Carla Binion: Bush's Absolute Power Grab
Submitted by BuzzFlash op-ed contributor
Carla Binion
Fri, 10/20/2006
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/496
On October 17, George W. Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act of 2006. This new law gives Bush power similar to that of Stalin or Hitler, and grants agencies within the executive branch powers similar to those of the KGB or Gestapo.
Bush justifies this act by claiming he needs it to fight the "war on terror," but a number of critics, including former counterterrorism officials, have said the administration has greatly exaggerated the threat and used illogical methods to combat terrorism. (Examples are listed below.)
Except for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, few television news reporters have bothered to mention that the Military Commissions Act has changed the U.S. justice system and our approach to human rights. As Olbermann said of the new law on his October 17 Countdown program, the new act "does away with habeas corpus, the right of suspected terrorists or anybody else to know why they have been imprisoned."
Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor, was Olbermann's guest. Olbermann asked him, "Does this mean that under this law, ultimately the only thing keeping you, I, or the viewer out of Gitmo is the sanity and honesty of the president of the United States?"
Turley responded, "It does. And it's a huge sea change for our democracy. The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president... People have no idea how significant this is. What, really a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values."
Although we have a free press, rather than follow Olbermann's good example, most television news reporters have responded to this nullification of America's fundamental principles by avoiding the subject. News networks which voluntarily relinquish their right and duty to challenge government officials function more as the Soviet Union's Pravda or Hitler's Nazi press program than as a genuinely free press.
Just as the mainstream media failed to adequately question the Bush administration's many shifting rationales for invading Iraq in the lead-up to the war, they're now failing to challenge Bush's logic and motives as he justifies eviscerating the Constitution in the name of his ever-expanding "war on terror." How realistic is this so-called war, and is the Bush administration conducting it effectively?
Robert Dreyfuss covers national security for Rolling Stone. He interviewed nearly a dozen former high-ranking counterterrorism officials about Bush's approach to the war on terrorism. In his article, "The Phony War," (Rolling Stone, 9/21/06) Dreyfuss says these officials conclude:
- The war on terror is bogus. Terrorism shouldn't be treated as if it were a nation to be battled with the military, but should instead be fought with police work and intelligence agencies.
- Terrorism is not an enemy, but a method. Even if the United States were to wipe out every terrorist cell in the world today, terrorism would be back tomorrow.
- Bush lacks a clear understanding of the nature of the "enemy" and has no real strategy for dealing with them.
- The Bush administration confuses the issue by grouping "Al Qaeda" with everything from Iraq's resistance movement to states such as Syria and Iran.
- Today, there's virtually no real "Al Qaeda threat" to Americans.
- Bush's policies have spawned a new generation of "amateur terrorists," but there are few of them, and they're not likely to pose a major threat to the U.S.
- Though Bush has said he will fight his "war" until every last terrorist is eliminated, terrorism can never be defeated, merely "contained and reduced."
Dreyfuss says, "In the short term, the cops and spies can continue to do their best to watch for terrorist threats as they emerge, and occasionally, as in London, they will succeed. But they are the first to admit that stopping a plot before it can unfold involved, more than anything, plain dumb luck."
Not only has the Bush administration falsely characterized and exaggerated the threat of terrorism; they have gone out of their way to mislead the public by claiming credit for preventing attacks. Dreyfuss points out that although Bush has claimed we've fended off 10 terrorist plots since 9/11, "on closer examination all 10 are either bogus or were to take place overseas."
Dreyfuss also notes that, although in 2002 the Bush administration leaked to the press that Al Qaeda had 5,000 "sleepers" in the U.S., there were, in fact, none. (Or, as Dreyfuss says, not a single one has been found.) If the administration believes the facts bolster their case for a war on terrorism, why do they find it necessary to leak false information?
The administration has done little to secure U.S. borders, ports, airports and nuclear facilities. What could logically explain their inattention to these vulnerabilities if they believe a terrorist threat here is likely? Bush has said he'll do anything it takes in order to protect the American people. Why hasn't he secured our nuclear facilities?
Exaggerating the terrorist threat does give the Bush team an excuse to seize more power for the Executive and shred the Constitution. In an article for Foreign Affairs (September/October 2006), political science professor John Mueller supports Dreyfuss's view that the war on terrorism is bogus.
Mueller points out that not only have there been no terrorist incidents here in the past five years, but there were none in the five years before 9/11. Mueller asks: "If it is so easy to pull off an attack and if terrorists are so demonically competent, why have they not done it? Why have they not been sniping at people in shopping centers, collapsing tunnels, poisoning the food supply, cutting electrical lines, derailing trains, blowing up oil pipelines, causing massive traffic jams, or exploiting the countless other vulnerabilities that, according to security experts, could be so easily exploited?"
He also bolsters Dreyfuss's conclusion that the Bush administration can't take credit for the fact that we haven't been attacked again. He says, "the government's protective measures would have to be nearly perfect to thwart all such plans. Given the monumental imperfection of the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, and the debacle of FBI and National Security Agency programs to upgrade their computers to better coordinate intelligence information, that explanation seems far-fetched."
Mueller addresses Bush's irrational argument that we're "fighting terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here." He points out that terrorists with Al Qaeda sympathies have managed to carry out attacks in a variety of countries (Egypt, Jordan Turkey, the United Kingdom), not merely in Iraq.
He adds that a reasonable explanation for the fact that no terrorists have attacked since 9/11 is that the terrorist threat "has been massively exaggerated." He notes that "it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-like operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor."
Although Bush's justification for the war on terror has been illogical and deceptive, the administration has used it as an excuse to abuse the U.S. military in Iraq, tear down our system of government at home and seize power on his own behalf. As Jonathan Turley told Keith Olbermann on his October 17th program, with the signing of the Military Commissions Act, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers... I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking -- overtaking -- almost absolute power."
Bush's many power grabs and refusal to submit to usual constitutional checks and balances indicates he prefers monarchy or dictatorship to the government set up by America's founders. The framers of our Constitution provided checks on tyranny by writing into law separation of powers, granting the legislative and judicial branches of government the ability to curb abuses by the executive. Today, the Congress has abdicated its constitutional obligation and serves only as a rubber stamp for the despotic president, and to date, the courts have done much the same.
Can George W. Bush be trusted with absolute power? Here are some things he has done with his unchecked power:
- Stolen two presidential elections.
- Exaggerated and falsely characterized the terrorist threat.
- Misled the country into war with Iraq.
- Urged the U.S. intelligence agencies to fix the intelligence around the Iraq war policy (as confirmed by the Downing Street Memo and other sources) in order to mislead the Congress and public into supporting war with Iraq.
- Abused human rights by promoting the use of torture and setting up virtual gulags.
- Suspended habeas corpus for some.
- Tried to silence political opposition by pronouncing them "weak on terrorism" or somehow "with the terrorists," and
- Placed himself above the law by issuing more legislation-challenging signing statements (around 800) than all of his predecessors put together.
Bush's unnecessary invasion of Iraq alone has cost nearly 3,000 American lives. An October 11, 2006 article by Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher says that a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, "suggests that more than 600,000 Iraqis have met a violent or otherwise war-related end since the U.S. arrived in March 2003."
The Bush administration's policies have not only resulted in high death counts, but also in widespread, out of control torture. A September 22, 2006 Christian Science Monitor report says:
"The United Nation's special investigator on torture said Thursday that torture may now be worse in Iraq than it was during the regime of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. The Associated Press reports that Manfred Nowak, who was making a brief to the United Nations Human Rights Council about the treatment of detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba, said the torture situation in Iraq was 'totally out of hand.'"
The CS Monitor mentions the fact that the recent compromise between the Bush White House and dissident Republicans (including Senator John McCain) allows torture to continue. The article quotes a Washington Post piece:
"The bad news is Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects...It's hard to credit the statement by [McCain] yesterday that 'there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved.' In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent."
Congress has given Bush a blank check as he's bulldozed toward an imperial presidency. We have the outward forms of democratic institutions such as Congress and a so-called free press. However, the people currently managing those institutions behave as if they're being forced to serve a totalitarian dictator.
A perfect example of this surrender to Bush's virtual despotism is Congress' and the mainstream media's compliance regarding Bush's Military Commissions Act. While Keith Olbermann and Jonathan Turley see the extreme danger posed by Bush's authoritarian moves, Congress has done little to challenge Bush, and, overall, the press is eerily silent.
In The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, William L. Shirer said the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which "tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich or offends the honor and dignity of Germany." According to Shirer, Max Amman, Hitler's top sergeant during the war and head of the Nazi Party's publishing firm and financial head of its press said that after the Nazis seized power in 1933, it was "a true statement to say that the basic purpose of the Nazi press program was to eliminate all the press which was in opposition to the party."
The U.S. mainstream press doesn't have to be coerced by a government Press Law to avoid publicly opposing Bush's most egregious policies. Television news networks, in particular, have voluntarily held back serious scrutiny. They have not only failed to discuss the recent Military Commissions Act at length, but in the run-up to the Iraq war, liberal talk show host Phil Donahue and comedian Bill Maher were fired for challenging the White House spin about Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.
Shirer also describes the ease with which the German Reichstag gave Hitler the power to change the nature of Germany's parliamentary democracy. He writes:
"One by one, Germany's most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler and to pass quietly, unprotestingly, out of existence...It cannot be said they went down fighting. On May 19, 1933, the Social Democrats -- those who were not in jail or in exile -- voted in the Reichstag without a dissenting voice to approve Hitler's foreign policy."
Shirer concludes: "The one-party totalitarian state had been achieved with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance, and within four months after the Reichstag had abdicated its democratic responsibilities."
The U.S. Congress, like the German Reichstag, has abdicated its democratic responsibilities by granting Bush an inordinate amount of power -- "with scarcely a ripple of opposition or defiance." The U.S. press has abandoned its role as democracy's watchdog by failing to question this development. Both of these institutions have failed the American people.
Considering Bush is using the war on terror to justify seizing undue power, both Congress and the media should question his reasoning and offer opposition. Just as they didn't effectively challenge the administration's shifting excuses for attacking Iraq, these institutions haven't scrutinized Bush's claims about the need for the Military Commissions Act and the apparently endless war on terrorism.
Among things Congress and the media should challenge is George W. Bush's false claim that the United States does not torture. In an article published at the CommonDreams.org site, journalist Molly Ivins reports that in one case of death from torture by Americans, the military at first said the prisoner's death was caused by a heart attack. Ivins adds that the coroner later said the heart attack occurred after the prisoner "had been beaten so often on his legs that they had 'basically been pulpified.'"
She adds that the Bush administration's officially sanctioning torture "throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems necessary -- these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law." Ivins isn't inclined to hyperbole, yet she says of Americans' passive acceptance of this new law: "Do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis."
As Jonathan Turley said on Olbermann's program, "I think you can feel the judgment of history. It won't be kind to President Bush. But frankly, I don't think that it will be kind to the rest of us. I think that history will ask, 'Where were you? What did you do when this thing was signed into law?' There were people that protested the Japanese concentration camps; there were people that protested these other acts. But we are strangely silent in this national yawn as our rights evaporate."
Future generations will wonder why the U.S. Congress and mainstream press helped Bush build up an imperial presidency and eliminate Constitutional protections. If they're able to sort through the administration's fallacies and lies and clearly see what went wrong with America during this time, they'll wonder why there were so few Molly Ivins's, Keith Olbermann's and Jonathan Turley's.
Coming generations will also ask why by comparison there were so many who failed to notice the obvious holes in Bush's logic and why so many turned a blind eye to his numerous false assertions and cruel policies. They'll wonder why so many supported, whether by direct action or by silence, the Bush administration's changing the fundamental nature of the democratic Republic we were given by America's founders, based on the flimsy excuse of fighting a war on terrorism -- a "war" Bush defines falsely and fights ineffectively.
Generations to come might ask why this president who lied so often, about Iraq and other critical matters, was ever entrusted with enough power to damage this country's founding principles and wage endless, unprovoked war on other nations. If Congress and the media would ask these questions now, they might prevent Bush from doing further harm. This might save many lives, prevent much unnecessary suffering and possibly steer this country out of its present darkness.
Friday, October 20, 2006
NY Times WHORES for the Gestapo/Concentration-Camp MCA law...Again.
Note: We apologize in advance for what many will regard as the "anti-Semitic" nature of this post. To begin with, #1.) the term "anti-Semitic" as it is used to mean "anti-Jewish" is itself a RACIST accusation, because the Semitic races include the Arabs, and when writers and columnists shout "That is anti-Semitic!" they do NOT mean "anti-Arab." So the term "anti-Semitic" ruthlessly EXCLUDES Arabs and others from consideration, an EXCLUSION as racist as banning a given minority to a walled in ghetto.
#2.) and More importantly, the first rule of warfare is "KNOW YOUR ENEMY," and when the US Constitution, Habeas Corpus, and the Bill of Rights are being STABBED IN THE BACK, one should certainly know who is doing the stabbing. It is not our fault that the neo-cons who infest the New York Times, and government, and much of media, can so often be grouped together because of their race, faith, and political allegiance. And there are most certainly EXCEPTIONS to the rule that all Jewish writers support the neo-con agenda; exceptions including some of our own favorite writers who DO indeed oppose the neo-con agenda and the ruthless DECEPTION and DECEIT that are necessary to make the draconian Military Commissions Act of October 2006 possible. But nonetheless it is not at all difficult to group together those influential Jewish Americans in the press and media who are NOT opposing the draconian MCA bill, and to point out that AS AMERICANS, much less heirs to the Jewish cultural notions of 'freedom,' justice, and human rights for an oppressed minority; that they have SOME RESPONSIBILITY to POINT OUT THE DRACONIAN, TOTALITARIAN, ruthless NATURE of the MCA law... WHICH THEY ARE NOT doing.
Writers and personalities such as Kurtz, Cohen, Krauthammer, Koppel, Kristol, Freidman, Blitzer, Brooks, Sulzberger, (etc), many of whom have PROMINENT LEADERSHIP ROLES in the press and media.
IF ANYONE in the world has an OBLIGATION to SOUND THE ALARM on the DRACONIAN provisions of the MCA law, one would think it would be THOSE personalities and media leaders; they are, after all, heirs to the cultural notion that even stereotyped members of an accused minority have rights and deserve justice, and as well they are the beneficiaries of FREEDOM OF THE PRESS and upwards social mobility here in America. (Ted Koppel arrived in America as a young Jewish European W.W.II refugee who had lived on the run from the ruthless black fist over Europe, and knows firsthand what it is like to dread draconian search, seizure, and "disappearance" powers.)
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Well, there is some justice, / irony in that THE most determined supporters in the entire world, outside of the Bush administration, for Mr. Bush's MCA "Military Commissions Act" law, which should be called what it is, the "GESTAPO/Concentration-Camp Powers Law," are found in the offices of ARTHUR SULZBERGER, the scion of the Jewish family that owns the Times, and among his rabid right-wing Jewish writers and editors, such as Judith Miller, William Safire, Abe Rosenthal, Thomas Friedman, and others ensconced in the Times.
"Ironic," of course, because for decades (if not generations) Jewish culture and society have maintained that ALL societies and governments HAVE AN OBLIGATION to provide full, clear, and transparent justice, that secret courts and summary sentences (much less mass-roundups which lead to, for example, Saddam's "Kurdish problem" which he solved by his ANFAL/genocide/free-fire zones) are the hallmark of fascist, Nazi, repressive, and totalitarian actors. (In fact, the Exodus and Judges portion of the Jewish bible contain episodes of systematic, premeditated genocide that not even the Mongols or Nazis could trump, what with the bible bragging about 100% mortality over captured enemy men, women, and children at Jericho, Ai, the twelve kingdoms, and in other massacres that the bible maintains were NECESSARY to establish "the promised" or "holy" land, including the massacre/extermination of Moses' own in-law clan, the Midianites.)
It is true that Rosenthal is deceased, Safire retired, and Judith Miller forced out in disgrace after her disgraceful "Iraq WMD!" stories were exposed as fabricated, unsubstantiated dreams of neo-con pet Ahmed Chalabi. (Himself since disgraced as an Iranian sympathizer.)
BUT THE MCA "Military Commissions Act" IS THEIR LEGACY, as surely as ARTHUR SULZBERGER is still running the New York Times, and allows his paper to continue to publishing this claptrap, "Don't worry... move along, move along" propaganda whitewashing the true ferocity of the MCA act.
<< The New York Times lead editorial gives FALSE COMFORT to American citizens by assuring them that they will NOT be victims of George W. Bush’s new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the US government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections. >> Robt. Parry, ConsortiumNews.com (column in full bottom of this post)
Over at TRUTHdig.com, Kevin Tillman, brother of courageous NFL millionaire/Afghan war volunteer and killed-in-action hero PAT TILLMAN, asks rhetorically on his brother's birthday:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
<< Somehow [How is it that?] torture is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] lying is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] a narrative is more important than reality. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated. >>
Sgt. Tillman, we regret to inform you, but from Mr. Parry's excellent (as always) editorial, we can tell you that the answer to the question:
"HOW HAS the SUBVERSION of the BILL OF RIGHTS, US CONSTITUTION, AND Habeas Corpus been TOLERATED?"
....is because the NEW YORK TIMES (and the Washington Post) have RELENTLESSLY been CHEERLEADING FOR_THOSE_SUBVERSIONS, as they CONTINUE to do today. The Times and Post SET THE TONE for the REST of the entire US major media; the huge corporations which exert MONOPOLY CONTROL over what the vast majority of Americans read, hear, see, and consume as "news" every day, AND THEY COULD PUT THE PROBLEMS of the draconian MCA act ON THE FRONT PAGE, EVERY DAY, and stoke REAL, GENUINE OUTRAGE among Americans towards those dictatorial laws. This they REFUSE to do, preferring instead to create "Lincoln Bedroom!" and "White House Trashing" scandals out of whole cloth and thin air.
To find the REAL news, one must dig deep into web-sites such as ConsortiumNews.com and TruthDig.com to find the unfiltered, unhomogenized, unstraightjacketed facts.
As of right now, the NEW YORK TIMES is probably THE MOST TREACHEROUS example of 'journalism' and "reporting" in all of human history. At least when the German press-media of the 1930s toed the power-party's line, they knew that they WOULD be 'visited' by goose-stepping Brown-shirt and Black-uniformed stormtroopers if they didn't.
In the 5 years since 9-11, the NY Times has JOINED IN the mocking WHITEWASH of the 9-11 investigation that was the "9-11 Commission" (which only came into existence because of the efforts of the 9-11 widows, at that); the Times has joined in sweeping under the table the GROSS_FAILURES_OF_COMMAND that led to 3,000 New Yorkers being incinerated and crushed in the WTC towers, and since then the TIMES has aggressively PUSHED and WHITEWASHED policies that have led to a similar tragic fate for tens of thousands of others.
<< Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe. >>
- - - - - - - - - - - - http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
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Who Is 'Any Person' in Tribunal Law?
By Robert Parry
October 19, 2006
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/101906.html
The New York Times lead editorial gives false comfort to American citizens by assuring them that they will not be victims of George W. Bush’s new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the U.S. government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections.
“This law does not apply to American citizens,” the Times editorial stated, “but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening.” [NYT, Oct. 19, 2006]
However, the Times analysis appears to be far too gentle. While it’s true that some parts of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to U.S. citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with resident aliens and foreigners.
“Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in September and signed by Bush on Oct. 17.
“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States ... shall be punished as a military commission … may direct. …
If the Times is correct that “this law does not apply to American citizens,” why does it contain language referring to “any person” and then adding in an adjacent context a reference to people acting “in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States”?
Who has “an allegiance or duty to the United States” if not an American citizen? That provision would not presumably apply to Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, nor would it apply generally to foreign citizens. This section of the law appears to be singling out American citizens.
Court-Stripping
Though the new law specifically strips non-U.S. citizens of habeas corpus – the right to a fair trial – American citizens caught up in Bush’s legal system also would be denied the right to challenge their incarceration.
Besides allowing for “any person” to go into Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside the system from appealing to the traditional American courts until a defendant is fully prosecuted and sentenced, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.
The law states that once a person is detained, “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever … relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”
That court-stripping provision – barring “any claim or cause of action whatsoever” – would seem to deny American citizens habeas corpus rights just as it does for non-citizens. If a person can’t file a motion with a court, he can’t assert any constitutional rights, including habeas corpus.
Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights – such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” – would seem to be beyond an American detainee’s reach as well.
Though the New York Times suggests that the new law “chips away at the foundations of the judicial system,” the law actually seems to obliterate the old judicial system.
Secret Trials
By putting detainees, apparently including American citizens outside the U.S. constitutional process, Bush’s system makes a mockery of the Sixth Amendment in particular. It reads:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses.”
By contrast, in Bush’s system, there are no guarantees of either a speedy or a public trial. Secrecy dominates in a process run by U.S. military officers whose careers depend on the favor of the Commander in Chief.
Under the new law, the military judge “may close to the public all or a portion of the proceedings” if he deems that the evidence must be kept secret for national security reasons. Those concerns can be conveyed to the judge through ex parte – or one-sided – communications from the prosecutor or a government representative.
The judge also can exclude the accused from the trial if there are safety concerns or if the defendant is disruptive. Plus, the judge can admit evidence obtained through coercion if he determines it “possesses sufficient probative value” and “the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.”
The law permits, too, the introduction of secret evidence “while protecting from disclosure the sources, methods, or activities by which the United States acquired the evidence if the military judge finds that ... the evidence is reliable.”
During trial, the prosecutor would have the additional right to assert a “national security privilege” that could stop “the examination of any witness,” presumably by the defense if the questioning touched on any sensitive matter.
In effect, what the new law appears to do is to create a parallel “star chamber” system for the prosecution, imprisonment and elimination of enemies of the state, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic.
Terror Fears
The Times editorial writers might also take into account the circumstances under which Bush is likely to execute his new powers. Imagine, for example, a terrorist incident or a threat of one somewhere in the United States. Amid public anger and fear, Bush or some future President could begin rounding up citizens and non-citizens alike.
Once these detainees are locked up at Guantanamo Bay or some other prison facility, they could be held incommunicado and denied access to civilian courts under the law’s court-stripping provision.
It could take years before the U.S. Supreme Court even addresses these detentions and – given the increasingly right-wing make-up of the Court – there would be no assurance that the justices wouldn’t endorse the President’s extraordinary powers.
The Times also might want to take note of the curious provision in the law that would jail “any person” who “collects or attempts to collect information by clandestine means or while acting under false pretenses, for the purpose of conveying such information to an enemy of the United States.”
Since the Bush administration and its political allies often have accused the New York Times of collecting and publishing information, from confidential sources, that is helpful to U.S. enemies – for instance, the stories about Bush’s secret wiretapping program – this provision arguably could apply to Times reporters and editors.
This “spying” provision not only puts alleged offenders into Bush’s special legal system but it could result in the offenders being sentenced to death.
So, before assuring American citizens that they’re safe from Bush’s draconian system, the Times editors might check on why these “any person” provisions were put into the law. For more than two centuries, the civilian U.S. legal system has handled similar crimes, including allegations of spying and charges of Americans aiding foreign enemies.
Yet now, under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called “unlawful enemy combatants,” Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have effectively created a parallel legal system for “any person” – American citizen or otherwise – who crosses some line and becomes an enemy of the state.
The Times editors may believe that to raise these concerns is alarmist. But over the past six years, Bush and his administration have routinely stretched legal language to aggrandize their power, not the other way around.
There are a multitude of reasons to think that Bush will now interpret every legal ambiguity in the new law in his favor, as granting him the broadest possible powers over people he perceives as his enemies.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
#2.) and More importantly, the first rule of warfare is "KNOW YOUR ENEMY," and when the US Constitution, Habeas Corpus, and the Bill of Rights are being STABBED IN THE BACK, one should certainly know who is doing the stabbing. It is not our fault that the neo-cons who infest the New York Times, and government, and much of media, can so often be grouped together because of their race, faith, and political allegiance. And there are most certainly EXCEPTIONS to the rule that all Jewish writers support the neo-con agenda; exceptions including some of our own favorite writers who DO indeed oppose the neo-con agenda and the ruthless DECEPTION and DECEIT that are necessary to make the draconian Military Commissions Act of October 2006 possible. But nonetheless it is not at all difficult to group together those influential Jewish Americans in the press and media who are NOT opposing the draconian MCA bill, and to point out that AS AMERICANS, much less heirs to the Jewish cultural notions of 'freedom,' justice, and human rights for an oppressed minority; that they have SOME RESPONSIBILITY to POINT OUT THE DRACONIAN, TOTALITARIAN, ruthless NATURE of the MCA law... WHICH THEY ARE NOT doing.
Writers and personalities such as Kurtz, Cohen, Krauthammer, Koppel, Kristol, Freidman, Blitzer, Brooks, Sulzberger, (etc), many of whom have PROMINENT LEADERSHIP ROLES in the press and media.
IF ANYONE in the world has an OBLIGATION to SOUND THE ALARM on the DRACONIAN provisions of the MCA law, one would think it would be THOSE personalities and media leaders; they are, after all, heirs to the cultural notion that even stereotyped members of an accused minority have rights and deserve justice, and as well they are the beneficiaries of FREEDOM OF THE PRESS and upwards social mobility here in America. (Ted Koppel arrived in America as a young Jewish European W.W.II refugee who had lived on the run from the ruthless black fist over Europe, and knows firsthand what it is like to dread draconian search, seizure, and "disappearance" powers.)
-----------------------------------------
Well, there is some justice, / irony in that THE most determined supporters in the entire world, outside of the Bush administration, for Mr. Bush's MCA "Military Commissions Act" law, which should be called what it is, the "GESTAPO/Concentration-Camp Powers Law," are found in the offices of ARTHUR SULZBERGER, the scion of the Jewish family that owns the Times, and among his rabid right-wing Jewish writers and editors, such as Judith Miller, William Safire, Abe Rosenthal, Thomas Friedman, and others ensconced in the Times.
"Ironic," of course, because for decades (if not generations) Jewish culture and society have maintained that ALL societies and governments HAVE AN OBLIGATION to provide full, clear, and transparent justice, that secret courts and summary sentences (much less mass-roundups which lead to, for example, Saddam's "Kurdish problem" which he solved by his ANFAL/genocide/free-fire zones) are the hallmark of fascist, Nazi, repressive, and totalitarian actors. (In fact, the Exodus and Judges portion of the Jewish bible contain episodes of systematic, premeditated genocide that not even the Mongols or Nazis could trump, what with the bible bragging about 100% mortality over captured enemy men, women, and children at Jericho, Ai, the twelve kingdoms, and in other massacres that the bible maintains were NECESSARY to establish "the promised" or "holy" land, including the massacre/extermination of Moses' own in-law clan, the Midianites.)
It is true that Rosenthal is deceased, Safire retired, and Judith Miller forced out in disgrace after her disgraceful "Iraq WMD!" stories were exposed as fabricated, unsubstantiated dreams of neo-con pet Ahmed Chalabi. (Himself since disgraced as an Iranian sympathizer.)
BUT THE MCA "Military Commissions Act" IS THEIR LEGACY, as surely as ARTHUR SULZBERGER is still running the New York Times, and allows his paper to continue to publishing this claptrap, "Don't worry... move along, move along" propaganda whitewashing the true ferocity of the MCA act.
<< The New York Times lead editorial gives FALSE COMFORT to American citizens by assuring them that they will NOT be victims of George W. Bush’s new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the US government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections. >> Robt. Parry, ConsortiumNews.com (column in full bottom of this post)
Over at TRUTHdig.com, Kevin Tillman, brother of courageous NFL millionaire/Afghan war volunteer and killed-in-action hero PAT TILLMAN, asks rhetorically on his brother's birthday:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
<< Somehow [How is it that?] torture is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] lying is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] a narrative is more important than reality. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow [How is it that?] the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated. >>
Sgt. Tillman, we regret to inform you, but from Mr. Parry's excellent (as always) editorial, we can tell you that the answer to the question:
"HOW HAS the SUBVERSION of the BILL OF RIGHTS, US CONSTITUTION, AND Habeas Corpus been TOLERATED?"
....is because the NEW YORK TIMES (and the Washington Post) have RELENTLESSLY been CHEERLEADING FOR_THOSE_SUBVERSIONS, as they CONTINUE to do today. The Times and Post SET THE TONE for the REST of the entire US major media; the huge corporations which exert MONOPOLY CONTROL over what the vast majority of Americans read, hear, see, and consume as "news" every day, AND THEY COULD PUT THE PROBLEMS of the draconian MCA act ON THE FRONT PAGE, EVERY DAY, and stoke REAL, GENUINE OUTRAGE among Americans towards those dictatorial laws. This they REFUSE to do, preferring instead to create "Lincoln Bedroom!" and "White House Trashing" scandals out of whole cloth and thin air.
To find the REAL news, one must dig deep into web-sites such as ConsortiumNews.com and TruthDig.com to find the unfiltered, unhomogenized, unstraightjacketed facts.
As of right now, the NEW YORK TIMES is probably THE MOST TREACHEROUS example of 'journalism' and "reporting" in all of human history. At least when the German press-media of the 1930s toed the power-party's line, they knew that they WOULD be 'visited' by goose-stepping Brown-shirt and Black-uniformed stormtroopers if they didn't.
In the 5 years since 9-11, the NY Times has JOINED IN the mocking WHITEWASH of the 9-11 investigation that was the "9-11 Commission" (which only came into existence because of the efforts of the 9-11 widows, at that); the Times has joined in sweeping under the table the GROSS_FAILURES_OF_COMMAND that led to 3,000 New Yorkers being incinerated and crushed in the WTC towers, and since then the TIMES has aggressively PUSHED and WHITEWASHED policies that have led to a similar tragic fate for tens of thousands of others.
<< Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated. >>
<< Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe. >>
- - - - - - - - - - - - http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601019_after_pats_birthday/
===========================================
Who Is 'Any Person' in Tribunal Law?
By Robert Parry
October 19, 2006
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/101906.html
The New York Times lead editorial gives false comfort to American citizens by assuring them that they will not be victims of George W. Bush’s new draconian system for prosecuting enemies of the U.S. government in military tribunals outside constitutional protections.
“This law does not apply to American citizens,” the Times editorial stated, “but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening.” [NYT, Oct. 19, 2006]
However, the Times analysis appears to be far too gentle. While it’s true that some parts of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 target non-citizens, other sections clearly apply to U.S. citizens as well, putting citizens inside the same tribunal system with resident aliens and foreigners.
“Any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission,” according to the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Congress in September and signed by Bush on Oct. 17.
“Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States ... shall be punished as a military commission … may direct. …
If the Times is correct that “this law does not apply to American citizens,” why does it contain language referring to “any person” and then adding in an adjacent context a reference to people acting “in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States”?
Who has “an allegiance or duty to the United States” if not an American citizen? That provision would not presumably apply to Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda, nor would it apply generally to foreign citizens. This section of the law appears to be singling out American citizens.
Court-Stripping
Though the new law specifically strips non-U.S. citizens of habeas corpus – the right to a fair trial – American citizens caught up in Bush’s legal system also would be denied the right to challenge their incarceration.
Besides allowing for “any person” to go into Bush’s system, the law prohibits detainees once inside the system from appealing to the traditional American courts until a defendant is fully prosecuted and sentenced, which could translate into an indefinite imprisonment since there are no timetables for Bush’s tribunal process to play out.
The law states that once a person is detained, “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action whatsoever … relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission under this chapter, including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”
That court-stripping provision – barring “any claim or cause of action whatsoever” – would seem to deny American citizens habeas corpus rights just as it does for non-citizens. If a person can’t file a motion with a court, he can’t assert any constitutional rights, including habeas corpus.
Other constitutional protections in the Bill of Rights – such as a speedy trial, the right to reasonable bail and the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” – would seem to be beyond an American detainee’s reach as well.
Though the New York Times suggests that the new law “chips away at the foundations of the judicial system,” the law actually seems to obliterate the old judicial system.
Secret Trials
By putting detainees, apparently including American citizens outside the U.S. constitutional process, Bush’s system makes a mockery of the Sixth Amendment in particular. It reads:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed … and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; [and] to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses.”
By contrast, in Bush’s system, there are no guarantees of either a speedy or a public trial. Secrecy dominates in a process run by U.S. military officers whose careers depend on the favor of the Commander in Chief.
Under the new law, the military judge “may close to the public all or a portion of the proceedings” if he deems that the evidence must be kept secret for national security reasons. Those concerns can be conveyed to the judge through ex parte – or one-sided – communications from the prosecutor or a government representative.
The judge also can exclude the accused from the trial if there are safety concerns or if the defendant is disruptive. Plus, the judge can admit evidence obtained through coercion if he determines it “possesses sufficient probative value” and “the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence.”
The law permits, too, the introduction of secret evidence “while protecting from disclosure the sources, methods, or activities by which the United States acquired the evidence if the military judge finds that ... the evidence is reliable.”
During trial, the prosecutor would have the additional right to assert a “national security privilege” that could stop “the examination of any witness,” presumably by the defense if the questioning touched on any sensitive matter.
In effect, what the new law appears to do is to create a parallel “star chamber” system for the prosecution, imprisonment and elimination of enemies of the state, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic.
Terror Fears
The Times editorial writers might also take into account the circumstances under which Bush is likely to execute his new powers. Imagine, for example, a terrorist incident or a threat of one somewhere in the United States. Amid public anger and fear, Bush or some future President could begin rounding up citizens and non-citizens alike.
Once these detainees are locked up at Guantanamo Bay or some other prison facility, they could be held incommunicado and denied access to civilian courts under the law’s court-stripping provision.
It could take years before the U.S. Supreme Court even addresses these detentions and – given the increasingly right-wing make-up of the Court – there would be no assurance that the justices wouldn’t endorse the President’s extraordinary powers.
The Times also might want to take note of the curious provision in the law that would jail “any person” who “collects or attempts to collect information by clandestine means or while acting under false pretenses, for the purpose of conveying such information to an enemy of the United States.”
Since the Bush administration and its political allies often have accused the New York Times of collecting and publishing information, from confidential sources, that is helpful to U.S. enemies – for instance, the stories about Bush’s secret wiretapping program – this provision arguably could apply to Times reporters and editors.
This “spying” provision not only puts alleged offenders into Bush’s special legal system but it could result in the offenders being sentenced to death.
So, before assuring American citizens that they’re safe from Bush’s draconian system, the Times editors might check on why these “any person” provisions were put into the law. For more than two centuries, the civilian U.S. legal system has handled similar crimes, including allegations of spying and charges of Americans aiding foreign enemies.
Yet now, under the cloak of setting up military tribunals to try al-Qaeda suspects and other so-called “unlawful enemy combatants,” Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have effectively created a parallel legal system for “any person” – American citizen or otherwise – who crosses some line and becomes an enemy of the state.
The Times editors may believe that to raise these concerns is alarmist. But over the past six years, Bush and his administration have routinely stretched legal language to aggrandize their power, not the other way around.
There are a multitude of reasons to think that Bush will now interpret every legal ambiguity in the new law in his favor, as granting him the broadest possible powers over people he perceives as his enemies.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Media/press types get to see THEIR OWN "war has ended" headlines again....
Tom Wieliczka: Anybody Have a Lot of Spare "Crows" To Be Eaten?
BuzzFlash contributor by Tom Wieliczka
Thu, 10/19/2006
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/493
How on earth can the Media corpSE actually be reporting or saying that the Iraq War has become, err, ahh, "A CIVIL WAR"???
How can that be?
I mean, look at how the Media CorpSE slapped people around back in April and May of 2003 when Bush was making his stunt "Mission Accomplished" Aircraft Carrier Landing.
Iraq Is All but Won; Now What? (Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)
Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it. (CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)
Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention. (NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)
Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints. (Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03)
The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington. (Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)
What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points? (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)
If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory? (CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)
Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong? (Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)
I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks. (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)
Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years. (Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters. (CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)
Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war. (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)
Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing. (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)
The source for all these quotes was on a soldier's website named: http://aneyeopener.com/index.php?blogid=1&catid=6
Gee, I wonder how these people would feel about re-printing or re-saying these quotes now? After all, didn't you hear/read that the war was a cakewalk??
Anybody have a spare "crow" to be eaten? Better make that MANY Spare Crows!
Tom Wieliczka
Windsor Locks, CT
BuzzFlash contributor by Tom Wieliczka
Thu, 10/19/2006
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/493
How on earth can the Media corpSE actually be reporting or saying that the Iraq War has become, err, ahh, "A CIVIL WAR"???
How can that be?
I mean, look at how the Media CorpSE slapped people around back in April and May of 2003 when Bush was making his stunt "Mission Accomplished" Aircraft Carrier Landing.
Iraq Is All but Won; Now What? (Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)
Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it. (CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)
Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention. (NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)
Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints. (Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03)
The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington. (Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)
What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points? (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)
If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory? (CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)
Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong? (Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)
I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks. (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)
Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years. (Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)
Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters. (CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)
Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war. (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)
Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing. (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)
The source for all these quotes was on a soldier's website named: http://aneyeopener.com/index.php?blogid=1&catid=6
Gee, I wonder how these people would feel about re-printing or re-saying these quotes now? After all, didn't you hear/read that the war was a cakewalk??
Anybody have a spare "crow" to be eaten? Better make that MANY Spare Crows!
Tom Wieliczka
Windsor Locks, CT
Media Whores CENSOR the story: GAY Republican Senators OUTED for their own HYPOCRISY re gay issues!
As the self-styled paper of record of the nation's capitol, the Washington Post MUST cover this story, about PROMINENT REPUBLICAN HYPOCRITES, that is GAY REPUBLICAN staffers, senior staffers, congressmen, and EVEN SENATORS who are GAY, but CONSISTENTLY JOIN THE REPUBLICAN GAY-BASHING JIHAD for political gain and personal power!
But notice where the WHORE POST puts this story: on page C-1, that is, SECTION "C"!
THIS IS A FRONT-PAGE, STATE-OF-AMERICA ISSUE, page A-1 above-the fold, blaring headlines story that the WHORE press/media has AN OBLIGATION to cover and put on the FRONT PAGES, given that the Republican Party and Bush-Rove White House had made DEMONIZING GAYS the CENTERPIECE of the past 2 national elections. The Post should treat this "HYPOCRITICAL LEADERS DEMONIZE Americans" story same way the lying, ghoulish whores put the Clinton "LINCONLN BEDROOM!" non-scandal scandal on the front pages, in blaring headlines, for days if not weeks on end..
We rest our case... the Washington Post editors and publishers, and most of the American corporate media, are paid professional LIARs, SMEAR-MERCHANTS, and HYPOCRITES, doing EVERTHING THEY CAN to UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY and HONEST journalism/reporting.... in favor of the autocratic, dictatorial, theocratic, intimidating, economic disparity, political disenfranchisement RIGHT-WING AGENDA.
======================================
Capitol Hill Insiders Irked By Campaign To 'Out' Them
By Rebecca Dana and Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50299-2004Jul14.html
The phone kept ringing in one Capitol Hill office -- hourly, daily, all leading up to yesterday's Senate vote on the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Mike Rogers was on the line again. He knew something very personal about the press secretary of a Republican House member who supports the amendment, and he wanted to tell someone, preferably someone high-ranking, that the man is gay. Rogers cannot understand this. How can someone help articulate the opposition to homosexual unions when he himself is homosexual?
Rogers, a 40-year-old Washington fundraising consultant, has waged a controversial "outing" campaign in the month leading up to yesterday's vote. He sent out more 10,000 e-mails encouraging and perpetrating outings. He handed out fliers at the gay pride parade in June, asking people to send in names of gay Hill staffers working for senators and representatives who supported the Federal Marriage Amendment. He created a Web log last week listing some of those names.
He made phone calls, day and night, to the offices and homes of these staffers. His message: How dare you?
Rogers's campaign has caused a stir throughout the capital, rallying some gay-rights advocates and horrifying others, for demanding that people who are gay and Republican to defend themselves. Rogers says he plans to continue his campaign despite yesterday's vote -- the amendment was defeated 50-48 but probably will be taken up by the House this fall -- and he will tack on a "fidelity pledge" to expose members of Congress who promote "family values" but have extramarital affairs.
Openly gay since 1986, Rogers views the marriage amendment as a "very personal" hit. Everything he says on the topic ends with an exclamation point. There is "the conspiracy," he fires, "on Capitol Hill!" And "the hypocrisy," he can't believe, "among gay staffers!" He is riled up, energized and organized, using "sources" around the District to identify and expose the homosexuals on the Hill who, he believes, are abetting discrimination aimed at themselves.
"This is the big cheese!" he says. "We are under attack! Gays and lesbians are under attack! It's amazing to me that people don't get that! So what are we going to do? Protect these gay staffers who have influence on policy matters while their bosses spew hate and bigotry?"
No, says John Aravosis, national co-chairman of the activist Web site DearMary.com -- which last week ran an ad in the Washington Blade, the gay weekly newspaper, that read: "For Years Our Silence Has Protected You. Today That Protection Ends." And the Blade itself has published back-to-back front-page stories on the outing campaign, naming senior staffers and two elected officials -- one congressman, one senator -- whose names have been circulating on the Web and in other gay publications.
In an editorial on July 2, the Blade's executive editor, Chris Crain, wrote: "It is 2004, not 1954, and sexual orientation in and of itself is no longer a 'private fact' beyond the pale of inquiry." The Blade, he wrote, "would investigate and report about whether influential Hill aides are gay if facts about their sexual orientation raise highly newsworthy questions of hypocrisy in the stands taken by anti-gay members of Congress for whom they work."
Crain, in a phone interview, explains his controversial position: "The more these staffers are personally responsible for policies that challenge the basic civil rights of gay people, the more it's our responsibility, as a gay newspaper, to ask them how they justify those positions considering that they're gay."
Rogers, Aravosis and Crain inherited strategic outing as a tactic from the 1980s and 1990s, when several congressmen announced their homosexuality under pressure from others. Republican Steve Gunderson, a former Wisconsin lawmaker, came out in 1994 after threats from both gay-rights activists and House conservatives. In response to a political ad in the Blade and the rumor of a story in the gay magazine the Advocate, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) came out in 1996 after voting in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
"The whole outing campaign makes me a little uncomfortable, but I still think it's the right thing to do," says Aravosis, a 40-year-old political consultant. "A line has been crossed. When you talk about amending the Constitution to make me a second-class citizen based on my personal relationship, then you've crossed a line of decency."
Gay organizations on the Hill -- the newly formed Gay, Lesbian & Allies U.S. Senate Staff Caucus and the 10-year-old Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association -- oppose Rogers's tactics, as do the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives that has offered counsel to the targets of Rogers's outings, and the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay-rights advocacy group.
Lynden Armstrong started working for Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) in 1995, and came out in the office two years later. As administrative director, he manages the senator's five offices -- four in New Mexico, one in Washington. He is a Republican. Being gay, he says, has not been an issue at work. He considers Rogers's campaign a "personal attack" on gay staffers "who haven't gotten to the point, emotionally and psychologically, that they feel that they can come out at work."
"That is a personal decision," says Armstrong, 32, sitting in the office with Fox News playing in the background. A native of Fort Sumner, N.M., now living in the District and co-chairing the nonpartisan Senate Staff Caucus, he declines to comment on whether he supports the marriage amendment. His boss voted for it. "I have to keep in mind that the senator has nothing personal against me or the gay community. He is having to do what he is elected to do -- represent his constituents. And New Mexicans, if you look at the polls, are overwhelmingly supportive of the amendment."
His beef with the Rogers campaign: "What a lot of people don't realize in this whole outing campaign, and one of the bigger problems I have with it, is they're outing people who aren't in the place in their life where they're ready for that to happen. Besides, is outing a staff member going to really affect a senator's or a representative's vote? Is it going to change anyone's position?"
Victor Castillo, a Democrat, has worked on the Hill for 11 years, first for a congressman from San Diego and now as a senior legislative assistant for Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.). Castillo is on the executive committee of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association. He opposes both the marriage amendment and Rogers's campaign. "What purpose does it serve? It's misdirected. If anything, his campaign pushes people further into the closet."
The press secretary Rogers has threatened to out, one of more than a dozen staffers he has approached, has been open about his homosexuality for years -- to his family, his friends and his co-workers. For even longer, he has been out as a Republican to the same people, which might be an even more daunting position, especially now. He supports, or more accurately doesn't oppose, the marriage amendment, because if calling homosexual unions " 'marriage' is going to upset the fabric of civil society, to me, it ain't that important."
Friends don't understand this, he says. They don't see how the 38-year-old press secretary, who declined to be named at the request of his boss, feels no inner conflict between his job and his sexuality. This gay man is not torn about the marriage amendment. Like others whom Rogers has targeted, he is the opposite of torn.
"The irony of all of this is that the people who should be among the most tolerant when the tables are turned are those who are the first to condemn and judge," he says. "Often the gay platform is one of accepting every X, Y and Z. Guess what? That hasn't been my life experience. I have more in common with [my Republican colleagues] than I do with any person off the street that happens to be of similar sexual orientation."
But notice where the WHORE POST puts this story: on page C-1, that is, SECTION "C"!
THIS IS A FRONT-PAGE, STATE-OF-AMERICA ISSUE, page A-1 above-the fold, blaring headlines story that the WHORE press/media has AN OBLIGATION to cover and put on the FRONT PAGES, given that the Republican Party and Bush-Rove White House had made DEMONIZING GAYS the CENTERPIECE of the past 2 national elections. The Post should treat this "HYPOCRITICAL LEADERS DEMONIZE Americans" story same way the lying, ghoulish whores put the Clinton "LINCONLN BEDROOM!" non-scandal scandal on the front pages, in blaring headlines, for days if not weeks on end..
We rest our case... the Washington Post editors and publishers, and most of the American corporate media, are paid professional LIARs, SMEAR-MERCHANTS, and HYPOCRITES, doing EVERTHING THEY CAN to UNDERMINE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY and HONEST journalism/reporting.... in favor of the autocratic, dictatorial, theocratic, intimidating, economic disparity, political disenfranchisement RIGHT-WING AGENDA.
======================================
Capitol Hill Insiders Irked By Campaign To 'Out' Them
By Rebecca Dana and Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 15, 2004; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50299-2004Jul14.html
The phone kept ringing in one Capitol Hill office -- hourly, daily, all leading up to yesterday's Senate vote on the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Mike Rogers was on the line again. He knew something very personal about the press secretary of a Republican House member who supports the amendment, and he wanted to tell someone, preferably someone high-ranking, that the man is gay. Rogers cannot understand this. How can someone help articulate the opposition to homosexual unions when he himself is homosexual?
Rogers, a 40-year-old Washington fundraising consultant, has waged a controversial "outing" campaign in the month leading up to yesterday's vote. He sent out more 10,000 e-mails encouraging and perpetrating outings. He handed out fliers at the gay pride parade in June, asking people to send in names of gay Hill staffers working for senators and representatives who supported the Federal Marriage Amendment. He created a Web log last week listing some of those names.
He made phone calls, day and night, to the offices and homes of these staffers. His message: How dare you?
Rogers's campaign has caused a stir throughout the capital, rallying some gay-rights advocates and horrifying others, for demanding that people who are gay and Republican to defend themselves. Rogers says he plans to continue his campaign despite yesterday's vote -- the amendment was defeated 50-48 but probably will be taken up by the House this fall -- and he will tack on a "fidelity pledge" to expose members of Congress who promote "family values" but have extramarital affairs.
Openly gay since 1986, Rogers views the marriage amendment as a "very personal" hit. Everything he says on the topic ends with an exclamation point. There is "the conspiracy," he fires, "on Capitol Hill!" And "the hypocrisy," he can't believe, "among gay staffers!" He is riled up, energized and organized, using "sources" around the District to identify and expose the homosexuals on the Hill who, he believes, are abetting discrimination aimed at themselves.
"This is the big cheese!" he says. "We are under attack! Gays and lesbians are under attack! It's amazing to me that people don't get that! So what are we going to do? Protect these gay staffers who have influence on policy matters while their bosses spew hate and bigotry?"
No, says John Aravosis, national co-chairman of the activist Web site DearMary.com -- which last week ran an ad in the Washington Blade, the gay weekly newspaper, that read: "For Years Our Silence Has Protected You. Today That Protection Ends." And the Blade itself has published back-to-back front-page stories on the outing campaign, naming senior staffers and two elected officials -- one congressman, one senator -- whose names have been circulating on the Web and in other gay publications.
In an editorial on July 2, the Blade's executive editor, Chris Crain, wrote: "It is 2004, not 1954, and sexual orientation in and of itself is no longer a 'private fact' beyond the pale of inquiry." The Blade, he wrote, "would investigate and report about whether influential Hill aides are gay if facts about their sexual orientation raise highly newsworthy questions of hypocrisy in the stands taken by anti-gay members of Congress for whom they work."
Crain, in a phone interview, explains his controversial position: "The more these staffers are personally responsible for policies that challenge the basic civil rights of gay people, the more it's our responsibility, as a gay newspaper, to ask them how they justify those positions considering that they're gay."
Rogers, Aravosis and Crain inherited strategic outing as a tactic from the 1980s and 1990s, when several congressmen announced their homosexuality under pressure from others. Republican Steve Gunderson, a former Wisconsin lawmaker, came out in 1994 after threats from both gay-rights activists and House conservatives. In response to a political ad in the Blade and the rumor of a story in the gay magazine the Advocate, Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) came out in 1996 after voting in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
"The whole outing campaign makes me a little uncomfortable, but I still think it's the right thing to do," says Aravosis, a 40-year-old political consultant. "A line has been crossed. When you talk about amending the Constitution to make me a second-class citizen based on my personal relationship, then you've crossed a line of decency."
Gay organizations on the Hill -- the newly formed Gay, Lesbian & Allies U.S. Senate Staff Caucus and the 10-year-old Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association -- oppose Rogers's tactics, as do the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives that has offered counsel to the targets of Rogers's outings, and the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay-rights advocacy group.
Lynden Armstrong started working for Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) in 1995, and came out in the office two years later. As administrative director, he manages the senator's five offices -- four in New Mexico, one in Washington. He is a Republican. Being gay, he says, has not been an issue at work. He considers Rogers's campaign a "personal attack" on gay staffers "who haven't gotten to the point, emotionally and psychologically, that they feel that they can come out at work."
"That is a personal decision," says Armstrong, 32, sitting in the office with Fox News playing in the background. A native of Fort Sumner, N.M., now living in the District and co-chairing the nonpartisan Senate Staff Caucus, he declines to comment on whether he supports the marriage amendment. His boss voted for it. "I have to keep in mind that the senator has nothing personal against me or the gay community. He is having to do what he is elected to do -- represent his constituents. And New Mexicans, if you look at the polls, are overwhelmingly supportive of the amendment."
His beef with the Rogers campaign: "What a lot of people don't realize in this whole outing campaign, and one of the bigger problems I have with it, is they're outing people who aren't in the place in their life where they're ready for that to happen. Besides, is outing a staff member going to really affect a senator's or a representative's vote? Is it going to change anyone's position?"
Victor Castillo, a Democrat, has worked on the Hill for 11 years, first for a congressman from San Diego and now as a senior legislative assistant for Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.). Castillo is on the executive committee of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association. He opposes both the marriage amendment and Rogers's campaign. "What purpose does it serve? It's misdirected. If anything, his campaign pushes people further into the closet."
The press secretary Rogers has threatened to out, one of more than a dozen staffers he has approached, has been open about his homosexuality for years -- to his family, his friends and his co-workers. For even longer, he has been out as a Republican to the same people, which might be an even more daunting position, especially now. He supports, or more accurately doesn't oppose, the marriage amendment, because if calling homosexual unions " 'marriage' is going to upset the fabric of civil society, to me, it ain't that important."
Friends don't understand this, he says. They don't see how the 38-year-old press secretary, who declined to be named at the request of his boss, feels no inner conflict between his job and his sexuality. This gay man is not torn about the marriage amendment. Like others whom Rogers has targeted, he is the opposite of torn.
"The irony of all of this is that the people who should be among the most tolerant when the tables are turned are those who are the first to condemn and judge," he says. "Often the gay platform is one of accepting every X, Y and Z. Guess what? That hasn't been my life experience. I have more in common with [my Republican colleagues] than I do with any person off the street that happens to be of similar sexual orientation."
"Ohio voters...[might feel] like THEY ARE IN a THIRD WORLD AUTOCRACY".... About Time the NYT wrote something honest!
IT IS ABOUT TIME that the NY Times woke up and smelled the stinkin' mess that has become of America's ***democracy*** - since the days they piled on the Republican-Rovian-Bush-Right-Wing smears and slanders of "White House trashing" and "TRAVEL-GATE!" and "Lincoln Bedroom!" and "Webster Hubbell (gasp!) OVERBILLED his own law firm and clients!" (A way of writing one's self a BONUS check that, if it didn't meet the approval of either the clients or partners, they would reject immediately.)
In retrospect, with the CUNNINGHAM BRIBERY, ABRAMOFF BRIBERY, BOB NEY BRIBERY, JEFF GANON LATE-NIGHT 'press passes," KEN LAY FRAUD, TWO stolen elections, a looted US treasury, a war that is killing (on average this month) 4 US soldiers per day, and a NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA, not only does the Web Hubbell prosecution look like the relentless, NYT-promoted LYNCH MOB that it was, but it looks positively GHOULISH by comparison. (QUICK: did anybody "ABATE" the CONVICTION of JIM McDOUGAL after HE died????? HELL NO!! Unlike Ken Lay, James McDougal did not put George W. Bush in the White House as his NUMBER ONE CAMPAIGN DONOR through two gubanatorial, one primary, and the 2000 presidential elections. Even though McDougal's S&L failure, a rather routine failure against the backdrop of the monstrous TRILLION-DOLLAR Republican-promoted S&L debacle ("DEREGULATION!"), harmed no investors, pensioners, workers, or energy consumers.)
<< Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a THIRD-WORLD AUTOCRACY. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality.
The complaint itself is without merit.... what is more troubling is [that] Mr. Blackwell says he has designated his assistant secretary to handle duties that could conflict with his candidacy. But passing these matters on to a subordinate who is a political ally and owes his job to the candidate hardly removes the conflict. >>
And the Winner Is ... Me
NYT editorial board (editors)
Published: October 17, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17tues1.html
Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a third-world autocracy. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We’d like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.
Ted Strickland, the Democratic nominee, is leading Mr. Blackwell by as much as 28 points, according to one recent poll. In their panic, some Blackwell supporters have hit on the idea of trying to prevent the election from occurring. One of them filed a complaint alleging that Mr. Strickland, who is a member of Congress, does not live in the apartment where he is registered to vote. Mr. Strickland owns a condominium in another part of Ohio, and the complaint alleges that he actually lives there. If Mr. Strickland was not a qualified voter, he would be prohibited from running for governor.
The complaint itself is without merit. No one disputes that Mr. Strickland lives in Ohio, or that he is registered. The only issue is which of his two homes he chose to register from, and the law gives voters with multiple homes broad discretion in choosing among them.
What is more interesting, and troubling, is the way the complaint is proceeding. The county board that heard it broke down 2 to 2, on party lines, about whether to hold a hearing. In the case of a tie vote at the county level, complaints like these get forwarded to the secretary of state’s office to be resolved. Mr. Blackwell says he has designated his assistant secretary to handle duties that could conflict with his candidacy. But passing these matters on to a subordinate who is a political ally and owes his job to the candidate hardly removes the conflict.
Election administration should be removed from partisan politics, in Ohio and everywhere else. Decisions like these should be made by nonpartisan bodies or, failing that, by people who do their utmost to insulate themselves from partisan politics. In 2004, Mr. Blackwell chose to become co-chairman of President Bush’s Ohio campaign, and then issued rulings that helped the campaign. Now we have the even more bizarre prospect of Mr. Blackwell, or his deputy, potentially participating in the baseless disqualification of his opponent.
We are confident it will not come to that. But however this particular case is resolved, it underscores the need for Ohio, and other states, to find a way to administer elections that is insulated from partisan politics.
In retrospect, with the CUNNINGHAM BRIBERY, ABRAMOFF BRIBERY, BOB NEY BRIBERY, JEFF GANON LATE-NIGHT 'press passes," KEN LAY FRAUD, TWO stolen elections, a looted US treasury, a war that is killing (on average this month) 4 US soldiers per day, and a NUCLEAR NORTH KOREA, not only does the Web Hubbell prosecution look like the relentless, NYT-promoted LYNCH MOB that it was, but it looks positively GHOULISH by comparison. (QUICK: did anybody "ABATE" the CONVICTION of JIM McDOUGAL after HE died????? HELL NO!! Unlike Ken Lay, James McDougal did not put George W. Bush in the White House as his NUMBER ONE CAMPAIGN DONOR through two gubanatorial, one primary, and the 2000 presidential elections. Even though McDougal's S&L failure, a rather routine failure against the backdrop of the monstrous TRILLION-DOLLAR Republican-promoted S&L debacle ("DEREGULATION!"), harmed no investors, pensioners, workers, or energy consumers.)
<< Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a THIRD-WORLD AUTOCRACY. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality.
The complaint itself is without merit.... what is more troubling is [that] Mr. Blackwell says he has designated his assistant secretary to handle duties that could conflict with his candidacy. But passing these matters on to a subordinate who is a political ally and owes his job to the candidate hardly removes the conflict. >>
And the Winner Is ... Me
NYT editorial board (editors)
Published: October 17, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17tues1.html
Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a third-world autocracy. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We’d like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.
Ted Strickland, the Democratic nominee, is leading Mr. Blackwell by as much as 28 points, according to one recent poll. In their panic, some Blackwell supporters have hit on the idea of trying to prevent the election from occurring. One of them filed a complaint alleging that Mr. Strickland, who is a member of Congress, does not live in the apartment where he is registered to vote. Mr. Strickland owns a condominium in another part of Ohio, and the complaint alleges that he actually lives there. If Mr. Strickland was not a qualified voter, he would be prohibited from running for governor.
The complaint itself is without merit. No one disputes that Mr. Strickland lives in Ohio, or that he is registered. The only issue is which of his two homes he chose to register from, and the law gives voters with multiple homes broad discretion in choosing among them.
What is more interesting, and troubling, is the way the complaint is proceeding. The county board that heard it broke down 2 to 2, on party lines, about whether to hold a hearing. In the case of a tie vote at the county level, complaints like these get forwarded to the secretary of state’s office to be resolved. Mr. Blackwell says he has designated his assistant secretary to handle duties that could conflict with his candidacy. But passing these matters on to a subordinate who is a political ally and owes his job to the candidate hardly removes the conflict.
Election administration should be removed from partisan politics, in Ohio and everywhere else. Decisions like these should be made by nonpartisan bodies or, failing that, by people who do their utmost to insulate themselves from partisan politics. In 2004, Mr. Blackwell chose to become co-chairman of President Bush’s Ohio campaign, and then issued rulings that helped the campaign. Now we have the even more bizarre prospect of Mr. Blackwell, or his deputy, potentially participating in the baseless disqualification of his opponent.
We are confident it will not come to that. But however this particular case is resolved, it underscores the need for Ohio, and other states, to find a way to administer elections that is insulated from partisan politics.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Justice is also a WHORE in America... Ken Lay's conviction ERASED, while thousands ROT in US prisons for far less...
WELL, at least << U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake >> has a "III" behind his name, presumably a member in good standing of the top tier of the American autocracy.
WHY the rush to CLEAR LAY of his conviction?
Was Judge Lake too stupid, or too corrupted, to realize that Lay got a FREE PASS for BILKING - defrauding - tens of millions of California rate-payers with Enron's signature COORDINATED PLANT-SHUTDOWNS, rigged bids, and other criminal shenanigans from Enron's California extortion, aided and abetted by the Bush-Cheney White House, a trial that WAS NEVER EVEN BROUGHT against the Enron exec's because "politics" is far stronger than "justice" in America.
Well, America is indeed a great country... we can support an entire layer of well-paid bureacracy, including those such as Judge Simeon T Lake, whose sole job is really nothing more than kissing the ring of power and money.
======================================
Judge Revokes Lay's Conviction
Ruling Rankles Enron Workers, Investors
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 18, 2006; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101700808_pf.html
A federal judge in Houston yesterday wiped away the fraud and conspiracy conviction of Kenneth L. Lay, the Enron Corp. founder who died of heart disease in July, bowing to decades of legal precedent but frustrating government attempts to seize nearly $44 million from his family.
The ruling worried employees and investors who lost billions of dollars when the Houston energy-trading company filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001. It also came more than a week after Congress recessed for the November elections without acting on a last-ditch Justice Department proposal that would have changed the law to allow prosecutors to seize millions of dollars in investments and other assets that Lay controlled.
With the judge's order, Lay's conviction on 10 criminal charges will be erased from the record. "The indictment against Kenneth L. Lay is dismissed," U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III wrote in a spare, 13-page order.
Legal analysts said Lake's ruling closely hewed to a long-held doctrine called abatement, which allows a conviction to be vacated if defendants die before they are able to exercise their right to appeal. Courts typically rule that defendants' constitutional rights to challenge their convictions outweigh other considerations, and the law hesitates to punish the dead, the analysts said.
Samuel J. Buffone, a Washington-based lawyer for Lay, said the family was pleased with the ruling. "As far as we're concerned, this is the last step," Buffone said. "It's as if the indictment never occurred."
But governance experts said Lay's name forever will be linked with the era's most complex and far-reaching corporate fraud.
"A lot of lives were ruined, both the perpetrators' and the victims,' " University of Tennessee corporate governance expert Joseph V. Carcello said. "This happened on his watch. Even if he's not legally culpable, he's culpable as a manager."
Regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission still may pursue their civil case against Lay's estate, but their task will be more difficult because they can no longer introduce the fact of his conviction and instead must prove again, in a resource-intensive trial, that he broke the law. The SEC case has been stayed pending resolution of the status of Lay's criminal conviction. The agency's five commissioners must decide in the weeks to come whether to proceed against Lay's estate.
The court ruling shifts the spotlight onto former Enron chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, 52, who is to be sentenced Monday on 19 fraud, conspiracy and false-filings charges. Skilling, Lay's protégé and fellow defendant, handled day-to-day operations at Enron until his resignation in the summer of 2001 and faces more than two decades in prison.
Skilling is the sole survivor from Enron's top management ranks and the one most likely to pay a heavy price for his decision to vigorously fight the charges against him. Earlier this month, Skilling laid out several avenues for appeal, including jury bias, faulty instructions by the judge and what he called overreaching by prosecutors that infringed on his constitutional rights.
Former finance chief Andrew S. Fastow, whom Skilling has painted as the man most responsible for the company's downfall, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges and gave damaging testimony against his onetime patrons. A separate federal judge in Houston last month sentenced him to six years in prison, a 40 percent reduction from the seemingly iron-clad deal his defense team had struck with the government. The leader of an Enron employees group later called the benefit to Fastow "a slap in the face."
The lead plaintiffs in a separate shareholder lawsuit against former Enron executives and other advisers accused of helping the company conceal its financial problems already have said they intend to focus their attentions not on Lay's family, but on investment banks with deeper pockets.
Days before Lay's death, prosecutors had filed court papers seeking to extract $43.5 million from his financial holdings, including $6 million in a recently matured investment and at least $1.5 million more that Lay used to cover part of the mortgage on a luxury apartment in Houston. The government said it intended to set aside the money in a special fund for Enron investors and employees. Now, federal prosecutors are seeking to hold Skilling responsible for Lay's share, over Skilling's objections.
Separately yesterday, lawyers for the Lay family asked the court to release a $5 million bond that had been secured by the homes of several of Lay's five children. Federal prosecutors at the Enron Task Force declined to comment.
"Today's ruling does not change the fact that Mr. Lay was found guilty after a four-month jury trial and a separate bench trial," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. "We will continue to pursue all remedies available for restitution on behalf of the victims of the fraud at Enron."
Lay, 64, collapsed in a rental home near Aspen, Colo., about a month after a Houston jury found him guilty of conspiring to mislead employees and investors about Enron's mounting financial problems. His death unleashed vicious criticism on the Internet and prompted conspiracy theories that were dispelled by a coroner's report and sheriff's deputies.
A man accustomed to flying in private jets and mingling with the Bush family, foreign diplomats and owners of professional sports teams, Lay was brought low by a widening scandal after disclosures that Enron had disguised billions of dollars in debt and manufactured revenue. He told the jury at his trial earlier this year that he was in the hole $250,000 after years of spending lavishly on homes, vacations and his five children.
Federal prosecutors baited Lay into displaying a short temper and a flair for micromanagement on the witness stand, and pounced when Lay could not explain why he sold more than $77 million in Enron shares back to the company in the months before its demise.
In recent weeks, Lay's family paid an undisclosed sum to settle a smaller civil case filed by former Enron employees over their pension and retirement funds.
Ken Horton, a former Enron manager who was laid off alongside thousands of others in December 2001, said he had steeled himself for the conviction to be extinguished after word of Lay's death three months ago. But Horton, who pegged his retirement and savings plan losses in the six-figure range, expressed "great" concern that he and former colleagues would never be made whole financially. Horton said he has received only $4,000 to date.
"If I got 10 cents on the dollar, I would be elated," Horton said.
WHY the rush to CLEAR LAY of his conviction?
Was Judge Lake too stupid, or too corrupted, to realize that Lay got a FREE PASS for BILKING - defrauding - tens of millions of California rate-payers with Enron's signature COORDINATED PLANT-SHUTDOWNS, rigged bids, and other criminal shenanigans from Enron's California extortion, aided and abetted by the Bush-Cheney White House, a trial that WAS NEVER EVEN BROUGHT against the Enron exec's because "politics" is far stronger than "justice" in America.
Well, America is indeed a great country... we can support an entire layer of well-paid bureacracy, including those such as Judge Simeon T Lake, whose sole job is really nothing more than kissing the ring of power and money.
======================================
Judge Revokes Lay's Conviction
Ruling Rankles Enron Workers, Investors
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 18, 2006; D01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101700808_pf.html
A federal judge in Houston yesterday wiped away the fraud and conspiracy conviction of Kenneth L. Lay, the Enron Corp. founder who died of heart disease in July, bowing to decades of legal precedent but frustrating government attempts to seize nearly $44 million from his family.
The ruling worried employees and investors who lost billions of dollars when the Houston energy-trading company filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001. It also came more than a week after Congress recessed for the November elections without acting on a last-ditch Justice Department proposal that would have changed the law to allow prosecutors to seize millions of dollars in investments and other assets that Lay controlled.
With the judge's order, Lay's conviction on 10 criminal charges will be erased from the record. "The indictment against Kenneth L. Lay is dismissed," U.S. District Judge Simeon T. Lake III wrote in a spare, 13-page order.
Legal analysts said Lake's ruling closely hewed to a long-held doctrine called abatement, which allows a conviction to be vacated if defendants die before they are able to exercise their right to appeal. Courts typically rule that defendants' constitutional rights to challenge their convictions outweigh other considerations, and the law hesitates to punish the dead, the analysts said.
Samuel J. Buffone, a Washington-based lawyer for Lay, said the family was pleased with the ruling. "As far as we're concerned, this is the last step," Buffone said. "It's as if the indictment never occurred."
But governance experts said Lay's name forever will be linked with the era's most complex and far-reaching corporate fraud.
"A lot of lives were ruined, both the perpetrators' and the victims,' " University of Tennessee corporate governance expert Joseph V. Carcello said. "This happened on his watch. Even if he's not legally culpable, he's culpable as a manager."
Regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission still may pursue their civil case against Lay's estate, but their task will be more difficult because they can no longer introduce the fact of his conviction and instead must prove again, in a resource-intensive trial, that he broke the law. The SEC case has been stayed pending resolution of the status of Lay's criminal conviction. The agency's five commissioners must decide in the weeks to come whether to proceed against Lay's estate.
The court ruling shifts the spotlight onto former Enron chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling, 52, who is to be sentenced Monday on 19 fraud, conspiracy and false-filings charges. Skilling, Lay's protégé and fellow defendant, handled day-to-day operations at Enron until his resignation in the summer of 2001 and faces more than two decades in prison.
Skilling is the sole survivor from Enron's top management ranks and the one most likely to pay a heavy price for his decision to vigorously fight the charges against him. Earlier this month, Skilling laid out several avenues for appeal, including jury bias, faulty instructions by the judge and what he called overreaching by prosecutors that infringed on his constitutional rights.
Former finance chief Andrew S. Fastow, whom Skilling has painted as the man most responsible for the company's downfall, pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges and gave damaging testimony against his onetime patrons. A separate federal judge in Houston last month sentenced him to six years in prison, a 40 percent reduction from the seemingly iron-clad deal his defense team had struck with the government. The leader of an Enron employees group later called the benefit to Fastow "a slap in the face."
The lead plaintiffs in a separate shareholder lawsuit against former Enron executives and other advisers accused of helping the company conceal its financial problems already have said they intend to focus their attentions not on Lay's family, but on investment banks with deeper pockets.
Days before Lay's death, prosecutors had filed court papers seeking to extract $43.5 million from his financial holdings, including $6 million in a recently matured investment and at least $1.5 million more that Lay used to cover part of the mortgage on a luxury apartment in Houston. The government said it intended to set aside the money in a special fund for Enron investors and employees. Now, federal prosecutors are seeking to hold Skilling responsible for Lay's share, over Skilling's objections.
Separately yesterday, lawyers for the Lay family asked the court to release a $5 million bond that had been secured by the homes of several of Lay's five children. Federal prosecutors at the Enron Task Force declined to comment.
"Today's ruling does not change the fact that Mr. Lay was found guilty after a four-month jury trial and a separate bench trial," Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said. "We will continue to pursue all remedies available for restitution on behalf of the victims of the fraud at Enron."
Lay, 64, collapsed in a rental home near Aspen, Colo., about a month after a Houston jury found him guilty of conspiring to mislead employees and investors about Enron's mounting financial problems. His death unleashed vicious criticism on the Internet and prompted conspiracy theories that were dispelled by a coroner's report and sheriff's deputies.
A man accustomed to flying in private jets and mingling with the Bush family, foreign diplomats and owners of professional sports teams, Lay was brought low by a widening scandal after disclosures that Enron had disguised billions of dollars in debt and manufactured revenue. He told the jury at his trial earlier this year that he was in the hole $250,000 after years of spending lavishly on homes, vacations and his five children.
Federal prosecutors baited Lay into displaying a short temper and a flair for micromanagement on the witness stand, and pounced when Lay could not explain why he sold more than $77 million in Enron shares back to the company in the months before its demise.
In recent weeks, Lay's family paid an undisclosed sum to settle a smaller civil case filed by former Enron employees over their pension and retirement funds.
Ken Horton, a former Enron manager who was laid off alongside thousands of others in December 2001, said he had steeled himself for the conviction to be extinguished after word of Lay's death three months ago. But Horton, who pegged his retirement and savings plan losses in the six-figure range, expressed "great" concern that he and former colleagues would never be made whole financially. Horton said he has received only $4,000 to date.
"If I got 10 cents on the dollar, I would be elated," Horton said.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
America's media and press whores bend over backwards to call "TORTURE" anything but...
Well, you have to hand it to President Bush, Tom DeLay, and other right-wing Republican anti-intellectuals: they have driven the ENTIRE American media, intelligentsia, press, and academia into a strange state where America's "best and brightest" have become chattering, nattering nabobs of cowering uselessness, people driven to earn their paychecks coming up with new euphemisms to replace the word "TORTURE."
Of course, some of the proponents of the right-wing Republican agenda fancy themselves as intellectuals, academics, and scholars, for example Ken Lay, Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, (all of whom earned PhDs) and Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's stolen electoral 'wins,' who may not have a PhD, but is quite the reader and historical devotee.
Yet scrape the veneer of "Moral Values" and "Honor and Dignity" from these political leaders, and their agenda, and one can say that their bedrock foundation is one of social bullying and political intimidation, of which war, violence, bombs, and now TORTURE are an integral part.
"DETAINEES," "terror suspects," "interrogation," "questioning," "protect detainees from blatant abuses during questioning" - [ NOT! ] - these are the euphemisms by which George W. Bush has written Gestapo-KGB rules of torture into American law, with the complicity and cooperation of the servile American press/media.
<< Bush was able to DIVERT ATTENTION from REPUBLICAN TROUBLES when he first asked for the legislation during a dramatic speech on Sept. 6 in the White House East Room attended by some families of Sept. 11 victims. >>
<< The bill ready for signing would protect detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — BUT DOES NOT REQUIRE that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. >>
That is, a detainee could be beaten within an inch of his life, and HAVE NO RECOURSE or avenue for justice. That is, the bill contradicts its own "protections against blatant abuse," which detainees certainly understand, but the cowardly press-media pretends not to.
<< The signing ceremony offered Bush the chance to bask in a legislative victory. About 150 people were invited to the White House for the event, including military officers, members of Congress and members of Bush's cabinet. >>
<< The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider HEARSAY EVIDENCE, so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts. >>
"HEARSAY EVIDENCE"?!! Why doesn't Mr. Bush and his cabal of right-wingers just reinstate the RUNAWAY SLAVE LAW?
Oh... we apologize... with the craven complicity of the American whore press & media, they just have...
(Thanks especially to Arthur Sulzberger and the New York Times, for the new KGB-Gestapo torture bill, which is only the culmination of a decade of lies and relentless press subservience to the right-wing agenda.)
======================================
Bush to sign law on terror suspects
By Nedra Pickler , Associated Press Writer
17 Oct. 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061017/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_terrorism;_ylt=AlIqGarRpI8jIE8ejviL5qms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OTB1amhuBHNlYwNtdHM-
WASHINGTON - President Bush is signing into law today new standards expediting interrogation and prosecution of terror suspects, a bill the White House says strengthens his hand in a time of war.
Bush's plan becomes law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.
The bill ready for signing would protect detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said that after Bush signs the legislation Tuesday, the government will immediately begin moving toward the goal of prosecuting some of the high-value suspects being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He expected it would take a month or two to get "things moving toward a trial phase."
"In terms of having trials, for good and obvious reasons, you don't do that overnight," Snow told reporters. "You do have to make sure that the defense is going to be able to do its job properly and the prosecution the same."
The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence. Lawmakers are increasingly calling for a change of strategy and political anxieties are jeopardizing Republican's chances of hanging onto control of Congress.
Bush was able to divert attention from Republican troubles when he first asked for the legislation during a dramatic speech on Sept. 6 in the White House East Room attended by some families of Sept. 11 victims.
But the distraction was short-lived as new revelations of Bush's handling of the Iraq war in a book by Bob Woodward raised fresh criticism of his administration. And Republican Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s resignation from Congress after amid revelations of tawdry e-mails sent to former House pages drowned out Bush's terrorism agenda.
The signing ceremony offered Bush the chance to bask in a legislative victory. About 150 people were invited to the White House for the event, including military officers, members of Congress and members of Bush's cabinet.
"President Bush is going to mark this bill signing as a historic moment because it is a law that he knows will be effective in preventing terrorist attacks and keeping Americans safe," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Bush needed the legislation because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.
The legislation, which sets the rules for court proceedings, applies to those selected by the military for prosecution and leaves mostly unaffected the majority of the 14,000 prisoners in U.S. custody, most of whom are in Iraq.
The Pentagon had previously selected 10 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison to be tried. Bush is expected also to try some or all of the 14 suspects held by the CIA in secret prisons and recently transferred to military custody at Guantanamo — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts.
The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize aggressive interrogation methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts. Snow said Bush would probably eventually issue an executive order that would describe his interpretation.
Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence.
Earlier this year, an anti-torture panel at the United Nations recommended the closure of Guantanamo and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning.
The legislation nonetheless won overwhelming approval in the House and Senate.
Of course, some of the proponents of the right-wing Republican agenda fancy themselves as intellectuals, academics, and scholars, for example Ken Lay, Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, (all of whom earned PhDs) and Karl Rove, the architect of Bush's stolen electoral 'wins,' who may not have a PhD, but is quite the reader and historical devotee.
Yet scrape the veneer of "Moral Values" and "Honor and Dignity" from these political leaders, and their agenda, and one can say that their bedrock foundation is one of social bullying and political intimidation, of which war, violence, bombs, and now TORTURE are an integral part.
"DETAINEES," "terror suspects," "interrogation," "questioning," "protect detainees from blatant abuses during questioning" - [ NOT! ] - these are the euphemisms by which George W. Bush has written Gestapo-KGB rules of torture into American law, with the complicity and cooperation of the servile American press/media.
<< Bush was able to DIVERT ATTENTION from REPUBLICAN TROUBLES when he first asked for the legislation during a dramatic speech on Sept. 6 in the White House East Room attended by some families of Sept. 11 victims. >>
<< The bill ready for signing would protect detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — BUT DOES NOT REQUIRE that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. >>
That is, a detainee could be beaten within an inch of his life, and HAVE NO RECOURSE or avenue for justice. That is, the bill contradicts its own "protections against blatant abuse," which detainees certainly understand, but the cowardly press-media pretends not to.
<< The signing ceremony offered Bush the chance to bask in a legislative victory. About 150 people were invited to the White House for the event, including military officers, members of Congress and members of Bush's cabinet. >>
<< The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider HEARSAY EVIDENCE, so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts. >>
"HEARSAY EVIDENCE"?!! Why doesn't Mr. Bush and his cabal of right-wingers just reinstate the RUNAWAY SLAVE LAW?
Oh... we apologize... with the craven complicity of the American whore press & media, they just have...
(Thanks especially to Arthur Sulzberger and the New York Times, for the new KGB-Gestapo torture bill, which is only the culmination of a decade of lies and relentless press subservience to the right-wing agenda.)
======================================
Bush to sign law on terror suspects
By Nedra Pickler , Associated Press Writer
17 Oct. 2006
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061017/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_terrorism;_ylt=AlIqGarRpI8jIE8ejviL5qms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3OTB1amhuBHNlYwNtdHM-
WASHINGTON - President Bush is signing into law today new standards expediting interrogation and prosecution of terror suspects, a bill the White House says strengthens his hand in a time of war.
Bush's plan becomes law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.
The bill ready for signing would protect detainees from blatant abuses during questioning — such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment — but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said that after Bush signs the legislation Tuesday, the government will immediately begin moving toward the goal of prosecuting some of the high-value suspects being held at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He expected it would take a month or two to get "things moving toward a trial phase."
"In terms of having trials, for good and obvious reasons, you don't do that overnight," Snow told reporters. "You do have to make sure that the defense is going to be able to do its job properly and the prosecution the same."
The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence. Lawmakers are increasingly calling for a change of strategy and political anxieties are jeopardizing Republican's chances of hanging onto control of Congress.
Bush was able to divert attention from Republican troubles when he first asked for the legislation during a dramatic speech on Sept. 6 in the White House East Room attended by some families of Sept. 11 victims.
But the distraction was short-lived as new revelations of Bush's handling of the Iraq war in a book by Bob Woodward raised fresh criticism of his administration. And Republican Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s resignation from Congress after amid revelations of tawdry e-mails sent to former House pages drowned out Bush's terrorism agenda.
The signing ceremony offered Bush the chance to bask in a legislative victory. About 150 people were invited to the White House for the event, including military officers, members of Congress and members of Bush's cabinet.
"President Bush is going to mark this bill signing as a historic moment because it is a law that he knows will be effective in preventing terrorist attacks and keeping Americans safe," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Bush needed the legislation because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.
The legislation, which sets the rules for court proceedings, applies to those selected by the military for prosecution and leaves mostly unaffected the majority of the 14,000 prisoners in U.S. custody, most of whom are in Iraq.
The Pentagon had previously selected 10 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison to be tried. Bush is expected also to try some or all of the 14 suspects held by the CIA in secret prisons and recently transferred to military custody at Guantanamo — including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The bill also eliminates some rights common in military and civilian courts. For example, the commission would be allowed to consider hearsay evidence so long as a judge determined it was reliable. Hearsay is barred from civilian courts.
The legislation also says the president can "interpret the meaning and application" of international standards for prisoner treatment, a provision intended to allow him to authorize aggressive interrogation methods that might otherwise be seen as illegal by international courts. Snow said Bush would probably eventually issue an executive order that would describe his interpretation.
Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence.
Earlier this year, an anti-torture panel at the United Nations recommended the closure of Guantanamo and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning.
The legislation nonetheless won overwhelming approval in the House and Senate.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Kerry's "moral authority abused... immoral...willful president's wrongful course"... "house of lies" speech NH Oct. 15, 2006
Senator John Kerry dissects the state of denial of a Washington press corps, media, and government that kowtow to the serial deceptions of the Bush administration. Some pretty damning words from the Senator who stood there like a box of rocks during the third presidential debate in 2004, as President Bush sneered "My opponent [Kerry] IS A FLIP-FLOPPER!"
----------------------------------------
Speech by Senator John Kerry to the New Hampshire Jefferson-Jackson Democratic dinner Oct. 15, 2006:
Thank you, thank you, Kathy, Thank you for a wonderful introduction to New Hampshire.
I congratulate Mary Chambers and Ray Buckly for their unbelievable service over the years, and most importantly, and will you join me please in welcoming my wife, an extraordinary citizen, Teresa Heinz Kerry (applause).
My fellow Democrats, my friends from an extraordinary journey.
This war in Iraq is a disgrace. Bob Woodward is right. They are in a state of denial. But its worse than that. They are in a state of deception. They tell us that we're making progress in Iraq, and that there is no civil war.
THAT IS A LIE.
They tell us that the Johns Hopkins study of Iraqi casualties is phony.
THAT IS A LIE. You can see it for yourself every day on the television.
They tell us the Congressional page scandal is a Democratic ploy to win the mid-term elections.
THAT IS A LIE. The issue is here because of a Republican cover-up, and the party that preaches "MORAL VALUES" that covered this up has no right to preach "Moral Values" to any of us at this time.
They tell us the North Korean nuclear test is the fault of Bill Clinton, well THAT is a LIE. North Korea's nuclear program was FROZEN under Bill Clinton, and when George W. Bush turned his back on diplomacy, Kim Jung Il turned BACK to making nuclear bombs, and the world is LESS SAFE TODAY because a madman has the Bush bomb.
A Lie, a lie, a lie, and a lie, what we have in Washington is a house of lies, and what we need to do in November is to clean house! (applause)
And to those who question my opposition to this war, just as they questioned my opposition to Vietnam after I returned, let me tell you, when you know the truth, when the facts are there for all to understand, when the lies and deceptions have been laid bare for everybody to see, then it is both a right, and an obligation as an American to disagree with a president who is wrong, with a policy that is wrong, and a war in Iraq that weakens our nation, doesn't strengthen it.
They say we have to support this war in order to support the troops. I say the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course THAT SQUANDERS THEIR LIVES. Oppose a course that DISHONORS their sacrifice, oppose a course that does a disservice to our principles.
They say that we would dishonor the lives that have been lost by changing course in Iraq.
How immoral and shameful and extraordinary to suggest, that we should use the lives already given, to excuse more lives that must be given in the future.
How immoral to say, that "More must die, because others already have."
Let me tell you when soldiers suffer and die on an altar of an administration's pride, when they loose their limbs because of the incompetence and arrogance of mere politicians, then the ONLY patriotic choice is to take back the moral authority that has been abused by those in high office, TAKE IT BACK AND THROW THEM OUT."
Right here, right here in New Hampshire Congressman Bass and Congressman Bradley have FAILED TO ASK the TOUGH QUESTIONS, failed to demand answers, and rubber-stamped a willful president's wrongful course. That failure demands that the independent voice of New Hampshire be represented by the independent voices of Paul Hodes and Carroll Shay Porter.
And replacing Jeff Bradley and Charlie Bass actually becomes even more urgent when they rubber stamp the agenda of an administration that refuses to debate their policies or disclose their facts or to respect the Constitution, as Carroll said.
And when that administration uses their OWN MILITARY BLUNDERS to answer their own failures, with more of the same.
Let me tell you, presidents and politicians may worry about losing face and losing votes and losing legacy, I believe as a veteran and as a citizen, that we ought to be worried about young Americans who are losing lives. ......
And then there's Donald Rumsfeld. He's been called the most stubborn, incompetent, and arrogant Defense Secretary in American history... and that's just what Republicans are saying about him! (applause)
Donald Rumsfeld, the man who should have been fired as Secretary of Defense a long time ago, Donald Rumsfeld recently gave a low and ugly speech, in which he smeared those who dissent from a catastrophic policy, and then he spoke of moral confusion.
Well, there certainly is a lot of moral confusion around these days.
It is IMMORAL for old men to send young men to fight in a war without a strategy to be able to win, and for a war that makes you weaker, not stronger.
It is IMMORAL to lie about the progress in that war in order to get through a news cycle or an election cycle.
It is immoral to treat 9-11 as a political pawn and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers and sons and brothers, daughters who were lost that day.
THEY were attacked NOT BY SADDAM HUSSEIN in Iraq, but by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
We've seen in recent days that this administration will say anything, they'll do anything, twist any truth, and even endanger our nation's character just to survive a midterm election.
But I think Americans are now beginning to see through that charade. Americans now know the truth that we have a Katrina foreign policy, blunders and failures piled upon each other, all of which have betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and WIDENED the terrorist threat, instead of diminishing it.
And Americans know the Republican playback backwards and forwards. Every time this administration is down in the polls, every time their political opponents at home appear to be gaining, they trot out the fear card. Well, enough is enough. I think we deserve leaders, who remember that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
NOT politicians who the only thing they have to sell is fear itself. (continued on video)
------------------------------------
(note: CSPAN's podcasting and video-link index is terrible.)
CSPAN's ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Fmr. Mayor Giuliani & Sen. Kerry (D-MA)
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani headlines a fundraiser in Concord for the House Republican Victory Committee. Then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry speaks at the annual New Hampshire Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Manchester
javascript:playClip(clip1_27792);
http://download.rbn.com/cspan/cspan/download/rwh_feed.xml
----------------------------------------
Speech by Senator John Kerry to the New Hampshire Jefferson-Jackson Democratic dinner Oct. 15, 2006:
Thank you, thank you, Kathy, Thank you for a wonderful introduction to New Hampshire.
I congratulate Mary Chambers and Ray Buckly for their unbelievable service over the years, and most importantly, and will you join me please in welcoming my wife, an extraordinary citizen, Teresa Heinz Kerry (applause).
My fellow Democrats, my friends from an extraordinary journey.
This war in Iraq is a disgrace. Bob Woodward is right. They are in a state of denial. But its worse than that. They are in a state of deception. They tell us that we're making progress in Iraq, and that there is no civil war.
THAT IS A LIE.
They tell us that the Johns Hopkins study of Iraqi casualties is phony.
THAT IS A LIE. You can see it for yourself every day on the television.
They tell us the Congressional page scandal is a Democratic ploy to win the mid-term elections.
THAT IS A LIE. The issue is here because of a Republican cover-up, and the party that preaches "MORAL VALUES" that covered this up has no right to preach "Moral Values" to any of us at this time.
They tell us the North Korean nuclear test is the fault of Bill Clinton, well THAT is a LIE. North Korea's nuclear program was FROZEN under Bill Clinton, and when George W. Bush turned his back on diplomacy, Kim Jung Il turned BACK to making nuclear bombs, and the world is LESS SAFE TODAY because a madman has the Bush bomb.
A Lie, a lie, a lie, and a lie, what we have in Washington is a house of lies, and what we need to do in November is to clean house! (applause)
And to those who question my opposition to this war, just as they questioned my opposition to Vietnam after I returned, let me tell you, when you know the truth, when the facts are there for all to understand, when the lies and deceptions have been laid bare for everybody to see, then it is both a right, and an obligation as an American to disagree with a president who is wrong, with a policy that is wrong, and a war in Iraq that weakens our nation, doesn't strengthen it.
They say we have to support this war in order to support the troops. I say the best way to support the troops is to oppose a course THAT SQUANDERS THEIR LIVES. Oppose a course that DISHONORS their sacrifice, oppose a course that does a disservice to our principles.
They say that we would dishonor the lives that have been lost by changing course in Iraq.
How immoral and shameful and extraordinary to suggest, that we should use the lives already given, to excuse more lives that must be given in the future.
How immoral to say, that "More must die, because others already have."
Let me tell you when soldiers suffer and die on an altar of an administration's pride, when they loose their limbs because of the incompetence and arrogance of mere politicians, then the ONLY patriotic choice is to take back the moral authority that has been abused by those in high office, TAKE IT BACK AND THROW THEM OUT."
Right here, right here in New Hampshire Congressman Bass and Congressman Bradley have FAILED TO ASK the TOUGH QUESTIONS, failed to demand answers, and rubber-stamped a willful president's wrongful course. That failure demands that the independent voice of New Hampshire be represented by the independent voices of Paul Hodes and Carroll Shay Porter.
And replacing Jeff Bradley and Charlie Bass actually becomes even more urgent when they rubber stamp the agenda of an administration that refuses to debate their policies or disclose their facts or to respect the Constitution, as Carroll said.
And when that administration uses their OWN MILITARY BLUNDERS to answer their own failures, with more of the same.
Let me tell you, presidents and politicians may worry about losing face and losing votes and losing legacy, I believe as a veteran and as a citizen, that we ought to be worried about young Americans who are losing lives. ......
And then there's Donald Rumsfeld. He's been called the most stubborn, incompetent, and arrogant Defense Secretary in American history... and that's just what Republicans are saying about him! (applause)
Donald Rumsfeld, the man who should have been fired as Secretary of Defense a long time ago, Donald Rumsfeld recently gave a low and ugly speech, in which he smeared those who dissent from a catastrophic policy, and then he spoke of moral confusion.
Well, there certainly is a lot of moral confusion around these days.
It is IMMORAL for old men to send young men to fight in a war without a strategy to be able to win, and for a war that makes you weaker, not stronger.
It is IMMORAL to lie about the progress in that war in order to get through a news cycle or an election cycle.
It is immoral to treat 9-11 as a political pawn and to continue to excuse the invasion of Iraq by exploiting the 3,000 mothers and fathers and sons and brothers, daughters who were lost that day.
THEY were attacked NOT BY SADDAM HUSSEIN in Iraq, but by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.
We've seen in recent days that this administration will say anything, they'll do anything, twist any truth, and even endanger our nation's character just to survive a midterm election.
But I think Americans are now beginning to see through that charade. Americans now know the truth that we have a Katrina foreign policy, blunders and failures piled upon each other, all of which have betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and WIDENED the terrorist threat, instead of diminishing it.
And Americans know the Republican playback backwards and forwards. Every time this administration is down in the polls, every time their political opponents at home appear to be gaining, they trot out the fear card. Well, enough is enough. I think we deserve leaders, who remember that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
NOT politicians who the only thing they have to sell is fear itself. (continued on video)
------------------------------------
(note: CSPAN's podcasting and video-link index is terrible.)
CSPAN's ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Fmr. Mayor Giuliani & Sen. Kerry (D-MA)
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani headlines a fundraiser in Concord for the House Republican Victory Committee. Then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry speaks at the annual New Hampshire Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Manchester
javascript:playClip(clip1_27792);
http://download.rbn.com/cspan/cspan/download/rwh_feed.xml
Bob Schieffer and CBS 'news'... Whores for BushCo....
Good little USN&WR (US News and World Report) commentary by Paul Bedard on Bob Schieffer's "beloved" status at the DC press corpse's "Gridiron Club."
OF COURSE the DC press corpse lauds their own.... that's what sycophantic institutions do.
Actually, it isn't Bedard's commentary that is so good... it is the readers at HuffPost who add their comments to the discussion that illuminates Schieffer's "qualifications" to be nominated as a prime example of DC self-congratulatory press whoredom. To wit:
#1. << Bob Schieffer kinda pisses me off. He seems to always let Condi get away with not answering any questions. He asks a questions, she doesn't answer, he laughs it away and goes to another question. One that she still doesn't answer. >>
By: shamijen on October 15, 2006 at 04:56pm
NOW THERE'S A GREAT EXAMPLE of what it qualifies to be an example of a 'top-notch' Washington Reporter: NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS, **ALLOW** your interviewee to DODGE your original questions!
---------------------------------------------
#2. << "George W. Bush is a well read man".
Bob Schiffer said that on Chicago Tonight, a PBS programme based in Chicago (obviously).
**** Bob Schiffer....
By: JaneaneTheGoblin on October 15, 2006 at 05:29pm >>
As another poster mentions, "NO, Mr. Schieffer... 'MY PET GOAT' does NOT count towards a "well read man."
--------------------------------------------------
#3. << Actually, Bob "the big guy" Shieffer went down long ago. It was one of the most incredible examples of faux-journalistic sychopancy, the night of the first debate between Kerry and Bush. After Kerry bitch-slapped the boy half-way to serious injury, our guy Bob gets up for the next forty minutes or so talking about, how...well...the president really did seem to hold his own." You should see it as a historical document, when the most free country in the world starts spinning and censoring itself. A clear sign of our descent. And that night Bob was leading the pack.
By: Villon on October 15, 2006 at 09:07pm
--------------------------------------------------
Ah yes, the great presidential debates of 2004, the ones where George W. Bush declared Democrats and all opposition writers, editors, condidates, or voters in sight to be "FLIP FLOPPERS!"...... WITHOUT ONCE HAVING TO ANSWER as to why HE himself had "FLIP FLOPPED" on his "Get Osama bin Laden DEAD OR ALIVE" pledge.
OF COURSE the DC press corpse lauds their own.... that's what sycophantic institutions do.
Actually, it isn't Bedard's commentary that is so good... it is the readers at HuffPost who add their comments to the discussion that illuminates Schieffer's "qualifications" to be nominated as a prime example of DC self-congratulatory press whoredom. To wit:
#1. << Bob Schieffer kinda pisses me off. He seems to always let Condi get away with not answering any questions. He asks a questions, she doesn't answer, he laughs it away and goes to another question. One that she still doesn't answer. >>
By: shamijen on October 15, 2006 at 04:56pm
NOW THERE'S A GREAT EXAMPLE of what it qualifies to be an example of a 'top-notch' Washington Reporter: NO FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS, **ALLOW** your interviewee to DODGE your original questions!
---------------------------------------------
#2. << "George W. Bush is a well read man".
Bob Schiffer said that on Chicago Tonight, a PBS programme based in Chicago (obviously).
**** Bob Schiffer....
By: JaneaneTheGoblin on October 15, 2006 at 05:29pm >>
As another poster mentions, "NO, Mr. Schieffer... 'MY PET GOAT' does NOT count towards a "well read man."
--------------------------------------------------
#3. << Actually, Bob "the big guy" Shieffer went down long ago. It was one of the most incredible examples of faux-journalistic sychopancy, the night of the first debate between Kerry and Bush. After Kerry bitch-slapped the boy half-way to serious injury, our guy Bob gets up for the next forty minutes or so talking about, how...well...the president really did seem to hold his own." You should see it as a historical document, when the most free country in the world starts spinning and censoring itself. A clear sign of our descent. And that night Bob was leading the pack.
By: Villon on October 15, 2006 at 09:07pm
--------------------------------------------------
Ah yes, the great presidential debates of 2004, the ones where George W. Bush declared Democrats and all opposition writers, editors, condidates, or voters in sight to be "FLIP FLOPPERS!"...... WITHOUT ONCE HAVING TO ANSWER as to why HE himself had "FLIP FLOPPED" on his "Get Osama bin Laden DEAD OR ALIVE" pledge.
LA Times whores for... its own corporate MONOPOLY on the political process....
The two horrible "dirty secrets" of American democracy, which bely the claim that America is, indeed, a democratic republic; are, #1. the DIEBOLDIZATION or "privatization" of the US voting process. "Privatization" has a much simpler term and connotation: slave plantation owners, the foundation of the Southern political process, literally "OWNED" everything they could see for miles in every direction; INCLUDING the local and state government.
#2. For any candidate to win office, they must purchase THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of TV, radio, and press commercials. Therefore, if a citizen wants to elect a populist, progressive, or "Liberal Democrat" to office, they send in money to that candidate.. which that candidate, in turn, hands over by bucketful TO THE VERY MEDIA CORPORATIONS that Mr. or Ms. Citizen is TRYING TO OPPOSE with their votes and donations.
NO WHERE in the US Constitution did the founders ever imagine that MEDIA CORPORTIONS would own or control a VIRTUAL MONOPOLY of the voting process. All through American history, there have been newspapers that pledged allegiance to one party or the other. IT IS ONLY WITHIN THE LAST DECADE or two that ALL media corporations have grown SO POWERFUL, that it is in ALL of their intrest's to OPPOSE ANY populist or progressive agenda... as Mr. Kevin Drum so perceptively points out in this article, the LA Times OPPOSING a .2 - - - POINT TWO PERCENT - increase in taxes to fund a more honest political discourse.
Political Animal
by Kevin Drum
October 15, 2006
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_10/009781.php
CLEAN MONEY....I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but the LA Times has recommended a No vote on Proposition 89, the Clean Money initiative on the ballot in California this November. They agree it's a splendid idea, but:
<< In the details, however, Proposition 89 runs aground. The funding would come from a tax on corporations and financial institutions....The measure worsens both the insult and the injury by sharply limiting a corporation's ability to spend money supporting or opposing a ballot measure. >>
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-clean13oct13,0,4159800.story?coll=la-promo-opinion
Yeah, Prop 89 really sticks it to corporations. It's funded by a 0.2 (that's zero point two) percentage point increase in the corporate income tax, and it prevents corporations from donating more than $10,000 to initiative campaigns unless they set up a PAC to do it.
Can we get real? 0.2% is a tiny increase, and forcing corporations to set up PACs that raise money from wealthy executives and stockholders is a speed bump, not a death sentence. But that's still too bold for the Times. Your liberal media at work.
#2. For any candidate to win office, they must purchase THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of TV, radio, and press commercials. Therefore, if a citizen wants to elect a populist, progressive, or "Liberal Democrat" to office, they send in money to that candidate.. which that candidate, in turn, hands over by bucketful TO THE VERY MEDIA CORPORATIONS that Mr. or Ms. Citizen is TRYING TO OPPOSE with their votes and donations.
NO WHERE in the US Constitution did the founders ever imagine that MEDIA CORPORTIONS would own or control a VIRTUAL MONOPOLY of the voting process. All through American history, there have been newspapers that pledged allegiance to one party or the other. IT IS ONLY WITHIN THE LAST DECADE or two that ALL media corporations have grown SO POWERFUL, that it is in ALL of their intrest's to OPPOSE ANY populist or progressive agenda... as Mr. Kevin Drum so perceptively points out in this article, the LA Times OPPOSING a .2 - - - POINT TWO PERCENT - increase in taxes to fund a more honest political discourse.
Political Animal
by Kevin Drum
October 15, 2006
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_10/009781.php
CLEAN MONEY....I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but the LA Times has recommended a No vote on Proposition 89, the Clean Money initiative on the ballot in California this November. They agree it's a splendid idea, but:
<< In the details, however, Proposition 89 runs aground. The funding would come from a tax on corporations and financial institutions....The measure worsens both the insult and the injury by sharply limiting a corporation's ability to spend money supporting or opposing a ballot measure. >>
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-clean13oct13,0,4159800.story?coll=la-promo-opinion
Yeah, Prop 89 really sticks it to corporations. It's funded by a 0.2 (that's zero point two) percentage point increase in the corporate income tax, and it prevents corporations from donating more than $10,000 to initiative campaigns unless they set up a PAC to do it.
Can we get real? 0.2% is a tiny increase, and forcing corporations to set up PACs that raise money from wealthy executives and stockholders is a speed bump, not a death sentence. But that's still too bold for the Times. Your liberal media at work.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Robert Scheer, once again, articulates the obvious: Bush's gunslinger "diplomacy" a disaster FOR THE US and world....
Dear Leader Brings It On
Robert Scheer
Originally posted at Truthdig.com
10.11.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/dear-leader-brings-it-on_b_31455.html
Well, Bush showed them, didn't he?
Over the past six years, our "my way or the highway" president blew up a crucial nonproliferation agreement which was keeping North Korea's plutonium stores under seal, ended bilateral talks with Pyongyang, squashed Japan's and South Korea's carefully constructed "sunshine policy," which was slowly drawing the bizarre Hermit Kingdom back into the light, and then took every opportunity to personally insult the country's reportedly unstable dictator because it played well politically at home.
If you shun them, they will shape up--this was the essence of President Bush's non-diplomacy, as it was in regards to Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The result? Cold War-style brinkmanship that has left the United States helpless.
The policy options left are dumb and dumber: Either passively accept Pyongyang's defiant threats and ability to slip weapons-grade plutonium around the world, or launch an invasion that could spark a devastating attack on Seoul.
Thank you, Mr. President. I feel so much safer now that we have a wannabe cowboy in charge of the free world.
In the ongoing story of Bush and Co.'s dangerous leadership, the North Korea chapter is one of the least understood--and potentially the most disastrous. And, as with the sordid saga of Iraq and the "missing" weapons of mass destruction, the devil is in the details obscured by the ugly glare of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.
Republican cheerleaders are now making the case that, as with every other problem in the world, this is all Bill Clinton's fault; the line is that former President Clinton caved to the North Korean communists, who then broke their agreements. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, what happened is that Jimmy Carter, on Clinton's behalf, had negotiated an historic deal back in 1994 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to seal Pyongyang's plutonium in exchange for major energy assistance in the form of fuel-oil shipments and the building of safe nuclear reactors. (Incidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was a director of one of the companies that profited from the reactor deal.)
Clinton then followed the lead of Japan and South Korea in trying to lead paranoid North Korea into the world community through baby-step agreements. (See two great timelines here and here)
Nearly a decade later, with the plutonium still safely under seal, however, Bush repudiated this approach, effectively driving North Korea to abandon all agreements and return to its pre-1994 pursuit of plutonium-based nukes. The White House rationale was that North Korea had broken the agreement by trying to enrich uranium enough to use it in weapons. However, not only are any such intelligence claims coming from this administration now highly suspect, but such a program would take a level of energy production and technical ability that seems to be beyond Pyongyang.
In any case, now Kim Jong Il and his scientists don't have to worry about the enormous difficulties posed by enriching uranium: They have back their far, far more dangerous plutonium reserves--thanks to Bush--with enough material to make between four and 13 bombs (see this article [.pdf file])--and have missiles capable of carrying them into Alaska. Even worse, we know now that this rogue nation also benefited from key nuclear technology training provided by Pakistani nuke scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who then inexplicably was pardoned by our "war on terror" allies in Islamabad and has never been made available to U.S. investigators.
What did tough-talk Dubya do in response to this international outrage? He dropped the sanctions previously imposed on Pakistan because of that country's nuclear weapons program.
While there is every reason to be alarmed by North Korea's cultish police state, it is still best to pursue a realpolitik pragmatism instead of the ideological and confrontational approach Bush and his neocons have pursued for six long years now.
The North Koreans' test also underscores that nuclear proliferation is a growing menace to the survival of life on this planet, and that the menace of WMD should not have been turned into a partisan political ploy. The recklessness of this administration's foreign policy is marked by the trivialization of the WMD issue, an approach epitomized by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's lauded (at the time) speech to the United Nations, in which he blurred the devastating consequence of a nuclear blast with the dangers of a meaningless vial of white powder.
Sensible Republicans must rein in the Bush administration and demand that progress take precedence over empty threats. They could start by listening to James Baker, secretary of state in Bush's father's administration. "I believe in talking to your enemies," Baker said a few days before the Korean nuclear test, endorsing the resumption of bilateral talks with Pyongyang and noting pointedly that he had taken 15 trips to Syria while serving Bush's father.
Unfortunately, the White House will almost certainly ignore this commonsense truth. It's much easier to blame Bill Clinton.
Robert Scheer
Originally posted at Truthdig.com
10.11.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/dear-leader-brings-it-on_b_31455.html
Well, Bush showed them, didn't he?
Over the past six years, our "my way or the highway" president blew up a crucial nonproliferation agreement which was keeping North Korea's plutonium stores under seal, ended bilateral talks with Pyongyang, squashed Japan's and South Korea's carefully constructed "sunshine policy," which was slowly drawing the bizarre Hermit Kingdom back into the light, and then took every opportunity to personally insult the country's reportedly unstable dictator because it played well politically at home.
If you shun them, they will shape up--this was the essence of President Bush's non-diplomacy, as it was in regards to Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The result? Cold War-style brinkmanship that has left the United States helpless.
The policy options left are dumb and dumber: Either passively accept Pyongyang's defiant threats and ability to slip weapons-grade plutonium around the world, or launch an invasion that could spark a devastating attack on Seoul.
Thank you, Mr. President. I feel so much safer now that we have a wannabe cowboy in charge of the free world.
In the ongoing story of Bush and Co.'s dangerous leadership, the North Korea chapter is one of the least understood--and potentially the most disastrous. And, as with the sordid saga of Iraq and the "missing" weapons of mass destruction, the devil is in the details obscured by the ugly glare of tyrants such as Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il.
Republican cheerleaders are now making the case that, as with every other problem in the world, this is all Bill Clinton's fault; the line is that former President Clinton caved to the North Korean communists, who then broke their agreements. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, what happened is that Jimmy Carter, on Clinton's behalf, had negotiated an historic deal back in 1994 to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to seal Pyongyang's plutonium in exchange for major energy assistance in the form of fuel-oil shipments and the building of safe nuclear reactors. (Incidentally, Donald Rumsfeld was a director of one of the companies that profited from the reactor deal.)
Clinton then followed the lead of Japan and South Korea in trying to lead paranoid North Korea into the world community through baby-step agreements. (See two great timelines here and here)
Nearly a decade later, with the plutonium still safely under seal, however, Bush repudiated this approach, effectively driving North Korea to abandon all agreements and return to its pre-1994 pursuit of plutonium-based nukes. The White House rationale was that North Korea had broken the agreement by trying to enrich uranium enough to use it in weapons. However, not only are any such intelligence claims coming from this administration now highly suspect, but such a program would take a level of energy production and technical ability that seems to be beyond Pyongyang.
In any case, now Kim Jong Il and his scientists don't have to worry about the enormous difficulties posed by enriching uranium: They have back their far, far more dangerous plutonium reserves--thanks to Bush--with enough material to make between four and 13 bombs (see this article [.pdf file])--and have missiles capable of carrying them into Alaska. Even worse, we know now that this rogue nation also benefited from key nuclear technology training provided by Pakistani nuke scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who then inexplicably was pardoned by our "war on terror" allies in Islamabad and has never been made available to U.S. investigators.
What did tough-talk Dubya do in response to this international outrage? He dropped the sanctions previously imposed on Pakistan because of that country's nuclear weapons program.
While there is every reason to be alarmed by North Korea's cultish police state, it is still best to pursue a realpolitik pragmatism instead of the ideological and confrontational approach Bush and his neocons have pursued for six long years now.
The North Koreans' test also underscores that nuclear proliferation is a growing menace to the survival of life on this planet, and that the menace of WMD should not have been turned into a partisan political ploy. The recklessness of this administration's foreign policy is marked by the trivialization of the WMD issue, an approach epitomized by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's lauded (at the time) speech to the United Nations, in which he blurred the devastating consequence of a nuclear blast with the dangers of a meaningless vial of white powder.
Sensible Republicans must rein in the Bush administration and demand that progress take precedence over empty threats. They could start by listening to James Baker, secretary of state in Bush's father's administration. "I believe in talking to your enemies," Baker said a few days before the Korean nuclear test, endorsing the resumption of bilateral talks with Pyongyang and noting pointedly that he had taken 15 trips to Syria while serving Bush's father.
Unfortunately, the White House will almost certainly ignore this commonsense truth. It's much easier to blame Bill Clinton.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Bono & Schriver on Larry King: Life-and-Death AIDS charity as a matter of urgent world concern... and good marketing and citizenship!
We're happy to report some WONDERFUL news here at MwUSA.blgsptcom. Bono, lead singer of the band "U2," and Bobby Schriver, nephew of President John F. Kennedy, have both worked to start up an AIDS charity called, simply, "RED," a charity that allows European and American consumers to almost effortlessly make purchasing choices that automatically send funds to "Red," an global AIDS charity.
But what was exceptional about Bono and Schriver's efforts are not that they have launched a successful, life-sustaining charity... nor even that they are using the strength of corporate America (and Europe), and the marketing geniuses of those companies, to make the fundraising efforts a simple and rewarding part of everyday consumer life.
No, what was truly EXCEPTIONAL about the Bono-Schriver appearance on Larry King Live last night was that the two wealthy Irish descendents (Bono is still Irish) not only rekindled the appeal to AMERICA's GREATNESS as a warm, compassionate, and charitable nation, but also that they brought to our attention something that wealthy Americans tend to forget: that not only are we a nation of immigrants, but that many of those immigrants have been REFUGEES; and in the case of Irish Americans, refugees fleeing a BRTUAL FAMINE that was MAN-MADE as much as it was a result of the potato blight. Bono recounted the history: << as Irish people we faced a very brutal famine, which was not as people often describe as a tater blight. It was actually -- it was organized by the then oppressive British forces in Ireland that we couldn't get to the food. >>
BONO THEN RECOUNTS HOW TODAY, despite claims of Western "charity" to Africa, the fact remains that << Africa was PAYING MUCH MORE BACK TO the western world servicing OLD DEBTS than it was ever getting, receiving in aid monies and I thought this was mad.... >>
[note: this is EXACTLY the prescription for extornionate lending by Amerian and European banks as recounted in the New York Times' bestseller book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. Google has some pages of the book for viewer sampling, which of course is available at bookstores everywhere.]
IN CONFRONTING both a deadly disease (AIDS, and the greater epidemic of what Bono calls "STUPID, STARVATION POVERTY"), the tendency of America to wallow in resentment and lethargy and do far less than is possible to combat such dehumanizing blights; and as well the tendency of Americans to IGNORE OUR OWN history as descendents of peasants, persecuted minorities, and refugees, BONO and SCHRIVER SCORE A DIRECT HIT.
Much has been written lately about how the Democrats are known more for RETREATING and GOING PASSIVE on the issues than for fighting back. And much history has been written about how POLITICAL ACE and Senate Majority Leader LYNDON JOHNSON (regarded by some historians as sort of a "co-president," legislatively, behind the scenes of the Eisenhower White House, Johnson was that powerful when teamed up with his mentor, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, both of Texas).... how, despite his power, experience, and connections, Johnson was COMPLETELY FROZEN OUT of the Democratic presidential nomination by John F. Kennedy, whom the experienced Johnson considered a rookie, neophyte, and superficial, inexperienced playboy!
Well, the key to Kennedy's meteoric political rise, of course, was the wealth and "street smarts" of his father and dynasty patriarch Joseph Kennedy, whose "street creds" were so deep, that they were all but intertwined with some of the most powerful mobsters of the prohibition era. But as one political video (Leslie Stahl, in the Bill Moyers produced series?) observed, the Kennedy's political genius was in harnessing the family's wealth and vitality to America's modern production economic post-WWII corncopia... along with the majestic pagentry of ANCIENT CATHOLIC RITUAL.
John Kennedy of course resolved that HE WOULD NOT be a slave or subject to Vatican dictates while leading the nation of America as president.... a notion of fallibility of the Church, and separation of Church and state, that is QUAINT in today's overheated era of Bible thumping (that is so extreme that the nation that put man on the moon is, in so many states, trying to prohibit the teaching of evolution in public schools). BUT the Kennedy's were genuises as harnessing the pomp, majesty, and glory of ancient Catholic pagentry to a modern political campaign... giving up absolutely nothing to the British royals or any other monarchs in the "all business is show business" department.
And, we must recall, despite the Kennedy millions, the photogenic good looks of the Kennedy brothers and heroic WWII record of JFK; despite the legendary political experince of Lyndon Johnson and control by the Democrats of both the House and the Senate... despite ALL of that, it was still a very close election against Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960, and, ironically, many have held that it was the Democrat's use of "the MISSILE GAP" issue that determined the outcome. (After winning the election and being presented with the illustrations of America's actual nuclear arsenal, John F. Kennedy instantly realized that there had never been "a missile gap," but that Eisenhower and Nixon could not rebut the charge without disclosing classified secrets.) (On the other hand, there is NO substance to the rumor that the Chicago mob delivered the election to the Kennedy-Johnson team. A look at the electoral map reaveals the Democrats would have won WITHOUT Illinois.)
==============================
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/13/lkl.01.html
KING: We're back with Bono and Bobby Shriver. Bono, why do you do all that you do? What inspires you to do -- you raise more money probably than any single individual in the world, why?....
BONO: Well, you know, I'm sure there's a complicated response to that and that, you know, maybe I haven't had time to figure out. I started off during Live Aid in the mid-'80s. U2 played on Live Aid and I kind of got caught up in this and ended up in Africa working in an orphanage in Ethiopia during the famine there.
And, I certainly saw things there that I wish I hadn't and had experiences I wish I and my wife had not had. And, you know, you say you won't forget but we did. We got back to our lives. But always in the back of my head I kind of had a feeling that this kind of poverty is not there just by accident.
There's a sort of structural nature of this and I started to discover that, for instance, that Africa was paying much more back to the western world servicing old debts than it was ever getting, receiving in aid monies and I thought this was mad.
And, you know, we raised $250 million or something at Live Aid back in the mid-'80s. Well Africa is paying that every few weeks back to us. So, I started to see things through a slightly different prism, one that you might call justice rather than charity.
It offended my sense of fairness is probably the answer to your question. And we were talking earlier about this, myself and Bobby, him being a Shriver/Kennedy there's Irish blood there and me, somewhere in the back of your head there has to be a sense that as Irish people we faced a very brutal famine, which was not as people often describe as a tater blight. It was actually -- it was organized by the then oppressive British forces in Ireland that we couldn't get to the food.
And, I started, you know, any Irish person has this folk memory of famine and, you know, as a result of that famine, you know, you have, you know, you have all the policemen in New York now. SHRIVER: You have Shrivers in California.
BONO: And Catholics in office.
Friday, October 13, 2006
British Reporter killed by US gunfire early in Iraq war...
We here at MediaWhoresUSA.blospot.com HATE titling our site "Media Whores" because, #1. there are so many COURAGEOUS writers, reporters, and journalists out there; and #2. the derogatory word "whores" denigrates thousands of women (and men) engaged in the sex trade, many of them legally (Las Vegas), and all of them risking their lives to clients, customers, or pathogens picked up "on the job." "Whore," especially, is one of the most DEHUMANIZING words ever to be applied to humans, somehow implying that they are less than human, apart from "normal society," and of far lesser value than "polite society."
Yet despite these "bleeding heart" impulses, we MUST use the moniker "MediaWhores" for now, because nothing else we can use as a headline or title so captures the PROSTITUTION of today's reporter's pen to the PROPAGANDA, LIES, and Orwellian DOUBLESPEAK of the Radical Right agenda and the corporate, religious, and media handmaidens who propagate those lies and propaganda on behalf of the Bush administration, the Republican party, the dictatorial "morality" of would be theocrats, and of course the tendency of corporate America to spin (or lie) on behalf of its own profits.
IN today's post, we SALUTE those COURAGEOUS wartime reporters, often doing their jobs on hellish and hazardous situations. And make no mistake: the US government is working double-overtime to make sure that they (government agencies) CONTROL THE NEWS as much as humanly possible. Today's media 'handlers" understand the Nazi dictum: "IF NO ONE IS THERE to WITNESS the death of THOUSANDS of "enemies of the state," then NO ONE (but the immediate family and kin of the victims) WILL MOURN those DEATHS."
Without going into the US military's role on the KILLING, by gunfire, of British reporter TERRY LLOYD, we simply SALUTE Mr. Lloyd, and other courageous reporters of the Iraq war, for putting themselves on such hazardous situations to report to us the true "facts on the ground" of the Iraq war.
============================
Coroner: U.S. killed British TV reporter
By MARIA HEGSTAD, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago
OXFORD, England - A coroner ruled Friday that U.S. forces unlawfully killed a British television journalist in the opening days of the Iraq war.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061013/ap_on_re_eu/britain_reporter_inquest
Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he would ask the attorney general to take steps to bring to justice those responsible for the death of Terry Lloyd, 50, a veteran reporter for the British television network ITN.
Witnesses testified during the weeklong inquest that Lloyd — who was driving with fellow ITN reporters from Kuwait toward Basra, Iraq — was shot in the back by Iraqi troops who overtook his car, then died after U.S. fire hit a civilian minivan being used as an ambulance and struck him in the head.
"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said. "There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire."
ITN cameraman Daniel Demoustier, the sole survivor of the incident, told the inquest that ITN's pair of four-wheel drive vehicles were overtaken by a truck carrying Iraqi forces and that gunfire erupted.
"The hell broke loose completely. I was absolutely sure I was going to die," Demoustier told the inquest. Driving blindly in smoke, Demoustier said he realized the passenger door was open and Lloyd was gone.
Demoustier, a Belgian, said he jumped from his flaming car and lay in the sand, waiting for the shooting to stop. Demoustier said he tried to stand to signal U.S. tanks in the area but that they resumed firing at the clearly marked ITN vehicles.
Demoustier said he saw a Red Crescent ambulance arrive and pick up people. He was later taken to safety in the car of a British newspaper reporter.
The coroner said Friday that a civilian drove up in a minivan, pulled a U-turn and picked up four wounded Iraqi soldiers, then saw Lloyd with a press card around his neck and helped him into the van. Lloyd was shot in the head as the van drove off toward a hospital, the coroner said.
Demoustier said after the ruling that the inquest had not made clear whether the bullet that killed Lloyd was fired by a U.S. tank or helicopter. He said the forces in a tank would have been able to see that they were firing at a civilian vehicle, but a helicopter would not.
The U.S. Embassy in London said it had no immediate reaction to the ruling.
Lloyd's widow, Lynn, in a statement read by her lawyer, said U.S. forces "allowed their soldiers to behave like trigger-happy cowboys in an area in which there were civilians traveling."
She called the killing a war crime — "a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act."
Lloyd and the three other ITN crew members were some of the few Western reporters who covered the fighting on their own, while most others were embedded with U.S. or British forces.
Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman also was killed in the ITN crew, and cameraman Fred Nerac remains missing and presumed dead.
U.S. authorities didn't allow servicemen to testify at the inquest. Several submitted statements that the coroner ruled inadmissible.
The court watched a video Tuesday, filmed by a U.S. serviceman attached to one of the tanks accused of firing at the reporters' cars. The tape opens with images of Lloyd's vehicle and the Iraqi truck burning amid gunfire. The tanks drive to the cars and inspect them. A minivan — possibly the ambulance — appears and more shots are fired.
At the end of the tape, a U.S. soldier shouts, "It's some media personnel! That's media down there!"
A forensic examiner said the first 15 minutes of the tape may have been erased.
In Britain, inquests take place when a person dies violently, unexpectedly, or of unknown causes. In the case of an overseas death, the inquest is held in the first English jurisdiction where the body is returned.
Yet despite these "bleeding heart" impulses, we MUST use the moniker "MediaWhores" for now, because nothing else we can use as a headline or title so captures the PROSTITUTION of today's reporter's pen to the PROPAGANDA, LIES, and Orwellian DOUBLESPEAK of the Radical Right agenda and the corporate, religious, and media handmaidens who propagate those lies and propaganda on behalf of the Bush administration, the Republican party, the dictatorial "morality" of would be theocrats, and of course the tendency of corporate America to spin (or lie) on behalf of its own profits.
IN today's post, we SALUTE those COURAGEOUS wartime reporters, often doing their jobs on hellish and hazardous situations. And make no mistake: the US government is working double-overtime to make sure that they (government agencies) CONTROL THE NEWS as much as humanly possible. Today's media 'handlers" understand the Nazi dictum: "IF NO ONE IS THERE to WITNESS the death of THOUSANDS of "enemies of the state," then NO ONE (but the immediate family and kin of the victims) WILL MOURN those DEATHS."
Without going into the US military's role on the KILLING, by gunfire, of British reporter TERRY LLOYD, we simply SALUTE Mr. Lloyd, and other courageous reporters of the Iraq war, for putting themselves on such hazardous situations to report to us the true "facts on the ground" of the Iraq war.
============================
Coroner: U.S. killed British TV reporter
By MARIA HEGSTAD, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago
OXFORD, England - A coroner ruled Friday that U.S. forces unlawfully killed a British television journalist in the opening days of the Iraq war.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061013/ap_on_re_eu/britain_reporter_inquest
Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker said he would ask the attorney general to take steps to bring to justice those responsible for the death of Terry Lloyd, 50, a veteran reporter for the British television network ITN.
Witnesses testified during the weeklong inquest that Lloyd — who was driving with fellow ITN reporters from Kuwait toward Basra, Iraq — was shot in the back by Iraqi troops who overtook his car, then died after U.S. fire hit a civilian minivan being used as an ambulance and struck him in the head.
"Terry Lloyd died following a gunshot wound to the head. The evidence this bullet was fired by the Americans is overwhelming," Walker said. "There is no doubt that the minibus presented no threat to the American forces. There is no doubt it was an unlawful act of fire."
ITN cameraman Daniel Demoustier, the sole survivor of the incident, told the inquest that ITN's pair of four-wheel drive vehicles were overtaken by a truck carrying Iraqi forces and that gunfire erupted.
"The hell broke loose completely. I was absolutely sure I was going to die," Demoustier told the inquest. Driving blindly in smoke, Demoustier said he realized the passenger door was open and Lloyd was gone.
Demoustier, a Belgian, said he jumped from his flaming car and lay in the sand, waiting for the shooting to stop. Demoustier said he tried to stand to signal U.S. tanks in the area but that they resumed firing at the clearly marked ITN vehicles.
Demoustier said he saw a Red Crescent ambulance arrive and pick up people. He was later taken to safety in the car of a British newspaper reporter.
The coroner said Friday that a civilian drove up in a minivan, pulled a U-turn and picked up four wounded Iraqi soldiers, then saw Lloyd with a press card around his neck and helped him into the van. Lloyd was shot in the head as the van drove off toward a hospital, the coroner said.
Demoustier said after the ruling that the inquest had not made clear whether the bullet that killed Lloyd was fired by a U.S. tank or helicopter. He said the forces in a tank would have been able to see that they were firing at a civilian vehicle, but a helicopter would not.
The U.S. Embassy in London said it had no immediate reaction to the ruling.
Lloyd's widow, Lynn, in a statement read by her lawyer, said U.S. forces "allowed their soldiers to behave like trigger-happy cowboys in an area in which there were civilians traveling."
She called the killing a war crime — "a despicable, deliberate, vengeful act."
Lloyd and the three other ITN crew members were some of the few Western reporters who covered the fighting on their own, while most others were embedded with U.S. or British forces.
Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman also was killed in the ITN crew, and cameraman Fred Nerac remains missing and presumed dead.
U.S. authorities didn't allow servicemen to testify at the inquest. Several submitted statements that the coroner ruled inadmissible.
The court watched a video Tuesday, filmed by a U.S. serviceman attached to one of the tanks accused of firing at the reporters' cars. The tape opens with images of Lloyd's vehicle and the Iraqi truck burning amid gunfire. The tanks drive to the cars and inspect them. A minivan — possibly the ambulance — appears and more shots are fired.
At the end of the tape, a U.S. soldier shouts, "It's some media personnel! That's media down there!"
A forensic examiner said the first 15 minutes of the tape may have been erased.
In Britain, inquests take place when a person dies violently, unexpectedly, or of unknown causes. In the case of an overseas death, the inquest is held in the first English jurisdiction where the body is returned.
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