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.