|
|
|
|
|
June 6, 2003
From Grist:
An interview with Democratic presidential
candidate Howard Dean
By Amanda Griscom
21 May 2003
With George W. Bush boasting perhaps the worst
environmental record of any president in U.S. history, it almost goes
without saying that any contender in the 2004 election will appear to be
an environmentalist nonpareil by comparison. Indeed, nearly every
Democrat running for president is advertising himself as just that, and
former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean is no exception. On April 22, Earth Day
2003, Dean posted a message on his website that read, "As an
outdoorsman, I have experienced the incredible power of the natural
world. I am horrified by what the Bush administration is doing to our
land, our air, and our water. The United States must play a leading role
in combating climate change and the ongoing loss of the world's
diversity and natural heritage."
As governor from 1991 through the beginning of this
year, Dean racked up a decent environmental record....
---------------
From PIPA:
Four in Ten Overall
Majority of Those Who Favored the War and Republicans
Who Follow International Affairs Very Closely
A striking finding in the new PIPA/Knowledge Networks
poll is that many Americans are unaware that weapons of mass destruction
have not been found in Iraq. While 59% of those polled correctly said
the US has not found Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, 41% said they
believed that the US has found such weapons (34%) or were unsure (7%).
Steven Kull, director of PIPA, comments: "For some
Americans, their desire to support the war may be leading them to screen
out information that weapons of mass destruction have not been found.
Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention to
the topic, this level of misinformation suggests that some Americans may
be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."...
---------------
From the Columbia Journalism Review:
The Unchallenged "Evidence" for War
By John R. MacArthur
Shortly before American military forces invaded Iraq, a
troubled Ellen Goodman raised a singularly important question about the
Bush administration’s propaganda campaign for war — “How we got from
there to here.”
There, according to Goodman, was innocent 9/11
victimhood at the hands of religious fanatics; here, was bullying
superpower bent on destroying a secular dictator. I assumed that someone
as astute as Goodman would reveal at least part of the answer — that the
American media provided free transportation to get the White House from
there to here. But nowhere in her nationally syndicated column did she
state the obvious — that the success of “Bush’s PR War” (the headline on
the piece) was largely dependent on a compliant press that uncritically
repeated almost every fraudulent administration claim about the threat
posed to America by Saddam Hussein.
Late as she was, Goodman was better than most in even
recognizing that there was a disinformation campaign aimed at the people
and Congress....
---------------
From the New York Times, via CommonDreams.org:
Published on Thursday, June 6, 2003
by the New York Times
By Bob Herbert
The latest government giveaway to big business came
Monday when the Federal Communications Commission eased a number of
media ownership restrictions that had been designed to enhance
competition, foster independence and provide the public with a wider
variety of views and perspectives across the media landscape.
What we will get instead is a further consolidation of
news and entertainment outlets under the control of a handful of giant
corporations. The assets and the tremendous power of these media biggies
were enhanced — and the interests of the viewing, listening and reading
public were eroded — by the controversial 3-to-2 vote of the F.C.C.
commissioners.
This was, understandably, a big story.
Not so widely covered was an interesting and
enlightening study by the Center for Public Integrity on the "cozy"
relationship between F.C.C. officials and the telecommunications and
broadcasting industries they are supposed to be regulating....
June 3, 2003
From MSNBC:
With the media suffering
self-inflicted wounds, the CIA spies an opening
Analysis
by Michael Moran
NEW YORK,
May 29 — The latest opinion polls show the American public takes a dim
view of its media outlets in the post 9/11 world - numbers punctuated by
a roiling fraud and fabrication scandal that has shaken The New York
Times. With big media back on its heels, the CIA fired its own broadside
this week, publishing an “unclassified” memorandum that recommends using
espionage laws to prosecute media outlets that publish or broadcast
leaked information from government officials if that information turns
out to be classified.
The memorandum,
‘The Consequences of Permissive Neglect’, argues that the U.S. media
has become an “open vault of classified information on U.S. intelligence
collection sources and methods” which “pose a serious, seemingly
intractable problem for U.S. national security.” In effect, the CIA
wants the vault sealed shut....
From the Casper
(Wyoming) Star Tribune:
By Ted
Monoson, Washington bureau
WASHINGTON --
Ranchers and environmentalists are facing off over the nomination of a
former aide to retired Wyoming U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson to serve on the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Ranchers say that William G. Myers III, a 47-year-old Idaho native who
is currently the Interior Department's top lawyer, would bring knowledge
of the West and respect for ranchers' rights to the Ninth Circuit.
Critics of the Ninth Circuit, which is based in San Francisco, say that
it produces many liberal decisions that are out of step with the law and
the interests of the West.
"It's a very liberal court and environmentalists don't want to see him
on it," National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) lobbyist Chandler
Keys said. "If he gets confirmed, he's not going to have a bunch of soul
mates. He will be drinking coffee by himself."...
Raed is back
online. From the Guardian:
The most gripping
account of the Iraq conflict came from a web diarist known as the
Baghdad Blogger. But no one
knew his identity - or even if he existed. Rory McCarthy finally tracked
him down, and found a quietly spoken, 29-year-old architect. From next
week he will write fortnightly in G2
Rory McCarthy
Friday May 30,
2003
The Guardian
No one in Baghdad knew who he was or the risks he was taking. Apart from
a select group of trusted friends, they still don't. The telephones and
the internet haven't worked here since the collapse of the regime, so
the Iraqis never had a chance to read the diaries of the
Baghdad Blogger. Outside
the country, many didn't even believe that the man who wrote only under
the sobriquet Salam Pax truly existed. It was the great irony of the
war. While the world's leading newspapers and television networks poured
millions of pounds into their coverage of the war in Iraq, it was the
internet musings of a witty young Iraqi living in a two-storey house in
a Baghdad suburb that scooped them all to deliver the most compelling
description of life during the war....
May 28, 2003
From CounterPunch:
A Guide to Being a Real Juror
By Clay S. Conrad
Government has a boundless appetite to inflict senseless pain on
Americans, in the guise of the war on drugs, even at the cost of
degrading Federalism and the needs and values of the American people. A
recent case demonstrates this arrogance handily. Ed Rosenthal was a
medical marijuana supplier who, in compliance with the California
Compassionate Use Act, had been growing marijuana for seriously ill
people under a doctor's advice and care. Rosenthal was arrested in
February, 2002 and accused of supplying marijuana to the Harm Reduction
Center in San Francisco. Rosenthal had been deputized by the city of
Oakland, California and made the official supplier of a city-sponsored
medical marijuana dispensary...
From TomDispatch:
At the end of a long weekend, when I've put out only
material original to the site, I thought I might offer a little summary
dispatch on some of the more interesting things I ran across, but didn't
post...
May 23, 2003
From Orion Online:
Challenging Empire on the World
Stage
By Rebecca Solnit
What We Hope For
On January 18, 1915, six months into the first world
war, the first terrible war in the modern sense -- slaughter by the
hundreds of thousands, poison gas, men living and dying in the open
graves of trench warfare, tanks, barbed wire, machine guns, airplanes --
Virginia Woolf wrote in her journal, "The future is dark, which is on
the whole, the best thing the future can be, I think." Dark, she seems
to say, as in inscrutable, not as in terrible. We often mistake the one
for the other. People imagine the end of the world is nigh because the
future is unimaginable. Who twenty years ago would have pictured a world
without the USSR and with the Internet? We talk about "what we hope for"
in terms of what we hope will come to pass but we could think of it
another way, as why we hope. We hope on principle, we hope tactically
and strategically, we hope because the future is dark, we hope because
it's a more powerful and more joyful way to live. Despair presumes it
knows what will happen next. But who, two decades ago, would have
imagined that the Canadian government would give a huge swathe of the
north back to its indigenous people, or that the imprisoned Nelson
Mandela would become president of a free South Africa?...
---------------
From the Rockford (Illinois) Register Star Online:
Text of the Rockford College
graduation speech by Chris Hedges, at which he was booed
I want to
speak to you today about war and empire.
Killing, or
at least the worst of it, is over in Iraq. Although blood will continue
to spill -- theirs and ours -- be prepared for this. For we are
embarking on an occupation that, if history is any guide, will be as
damaging to our souls as it will be to our prestige, power, and
security. But this will come later as our empire expands and in all this
we become pariahs, tyrants to others weaker than ourselves. Isolation
always impairs judgment and we are very isolated now....
May 16, 2003
From the U.S. House of
Representatives:
Reps. DeGette, Dingell, Brown
Demand President Commit to Health Care for All Americans and All Iraqis
WASHINGTON, DC - On the day that the Bush Administration
awarded a contract to Abt Associates
to provide universal health service to 25 million Iraqis within a year,
U.S. Representatives Diana DeGette (D-CO), John D. Dingell (D-MI), and
Sherrod Brown (D-OH) called on President Bush to provide the same
commitment to the 44 million Americans without health care coverage....
---------------
From WorkingForChange.com
Counter-terrorism and corporate
crisis management specialist heads Iraq's reconstruction
By Bill Berkowitz
05.09.03 - When L. Paul Bremer III
sets down in Iraq as the U.S.'s new overseer of reconstruction, he'll be
bringing a lot of baggage along with him. Chosen by President Bush for
his expertise in counter-terrorism, crisis management and diplomacy,
Bremer has a resume that includes extended service in the Reagan
Administration, an eleven-year stint at Kissinger & Associates, and the
co-chairmanship of the Heritage Foundation's Homeland Security Task
Force.
That President Bush has turned to a civilian and a skilled negotiator --
the president called Bremer a "can-do-type person'' -- is indicative of
the administration's fear that events in post-war Iraq are in danger of
spinning out of control....
May 9, 2003
From Commondreams.org:
Iraqi Medical Staff Tell a Different
Story Than US Military
'We all became friends with her, we
liked her so much'
By Mitch Potter
NASIRIYA, Iraq—The fog of war comes sometimes with a certain odor, and
cutting through its layers, like cutting through an onion, can bring
tears to the eyes.
Such is the case with what is far and away the most oft-told story of
the Persian Gulf War II — the saga of Saving Private Lynch.
Branded on to our consciousness by media frenzy, the flawless midnight
rescue of 19-year-old Private First Class Jessica Lynch hardly bears
repeating even a month after the fact.
Precision teams of U.S. Army Rangers and Navy Seals, acting on
intelligence information and supported by four helicopter gunships,
ended Lynch's nine-day Iraqi imprisonment in true Rambo style, raising
America's spirits when it needed it most.
All Hollywood could ever hope to have in a movie was there in this
extraordinary feat of rescue — except, perhaps, the truth.
---------------
Two Messages from Gary Bauer
STOP "DRAG QUEEN" QUOTA BILL
Somehow a bill that would provide legal protection to drag queens,
cross dressers and transsexuals managed to pass the California State
Assembly.
April 30, 2003
These are busy times for the ACLU. Here are two
Alternet stories where the organization figures prominently.
By Jason Halperin
April 29, 2003
Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste
of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South
Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of
others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without
warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the
need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as
these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place
raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of
civil liberties in times of war.
That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to
see the Broadway show "Rent."...
----------------
By Kari Lydersen
April 28, 2003
When Americans open their morning papers, turn
on the T.V to catch the weather or sign onto the internet at the start
of the day, they are used to being bombarded with ads for everything
from shampoo and SUVs to dating services and weight loss regimens. But
now they are also seeing paid ads selling them on an issue that many
previously either took for granted or didn't think about much at all:
the importance of our civil liberties.
Starting last October, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
has been running a $3.5 million ad campaign called Keep America Safe
and Free which includes print, internet and TV ads around the country
reminding people of the importance of civil liberties and depicting,
in sound-bite, advertising-speak, the way the USA PATRIOT Act and
other post- Sept. 11, war on terrorism policies have been gutting
these liberties....
April 28, 2003
From Al-Jazeera:
The Presenter (Ahmed Mansour): Despite research by a
large number of scientists and experts on the enormous damage inflicted
by depleted uranium … and the use by the US in the Gulf War in 1991, and
wars in the Balkans and Afghanistan in 1994, 1995, 1999 and 2000…The US
use of depleted uranium is not confined to the total destruction of
targets but extends to the destruction of the environment and human life
in general in the affected regions. Such areas will be unfit for
habitation for millions of years.
Our guest is professor Major Doug Rocke, former chief of
Depleted Uranium Project at the Pentagon....
From the San Jose Mercury News:
By Dan Stober
Demonstrating a significant shift in America's nuclear strategy, the
Bush administration intends to produce -- not just research -- a
thermonuclear bunker-busting bomb to destroy hardened, deeply buried
targets, the Pentagon has acknowledged for the first time.
The weapon -- known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator -- would be a
full-power hydrogen bomb that would throw up enormous clouds of
radioactive dust while wreaking large-scale damage and death if used in
an urban area. It would be thousands of times more powerful than the
conventional ``bunker busters'' dropped on Baghdad in an attempt to kill
former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein....
From CommonDreams.org:
by Ira Chernus
Most astounding web page of the week:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm
Here is MSNBC, giving us more information on Israel's
weapons of mass destruction (WMD)than I've seen in any left-wing or
peace-activist news source. Here is the mainstream U.S. media, that
beast we love to hate, giving us a story that gives away the store.
It's a story we expect the elite media to hide, because
it is so embarrassing to U.S. policymakers. How could anyone cheer for
the carnage in Iraq, where no WMD have yet been found, if they knew that
Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation with a proven WMD arsenal? How
could anyone approve of a U.S. policy that kills where WMD don't seem to
exist and turns a blind eye where they obviously do?
Far from hiding the story, though, MSNBC uses its
graphic skills to put all the details just a mouse-click away. What's
going on?...
April 18, 2003
From TomDispatch:
By Chalmers Johnson
Next Wednesday, April 23, North Korea, the U.S., and China will meet in
Beijing to discuss a possible resolution of a crisis caused by North
Korea's determination to defend itself with nuclear weapons against
threats of aggression from the Bush administration. North Korea made the
first concession. On Saturday, April 12, Pyongyang dropped its demand
that it meet the U.S. face-to-face, without any other participants in
the talks, including the U.N. Security Council.
Today, April 16, the U.S. made even greater concessions in order to move
the talks ahead. It dropped its original demand --typically advanced by
the neoconservative war-lover, Undersecretary of State John Bolton --
that North Korea would first have to "immediately and visibly dismantle
[its] covert nuclear weapons program" before talks could take place. ...
A UPI story from the Washington Times:
Exclusive: Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot
By Richard Sale, UPI
Intelligence Correspondent
U.S. forces in Baghdad might now
be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the
past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of
anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40
years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence
officials.
United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S.
diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to
piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the
report.
While many have thought that
Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the
start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S.
officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized
six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen.
Abd al-Karim Qasim....
From the AFL-CIO:
Executive Pay Database: The CEO & You
For a true picture of the vast
inequities in the American workplace, try comparing the pay of your
company's CEO with your own....
Compensation data for the CEOs of some of the largest companies in the
United States are included here in the Executive PayWatch database....
April 14, 2003
From IndyMedia
April 11, 2003
From AlterNet:
Stephen Marshall, In These Times
April 10, 2003
A feverish, corporate-sponsored nationalism has taken root in
America at a time when the public depends on a vibrant
communications culture to sustain its institutional democracy.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of Clear Channel
Communications, the nation's largest radio chain.
In the outrage that followed the Floridian scandal and George
Bush Jr.'s appointment by the Supreme Court to the Oval Office, many
in the media missed an equally alarming familial maneuver. In one of
his first bureaucratic decisions as president, Bush named Michael
Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, as chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission. That the son of one of the
nation's most decorated and politically entrenched former military
officers should be given control of the agency that regulates the
domestic news and entertainment networks -- indeed the whole
telecommunications industry -- is something that is more imaginable
in ... well, Iraq....
April 7, 2003
From the Observer:
By Tracy McVeigh
Sunday April 6, 2003
War in North Korea is now almost inevitable because of the
country's diplomatic stalemate with America, a senior UN official
claims.
Ahead of this week's crucial talks between members of the UN
Security Council, Maurice Strong, special adviser to the Secretary
General Kofi Annan, was gloomy on the chances of a peaceful
settlement....
April 4, 2003
A cartoon
from Mark Fiore
From TomPaine.Com
By Bill Berkowitz
In another example of the administration's predilection for
secrecy, President Bush recently signed an executive order to "delay
the release of millions of historical documents for more than three
years and make it easier to reclassify information considered
damaging to national security," the Associated Press reported. The
25-page executive order was signed three weeks prior to an April 17
deadline which would have lifted the veil off millions of documents
25 years old or older.
Not so coincidentally, "The reclassification provision applies to
documents between 10 and 25 years old, which would include periods
in which Bush's father, George Bush, served as president and
vice-president."
In the midst of the president's war, while dead soldiers and
civilians are littering the landscape of Iraq, it might be difficult
to get too bent out of shape by the status of some historical
records. The administration's latest action, however, is congruent
with a number of other decisions it has made regarding access to
both historical and current information. These actions should be
viewed in its larger context: the administration's systematic
chipping away at the public's right-to-know....
From the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
On February 7, 2003, the draft form of the
Domestic Security Enhancement Act (DSEA, also known as "PATRIOT II")
was revealed. In an April 1, 2003 article in the Village Voice (Chisun
Lee, "Bracing for Bush's War at Home"), Justice Department
Spokesperson Mark Corallo confimed that "exact details are confined
to 'internal deliberations...' but the proposals 'will be filling in
the holes' of the Patriot Act, 'refining things that will enable us
to do our job.'
On March 17, 2003, the Lawyers Committee joined 66 other
organizations in urging members of Congress to oppose the Domestic
Security Enhancement Act. Included in this letter is a description
of the potential consequences of "PATRIOT II":...
Capital goods have special importance in all this, for those are the
tools and machines used to produce everything else....
[top]
From American Prospect
Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake
the world?
By Robert Dreyfuss
For months Americans have been told that the United States is going
to war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, remove him from
power, eliminate Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass
destruction, and prevent Baghdad from blackmailing its neighbors or
aiding terrorist groups. But the Bush administration's hawks,
especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war,
see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal
event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the
region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American
imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into
conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that
U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle
spreading beyond Iraq's borders, are likely to be mistaken.
"I think we're going to be obliged to fight a regional war,
whether we want to or not," says Michael Ledeen, a former U.S.
national-security official and a key strategist among the ascendant
flock of neoconservative hawks, many of whom have taken up perches
inside the U.S. government....
[top]
From Common Dreams
By Greg Barrett
BAGHDAD - If the invasion that the Pentagon has dubbed "Operation
Shock and Awe" commences, Charlie Liteky is unlikely to feel either.
He expects the United States to bomb Iraq. He expects noise and
destruction more powerful and frightening than he has ever known. He
expects the Earth to shake and houses to go dark and children to
scream themselves hoarse.
But Liteky sounds more determined than frightened.
Like 20 other members of the Chicago-based
Iraq Peace Team
who remain in Baghdad even as hostilities appear certain, Liteky
abhors cluster bombs, cruise missiles and the civil unrest that combat
causes....
[top]
From AlterNet
By Paulo Coelho
Thank you, great leader
George W. Bush....
Thank you for showing everyone that the Turkish people and their
parliament are not for sale, not even for 26 billion dollars.
Thank you for revealing to the world the gulf that exists between
the decisions made by those in power and the wishes of the people....
[top]
By Harold Pinter
I am deeply honoured to receive this degree from such a great
university.
Earlier this year I had a major operation for cancer. The operation
and its after-effects were something of a nightmare. I felt I was a man
unable to swim bobbing about under water in a deep dark endless ocean.
But I did not drown and I am very glad to be alive. However, I found
that to emerge from a personal nightmare was to enter an infinitely more
pervasive public nightmare - the nightmare of American hysteria,
ignorance, arrogance, stupidity and belligerence; the most powerful
nation the world has ever known effectively waging war against the rest
of the world. "If you are not with us you are against us" President Bush
has said. He has also said "We will not allow the world's worst weapons
to remain in the hands of the world's worst leaders". Quite right. Look
in the mirror chum. That's you....
[top]
Don't expect democracy in Iraq
By John Dower
You have written about the occupation of Japan by the United
States after World War Two. Does this have any relevance to what might
take place in a post-hostilities Iraq, should the United States carry
out its threat to go to war against that country?
Starting last fall, we began to hear that U.S. policymakers were
looking into Japan and Germany after World War II as examples or even
models of successful military occupations. In the case of Japan, the
imagined analogy with Iraq is probably irresistible. Although Japan
was nominally occupied by the victorious "Allied powers" from August
1945 until early 1952, the Americans ran the show and tolerated no
disagreement. This was Unilateralism with a capital "U" -- much as we
are seeing in U.S. global policy in general today. And the occupation
was a pronounced success. A repressive society became democratic, and
Japan -- like Germany -- has posed no military threat for over half a
century.
The problem is that few if any of the ingredients that made this
success possible are present -- or would be present -- in the case of
Iraq. The lessons we can draw from the occupation of Japan all become
warnings where Iraq is concerned....
[top]
|
|
|
