Nick Berg's father calls for Peace...!

...George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.

[...]

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

[...]

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

Complete statement here.

Bush budget stalls....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans retreated Thursday and decided to postpone a Senate vote on their $2.4 trillion budget until at least next month, GOP aides said, averting a certain defeat by party moderates demanding curbs on future tax cuts.

The decision, described by aides on condition of anonymity, was an election-year embarrassment for both the Republicans who control Congress and President Bush. [Emphasis mine.]

When asked what might make moderate Republicans change their minds and support the budget, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, "Some of us could get killed in tragic accidents.''

Whoa. I'd be careful what I said around the bunch in the White House.

Complete story here.

Sad, sad news....

David Reimer, a Canadian man who was raised as a girl in a controversial case that drew international attention to issues of gender and biology, took his own life last Tuesday.

According to press reports, Reimer, 38, had been depressed following a series of personal and professional setbacks, including the loss of his job, separation from his wife and the death of his identical twin brother two years ago.

David's story was the subject of the book, "As Nature Made Him," The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl," by journalist John Colapinto.

As I can vouch, being gender-variant in this narrow-minded world can take a toll on a person. I'm very sad that David reached a point where he felt he couldn't soldier on.

Complete story here.

Horrific....

RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, May 20 — As a throng of Palestinians marched in protest here today, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunship opened fire, leaving at least nine people dead, including children, and dozens wounded, witnesses said.

The incident began when more than a thousand Palestinians responded to a public committee's call to demonstrate this afternoon by walking down a central avenue toward the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on Rafah's outskirts, where Israeli forces seized control Tuesday in what the Army called a hunt for militants.

As the leading edge of the crowd of men and boys approached an Israeli tank position, two thunderous explosions rang out, interspersed with jackhammer blasts of machine gun fire. Clouds of dust rose in the air as debris and blood sprayed across the road. The Palestinians turned to flee, some carrying bleeding children in their arms.

[Complete story here.]

The Palestinian death toll in the military sweep the Israeli army is nauseatingly dubbing "Operation Rainbow," stands at 33 in two days, and will probably go higher.

I am sickened and feel complicit in that the carnage could not be taking place without U.S. arms sales and tax dollars.

Most Americans feel otherwise, if they care at all. One woman I used to work for who describes herself as a "tax and spend liberal," says she might vote for Bush in November due to his support for Israel and strong "war on terrorism."

Tragically, she is not alone. (See here.)

In a somewhat heated argument, she justified to me her utter lack of sympathy for Palestinians by saying, "But they are killing my children!" speaking in the larger sense of Jewish family.

What confounds me is how this intelligent, caring mother of four can feel no compassion for murdered Palestinian children.

Not only that, but how can she fail to see that our support for "Israel no matter what" puts us at risk of terrorist attack? Incidents like "Operation Rainbow," in which American-made helicopters and missiles mow down Palestinians are precisely why Arab extremists consider the U.S. a legitimate military target.

I support Israel's right to exist, as I do a viable Palestinian state. If Bush truly wanted to protect Americans from terrorism, he would make all aid to Israel contingent on an immediate and just resolution of the Palestinian question.

And more....

Not only did the policy to torture detainees originate at the highest levels of the U.S. government, but Bush and his officials knew damned well that what they were doing was wrong!

May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

And they should be tried for war crimes, for actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Complete story here.

Abu Ghraib....

If you still believe the torture at Abu Ghraib was a case of privates and sergeants gone amok, rather than policy ordered from above, check this out:

...Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence.

"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," Provance said. "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."

Complete story here.

Stranger and stranger....

...According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were terrorists at the time."

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.

"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence. But the sources would not disclose details of how the men were connected.

So, are we to assume that Nick Berg was accessing his email on a moving bus using what, his cell-phone? I know you can do it, but was it really that easy and reliable a "few years ago"?

Complete story here.

Prosthetic leg...?

The mystery of who really killed Nick Berg deepens:

"From Iran Zarqawi traveled to Iraq in May 2002, where his wounded leg was amputated and the limb fitted with a prosthetic device. He spent two months recovering in Baghdad, at which time "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." (From here.)

The quote is originally from the National Review Online.

According to people who have seen the video, the person beheading Berg did not seem to have a prosthetic leg.

Michael Berg, Nick's father, blames the Bush administration in no uncertain terms, not for directly wielding the knife, but for delaying his son so long that he could not safely exit Iraq.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

Full story here.

Were U.S. forces responsible for Berg’s gruesome death?


I’m blogging again after a long hiatus.

The reason? Despite a schedule that leaves me no time, I just can’t stay silent any longer.

The precipitating factor is the Nicholas Berg tragedy. As usual, mainstream media coverage is infuriatingly inadequate.

Contrary to the official storyline, family and friends insist that Berg was held in detention in Iraq not by the Iraqis but by U.S. forces.

…The Berg family last month filed a habeas corpus petition against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, saying Berg was being illegally detained by the U.S. military without probable cause. Berg was released a day later, April 6.

According to the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, the family said it understood, based on information provided by the FBI and the State Department, that while Berg had originally been detained by Iraqi police in Mosul, he was later transferred to U.S. military custody.

The petition said the FBI had been involved in "investigating and confirming Nicholas Berg's identity and to ensure that the individual detained was Nicholas Berg based on a concern of possible identity theft."

The Bergs added that the FBI had recommended that their son be released from custody, and that the State Department had told them it no longer had power to intervene or to bring him home because the son "had been turned over by the Iraqi police to the United States military."

[Full story here.]

One day after the family filed the lawsuit on 4/5, Berg was released from custody in Mosul. He told friends when he got back to Baghdad that, due to his Jewish name and an Israeli stamp in his passport, he'd been suspected of being an Israeli agent. He checked out of his Baghdad hotel on 4/10 and vanished, until U.S. forces found his decapitated body on 5/15.

Allegations are flying that Berg was picked up at the behest of U.S. forces due to the mistaken supposition that he was an antiwar activist. Why would someone think that the Bush supporter was actually against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and do such a thing? Because his father, Michael Berg, signed an anti-war petition that ended up on a Rightwing website that called for reprisals against the petition’s signatories.

Furthermore, speculation that Berg’s actual murderers were not al Qaeda operatives was given substance by Wolf Blitzer’s interview on CNN yesterday of Rend Rahim Francke (or Rend al-Rahim), the Iraqi Governing Council’s representative to Washington. Rahim stated categorically that the U.S. translation of the horrific video showing Berg’s murder was inaccurate. The expression translated as “al Qaeda,” she said, actually referred to a similar sounding Arabic expression meaning roughly “those who sit by and do nothing” (think, “apathetic,”), a mistake native Arabic speakers would never make. Moreover, she said the speaker did not have a Jordanian accent, as would be expected if he were actually Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who U.S. authorities and the C.I.A. are blaming for actually cutting off Berg’s head.

I can’t find a live link to the CNN story (I saw the segment as it aired yesterday) and it hasn't been picked up by any other news outlet I've seen.

Other websites and threads are commenting on the light-skins of the hooded men in the video, the military stances they held, their buff physiques and possession of weapons not usually found in the hands of al Qaeda operatives. Ignorant as I am of military habits and paraphernalia and not having viewed the video, I can’t comment on any of this.

What is blatantly obvious is that Berg’s tragic and grisly murder has shifted the attention of American voters away from the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, the mounting American death toll and escalating financial costs of the war. Once again, “Us against them” war hysteria is running at fever pitch among the suseptible and renewed determination to “stay the course,” is strong in America.

Am I actually suggesting that the Bush administration would cold-bloodedly sacrifice a 26-year-old American citizen’s life purely for political gain?

What do you think?

Just call me pessimistic....

Boy, even if you didn't know it was an election year, the number of empty promises flying out of the White House would tell you something was up.

The latest is about space.

President Bush will make a speech next week outlining a major space initiative, the White House said last night.

Administration officials said they expected that Mr. Bush would propose a research and development program with the aim of establishing a base on the moon, as a prelude to a longer-term goal of sending humans to Mars.

Excuse me if I postpone celebrating until I see the actual funding for such an expensive initiative.

Bush loves to go about pronouncing, then promptly underfunding or ignoring. He promised to fight the global AIDS epidemic, make the U.S. safer from terrorist attacks, support the troops, improve American air and water quality, leave no child behind, capture Osama bin-Laden and make Halliburton pay back what it overcharged U.S. troops in Iraq.

He hasn't followed through on those--and countless other promises--he's made to date. I see no reason to expect follow through on this latest enticement, timed to capitalize on the success of America's Spirit Mars landing.

Complete story here.

Unbelievable....

Oh, yeah, we have the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, a staggering federal budget deficit that the IMF worries will bring down the global economy if something isn't done, 495 dead American soldiers in Iraq and counting with no "weapons of mass destruction" to be found, global warming threatening the extinction of one-quarter of all plants and animals by 2050, and this is a crucial issue.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, trying to limit the fallout from negative comments he made four years ago, said Friday he ``didn't really understand the Iowa caucuses'' when he said they were dominated by extremist special interests.

Dean is scrambling to "stem fallout from comments" made on a Canadian talk-show four years ago, criticizing the Iowa caucuses. Comments which, from what little I know, are true.

Meanwhile, Bush is given an almost free-ride in the media on his boondoggle of a war in Iraq, presidential culpability for 9/11, the ballooning deficit, soaring unemployment, a host of broken campaign promises ranging from tax relief for working people to cleaner water to “no child left behind.” The outing of an undercover CIA operative Valeria Plame alone would have been enough to prompt Right-Wing pundits to scream for Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The New York Times should be ashamed they gave this story prominent position on their website.

Carnivorous cows and vegetarian salmon....

Salmon raised in ocean feedlots, the main source of supply for American consumers, contain such high levels of PCBs, dioxins and other probable cancer-causing chemicals that people should not eat it more than once a month, according to a large-scale study to be reported Friday in the journal Science.

Read all the way to the end of this article and you'll see that the industries who brought you "mad-cow disease" by feeding rendered beef to cattle are now searching for ways to turn carnivorous salmon into vegetarians.

While I think it's a worthy goal to lower dangerously high levels of contaminants in food (the result of feeding processed small fish to farmed salmon), I can't help but worry that turning carnivores into vegetarians could create unforeseen problems in the same way that turning cows into cannibals did.

Among other things this article fails to mention is that farmed salmon are also fed pellets made from rendered beef, chicken, lamb, etc.

Complete story here.

Whatever happened to campaign finance reform...?

Will Bush purchase the office he stole last time?

WASHINGTON — President Bush's reelection campaign raised a record $130 million last year, officials said today, a show of financial muscle aimed at unnerving Bush's Democratic rivals.

The figure eclipsed the $100 million that Bush raised for the 2000 election and was more than triple what former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, amassed in 2003.

While the Democrats must spend their money now in pursuit of their party's nomination, Bush, who faces no Republican opposition, entered the year with $99 million in the bank. He can save that money for a big spending blitz once his Democratic opponent is determined.

But the president isn't resting. This week, he raised an estimated $2.8 million at a $2,000-a-ticket St.. Louis fundraiser - the largest amount raised at a single event in Missouri history - and is due to attend fund-raisers in Knoxville, Tenn. and Palm Beach, Fla. on Thursday.

And the money keeps rolling in. Bush is expected to raise a whopping $200 million in the end.

Meanwhile, Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman continue to sling mud at Dean, and to a lesser extent Clark, making Bush's re-election that much surer. Are the Democrats stark raving mad? Or simply selfish, egotistical, immature and short-sighted?

If democracy is to survive in this country in any form, Bush must be defeated in 2004.

Story here.

More on Republican hypocrisy....


This time on Ed Gillespie and the RNC.

Here.

So who's pandering now...?

When former California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill granting undocumented immigrants the right to California drivers' licenses, his opponents in the recall race (including current Governor Arnold Schwarznegger) howled that he was pandering to Latino voters.

I supported Davis' bill and I generally support improving the status and conditions of immigrant workers.

What irks me is the hypocrisy of a Republican Party that lambasts a sitting Democratic governor then turns right around and introduces their 2004 version of the Bracero Program.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — President Bush offered a plan today that he said would help millions of illegal immigrants working in the United States while also making the country more secure and prosperous and living up to its finest ideals.

"By tradition and conviction, our country is a welcoming society," Mr. Bush said at a special ceremony in the White House. "We welcome the talent, the character and the patriotism of immigrant families."

While Mr. Bush said again that he opposed amnesty, which he said would only encourage lawbreaking and perpetuate illegal immigration, his proposals would nonetheless effectively grant a measure of amnesty to illegal immigrants with jobs.

Bush has amply demonstrated in his 3 years in office that he could care less about the plight or rights of immigrant workers. The real reason for this too little too late PR ploy is to (1) garner Latino votes in November, and (2) hopefully score Brownie points in his upcoming meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Complete story here.

A problem to dwarf all others...

While President Bush and his coterie drag their feet, maintaining that global warming is a hoax, time is running out for hundreds of plants and animals.

Hundreds of species of land plants and animals around the globe could vanish or be on the road to extinction over the next 50 years if global warming continues, scientists warn.

The researchers concede that there are many uncertainties in both climate forecasts and the computer models they used. But they said their prediction could come to pass if industrial nations do not curtail emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

[...]

They found that more than one-third of the 1,103 native species they studied could disappear or approach extinction by 2050 as climate change turns plains into deserts or alters forests.

Complete story here.

Why aren't the Democrats jumping on this...?

I know this is old news to those of us who haunt alternative news-sites. But why aren't the Dems going after Bush?!

...George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.

Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.

Complete piece here.

Happy 2004....

May it be the year we kick George W. Bush out of the office he so undeservedly occupies!

Sorry about my absence these past days. I've been packing up and getting ready to move to New York.

That's right! I'm leaving the "Left Coast," as one of my New York contacts is wont to call it, to try my hand again in the Big Apple. And, what is more, to rejoin my sweetie. Long-distance relationships suck!

With luck, depending on the gig I pick up, I'll start posting more regularly on K9 once I settle in.

Lord knows, there's plenty to complain about! What with Dean trailing Bush by only 5 points in the latest Harris poll, the Republican party is running scared that the more than $112 million--raised for the primary alone, in which Bush runs unopposed--won't be enough to beat the Democrats. And we all know that a scared Karl Rove is a man who will stop at nothing.

The latest? They've targeted MoveOn.org regarding two ads entered in a recent contest (here, among other places) . Talk about a non-issue! The ads in question were submitted to an open forum, to be voted on by interested MoveOn members. And guess what: the weren't among the 15 final ads chosen.

Even had they been picked and actually aired on TV, they would have fallen under the category of free speech, still protected by the Constitution. Give the Bush camp another 4 years and that may no longer be true.

So stay tuned in '04 and keep on fighting!

"We got 'im...?"

According to foreign news sources, U.S. military and intelligence forces did not find and capture Saddam Hussein. Rather, U.S. soldiers followed directions given by Kurdish forces to locate and drag the drugged, befuddled Hussein from the hole in the ground where the Kurds had imprisoned him since one of his own tribesmen betrayed him out of revenge.

London: Ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured by Kurdish forces, then drugged and handed over to the American forces as a revenge against the rape of a tribal chief's daughter by the tyrant's psychopathic eldest son Uday, a media report said today.

The full story of the fallen dictator's capture last Saturday in a "spider hole" near his birthplace of Tikrit exposes the version peddled by Americans as incomplete.

According to the report in The Sunday Express, Saddam had already been handed over to Kurdish forces, who then brokered a deal with US commanders.

He was drugged and abandoned, ready for the American troops to recover him.

So, President Bush lied again when he said, "Yesterday, on December 13th, at 8:30 p.m. Iraqi time, Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces."

Worse, most major U.S. media outlets are complicit in his lie by failing to publish and broadcast the truth.

Real story here, here, and here.

Feel safer yet...?


Exactly how is this going to make us safer?

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 — Pentagon officials said today that Americans in some areas of the country could expect to see more warplanes in the skies during the holiday season now that a higher antiterrorism alert level is in effect.

"They may see additional air patrols over select cities and facilities, an increase in the air-defense posture here in Washington, D.C., and combat aircraft could be put on a higher alert at different air bases throughout the country," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, said at a Pentagon briefing.

Yeah, right, al Qaeda's going to attack us with a squadron of fighter bombers.

Considering the safety record of the U.S. military, more warplanes in the skies above American cities probably increases the risk of casualties.

More here.