New York and Antony Barnett Indonesian military forces linked to the carnage in East Timor were trained in the United States under a covert programme sponsored by the Clinton Administration which continued until last year. The Observer can also disclose that the Government has spent about ?1 million in training more than 50 members of the Indonesian military in Britain since it came to power. Human rights campaigners claim a number of these are likely to have links with those complicit in the attrocities. The US programme, codenamed ‘Iron […]
September 14, 2004 | Associated Press by Ben Feller Washington — The United States is falling behind other countries in having a high-school-educated public, with the gap widening the most among young adults, a new comparison of industrialized nations shows. A total of 87 percent of U.S. adults age 25 to 34 have finished high school, which puts the country 10th behind such nations as Korea, Norway, the Czech Republic and Japan.
Speeches ignore impending U.S. debt disaster: No mention of fiscal gap estimated as high as $72 trillion September 12, 2004 | San Francisco Chronicle by Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau Washington — The first of the 77 million-strong Baby Boom generation will begin to retire in just four years. The economic consequences of this fact — as scary as they are foreseeable — are all but ignored by President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry, who discuss just about everything but the biggest fiscal challenge of modern times. Yet whoever wins the 2004 race will become the first U.S. president […]
September 14, 2004 | FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting) In the past week, a handful of stories have cast doubt on whether George W. Bush fulfilled his National Guard obligations 30 years ago. Reports by the Associated Press (9/7/04), Boston Globe (9/8/04) and U.S. News & World Report (9/20/04) have all raised new questions about Bush’s military service. Though each of these stories has been accompanied by significant official documentation, developments in the investigations by AP, U.S. News and the Boston Globe have been largely sidetracked by the fixation on questions about the authenticity of documents aired on CBS […]
14 Sept. 2004 | Washington Post by Mike Allen The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade. A staple of Bush’s stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator’s campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
[ In 2001, The Onion must have been unaware of how unfunny this piece would be in retrospect! Thanks to Annie Butler for bringing it to my attention. –BL ] 18 January 2001 | The Onion WASHINGTON, DC—Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.” Above: President-elect Bush vows that “together, we can put the triumphs of the recent past behind us.” “My fellow Americans,” Bush said, “at […]
The Washington Post reports that outgoing U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who was in charge of western Iraq, dealt a blow “against top U.S. military and civilian leaders who ordered the [April] Fallujah invasion and withdrawal.” After the late March “killing [in Fallujah] of four U.S. security contractors, whose bodies were mutilated or burned by a celebrating mob[,] Conway said he resisted calls for revenge, and instead advocated targeted operations and continued engagement with municipal leaders.” The U.S.-led assault on Fallujah, he said, “served to increase ‘the level of animosity’ in the city.”
September 13, 2004 | Washington Post [Page A01] by Jackie Spinner BAGHDAD, Sept. 12 — Car bombings, mortar attacks and clashes between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi security forces killed at least 80 civilians across the country Sunday, Iraqi officials said. In Baghdad, the scene of some of the most intense fighting in months, at least 27 people were killed and 107 were wounded. A U.S. military helicopter fired into a crowd of civilians who had surrounded a burning Army armored vehicle in the capital, killing 13 people, said Saad Amili, spokesman for the Health Ministry. Among those killed was […]
14 Sept. 2004 | Misleader.org Displaying a brazen disregard for the facts, Vice President Cheney told an audience in Cincinnati Thursday that Iraq had “provided safe harbor and sanctuary…for Al Qaeda.”1 There is no evidence to support Cheney’s claim. The 9/11 Commission – which spent months exhaustively studying the issue – concluded there was no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda.2 After the release of the report, Cheney claimed there was “overwhelming” evidence of a relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq and that he had “probably” seen evidence that was not shared with the commission.3 After investigating the matter, the 9/11 […]
excerpted from September 12, 2004 | San Francisco Chronicle by Vicki Haddock This past week … the 1,000th U.S. casualty [in Iraq] reclaimed our attention. [That’s nearly three times as many as in the first Gulf War.]… It’s been 16 months since President Bush celebrated under a banner extolling “Mission Accomplished,” more than a year since he taunted those seeking to attack Americans inside Iraq with: “Bring ’em on. We’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” Since then, insurgents have “brought it on” with a vengeance. The casualty rate for coalition troops in Iraq now is […]
by Brendan Lalor “The enemy of America is ‘Made in America’; this is an inescapable fact,” according to Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, which has just released a series of essays entitled, 9/11 and the “War on Terrorism” as part of its E-Reports and Monograph Series online. Chossudovsky explains that The “Islamic Militant Network” (the forerunner of Osama bin Laden?s Al Qaeda), was created and sustained by the CIA. He criticizes the 9/11 Commission Report as devoid of a historical perspective. While it provides all the […]
[ This piece follows up one from last month. –BL ] September 12, 2004 | The lndependent [London] by Geoffrey Lean Up to 400,000 New Yorkers breathed in the most toxic polluting cloud ever recorded after the twin towers were brought down three years ago, but no proper effort has been made to find out how their health has been affected, according to an official report. The US government study provides the latest evidence of a systematic cover-up of the health toll from pollution after the 9/11 disaster, which doctors fear will cause more deaths than the attacks themselves. The Bush […]
Fri, Sep. 10, 2004 | Knight Ridder Keywords: Swift Boat Veterans by MEG LAUGHLIN AND TOM INFIELD WASHINGTON – Texas oilmen, led by takeover specialist T. Boone Pickens, helped fuel the anti-Kerry advertising campaign of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a report filed Friday shows. Pickens contributed $500,000 to the group, the report said. A second oilman from Dallas, Albert Huddleston, contributed $100,000. The group, whose controversial attacks on the war record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry have attracted national attention, claims it has raised $6.7 million, but it portrays itself as a grass-roots effort thriving on small contributions. […]
[ This story follows up an earlier piece. –BL ] September 11, 2004 | Boston Globe by Francie Latour and Michael Rezendes After CBS News on Wednesday trumpeted newly discovered documents that referred to a 1973 effort to ”sugar coat” President Bush’s service record in the Texas Air National Guard, the network almost immediately faced charges that the documents were forgeries, with typography that was not available on typewriters used at that time. But specialists interviewed by the Globe and some other news organizations say the specialized characters used in the documents, and the type format, were common to electric typewriters […]
by Brendan Lalor Scholars in the tradition of Just War Theory distinguish between jus ad bellum (justice in going to war) and jus in bello (justice in the conduct of war). The distinction facilitates nuanced moral discussion about which actions and motives of warring parties might or might not be justified, and helps prevent overgeneralization of blame and innocence. A warring party might have been justified in going to war, but not in its conduct of the war; or it might be blamed not for its conduct but for inadequate justification; and so on. To my knowledge, scholars have not […]
[ Americans remain OutFoxed! –BL ] 10 Sept 2004 | Editor and Publisher Media failure or willful public indifference to the truth? ‘E & P’ readers sound off and point fingers. by Greg Mitchell NEW YORK — The latest Newsweek poll, released this week, revealed that 42% of Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein’s regime was “directly involved” in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, despite all the evidence to the contrary. That’s nearly as many as the 44% who disagree. It seems to matter little that every official federal probe, most recently the much-lauded 9/11 Commission, has […]
10 Sept 2004 | Washington Post [A24] by Bradley Graham and Josh White A senior U.S. Army general who investigated the abusive treatment of prisoners in Iraq said yesterday that the CIA may have avoided registering up to 100 detainees in U.S. military facilities, a number far higher than the eight cases that Army officials had previously cited. The disclosure by Gen. Paul J. Kern at a Senate hearing stunned lawmakers, who grew more aggravated as they heard Kern and another general involved in the probe describe their own unsuccessful efforts to obtain documents from the CIA about the unregistered […]
10 Sept 2004 | Los Angeles Times by Debora Vrana The cost of providing health insurance for American workers has climbed an average of 11.2% this year — five times as fast as wages — according to a survey released Thursday.
[ The dust has yet to settle on questions regarding the memos at issue in the story below. CBS insists its sources are “unimpeachable.” Either way, it’s worth remembering that the memos were not the whole 60 Minutes scoop. Oklahomans won a victory in connection with this story, which broke on CBS’s 60 Minutes: the affiliate in Oklahoma City, KWTV, had planned to preempt the show, but decided to air it due to an overwhelming volume of calls. Grassroots action! Thanks to Alexandra Dadlez for sending the AP piece below. In a related piece, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof […]
[ This story follows up the hype pushed by the Bush Administration and FoxNews about the possibility of attack by Iraqi drone planes! (See, e.g., the Fox story below.) It’s worth noting that the Associated Press debunked the Fox story long ago. –BL ] U.N. Inspectors Dispute U.S. Theories on Iraqi Drones Sep 7, 2004 | Reuters by Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS – U.N. inspectors said they had no evidence that Iraq had developed drones capable of delivering chemical or biological weapons, as the Bush administration contended in making its case for war, according a report obtained Tuesday.
Sep. 13, 2004 | Time by TIMOTHY J. BURGER Some democrats on the Hill claim that they are worried a second Bush Administration may prove more militarily aggressive than the first. One reason: a Democratic official tells TIME that a leading Pentagon hawk recently hinted that the doctrine of pre-emptive war could soon apply to potential new targets. During a private Aug. 19 conference call with Capitol Hill aides from both parties, sources say, senior Pentagon policy official William Luti said there are at least five or six foreign countries with traits that “no responsible leader can allow.” An outspoken […]
7 September 2004 | Aljazeera by Khalid Amayreh in Hebron Israeli rabbis say killing enemy civilians during war is ‘normal’ A group of prominent Jewish rabbis have asked the Israeli army not to flinch from killing Palestinian civilians in the context of the ongoing military campaign against armed groups resisting the occupation. In a letter to the Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, published on Tuesday, the rabbis said killing enemy civilians is “normal” during the time of war and that the Israeli occupation army should never hesitate to kill non-Jewish civilians in order to save Jewish lives. “There is no […]
September 7, 2004 | New York Times by PAUL KRUGMAN The best book I’ve read about America after 9/11 isn’t about either America or 9/11. It’s War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, an essay on the psychology of war by Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent. Better than any poll analysis or focus group, it explains why President Bush, despite policy failures at home and abroad, is ahead in the polls.
9/11 three years on: ‘War on terror’ has not stopped terrorism 8 Sept 2004 | Green Left Weekly by Rohan Pearce & Alison Dellit The appalling end to the hostage crisis in Beslan, Russia on September 4, which left more than 300 dead, had people all over the world horrified. The killing of so many children helped neither the Chechens fighting the Russian occupation of their country, nor those of us fighting war and state-sponsored terrorism all over the world. The only people who were really aided by the slaughter were those pursuing the misnamed ?war on terror?, in particular […]
September 6, 2004 | WorkingForChange.com & Morphizm.Com by Greg Palast In celebration of the working person’s holiday, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has announced the Bush Administration’s plan to end the 60-year-old law which requires employers to pay time-and-a-half for overtime. I’m sure you already knew that — if you happened to have run across page 15,576 of last year’s Federal Register. According to the Register, where the Bush Administration likes to place its little gifts to major campaign donors, 2.7 million workers will lose their overtime pay for a “benefit” of $1.53 billion. I put “benefit” in quotes because, […]
7 September 2004 | Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq – As U.S. forces again battled insurgents loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, U.S. military deaths in the Iraq campaign passed 1,000 on Tuesday, according to an Associated Press tally. The grim milestone was surpassed after a spike in fighting that has killed 14 U.S. service members in the past two days.
6 September 2004 | Los Angeles Times Plan would allow voting to proceed in January but might undermine credibility of the results by Patrick J. McDonnell BAGHDAD — Iraq remains on course to hold landmark elections in January, but violence could force authorities to exclude hotspots such as the western city of Fallouja from voting, a top U.S. general said here Sunday. Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operations chief of more than 150,000 mostly U.S. troops, said in an interview that the “cancer” of anti-American militancy in places such as Fallouja would not derail national elections. A “contingency” plan, Metz […]
7 Sept 2004 | StopTheNRA.com In 6 days, banned guns — including Uzis, AK-47s, and Tec-9s — will be coming back to our neighborhoods, courtesy of President Bush, unless the Assault Weapons Ban is renewed. Sign the petition.
7 Sept 2004 | MoveOn.org Today, a group in Texas, Texans for Truth, is launching an ad campaign that highlights Bush’s absence from duty in 1972. The ad features Robert Mintz, who served in Alabama’s 187th Air National Guard when Bush claims to have been there. In the ad, Robert Mintz says simply and powerfully that “I heard George Bush get up and say ‘I served in the 187th Air National Guard in Montgomery Alabama.’ Really? That was my unit. And I don’t remember seeing you there. So I called friends. ‘Did you know that George served in our unit?’ […]
7 Sept 2004 | Misleader.org President Bush yesterday said that because of his leadership, “America and the world are safer.”1 But almost three years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden remains at large, while the U.S. government admits top al Qaeda leaders are planning attacks on America from the Afghan-Pakistan border region.2 And now a new book confirms the President actually shifted key resources away from the fight against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Knight-Ridder reports that in his upcoming book, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months after the invasion […]
September 5, 2004 | New York Times by DEXTER FILKINS BAGHDAD, Iraq — At a recent meeting with a group of tribal sheiks, an American general spoke with evident frustration about the latest Iraqi city to fall into the hands of insurgents. “Not one dime of American taxpayers’ money will come into your city until you help us drive out the terrorists,” Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in his base in Tikrit, tapping the table to make sure he was understood. The sheiks nodded, smiled and withdrew, back to the city that neither they, nor the American military, […]
03 September 2004 | Aljazeera Residents of Falluja have taken to the streets after Friday prayers to denounce the continuous bombing of their homes and to support their city’s security forces. Hundreds of protesters condemned the killing of civilians by US warplanes, calling US air raids a cowardly action and calling on US soldiers to fight them on the battlefield. “Air strikes are cowardly. Get down and face us on the battlefield,” the crowd chanted.
[ For more on Republican deception at the Convention, see this AP story. –BL ] 3 September 2004 | FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) It is the function of journalism to separate fact from fiction. In covering the Republican National Convention of 2004, the media made isolated efforts to point out some of the convention speakers’ more egregious distortions, but on the whole failed in their vital role of letting citizens know when they are being lied to. To take the example that dominated the convention perhaps more than any other claim: Professional politicians and political correspondents alike know that […]
‘Who was this guy who came in late and left early?’ After thirty years of silence, Mary Jacoby finds out what the future President really did in 1972 September 2, 2004 | Salon.com Before Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family’s political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George HW Bush phoned his friend and asked a favour: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W Bush? […]
Things getting sticky for owner of sticker 1 Sept 2004 | The Salt Lake Tribune by Matthew D. LaPlante Derek Kjar is not the president’s biggest fan. But the 19-year-old Salt Lake County man says he does not intend to harm President Bush with anything more than a vote for John Kerry come November. Just to be sure, though, agents from the Secret Service recently paid Kjar a visit, telling him that his neighbors had alerted them to a potentially threatening bumper sticker on his car. The sticker, which can be found on a number of Web sites, features a […]
2 September 2004 | United Press International WASHINGTON — U.S. newspapers are moving stories of American troops dying in Iraq to the back pages, the Washington Monthly has reported. The magazine noted in its September issue that on July 9, the Los Angeles Times put the story of five soldiers being killed on page 7 and the New York Times put it on page 8. On July 22, the magazine said, The Washington Times headlined a story “U.S. Troops Dying Two Per Day Since Turnover in Iraq,” but only put it on page 10. Also, “stories of the wounded, nearing […]
1 September 2004 | New York Times by PAUL MELLER and ELIZABETH BECKER BRUSSELS, Aug. 31 – The World Trade Organization on Tuesday authorized the European Union and seven other leading American trading partners to impose more than $150 million in retaliatory sanctions on exports from the United States. The ruling comes after Congress refused for two years to repeal a tariff subsidy for American companies that the W.T.O. found to be in violation of global trade laws. The decision by the trade organization, based in Geneva, is the latest example of several cases where Washington has been found to […]
[ Oil reserves elsewhere are not what they once were … It is not easy and it is not cheap, and through most of the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was not attractive to pursue, because there was plenty of crude oil available from more convenient sources and the market price was too low to reward large-scale tar sands development. –BL ]31 August 2004 | New York Times by SIMON ROMERO
September 2, 2004 | AlterNet.org Keyword: Lakoff by George Lakoff Last night was red-meat night. Tear up the opposition and throw them to the dogs. This is traditionally a vice-presidential task so that the president can keep his hands clean. But this time Vice President Dick Cheney had the help of Zell Miller, a nominal Democrat who almost always votes with Republicans. It is important to distinguish between honest framing on the one hand, and framing by distortion and spin on the other. Arnold Schwarzenegger may actually believe that everyone and anyone can make it in this American economy, even […]
President Bush photographed wearing Air Force award he never earned 1 Sept 2004 | The Raw Story by John Byrne A closer examination of a photograph included in President George W. Bush’s Air Force records, released by the White House earlier this year, shows then-Second Lieutenant Bush wearing an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award which he never earned. The photograph is also displayed on George H. W. Bush’s Presidential library website. Read the full story Ben Barnes to break silence on “60 Minutes”: The Republican campaign gets ready for shock waves, as the former Texas official who says he pulled […]
When Dr Thomas Butler noticed vials of plague bacteria were missing from his Texas university lab, he did the right thing and informed the FBI – only to find himself the prime suspect in a bio-terrorism investigation. Now he’s in jail, but his fate was sealed by paranoia and prejudice. Rose George investigates. 31 August 2004 | The Independent
2 September 2004 | Boston Globe by Marcella Bombardieri NEW YORK — A year and a half ago, Robert Sarra was a Marine sergeant in Iraq, where, he says, he once fired his M-16 at a black-cloaked old woman who failed to stop when she was told. Instead of a suicide bomb, the bundle she carried to her death held only bread, tea, and a white flag.
2 September 2004 | DemocracyNow! The New York Times is reporting that Warner Brothers has decided not to distribute director David O. Russell’s new antiwar documentary when it re-releases his 1999 Gulf War movie, “Three Kings,” this fall. The studio said the anti-war documentary was “totally inappropriate” for a political season. It features interviews with Iraqi refugees and veterans of the current war in Iraq.
[ As Slate’s Eric Umansky points out, Dana Milbank, in his usual fashion, fact-checks [the Miller address at the RNC], pointing that Miller–who three years ago called Kerry “one of this nation’s authentic heroes”–was basing his charge on just one vote and that then SecDef Cheney “was demanding even deeper cuts.” Milbank also clarifies a number of other doozies. But the effort is wasted, stuffed on A25 with the please-skip-this-story head: “TOPIC OF TERROR OVERSHADOWING ALL OTHERS.” The other papers by and large ignore Zell’s zingers (in some instances, lies). –BL ] Topic of Terror Overshadowing All Others: Bush Pushes Aside […]
[ In case you haven’t heard, USA Today has given Michael Moore press credentials to write a column from the Republican National Convention this week: Political conventions have become predictable rituals, four-day cheerleading sessions for both parties. So USA TODAY is offering readers an alternative perspective. Michael Moore, director of Fahrenheit 9/11, is writing daily from the Republican convention in New York. A month ago, conservative National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg weighed in from the Democratic convention. This is one of the installments of Moore’s column. –BL ] 1 September 04 | USA Today by Michael Moore Poor John McCain. Here’s […]
August 31, 2004 | Counterpunch by MIKE WHITNEY “We are ready to do everything necessary to give guarantees that we won’t seek nuclear weapons.” –President Mohammad Khatami When did “liberal” NPR become a champion of American aggression against Iran? Listeners to National Public Radio are increasingly apt to criticize the “rightward shift” in the station’s news coverage. The August 30 “Morning Edition” program, however, reached a new low for slanted journalism and for making the Bush Administration’s case for war with Iran. The commentary titled “US Presses UN Agency on Iran Nuclear Program” was a textbook example of propaganda dressed […]
[ Recall that the U.S.-installed leader of Haiti, Latortue, was to replace the Lavalas Party’s democratically elected Aristide because of Aristide’s alleged failures. Aristide’s failures were in large part due to U.S. policies designed to punish him for failing to give in to Washington’s neo-liberal agenda. What of Latortue’s? –BL ] 1 Sept 2004 | Reuters by Joseph Guyler Delva in Port-au-Prince Former soldiers who in February helped overthrow Haiti’s then president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, have taken over a town to back their demands to set up a new army. Yesterday they were out in camouflage uniforms trying to win support in […]
[ Thanks to Melissa Rabe for forwarding this Kristof piece. –BL ] 1 September 04 | New York Times by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF ASHLAND, Ore. — The most common literary allusion to President Bush is Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, the hard-drinking, wild-living young man who sobers up, reforms and emerges as the great English warrior King Henry V. So, as the Republicans once again crown Mr. Bush as their nominee, I decided to seek lessons from an expert on King Henry who is also one of the shrewdest analysts of current American politics and international affairs. That’s right: Shakespeare. I went to […]
At Least 900 Arrested in Major RNC Protests 1 September 04 | DemocracyNow! In New York, nearly 1,000 people were arrested yesterday in widespread protests against the Republican National Convention. The protests were organized by the A31 Action Coalition, a decentralized umbrella group made up of scores of activist organizations and affinity groups. Yesterday’s arrests brought the number of arrests over the past five days to over 1500.
1 September 04 | DemocracyNow! The International Atomic Energy Agency is preparing to release a report that states U.N. inspectors have not uncovered definitive evidence that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. This according to a report in the Washington Post based on interviews with diplomats who have seen the study. The Bush administration has claimed that Iran is three to five years away from building a nuclear bomb. In June the US shared intelligence tips with the UN atomic agency but the intelligence did not lead to any discoveries.
26 August 2004 | Intervention Magazine by Lawrence J. McNamee Review of: Take the Rich Off Welfare (New Expanded Edition) by Mark Zepezauer; Consortium, 160 pages, 2004 Charles Dickens? memorable character Mr. Bumble, from the novel Oliver Twist, was an ironic spokesman for Victorian England?s parish welfare system. He had a simple rule for administering aid to the destitute: ?Give ?em plenty of what they don’t want.? Theresa Funacello?s 1980?s nonfiction book A Tyranny of Kindness alerted modern America to the reality that New York City?s welfare system was so maladministered and bureaucratic that few would want to remain on […]
1 September 04 | Misleader.org Last week, the Census Bureau released statistics showing that for the first time in years, poverty had increased for three straight years, while the number of Americans without health care increased to a record level.1 But instead of changing its economic and health care policies, the Bush administration today is announcing plans to change the way the statistics are compiled. The move is just the latest in a series of actions by the White House to doctor or eliminate longstanding and nonpartisan economic data collection methods.
August 29, 2004 | AlterNet.org A visionary biologist says mushrooms are potent antiviral and antibacterial agents, as well as key boosters to the human immune system. They also might end up saving the Earth. by Kelly Hearn, AlterNet To lots of folks, a middle-aged man who says mushrooms can save the world falls into the category of turbo-freak. But to some environmentalists, scientists and major investors, Paul Stamets is the trippiest of profitable kings. “Mushrooms restore health both on the personal and ecological level,” says Stamets, mycologist and owner of Fungi Perfecti, a family-owned mushroom business in Shelton, Wash. “Mushrooms […]
31 August 2004 | Misleader.org The Bush White House has denied any connection to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth1 – the group that has been airing factually unsupportable smear ads against Sen. John Kerry’s war record. But a new report today shows that one of the key accusers in the smear ads was a lobbyist for a company that recently received a massive federal contract from the Bush administration.
30 August 2004 | DemocracyNow! Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets Sunday in the largest demonstration ever at a political convention. Organizers with United For Peace and Justice estimated more than a half million protesters marched past Madison Square Garden where the Republican National Convention opens today. In New York, major protests against President Bush began on Friday when 5,000 bikers took part in a Critical Mass bike ride. Some 15,000 marched on Saturday in one of the city’s largest women’s marches in history. Today two more large demonstrations are scheduled to mark the start of the […]
30 August 2004 | DemocracyNow! In news from the Republican convention, the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the New York City Indymedia center. The Justice Department is demanding Indymedia’s internet service provider hand over records regarding posts on the site that listed the names of Republican delegates. The federal government is claiming the posting of the delegates’ names may constitute a form of voter intimidation. The American Civil Liberties Union is defending Indymedia and the internet provider Calyx in the case. Ann Beeson of the A.C.L.U. said “We can’t see any legitimate purpose behind this investigation, and […]
30 August 2004 | DemocracyNow! The former speaker of the Texas House, Ben Barnes, has revealed that he helped President George W. Bush and the sons of other rich families to get into the Texas National Guard so they could avoid serving in Vietnam. Meanwhile on Saturday, President Bush admitted on the Today show that he believes that John Kerry was heroic during the Vietnam War. He said “going to Vietnam was more heroic than my flying fighter jets. He was in harm’s way and I wasn’t.”
[ Although Michael Moore called on the Palestinians to engage in massive nonviolent action to shame Israel before the world in his Stupid White Men (2002), Palestinian cynicism is understandable: As the International Herald Tribune’s Jonathan Cook points out, for most of the 37 years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians were nonviolent – and it did them little good. Israel simply entrenched the occupation, illegally moving hundreds of thousands of settlers on to Palestinian land…. The sad truth is that over the last four years, in the second intifada, the Palestinians have learned that […]
August 30, 2004 | The Guardian by John Sutherland One of the surest ways of testing a country’s political temperature is to look at the national bestseller list. The current No 1 on Amazon’s chart, Unfit for Command, in which “Swift Boat veterans speak out against John Kerry”, will draw attention in this country. Formerly No 1, currently holding on at No 3 among the mega-sellers, The American Prophecies, will probably not. It should. The author, Michael D Evans, is part preacher, would-be sooth-sayer, big-time blowhard. He’s also rich, given his book’s runaway sales. Not that money is a main […]
[ Conservative Bob Barr was a Republican Representative from Georgia until 2003, supported Pat Buchanan for president, and has been accused of being tied to white supremacist groups. But, as a traditional conservative sympathizer with privacy (apart from his support for the war on drugs!) and free speech, he naturally opposes the violations of basic rights under the Bush Administration. –BL ] Aug. 25, 2004 | FindLaw Legal Commentary by BOB BARR The FBI, no longer content with working to maintain order at political events, is now preemptively identifying and interrogating (“interviewing”) possible demonstrators. It has summarized this strategy in a […]
[ From one conscientious objector, Camilo Mejia: ?I cannot say that I [went to war] to help the Iraqi people. I cannot say that it was to make America and the world safer. I cannot say that it was for democracy. I cannot say that it was to prevent terrorism. I could not find a single good reason for having been there and having shot at people and having been shot at.” … ?But if I’m going to commit to killing people, there had better be a good reason. Not for the right of someone to drive an SUV with […]
[ Manning insightfully connects meat protein output to fossil fuel input, wheat to imperialism. The underlining is mine. Thanks to Matt Miller for forwarding the article. –BL ] February 1, 2003 | Harper’s Magazine by Richard Manning The secret of great wealth with no obvious source is some forgotten crime, forgotten because it was done neatly. –Balzac The journalist’s rule says: follow the money. This rule, however, is not really axiomatic but derivative, in that money, as even our vice president will tell you, is really a way of tracking energy. We’ll follow the energy.
[ From the article: This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm. The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke […]
27 August 2004 | DemocracyNow! Media giant Clear Channel which is known for sponsoring pro-war rallies is holding a pro-heterosexuality rally this weekend. In Raleigh, North Carolina, the Bob and Showgram show is holding what its calling a Straight is Great rally on Saturday.
27 August 2004 | DemocracyNow! For the first time, former Chilean dictator Augosto Pinochet could be brought to trial for the death of thousands of people in 1970s. Chile’s Supreme Court yesterday stripped Pinochet of immunity from prosecution. More than 3,000 people were killed for political reasons under Pinochet’s rule after he led a bloody coup overthrowing democratically-elected president Salvador Allende.