Thursday, January 13, 2005
Bush the Coward
CBS' COWARDICE AND CONFLICTS BEHIND PURGE
Network's Craven Back-Down on Bush Draft Dodge Report Sure to Get a Standing Rove-ation at White House
By Greg Palast
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
"Independent" my ass. CBS' cowardly purge of five journalists who exposed George Bush's dodging of the Vietnam War draft was done under cover of what the network laughably called an "Independent Review Panel."
The "panel" was just two guys as qualified for the job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.
Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41 Administration's payroll. His grand accomplishment as Bush's Attorney General was to whitewash the investigation of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, letting the oil giant off the hook on big damages. Thornburgh's fat pay as counsel to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, the Washington law-and-lobbying outfit, is substantially due to his job as a Bush retainer. This is the kind of stinky conflict of interest that hardly suggests "independent." Why not just appoint Karl Rove as CBS' grand inquisitor and be done with it?...
Network's Craven Back-Down on Bush Draft Dodge Report Sure to Get a Standing Rove-ation at White House
By Greg Palast
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
"Independent" my ass. CBS' cowardly purge of five journalists who exposed George Bush's dodging of the Vietnam War draft was done under cover of what the network laughably called an "Independent Review Panel."
The "panel" was just two guys as qualified for the job as they are for landing the space shuttle: Dick Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi.
Remember Dickie Thornburgh? He was on the Bush 41 Administration's payroll. His grand accomplishment as Bush's Attorney General was to whitewash the investigation of the Exxon Valdez Oil spill, letting the oil giant off the hook on big damages. Thornburgh's fat pay as counsel to Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, the Washington law-and-lobbying outfit, is substantially due to his job as a Bush retainer. This is the kind of stinky conflict of interest that hardly suggests "independent." Why not just appoint Karl Rove as CBS' grand inquisitor and be done with it?...
© 2005 Greg Palast
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
The"Salvador Option'
From El Salvador to Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
by Charles Demers
by Charles Demers
Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by Seven Oaks Magazine
...Shifty, far-out, conspiratorially anti-government sources like Newsweek [have begun] to report on a raging debate in the Pentagon that has definitively put to rest any Tsunami-mirage hopes that in 2005, the white North might assign even mildly human-like values to non-white lives: The debate over the “Salvador Option,” a term in an of itself so chilling and inhuman as to recall the moral fitness of another first-world regime that weighed the “option” of Madagascar against Zyklon B...
© 2005 Seven Oaks Magazine
Fuck the Future
America's Finite Future?
by Arianna Huffington
Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by AriannaOnline.com
by Arianna Huffington
Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by AriannaOnline.com
Near the beginning of "Saturday Night Fever," John Travolta's Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, "fuck the future!" To which his boss replies: "No, Tony, you can't fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain't prepared for it!"
Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros — collectively dismissing the future. And nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than at the Bush White House, which is unwavering in its determination to ignore the future...
Iraqi Elections
The Projected Winner in Iraq: Failure
by Edwin Black
by Edwin Black
Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
...Historically, the assumption or seizure of authority in Iraq has never constituted a true representative government accepted by the warring tribal factions, but rather an expression of ethnic supremacy. More and more, the Jan. 30 vote seems not a national election, but a mainly Shia election. So even if the election takes place, even if the Shias deliver a statistical majority for the turnout, the forces of Sunni and insurgent rejection will demonize the results and elected officials, thus further plunging the populace into violence...
A Dying Ideology?
The Imminent Demise of the Republican Party
by David W. Orr
by David W. Orr
Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
...The Republican Party has chosen to deny social, ecological, cultural, religious, and economic realities which are unavoidably complicated, complex, diverse, ironic, and paradoxical. Instead they have chosen to make their own simplistic, ideological, and chauvinistic fantasy world that has little affinity for law, science, a free and independent press, fairness, true security, ecological sustainability, and the accountability that is requisite for genuine democracy...
Beyond Elections
Beyond Elections
Dr. King's Teachings on Strategy and Tactics
by Paul Rockwel
Published on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
According to Arundhati Roy, "There is no discussion taking place in the world today that is more crucial than the debate about strategies of resistance."
There is no greater strategist in American history, no teacher more relevant to our post-election malaise, than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was more than a moral visionary; he was a creative tactician. All of us-especially leaders of the peace movement-have much to learn from King's teachings on strategy and tactics...
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Income Disparity
[Australians should take note. John Howard has his own little band of "Robber Barons" who are determined to return Australia to the age of Charles Dickens]
...the stark fact, labor economist Sam Pizzigati points out in his new book, "Greed and Good," is that income disparity between classes of Americans has soared to heights reminiscent of the post-Civil War Gilded Age when "robber barons" of steel and rail and oil squeezed gargantuan fortunes out of workers and consumers alike.
During the 1990s, average worker pay barely outpaced inflation. But the most affluent 5 percent of families saw their incomes rise 111 percent. The inflation-adjusted incomes of the very top 1 percent increased 184 percent, from $454,200 in 1979 to $1,290,800 in 2000.
Corporate CEOs saw their pay soar 571 percent in the '90s, to a $10 million-plus average. An average worker would have to labor centuries, and in extreme cases a millennium, to equal what some of these plutocrats cart home in a year...
During the 1990s, average worker pay barely outpaced inflation. But the most affluent 5 percent of families saw their incomes rise 111 percent. The inflation-adjusted incomes of the very top 1 percent increased 184 percent, from $454,200 in 1979 to $1,290,800 in 2000.
Corporate CEOs saw their pay soar 571 percent in the '90s, to a $10 million-plus average. An average worker would have to labor centuries, and in extreme cases a millennium, to equal what some of these plutocrats cart home in a year...
Who Cares about "Terrorists"
[Like the early Puritan settlers of America, Bush and his cronies believe that Jee-zus has given them a Divine Mandate to do whatever they want in the "battle against evil." Australians just don't care about such matters ... BUT THEY SHOULD]
37 Questions Congress Should Ask the Secretary of Defense on Administration Torture Policies
by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel
Published on Monday, January 10, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
by Karen J. Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratel
Published on Monday, January 10, 2005 by TomDispatch.com
The "torture memos," as they have come to be known, reveal much about the current administration. They point to a level of secrecy matching, or even surpassing, any sought or achieved by the executive branch in prior eras, even during wartime. They point to a lack of concern for accountability that veers far from previously acknowledged limits on unchecked executive power. They deliberately disregard, even nullify, the balance-of-powers doctrine that has defined the United States since its inception. Essentially, much of what has been put in place by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11 has relied on the fear of terror as a means to establish a new doctrine of state; it is a doctrine that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, had lingered in the outer corridors of power. Much of the Patriot Act, for instance, had already been drafted before 9/11; and the proposal for the Department of Homeland Security was also in draft form at that time. So, too, were plans for a war in Iraq...
Monday, January 10, 2005
Gonzales, Inquisitor for Dubya (& God)
First They Came For The Terrorists...
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Monday, January 10, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Thom Hartmann
Published on Monday, January 10, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
The Gonzales confirmation is not just about the torture memos. It's much bigger than that.
If Bush continues to roll back human and civil rights - and the installation of Alberto Gonzalez as America's chief law enforcement officer is very much a part of his campaign to do so - we may be facing a "Pastor Niemöller moment" sooner than most of us could have imagined...
Tsunami Relief
Recently the Australian Shareholders’ Association pontificated that Australian companies should not donate any money to appeals for the victims of the Boxing Day tsunami unless they could guarantee that it would bring a “cost-benefit” to shareholders.
How pleasing to see that capitalism is regaining its red-blooded, hairy-chested approach after decades of emasculation at the hands of limp-wristed snivel-libertarians!
How pleasing to see that capitalism is regaining its red-blooded, hairy-chested approach after decades of emasculation at the hands of limp-wristed snivel-libertarians!
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Debt and Poor Countries
The Debt Threat Complicates Tsunami Disaster
by Noreena Hertz
Published on Saturday, January 8, 2005 by the MediaChannel.org
by Noreena Hertz
Published on Saturday, January 8, 2005 by the MediaChannel.org
After days of indecision, the G7, the world's leading industrialized nations announced today that all Tsunami afflicted countries would be eligible to have their debt repayments halted. Thank goodness. How obscene it would have been to witness the aid that is now flowing into Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Thailand flow immediately out again to the coffers of the same donors...
© MediaChannel.org
Fear and Adrenaline
Fear and Adrenaline
by Virginia Hoffman
Published on Saturday, January 8, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
by Virginia Hoffman
Published on Saturday, January 8, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
There is no doubt that war is a catalyst for atrocities committed against noncombatants. The report of wholesale shootings at My Lai and the 2003 Toledo Blade account of the Tiger Force collecting ears of those they killed made US brutality in Viet Nam inescapably clear. Last year’s pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib, along with analyses by the Red Cross and Major General Antonio Taguba, seared the image of US abuse in Iraq into our minds. Did all the GIs sent to Viet Nam or Iraq participate? No. But these stories are a grim reminder of the doors our nation opens every time it chooses war...
