Desperate acts...?

While President Bush calls today's attacks in Baghdad that killed up to 40 people and wounded 200, the acts of "desperate" individuals who "hate freedom" and "love terror," others see them as indications that the resistance is growing stronger and more organized.

...All of the attacks came within 45 minutes of each other and appeared to be carefully choreographed by Iraqi resistance guerrillas and timed to coincide with the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Brigadier General Ahmed Ibrahim, Iraq's deputy interior minister, put the Iraqi death toll at 34, including 26 civilians and eight police officers. He did not include any suicide bombers in the tally.

One American soldier was also killed in one of the police station attacks and six US troops were wounded, the US military said.

The capital has now seen the worst two days of violence since the war was declared over in April and the sound of sirens reverberated through the streets as emergency vehicles criss-crossed the city.

[...]

The terror attacks came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three US soldiers overnight, and a day after an audacious rocket salvo attack on the Rashid hotel in central Baghdad which narrowly missed Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary, who had been staying there. A US colonel was killed and 18 people wounded in that attack.

Meanwhile, near Fallujah, "US troops opened fire indiscriminately, killing at least four Iraqi civilians, after a roadside bomb exploded as a US military convoy passed."

Someone at Saturday's peace rally had a great idea for ending our occupation of Iraq. Draft the Bush daughters and the children of congressmen, senators and other politicians and ceo's into the ranks of those troops destined to go.

Complete story here.

Fire diary....

Like tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Californians, I'm avoiding smoke and ash today by staying indoors. Work has been cancelled. It's dark outside, even though it's 10:40 in the morning. The light that makes it through the smoke is a sickening shade of yellow, casting a pallor on buildings, vehicles, and people. It’s hot, the air heavy and hard to breathe. Park a car or leave a bike or anything outdoors for a few minutes and it will be covered in a layer of burnt ash. The swimming pool in my apartment complex is black with soot and sunken ash.

So far, I’m in no immediate danger. The nearest fire is at least 15 minutes away by freeway—about 15 miles. That’s closer than I like, considering the fire covered twice that distance yesterday. But rather than the dry brush lands it mostly consumed in that period, dense city development lies between me and it. Maybe I’m naïve, but I don’t feel threatened.

I can't help but marvel that this immense destruction has been set in motion by a suspected 3 individuals. One, a lost hunter, started a signal fire that accidentally burst out of control into the so-called Cedar Fire, which has destroyed 260 homes, burned 115,000 acres and so far killed nine people. Two men, presumed arsonists, were seen fleeing from the scene of the so-called Center Valley Fire, which has burned 15,000 acres, destroyed 57 homes and killed two. The cause of the third local fire, the Mine Fire, which has burned 15,000 acres, destroyed no structures and killed no one so far, is undetermined.

It shows how vulnerable our society is. Three people, with matches, have shut down an entire county. And it's not over yet. Fire officials are worried the three fires might merge into one. (If that happens, I’ll most likely be evacuated.) The soonest they're predicting containment is Thursday. And that’s if the Santa Ana Winds, quiet this morning, do not strengthen.

I’ve always maintained that humans are vulnerable enough to nature’s forces—earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes—that we should draw together and reinforce one another’s communities with kindness and generosity, rather than invading, bombing and deliberately destroying. This is certainly a case in point.

Deception dollars....

These were being distributed at today's peace demonstation.

Very effective and packed with information. Check them out here, too. (It loads faster.)

President Bush's downfall...?

We can only hope.

...Since 1979, when manufacturing employment peaked at 19.6 million, 1 in 4 [American] factory jobs have disappeared. It took more than two decades to lose the first 2.5 million. The second 2.5 million have gone away since Bush took office in January 2001.

[...]

But even the optimists tend to agree this recovery is different. So far, it is occurring without a net gain in factory employment, and economists say it is likely that many of the lost jobs will not be restored. That's because most of the losses are attributable to permanent, structural shifts instead of the cyclical layoffs typical of past recessions.

"They're not all going to come back," acknowledged National Assn. of Manufacturers President Jerry Jasinowski. Displaced factory workers "will have to move on," he said, into growing sectors of the economy, such as home building and health care.

Pete Merriman moved on earlier than most. After being laid off several times as an industrial electrician, he staked his claim in the service economy shortly after Bush assumed office in 2001. For the last three years, he's been delivering pizza for a living.

"It's hurt [Bush] in my view, that's for sure," said Merriman, who said he is making decent money toting thick-crust pizzas around Green Bay but would rather be wiring paper-making machinery again. The rate of decline during Bush's tenure dwarfs the experience of his father, George H. W. Bush, who was turned out of office in 1992 after presiding over the first "jobless recovery." Over the four years of the elder Bush's presidency, America lost factory jobs at a rate of about 26,000 a month. Since his son settled in the White House, the monthly job loss has averaged nearly 80,000.

The reporter uncritically gives far too much ink to those who believe the massive hemorrhaging of American manufacturing jobs is a natural result of “the inevitable march of history.”

If that were true, why have European countries not suffered--and worse, too, as they consist of smaller, older, and more dependent economies?

What is happening in America is neither inevitable nor accidental. It is the result of deliberate taxation, trade and government policies which, for the past 30 years or longer, have been made in such a way as to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who are already wealthy and powerful. While the Republican party has taken both the ideological and legislative lead in this process, the Democrats have been not very far behind.

Complete story here.

San Diego peace rally....

My guess, there were about 500-600 people at the peace rally and march in downtown San Diego today.

What's even more significant, the reaction from onlookers in buildings, on foot and in automobiles was overwhelmingly supportive. Thumbs-up, cheering, peace-signs and honking outnumbered thumbs-down or middle-fingers (isn't the Right articulate?) probably 4 or 5 to one. And this in San Diego!

Just where are all those ardent Bush supporters anyway?

As for any sort of organized counter-protest, nothing. Maybe I overestimated Protest Warrior...

"Core values of this country...?"

This group, "Protest Warrior," has set itself up as defenders of America’s core values and is "crashing" anti-war demonstrations across the country. My sweetie, in D.C. for today’s protest, said a large contingent of more than 100 people shoved its way into today’s rally, carrying assembly-line produced protest signs.

Typical of the Right (think Limbaugh, O’Reilly, etc.), what they lack in logic and truth, these guys more than make up for in aggression, belligerence and arrogance. Take this quote, for example:

We must admit we get a certain high from puncturing the moral self-righteousness of leftists. These people claim to have a monopoly on what is good, their entire self-esteem depends on it. So we like to take their premises to their logical conclusions, and show them that the policies they endorse actually lead to what they're purportedly against. For example, take our sign "Saddam only kills his own people. It's none of our business." A sign like that strikes at their ill-conceived mental constructs, because it's pointing out that their anti-war view on Iraq is very selfish and isolationist. And when this is pointed out to them, it forces them to acknowledge that they are really not for what's good, but that their ideology is based on something far less noble - that in fact they have a hatred of what's good. Witness that the two countries on this planet that stand most for 'liberal' values, the United States and Israel, are the two countries leftists despise the most.

Yeah, and black is white and down is up.

Another tactic of the Right: repeating distortions so often that people come to believe them.

When you explore their site, you see too how the Right portrays itself as the beleaguered victim in American politics. They are beset by the “liberal media,” the ideological McCarthyism at our universities.” And now, the greatest threat to America? “Islamo-fascism.”

Talk about projection.

You’ll be glad to know, though, that according to them, “…due to a successful campaign in Afghanistan, the Taliban is no more, and Al-Qaeda was largely disrupted.” Now that's a relief.

What a bunch of delusional fanatics.

Unfortunately, their ilk now holds the reins of our government.

While they criticize "the Republican party" and "its tradition of weak and uninspiring ads," (which Republican party are they talking about?) it's clear that this group is bigger than just the two, young, affable-looking white guys, pictured on the website. It takes money and organization to mobilize 100 or more anti-protesters to a Washington rally. They may portray themselves as "grassroots" but they're getting watered by someone.

And speaking again of the photo of the two founders. What's with the peace-sign Alan Davidson is flashing?

No, you do not get to co-opt that! It's not just some hip gesture: protestors have had their heads bashed in--they have been shot-- for what it represents. And, believe me, what it represents is not the fascistic pabulum that passes for discourse on your site.

I wonder if they'll show up at today's rally in San Diego...?

Do the ends justify the means...?


I'm sad to report that progressives are resorting to "astroturfing."

If you go here, you can click through the menus and generate a "letter to the editor" of your local paper--in this case, against Patriot Acts I and II.

While I agree with the end, I strongly disagree with the means. Leftists have been rightly criticizing the RNC for using this tactic for some time now.

I must say, True Majority and Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream fame, I'm disappointed in you.

Correction....

The link to the House of Representatives vote tally of infamy (below: removed now) was incorrect. I got it from MoveOn.org, who now says that link was for a procedural vote on the $87 billion -- not the final Yes or No.

My post was correct on this matter: Susan Davis did vote for the bill.

I hope other voters besides me are calling her office to express their displeasure.

Here's the final tally for the yes or no.

Rummy memo a plant...?

I must say, I've been suspicious of the Rumsfeld memo from the start. This guy makes sense:

That memo wasn't leaked, it was obviously planted. Why? Well here are a few reasons I believe:

- The administration obviously knows they are losing the war on terrorism and so now they are setting up their excuses. How else are they going to try to explain why there are still so many terrorists?

- They are trying to prepare the American mentality to expect long drawn out occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan as necessary evils.

- It makes Rumsfeld look like he is doing his job, but that the Department of Defense is a large difficult bureaucracy to manage (shift the blame).

- It plants the seed for the possible development of a new branch of defense designed by the White House.

- It paves the way for them to take more "necessary" aggressive measures.

Complete post here.

Infamy in the House....

To my ire, Congresswoman Susan Davis, my rep, voted to give Bush his $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. I just called her office and expressed my displeasure.

Want to check your own representative's vote? Go here. [Link removed: see above.]

Make sure you let them know if you're pleased or angry.

This made my day...!

Bush heckled inside and outside Australia's Parliament.

...Thousands of demonstrators banged drums and shouted outside the Parliament building while a separate group of protesters jostled with security officials outside the U.S. embassy compound where Bush stayed overnight.

During Bush's speech, two Green Party senators jumped to their feet and shouted war protests at Bush. They were ordered removed from the chamber but sat and refused to leave. One of them, Sen. Bob Brown, shouted "we are not a sheriff," a reference to Bush's recent description of Howard.

"I love free speech," Bush said to laughter. [You lie, you smug bastard.]

If only more lawmakers, at home and abroad, had the guts.

Complete story here.

Roll call of infamy ii....

If you want to see how your senators voted on the abortion ban.

Here.

Roll call of infamy...

On the $87 billion funding to continue the debacle in Iraq.

Senator Diane Feinstein, of California, voted "yea." So did Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, of New York.

For shame!

Only 12 senators stood up to President Bush: Boxer (D, CA), Byrd (D, WV), Edwards (D, NC), Graham (D, FL), Harkin (D, IA), Hollings (D, SC), Jeffords (I, VT), Kennedy (D, MA), Kerry (D, MA), Lautenberg (D, NJ), Leahy (D, VT) and Sarbanes (D, MD).

Tally here.

U.S. troops spread too thin....

We're so overextended, we have to hire rent-a-cops to guard our military bases!

Of course, this means big bucks for the companies getting the contracts, both here and abroad.

...In Iraq, almost a third of the $4 billion monthly costs are going to private contractors. One foreign policy expert estimates the current Bush Administration has five times as many civilian contractors in Iraq as his father's administration did during the first Gulf War in 1991. [Emphasis mine.]

The privatization practice, first explored when Cheney was Secretary of Defense for the senior Bush, led to an $8.9 million logistics contract for Brown and Root, a company Cheney later oversaw as head of Halliburton after he left government. Of approximately 3,000 civilian contracts awarded by the Pentagon since 1994, about 2,700 have gone to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root and one other firm.

Complete story here.

Abortion ban passes....

Sometimes I see this as a continuation of the centuries-long battle between secularism and superstition. You know, the same battle that claimed Galileo as a victim and kept us believing the sun rotated around the earth for a few hundred years longer?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 21 — The Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the first federal ban on a specific abortion procedure, ending eight years of divisive debate and clearing the way for President Bush to sign the measure into law.

Both sides declared the 64-to-34 vote a historic turning point in a controversy that has split Americans for decades, ever since the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion in the case of Roe v. Wade 30 years ago.

Of course President Bush is salivating to sign the bill, calling it, "very important legislation that will end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America."

Gag.

Our hopes lie in the Supreme Court now.

Yep, the same court that appointed Bush some two years ago.

Complete story here.

Stovepiping...

Interesting interview with Seymour M. Hersh on the New Yorker website, referring to his recent article, "The Stovepipe," which details the practice of "taking a piece of intelligence or a request that should be pushed through the chain of command—checked at levels and sent from one level to another—and bringing it straight to the highest authority." He makes a strong case that President Bush might actually believe his own misinformation about Iraq--a frightening prospect.

...Remember that the Administration, no matter how they twist the words or spin the words, told us we’d find weapons in Iraq. They believed it. That was the intelligence they got. And, to me, the fact that they weren’t lying and really believed it is as alarming as if they had been lying. It’s very, very troubling.

He also quotes classified sources inside the U.S. government that say, as of two weeks ago, the number of incidents against American forces in Iraq were up to 23 a day!

Not that we hear about them here in the United States.

Complete story here.

Boykin watch....

Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin has apologized and says his words were misconstrued.

Awww, what a guy! We were wrong, he shouldn't be fired after all.

...When he spoke of the Somali warlord, he did not mean that the Somali's god was Islam, but rather "his worship of money and power — idolatry." Boykin said he did believe that "radical extremists have sought to use Islam as a cause of attacks on America."

As for his statement that God had installed Bush in the White House, Boykin said he meant that God had done the same for "Bill Clinton and other presidents."

Boy, I'll bet ya he gagged on that sentence!

Is the guy going to get away with this sham?

It seems so:

Though he defended his comments, Boykin has told others at the Pentagon that he will stop making speeches to religious groups and will try to tone down his remarks on the sensitive subject of religion. Defense officials said his job was not in jeopardy.[Emphasis mine.]

Once again, the L.A. Times focuses on the anger Boykin's remarks have caused in Islamic communities. Once again I ask, what about non-Islamic, secularist American constituents who don't want a religious nut like this in charge of hunting down bin Laden and Hussein? If the guy can't separate his religious extremism from his job, he shouldn't hold a government position.

Boykin should be fired.

L.A. Times story, sad disappointment that it is, here.

Is this site for real...?

Or an over-the-top parody?

It makes my skin crawl.

I can't believe the letters in the "hate mail" section are authentic. If I were a Right-Winger, trying to fake a "hate letter" from someone on the Left, I think I'd come up with something along the lines of what they have.

Creepy.

Pathetic....

That "defiance" of the Bush administration has been reduced to this.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 — The Senate defied the Bush administration on Thursday by insisting that Iraq repay up to $10 billion in reconstruction aid, even as a divided House took a different path and prepared to grant President Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq and Afghanistan without conditions.

A bipartisan coalition of moderate senators, saying that American taxpayers should not bear the entire burden of rebuilding Iraq, prevailed against strong administration opposition in a 51-to-47 vote Thursday evening. Their amendment — approved shortly after Vice President Dick Cheney failed to bring wavering senators in line through a round of phone calls — would require half of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid to be a loan to Iraq, unless the administration persuaded other countries to forgive 90 percent of Iraq's existing debt.

This is the best that Congress can do, even given the "waves of opposition that their constituents have voiced in the five weeks since Mr. Bush announced his intention of spending $87 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan" and the "record-high deficits [that] have squeezed public-works projects at home."

What spineless wheenies!

A bit further down in the story is the truth:

The debate about loans versus grants, however, could not obscure the administration's overall success in persuading both chambers to endorse the basic framework of its postwar Iraq policy. The president is virtually certain to command solid majorities in both houses for a vast majority of what he is asking for — and a mandate for a strong role in overseeing Iraq's future.

We have no opposition party in the U.S.

Complete story here.

More about Boykin....

This story in today's L.A. Times misses the point.

Rather than raising the question of General Boykin's fitness (see below) for the position of deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, it suggests that someone should have "a quiet chat" with him, to get him to quit offending the Islamic world with all his religious posturing.

Forget the Islamic world! (For the moment only.) The issue here is not global public relations. As a secularist who believes strongly in the separation of church and state and as a citizen who wishes to prevent a repeat of 9/11/2001, I believe someone who has stated that the real enemy is Satan, not the bin Ladens of the world, should be disqualified for the position of deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence.

Period.

Fairy tales....

Some interesting quotes, uttered in June, by our nation's deputy undersecretary of defense, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, whose mission is to aggressively combine intelligence with special operations and hunt down "so-called high-value terrorist targets," including Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein (both still missing, as you may recall):

“Well, is he [bin Laden] the enemy? Next slide. Or is this man [Saddam] the enemy? The enemy is none of these people I have showed you here. The enemy is a spiritual enemy. He’s called the principality of darkness. The enemy is a guy called Satan.”

Why are terrorists out to destroy the United States? Boykin said: “They’re after us because we’re a Christian nation.”

There's more:

Boykin also routinely tells audiences that God, not the voters, chose President Bush: “Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

Lest NBC seem too critical of the Bush administration, the article carries this "disclaimer."

NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin, who’s been investigating Boykin for the Los Angeles Times, says the general casts the war on terror as a religious war: “I think that it is not only at odds with what the president believes, but it is a dangerous, extreme and pernicious view that really has no place.”

Yeah, right. And I've got a pretty bridge for sale.

On the other hand, who really wants to believe that the finger on the button to the nation's nuclear arsenal belongs to a man who believes Satan walks the earth and that he was placed in office by divine intervention?

Complete story, such as it is (NBC doesn't do depth) here.

Saint George....

As Buzzflash asks, is the AP trying to sanctify Bush? By running this photo, the wire-service has lost a lot of credibility.

See for yourself here.

Krugman sounds another warning in the NYT....

During the 1990's I spent much of my time focusing on economic crises around the world — in particular, on currency crises like those that struck Southeast Asia in 1997 and Argentina in 2001. The timing of such crises is hard to predict. But there are warning signs, like big trade and budget deficits and rising debt burdens.

And there's one thing I can't help noticing: a third world country with America's recent numbers — its huge budget and trade deficits, its growing reliance on short-term borrowing from the rest of the world — would definitely be on the watch list.

One mystery I will never understand is how the Republicans continue to successfully present themselves as the political party of fiscal responsibility.

Complete story here.

A taste of our new governor's tactics....

California Governor-Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger gets back at one of the women who accused him of sexual-harassment.

Read about it here.

Fed up....

I rushed in late to a work meeting the other day, just in time to hear our HR representative winding up a talk on upcoming budget cuts, belt-tightening, heavier workloads and possible salary freezes.

Gloomy predictions have become commonplace at the large, state-funded California university where I work. The $20 billion state budget deficit lurks around every campus corner, an uninvited guest at the banquet, ravaging the buffet before anyone else can get to it.

After HR left the room, my fellow faculty assistants erupted into talk. We have to make the best of a bad situation, they said. Suck it up. Help one another when the workload gets too heavy.

No one questioned the basic premise of the situation. Not a word was uttered about fighting back if our workloads became unbearable or our workplace conditions intolerable.

Until finally I could take it no longer and piped up. “Hey, isn’t there a limit to how much we’ll take? After all, we do have a union…”

You would have thought I had suggested jumping off a cliff into the nearby Pacific. If only a fraction of the anti-union sentiment my remark occasioned would be channeled into campus labor organizing, our union wouldn’t be the well-meaning but ineffectual body even I agree it is.

Instead, the most vocal group members around the table damned the union and insisted that we have to take whatever the university dishes out because...well...that’s the way it is. Who can argue with a state budget deficit? Employers hold all the cards. Besides, we have it better than many others out there.

That the latter is true, makes me even angrier. I am so sick of low-paid workers getting the shaft, then being manipulated into turning against one another. The university has used the budget deficit for years to intimidate employees, keep lower-level wages low and excuse a host of ridiculous business practices.

Yes, California’s budget is in a colossal crisis—especially now that an inexperienced Republican actor has been placed in the governor’s mansion. (Remember what happened the last time this occurred.) The university, however, is a huge, pampered financial entity, rich in cash, land, facilities, resources and employees. Its wealth is anything but evenly distributed throughout the system.

A case in point. I recently saw one my boss’ federal tax returns. A relatively new faculty-member in electrical and computer engineering, he reported $149,000 in income in 2001. That's nothing compared to what senior U.C. administrators and other top academic leaders make. In 2001, the average salary of a UC chancellor was $280,610. And they've given themselves raises since then.

Yet, when I brought up wage-disparities in the meeting, without naming names or quoting salaries, and suggested that maybe fat could be cut from above rather than below, my fellow employees reacted more strongly than when HR had threatened to freeze their own salaries.

The faculty, they said, would go elsewhere if they aren’t paid enough. Not only that, they are "Ph.D.'s," the letters uttered as if discussing godly attributes. They have to study four years undergraduate, six years graduate, then take a post-graduate position, be an intern or whatever for even longer. Do you want to do that? someone asked.

You bet! I said. Only, I’m too broke, too indebted and most likely, too old.

Ten years ago, I tried to better my circumstances through education. I worked like a maniac and went into $20,000 in debt to earn first a B.A., then a master’s degree from U.C. Berkeley. Only to graduate and be offered $9 an hour to pursue my field, journalism, in one of the most expensive regions of the country, the San Francisco Bay Area. With a child to support and no savings or investments to fall back on, I had no choice but to turn the job down and return to higher-paying office work.

So much for my attempt to escape the admin-support ghetto.

But those poor Ph.D.’s! To hear my coworkers talk, it’s as if schooling, followed by interesting, creative and highly-paid work are sacrifices, not amazingly good fortune.

While grad students out there are studying and making, what, $25,000? Other workers are earning the same or less, pushing coffee, pumping gas, stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart, cleaning motel rooms and performing other less-than-desirable labor. Rather than rosier futures to look forward to in a few years, they have bunions, blown spinal-discs, hundreds of rude, disrespectful and filthy customers, mind-numbing boredom and no healthcare or dental benefits. Vacations? Hell, most working-class Americans are lucky now if they can get by holding down only one job.

People in the privileged classes consider several years of making less than $100,000 an economic hardship, above and beyond the call of duty.

The rest of us call it Life and consider ourselves lucky if we ever break $35,000.

Sad day for Ca-lee-for-nya...

How's this for a quote from the governor-elect of the largest state (population-wise) of the union?

"I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you, and I will not let you down," Schwarzenegger said to cheers from the crowd.

Well, he already has by uttering the same thing three ways without saying anything of substance.

A true protégé of President Bush in this regard, Schwarzenegger promises to go far!

What's more, don’t feel too smug from the safety of faraway states and foreign countries. He will soon be heading your way.

His celebration last night was held in the ballroom of the Century Plaza Hotel on Avenue of the Stars in LA, where Republicans have toasted Reagan election-night victories for two decades.

Want more proof the Republican Party is grooming him for the Oval Office? In July, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah introduced what he hopes will become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, permitting foreign-born nationals to be elected president.

Time to wake up!

According to the LAX, Hummers clogged the Avenue of the Stars last night, as invitees to the victory celebration searched for nonexistent parking places. Security was tight at the super-swank affair: if you weren't on the list, you didn’t get in. And that seems to have included a fair number of disappointed reporters.

Well, what do you expect from a multi-millionaire Republican actor-cum-politician-cum-governor?

Pandering to California voters’ basest instincts, Schwarzenegger’s first move will be to overturn a law granting drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants. But make sure you somehow get a ride to the fields, nurseries, kitchens and laundry-rooms!

Just as quickly, he’s promising to undo the unpopular tripling of the car tax. And balance the state budget.

Oh well, we all know when he fails, the Democrats will somehow be blamed.

By the way, someone ought to tell Maria Shriver to ease up on whatever chemical substance has been smoothing her way on those late nights on the campaign trail. In every recent photo, she looks like a Stepford Wife on coke.

Election story here.

So much for Bush's tax-cut for the working people...

From the Harper's Index, October 2003.

Percentage of Americans who will save less than $100 on their 2006 federal taxes as a result of this year's tax cut: 88
Average amount these Americans will save: $4

Unfortunately the current index is not available online: you must buy the magazine. Rather steep at $5.95/issue, it's well worth the $16 yearly subscription rate.

Why...?

From today's NY Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 20 — In the first attempt to assassinate a member of Iraq's interim government, nine gunmen this morning shot and critically wounded Akila al-Hashemi, one of three women on the governing body, as she was being driven to work by a driver and three bodyguards

The first thing I thought when I heard this story on NPR this morning was that Aquila al-Hashimi was targeted because she's a woman who dared to serve on Iraq's Governing Council. Yet other than mentioning that she is one of three women on the council, neither the NY Times, nor the A.P. story in the LA Times even raised the question that her assailants could have been motivated by a resurgence of sexism in a country which, under Saddam Hussein, offered women much more freedom and civil rights than our famed ally, Saudi Arabia.

NY Times story here, LA Times here.

Global warming....

The Earth has never been so warm in the last 2000 years. That is the conclusion of the most comprehensive study of climatic history ever undertaken and which was released last week, by two scientists already generally recognized as leading authorities on the subject.

Full story here.

Sept. 11, 1973....

And let's not forget all those who lost their lives--not least, Salvador Allende--in the U.S.-formulated coup in Chile 30 years ago today.

Will we never learn from history?

My op-ed....

No mainstream newspaper that I queried opted to publish this. So I'm publishing it here today, in memory of the people who needlessly lost their lives two years ago.

"Black September Revisited"

In the two years since the attacks of 9/11, I have searched through mountains of U.S. commentary and commemoration for mention of a 33-year-old terrorist strike that chillingly prefigured the 2001 attacks.

Without success.

On September 6, 1970, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) simultaneously hijacked four airliners bound for New York. Two—TWA Flight 741 of Frankfurt and Swissair Flight 100 of Zurich--were forced to land at Dawson's Field, a former RAF airstrip in the Jordanian desert. The third, Pan American Flight 93 of Amsterdam, was too large for Dawson's, so hijackers forced it down in Cairo, where passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane blown up.

In uncanny parallel to what happened 31 years later, the PFLP’s fourth hijacking attempt was foiled in flight. At the outset, the pilots of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York plunged their jet into a steep dive, throwing the hijackers off their feet. One, Leila Khaled, 24, was overpowered by passengers. The other, Californian Patrick Arguello, 27, was fatally shot by an El Al onboard security guard.

Unlike United Flight 93, which on September 11th, 2001, plunged to the ground in Pennsylvania, killing everyone on board after passengers tried to regain control from hijackers, El Al 219 landed safely in London.

Yet the drama was far from over. On September 9th, PFLP operatives hijacked a fifth jet, adding it to the two planes in Jordan. Passengers were exchanged for Leila Khaled. Then, on September 12, 1970, the three empty airliners were blown up on the ground while television crews broadcast the spectacle to the world.

The diplomatic embarrassment spurred King Hussein of Jordan to declare military rule, provoking a bloody civil war between Palestinian refugees and the Jordanian army. Some 15,000 people died before the Palestinians, under Yassir Arafat, fled Jordan. The debacle spawned the infamous Black September Movement, responsible for killing 10 Israeli athletes and their coach at the Munich Olympics—two years later, again in early September.

The PFLP spelled out their motive for the 1970 hijackings as retribution for American arms-sales to Israel—sales which continue to this day. Since Israel’s founding in 1948, America has given the state a staggering $97 billion in foreign aid, a sizeable portion of which has gone towards weapons.

With such an investment, are we closer to peace in the Middle East? Is terrorism waning?

You judge: in 1970, one person was killed in five hijackings over six days. In 2001, some 3,044 people died in four hijackings in a matter of hours.

Those numbers expose a terrible trend. Noncombatant casualties are growing in lock-step with “get tough” policies of governments towards extremists. The policy of “No negotiation with terrorists” has escalated into all-out war, frequently pitting professional armies against civilians.

U.S. Predator drones track automobiles across Afghani deserts, obliterating alleged Taliban ringleaders and passengers alike. Israeli missiles target Hamas operatives, slaughtering bystanders in crowded Palestinian alleyways. “Coalition Forces” pulverize Iraqi cities, maiming tens of thousands who have nowhere to flee. In response, terrorists strap on explosives and board crowded busses. Civilians die regardless, “collateral damage” to one side or another.

History could have played out differently. What if Americans had paid heed to legitimate Palestinian concerns after the first hijackings and reassessed foreign policy in the region? Might 9/11 have been averted?

These questions are not even being posed. In contrast to al Qaeda, who one can assume studied the 1970 hijackings, U.S. leaders have “disappeared” them. President Bush publicly treated 9/11 as if it came out of nowhere—which is curious, given his neocon advisors are steeped in Middle Eastern history.

Take neocon godfather, Irving Podhoretz. On September 13, 1970, he signed a letter to The New York Times condemning the PFLP hijackings. More recently, he signed the statement of principles for the Project for the New American Century, with Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. Podhoretz is also father-in-law to Elliott Abrams, director of Near Eastern & North American Affairs in the National Security Council.

Given the striking parallels, these men must discuss the earlier hijackings? Yet posing before news cameras, all Bush can ask is, “Why do they hate us?” Our rejoinder should be, “Why play dumb?” Why conceal the fact we were warned decades ago that our foreign policy, if unaltered, would result in devastating blowback?

Obscuring the fact that 9/11 was a by-product of corporate greed, arms sales and America’s unquenchable thirst for oil is fundamental to the pursuit of Bush’s foolhardy, expensive and ineffectual “War on Terrorism.” This never-ending conflict, with its lucrative war profiteering and curbs on civil liberties, advances both the fortunes and longstanding political aims of Bush’s closest supporters.

An even more dangerous obfuscation, however, is that we can deter future attacks through a “get tough” military strategy. If that were true, Israelis and Palestinians would not be dying at a rate of nearly 100 a month since the outbreak of the second Intifada in September—there’s that month again—2000.

We now have more than 33 years experience to demonstrate the futility of force as a deterrent to terrorism. Isn’t it time to try something new? Maybe refurbishing hospitals, schools, roads and power plants, instead of bombing them into rubble. How about offering Palestinians, ancient regional inhabitants, a standard of living comparable to that offered Jewish immigrants the minute they step foot on Israeli soil? Not only would these measures prove less expensive in money and lives in the long run, but Islamic fundamentalists have won over the Middle East’s poverty-stricken inhabitants by offering far less in the way of social services.

Or we can continue our present course of action: disregard the past, feign innocence and hope for the best. Just keep in mind, though, what the next escalation could involve. Can you imagine the death toll were a determined martyr to detonate a nuclear device in Manhattan?

Horrific as 9/11 was, it was also a second opportunity to change our ways. I, for one, am still hoping for a miracle, that we take the chance and avoid being condemned to relive history.

END

As far as I can ascertain, until Tuesday of this week when Walter Chronkite did a piece on NPR, this story remained essentially uncovered in the mainstream American media.

I can't help but wonder if circulating my piece wasn't the spark that finally got someone with access to cover it.

The NPR story, by the way, was gutless. Rather than making any points about American foreign policy, the media's lack of historical memory, or questioning why the 1970 hijackings have been ignored for two years, the best Chronkite could do was claim the event represented "the moment when the jet plane first became an instrument of international terror."

Which is not only absurd, but historically inaccurate. What a total waste of the public's airwaves!

Krugman vets Bush's speech....

And, as usual, is right on.

In his Sunday speech President Bush made a call for unity: "We cannot let past differences interfere with present duties." He also spoke, in a way he hasn't before, about "sacrifice." Yet, as always, what he means by unity is that he should receive a blank check, and it turns out that what he means by sacrifice is sacrifice by other people.

Complete op-ed here.

A "decent and democratic society" in the making...?

Christian Parenti describes an Iraq going from bad to worse:

…Here the criminal is king. Saddam emptied the prisons and the United States disbanded the police, while 60 percent of people are unemployed. As a result, carjacking, robbery, looting, and murder are rife. Marauding men in “misery gangs” kidnap and rape women and girls at will. Some of these victims are dumped back on the streets only to be executed by their “disgraced” male relatives in what are called “honor killings.”

Many women and girls stay locked inside their homes for weeks at a time. And increasingly those who do venture out wear veils, as the misogynist threats and ravings of the more fundamentalist Shia and Sunni clerics have warned that women who do not wear the hijab should not be protected.

According to the city morgue, there were 470 fatal shootings in July, up from 10 the year before. Not surprisingly, most people in Baghdad are armed and edgy.

[...]

As for the American troops—whom Iraqis call the kuwat al-ihtilal, or forces of occupation—they are stretched too thin to deal effectively with such crimes. And they have little understanding of Iraqi culture or politics. They are adrift in a sea of unintelligible Arabic, where even the street names are a mystery. At crime scenes they can just as easily arrest the victims as the perpetrators. Their small convoys are under constant assault.

Officially there are, on average, 13 attacks on Coalition Forces in Baghdad every day. Since May 1, when the war “ended,” more than 404 U.S. soldiers have been permanently removed from action due to wounds, while more that 60 have been killed in attacks.

[...]

Baghdad also suffers from the less dramatic structural violence of epidemic poverty. War, sanctions, and Saddam’s greed have left a large destitute class with no work, medicine, or schooling. Exploring the rubble of some government ministry, two colleagues and I meet Ibrahim Kadum, who lost his foot in the Iran-Iraq war, then he lost his home and now squats in these ruins with his wife, nine children, and a shaggy and bleating ewe.

[...]

A young woman, through a translator, explains the details of her work. She sells herself to American soldiers for $15 a session. She’s seventeen, wants to go to college and leave Iraq.

“Do you use protection with the soldiers?”

She blushes and pauses. “She says she takes the pills,” explains our translator Ahmed. Does she know about AIDS? “No condoms?” I ask. She blushes even more deeply and answers directly in English. “Sometimes.”

Read more here via Common Dreams.

Bush's speech deconstructed....

An excellent critical analysis of Bush's Sunday speech. A must read, by Stephen Zunes, associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

A sample:

...“We have learned that terrorist attacks are not caused by the use of strength; they are invited by the perception of weakness.”

Again, there are no doubts among extremists in the Middle East regarding America’s military strength. The perceived weakness is in regard to America’s moral strength. Millions of people in the Middle East and beyond believe that it is morally wrong for the United States to support Arab dictatorships and Israeli occupation forces. They believe it is morally wrong that the amount of U.S. military aid to the Middle East is six times that of its economic aid. They believe it is morally wrong that the #1 U.S. export to the region is not consumer goods, high-tech equipment or agricultural products, but armaments. They believe it is morally wrong that a powerful country from the other side of the world would invade a sovereign Arab nation and justify it by falsely claiming that its government currently had weapons of mass destruction and was supporting Al-Qaeda. They believe it is morally wrong that U.S. bombing and sanctions against Muslim countries has killed far more civilians than have the terrorists themselves.

The unfortunate reality is that the more the United States has militarized the Middle East, the less secure we have become.

“And the surest way to avoid attacks on our own people is to engage the enemy where he lives and plans. We are fighting that enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan today so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.”

It is absurd to believe that those Iraqis and Afghanis currently fighting U.S. occupation forces in their own countries actually want to somehow sneak into the United States to fight Americans here. Indeed, no Afghans or Iraqis are known to have ever committed an act of terrorism against Americans on American soil.

The president’s statement is essentially a retread of the line used by supporters of the Vietnam War that “If we don’t fight them over there, we will have to fight them here.” However, more than 28 years after the Communist victory in Vietnam, we are yet to fight the Vietnamese in our streets and there is no indication that we ever will. The Iraqis and Afghans, as were the Vietnamese, are fighting Americans because U.S. troops are in their country and, like the Vietnamese, will stop fighting Americans once U.S. troops leave their country.

Complete story here via Common Dreams

Every pol for himself....

FRESNO — In a significant shift of campaign strategy, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante on Sunday moved away from urging a "no" vote in the Oct. 7 recall election, abandoning Gov. Gray Davis to fight alone and focusing instead on the merits of his own candidacy.

This really doesn't surprise me, I have such low expectations of all professional politicians.

Yet it does repel me.

Let's just hope his political aspirations don't fatally fracture the Democratic vote and put The Terminator in office.

Complete story here.

Bitter pill, indeed....

We feel angry about the money--and justifiably so! But we still have it better than the Iraqis.

I just wish the members of Congress would grow a collective spine and stand up to the petulant bully in the Whitehouse.

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress are preparing to swallow hard and approve the $87 billion President Bush has requested for U.S. operations in Iraq, but it will be a more bitter pill than earlier votes to authorize the war against Saddam Hussein and to begin funding the enterprise, legislators and political analysts said today.

In the year since Congress authorized the war and the six months since it passed the first, $79 billion installment of funding, the political and fiscal picture has changed significantly in a way that will prompt greater scrutiny on Capitol Hill.

The federal budget deficit has soared. Few allies have offered to help with postwar troops or funding. U.S. casualties have mounted. No caches of unconventional weapons have been found. Even some members of Bush's own party have openly complained that the administration had inadequately planned for the rebuilding of Iraq after an unexpectedly rapid military victory over Saddam Hussein. [Emphasis mine.]

What irritates me about the tone of this article is the sense of surprise. Like no one could have seen these developments coming. When, in fact, the situation in Iraq is unfolding just as many anti-war activists predicted.

Complete story here.

By the way...

That $87 billion is in addition to the $79 billion already approved for the war and occupation through September 30. (See it ticking way on the counter to the left?)

What's that add up to...$166 billion? And with no end in sight.

Just remember, that's yours and my tax dollars.

Think about that as our bridges crumble, our roads decay, our lights go out, our public schools get dingier and dingier and the only job you can find is toting an M-16 in Iraq or flipping burgers for McDonald's.

Unbelievable...!

The Bush administration plans to ask Congress for $87 billion in emergency spending for military and intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Iraq had now become ``the central front'' in the war against terror.

Mr. Bush's request for $87 billion was on the high end of what Congress expected. In recent days, administration officials have said they anticipated asking Congress for an additional $60 billion to $80 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The financing, if approved by Congress, would significantly add to the federal government's deficit, which is approaching $500 billion. Mr. Bush said that $66 billion would be for the next fiscal year. White House officials said tonight they could not specify how the $87 billion would be spent.

[...]

In his 15-minute speech, Mr. Bush did not specifically mention the searches for Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, who have so far eluded American capture. He also did not mention the failure so far to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the major stated reason that the United States went to war. Nor did Mr. Bush dwell on the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, which he once predicted would abate if Mr. Hussein was ousted from power.

$87 billion...!

Complete story here.

Organ donors needed...



and these bighearted folks are tossing their helmets into the lottery to volunteer.

The "barbeque" was to celebrate the fact that state legislators have done their part by repealing Pennsylvania’s helmet law.

…Thursday was the first day that Pennsylvania's more than 750,000 motorcyclists could ride bareheaded in 35 years. This summer, the Legislature voted to repeal the helmet requirement by comfortable margins, after more than two decades of unsuccessful attempts by motorcycle groups to repeal the helmet law.

Statistics show that fatalities will rise. Even minor accidents can result in serious injuries when a motorcyclist isn't wearing a helmet.

Per mile traveled, motorcyclists are 16 times more likely than passenger car occupants to die in a traffic crash and about four times as likely to be injured. While only 20 percent of car crashes result in injury or death, that figure jumps to an astounding 80 percent for motorcycle crashes, according to the administration.

Complete story here.

This is Bush's war....

Farah Fadhil was only 18 when she was killed. An American soldier threw a grenade through the window of her apartment. Her death, early last Monday, was slow and agonising. Her legs had been shredded, her hands burnt and punctured by splinters of metal, suggesting that the bright high-school student had covered her face to shield it from the explosion.

She had been walking to the window to try to calm an escalating situation; to use her smattering of English to plead with the soldiers who were spraying her apartment building with bullets.

But then a grenade was thrown and Farah died. So did Marwan Hassan who, according to neighbours, was caught in the crossfire as he went looking for his brother when the shooting began.

What is perhaps most shocking about their deaths is that the coalition troops who killed them did not even bother to record details of the raid with the coalition military press office.

[...]

I stood inside and looked to where the [American soldiers] must have been standing, towards the apartment houses the other way. I could not find impacts on the concrete paths or on the facing walls that would suggest that there was a two-way firefight here. Whatever happened here was one-sided, a wall of fire unleashed at a building packed with sleeping families. Further examination shows powder burns where door locks had been shot off and splintered wood where the doors had been kicked in. All the evidence was that this was a raid that - like so many before it - went horribly wrong.

[...]

What happened at Mahmudiya would be disturbing enough if it was unique, but it is not. It is part of a pattern that points not to a deliberate policy but perhaps to something equally worrying, an institutional lack of care among many in the US military for whether civilians are killed in their operations. It is not enough to say, as some defenders of the US military in Iraq do, that its soldiers are tired, frightened and under pressure from the simmering guerrilla attacks directed against them. For it is the impression that the US military gives of not caring about those innocent Iraqis that they kill that is stoking resentment.

Complete story here.

No-fly lists....

I may be one of the last to know about this. My sweetie and I were talking on the phone last night about an anti-war activist we know who was hassled at an airport recently when trying to board his flight. The guy was still fuming days later, talking about lists of names of activists who can be kept from leaving the country at the whim of “Homeland Security.”

I decided to follow up and I found this story from The Oregonian. (The url links to a non-Oregonian page: the original article seems inaccessible on the newspaper’s site. I did confirm the authenticity of the piece on Lexus-Nexus.)

"There is a 'no-fly' list," [Nico Melendez, federal Transportation Security Administration spokesperson] says. "That's people who cannot fly, period," because they've been determined to be or are suspected of being "a threat to civil aviation or to national security."

Details about the list are "considered sensitive security information and cannot be released to the public," Nico says, but the Wall Street Journal suggests there are about 300 names on the "no-fly" list.

There's another list that Nico calls the "selectees list." Might as well call them "suspectees." This is a much larger list of names, accumulated, Nico says, from information obtained from intelligence agencies and the airlines. These folks may be allowed to fly but only after they're intensely scrutinized by airline, law enforcement and security personnel.

So the activist was not really exaggerating.

This feeds into my greatest paranoia. Which is that when the next terrorist strike occurs on U.S. soil (I say when because most “anti-terrorist” measures are ineffectual and Bush’s “war on terrorism” is akin to throwing petrol on a raging fire), Bush will declare martial law and suspend civil liberties and the freedom to travel. Then Ashcroft will begin rounding up leftists, anti-war activists, non-born-again Christians, and others.

We’ve already done those things to non-U.S. citizens. I don't know about you, but my citizenship seems a rather thin shield to stand between me and this out-of-control fascist government.

Watch the ticker to the left....

...The White House has informed congressional leaders that it is preparing a new budget request for between $60 billion and $70 billion to help cover the mounting costs of the reconstruction and military occupation of Iraq, sources on Capitol Hill said last night.

The planned request -- which congressional budget analysts said will be nearly double what Congress expected -- reflects the deepening cost of the five-month-old U.S. occupation and serves as an acknowledgement by the administration that it vastly underestimated the cost of restoring order in Iraq and rebuilding the country's infrastructure.[Emphasis mine.]

The article goes on to talk of Bush’s appeal to the U.N. for help in rebuilding and administering Iraq and to say that the president is trying to resolve "festering disputes" over his Iraq policies before they turn into political liabilities.

Before?! I don't understand why Bush is not mired to his pointy little head in political shit already! He has been given the freest ticket to ride of any president I’ve ever known.

To the U.N. I say, tell Bush to take a flying folkdance, especially as long as he insists on all authority residing with the U.S.

Complete story here.

Religion trumps art in Russia....

I almost missed this story. Seems Russia has its own homegrown variety of religious fanatic.

MOSCOW, Sept. 1 — It was provocative, as modern art often is. But few of those involved could have foreseen just how provocative it would become when the Sakharov Museum here opened an exhibition of paintings and sculptures in January under the title "Caution! Religion."

Four days after the Jan. 14 opening, six men from a Russian Orthodox church came to the museum's exhibition hall and sacked it, defacing many of the 45 works with spray paint and destroying others. "Sacrilege," one of them scrawled on the wall.

The police came and quickly arrested the men, but their actions — described either as heroism or hooliganism — began a highly charged debate not only over the state of freedom of expression in Russia today but also over the ever-growing influence of the Orthodox Church.

Priests have denounced the museum, the lower house of Parliament has passed a resolution condemning it, criminal charges against four of the six men were dropped for lack of evidence — even though they were arrested inside the museum—and a court threw out charges against the others, saying they had been unlawfully prosecuted. Meanwhile, the exhibition's curator has gone into hiding.

One question: if religious believers have faith in God’s omnipotence, why don’t they just leave it to Her to punish immoral artists, abortionists and assorted evil-doers?

To me, their actions speak of a deep insecurity.

Complete story here.

Elevated to martyr status....

STARKE, Fla., Sept. 3 — Nine years after he calmly shot and killed an abortion doctor and his volunteer escort outside a Pensacola clinic, Paul Jennings Hill died by lethal injection here today as his supporters declared him a martyr and warned that his actions might be replicated.

Mr. Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, is the first killer of an abortion provider to be executed in the United States. He had not tried to prevent his death, which took place at Florida State Prison, just after 6 p.m. as lightning jagged across a nearly black sky. But abortion rights advocates fear what Mr. Hill's followers have hinted for months: that his death will cause a new wave of violence against abortion clinics, many of which have operated in relative peace over the last few years.

Among the highly disturbing details associated with this story is the following:

...Most of the roughly 50 supporters of Mr. Hill were white men, some kneeling and praying, others singing "How Great Thou Art..."

What's with that? The most extreme opponents of abortion are men! Is it a control issue? Womb-envy? Issues with their mothers? Small dicks?

Jeeze....

Here are some quotes:

Dan Holman, who said he drove here from Keokuk, Iowa, said Mr. Hill had "raised the standard" for anti-abortion protesters.

"Some day, I hope I will have the courage to be as much as a man as he was," said Mr. Holman, who carried a sign that said: "Dead Doctors Can't Kill."

Other signs read, "Killing Baby Killers Is Justifiable Homicide," and "Extremism in Defense of Life Is Not Extreme."

Yep, nothing like murder to prove you're a man.

Be warned, Hill's cold-blooded account of his actions that day are chilling to read. Complete story here.

Why'd he do it...?

HOUSTON, Sept. 3 — And then there were 10.

With the crucial defection of a leading Texas lawmaker, the defiant band of Democratic state senators holed up in New Mexico since July 28 has lost its ability to deny Gov. Rick Perry the quorum he needs to push through a hotly disputed Republican redistricting plan.

The surprising reappearance in Houston Tuesday night of a prize holdout, Senator John Whitmire, who, with 30 years in the State House and Senate is the dean of the Legislature, threw Texas politics into a new tizzy.

If Mr. Perry calls a highly unusual third special legislative session, as is widely expected, Mr. Whitmire, 54, known as Boogie from his avid partying in younger years, could be required to attend or be arrested and dragooned into the chamber.

"I don't perceive what I'm doing as caving," Mr. Whitmire said in an interview in his Houston district office as the phones rang incessantly. "I'm pursuing a different strategy."

But his colleagues in Albuquerque were incensed, members of the delegation said. One staff member sobbed.

Complete story here.

Bush on the couch....


I started to read this psychoanalysis of Bush in the Guardian for a laugh, but it actually makes some interesting points.

...His deepest beliefs amount to superstition. "Life takes its own turns," [Bush] says, "writes its own story and along the way we start to realise that we are not the author." God's will, not his own, explains his life.

Most fundamentalist Christians have authoritarian personalities. Two core beliefs separate fundamentalists from mere evangelists ("happy-clappy" Christians) or the mainstream Presbyterians among whom Bush first learned religion every Sunday with his parents: fundamentalists take the Bible absolutely literally as the word of God and believe that human history will come to an end in the near future, preceded by a terrible, apocaplytic [sic] battle on Earth between the forces of good and evil, which only the righteous shall survive. According to Frum when Bush talks of an "axis of evil" he is identifying his enemies as literally satanic, possessed by the devil. Whether he specifically sees the battle with Iraq and other "evil" nations as being part of the end-time, the apocalypse preceding the day of judgment, is not known. Nor is it known whether Tony Blair shares these particular religious ideas.

However, it is certain that however much Bush may sometimes seem like a buffoon, he is also powered by massive, suppressed anger towards anyone who challenges the extreme, fanatical beliefs shared by him and a significant slice of his citizens - in surveys, half of them also agree with the statement "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word".

Bush's deep hatred, as well as love, for both his parents explains how he became a reckless rebel with a death wish. He hated his father for putting his whole life in the shade and for emotionally blackmailing him. He hated his mother for physically and mentally badgering him to fulfil her wishes. But the hatred also explains his radical transformation into an authoritarian fundamentalist. By totally identifying with an extreme version of their strict, religion-fuelled beliefs, he jailed his rebellious self. From now on, his unconscious hatred for them was channelled into a fanatical moral crusade to rid the world of evil...

Complete story here.

Shame on them...!

Researchers at the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute have found that charitable foundations are paying outrageous fees to their wealthy trustees.

-- Fourteen of the large foundations paid their trustees more than $100,000 each. The largest amounts went to two trustees of the Kimbell Art Foundation ($750,000 and $747,000) and to Walter Annenberg of the Annenberg Foundation ($500,000). Three large foundations paid between $90,000 and $100,000 to each of their board members, 27 paid $50,000 or more, and 56 paid $25,000 or more.

-- Five of the smaller foundations paid their trustees more than $100,000 each in fees. The highest fee, $232,619, was paid by the Ira and Doris Kukin Foundation. Four smaller institutions paid between $90,000 and $100,000 each to their board members, 16 paid $50,000 or more, and 31, or 50 percent, paid $25,000 or more.

-- Based on the 990-PF's and our follow-up phone calls, we found that, with a number of notable exceptions, trustees in general spent little time on foundation business.

I am the only person in my immediate family to graduate from college. I have worked since age 13 at an hourly job, attending school, or raising my daughter. Now, with a master's degree from a pestigious public university, I still have never taken home more than $30,000 a year, if that.

And these rich folks are making $25,000, $50,00, or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing practically nothing!

Complete story here, via Common Dreams.

No kidding...!

JERUSALEM, Sept. 1 — Finding a pattern of government "prejudice and neglect" toward Israel's Arab minority, a landmark Israeli commission of inquiry today accused the police of using excessive force three years ago to combat riots that it said had resulted from simmering, overlooked anger. [Which has only gotten only worse in the past three years.]

The commission said insensitivity by the Israeli "establishment" permitted widespread discrimination against Israeli Arabs and the buildup of a "combustible atmosphere," as, it said, a politicized Islam began to radicalize the population.

The three-member commission was charged with investigating the deaths of 13 people from police fire in October 2000, when thousands of Israeli Arabs choked streets and threw stones in solidarity with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who just had just begun their uprising against Israel. A Jewish motorist was also killed, by a stone-thrower.

Criticizing police tactics that included the use of sniper fire to disperse crowds, the report concluded that Israel "must educate its police that the Arab public is not the enemy, and should not be treated as such..."

I remind readers that this report is referring to the more than 1 million of Israel's 6.6 million citizens who are Arabs, and not to the roughly 4 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories.

While Israel is to be commended for investigating police violence toward Arabs, many Arabs feel the investigation did not go nearly far enough.

Walid Ghanaym, 37, whose brother Emad, 25, was killed, said: "If the police killed 13 Jews, what would they do? That's why we're third class."

Complete story here.

Unscheduled hiatus....

I've spent the past week working on an op-ed submission I'm optimistically pitching to some mainstream publications. (I'll keep you posted if anyone picks it up!) As there are only so many hours in a day, and I am compelled to devote an inordinate number of them to putting food on the table and paying the rent, I have been forced to neglect Krieg9.

Unfortunately, the neglect will continue for a few more days. My sweetie flies into town from the East Coast tomorrow, so I will be engaged in much pleasanter pursuits than keeping up with the most recent bad news.

Tune in next Tuesday, though...I'll be back!

MoveOn appeal.…

The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature is still trying to gerrymander the state's 32 Congressional districts to consolidate their party’s hold on power in Washington. Democratic congressmen have once again fled across state lines to subvert the formation of a quorum, necessary to pass the redistricting legislation.

Help MoveOn publicize what the Republicans are doing to Texan voters and the nation.

More information here.

Donate here.

Modern slavery flourishes....

There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The modern commerce in humans rivals illegal drug trafficking in its global reach—and in the destruction of lives.

National Geographic is to be commended for taking this on. You have to purchase the magazine to read the complete story, but an excerpt (here) gives you a bitter taste.

The world's foremost anti-slavery activist makes an eloquent case here that we can end this odious practice of trafficking in human beings.

While the 27 million people enslaved today are the largest number of slaves alive at any time in human history, they are also the smallest proportion of the world population to ever be held in slavery. No one wants to live in a world with slavery. Today the slaveholders are weaker than they have ever been, and there is universal agreement that slavery must end. In South Asia whole villages come to freedom when others help them form institutions such as small credit unions, inform them of their rights, and show them how to organize to fight for them. Slaves everywhere outnumber their masters. When we all stand with the slaves, their masters cannot keep them in bondage. It is true that criminal mafias control some of the traffic in people, and they will be difficult to root out. But slavery will end if corruption is tackled, victims are treated with respect, and those of us who are free decide to support all those who help others to freedom.

Go here to see what you can do to free the slaves!

Bush blinks....

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20 — The Bush administration, seizing on the bomb attack on the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, is preparing a new Security Council resolution that would urge other nations to send troops and aid to secure Iraq, administration officials said today.

[...]

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking in Honduras, said that despite the bombing in Iraq, he saw no need to increase troop levels, at least for now. "At the moment, the conclusion of the responsible military officials is that the force levels are where they should be," he said.

But the diplomatic maneuvering today suggested that some officials in the administration, particularly in the State Department, believe that the bombing demonstrates that military reinforcements are needed. There are now 139,000 American troops in Iraq and 21,700 troops from other countries, half from Britain.

Some experts say it is unrealistic to think that Iraq can be secured with troops at the current level. A debate over this subject flared in May, when Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, then the Army chief of staff, said hundreds of thousands would be needed to secure Iraq after the war.

James F. Dobbins, an expert in peacekeeping operations who was the Bush administration's special envoy to Afghanistan, said in an interview today that the United States might need 300,000 to 500,000 troops to maintain stability in the country.

Complete story here.

Good...!

So rarely do I read a news story lately in which the establishment decides "my way."

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court refused Wednesday to block a federal judge's ruling that a Ten Commandments monument be removed from the rotunda of Alabama's state Judicial Building in Montgomery.

The one-line order dismissing an emergency appeal from Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore came hours before a midnight deadline set by U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson for removing the 4-foot-tall, 5,300-pound monument. If officials do not remove it, the state faces a $5,000-a-day fine for defying the judge's order.

To remind readers, the First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..."

Complete story here.

Get out your telescopes...!

On Aug. 27, Mars will be closer to Earth than it has been in nearly 59,619 years! That long ago, the Neanderthals still had Europe to themselves and anatomically modern Homo sapiens remained mostly in Africa.

On the 27th, the two planets will be only 34,646,418 miles apart--about five times closer than only six months ago.

Complete story here.

And in Israel....

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A suicide bomber blew himself up Tuesday on a packed bus on a main thoroughfare in Jerusalem, killing at least 20 people, Israel Army Radio said.

The militant Islamic Jihad group claimed responsibility in a call to the Lebanese TV station Al Manar. The attack killed three children and wounded at least 100 more.

The blast on the extra long bus, which had two passenger sections that were full, went off shortly after 9 p.m. Another bus nearby also was hit by the explosion.

It's horrible. Absolutely shocking and sickening.

How can any of these so-called religious extremists--be they Christian, like Bush; Islamic, like the perpetrators of this bombing; or Jewish, like the settlers who bomb Islamic schools--claim their actions are moral?!

Lest you object to my inclusion of Bush in that group, consider the “collateral damage” in Baghdad and Iraq from our missiles and bombs. At Bush's orders, our military intentionally rained down ordinance on cities, knowing hundreds of innocent civilians would "accidentally" be killed.

And don't try to defend his actions by saying he weighed the costs against the lives to be saved. NO weapons of mass destruction have been found. In the end, Bush's ill-conceived war has made the entire population of the world less safe, as we are seeing every day.

Complete story here.

The death toll rises in Baghdad....

BAGHDAD -- The United Nations' chief official in Iraq died today along with at least 14 others when a suicide bomber struck a hotel serving as the headquarters for the U.N., injuring about 100 people.

Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was working in his second-floor office when the explosion occurred, was trapped in the rubble of the Canal Hotel after the blast. Despite rescuers' attempts to pull him free, the U.N. confirmed in a statement that he died.

The blast, occurring about 4:30 p.m. local time, caused part of the hotel to collapse, and thick, black smoke rose above the rubble. The explosion, which was believed to be caused by a vehicle bomb, jolted Baghdad up to a mile away.

At least 14 people are known dead, with the death toll expected to rise.

Right below this story on the L.A. Times website is one about a suicide-bomber attack on a Jerusalem bus that just killed at least five people.

Tell me again, how are we "winning the war on terrorism?"

I will say it again: you cannot "defeat" terrorism with force, no matter how overwhelming. Did we not learn that in Vietnam?

Moreover, if Israel--with the finest military, police and intelligence forces in the world, operating in a tiny country with a small population--cannot prevent terrorists acts through force, what makes us think we can?

I only wish that the people suffering from these terrorist strikes were the ones driving our insane foreign policy, like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et. al, and not innocent bystanders.

Complete story here.

Bush in San Diego....

President Bush yesterday thanked military personnel in San Diego for helping the United States toward winning the war against terrorism as he steered clear of the California political spectacle that is overshadowing even his own re-election campaign.

The president raised more than $1 million for that campaign last night at the San Diego Convention Center, telling supporters, "You're laying the groundwork for what will be a great victory in 2004."

[...]

Last week, when Arnold Schwarzenegger declared his candidacy to replace Davis, Bush's remark that the actor would make a "good governor" was widely interpreted as a veiled endorsement.

The day before leaving his Texas ranch for California, Bush amended the comment to say, "He would be a good governor, as would others running for governor of California."

"I'm going to campaign for George W.," he said.

And indeed he is! Raising more than $1 million at a single fundraiser.

I couldn't find any mention in a quick scan of the major papers of Bush addressing the blackout....When he spoke at his fundraiser or elsewhere, did he make any mention of the fact that the entire northeastern United States was without power?

Local story of his speech here.

Isn't it ironic...?

...White House officials were monitoring the blackout from Washington and from San Diego, where President Bush addressed troops at midday.[Emphasis mine.]

I don't know why, but it seems ironic to me that he's in the city where I live when this goes down in the city where I want' to be.

The LA Times and other news outlets are reporting that the blackout has stranded commuters in New York in the subways underground. Yikes!

Complete story here.

New York blacked-out...!

As of around 4:30 p.m. today, New York city is without power. The NYT says the area without electricity extends along the east coast south to Maryland, north to Toronto and west to Cleveland and Detroit. No other details yet.

Ashcroft goes after Voices in the Wilderness...!

The Department of Justice is suing VitW seeking $20,000 for violations of the Iraqi Sanction Regulations. VitW, which solicits funds for humanitarian aid to Iraq, says it will not pay the fine. Instead, it vows to continue its work organizing delegations to Iraq composed of teachers, veterans, social workers, artists, health care professionals and others with the aim of educating the world about the deadly effects of the US bombing and embargo of Iraq.

View the summons.
Participate in the campaign against the summons.

Aren't Christians supposed to be generous....?

Just when I start thinking we're making progress, I'm reminded how bigoted, selfish and narrow-minded many Americans remain.

A strong majority of the public disapproves of the Episcopal Church's decision to recognize the blessing of same-sex unions, and a larger share of churchgoing Americans would object if their own faith adopted a similar practice, according to a new Washington Post poll.

So broad and deep is this opposition that half of all Americans who regularly attend worship services say they would leave their current church if their minister blessed gay couples -- even if their denomination officially approved those ceremonies.

The poll also found that public acceptance of same-sex civil unions is falling. Fewer than four in 10 polled said they would support a law allowing gay men and lesbians to form civil unions that would provide some of the rights and legal protections of marriage.

How bighearted of them.

Naturally, opposition was strongest among evangelical Christians—those charitable folk who believe the Bible is the literal word of God. Eight of 10 polled rejected gay unions, and two of three said they would abandon their home church if it began performing commitment ceremonies for gays.

One was quoted, "It's against the word of God. . . . The Lord didn't make these rules to be mean to us. We will find our greatest amount of health and peace by following his [sic] law."

Well, I am sure relieved to hear that God isn’t mean! It’s a little hard to tell, looking around at the suffering in the world. Suffering that God, being omnipotent, as you believe, could alleviate in the blink of an eye. If he deigned.

As for following “His law,” the Bible also says don’t eat pork or shellfish, don’t mix meat and milk in the same meal and don’t ever have (heterosexual) sex when a woman is on her period.

On the other hand, slavery and polygamy are fine.

I respect people who, without trying to foist their belief system onto others, follow an ethical code of living for the value and meaning it instills into everyday life—whether or not they consider the code divinely-ordained. I practiced orthodox Judaism in that manner for a brief period when I was young.

As for the Evangelicals, who preach “family values” but forbid two men or two women who love each other to consecrate their lives together, I'd rather roast in hell than spend eternity surrounded by the hypocritical, selfish, holier-than-thou likes of you!

Complete story here.

Not the way to gain the people's trust....

BAGHDAD -- American troops shot dead two members of the new Iraqi police force and beat up a third, Iraqi police officers said yesterday, in a development that has aggravated already stressed relations between US troops and the Iraqi people.

[...]

The driver, whom police said was interviewed yesterday by US investigators, offered the following account, according to [Iraqi Police Captain Alaa] Isamil:

The police were trying to apprehend alleged car thieves, who shot at the police car. Iraqi police returned fire, and American soldiers -- apparently hearing the shots -- arrived on the scene. But the troops shot at the Iraqi police car, hitting the officer in the back seat, Isamil said.

The lieutenant in the front seat stumbled out of the car with his hands up, wearing his black and white Iraqi Police arm band and shouting that he was a police officer. A soldier then shot the lieutenant between the eyes. The driver, who had been crouched down in the front seat and waving his badge, was kicked and beaten by US troops.

US military officials earlier told reporters that US forces had "engaged" Iraqi police. But when pressed yesterday about how the two Iraqi police officers died, they said the incident was under investigation.

The image of the lieutenant, shot dead with his hands up, is shocking. Even if he had been a thief, since when is it legal under the Geneva Convention--or any system of law--to kill someone holding their empty hands in the air?

Complete story here.

Dare we hope…?

Thousands of US physicians have endorsed a broad proposal that would abolish for-profit hospitals and insurers and transfer all Americans into an expanded and improved Medicare program for all ages, reigniting the debate over universal health care a decade after President Clinton's failed plan.

While the four physicians who wrote the plan -- three of whom are affiliated with Harvard Medical School -- are members of a nonprofit organization that has long pushed for universal health coverage, the new proposal is important for two reasons: It was published today in one of the country's most prestigious and its most widely circulated medical journal, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and because of the large number of doctors -- nearly 8,000, including two former surgeons general -- who endorsed it.

AMA officials said it is unusual for the journal, which has a circulation of about 700,000 worldwide, to publish an article endorsed by such a large number of physicians. JAMA's editor, Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, said that an editorial accompanying the article represents the journal's viewpoint that it is time for the country to grapple more seriously with major problems in the health-care system.

Here’s the good part: private insurance companies would be virtually eliminated! Considering how many politicians are in the pockets of the insurance companies, this factor alone probably insures the plan's defeat.

But look how great it would be!

The physicians estimate that the country would save $200 billion annually by eliminating profits of investor-owned hospitals and insurance companies and by reducing administrative costs for hospitals and doctors who must bill dozens of different insurance companies. Private health insurers now consume 12 percent of premiums for overhead, while Medicare and the Canadian national health insurance system have overhead costs below 3.2 percent, the doctors reported.

Taxes, the doctors said, would increase. But except for the very wealthy, higher taxes would be offset by the elimination of insurance premiums and out-of-pocket copayments and deductibles, they argued.

Yeah!

Complete story here.

A rose by any other name....

Have we ever had an administration more into couching the truth in incomprehensible, flowery language?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 — The Pentagon said today that about 200 more United States troops could soon go ashore in Liberia — but officials emphasized that their mission was not peacekeeping in the usual sense.

Rather, their purpose will be "to achieve a stable environment so that humanitarian assistance can be provided to the people of Liberia, and also to facilitate the transition to a U.N.-led international peacekeeping operation," Maj. Gen. Norton Schwartz said...

And check this out:

…When a questioner suggested that the Americans' mission could potentially put them in combat, General Schwartz said, "There is a reaction capability, should something unexpected occur."

Jeeze, among other crimes, try these morons for butchering the English language!

As for committing troops to Morovia, I actually think using U.S. troops to help stabilize a worn-torn region and protect civilians is a legitimate operation, although I’d like to have the U.N. in charge as soon as possible.

Complete story here.

Here's the war America should be fighting....

For more than a decade, health workers in Africa have been sounding the alarm about the growing numbers of orphans, left on their own after AIDS kills their parents. Imagine what America could be doing with the $68 billion-plus we’ve squandered to invade Iraq, a country that was in no way a threat to us, if we spent that money Kenya, where $300 represents a family’s annual income.

LOOK what they are enduring:

…In East Kagan, a sprawling village of 3,000, one in every three people has the disease and there are more than 400 orphans, many struggling to survive on their own. Tucked into a trail of knobby grass and mud footpaths, the village is made up largely of the Luo tribe, the second-biggest ethnic group in Kenya.

The village is in one of Kenya's poorest districts. Mud huts with thatched roofs sit in clusters of three or four in the scrappy, flat fields. Small sprouts of wilting maize cover fields that are gray and dry from the hot sun and lack of rain.

A few men herd cattle. A few children lead donkeys to carry water and firewood. Like many rural communities in Africa, the village has no cars, no electricity and no running water.

Parents who are dying of AIDS linger at the village's one-room health clinic, looking weak and begging for aspirin to ease their pain. No one here can afford the life-saving drugs available in the West.

Parents are dying so quickly that they don't have time to ask relatives if they can take in their children…

While dying parents are begging for aspirins, starving children are eating grass. Grass!

I am ashamed. How can we in the developed world go about our daily routines in face of such appalling suffering and injustice?!

Story here.

Washington Post on the prelude to the Iraq war....

...The new information indicates a pattern in which President Bush, Vice President Cheney and their subordinates -- in public and behind the scenes -- made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support. On occasion administration advocates withheld evidence that did not conform to their views. The White House seldom corrected misstatements or acknowledged loss of confidence in information upon which it had previously relied...

No White House, Pentagon or State Department policymaker would speak on the record to the Post about the administration's nuclear case. The official line remains that the regime was pursuing nuclear weapons, that it had biological and chemical weapons and that it intended to use them, even though there is absolutely no proof to support the allegations. In fact, mounting evidence contradicts them.

They lied to coerce this country into an unprovoked war that has cost U.S. taxpayers between $68 and $76 billion to date, and killed more than 300 coalition troops, 10,200 Iraqi soldiers and 6200 Iraqi civilians.

And it's not over yet.

Long and very comprehensive story here.