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Horrific Images of Torture & Abuse: Iraqi Prison Photos Mar U.S. Image Worldwide

04.30.04 (10:48 am) [edit]

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[i][b]US soldiers force Iraqi prisoners to pose naked and wired for execution at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.[/b][/i]

Photos of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners drew international condemnation on Friday, prompting the stark conclusion that the U.S. campaign to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a lost cause.

"This is the straw that broke the camel's back for America," said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi. "The liberators are worse than the dictators."

"They have not just lost the hearts and minds of Iraqis but all the Third World and the Arab countries," he told Reuters.

The CBS News program "60 Minutes II" on Wednesday broadcast photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison late last year showing American troops abusing some Iraqis held at what was once a notorious center of torture and executions under toppled President Saddam Hussein.

The pictures showed U.S. troops smiling, posing, laughing or giving the thumbs-up sign as naked, male Iraqi prisoners were stacked in a pyramid or positioned to simulate sex acts with one another.

Britain has been America's staunchest ally in Iraq but alarm has spread over strong-arm U.S tactics, support for Prime Minister Tony Blair has plummeted and the pictures were widely condemned on Thursday.

"When it comes to winning hearts and minds, the U.S. Army hasn't got a clue," wrote the Daily Mirror tabloid, one of several British papers to splash the photos on its front page.

"Nobody underestimates how wrong this is," Blair's spokesman told reporters. "Actions of this kind are in no way condoned by the coalition."

The publicity could not have been worse in the Arab world with the sexual humiliation depicted in the pictures particularly shocking.

"That really, really is the worst atrocity," Atwan said. "It affects the honor and pride of Muslim people. It is better to kill them than sexually abuse them."

[b]MUSCLE-BOUND OX [/b]

Saudi Arabia's English-language Arab News daily said: "The greatest loss the Americans face is to their reputation, not simply in the Middle East but in the world at large.

"U.S. military power will be seen for what it is, a behemoth with the response speed of a muscle-bound ox and the limited understanding of a mouse."

In Geneva, the International Committee of The Red Cross voiced concern.

"We take this extremely seriously. Torture is forbidden in any circumstances of any person detained in the world. Humiliation and degrading treatment is a form of torture," chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari told Reuters.

The photographs were splashed across many leading newspapers in Italy, which is anxiously following the fate of three Italians being held hostage in Iraq.

"Torture in Iraq: American horrors revealed on TV," the left-wing L'Unita said in a headline while la Repubblica daily said the images were "irrefutable" proof of torture.

"It wasn't psychological pressure or simple mistreatment or illegitimate detention as in Guantanamo, but true, classic and irrefutable torture," the paper wrote in an editorial, citing forced, public sodomy as one of the gravest offences.

Calling for an independent inquiry, Amnesty International said: "There is a real crisis of leadership in Iraq with double standards and double speak on human rights.

"The prison was notorious under Saddam Hussein -- it should not be allowed to become so again," said the human rights pressure group.

"Our extensive research in Iraq suggested that this is not an isolated incident," it said. "Detainees have reported being routinely subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment during arrest and detention."

[b]It is time for Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the neo-cons who put these horrible events into action to go. Write to Congress and demand that Bush be removed from office [/b]on http://www.congress.org .

Beware: (Horrific Photos of Torture & Abuse) Iraqi Prison Photos Mar U.S. Image Worldwide

04.30.04 (10:46 am) [edit]

The Senate Votes To Reject Bush/Cheney's Energy Bill

04.30.04 (10:34 am) [edit]

[u][b]Statement of Anna Aurilio, Legislative Director[/b][/u]

The Senate's vote to reject this anti-environmental, anti-consumer energy bill is a huge victory for anyone who drinks water, breathes air, pays utility bills or pays taxes.

We are pleased that instead of rewarding the dirty, unsustainable and unreliable sources of energy being promoted by industry lobbyists in Washington, the Senate chose to pursue a smarter, cleaner energy future for America's consumers.

The energy bill would have:

• Delayed clean up of air pollution in smoggy areas.

• Increased our dependence on oil.

• Failed to harness the potential for diversifying our energy supply to include clean renewable energy sources.

• Authorized programs that increase the risk of nuclear proliferation.

• Weakened important drinking water and surface water protections.

• Further exposed electricity consumers to future Enrons and blackouts.

• Squandered billions in taxpayer handouts to oil, gas, nuclear and other dirty energy sources.

America deserves a clean safe energy future. We look forward to working for an energy policy that makes our electricity supply more reliable and prevents future Enron-type scandals, promotes clean, efficient, renewable energy like wind and solar power, protects the environment, cuts global warming pollution and moves America forward.

We applaud the Senate for once again rejecting this terrible energy policy and standing up for the public instead of the polluters.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] U.S. PIRG
Liz Hitchcock, Anna Aurilio (202) 546-9707 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Victory for America: Senate Rejects Bush/Cheney's Disastrous Energy Bill

04.30.04 (10:30 am) [edit]

Senate Rejects Bush/Cheney's Disastrous Energy Swindle Bill

04.30.04 (10:29 am) [edit]

The Bush Administration Threatens Choice, Reproductive Rights & Women's Health

04.29.04 (11:45 pm) [edit]

On Sunday, April 25, citizens from across the country descended on Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about President Bush's assault on choice and reproductive rights in the March for Women's Lives. Threats to women's rights and health are present and real, and Americans of all stripes must speak loudly in defense of their freedoms.

[b]Abortion is a serious decision that should only be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor.[/b] The government has no business interfering in private medical and life decisions regarding reproduction. Women have the constitutionally protected right to make such fundamental and deeply personal decisions for themselves.

[b]President Bush is committed to appointing justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade – the constitutional decision that guarantees the legal right to choose an abortion.[/b] If these constitutional protections fall, at least 17 states are set to outlaw abortion altogether effectively turning women into criminals for exercising control over their own lives and bodies. Before Roe, 1.2 million women per year sought illegal, back-alley abortions and 5,000 women died each year from these procedures.

[b]Outlawing abortion is just the beginning of proposed limitations on reproductive freedoms.[/b] Right wing elements in government are trying to pry into private medical records, deny access to contraception like Plan B, and block basic sex education for teenagers. But the maintenance of public health – and basic dignity and decency for women – requires access to comprehensive health care including prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS awareness, and access to abortion and contraception services. - http://www.americanprogress.o...

Also refer to [b]Beyond Abortion: Reproductive Health and Rights of Low-Income Women[/b] on http://www.americanprogress.o...

On Abortion: A Woman's Right To Choose Must Not Be Abolished

04.29.04 (11:41 pm) [edit]

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[i][b]MARCH FOR WOMEN'S LIVES: MASSIVE PROTEST IN DC
Hundreds of thousands rally on the Mall in Washington, Sunday, April 25, 2004, for an abortion-rights rally and march. The rally, which focused on protecting women's reproductive rights, included men and women from across the country along with activists from nearly 60 countries. [/b][/i]

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[i][b]With the US Capitol in the background, hundreds of thousands of pro-choice supporters take part in the 'March For Women's Lives,' on the Mall in Washington, April 25, 2004. Protesters massed to show support for abortion rights and opposition to Bush administration policies on family planning and other reproductive health issues[/b][/i].

[b]Massive Protest Decries Bush Abortion Policies [/b]

Protesters crowded the National Mall on Sunday to show support for abortion rights and opposition to Bush administration policies on women's health issues in one of the biggest demonstrations in U.S. history.

There was no official crowd count, but organizers claimed more than 1 million people participated.

Pink- and purple-shirted protesters raised signs reading "Fight the Radical Right," "Keep Abortion Legal" and "U.S. Out Of My Uterus" and covered the Mall from the foot of Capitol Hill to the base of the Washington Monument.

Speakers ranged from actresses Whoopi Goldberg, Ashley Judd and Kathleen Turner to philanthropist Ted Turner, feminist icon Gloria Steinem and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Goldberg raised a wire coat hanger -- a symbol of illegal abortions in the days before the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling recognizing abortion rights -- and told the crowd, "We are one vote away from going back to this!"

She was referring to the nine-member high court, which has frequently decided abortion-related cases on a five-four vote.

The abortion issue was the centerpiece of the march's broad protest against the policies of President Bush, including his stance on funding international family planning. No U.S. funds may be used for any family planning agency that mentions abortion to patients.

"Vote That Smirk Out of Office," was a characteristically political placard targeting Bush, but Dorothy Smith, 76, of Eldridge, Missouri, carried an emblem she made herself -- a wire coat hanger draped with a sign reading "Never Again."

"I can remember when abortion was just as common as it is now, but it killed a lot of women," Smith said.

Major sponsors included stalwarts of the abortion rights movement -- NARAL Pro-Choice America, Feminist Majority, National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood Federation of America -- as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Black Women's Health Imperative and the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.

[b]'OLD BROADS FOR CHOICE'[/b]

Some 1,400 groups attended the event, including an international contingent with marchers from 57 countries. There were medical students who carried signs saying they planned to be the next generation of abortion providers, and there was a Texas group marching behind a banner that read, "Old Broads for Choice."

As the march wound from the Mall toward the White House and then turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue and toward Capitol Hill, abortion rights groups encountered anti-abortion protesters.

These protesters carried posters showing photographs of fetuses at eight weeks gestation and signs reading "Abortion Kills Babies."

March organizers claimed double the turnout of the last big abortion rights march in 1992, which drew 500,000, according to the U.S. Park Police, who no longer gives official crowd counts. The biggest demonstration was an anti-Vietnam War rally in 1969, which drew 600,000. The largest gathering on the National Mall was the 1976 U.S. bicentennial celebration.

Though the march was billed as nonpartisan and included a contingent called Republicans for Choice, much of the day's rhetoric was plainly aimed at Bush, a Republican who opposes abortion in most cases.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry vowed on Friday to champion abortion rights if elected. He received the endorsement of Planned Parenthood's Action Fund, the organization's political fund-raising arm.

Neither Bush or Kerry attended the march, but U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat and former first lady, drew roars of approval when she exhorted the crowd to register to vote. Volunteers were on hand to register new voters.

Bush addressed an anti-abortion march in January, saying the effort to overturn the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which recognized a right to abortion, was "a noble cause." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Bush Administration Argues Against Openness, Accountability

04.29.04 (11:18 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Administration Argues Against Openness, Accountability[/b]

[u][b]Statement of Alex Levinson, Sierra Club's Deputy Legal Director[/b][/u]

"Desperate to keep the workings of the Energy Task Force secret, the Bush Administration argued today that the judiciary has no role reviewing whether it broke the law - an unprecedented argument in light of the Court's prior rulings against Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and others.

"It seems that the Bush Administration is obsessed with secrecy. This case is about how that penchant for secrecy and back-room deals resulted in a polluting energy policy that will negatively impact Americans' health, safety and the places they treasure.

"The oral argument today shows the importance of citizen participation in government. The Bush Administration has consistently demonstrated a pattern of shutting the public out, ignoring public comments, and instead favoring corporate campaign contributors.

"This case is of vital importance right now because the energy bill inspired by this secret process is currently before Congress. The American people deserve to know who really wrote their energy policy before it becomes law."

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Sierra Club
David Willett 202-675-6698 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush Administration Argues Against Openness, Accountability

04.29.04 (11:17 am) [edit]

Bush Administration Argues Against Openness, Accountability

04.29.04 (11:16 am) [edit]

Remedy to Outsourcing: Better US Jobs

04.29.04 (11:13 am) [edit]

[b]Remedy to Outsourcing: Better US Jobs [/b]

LAST WEEK I addressed the dilemma of job outsourcing. I promised some remedies in this column.

In truth, the outsourcing of American jobs is one relatively small facet of the larger problem -- the steady erosion of jobs that pay middle-class wages. A global economy makes this challenge more difficult because it puts many American workers into direct competition with foreigners who are happy to work for less.

Most of the solution to the outsourcing problem, however, is domestic. In recent decades, institutions that once produced a more equal society have been dismantled or weakened. These included government regulation of wages and working conditions, of industry practices, of a worker's right to choose a union (or not), as well as various social investments that once contributed good jobs. If we can rebuild these, the loss of some jobs overseas will continue to be a problem, but a manageable one.

The majority of jobs in the economy today are in the service sector, and many of these need to be close to the customer. A job in a hotel, a nursing home, a restaurant, a university, or a public school cannot easily be outsourced overseas.

So the first remedy is to make these good jobs. We can do this with higher minimum wages, local living wage ordinances, by enforcing the right of workers to join unions, and structuring these jobs to encourage and reward higher skills and career paths.

Enforcement of the Wagner Act, which allows American workers a free choice to vote in a union, has become a joke. Employers find it cheaper to fire pro-union workers, hire fancy law firms to conduct union-busting campaigns, and pay the very infrequent fine.

One happy exception speaks volumes -- the successful struggle by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees to turn Las Vegas into a union town. Today, the most humble workers in Vegas's hotels -- those who clean the rooms -- are paid middle-class salaries with health benefits and have career opportunities. They are becoming homeowners and starting to live the American dream. The higher labor costs are a drop in the casino bucket.

After all, no inherent economic logic required semi-skilled factory workers to earn middle-class wages. What made the difference was strong unions and federal enforcement of the right to organize. Blue-collar service jobs could pay decently, too.

Second, we need more human service jobs that pay professional salaries by addressing unmet social needs. At many hospitals, nursing staffs are spread thin. Residents in nursing homes are cared for mainly by inadequately trained people earning barely above minimum wage with very high turnover rates. Budget cuts have decimated mental health services. America's children need a whole new set of professionally trained child development workers.

These social needs should be met in the time-tested way -- by taxing those who can afford to pay and using the proceeds for social investments. America's social outlays have been reduced to the level of the 1950s. Let's have a new marriage between necessary services and good jobs.

Third, while manufacturing jobs may never employ the work force they once did, public policy can help stimulate an advanced manufacturing economy. Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, but the US government did -- as a byproduct of defense spending. A lot of very good jobs were created as high-tech industries took off. Government subsidy of biotech research, likewise, has helped incubate an industry with good jobs both in research and manufacturing.

Government could work alongside private industry to invest in new technologies for energy independence. We could make a national commitment to bring broadband cable service to every home, which would create a huge new market for jobs. These strategies would both create millions of good jobs in research, services, and manufacturing.

Trade and oursourcing do need to be addressed, too. If workers in countries that trade with the United States are assured the right to form unions, wage competition will be less of a problem. Repealing tax incentives to outsource jobs would also help. If we enforce fair trade, the United States could have more export opportunities to balance our increased imports.

One approach to creating good jobs, however, is a proven failure: George Bush's strategy of cutting taxes, gutting regulation, and trusting private industry to do the rest. This path has led to a few astronomically compensated executive jobs, a bonanza for a few fortunate investors, and a slow slide for the working middle class. Ultimately, many roads are available in the new economy. How to reconcile globalism with good American jobs remains a political choice.

[b]Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Scientists & Environmentalists Present New Info & Voice Concerns Over Genetically Engineered Foods

04.29.04 (11:09 am) [edit]

[b]Investors, Consumers, Scientists, And Environmentalists Present New Information And Voice Concerns About Genetically Engineered Foods At Kraft Shareholder Meeting[/b]

Investors in Kraft Foods, Inc. (KFT-NYSE) expressed concern at the annual shareholder meeting over Kraft's continued use of genetically engineered ingredients. They cited the company's failure to properly address the financial, health, and environmental risks that engineered crops pose.

"Continued use of genetically engineered ingredients is a mistake for Kraft on many levels," stated Richard Caplan, food safety advocate for the state Public Interest Research Groups. "Many food companies have already removed these ingredients from their products to protect consumers and investors. Kraft should do the same."

A scientist present at the meeting discussed recent research on the possible allergenicity of certain genetically engineered crops. Several articles published over the past few years indicate that crops known as Bt crops have immunogenic and allergenic properties. One paper by the head of FDA's own biotechnology studies branch indicates a Bt protein has amino acid sequence homology with a known allergen, one of the key indicators of allergenicity. Several other scientists have published papers on other newly discovered allergenic properties of the Bt protein.

Kraft continues to subject itself to financial risks from using genetically engineered ingredients while the company appears to receive no benefits and has acknowledged in SEC filings that genetically engineered ingredients are a liability, according to Green Century Capital Management's Michael Leone.

"If consumers do not want genetically engineered ingredients, and Kraft recognizes them as a financial liability, why not take the prudent move and remove them from Kraft products?" asked Leone at Kraft's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday.

Many financial risks of genetically engineered foods became evident with contamination of the food supply by StarLink corn in 2000. Since that time other contamination episodes have occurred, including the contamination of conventional soybeans with a variety of genetically engineered corn that was designed to produce a drug not intended for human consumption. The incident led to the quarantine and destruction of 500,000 bushels of soybeans. A recent report from the Union of Concerned Scientists revealed low levels of contamination of conventional seeds that were thought to be free of genetically engineered material. The report calls into question the ability of Kraft to provide consumers organic and other natural products here and abroad, as they recently pledged to do with the launch of their Back to Nature brand.

"Kraft has made it clear that the company receives no benefit from using genetically engineered ingredients, and in fact may be risking its new ventures into natural and organic foods," stated Friends of the Earth's Health and Environment Program campaigns coordinator Lisa Archer. "Thus genetically engineered crops seem like a lose-lose proposition for the company."

[i]The State Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) are a nationwide network of non-profit public interest advocacy groups. www.pirg.org/ge

Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of the world's largest network of environmental groups. www.foe.org/safefood

Green Century Capital Management, Inc. is the investment adviser to the Green Century Balanced Fund and the administrator of the Green Century Funds. The Green Century Funds are the first family of no-load, environmentally responsible mutual funds and were founded by a partnership of non-profit environmental advocacy organizations[/i].

[b]CONTACT:[/b] U.S. PIRG
Richard Caplan,(202) 427-4587
Lisa Archer, (301) 379-9629
Michael Leone,(617) 482-0800 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Don't Give President Power To Suspend Our Constitutional Freedoms!

04.29.04 (11:06 am) [edit]

[b]Don't Give President Sole Power to Suspend Constitutional Freedoms; Groups Protest as Supreme Court Hears Case of Citizens Held Without Rights[/b]

Today, while the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, a diverse coalition of local and national groups demonstrating in front of the court released the following statement:

"In 2002, President Bush pledged to 'stand firm' for the 'non- negotiable demands of human dignity...the rule of law...and limits on the power of state.' In what seems like a direct contradiction of his firm pledge, the president is now taking a pick-and-choose approach to enforcing Constitutional protections, claiming that guarantees to due process and equal protection can be suspended at his discretion. The dangerous new presidentially-designated category of enemy combatants, individuals who have no legal rights, is unjust, illegal, and immoral, and cannot be allowed to stand."

[u]PARTICIPATING ORGANIZATIONS[/u]: American Friends Service Committee, American Muslim Voice, Amnesty International USA, Arab American Institute, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Blue Triangle Network, Cambios Planetarios, Community Solutions Foundation Trust, LLC., Council on American-Islamic Relations, Equal Justice USA/Moratorium Now!, First Amendment Foundation, Freedom Socialist Party, Guantanamo Human Rights Commission, Japanese American Citizens League, La Resistencia, Muslim Civil Rights Center, National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (NCARL), National Lawyers Guild, Not in Our Name Project, Oct. 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, Pax Christi USA, Proposition One Committee, Radical Women, Refuse & Resist!, Solidarity USA, Two- Edged Sword Incorporated, United for Peace and Justice.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Amnesty International
Edward Jackson 202-544-0200 ext. 302 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Don't Give President The Power To Suspend Our Constitutional Freedoms!

04.29.04 (11:04 am) [edit]

Do The Geneva Conventions Apply To Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp Detainees?

04.28.04 (6:43 pm) [edit]

[b]Geneva Conventions Apply to Guantanamo Detainees [/b]

Human Rights Watch questioned Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld´s statement that captured fighters from Afghanistan shipped to Cuba were “unlawful combatants” not entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. Human Rights Watch also criticized the reported use of chain-link cages to confine the detainees.

“The Secretary seems unaware of the requirements of international humanitarian law,” said Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch´s U.S. Program. “As a party to the Geneva Conventions, the United States is required to treat every detained combatant humanely, including unlawful combatants. The United States may not pick and choose among them to decide who is entitled to decent treatment.”

News reports indicate that Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees will be confined at Guantanamo Bay in small cages with chain-link sides, concrete floors and metal roofs. The cages will offer scant shelter from wind and rain. Details about sanitary and hygiene facilities are not available.

This is not the first time detainees have been held at Guantanamo Bay. In 1994, the U.S. government responded to refugee flows from Haiti and then Cuba by creating a temporary holding facility at the base. While conditions there were stark and hardly hospitable, the detainees were held in permanent hard-walled shelters.

“The proposed cages are a scandal,” said Fellner. “The United States should not be transporting detainees to Cuba until it can provide decent shelter.”

The United States is a party to the Geneva Conventions, the laws governing the treatment of persons captured during armed conflict. Every captured fighter is entitled to humane treatment, understood at a minimum to include basic shelter, clothing, food and medical attention. In addition, no detainee – even if suspected of war crimes such as the murder of civilians – may be subjected to torture, corporal punishment, or humiliating or degrading treatment. If captured fighters are tried for crimes, the trials must satisfy certain basic fair trial guarantees.

Prisoners of war (POWs) are entitled to further protections, commensurate with respect for their military status as soldiers. Indeed, the Geneva Conventions provide that prisoners of war must be quartered in conditions that meet the same general standards as the quarters available to the captor´s forces, e.g. the U.S. armed forces. In addition, POW´s prosecuted for war crimes must be tried by the same court under the same rules as the detaining country´s armed forces. In the current conflict, an Afghan POW could not be tried by the proposed military commissions, although they could be tried by an American court-martial.

Under the Geneva Conventions, captured fighters are considered prisoners of war (POWs) if they are members of an adversary state´s armed forces or are part of an identifiable militia group that abides by the laws of war. Al-Qaeda members, who neither wear identifying insignia nor abide by the laws of war, probably would not quality. Taliban soldiers, as the armed forces of Afghanistan, may well be entitled to POW status. If there is doubt about a captured fighter's status as a POW, the Geneva Conventions require that he be treated as such until a competent tribunal determines otherwise. - http://www.hrw.org/press/2002...

Fight Against the Patriot Acts: Conservative Voices Against the Neo-Nazi Patriot Acts!

04.28.04 (11:25 am) [edit]

[b]Conservative Voices Against the USA PATRIOT Act [/b] http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFr...

[b]USA Patriot Act is Latest in Series of Bad Laws [/b]

That we're a nation of laws isn't in itself saying much. Iraq's forebears were a nation of laws under Hammurabi, but it couldn't have been very pleasant to live under a regime in which women who left their husbands were drowned and the punishment for medical malpractice was to cut off the surgeon's hands. (Even then the insurance industry knew how to scrimp on payouts.)

The Soviet Union was a nation of laws, too. So were the Balkans' genocidal little countries in the 1990s. So was Rwanda. The mass graves filled up anyway.

To mean anything at all, laws have to be just, they have to be realistic and they have to be enforced. The United States has never had trouble with the enforcement part. We're nothing if not a nation of enforcers. Luckily, the kinds of laws we live with are, on the whole, among the fairest ever devised. Unlike Hammurabi slash-and-drown codes, the Constitution is firm but not cruel. Its realism keeps its idealism honest. It recognizes that men are generally crummy creatures who can't be trusted with too much power. Its genius is to have found a way to diffuse the crumminess through a marketplace of competing self-interests. Hence, the proverbial checks and balances.

That our laws have been on the whole among the fairest ever devised also isn't saying much. The competition for good laws in human history is slim to none. The competition for bad laws in American history is fierce, beginning with the Constitution's own dyspeptic equality clause. Significant progress notwithstanding, the "law of the land" has yet to fully digest the notion of equal opportunity for more than those who can buy their way to it, and the Constitution's interpreters have never lost their knack for confusing "the pursuit of happiness" with the pursuit of dividends and other people's money, preferably with government help.

But every generation has had its share of weird and backward laws, the sort of legal aberrations that make it more expedient for a president to wield power and for a lazy Congress to seem assertive. John Adams had his Alien and Sedition Acts, which invited suspicion of immigrants and criminalized any critical opinion of the government. Massacring Indians was a favorite sport of Andrew Jackson's, but in order to indulge it he had to act as if Supreme Court decisions had the legal standing of a fugitive slave. His contempt was infectious. "The farce of dealing with Indian tribes," as Jackson put it, meant that none of the 374 treaties signed with Native Americans by 1868 were worth more than the feathers they were inked with. By then the nation got busy dealing with the farce of Reconstruction, when lawmaking turned its deceptive wiles on blacks, a political pastime that continues to this day with such legal sophistries as affirmative action and the gerrymandering of "majority-minority" voting districts -- two effective ways of patronizing black participation in society while isolating it in politics. All legal, all seemingly constitutional, for now.

With blacks effectively re-repressed and few Indians left to chase at the turn of the 20th century, the federal government's medieval instincts turned to organized labor and working-class whites, who were managing more than PR victories against trusts and corporations. Their whiteness was a complication of sorts. Too many Americans

risked identifying with them rather than with the moneyed class that sought to vilify them. The solution was to colorize them, call them "reds," prejudice them with the whiff of socialism, a sure-fire way of rallying the Babbitts and Gatsbys to Wall Street's side of paradise. Methodically, sometimes forcefully, always legally, the populist movement was put down. Bull Moose fever yielded to the fat conservatism of Chief Justice William Howard Taft and the thin presidencies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

What was good for the 1920s was warm-up for the Cold War, when the best way to keep Americans in line was to subject them to loyalty oaths and such repression-loving laws as the Smith Act, a rehash of the Sedition Act, and the McCarren Act, which criminalized any participation in anything deemed (or, more accurately and much more often, imagined) communist. All legal and, for the most part, troubled neither by congressional checks nor by Supreme Court balances. The nation was at one with its liberty-busting fearmongers.

Which brings me to the USA Patriot Act. The law is 342 pages long, or 57,000 words, making it a bit longer than Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" or, if you're partial to pigs, about twice the size of Orwell's "Animal Farm." The Patriot Act is the reigning champion of government's un-American activities. The law wrecks a gener-ation's worth of constitutional protections against government snooping, legalizing police-state tactics in searches and seizures, criminalizing certain forms of speech and political activity, and opening the way to the mistreatment of foreigners in government custody, wholesale expulsions and imprisonment. It is a repugnant, unnecessary law that goes against the very principles its name stands for. Yet, it remains unchecked and unbalanced either by public opinion, lawmakers or the courts (one low-level federal court's minor exception aside).

So, yes, we're a nation of laws. But the laws aren't much to speak of when they're designed to hoodwink the public and win its docility. Neither is public responsibility much to speak of these days when its docility is secured with nothing more than a ploy-riddled play on the word patriot. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Special Interests Corrupt What Is and Isn't News

04.28.04 (11:22 am) [edit]

[b]Special Interests Corrupt What Is and Isn't News [/b]

In the spring of 1990, Philip Morris circulated a top-secret proposal suggesting that the nation's biggest cigarette manufacturer acquire a news company such as Knight Ridder in order to "improve the climate for the marketing and use of tobacco products."

Luckily, Big Tobacco never acquired Big Media, and the nation was saved from the prospect of newspapers run by the Marlboro Man. Since then, the threat of special interests' owning news outlets hasn't gone away. In fact, it has come closer to reality.

Earlier this month, at its annual meeting in Pittsburgh, the National Rifle Association (NRA) launched NRANews.com, a private news company that offers a daily Internet talk show and plans to acquire TV and radio stations.

NRA President Wayne LaPierre was candid about the goal: to give the NRA's media arm the same legal recognition as a mainstream news organization, so that it can push pro-gun views and candidates without the pesky constraints of the campaign-finance law's ban on certain donations.

In the U.S., there are few legal restrictions on who can own news outlets. After all, defense contractor General Electric owns NBC. So who's to say Wal-Mart or ExxonMobil — or Philip Morris, for that matter — shouldn't own a national television network or newspaper chain? There's little stopping political advocacy groups, either.

[b]More than the mike [/b]

When Ronald Reagan uttered his famous line — "I paid for this microphone" — during a New Hampshire primary debate nearly 25 years ago, he probably never imagined that one day a prominent Democrat — former vice president Al Gore, who, with a business partner, recently bought the tiny digital-cable channel Newsworld International — would own not just the microphone, but also the whole news organization.

What's legally possible, though, isn't necessarily desirable. In a nation already bitterly divided along partisan lines, we don't need more media bias. An overtly political press is a clear step backward — to the 19th century, to be precise, when parties openly subsidized newspapers. And we certainly don't need to muddy the already-fuzzy line between public relations, advertising and news.

The NRA is one of the biggest magazine publishers in the country and trumpets its views through ads, news releases, newspapers and a slickly produced Web site. What it doesn't do — and shouldn't do — is pretend it is providing "news."

President Bush was correct when he described the news media as "the filter." That is, in fact, the journalist's job: to gather information from a variety of sources and put it through a fine-mesh screen to sift out inaccuracy, untruth, imbalance and unfairness.

[b]'The truth' [/b]

The NRA, cigarette manufacturers and advocacy groups of all stripes aren't interested in "the truth." Their aim is to persuade the public of a point of view without being forced to answer uncomfortable questions from reporters.

As long as the Federal Election Commission can say with a straight face that NRA News isn't really just a vehicle for political advertising, the gun lobby may, in fact, get its wish. Many Americans will, no doubt, shrug at the notion of politicians owning news organizations. They distrust the media anyway and figure everyone is biased, so what's so awful about that bias being out in the open?

But that misses the point. The NRA's recent action corrupts the conventional definition of "news" and takes us one step closer to a world in which self-interested information generated by a swelling chorus of hawkers, hucksters and hacks is sold as journalism.

For lobbies and private interests to wrap themselves in the cloak of dispassionate news gathering when what is actually being practiced is PR and political advocacy is the ultimate cynical act. It demeans the journalistic craft and mocks the democratic principle that for self-governance to work, citizens must have access to accurate information.

The cigarette manufacturers never got their "filter," but the gun lobby may yet get its shot. If so, the American people and journalism stand to lose.

[b]Susan E. Tifft teaches journalism and public policy at Duke University and is the co-author of 'The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times'. [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Special Interests Corrupt What Is and Isn't News

04.28.04 (11:21 am) [edit]

Earth's Riches Should Help the Poor: Ground Rules for the World Bank

04.28.04 (11:19 am) [edit]

[b]Earth's Riches Should Help the Poor: Ground Rules for the World Bank [/b]

It is a cruel irony that countries around the world that suffer from some of the highest rates of poverty, disease, corruption, violent conflict and human rights troubles are also - at least on paper - some of the richest. Paradoxically, their wealth in natural resources like oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds and copper, has helped fuel many of their problems.

Economists call this phenomenon the "resource curse" or the "paradox of plenty" and have struggled for years to come up with ways to deal with it. Now after much study and analysis, the World Bank, the world's most important poverty-reduction institution, has perhaps the best opportunity ever to help poor countries break out of this trap. But for this to happen, its board of directors and its president, James Wolfensohn, must exert the leadership necessary to assure that the earth's riches help the world's poor.

Some countries have been able to convert their natural wealth into improved standards of living for their citizens. But in the vast majority of cases, this has not happened. The money generated from natural resources has helped perpetuate civil wars, as in Sierra Leone and Angola, or has been squandered by corrupt government officials - perhaps most spectacularly in Nigeria, which lost which lost an estimated $4 billion in government funds, 90 percent derived from oil, during the dictatorship of Sani Abachi in the 1990s.

In addition, the spills of oil and toxic chemicals used in mining, such as cyanide, can cause grave damage to poor communities near mines or oil installations that depend on subsistence farming or fishing to sustain themselves. Such communities rarely see any “trickle down” benefits from such operations. A lack of transparency in accounting for oil and mining revenues makes graft and corruption harder to address effectively.

The World Bank has played a central role in opening the economies of poor countries to investment by foreign oil and mining companies. The bank's theory has been that such investment would generate the money needed by poor countries to help lift them out of poverty.

The reality has proven far different. According to several studies, including some by the bank itself, poor countries that depend on oil and mining resources actually grow more slowly than those that do not. Additionally, they have lower education and higher malnutrition rates and a much greater tendency to violent conflict.

To its credit, the World Bank began to recognize these problems several years ago. In 2000, prodded by environmental and human rights organizations, the bank began a major review of its policies for its oil and mining projects.

The review, conducted by a former Indonesian environment minister, Emil Salim, produced a sweeping set of recommendations for overhauling the bank's involvement in these sectors. These include doing more to protect human rights, requiring that oil and mining companies obtain the consent of local communities before setting up operations and avoiding investing in areas of conflict.

These recommendations are reasonable and necessary if the World Bank wants to improve the impact of its investments. These changes have broad support from a range of interests, including religious leaders, renewable energy companies, socially responsible investment firms and nongovernmental organizations such as Oxfam and the World Wildlife Fund, as well as local organizations from around the world.

If implemented, these policy reforms could dramatically change the way the bank does business in the oil and mining sectors and could significantly improve the chances that this natural wealth could benefit the poorest populations. But to overcome the inertia of the bank's bureaucracy - which has squelched previous reform efforts - Wolfensohn and the World Bank's shareholders must take steps now to ensure the adoption of the review's recommendations.

The time for action is now. The world's poorest, who suffer daily from the negative impact of these industries while being denied the benefits they could bring, cannot wait any longer.

[b]Archbishop Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and Jody Williams in 1997[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Earth's Riches Should Help the Poor: Ground Rules for the World Bank

04.28.04 (11:18 am) [edit]

Beware the Fossil Fools

04.27.04 (3:10 pm) [edit]

[b]Beware the Fossil Fools

The Dismissal of Climate Change by Journalistic Nincompoops is a Danger to us All[/b]

[i][b]by George Monbiot [/b][/i] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Picture a situation in which most of the media, despite the overwhelming weight of medical opinion, refused to accept that there was a connection between smoking and lung cancer. Imagine that every time new evidence emerged, they asked someone with no medical qualifications to write a piece dismissing the evidence and claiming that there was no consensus on the issue.

Imagine that the BBC, in the interests of "debate", wheeled out one of the tiny number of scientists who says that smoking and cancer aren't linked, or that giving up isn't worth the trouble, every time the issue of cancer was raised.

Imagine that, as a result, next to nothing was done about the problem, to the delight of the tobacco industry and the detriment of millions of smokers. We would surely describe the newspapers and the BBC as grossly irresponsible.

Now stop imagining it, and take a look at what's happening. The issue is not smoking, but climate change. The scientific consensus is just as robust, the misreporting just as widespread, the consequences even graver.

If it is true, as the government's new report suggested last week, that it is now too late to prevent hundreds of thousands of British people from being flooded out of their homes, then the journalists who have consistently and deliberately downplayed the threat carry much of the responsibility for the problem. It is time we stopped treating them as bystanders. It is time we started holding them to account.

"The scientific community has reached a consensus," the government's chief scientific adviser, Professor David King, told the House of Lords last month. "I do not believe that amongst the scientists there is a discussion as to whether global warming is due to anthropogenic effects.

It is man-made and it is essentially [caused by] fossil fuel burning, increased methane production... and so on." Sir David chose his words carefully. There is a discussion about whether global warming is due to anthropogenic (man-made) effects. But it is not - or is only seldom - taking place among scientists. It is taking place in the media, and it seems to consist of a competition to establish the outer reaches of imbecility.

During the heatwave last year, the Spectator made the case that because there was widespread concern in the 1970s about the possibility of a new ice age, we can safely dismiss concerns about global warming today.

This is rather like saying that because Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's hypothesis on evolution once commanded scientific support and was later shown to be incorrect, then Charles Darwin's must also be wrong.

Science differs from the leader writers of the Spectator in that it learns from its mistakes. A hypothesis is advanced and tested. If the evidence suggests it is wrong, it is discarded. If the evidence appears to support it, it is refined and subjected to further testing. That some climatologists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, and that the idea was dropped when others found that their predictions were flawed, is a cause for confidence in climatology.

But the Spectator looks like the Journal of Atmospheric Physics compared to the Mail on Sunday and its Nobel laureate-in-waiting, Peter Hitchens. "The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist," he wrote in 2001. "There is as yet no evidence for it." Perhaps Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from that of Mars.

That some of the heat from the sun is trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by gases (the greenhouse effect) has been established since the mid-19th century. But, like most of these nincompoops, Hitchens claims to be defending science from its opponents. "The only reason these facts are so little known", he tells us, is (apart from the reason that he has just made them up), "that a self-righteous love of 'the environment' has now replaced religion as the new orthodoxy".

Hitchens, in turn, is an Einstein beside that famous climate scientist Melanie Phillips. Writing in the Daily Mail in January, she dismissed the entire canon of climatology as "a global fraud" perpetrated by the "leftwing, anti-American, anti-west ideology which goes hand in hand with anti-globalization and the belief that everything done by the industrialized world is wicked".

This belief must be shared by the Pentagon, whose recent report pictures climate change as the foremost threat to global security. In an earlier article, she claimed that "most independent climate specialists, far from supporting [global warming], are deeply skeptical". She managed to name only one, however, and he receives his funding from the fossil fuel industry.

Having blasted the world's climatologists for "scientific illiteracy", she then trumpeted her own. The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which collates the findings of climatologists) is, she complained, "studded with weasel words" such as "very likely" and "best estimate". These weasel words are, of course, what make it a scientific report, rather than a column by Melanie Phillips.

If ever you meet one of these people, I suggest you ask them the following questions: 1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide? 2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide influence global temperatures? 3. Will that influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide? 4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide? It would be interesting to discover at which point they answer no - at which point, in other words, they choose to part company with basic physics.

But these dolts are rather less danger ous than the BBC, and its insistence on "balancing" its coverage of climate change. It appears to be incapable of running an item on the subject without inviting a skeptic to comment on it.

Usually this is either someone from a corporate-funded thinktank (who is, of course, never introduced as such) or the professional anti-environmentalist Philip Stott. Professor Stott is a retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent skeptics he has never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the "lies" of ecofundamentalists.

This wouldn't be so objectionable if the BBC made it clear that these people are not climatologists, and the overwhelming majority of qualified scientific opinion is against them. Instead, it leaves us with the impression that professional opinion is split down the middle. It's a bit like continually bringing people on to the program to suggest that there is no link between HIV and Aids.

What makes all this so dangerous is that it plays into the hands of corporate lobbyists. A recently leaked memo written by Frank Luntz, the US Republican and corporate strategist, warned that "The environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable... Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need... to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue."

We can expect Professors Hitchens and Phillips to do what they're told. But isn't it time that the BBC stopped behaving like the public relations arm of the fossil fuel lobby?

Beware the Fossil Fools

04.27.04 (3:09 pm) [edit]

Beware the Fossil Fools

04.27.04 (3:08 pm) [edit]

Face the Iraq Fiasco, Senator

04.27.04 (3:06 pm) [edit]

[b]Face the Iraq Fiasco, Senator [/b]

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

That was the crucial question Vietnam combat veteran John Kerry put to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 33 years ago, and it is the question that should be at the center of his presidential campaign.

Today, however, Kerry seems unable to admit that the war he voted to authorize in Iraq has been such a disaster, arguing only that we must "stay the course." Why, when that was the tragic advice from the best and brightest in the Lyndon Johnson administration?

In proposing a long-overdue appeal to the United Nations and NATO to make them real partners in the rebirth of Iraq and take — in his words — the "Made in America" label off what has become a very unpopular occupation, Kerry gets some things right that the president has gotten so wrong. Unfortunately, however, the Democrats' heir apparent is still taking far too much solace in the conventional wisdom, which brought us the sorrows of the Vietnam War.

"Americans differ about whether and how we should have gone to war," Kerry said in a national radio address April 17. "But it would be unthinkable now for us to retreat in disarray and leave behind a society deep in strife and dominated by radicals. All Americans are united in backing our troops and meeting our commitment to help the people of Iraq build a country that is stable, peaceful, tolerant and free."

Wasn't that our stated goal in Vietnam? The repetition of history here is tragic. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who wrote a searing acknowledgment of the folly of the Vietnam War in his own autobiography, deceived the U.N. last year in support of another ill-fated military adventure in the so-called developing world. We now see a similarly intelligent war veteran, Kerry, seeking to send more troops to a country that he must know, from his own war experience, will not stay pacified.

In the birthplace of civilization, we have again run aground on the rocky shoals of nationalism, this time augmented by a religious fervor that increases the danger. As with Vietnam, escalation is not the answer. But an orderly and timely withdrawal is — under U.N. supervision and with the firm goal of leaving Iraq to the Iraqis.

Beyond postulating "tactical" solutions in Iraq, like sending our troops more body armor, Kerry needs to take a huge step and acknowledge that his own support of this war was a terrible mistake.

Sure, he was lied to repeatedly by a president who told us a year ago under a "Mission Accomplished" banner that "we have defeated an ally of Al Qaeda," when he knew we had done no such thing. But Kerry had all the resources to know what many inside and outside the United States' own family of intelligence agencies were saying long before last year's invasion: Iraq no longer had a nuclear weapons program, had no ties to 9/11 and would be a nightmare to occupy.

Although Kerry claims "all Americans" would agree it is "unthinkable" to leave Iraq any time soon, he fails to acknowledge that having more than 100,000 of American troops hunkered down in the Middle East is not a force for stability in the region but rather a lightning rod for violence and chaos.

He is even urging the government to send more U.S. troops to Iraq and keep them there until that country, which has little or no history of democracy, is "stable, peaceful, tolerant and free."

Such rhetoric may sound good on the stump, but it utterly fails to acknowledge that we have no clue as to how long that would take or how many Americans and Iraqis would die in the experiment. In the Vietnam War, millions died before our hubris was exhausted.

In the end, if Kerry is not to become the next Al Gore — triangulating safe positions just this side of a Republican who is probably the most irresponsible American politician in a century — he must challenge President Bush's entire vision, not just his tactics. What Bush is doing in the name of fighting terrorism has nothing to do with making us safer and everything to do with dressing up the grim goals of empire as a grand (and all-too-familiar) experiment in bringing enlightenment to so-called backward people at gunpoint.

To have a real choice in this election, we need to hear the voice of that young Navy hero who once warned us that murderous meddling in other countries' affairs will never win the hearts and minds of the people.

If Kerry fails to truly confront Bush and is elected, he may find himself answering his own awful question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

[b]Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times and is coauthor of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" (Seven Stories Press/Akashic Books, 2003). [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Still on Catastrophe's Edge

04.27.04 (8:58 am) [edit]

[b]Still on Catastrophe's Edge [/b]

As we continue to grapple with the United States' vulnerability to terrorist attack, we fail to recognize the most serious danger, one that is overlooked by politicians and emergency management agencies alike. Thousands of Russian nuclear warheads are targeted on the U.S.

How can this be, after the end of the Cold War nearly 15 years ago? Unfortunately, the targeting strategy of Russia and the United States has changed little, despite a profound change in relations between these two nations.

Most people believe that the threat of nuclear attack — whether by accident, human fallibility or malfeasance — has disappeared. Yet a January 2002 document from the U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office, titled "Prototypes for Targeting America, a Soviet Military Assessment," states that New York City, for example, is the single most important target in the Atlantic region after major military installations.

A U.S. Office of Technology Assessment report, commissioned in the 1980s, is still relevant. It estimated that Soviet nuclear war plans had two one-megaton bombs aimed at each of three airports that serve New York, one aimed at each of the major bridges, two at Wall Street and two at each of four oil refineries. The major rail centers and power stations were also targeted, along with the port facilities.

It's also instructive that a recent Federal Emergency Management Agency report on nuclear-attack preparedness contains a map that depicts New York City obliterated by nuclear blasts and the resulting firestorms and fallout. Millions of people would die instantly. Survivors would perish shortly thereafter from burns and exposure to radiation.

And New York would not be the only devastated city. According to a report on nuclear war planning by the National Resources Defense Council, Russia aims most of its 8,200 nuclear warheads at the U.S., and the U.S. maintains 7,000 offensive strategic warheads in its arsenal, most of which are targeted on Russian missile silos and command centers. Each of these warheads has roughly 20 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Of the 7,000 U.S. nuclear warheads, 2,500 are maintained on hair-trigger alert, ready for launching. In order to effectively retaliate, the commander of the Strategic Air Command has only three minutes to decide if a nuclear attack warning is valid. He has 10 minutes to find the president for a 30-second briefing on attack options. And the president has three minutes to decide whether to launch the warheads and at which targets, according to the Center for Defense Information. Once launched, the missiles would reach their Russian targets in 15 to 30 minutes.

A nearly identical situation prevails in Russia, except there the early warning system is decaying rapidly. As always, the early warning systems of both countries register alarms daily, triggered by wildfires, satellite launchings and solar reflections off clouds or oceans. A more immediate concern is the difficulty of guaranteeing protection of computerized early warning systems and command centers against terrorists or hackers.

The two nuclear superpowers still own 96% of the global nuclear arsenal of 30,000 nuclear weapons. It is clear that their nuclear planning and ongoing targeting are the major threats to national security.

The Senate and House armed services committees and foreign relations committees must address these ongoing and unresolved threats to the people of the U.S. and, indeed, the planet.

Russia and the U.S. are now self- described allies in their fight against global terrorism. Their first duty in this effort should be immediate and rapid bilateral nuclear disarmament, accompanied by the other six nuclear nations (France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan and Israel), along with U.N. Security Council action to ensure that no other nations — particularly Iran and North Korea — acquire nuclear weapons.

According to Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a clear road map for nuclear disarmament should be established. Time is not on our side.

[b]Robert McNamara was secretary of Defense for presidents Kennedy and Johnson. Helen Caldicott is a pediatrician and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Still on Catastrophe's Edge

04.27.04 (8:57 am) [edit]

Still on Catastrophe's Edge

04.27.04 (8:56 am) [edit]

Bush Hypocrisy: New Study Shows Bush Budget Short-Changes U.S. Army in Iraq

04.27.04 (8:52 am) [edit]

[b]New Study Shows Bush Budget Short-Changes U.S. Army in Iraq [/b]

In the May 3rd issue of [i]Newsweek[/i], http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4... an unofficial study by a defense consultant, now circulating through the army, shows that U.S. soldiers do not have military vehicles, equipment or armor needed for protection against Iraqi uprisings— consequently that has meant 25% more American casualties in Iraq.

The study cites that of the 190 killed by landmines, improvised explosive devices, or rocket-propelled grenade attacks, "almost all those were killed while in unprotected vehicles, which means that perhaps one in four of those killed in combat in Iraq might be alive if they had had stronger armor around them." Additionally, "thousands more who were unprotected have suffered grievous wounds, such as the loss of limbs."

Bush, however, continues to withhold funding that military officials say is desperately needed to plug shortfalls in armor and protection equipment.

Instead of following through on his promise to give the military the urgently needed protection equipment, Bush has left major funding holes in the most basic areas.

Military commanders just last week desperately begged Congress just last week to fill key shortfalls left by the President's budget.

They pointed out a $132 million shortfall for bolt-on vehicle armor, an $879 million in shortfall for combat helmets, and a $40 million shortfall for body armor. Meanwhile, according to the Chicago Tribune, the White House has "dramatically reduced the number of Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in Iraq," even as the fighting intensified, leaving troops to "ride in lightly protected Humvees, trucks and troop carriers" which are much more vulnerable to attack. - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

For full citations and links to the cited documents, visit: www.misleader.org.

[b]CONTACT: [/b]MoveOn.org
Kawana Lloyd, Jessica Smith 202-822-5200

Bush Hypocrisy: New Study Shows Bush Budget Short-Changes U.S. Army in Iraq

04.27.04 (8:48 am) [edit]

Sounding the Alarm: A Republican Icon Criticizes Bush's Lousy Environmental Record

04.26.04 (8:26 am) [edit]

[b]Sounding the Alarm: A Republican environmental icon takes a reasoned swipe at Bush's record.

[i]Russell Train Interviewed By Deborah Ziff [/i][/b]

Hard as it is to believe, many of the nation's most substantive and lasting federal environmental protections were established by a Republican president. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Drinking Water Act – they were all pushed by the Nixon administration in the early 1970s. The EPA itself was formed under Nixon , in 1970, as a strong regulatory body with considerable autonomy and a clear commitment to environmental protection.

Over the last three years, the Bush administration has worked tirelessly to overturn many of those gains. The White House has effectively undercut the EPA's autonomy and credibility, by arrogating the EPA's regulatory function and packing the EPA with former industry lobbyists. A panel of Nobel laureates and prominent scientists recently declared in a report that "the Bush administration is, to an unprecedented degree, distorting and manipulating the science meant to assist the formation and implementation of policy."

Under Bush, the EPA has lost nearly one-fifth of the it's enforcement division, the lowest level on record; fines assessed for environmental violations have dropped by nearly two-thirds; and criminal prosecutions, the government's last resort against the worst polluters, are down by nearly one-third.

Even some Republicans are starting to sound the alarm on Bush's environmental record. One of them is Russell Train, one of the major players in the creation of both federal environmental policies and agencies under Nixon, and the second ever EPA chief, and is still active in environmental causes. Train has written a memoir, Politics, Pollution and Pandas, a fascinating memoir of his experiences as an environmentalist, which, on top of his government service, included a stint as head the World Wildlife Fund.

In the book, Train doesn't hold back from criticizing the Bush administration's environmental record. "During my time as EPA administrator," he has said, "I don't recall a single instance of the White House ever, ever interfering with a regulatory decision I had to make." That Train, at 84 a life-long Republican, feels the need to speak out, shows how far environmental policy and regulation have strayed from their early promise.

Train recently sat down with Mother Jones to share his concerns over Bush administration environmental policy.

MotherJones.com: You say Nixon was pro-environment chiefly because he thought it was necessary politically. Bush doesn't seem to share that assumption. What's changed?

Russell Train: Well of course a lot's changed since Nixon. Public attitudes toward the environment probably have changed somewhat. I think there isn't the sense of urgency in the public with respect to environmental problems today as there was back in the beginning of the 1970s. At that time our environmental protection rules were fairly modest in extent and we were just getting into it, and at the same time we were having big air pollution incidents and we had rivers like the Cuyahoga, outside of Cleveland, catching fire, we had the Santa Barbara oil spill. Lots of very dramatic events that really stirred public anxiety and concern.

I say somewhat facetiously that one reason people aren't so anxious about the environment today is that we put a pretty good job back then of putting a lot of protections into place. That's when we had the air and water pollution control acts. And the endangered species act, safe drinking water act. There's a whole myriad of initiatives, many of them taken at the instance of the Nixon White House. I was very much involved in that.

Nixon personally, probably was not an environmentalist. In many ways, I think you could say very few people in those days were environmentalists. But he had a shrewd feel for the public pulse. He knew this was an important issue and he seized it. It sort of showed how the political people in those days recognized that the American people really cared about the environment. I don't think there's a sense of urgency today. Of course right now there are a lot of other things that are all over the press all the time -- none of them, to my mind, as fundamental as the need to protect the human environment and to get human society living in a sustainable way and in harmony with nature.

MJ.com: Do you worry that the path taken by this administration and maybe even the Clinton administration before it, but particularly the Bush administration, is undermining the gains that you and Nixon were responsible for putting in place?

RT: Yes. First, I think this administration if it continues on its present course and certainly if it continues for another 4 years, is going to seriously undermine our environmental protections. Now that very likely will set up a storm reaction on the part of the American people. You do get the big swings of public attitude and I think this is very unfortunate because we need a steady course.

MJ.com: What do you make of the rising concern that science in the Bush administration has become politicized?

RT: Well I think it's terrible. I've taken part in some discussions on this issue. The Union of Concerned Scientists recently filed a report – and I signed on to it -- expressing strong objection to the scientific policies --or lack of them -- in the administration, which have led to distortion of science, or ignoring of science, and interference on the part of the White House and decision-making relating to science; and not only in the scientific area, but in the general regulatory area – certainly in the EPA. During this administration we have heard regulatory decisions announced by the White House. That's very peculiar to me. The White House isn't a regulatory agency; the EPA is. The White House is making political considerations the touchstone of regulatory decisions. We are dealing here with the health and wellbeing of the American people, and politics really shouldn't be a deciding factor. During my time as EPA administrator under both President Nixon and President Ford, which covered a period of well over 3 years, I don't recall a single instance of the White House ever, ever interfering with a regulatory decision I had to make.

The American people badly need an EPA that they can have confidence in and that's credible. White House interference is going to undermine the credibility of the regulatory agency and what is already happening is that your career people, with scientific strength, or technological capacity, tend to become frustrated, and they leave. Again, you get long-term damage, you also, I might add, raise the possibility that new people will be put in to these jobs that have an ideological fix. That would be terrible.

MJ.com: Is there any precedent for this kind of political interference?

RT: Now we see just a steady pattern of behavior in that regard in which the White House is intruding all the time in making regulatory decisions. Today it seems to be commonplace that a whole range of lobbyists and special interests suddenly become appointed to really very high policy-making roles, assistant secretary, under secretary, and so forth. I had no experience with that when I was at EPA. These were solid professional people many of whom had been in government, not lobbyists. Now we see for example in the department of the Interior, the assistant secretary responsible for forest policy is a former top lobbyist of the paper and pulp industry. This is an extraordinary revolution in the way government behaves. And I don't think its right.

MJ.com: What's behind this politicization?

RT: I think there is ideological bias here. I think doubtless it's a payback to special interests who supported the president's election campaign. And I think there's a built-in bias at the top in this administration against the environment.

MJ.com: The Pentagon has now recognized that global climate change is actually a security issue. Does that represent an opening for environmentalists?

RT: I think it does. The risks that we run from climate change are probably far greater risks of long-term damage and destruction to this country than almost any military risk that can be described. I don't think most people appreciate the extent of damage to the economy, the whole fabric of our society if some of these projections that are being made were to come about. People tend to say we can't afford to worry about the environment because we are focused on national security, well, perhaps, as this report says, global warming is a greater threat to national security in the United States than any other possible thing at the present time.

There have been sufficiently reputable studies of this issue by our own National Academy of Scientists for example, that one would look to for guidance in a problem of this kind. And the tendency of this White House has been to brush that off. President Bush described it as the work of bureaucrats. Well, that's not true for one thing, but even if it were, that was a great mistake to brush off a study of that kind. It's going to be hard to get the public's attention and steer this country in a wise way without strong leadership at the top. There's just no question about it. Difficult decisions have to be made.

MJ.com: Could people have an influence?

RT: I think it's very important that the people of this country speak up on this issue. There seems to be a tendency for people to turn off, because there's so much else in terms of news and issues. But this is a fundamental issue.

I'll go back and again quote from my book, Politics, Pollution and Pandas, that Nixon devoted one third of his 1970 State of the Union message the environment, compared to the last State of the Union message which did not have a word on the environment in it, in there Nixon said "the environmental cause is as fundamental as life itself." He was 100 percent right. This is an extremely important matter that will affect the wellbeing, and maybe even ultimately the survival, of future generations.

I recently met with a group of students last week at American University in Washington, and I told them it was vitally important if they were of voting age they should register and make sure their voices were heard. Make a difference.

MJ.com: Do you have any thoughts on how John Kerry would do on the environment?

RT: Kerry has a very good environmental voting record. The League of Conservation Voters, I think, gave him 100 percent rating, which is a little unusual. He's very sensitive to the environmental issue, and he knows a great deal about it. But I'm not taking part in Democratic politics. I still consider myself a Republican. Somebody asked me at another radio interview if I left the Republican Party. I said I didn't feel that way; I said I thought the Republican Party had left me.

MJ.com: Given the Bush administration's record, do you think the environment will be a big issue in the election?

RT: Well I certainly think it could well be. I was surprised in the last election that it played such a small part. In the debate, for example, Gore, who had made sort of a career out of being an environmental advocate, didn't make this a key issue in the campaign at all.

MJ.com: What would you say is the biggest threat to the environment today?

RT: The biggest threat is global warming. That can have impacts on this country that are mind-boggling: Rising sea levels, changing climate, loss of species, destruction of agriculture, drying out of presently very productive agricultural lands. The rest of the developed world, with the exception of Russia, all of Europe, Japan, Canada, has recognized global climate change as an imminent threat. Only the U.S. has refused to do so. At the same time, the United States is contributing more, by far, to the existence of this threat, than any other country on the face of the globe. I think some Europeans would say the biggest threat to the world environment is the U.S. I think it's an unhappy day that the U.S. is not in a position of world leadership on an issue that is of such critical importance.

MJ.com: Do you think the environmental movement is doing all it can to raise awareness?

RT: The fact the country is not really keyed up over this issue leads me to feel the environmental community is not doing enough. I don't think you can put the whole blame on them -- it's a tough one. Every environmental organization has such a huge set of issues to deal with dealing with that the global warming message tends to get lost in the background noise. You can't stop doing all these other things, they are all individually extremely important. But I think maybe we should learn to speak more with one voice on the climate issue.

Certainly the average citizen needs to speak up. But we also need leadership in the government because we have to deal with important issues of fuel economy and our automobile fleet. It's shocking. We're going backwards. We are worse off today then when I was in government 30-some years ago as far as fuel economy is concerned. I happen to be given a ride home last night in a hybrid car that gets 60 miles a gallon -- a car that sells for $20,000. Why don't we go in this direction? It seemed to drive beautifully to me. Obviously we need to make a huge investment, reinvestment on the part of the automobile industry. These are things that have to be transitioned, be extremely wrenching, costly, and probably disruptive to the labor force. But these are issues we have to deal with. And they can be dealt with. The answers are really there, it's not as if we have no idea what to do. It's just a matter of political will.

MJ.com: Is there a free-market case to be made for clean, renewable energy?

RT: Yes, I think to the extent we can harness market forces -- and I think we have to – it's all for the good. But I've never felt that market mechanisms can take the place of regulatory functions. For example if you are dealing with a highly toxic chemical, you don't want to leave that to the market place to decide its use. I think mercury is something that comes into it. The administration's proposal with respect to air emissions of mercury is to leave it to a cap- and-trade approach. Personally I have a farm alongside Chesapeake Bay and I know the impact of airborne mercury on the bay is severe. Most of the fish have high levels of mercury. I think this is something for example, that needs to be regulated, and really not left to market mechanisms.

MJ.com: When you spoke with the students at American University, did you have any voting advice for them?

RT: I think they got the message. I don't think I had to tell them. I make no bones about the fact that I would have great difficulty voting for this administration, or voting for this president. I had very, very high regard for his father. Still do. He's a fine person, served his country well. But I just feel the present situation is intolerable. - http://www.motherjones.com/ne...

Sounding the Alarm: A Republican Icon Criticizes Bush's Lousy Environmental Record

04.26.04 (8:23 am) [edit]

Anti-Christian Bush Hates The Natural World Created By God!!!

04.26.04 (8:22 am) [edit]

Sounding the Alarm: A Republican Icon Criticizes Bush's Lousy Environmental Record

04.26.04 (8:20 am) [edit]

Falluja, Najaf and the First Law of Holes

04.26.04 (8:16 am) [edit]

[b]Falluja, Najaf and the First Law of Holes[/b]

Anyone who believes that April has been the cruelest month of this Iraq war - 111 Americans killed with the total dead now at 718, hundreds upon hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed - should gird themselves for the reality that the worst, the very worst, the unimaginably awful, is still yet to come.

It is bad enough that this second Bush war in Iraq has yielded nothing of what was promised by George and his merry crew. There are no weapons of mass destruction, there was no connection between the deposed Hussein regime and al Qaeda, there was no connection between Hussein and September 11, there will be no democracy for Iraq, and the Iraqi people have most definitely not welcomed us with open arms.

Instead, Bush has mobilized anti-American sentiment to such a staggering degree that Shi'ite and Sunni, enemies for generations past counting, have united to fight us. The invasion and occupation has spurred an al Qaeda recruitment drive that has swelled the ranks of that organization. A lot of people are dead, American and British and Spanish and Polish and Iraqi alike. Nine Americans and 28 Iraqis were killed this weekend alone. The light at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming freight train.

That's not the worst part, however. The worst part is yet to come, in two cities called Falluja and Najaf. Americans paying attention to the spiral of violence in recent weeks will recognize those names, for they have been at the center of heavy combat since the month of April began. Bush administration officials, rocked back on their heels by the eruption of death there, were forced at one point to sue for a cease fire with the 'insurgents' they had supposedly defeated last May, when the mission was declared accomplished and the end of major combat operations was declared over during a photo-op on an aircraft carrier several time zones away from the violence.

The cease fire has failed, and American forces are at this moment surrounding Falluja and Najaf with the intention of invading these cities and routing the 'insurgents.' A showdown is coming, and nothing good will be made of it.

U.S. military planners have spent many years now studying about and training soldiers for the realities of urban combat. The city of Falluja should be the first chapter in the urban combat strategy binder titled "Worst Terrain Imaginable." The city has nearly 300,000 residents and is made up of a dizzying maze of narrow streets, wide boulevards and back alleys. Most of the apartments have porches that will serve Iraqi snipers and RPG-toting helicopter hunters well. Every neighborhood has a mosque, a school, markets and clinics which, if struck by an errant American bomb, will deliver horrible numbers of civilian casualties.

The politics of the looming Falluja incursion are another thing again. Hajim al-Hassani, of the Iraqi Islamic Party, sits on the American-compiled Iraqi Governing Council, but has little credibility among the people in Falluja. He is seen as not having been able to stop American forces from fighting in that city, and the Iraqi Islamic Party itself has been accused of collaboration with America. The mayor of Falluja, Mahmoud Ibrahim, is disliked by many of the city's residents. He informed officers of the American forces a few days ago that he had no control over Jolan, Hayal Askeri and Shuhada, three sections of the city which make up half its area. In other words, both representatives for this town are basically useless in any effort to call a halt to the attack.

The religious aspect is easily the most explosive element in this matter. Falluja is a Sunni town. Through the almost mystical bungling of the Bush administration, it has become tied to the holy city of Najaf, a Shi'ite stronghold. This city, like Falluja, has been surrounded by American forces and faces imminent attack. If an attack against Najaf is indeed undertaken, the consequences for Iraq, and indeed for the entire Middle East, will be unimaginable.

Najaf is the site of the tomb of Ali, the most important Shi'ite saint. It is a holy city, like Mecca and Medina, and is the symbolic capital for Shi'ites all around the world. If American forces attack Najaf, every Shi'ite on the planet will have a dog in the fight. Iran, a Shi'ite-controlled nation, may well become involved. Shi'ite religious leaders will issue fatwas demanding massive numbers of suicide attacks against Americans.

Do the math.

American forces attack Falluja, and become ensconced in a brutal street-to-street fight within the confines of that maze-like city. 300,000 civilians will be caught in the crossfire, and the resulting carnage will enflame the Iraqi people to a degree not yet seen. American forces will absorb brutal casualties. If the U.S. decides to avoid troop casualties by bombing Falluja in a repeat of Shock and Awe, the loss of civilian life will be beyond severe.

Simultaneously, American forces attack Najaf, a holy city central to the spiritual lives of millions of Shi'ites around the world. An explosion of rage will engulf the Middle East. Iran, which has something resembling a real army, could very well drive across the border to engage American forces that are already stretched. This war, already a ridiculous mess, will become an unmitigated catastrophe.

Anyone who thinks Iraq is a bad situation now should reserve judgment until the end of this week. George W. Bush and his crew have clearly forgotten the First Law of Holes: When you find yourself deep in a hole, stop digging. If this is what Bush meant when he talked about "changing the world" in his recent prime-time press conference, we are all in a great deal of trouble.

[b]William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a [i]New York Times [/i]and international bestselling author of two books - 'War [i]on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' [/i]and [i]'The Greatest Sedition is Silence[/i].'[/b] - http://www.truthout.org/docs_...

Falluja, Najaf and the First Law of Holes

04.26.04 (8:15 am) [edit]

Bush Administration Threatens Choice and Reproductive Rights

04.26.04 (8:12 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Administration Threatens Choice and Reproductive Rights[/b]

On Sunday, April 25, citizens from across the country will descend on Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about President Bush's assault on choice and reproductive rights in the March for Women's Lives. Threats to women's rights and health are present and real, and Americans of all stripes must speak loudly in defense of their freedoms.

[b]1. Abortion is a serious decision that should only be made by a woman in consultation with her doctor.[/b] The government has no business interfering in private medical and life decisions regarding reproduction. Women have the constitutionally protected right to make such fundamental and deeply personal decisions for themselves.

[b]2. President Bush is committed to appointing justices to the U.S. Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v. Wade – the constitutional decision that guarantees the legal right to choose an abortion. [/b]If these constitutional protections fall, at least 17 states are set to outlaw abortion altogether effectively turning women into criminals for exercising control over their own lives and bodies. Before Roe, 1.2 million women per year sought illegal, back-alley abortions and 5,000 women died each year from these procedures.

[b]3. Outlawing abortion is just the beginning of proposed limitations on reproductive freedoms.[/b] Right wing elements in government are trying to pry into private medical records, deny access to contraception like Plan B, and block basic sex education for teenagers. But the maintenance of public health – and basic dignity and decency for women – requires access to comprehensive health care including prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS awareness, and access to abortion and contraception services. - http://www.americanprogress.o...

[b]Also click on "March for Women's Lives" [/b] http://www.americanprogress.o...

Attention on Deck! Violation of Rule 17!

04.26.04 (8:10 am) [edit]

[b]Attention on Deck! Violation of Rule 17![/b]

"[i]It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion[/i]." ~ Paul Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda Minister

Tami Silicio’s photograph of flag draped coffins on their way home from Iraq was meant to send a message of care and respect. When Uncle Sam and Grandpa Rumsfeld complained, her employer, Maytag Aircraft, took action.

Maytag did the only thing it could do and remain part of that honorable band of brothers known as the American defense industry. The company immediately fired Tami Silicio. For good measure and as a sign of everlasting faith and obedience, Maytag gratuitously fired her husband as well.

Tami’s employment dilemma is made even more pointless, because the Air Force itself had one week earlier released hundreds of pictures of the caskets of American servicemen and women coming home from Iraq. With a Freedom of Information Act request, 34-year-old Russ Kick, continues to make history. His website at TheMemoryHole.org (mirror site) provides 361 Air Force photographs of funereal processions and ceremonies taking place at Dover AFB since February 2003.

For this small flirtation with honesty, the Air Force is now in hot water with the higher ups at the Pentagon.

For thirteen years the Pentagon has had a blackout policy for coffin photos. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense John Molino explains. "This policy of no photos has been in effect since 1991….It has been tested over time and it reflects what families tell us that they would like as far as treatment of shipment of remains."

"Quite frankly, we don't want the remains of our service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice to be the subject of any kind of attention that is unwarranted or undignified."

Unwarranted, undignified, disrespectful, unbecoming? None of the pictures remotely approach that. Perhaps what Molino meant to say is we really can’t have Americans reminded of the incredible human overhead already paid – and more bills due daily – for the Bush-Cheney misadventure in Iraq.

Using "what the families want" to justify the media lockdown is Goebbelian Pentagonese at its most subtle and restrained. It is a tragedy that the ship of State, commandeered by the Chief Executive and his gnomic little team of soft-bellied war-worshipping brainiacs, cannot apply that thinking to the other things the families want.

Things like adequate training, suitable protective gear, fact-based intelligence, honest military leadership, a real war plan that applies to the real situation, an exit strategy. Well, at least we can be buoyed and uplifted because the Pentagon cares about what wives, husbands, parents, siblings and children want – after it has all become immaterial.

Indeed, photographs and other evidence of the deaths of hundreds of young Americans are, as Rumsfeld might put it, "very unhelpful." For the State to allow their release also violates Goebbels’ 17th rule of propaganda, which says, "Propaganda to the home front must diminish the impact of frustration."

I guess the nation can take comfort in the fact that the rest of Goebbels’ 19 rules of propaganda are being followed magnificently. Now if we could only shut down the Internet....

[b]Karen Kwiatkowski [send her mail] is a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, who spent her final four and a half years in uniform working at the Pentagon. She now lives with her freedom-loving family in the Shenandoah Valley, and writes a bi-weekly column on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for militaryweek.com[/b]. - http://www.lewrockwell.com/kw...

Bush Administration Threatens Choice and Reproductive Rights

04.26.04 (8:03 am) [edit]

'Revelations of Bush-Saudi family ties disturbing'

04.25.04 (10:34 am) [edit]

[b]'Revelations of Bush-Saudi family ties disturbing'[/b]

Why the Bush White House cooperated so assiduously with Bob Woodward for his new book, Plan of Attack, remains puzzling. Woodward's career has been unique: Having gotten a taste for changing history with his early 1970s Watergate reporting, he continues to want to be a player in current events, not merely history's chronicler.

Woodward's first book on the Bush presidency, Bush at War, was considered a plus for President Bush. But why was that book aided by the White House?

One answer, of course, is that Bush's handlers decided Woodward could write a book without the president's approval, so by cooperating they could help shape it. Woodward is a curious hybrid: an investigative reporter who values the status quo. He is the official scribe of Washington power politics. Woodward's books are written in a mock heroic style, shorn of editorial comment, which anoints all the participants with grandeur and gravitas -- especially, in the case of Bush at War, President Bush.

Since the Watergate days, Woodward has been dogged by rumors that he has ties to the CIA, because his military service included intelligence work in the vicinity of Gen. Alexander Haig, who became President Richard Nixon's last chief of staff and one of the perennial candidates suspected of being ''Deep Throat,'' the principal source for Woodward and Carl Bernstein's Watergate work. Nonetheless, Woodward seems sympathetic to those in the CIA who think the agency is being misused and abused, this time by its director, George Tenet.

Woodward and his books embody the Washington establishment's view of how the world works: They are hymns to the powerful, cartoonlike in the simplicity of their presentation. Woodward's establishment (made up of long-term government and legal insiders and media-world movers and shakers) turned against Bill Clinton at the end of his besieged presidency, concluding that Clinton was just too ''Arkansas'' for its taste.

Some of Woodward's revelations in Plan of Attack confirm the obvious, but they have to be taken seriously.

And serious they are. The most shocking is not Bush's march to war in Iraq beginning shortly after taking office, since that by now is well-known and hardly disputed. It is the Bush administration's ongoing close ties to the Saudis, and the remarkable fact that Prince Bandar was shown the Iraq war plan and told that the war was on before Secretary of State Colin Powell was informed it was a go.

Even more disturbing, Woodward writes of the Saudis' pledge to ''fine-tune oil prices over 10 months to prime the economy for 2004'' to help ensure a second term for Bush.

Of all the venom aimed by the Republican's far-right legions at Bill Clinton, accusations that he took money and had corrupt relationships with shady foreign figures lurking around Little Rock were particularly prominent.

Over the years, the Saudi royal family and the Bush family have been so close they appear related. Today's high gas prices allow the Saudis to take their profits now. They will barely notice the dip that will take place in the fall, and after Nov. 5 the prices will be able to rise again.

During the Iraq invasion, our military made use of the high-tech underground command-and-control bases we built in Saudi Arabia over the years, and our government continues to look the other way even after the Saudis nurtured 15 of the 19 terrorists who manned the 9/11 attacks; and it looks the other way as the Saudi royal family suppresses whomever it wishes and enriches those it chooses to, including the Bush family and its circle.

Those in Woodward's establishment consider such circumstances business as usual: Some people always profit off of others' misery.

But, given Woodward's book, it appears that Washington's power brokers harbor some discontent. That might be because the bellicose Bush brigade is not showing the requisite competence to handle all they bit off. The chewing has been hard and unsightly for a while. Woodward's book might be an attempt to correct such behavior, a signal to announce a Trump-like, ''You're fired'' to George Tenet. If the public doesn't care about the message, Woodward and those he represents do. And they expect the Bush White House to pay attention.

[b]The Chicago Sun-Times:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/orourke/cst-ed t-rour25.html" title="http://www.suntimes.com/output/orourke/cst-ed t-rour25.html" target="_blank"http://www.suntimes.com/outpu... [/b]- http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

'Revelations of Bush-Saudi family ties disturbing'

04.25.04 (10:33 am) [edit]

Why he quit: Former senior Coalition adviser says Iraq spinning out of control

04.25.04 (10:31 am) [edit]

[b]Why he quit: Former senior Coalition adviser says Iraq spinning out of control[/b]

When Larry Diamond left for Baghdad in January as an adviser to the U.S. occupation authority, he took all the equipment he believed he needed to help construct a hopeful new nation out of the ashes of dictatorship: the academic models he had crafted over the years as an authority on building democracies, and confidence those models would work.

But the jarring reality of Iraq, with its escalating violence and collapsing civic order, forced Diamond to look for a few new tools beyond those listed in the textbooks. When he speaks now of the models for building democratic countries, he stresses a different set of equipment, which he found in short supply: body armor, armor-plated cars, a huge military presence.

The story of Iraq, this onetime optimist believes, is a tale of missed opportunities.

"We just bungled this so badly," said Diamond, a 52-year-old senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "We just weren't honest with ourselves or with the American people about what was going to be needed to secure the country."

Diamond was a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority and spent several initially hopeful months in Iraq -- lecturing on democracy, even in mosques, encouraging people to participate and helping shape laws that embodied his vision. He returned to Palo Alto in early April for a short break, then ran into an emotional brick wall, he said, when he contemplated the mess he had left behind.

Last Thursday, when it came time for Diamond to return, he did not get on the plane.

Instead, he was in his office at the Hoover Tower, disillusioned over the desperate turn of events he had witnessed and what he feels was a country allowed to spin out of control, in large part, he says, because of the Bush administration's unwillingness to commit a big enough force to protect Iraqis from militias and insurgents.

"You can't develop democracy without security," he said. "In Iraq, it's really a security nightmare that did not have to be. If you don't get that right, nothing else is possible. Everything else is connected to that."

Few people would seem better prepared for the job in Iraq than Diamond. He is coordinator of the Democracy Program at Stanford's Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and he has been co-editor since 1990 of the Journal of Democracy. He has done extensive fieldwork in Taiwan and Nigeria.

He said he had initially opposed the war in Iraq because he felt the United States needed broader international support before attacking, but after the main ground fighting ended last April, he was ready to help.

"Once the war was over, I felt we had a moral and political obligation to the Iraqis to try and help build something better," he said. "That was clear in my mind. I didn't agonize over that. I really had something to contribute."

So late last year, after the Bush administration and the provisional authority outlined their plans for writing an interim constitution and handing over sovereignty on June 30, Diamond said he began to speak with officials about playing a role and implementing some of the ideas he had spent his career developing.

Arriving in Baghdad in early January, he said, he was sober-minded about the challenges but encouraged by much of what he found.

"When I got there on the ground, I was actually hopeful as I met some of the young people, women, civic groups, and their eagerness for change," he said.

"It was mind-blowing, really,'' he added. "There were people who wanted to know how to make democracy work. There were so many positive signs. Civil society was very weak, as you'd expect, but it was beginning to reconstitute itself. There was a lot of energy, a lot of passion, a lot of creativity and a lot of desire to learn. I even had a good experience with some mullahs who supported us."

Diamond said that he had some successes. He said he sought to provide female representatives a guaranteed number of seats in the provisional parliament and helped secure for them a 25 percent stake.

He helped strengthen some of the provisions in the interim constitution supporting the development of civic groups to organize people at a grassroots level, and worked to make the new government structure somewhat decentralized as a way of giving minority groups more of a voice and providing opportunities for grassroots participation. And he instructed, while learning.

In January, he outlined the four basic principles of democracy in a speech at Hilla University, discussing such issues as checks and balances and the rule of law. In February, at a conference in Baghdad on decentralization, he presented a 12-point description of how civil society helps build a stronger democracy.

In another address to Iraqis in late March, Diamond called the transitional law, as the interim constitution is called, the right path to "a true democracy," praised the spirit of compromise he found and promised the Iraqis that their nascent democracy would lead the Arab world.

But Diamond said it was around that time that the insurgency grew bolder, that more Americans and Iraqis began to die and that security appeared to be collapsing. He said he shuddered as he began to see other advisers getting killed on the same roads he traveled.

And then he had what he describes as a painful, transforming experience.

"I had one of those moments when you cut through all the bull," he said. "I was speaking to this women's group, and one woman got up and asked, 'If we do all these things, who's going to protect us?' " Diamond recalled. "That was the moment when I said to myself, 'Oh my God, some of these women are going to be assassinated because they are here listening to me.' It just struck me between the eyes."

As the violence spread, Diamond said, he felt ever more painfully the mistake the United States had made by not sending in more troops to keep the insurgents at bay.

The American policies basically encouraged Iraqis to stand up -- only to face the threat of being mowed down for doing so, he said.

"It was totally hypocritical of us to do one and not the other," Diamond said of the lack of security.

As a result, he said, democratization suffered potentially fatal setbacks. He was angry, he added, not just because optimistic Iraqis were being killed, but because the downward spiral was preventable.

His recommendations for rescuing the situation run counter to some of the policies that the Bush administration insists it will not alter. Diamond said that, in his view, the United States must more than double its current military force of about 135,000 and confront the violent Iraqi militias consistently, while offering political benefits to those who lay down their arms and accept democratic institutions.

The best he can say about the prospects in Iraq now is that, as he puts it, "civil war is not inevitable."

Diamond said that, realistically, he never expected a flawless democracy to emerge in just months. It was more likely, he said, that the legacies of traditional Arab society and dictatorship would have produced some rigged elections, corruption and sporadic violence. But with greater security, there would have been, at the least, a constitution and a more flexible and responsive government.

None of that is likely to happen now, he said, without significantly more American troops and a more assertive military stance.

"The literature stresses the overwhelming need to get the security under control," Diamond said. "Nothing that happened could not have been anticipated. I don't think we were applying the lessons of the past as systematically as they should have been, to put it as politely as possible."

[b]E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com. San Francisco Chronicle [/b]- http://www.smirkingchimp.com/...

Why he quit: Former senior Coalition adviser says Iraq spinning out of control

04.25.04 (10:30 am) [edit]

U.S. Civilians Confront U.S. Military in Najaf, Iraq

04.25.04 (10:27 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. Civilians Confront U.S. Military in Najaf, Iraq[/b]

As numerous people from nonprofit organizations working in Iraq evacuated the country during the past week, an independent emergency delegation of U.S. civilians was preparing to enter the conflict-torn nation,traveling to the tense stand-off around Najaf, where the U.S. military recently deployed almost 3,000 troops for a looming assault to crush Shiite rebels there.

The Najaf Emergency Peace Team, "Peace Between Peoples", a handful of determined volunteers from several well-established peace/global justice/human rights and religious organizations, has now arrived in the area, to place themselves "nonviolently, symbolically and physically" between the U.S. armed forces massed nearby and the civilian population of the ancient holy city - in the way of any American military assault.

The delegation has received messages of encouragement from religious and community leaders in south-central Iraq, including an advisor to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. "We understand the dangers of our journey, but we are determined to try and contribute in our own small way to peace and justice for the people of Najaf and Iraq. Only when peacemakers are willing to shoulder some of the same risks that soldiers take in war, can we begin to move away from the cycle of violence that grips human society at the dawn of the 21st century," says the group's statement.

Meg Lumsdaine, Peter Lumsdaine, Mario Galvan, Trish Schuh, and Brian Buckley - of California, New York and Virginia, respectively - are now in south-central Iraq to carry out their peace mission.

Rev. Meg Lumsdaine is an ordained Lutheran pastor who has previously been involved in human rights delegations to Latin America and Iraq. Peter Lumsdaine is coordinator of the Military Globalization Analysis Project and organizer of the Najaf delegation. Mario Galvan, a high school teacher, is a national board member of Peace Action, with 100,000 members throughout the U.S., and a founding member of the Zapatista Solidarity Coalition. Trish Schuh co-founded the Military Families Support Network in 1990 and was involved in Military Families Speak Out. Brian Buckley is a carpenter and member of the Little Flower Catholic Worker community.

The Najaf emergency delegation can be contacted for interviews and more information by e-mail (mariogalvan44@hotmail.com), as their peace witness and nonviolent challenge to the U.S. military assault plan unfolds in the days ahead.

[b]CONTACT: [/b] Peace Action
Scott Lynch 703.735.5680 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

U.S. Civilians Confront U.S. Military in Najaf, Iraq

04.25.04 (10:26 am) [edit]

Vatican & Pope Warn Fascist Bush: End Your 'Logic of Death' in Iraq

04.24.04 (6:59 am) [edit]

[b]Vatican: End 'Logic of Death' in Iraq, Mideast, Pope Says[/b]

Amid some of the tightest security ever seen at the Vatican, Pope John Paul issued an Easter condemnation of terrorism Sunday and urged world leaders to bring peace to Iraq and other flashpoints.

Speaking to tens of thousands of people in St Peter's Square and tens of millions of television viewers and radio listeners, he railed against "a logic of death" pervasive in the world.

"May (humanity) find the strength to face the inhuman, and unfortunately growing, phenomenon of terrorism," he said in his "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message.

The long shadow of the conflict in Iraq reached as far as St Peter's Square this year with an Easter season that has been marked by unprecedented security for fear of an attack at the heart of Christianity or elsewhere in Italy.

Many more police -- in uniform and plainclothes -- were on hand than in the past to check people as they entered the Vatican area.

The Polish pope, who afterward wished the world a Happy Easter in 62 languages -- including Arabic and Hebrew -- painted one of the bleakest pictures of the world that he ever has in his 26 Easters as Roman Catholic leader.

He said the international community had its work cut out for it in trying to deal with conflicts and asked God to sustain world leaders "in their efforts to resolve satisfactorily the continuing conflicts" in Iraq, the Holy Land and Africa.

St Peter's Square was bedecked with the usual thousands of flowers and hundreds of trees donated by the Netherlands but the mood and the pope were decidedly more glum than in the past.

GRAY SKIES, GRAY MESSAGE

Rome was appropriately overcast and unseasonably cold as the pope spoke of a world "troubled by many threatening shadows" and yet still hoping for light and peace.

"Take heed all of you who have at heart mankind's future! Take heed men and women of good will! May the temptation to seek revenge give way to the courage to forgive; may the culture of life and love render vain the logic of death; may trust once more give breath to the lives of peoples," he said.

He wore resplendent gold and white vestments and, although his voice was raspy at the end of a hectic week of activities, he raised it several times to stress his peace appeal.

"If our future is one, it is the task and duty of all to build it with patient and painstaking far-sightedness," he said.

He reminded Christians, Jews and Muslims that they are all children of Abraham and so should "rediscover the brotherhood that they share" and work for peace together.

This Easter season at the Vatican has been marked by unprecedented security for fear of an attack.

Police have sealed manhole covers near St Peter's and diverted traffic at night to thwart possible suicide bombers.

Last week, Italian media reported that intelligence agencies had warned the Vatican that the pope, who was shot in 1981, might be the target of an attack during the Easter period.

Officials have banned small aircraft over Rome for the Easter holidays, with jet fighters and helicopters ready to take to the air within minutes to intercept intruders.

They said precautions were on a new scale this year following the March 11 train blasts that killed 191 people in Madrid and with the deteriorating situation in Iraq, where Italy has some 3,000 troops.

Throughout Italy, some 19,000 police and 4,000 military are on hand to protect more than 13,000 sites that could be targets. - http://mathaba.net/x.htm?http...://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=44014

Bush's Legacy: U.S. Debtor Nation

04.24.04 (6:53 am) [edit]

[b]Debtor Nation[/b]

The backstory for this election year lacks the urgency of war or of defeating George W. Bush but focuses on a most fateful question: When will this hemorrhaging debtor nation be compelled to pull back from profligate consumption and resign its role as "buyer of last resort" for the global economy? The smart money assumes such a momentous reckoning probably won't occur in time to disrupt Bush's re-election campaign, but it may well become the dominating crisis in the next presidential term, whoever is elected. At that point, the United States will lose its aura of unilateral superiority, and globalization will be forced to undergo wrenching change. The American economy, in other words, is in much deeper trouble than most people realize.

The facts are not secret. Despite ebbs and surges, the gap between US exports and imports has been steadily widening across three decades. The trade deficits of the early 1970s (due mainly to soaring oil prices) were trivial in size, but Americans were shocked in 1978 when the deficit hit $30 billion (TV sets and some cars were now made in Japan). During the 1980s, the trade deficit expanded enormously, as Washington's strong- dollar policy crippled US manufacturers and companies moved jobs and production offshore in swelling volume. After a recession and dollar devaluation, the gap shrank briefly, but soon began expanding again.

For several decades, in fact, the federal government has tolerated and even encouraged the dispersal of American production overseas--first to secure allies during the cold war, later to advance the fortunes of US multinationals. No other major economy in the world accepts perennial trade deficits; some maintain huge surpluses. But American leaders and policy-makers are uniquely dedicated to a faith in "free market" globalization, and they have regularly promised Americans that despite the disruptions, this policy guarantees their long-term prosperity. Present facts make these long-held convictions look like gross illusion. By 1998, the trade deficit was back to a new high and expanding ferociously, despite supposed improvements in US competitiveness. Last year it set another new record: $489 billion.

Yet no one running for President has found the nerve to discuss these facts in a straightforward manner. Nor do the candidates have anything to say about how the country might avoid a potential calamity. A few wise heads in finance, like billionaire investor Warren Buffett, have sounded the alarm--Buffett refers to the United States as "Squanderville" and is shifting billions offshore into foreign currencies for safety. Meanwhile, political leaders remain silent.

The US economy, in essence, is being kept afloat by enormous foreign lending so that consumers can keep buying more imports, thus increasing the bloated trade deficits. This lopsided arrangement will end when those foreign creditors--major trading partners like Japan, China and Europe--decide to stop the lending or simply reduce it substantially.

That reckoning could arrive as a sudden thunderclap of financial crisis--spiking interest rates, swooning stock market and crashing home prices. More likely it will be less dramatic but equally painful. As foreign capital moves elsewhere and easy credit disappears for consumers, many Americans will experience a major decline in their living standards--a gradual grinding-down process that could continue for years. If the US government reacts passively and allows "market forces" to make these adjustments, the consequences will be especially severe for the less affluent--families already stretched by stagnating wages and too much borrowing.

Normally, I wouldn't use an economic chart to make my point, but the one you see on page 11 tells the story of America's predicament more effectively than words. Prepared by University of Wisconsin economist Menzie Chinn (and illustrated by Stephen Kling/Avenging Angels), with dollar values adjusted to remove the distortions of price inflation, it's a visual display of the US economy's performance in the global trading system during the past three decades. Year by year, it traces the line of US imports versus the line of US exports. The red ink in between represents America's trade deficits.

The red ink, as you can see, is exploding. The thick red blob in the upper right-hand corner represents our present condition--the record trade deficits of recent years. Starting six or seven years ago, these two lines diverged dramatically: The volume of imports soared, while export growth leveled off. Historically, when a mature economy suffers perennial trade deficits, it is usually understood as a sign of weakness, especially if the deficits keep getting larger.

The red ink can also be read as a rough approximation of America's indebtedness to the rest of the world. Last year the US economy (business and households as well as the federal government) was compelled to borrow $540 billion from overseas creditors. Since the United States first became a debtor nation fifteen years ago, it has accumulated nearly $3 trillion in debt obligations abroad. At the current pace, the foreign debt load will double again in the next six or seven years. You can see why we have depicted the debt as a serpent, rising to strike. The serpent, I suggest, is biting the debtor nation that has fed it. Actually, it ate our lunch.

Leading authorities typically explain what is happening by observing correctly that Americans are collectively "overconsuming"--that is, living beyond their means--but experts assume that "market forces" will eventually correct the situation. Once the global economy regains robust growth, it is said, other nations will buy more US exports. Or, once the dollar has depreciated in value sufficiently, Americans will buy fewer imports. Some even claim the indebtedness is America's good fortune--a sign of strength that other nations are so eager to finance US consumption.

I think the authorities are wrong. When I look at the chart, I see the United States sinking into financial dependency--dangerously indebted to rival nations that are holding our debt paper, collecting the interest on Treasury bonds and private bank loans, or repatriating the profits from companies that used to be American- owned. A very wealthy nation can tolerate this negative toll for many years, but not forever. Unless the historic meaning of debt has been repealed, no nation can borrow endlessly from others without sooner or later forfeiting control of its destiny, and also losing the economic foundations of its general prosperity.

The world at large will be better off, in my view, when Washington is compelled to accept a less dominating role and global political power is dispersed more multilaterally. But the transition itself could be an unsettling, even dangerous time, since the declining economic power also happens to be the pre-eminent military power. In any case, an American reckoning would also have economic consequences for the rest of the world. If the United States were to tap out, the global system would lose its best customer. American consumers have propped up global trade with their open-ended purchases. Now the rest of the world is propping up American consumers, lending them the money to buy still more.

The endgame might be triggered by any number of events--including the financial exhaustion of America's overextended consumers--but the most likely venue is the global trade in capital, not the trade in goods and services. In theory, wealthy countries are expected to ship investment capital to poorer countries to build factories and infrastructure. But at present, most of the world's capital is flowing in reverse: The net inflow of foreign capital to the United States represents a staggering 75 percent of the net outflows from the rest of the world, according to economist Jane D'Arista of the Financial Markets Center. Even more abnormal is that nearly one-fourth of this lending comes from emerging-market nations, led by China, whose trade surplus with America has surpassed Japan's.

Both China and Japan are prodigious financiers of US consumption--the two largest foreign holders of US Treasury bonds--despite the weak returns they get from low US interest rates. China and Japan are willing to do this because they calculate that sustaining their own industrial output and employment is worth more than seeking stronger financial returns elsewhere.

[b]CONTINUE[/b] http://www.thenation.com/doc....

Dangerously Hypocritical Right-wing Theocracy: A Second Disastrous Bush Term

04.24.04 (6:35 am) [edit]

[b]For God's sake

The strong influence of the Christian right on US policy will only increase if George Bush wins a second term, says Philip James [/b] - http://www.guardian.co.uk/use...,13918,1201933,00.html

Evangelical lobbyists used to talk about access to previous Republican administrations. Today, they can say with confidence: "Who needs access when we are already on the inside?"

The influence of the Christian right on the Bush White House is self-evident. As well as George Bush, cabinet members Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft and Don Evans all consider themselves to be born again.

This administration has embarked on a bold agenda to roll back liberalism in the US, and won't let up if it gets a second term.

The September 11 attacks, Afghanistan and Iraq have overshadowed Bush's conservative domestic agenda, but it should not go overlooked by voters as we approach the November elections.

Bush's self-description as a compassionate conservative belies a much harsher reality. And as America's attention has been focused on historic events overseas, the ground at home has shifted just as dramatically.

The administration is acutely aware of the power of the Christian voting block in the US. Gallup surveys consistently count 46% of the population as being self-described born again Christians, the bulk of whom live in middle America.

It is a stunning statistic, and one that escapes the attention of the chattering classes who populate the much less devout coastal strips.

Many of these churchgoers voted for Bush in 2000, and Carl Rove is determined that all of them should do the same this year. The latest data should put a spring in his step - Bush's job approval among grassroots Christian social conservatives hovers between 92% and 96%.

If Bush wins the election, it will mean that, after 30 years as the law of the land, a woman's right to choose to have an abortion will be under serious threat. The ultimate goal of the Christian right is to overturn Roe versus Wade, the landmark 1973 decision enshrining a woman's right to choose.

In the likely event of one of the ageing supremes stepping down in the next few years, the balance of power in the US supreme court will be up for grabs, and Bush will not hesitate to nominate a pro-life candidate. Having already signed a ban on late term abortions, he believes he has the momentum on this issue.

If he wins, he has four more years in which to push a constitutional amendment to "protect" marriage from same-sex unions. He will not have to weigh pre-election expediency against his belief that it is the right thing to do.

If Bush wins, it will mean four more years of Middle East policy influenced by the evangelical belief that the Messiah will not return until Israel rebuilds a temple on the site of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.

It should come as no surprise that there is not much daylight between the beliefs of hardcore evangelicals and the Bush White House.

When asked, during the 1999 Iowa caucus debate, who his favourite philosopher was, Bush replied: "Jesus." At the time, pundits thought this was a canny signal to grassroots religious voters from a sophisticated campaigner. It was - but what people didn't realise at the time is that Bush actually believes it as well.

The story of how he found faith at the bottom of a whisky glass was thought to be a rote rallying yarn intended strictly for the Republican faithful during the campaign. However, Bush has passionately and consistently repeated the story at after-dinner speeches throughout his time in office.

He dispelled any doubts about the strength of his Christian faith during his last press conference on Iraq, when he made it clear that God was personally directing him to fundamentally reshape the Arab world.

As surely as fundamentalism has kept much of the Islamic world in a state of cultural regression, so the fundamentalists of the US threaten to do the same thing in the States.

John Kerry should steal a powerful line from Bush's speech on Iraq and rephrase it thus: "Now is the time, and America is the place, where the forces of fundamentalism are arraigned against the forces of enlightenment."

He should make this election about a choice between two visions: one that wants to take the country to a dark, puritanical tyranny, as opposed to one that wants to restore the US as a light unto nations, a place of freedom, diversity and opportunity.

And he should fire up women voters, the one voting block that rivals the size of the born-agains and tell them: "If you want to protect your right to choose, make sure you choose correctly in November."

Bush's Fascism: The Rising Corporate Military Monster

04.24.04 (6:32 am) [edit]

[b]The Rising Corporate Military Monster [/b]

A corporate military monster is being created in Iraq.

The U.S. government is relying on private military contractors like never before.

Approximately 15,000 military contractors, maybe more, are now working in Iraq. The four Americans brutally killed and mutilated in Fallujah March 31 were part of this informal army of occupation.

Contractors are complicating traditional norms of military command and control, and challenging the basic norms of accountability that are supposed to govern the government's use of violence. Human rights abuses go unpunished. Reliance on poorly monitored contractors is bleeding the public treasury. The contractors are simultaneously creating opportunities for the government to evade public accountability, and, in Iraq at least, are on the verge of evolving into an independent force at least somewhat beyond the control of the U.S. military. And, as the contractors grow in numbers and political influence, their power to entrench themselves and block reform is growing.

Whatever the limitations of the military code of justice and its in-practice application, the code does not apply to the modern-day mercenaries. Indeed, the mechanisms by which the contractors are held responsible for their behavior, and disciplined for mistreating civilians or committing human rights abuses -- all too easy for men with guns in a hostile environment -- are fuzzy.

It is unclear exactly what law applies to the contractors, explains Peter W. Singer, author of Corporate Warriors (Cornell University Press, 2003) and a leading authority on private military contracting. They do not fall under international law on mercenaries, which is defined narrowly. Nor does the national law of the United States clearly apply to the contractors in Iraq -- especially because many of the contractors are not Americans.

Relatedly, many firms do not properly screen those they hire to patrol the streets in foreign nations. "Lives, soldiers' and civilians' welfare, human rights, are all at stake," says Singer. "But we have left it up to very raw market forces to figure out who can work for these firms, and who they can work for."

There are already more than a few examples of what can happen, notable among them accusations that Dyncorp employees were involved in sex trafficking of young girls in Bosnia.

In general, the performance of the private military firms is horribly under-monitored.

Sometimes the lack of monitoring is a boon to the government agencies that hire the contractors. Although there are firm limits on the kinds of operations that U.S. troops can conduct in Colombia, Singer notes, "it has been pretty loosey-goosey on the private contractor side." The contractors are working with the Colombian military to defeat the guerilla insurgency in Colombia -- unconstrained by Congressionally imposed limits on what U.S. soldiers in Colombia may do.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a problem of a whole different sort is starting to emerge.

The security contractors are already involved in full-fledged battlefield operations, increasingly so as the insurgency in Iraq escalates.

A few days after the Americans were killed in Fallujah, Blackwater Security Consulting engaged in full-scale battle in Najaf, with the company flying its own helicopters amidst an intense firefight to resupply its own commandos.

Now, reports the Washington Post, the security firms are networking formally, "organizing what may effectively be the largest private army in the world, with its own rescue teams and pooled, sensitive intelligence."

Because many of the security contractors work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, as opposed to the U.S. military, they are not integrated into the military's operations. "Under assault by insurgents and unable to rely on U.S. and coalition troops for intelligence or help under duress," according to the Post, the contractors are banding together.

Private occupying commandos? Corporate military helicopters in a battlefield situation? An integrated occupation private intelligence network?

Isn't this just obviously a horrible idea?

Given the problems that have already occurred in places like Colombia and Bosnia, the scale and now independent integrated nature of the private military operations in Iraq is asking for disaster, beyond that already inflicted on the Iraqis.

Making the problem still worse is that the monster feeds on itself.

The larger become the military contractors, the more influence they have in Congress and the Pentagon, the more they are able to shape policy, immunize themselves from proper oversight, and expand their reach. The private military firms are led by ex-generals, the most effective possible lobbyists of their former colleagues -- and frequently former subordinates -- at the Pentagon. As they grow in size, and become integrated into the military-industrial complex (Northrop Grumman has swallowed a number of the military contractors, for example), their political leverage in Congress and among civilians in the executive branch grows.

Over the last decade or so, the phenomenon of private military contracting has grown unchecked. We're now at a precipice, with action to constrain the contractors about to become far, far more difficult than if the madness of employing mercenaries had been averted in the first place.

[b]Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter, http://www.corporatecrimerepo... Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor, http://www.multinationalmonit... They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators...).[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Bush's Fascism: The Rising Corporate Military Monster

04.24.04 (6:31 am) [edit]

Bush Event in Florida Exposes Hypocrisy in Wetlands, Clean Water Policies

04.24.04 (6:29 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Event in Florida Exposes Hypocrisy in Wetlands, Clean Water Policies[/b]

The Bush administration approved a development that would destroy hundreds of acres of wetlands at the headwaters of Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve where the President today is touting wetlands restoration. The federal Bush administration rejected concerns that a proposed housing and golf course development would destroy or damage surrounding wetlands on the Gulf coast near the western edge of the Everglades.

"When it comes to the Bush administration's wetlands policy, hypocrisy reigns supreme," said Frank Jackalone with the Sierra Club in Florida. "While the President poses for pictures at Rookery Bay, he turns a blind eye to wetlands destruction just around the corner."

Bush returns to Florida the day after Earth Day to join his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, to promote wetlands restoration where he has faces citizens who are outraged that the special interests of polluting industries are trumping their own health, safety and job security. President Bush will then attend a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser luncheon and another fundraiser tonight in Coral Gables.

"With southwest Florida under more and more pressure from development, we cannot sustain the current pattern of sacrificing Florida's wetlands and clean water to developers," said Jackalone. "Protecting Florida's waters should be a year round priority for both Bush administrations instead of an Earth Day photo-op."

Last fall, Sierra Club, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and many other groups asked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to veto permits requested by the Barron Collier Company for some 2,000 acres of wetlands in southwest Florida. The wetlands are being destroyed to build housing developments and golf courses. The EPA refused to prevent the destruction of these wetlands, despite several violations of the Clean Water Act.

In January 2003, the Bush administration ordered the EPA and the Army Corps of engineers to immediately stop enforcing the Clean Water Act for as many as 20 million acres of wetlands. Although the agencies shelved their proposal to change wetland rules, the nonenforcement directive remains in place. Yesterday, President Bush, on a campaign stop in Maine, pledged to restore or protect 3 million acres of wetlands.

"The Bush administration's proposal to restore wetlands is a contradiction," said Ed Hopkins with the Sierra Club's Environmental Quality program. "While we still need to see the details, it seems clear that we'd be better off if the Bush administration simply enforced the law that's on the books."

Background on Florida's Environment and the Bush Administration's Policies:

EVERGLADES RESTORATION AND MINING

The Bush Administration permitted the first phase of the destruction of approximately 15,000 acres of historic Everglades wetlands for the mining industry. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers calls the proposal the "Lake Belt Plan" in a transparent effort to "greenwash" the horrific consequences: an otherworldly future landscape of huge sterile contaminated pits lining the eastern borders of the Everglades for miles. The Everglades mining plan will destroy critical wetlands. It could detrimentally affect Everglades restoration, harm local drinking water supplies, and shift rising costs to the taxpayer. This year, environmental groups released the results of government testing showing that a massive mining project surrounding Miami-Dade County's largest wellfield could pose a significant and undisclosed threat to the area's drinking water.

MERCURY POLLUTION:

All of Florida's lakes and rivers, and the entire coastline, are under EPA fish consumption advisories for mercury pollution. Mercury is a potent neuro-toxin. New estimates by the EPA indicate that one in six U.S. women of childbearing age has mercury levels in her blood high enough to put her baby at risk -- as many as 630,000 infants are at risk for the effect of mercury poisoning in the U.S. each year. Coal-fired power plants are the largest single man-made source of mercury pollution. The Bush administration wants to allow power plants to spew far more mercury into the air, for decades longer than enforcing our current clean air laws.

POLLUTED WATERWAYS:

In Florida, 712 waterways, including Lake Kissimmee, much of the St. John's River and the Indian River Lagoon, are already too polluted for safe fishing and swimming. Yet, the Bush administration told EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers to stop using the Clean Water Act to protect "isolated" waterways, which would allow polluters to dump more toxic chemicals into streams and developers to drain and fill more wetlands.

TOXIC WASTE SITES:

There are 51 Superfund toxic waste sites in Florida and nearly 600 other toxic waste sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Yet the Bush administration does not support reinstating the "polluter pays" fees that help fund cleanup of abandoned toxic waste sites. In 2004, taxpayers will pay approximately $73 million to pay for cleaning up toxic waste sites caused by polluting industries. The EPA has proposed a plan that weakens the Clean Air Act's New Source Review program as well as weaken and delay the clean up of mercury emissions from the country's 1,100 coal-fired plants. Florida's air quality will worsen. In 2001, Florida's residents breathed unhealthy air on 14 days.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Sierra Club
Frank Jackalone, (727) 804-1317 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush Event in Florida Exposes Hypocrisy in Wetlands, Clean Water Policies

04.24.04 (6:28 am) [edit]

Kucinich Calls for Suspension of Electronic Voting

04.24.04 (6:26 am) [edit]

[b]Kucinich Calls for Suspension of Electronic Voting[/b]

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, who has been sounding warning alarms regarding electronic voting systems since he began his campaign last year, today called on federal, state and local election officials “to suspend immediately the implementation of any voting systems that do not provide a 100 percent reliable paper-trail back-up to corroborate results.”

A decision yesterday by the eight-member California Voting Systems and Procedures Panel that 15,000 electronic voting machines in four counties be banned in the November election because of “glitches” in the March primary election “is more than enough evidence that these systems could undermine the integrity and affect the results of November’s general election,” Kucinich said.

Especially in terms of the Presidential election, Kucinich said, “we cannot entrust the future of our country to technologies that are flawed, suspect, and proven to have failed, especially when those technologies have been developed by companies that have their own political agendas.”

Diebold Election Systems, which came under the harshest criticism from the California elections panel, is headed by Chief Executive Officer Walden O'Dell, who last year became active in the re-election effort of President Bush, even attending a strategy meeting with wealthy Bush benefactors at the President's private ranch in Texas. Soon after, O’Dell wrote a fundraising letter where he said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Although Diebold is the most embattled voting equipment company, Newsday reported that “paperless systems made by Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and other competitors also expose elections to malicious attack, software glitches and mechanical errors that could delete or alter millions of ballots.” The story went on to report a variety of other problems in Indiana, Maryland, and other states. According to Newsday, “Because votes that only exist in electronic form can be altered or deleted, Oregon, New Hampshire and Illinois require paper ballots; and California, Missouri and Nevada will require paper backups on touchscreen terminals by 2006.” The newspaper also reported that “Secretaries of state in Washington and West Virginia are calling for paper trails, while Ohio is reconsidering the switch to new machines.”

Kucinich said he will take his challenges to the newly created federal agency charged with overseeing electronic voting, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, established in January, which will conduct a May 5 public hearing in Washington, D.C. on May 5.

“The technological problems are real,” Kucinich said, “and the potential for further problems, mischief, and outright fraud is equally real, and far more dangerous.”

(Extensive information on electronic voting systems is available at http://www.kucinich.us/e-voti...

[i]For information about the National campaign: http://www.kucinich.us

For Congressman Kucinich's Schedule: http://www.kucinich.us/schedu...
To schedule an interview with Kucinich or spokesperson: interviews@kucinich.us [/i]

[b]CONTACT: [/b] Kucinich Campaign
Matt Harris, 216.403.3980, press@kucinich.us
Terre Lundy, 515.988.5534 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush Lied About Freedom, Democracy and Sovereignty for the Iraqi People

04.23.04 (8:11 am) [edit]

[b]White House Says Iraq Sovereignty Could Be "Limited"[/b]

The Bush administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday.

These restrictions to the plan negotiated with Lakhdar Brahimi, the special United Nations envoy, were presented in detail for the first time by top administration officials at Congressional hearings this week, culminating in long and intense questioning on Thursday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing on the goal of returning Iraq to self-rule on June 30.

Only 10 weeks from the scheduled transfer of sovereignty, the administration is still not sure exactly who will govern in Baghdad, or precisely how they will be selected. A week ago, President Bush agreed to a recommendation by Mr. Brahimi to dismantle the existing Iraqi Governing Council, which was handpicked by the United States, and to replace it with a caretaker government whose makeup is to be decided next month.

That government would stay in power until elections could be held, beginning next year.

The administration's plans seem likely to face objections on several fronts. Several European and United Nations diplomats have said in interviews that they do not think the United Nations will approve a Security Council resolution sought by Washington that handcuffs the new Iraq government in its authority over its own armed forces, let alone foreign forces on its soil.

These diplomats, and some American officials, said that if the American military command ordered a siege of an Iraqi city, for example, and there was no language calling for an Iraqi government to participate in the decision, the government might not be able to survive protests that could follow.

The diplomats added that it might be unrealistic to expect the new Iraqi government not to demand the right to change Iraqi laws put in place by the American occupation under L. Paul Bremer III, including provisions limiting the influence of Islamic religious law.

Democratic and Republican senators appeared frustrated on Thursday that so few details were known at this late stage in the transition process, and several senators focused on the question of who would be in charge of Iraq's security.

Asked whether the new Iraqi government would have a chance to approve military operations led by American commanders, who would be in charge of both foreign and Iraqi forces, a senior official said Americans would have the final say.

"The arrangement would be, I think as we are doing today, that we would do our very best to consult with that interim government and take their views into account," said Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs. But he added that American commanders will "have the right, and the power, and the obligation" to decide.

That formulation is especially sensitive at a time when American and Iraqi forces are poised to fight for control of Falluja.

In another sphere, Mr. Grossman said there would be curbs on the powers of the National Conference of Iraqis that Mr. Brahimi envisions as a consultative body. The conference, he said, is not expected to pass new laws or revise the laws adopted under the American occupation.

"We don't believe that the period between the 1st of July and the end of December should be a time for making new laws," Mr. Grossman said.

As envisioned by Mr. Brahimi, the caretaker government would consist of a president, a prime minister, two vice presidents or deputy prime ministers and a cabinet of ministers in each agency. A national conference of perhaps 1,000 Iraqis would advise it, possibly by establishing a smaller body of about 100 Iraqis.

His plan would supplant an earlier American proposal that would have chosen an Iraqi assembly through caucuses.

Since last November, when the June 30 transfer of sovereignty was approved by President Bush and decreed by Mr. Bremer in Iraq, the United States has insisted that Iraq would have a full transfer of sovereignty on that date.

Mr. Grossman, however, referred in testimony on Wednesday to what he said would be "limited sovereignty," a phrase he did not repeat on Thursday, apparently because it raised eyebrows among those not expecting the administration to acknowledge that the sovereignty would be less than full-fledged.

The problem of limiting Iraq's sovereignty is more than one of terminology, several administration officials said in interviews this week.

The proposed curbs on Iraqi sovereignty are paving the way for what officials and diplomats say is shaping up as another potential battle with American allies as the United Nations is asked to confer legitimacy on the new government.

"Clearly you can't have a sovereign government speaking for Iraq in international forums, and yet leave open this possibility that we'll do something they won't particularly like or disagree with," said an administration official. "There's got to be something to be set up to deal with that possibility."

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the foreign relations panel, and Senator Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat, pressed Mr. Grossman on that point.

European and United Nations diplomats said that because the main task of the caretaker government would be to try to secure the support of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Iraqi Shiite leader whose supporters are unhappy with some of the laws enacted by the Iraqi Governing Council, there may have to be a change in these laws.

Under the basic legal framework pressed by Mr. Bremer, Islam is only one of many foundations of the law. Ayatollah Sistani's supporters want Islam to govern such matters as family law, divorce and women's rights. Mr. Bremer had at one time threatened to veto any such changes, but even some administration officials acknowledge that the idea of telling the new Iraqi government it cannot enact new laws is unrealistic.

A European official familiar with Mr. Brahimi's thinking said the envoy wants the caretaker government and its consultative body "to find a consensus on the fundamental law to make sure Sistani is invested."

"Everybody wants to have Sistani on board," said this diplomat. "For that you'll have to pay a price."

The skeptical tone of the foreign relations hearing was set by the committee's chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, who said that without clearer answers, "we risk the loss of support of the American people, the loss of potential contributions from our allies and the disillusionment of Iraqis."

But Mr. Grossman said Mr. Brahimi's plans were still so vague that they have not yet been put in writing to be incorporated into Iraqi regulations.

Mr. Grossman was also asked what would happen if the new government wanted to adopt a foreign policy opposed by the United States, such as forging close relations with two neighbors, Iran and Syria.

The United States, he replied, would have to use the kind of persuasion used by any American ambassador in any country.

[b]By STEVEN R. WEISMAN, N.Y. TIMES[/b] - http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

Taxpayer Funds for Poverty Reduction Funnelled to Halliburton and Big Oil

04.23.04 (7:59 am) [edit]

[b]World Bank [Directed by Bush & Cheney] Funnels Taxpayer Funds for Poverty Reduction to Halliburton and Big Oil[/b]

The Institute for Policy Studies released a report today that shows most oil projects supported by the World Bank supply industrialized country consumption not developing countries' energy needs and almost all benefit large corporations based in those countries. Halliburton leads the pack of companies benefiting from World Bank energy lending.

"The Energy Tug-of-War: Winners and Losers in World Bank Fossil Fuel Finance" exposes the leading beneficiaries of 133 financial packages, worth over $10.7 billion, approved by the World Bank Group since 1992. The report was written by the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

The World Bank-commissioned Extractive Industries Review (EIR) recently recommended that "The World Bank Group should phase out investments in oil production by 2008." This week, at the World Bank Spring Meetings, civil society representatives will meet with World Bank President JamesWolfensohn and others to urge them to adopt the Review's recommendations. Although the Bank is reportedly considering many of the recommendations, the oil phase-out, in particular, has been met with stiff resistance the bank's management.

"World Bank staff contend that they must keep supporting Big Oil to provide energy for the poor and alleviate poverty" said Steve Kretzmann of the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-author of the report. "This new study shows that Halliburton, not the poor, stands to lose the most ifWorld Bank support for oil is eliminated."

Among the study's key findings regarding World Bank fossil fuel finance since 1992:

-No company has benefited more than Halliburton. IPS research identified thirteen projects, supported by over $2.5 billion of World Bank finance, in which Halliburton is involved, as a contractor, developer or investor.

-Six of the top 12 beneficiaries are U.S. corporations: Halliburton, Chevron, Texaco, ExxonMobil, Bechtel, Unocal, and Enron. The United States government is the largest World Bank shareholder.

-Most of the oil feeds the global North's growing demand, and does nothing to provide energy for poor nations. The IPS examination of the Bank's portfolio finds that 82 percent of these projects are export-oriented.

"World Bank oil finance is consistent with long established Washington-driven goals for energy lending: to diversify oil supplies for Northern consumption, and to open developing country oil fields to Northern companies. In this regard, the World Bank has carried out its mission with precision and success," said Jim Vallette of the Institute for Policy Studies and the report's co-author.

The report is available online at the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. http://www.seen.org/ SEEN is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Institute for Policy Studies
Steve Kretzmann 202-497-1033
Jim Vallette 646-522-1605 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Ducking Responsibility: Bush Has Forfeited The Right To Be President

04.23.04 (7:56 am) [edit]

[b]Ducking Responsibility [/b]

FOR DECADES, conservative Republicans have hectored single mothers on welfare, sexually active teenagers and disadvantaged minorities to stop blaming others and to take responsibility for their own lives.

I agree that we should take responsibility for our actions. So how come top Bush officials have refused to take responsibility for what they have or have not done?

During her evasive testimony before the Sept. 11 commission, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice sounded like a stereotypical liberal as she repeatedly blamed "structural" problems (rather than actual people) for intelligence failures. She also described the Aug. 6, 2001, "Presidential Daily Briefing," or PDB, as "historical information based on old reporting. There was no new threat information."

Excuse me, but the title alone -- "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U. S." -- should have sent shock waves through her office. The intelligence community does not give morning "history backgrounders" to the president. This particular memo, in fact, contained specific information about active threats. Yet, according to Rice, there was nothing more she could have done to prevent the terrorist attacks.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, another member of this responsibility- phobic administration, said that no one could have predicted that the war in Iraq would turn into such a dangerous occupation. Oh, really? Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki told Rumsfeld that he needed several hundreds of thousands more troops. He was then sent into retirement.

Now, Rumsfeld says he is surprised about "the way it happens to be today. " To which Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, responds, "Anyone could know the problem they were going to see. How could they not?"

Rice and Rumsfeld are guilty of gross incompetence and should resign.

Then there is President Bush, whose recent press conference demonstrated his tortured relationship with reality. "The PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat," he said.

Just what doesn't he understand about, "determined to strike"? That memo should have sent the president flying back to the capital to put the nation on a "war footing." But this is a president who is so detached from the job that he has spent 40 percent of his time in office either at Camp David, Md., at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, or the Bush family retreat in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Bush didn't need to apologize to the nation, but he should have been willing to admit that everyone, including the president, can always do more, even if we eventually fail.

Asked if he had made any recent mistakes, the president couldn't even summon up one of his most serious blunders:

-- His determination to wage war in Iraq has left Afghanistan a failed nation, propped up by the sale of opium poppies and ruled by rival warlords.

-- His rush to end the U.N. weapons inspections, coupled with his "conviction" that Iraq had WMDs, resulted in few plans for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

-- His unilateralism and policy of pre-emptive war have alienated our traditional allies and inflamed much of the Islamic world.

No one can truly know if the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented. Even the most attentive administration, less fixated on tax cuts, missile defense and Iraq, could have failed to connect all the dots.

It's what happened after Sept. 11 that demonstrates this administration's incompetence.

As former Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill, former counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke and now Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, in his new book, "Plan of Attack," have all confirmed, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had their eyes on Iraq since they took office in 2001.

Instead of working with the international community to eliminate the al Qaeda threat, and reconstruct Afghanistan, Bush hijacked a national tragedy so that he could topple Hussein and install a government that would assure the United States of a Mideast base and access to Iraq's oil.

Whether or not you support the president or the war, it is hard to argue that Bush has demonstrated competence as a chief executive in pursuing these goals.

Bush is also guilty of breathtaking arrogance. Here is a man who shirked his own military responsibility, swaggered as he played a hero in a flight suit and then told the enemy, with adolescent bravado, to "bring it on." Yet this is a man who is too insecure to admit he could have done more and too timid to face the Sept. 11 commission without Cheney at his side.

Bush's deceptions and betrayal of the public trust after Sept. 11 may or may not constitute impeachable crimes. But he has certainly forfeited the right to govern our nation.

November can't come soon enough.

[b]By Ruth Rosen, San Francisco Chronicle[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Neo-conservatives Now Call Themselves 'Neo-liberals', But They Are Neither ...

04.23.04 (7:52 am) [edit]

[b]Going Back Where They Came From [/b]

"If we have to make common cause with the more hawkish liberals and fight the conservatives, that is fine with me," William Kristol has told the[i] New York Times[/i].

[i]The Weekly Standard [/i]editor added that the neoconservatives may just abandon the Right altogether and convert to neo-liberalism.

Alluding to his father Irving's definition of a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality, Kristol describes a neoliberal as a "neoconservative who has been mugged by reality in Iraq."

Ranking his political preferences, Kristol added, "I will take Bush over Kerry, but Kerry over Buchanan....If you read the last few issues of [i]The Weekly Standard[/i], it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives."

Yes, it does. But as John Kerry backs partial birth abortion, quotas, raising taxes, homosexual unions, liberals on the Supreme Court and has a voting record to the left of Teddy Kennedy, how can Kristol prefer him to other conservatives? Answer: War and Israel.

Like Kristol, Kerry wants more U.S. troops sent to Iraq where they can advance the neocons' project for empire. And at a fund-raiser in Juno Beach, Fla., Kerry declared eternal fealty to Israel: "I have a 100 percent record – not a 99, a 100 percent record – of sustaining the special relationship and friendship that we have with Israel."

Kristol's warning that the neocons could break with the Right and go to Kerry is an admission of what many conservatives have long argued. To neocons, Israel comes first, second, and third, conservative principles be damned.

The day after Kristol said he preferred Kerry to conservatives skeptical of committing more troops to Iraq, this item appeared in[i] The Wall Street Journal[/i]:

"[i]Mr. Kristol thinks Mr. Bush should use the revelations [from the Woodward book] to shake up his war cabinet by firing Mr. Powell...along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who has pushed for smaller deployments of U.S. forces than some critics, including Mr. Kristol, think wise[/i]."

Set aside the suicidal folly of Bush dynamiting his war cabinet in an election year by firing its most famous members, and consider the ingratitude, the ruthlessness, and the cynicism on display here.

When it was launched in 1995, The Weekly Standard called on Colin Powell to run for president and offered its endorsement. Purpose: Hook up with the most popular man in the GOP who could restore the neocons and Kristols to preeminence and power. Powell rebuffed the offer. Ever since, he has been a target of abuse for having repelled the boarding party.

As for Rumsfeld, he has been a hero of neoconservatives for two decades. He co-signed the neocons' 1998 open letter to Clinton urging war on Iraq. He brought Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith into his Pentagon in the No. 2 and 3 slots. He put Perle in charge of the Defense Review Board. After 9/11, according to Richard Clarke, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were making the case for attacking Iraq immediately, even before Bush had ousted the Taliban enablers of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.

Agree or disagree with the defense secretary, Rumsfeld has been a lion in the neocon cause. To see the [i]Weekly Standard[/i] snake on him like this brings to mind that wretched crowd in Yankee Stadium that took to booing Joe Dimaggio at the end of his career.

With Iraq turning into the Mesopotamian morass some of us warned it would become, the neo-Jacobins have decided they are not going to be the ones to ride the tumbrels.

In times like this character comes through. By turning on the men they persuaded to go to war, by fabricating alibis and inventing excuses to absolve themselves of culpability for what they labored to create, they have revealed themselves for what they are: hustlers and opportunists devoid of principle, driven by an ideology of power and a passionate attachment to a nation not their own.

The Old Right curmudgeons who warned us against giving these vagabonds food, shelter and a warm place by the fire were right. We should have put them back out on the street.

President Bush should have listened to his father who kept the neocons at some remove, and he had best beware, because they have a major card yet to play. That card is escalation.

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the neocon agenda is to widen the war into Syria, Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and convert it into "World War IV," the war of their dreams, a war of civilizations, an Armageddon, with America and Israel on one side and Islam on the other.

Exiting Iraq with honor and avoiding the wider war for which the neocons are even now scheming is the first duty of patriots.

[b]By Patrick J. Buchanan[/b], http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?a...

The Bible College That Leads to the White House

04.22.04 (7:33 am) [edit]

[b]The Bible College That Leads to the White House

The campus is immaculate, everyone is clean-cut and cheerful. But just what are they teaching at Patrick Henry College? And why do so many students end up working for George Bush? [/b]

It is worth making clear from the outset that Patrick Henry College in rural Virginia is not your average American university. At Patrick Henry, the students - about 75 per cent of whom have been taught at home rather than in schools - are required to sign a statement of faith before they arrive, confirming (among other things) that they have a literal belief in the teachings of the Bible. At Patrick Henry, students must obey a curfew. They must wear their hair neatly and dress "modestly".

Students must also obey a rule stating that if they wish to hold hands with a member of the opposite sex, they must do so while walking: standing while holding hands is not permitted. And at Patrick Henry, students must sign an honor pledge that bans them from drinking alcohol unless under parental supervision.

Yet these things alone do not make the college special. There are, after all, a number of Christian establishments across the United States that enforce such a strict fundamentalist code for their students.

No, what makes Patrick Henry unique is the increasingly close - critics say alarmingly close - links this recently established, right-wing Christian college has with the Bush administration and the Republican establishment as a whole. This spring, of the almost 100 interns working in the White House, seven are from Patrick Henry. Another intern works for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, while another works for President George Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove. Yet another works for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Over the past four years, 22 conservative members of Congress have employed one or more Patrick Henry interns. Janet Ashcroft, the wife of Bush's Bible-thumping Attorney General, is one of the college's trustees.

And this is no coincidence. Rather, it is the very point. Students at Patrick Henry are on a mission to change the world: indeed, to lead the world. When, after four years or so of study, they leave their neatly-kept campus with its close-mown lawns, they do so with a drive and commitment to reshape their new environments according to the fundamentalist, right-wing vision of their college.

Critics say that Patrick Henry's system cannot help but produce narrow-minded students with extremist views, but the college's openly stated aim is to train young men and women "who will lead our nation and shape our culture with timeless biblical values".

Nancy Keenan, of the liberal campaign group People for the American Way, says: "The number of interns [from Patrick Henry] going into the White House scares me to death. People have a right to choose [where their children are educated], but we are concerned that they are not exposed to the kind of diversity this country has. They are training people with a very limited ideological and political view. If these young people are going into positions of power, they have to govern with all people in mind, not just a limited number."

It is also worth making clear that the staff and students at Patrick Henry College are extraordinarily pleasant. The campus itself lies in the small town of Purcellville, about 90 minutes' drive west of Washington DC, amid rolling hills and anonymous commuter communities. The campus is small - there are currently only 240 students, all of them white - and dominated by one large building that houses the classrooms, library and cafeteria where the students and staff take their meals. On one wall is a copy of a famous painting of the revolutionary war hero after which the college is named, 10 years before he made the "Give me liberty or give me death" speech for which he is best known. Students are required to attend "chapel" every morning.

The college was established in 2000 by Michael Farris, who runs the Home School Legal Defense Association, itself set up in 1983 to promote the values of Christian home-schooling as an alternative to what he and others considered the increasingly secular and irreligious culture taking hold in America's public schools. Farris - a lawyer who, with his wife, home-schooled their 10 children - is a protégé of Tim LaHaye, well known in the American Christian community as a veteran conservative evangelical author and preacher.

The association has since grown in numbers and influence. It now has 81,000 families, each paying dues of $100. Last year, when George Bush signed legislation banning so-called "partial-birth abortion", Farris was one of five Christian conservatives invited to witness the act in the Oval Office. The college gets so much money from right-wing Christian donors that it operates without debt and yet charges just $15,000 (£8,300) a year for tuition - about $10,000 less than comparable institutions.

Farris, who is also the president of Patrick Henry, was unavailable for an interview when we visited his establishment, but he has told The New York Times: "We are not home-schooling our kids just so they can read. The most common thing I hear is parents telling me that they want their kids to be on the Supreme Court. And if we put enough kids in the system, some may get through to the major leagues."

The man entrusted with the education of Patrick Henry's students is Paul Bonicelli, a former staffer on the House of Representatives international relations committee and now the college's dean of academic affairs. He, too, is terribly pleasant. "I am just sorry that the most important thing we do did not get mentioned," he says, referring to an article in an American newspaper that focused on the strict behavior code. "And that is to provide a very good liberal arts education." He adds: "I think the most important thing is our academic excellence, [and that we] combine it with a serious statement about our faith and values."

Before being hired by Patrick Henry, all members of the teaching faculty, too, have to sign a pledge stating that they share a generally literalist belief in the Bible. Oddly, only staff teaching biology and theology have to hold a literal view specifically of the six-day creation story. And what is Bonicelli's own view? He smiles. "I am basically persuaded by the young Earth. I believe in six literal days, but I remain open to someone persuading me otherwise."

Internships or apprenticeships, which all students are required to do in their final year, form a major part of their courses. Many spend time working for Republican members of the House or Senate, or in the White House. Only one student has interned for a Democrat. "Most students' values don't link up with [those of] the Democrats," Bonicelli says.

"Values" are something the students here seem to think about an awful lot - values and focus. Indeed, it must be rare to find a group of students so apparently focused as those at Patrick Henry. (Perhaps they are mindful that the admissions document they sign warns that "Satan exists as a personal, malevolent being who acts as tempter and accuser".)

"It's a very focused campus," confirms Marian Braaksma, 21, a charming, third-year creative and professional writing student, who was home-schooled by her parents in Arizona until the age of 18. "We know why we are here and we want to learn everything we can here. The professors give us a great opportunity to learn. We do work awfully hard; more than most colleges."

But what about student life? What about having fun, what about those usual student experiences that one might struggle to enjoy while obeying the rule about hand-holding and walking? What about those aspects of student life that I, frankly, felt a little too embarrassed to ask about directly? "We do have fun, but it is not the sort of student life of a normal college," insists Braaksma. "There are no heavy parties, we have a curfew. But there are sports and games. It is a very musical college. We have a drama team. We also have a debate team that does very well. Mr Farris has said the debate team is our college sports team. Often we will stay up to welcome them back if they have been away debating against another college."

On a tour of the campus, we bumped into a bright young man called Jordan Estrada, from Pennsylvania. Estrada, 18, carried a book entitled Systematic Theology. He had played the part of Creon in Sophocles' Greek tragedy Antigone when it was performed recently by the drama team. He said he was interested in science fiction and wanted to be a writer.

Why had he wanted to study at Patrick Henry? "A lot of what they teach in public schools is not based in reality. I am a believer in creation," he says. Did that belief lead to a conflict with his pursuit of science? "None whatsoever. I have discussed this and spoken to many scientists and I found that there is no contradiction."

A little further on we stopped to speak to Leeann Walker from San Diego, a 20-year-old due to be among the college's first students to graduate next month. Unlike most of the students, Walker had not been home schooled, but she had nothing but praise for her friends who had. "I have found them to be some of the most responsible, most hardworking people I have ever met," she says.

Walker says she feels the college has prepared her for the real world, and that she is looking to work for one of the many conservative think tanks in Washington. "The mindset of most students is of denial of reality. They want to stay in their own, self-centered world for as long as possible."

It was at this point, walking past the single-sex dormitories and the campaign posters of suited students running for college office, towards the main building with its classrooms of attentive students, that one was struck with a sense of being on a film set. One could not help but recall the 1998 film Pleasantville, in which two teenagers are transported back to their parents' 1950s town of bland, unquestioning niceness.

The staff and students at Patrick Henry may laugh at this - if, that is, they have seen the film. The MTV and VH1 pop-culture channels are blocked from campus televisions, because their contents are considered inappropriate. The students' computers are set up with a program called Covenant Eyes, which monitors the websites they visit.

For all the warm welcomes, for all the smiles, for all the openness, there is something a little unsettling about Patrick Henry and the cultish devotion of its students. This is, after all, an establishment that claims to challenge its students to think for themselves, and yet establishes a fixed, rigid framework - both culturally and intellectually - in which they are to operate.

But, to its critics, what is perhaps most striking about this small, influential college with its self-confidence and focus, and its links with America's neoconservative political elite, is its utter transparency. Patrick Henry College is an institution devoted to spreading its word, spreading its view of the world, and helping to place its students in positions of authority and influence. And it does so in plain view.

[b]By Andrew Buncombe, UK Independent[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Highly Radioactive Fuel Rods Missing at Vermont Nuke Plant

04.22.04 (7:31 am) [edit]

[b]Highly Radioactive Fuel Rods Missing at Vermont Nuke Plant [/b]

Two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod are missing from a Vermont nuclear plant, and engineers planned to search onsite for the nuclear material, officials said Wednesday.

The fuel rod was removed in 1979 from the Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance. Remote-control cameras will be used to search a spent fuel pool on the property, officials said.

"We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the pool," said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.

But Sheehan said it was possible the spent fuel was mixed in with a shipment of low-level nuclear waste and ended up at a repository in South Carolina, or a facility in Washington state. He said it was also possible it was taken to a nuclear testing facility run by General Electric, which designed the plant.

The material would be fatal to anyone who came in contact with it without being properly shielded, Sheehan said. Spent nuclear fuel also could be used by terrorists to construct so-called dirty bombs that would spread deadly radiation with conventional explosives.

The NRC is helping plant officials in the search. The rod was part of the fuel assembly used to power the reactor. One of the missing pieces is about the size of a pencil. The other piece is about the thickness of a pencil and 17 inches long.

"It would be very difficult to remove this material from the site without somebody knowing about it," Sheehan said. "It would set off radiation monitors."

Sheehan cited the heightened awareness of the need to control nuclear material that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. "We don't want this falling into the wrong hands," he said. "This is something we would never take lightly."

Gov. James Douglas, after speaking Wednesday afternoon with the head of the NRC, said he was "very concerned" about the missing fuel at the plant, run by Entergy Nuclear.

"This situation is intolerable," he said in a statement.

In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for.

Vermont Yankee is located in the southeastern town of Vernon, on the border with Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

The state's Public Safety Department and Homeland Security Unit also were notified of the missing fuel.

[b]The Associated Press [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Nuclear Hero's 'Crime' Was Making Us Safer

04.22.04 (7:29 am) [edit]

[b]Nuclear Hero's 'Crime' Was Making Us Safer [/b]

Mordechai Vanunu is the preeminent hero of the nuclear era. He consciously risked all he had in life to warn his own country and the world of the true extent of the nuclear danger facing us. And he paid the full price, a burden in many ways worse than death, for his heroic act — for doing exactly what he should have done and what others should be doing.

Vanunu's "crime" was committed in 1986, when he gave the London Sunday Times a series of photos he had taken within the Israeli nuclear weapons facility at Dimona, where he had worked as a technician.

For that act — revealing that his country's program and stockpile were much larger than the CIA or others had estimated — Vanunu was kidnapped from the Rome airport by agents of the Israeli Mossad and secretly transported back for a closed trial in which he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

He spent the first 11 1/2 years in solitary confinement in a 6-by-9-foot cell, an unprecedented term of solitary under conditions that Amnesty International called "cruel, inhuman and degrading."

Now, after serving his full term, he is due to be released today. But his "unfreedom" is to be continued by restrictions on his movements and his contacts: He cannot leave Israel, he will be confined to a single town, he cannot communicate with foreigners face to face or by phone, fax or e-mail (purely punitive conditions because any classified information that he may have possessed is by now nearly two decades old).

The irony of all this is that no country in the world has a stronger stake than Israel in preventing nuclear proliferation, above all in the Middle East. Yet Israel's secret nuclear policies — to this day it does not acknowledge that it possesses such weapons — are shortsighted and self-destructive. They promote rather than block proliferation by encouraging the country's neighbors to develop their own, comparable weapons.

This will not change without public mobilization and democratic pressure, which in turn demand public awareness and discussion. It was precisely this that Vanunu sought to stimulate.

Not in Israel or in any other case — not that of the U.S., Russia, England, France, China, India or Pakistan — has the decision to become a nuclear weapons state ever been made democratically or even with the knowledge of the full Cabinet. It is likely that in an open discussion not one of these states could convince its own people or the rest of the world that it had a legitimate reason for possessing as many warheads as the several hundred that Israel allegedly has (far beyond any plausible requirement for deterrence).

More Vanunus are urgently needed. That is true not only in Israel but in every nuclear weapons state, declared and undeclared. Can anyone fail to recognize the value to world security of a heroic Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian or North Korean Vanunu making comparable revelations?

And the world's need for such secret-telling is not limited to citizens of what nuclear weapons states presumptuously call rogue nations. Every nuclear weapons state has secret policies, aims, programs and plans that contradict its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1995 Declaration of Principles agreed to at the NPT Renewal Conference. Every official with knowledge of these violations could and should consider doing what Vanunu did.

That is what I should have done in the early '60s based on what I knew about the secret nuclear planning and practices of the United States when I consulted at the Defense Department, on loan from the Rand Corp., on problems of nuclear command and control. I drafted the Secretary of Defense Guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the general nuclear war plans, and the extreme dangers of our practices and plan were apparent to me.

I now feel derelict for wrongfully keeping secret the documents in my safe revealing this catastrophically reckless posture. But I did not then have Vanunu's example to guide me.

When I finally did have an example in front of me — that of young Americans who were choosing to go to prison rather than participate in what I too knew was a hopeless, immoral war — I was inspired in 1971 to turn over a top- secret history of presidential lies about the war in Vietnam to 19 newspapers. I regret only that I didn't do it earlier, before the bombs started falling.

Vanunu should long since have been released from solitary and from prison, not because he has "suffered enough" but because what he did was the correct and courageous thing to do in the face of the foreseeable efforts to silence and punish him.

The outrageous and illegal restrictions proposed to be inflicted on him when he finally steps out of prison after 18 years should be widely protested and rejected, not only because they violate his fundamental human rights but because the world needs to hear this man's voice.

The cult and culture of secrecy in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu's challenge to that wrongful and dangerous secrecy must be joined worldwide.

[b]Daniel Ellsberg, a former State Department and Defense Department official, released the 'Pentagon Papers' to the press in 1971 [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Gap in Basic Consumer Safeguards Encourage Offshoring

04.22.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

[b]Gap in Basic Consumer Safeguards Encourage Offshoring [/b]

Tax season generates enough anxiety for many without adding a serious new concern: is your most vital personal financial information about to go public worldwide to be used by who knowns whom for who knows what purposes because you had you taxes done professionally?

This spring, an estimated 200,000 federal and state tax returns, all of which contain sensitive personal information, were completed offshore. This is not a new phenomenon; over the last few years accounting firms around the U.S. have sent a growing portion of simple tax prep work overseas.

The accounting industry has largely embraced offshoring as the future of tax preparation. CCH, the industry's leading provider of tax information and software, endorses offshoring as it reduces or eliminates the "tax season staffing spikes in most CPA" firms and results in lower per-unit cost for tax preparation.

Unfortunately, the cheaper wages paid workers in the developing countries where the work is being relocated are not being passed on to the tax paying consumer. The cost to the consumer for standard tax preparation is practically unchanged even as more returns are prepared abroad-- approximately $150 in 2004 and 2003 and usually based primarily on the tax refund received by the customer.

More alarming is the implication for the privacy of consumers' most vital financial information when accounting work is offshored beyond the reach of U.S. privacy law. A recent study by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch describes the threat and proposes some solutions.

The serious privacy problems surrounding offshoring of work involving information subject to U.S. federal law privacy protections have been highlighted through numerous incidents and accusations. While these unquestionably also plague outsourcing in general, they are particularly problematic with regard to overseas providers in terms of both a lack of legal protections and access to civil justice systems in cases of abuse.

In Ohio, allegations that citizens' birth records had been sent to a facility in Sri Lanka led to the company being barred from state contract work for 15 months and prompted a federal investigation in 2001 - which was soon followed by more accusations that confidential information from the records of hundreds of thousands of Ohioan veterans had been given to an Indian data-processing company.

In 2003, a medical transcriber in Pakistan threatened to post patients' records on-line unless the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center paid the wages owed to her by the U.S. subcontractor that had sent the work to her. The hospital's transcription work had already been subcontracted from a Sausalito-based transcription firm to two U.S. sources before being subcontracted a third time to the transcriber in Pakistan. Heartland Information Services, an Ohio-based company that offshores medical records work to India, received a similar threat from a group of disgruntled employees in Bangalore, India. The Indian workers said that they would release confidential records unless they received a cash payoff from the company. The workers were soon apprehended with company training documents - but no patients' files were in their possession.

Such a threat and act of extortion also could have come from a medical transcriber in the U.S. However, a U.S.-based transcriber would be highly unlikely to issue such a threat given the legal recourse available to patients in the U.S. if their privacy is violated. In contrast, the only liability in the Pakistani transcriber case would reside with the U.S. companies having created no disincentive for the bad conduct by the overseas provider.

But what are privacy issues that fall under tax preparation? For starters, personal information on the tax return includes name, home or e-mail address, social security number, as well as your employer and your credit, pension and investment history. Sensitive personal information including medical and health conditions that might qualify for deductions, as well as tax documents pertaining to your mortgage, bank accounts and other financial transactions are required to fill out the forms. Your charitable deductions might reveal your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, union membership, or sexual preferences.

The American Institute of CPAs knows it has a problem on its hands and will for the first time in thirty years revise its code dictating CPAs legal and ethical responsibilities regarding outsourcing and obligations to their customers.

As we have seen time and again in this era of corporate scandals, when industry disciplines itself, a dangerous regulatory gap grows with worrisome consumer safety and economic implications. The practice of professional offshoring has gotten far ahead of the consumer protections. The only current "regulatory" system is a silent assumption that your privacy and the qualifications of those doing your taxes are assured by private companies. It is not enough.

[b]Lori Wallach is the Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/v...

... President Owes America Answers on Iraq ...

04.22.04 (7:26 am) [edit]

[b][u]President Owes America Answers on Iraq[/u]

by Senator Robert C. Byrd[/b]

[b]Senator Byrd, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered the following remarks regarding the continued lack of security and stability in Iraq. Mr. Byrd also addressed the claim made in a book by Mr. Robert Woodward that the President and his Administration shifted funds without Congressional approval from the war in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq[/b].

It is the poet T.S. Eliot who reminds us, as if we needed to be reminded, that "April is the cruelest month." How prescient his words ring this April, as we reflect upon the deepening crisis and the steadily mounting death toll in Iraq. This April, this month in which millions of Americans marked the holiest season of the Judeo-Christian calendar, has been an unholy nightmare for American military forces and American policy in Iraq.

April 2004, 11 months after the President proclaimed the end of major combat operations in Iraq, has proved to be the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since the onset of the war more than a year ago. Major combat operations may have ended, as the President asserted nearly one year ago, but major combat casualties have not. The "Mission Accomplished" banner under which he spoke so confidently on a May 1st, 2003, has come back to haunt us and to taunt us many times over.

In the weeks and months leading up to the war, Americans were assured by the President and his cadre of top advisers – most particularly Vice President Dick Cheney – that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq, our path to victory strewn with cheers and flowers. Those flowers, it now appears, are less like rose petals tossed at the feet of liberators and more like Eliot's mournful April lilacs – "Lilacs out of the deadland, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

April has indeed become the cruelest month. Memory and desire cannot supplant reality in Iraq. More than one hundred American military personnel have been killed in Iraq so far this month, the highest number of deaths in a single month since the beginning of the war. In all, more than 700 American military members have died in Iraq since the beginning of combat. Today, more than one year after the fall of Baghdad, America's military forces are being greeted in too many quarters of Iraq, not with flowers but with gunfire; not with cheers but with jeers, not as liberators but as oppressors.

In the harsh glare of hindsight, it is now clear that the President's preconceived notions of the war and the aftermath of the war in Iraq were profoundly flawed. Even the President's Secretary of Defense – one of the supreme architects of the Iraqi offensive – has been forced to admit that the battle has not gone according to plan, that the level of casualties, continuing so long after the fall of Baghdad, was neither anticipated nor planned for before the invasion.

And yet President Bush refuses to admit any flaws in his grand strategy to invade Iraq and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein without giving adequate consideration to the potential perils awaiting America in the seething streets and towns of post-war Iraq. Despite the fact that debate over the war in Iraq rages worldwide, despite the fact that the American occupation is reeling from unexpected opposition from the very people it was intended to liberate, still the President is hard pressed under questioning to come up with any mistakes he might have made in dealing with Iraq.

In his press conference last week, President Bush acknowledged "tough weeks" in Iraq, but he clung to his oft-repeated assertion that Iraq is mostly stable, and shrugged off the violence of recent weeks as the work of a small faction of fanatical "thugs" and terrorists bent on imposing their will over the popular will of Iraq.

In this assessment, I hope and pray that the President is right. For the sake of America's military families, who have had to bear the burden of the increased violence in Iraq, I hope that the President is right. I hope that Iraq achieves stability and security soon. For while Iraq and the world may indeed be better off with Saddam Hussein behind bars, alas I do not believe that an Iraq in turmoil is either a boon to the Middle East or an asset to the security of the United States.

Instead of reflecting candidly on the current challenges in Iraq, President Bush would prefer to focus on his grandiose vision for reforming the Middle East. In this he speaks in ideological, almost messianic, cadences as he paints a picture of Iraq as a central front not just in the war on terror but also in a battle of Biblical proportions pitting "good" against "evil."

President Bush is a man of absolutes. Either we stay the course in Iraq, or we cut and run. Either we fight terrorists on the streets of Iraq, or we fight them on the streets of New York or Washington. Either we support the President's policies absolutely, or we give aid and comfort to the enemy.

No, no, a thousand times no. Either-or propositions like those invoked by the President to describe the war in Iraq are nothing more than politically inspired slogans, like last year's ill-advised "Mission Accomplished" banner, designed to whip up emotions while masking the complexity of national security considerations.

Fighting in the streets of Iraq has not prevented terrorists from striking in Saudi Arabia or Bali or Madrid, and there is no guarantee that it will prevent them from striking again in the United States. Just this week, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the formation of a federal task force to respond to heightened threats that al Qaeda will strike again in the United States sometime before the November elections. Significant events, including the dedication of the World War II memorial in Washington and the political conventions in New York and Boston, are among those viewed as prime targets for a new al Qaeda offensive.

This is the sobering reality. Osama bin Laden remains at large, and his minions appear to be multiplying, not diminishing. If anything, the war in Iraq has served as a rallying cry for anti-American and anti-democratic extremists in the Middle East and beyond. Sadly, given the distraction from the war on terror that the war in Iraq has proved itself to be, the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, when and if it comes, is likely to be an anti-climactic footnote to a widening and ever more deadly surge in international terrorism.

Despite the often invoked and patently misleading conclusion drawn by the Bush Administration, "cutting and running" is not the only alternative to staying the course in Iraq, especially when that course is fraught with disaster. Altering a flawed and dangerous course of action, seeking meaningful support from the international community, is another alternative, one that this President is loath to acknowledge but evidently more than willing to embrace in the face of the calamity that has befallen his own roadmap for Iraq.

For months, I and others have implored the President to return to the United Nations and to seek a greater role for the U.N. in the occupation, administration, and reconstruction of Iraq. Long before the war, we begged the President to seek the support of the U.N. Security Council before invading Iraq. Our pleas fell on deaf ears. This Administration was confident it could go it alone, with only a threadbare coalition of the willing to paper over its unilateral action.

How hollow that confidence now rings. In the face of disaster, in the face of mounting doubts among members of the coalition, the President has now been forced to seek shelter under the wings of the United Nations. The Iraqis have rejected every plan for transition of power put forward by the President's Coalition Provisional Authority. Our only hope left is that they will embrace a plan put forward by the United Nations, the very body that the United States spurned when the President chose to invade Iraq without the support of the U.N. Security Council. Irony scarcely begins to describe the current state of affairs.

The fact is, while espousing hard-line rhetoric and iron-clad resolve, this Administration has ducked and bobbed and weaved at every opportunity. In the Administration's ever-shifting explanation for the war in Iraq, the face of our enemy has ricocheted over the past 12 months from Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard to disgruntled Baathist dead-enders to foreign terrorists taking advantage of the unrest in Iraq to pursue their agenda of jihad to today's vague assortment of thugs and fanatics opposed to democracy for Iraq.

We hear the refrain: Stay the course. Stay the course. Exactly what course is it we are supposed to be staying in Iraq? The President failed to explain that to the American people at his press conference. How did we get from protecting the United States from the threat of weapons of mass destruction to the vague notion of fighting extremists opposed to democracy in Iraq? The President failed to explain that fact as well. Where were those extremists before the invasion? Why is it that they are emerging in force only now, a full year after the fall of Baghdad. Could it be that this Administration has created America's own worst nightmare because of its colossal arrogance, clumsy mistakes, and painful misjudgments on virtually every aspect of the war in Iraq?

These are not the questions of an unpatriotic or reckless opposition. These are not questions intended to demoralize America or hearten our enemies. Rather, these are the questions that a free and open society – the kind of democratic society we envision for Iraq – is expected to pose of its leaders. And these are the kind of questions that a democratic nation's leader is beholden to answer. Dogmatic admonitions and grandiose allusions will not suffice. In a democratic society, the people demand and deserve the simple and unvarnished truth.

So do the people's representatives in government. Congress also demands and deserves the simple and unvarnished truth from the Executive Branch. As a co-equal branch of government, as the body in which the Constitution vests the power of the purse, Congress requires the truth from the President. This is what makes the recent allegations in Bob Woodward's new book regarding the redirection of appropriated funds into clandestine preparations for the war on Iraq so disturbing. If the President, as alleged in this book, made the decision to wage war against Iraq and secretly spent appropriated funds to prepare for that war without prior consultation with Congress, then the letter of the law, the intent of the law, and the Constitutional power of the purse, have been subverted. This would be not only a very grave breach of trust on the part of the Administration, but also a very grave abuse of power.

I hope with all my heart that Iraq will emerge from the current chaos to become a free and democratic nation. I hope with all my heart that the sacrifices that America's military forces have endured in Iraq will be validated by reality, and not justified merely on the basis of wishful thinking. The path forward is not yet clear, but this I do know. President Bush led America into a preemptive war that was neither dictated by circumstances nor driven by events. He led America into a war of choice that might well have been avoided with patience and prudence. Would that we could read that "April is the cruelest month" without reflecting on the cruel and terrible toll that the war on Iraq has taken on America's men and women in uniform in Iraq during this sorrowful month of April.

It is said in the Bible that of those to whom much is given, much is required. Much is required of this Administration and this President with regard to Iraq. The American people expect answers, they expect a judicious strategy, and they expect a well thought-out military and diplomatic campaign. On all fronts, the American people have been let down. A President who wages war, and manages the aftermath of war, by the seat of his pants is not what the American people either expect or deserve, and that is what I fear they are seeing in Iraq.

The President, having blundered into this war in Iraq, does not have much time left to get the stabilization of Iraq right. We have spent our blood and treasure in Iraq, and it is now time – past time – to aggressively explore ways in which the burden on Americans can be mitigated. It is time to abandon the go-it-alone attitude established by this President. It is time – long past time – for the President to admit to mistakes made, to forsake his divisive either-or rhetoric, and to seek a way out of the deepening morass of Iraq with the full partnership of the United Nations, the region, and the international community.

President Bush needs to drop all pretensions that the war in Iraq and the battle for stability are going according to plan. Only by accepting the fact that a bold new direction is needed to untangle the mess in Iraq can this President extricate the United States from what is fast becoming a quagmire. It is time for the President to set aside his pride and to convene an international summit on the future of Iraq, composed of representatives of the Iraqi people, their Arab neighbors, NATO, and the United Nations. Then and only then will the Iraqi people be in a position to chart their own future with the help of the international community. Then and only then will the United States be able to relinquish ownership of the tiger it now holds by the tail.

America must alter its course in Iraq to deal with the volatile vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. America must be prepared to fight terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head, and not be lulled into the false belief that attacking terrorists overseas will stop them from attacking America on its homefront. And above all, Americans must never be cowed into believing that questions are somehow "unpatriotic" or that presidents, even war-time presidents, are ever above answering them.

[b]CommonDreams[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Statement on the Bush Administration's New Overtime Pay Restrictions

04.22.04 (7:24 am) [edit]

[b]Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on the Bush Administration’s New Overtime Pay Restrictions [/b]

A close reading of the Bush Administration’s new overtime regulation finds that under the new restrictions to go into effect in August, many middle-income working families are at risk of losing overtime pay at a time when wages are already flat or falling for millions of workers. While the Administration has apparently abandoned its efforts to strip overtime rights from workers in a few high-profile occupations, as a result of intense pushback from working families and a public relations fiasco, it has now decided to target overtime rights for many middle-class workers who have received less attention. Cutting overtime pay and weakening overtime protections discourages job creation and encourages businesses to overwork their existing staff rather than hire new workers.

It is unconscionable to take away overtime pay from workers who spend more hours on the job and less time with their families. According to the final regulation, many workers remain at risk of losing overtime protection, including those in the following fields: network and database administration, tax, finance, accounting, budgeting, auditing, insurance, quality control, advertising, marketing, safety and health, personnel management and journalism.

If the president wants to protect all workers, he should support the Harkin Amendment. It would ensure no workers lose overtime pay, but allow the Administration to update the regulations. The final regulation is merely an attempt by the Administration to appease voters on an issue that resonates with millions of Americans while still providing a windfall to corporations.

(Attached is a fact sheet with a further breakdown of overtime pay restrictions under the new Bush administration rule.)

[b]BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S NEW OVERTIME PAY RESTRICTIONS HURT WORKING FAMILIES AND THE ECONOMY [/b]

· The Bush Administration’s new restrictions on who can receive overtime pay will hurt many workers, taking much-needed extra cash out of their pockets during an economic crunch and discouraging companies to create new jobs. Overtime pay makes up about one-fourth of the weekly earnings of workers who earn overtime, an average of $161 per week.

· The Administration could have supported legislation that would ensure no workers lost overtime pay, while still allowing them to update the rules. Instead, they came out with a 500-page rule that weakens the overtime eligibility rules and strips overtime rights from workers earning as little as $23,660 per year.

· It appears that the Bush Administration has dealt with a public relations problem by addressing the overtime concerns of the most highly-visible workers—like firefighters and police—while simultaneously including new provisions that will strip overtime rights from less visible workers.

· The Bush Administration has consistently underestimated the number of workers who would lose overtime rights under their proposal. It is likely that they are doing so again.

Who will lose overtime pay rights?

Many workers who earn between $23,660 and $100,000 will no longer be eligible for overtime pay, including those who fall in the categories below:

- In general, the final overtime regulation will have an especially large impact on workers with minimal supervisory or “leadership” responsibilities, workers who perform minimal amounts of administrative work, workers with special skills, and certain kinds of employees in the computer field;

- An employee who leads a team of other employees assigned to complete major projects for the employer will lose overtime rights, even if the employee does not have direct supervisory responsibility. This is an enormous new loophole that will allow management to disqualify workers from overtime simply by appointing them “team leaders.” (New Section 541.203);

- The rule will strip overtime rights from many working supervisors, including assistant retail managers, who spend most of their time performing non-management work. (New Sections 541.106 and 541.700);

- Workers in network and database administration, tax, finance, accounting, budgeting, auditing, insurance, quality control, purchasing, procurement, advertising, marketing, research, safety and health, personnel management, human resources, employee benefits, labor relations, public relations, government relations, and legal and regulatory compliance will be especially vulnerable to losing overtime rights. (New Section 541.201(b));

- Most workers in the financial services industry other than sellers of financial products will be exempt. (New Section 541.203(b));

- The new rule eliminates the presumption that journalists are non-exempt professionals, with journalists working in print media, radio, television, and electronic media being especially vulnerable to loss of overtime rights. ( New Section 541.302);

- The rule specifically exempts insurance claims adjuster, thus nullifying the effects of a recent court case rejecting DOL’s position that insurance claims adjusters are exempt under the FLSA. (New Section 541.203(a));

- Funeral directors and embalmers will be exempt. The Bush Administration has used the rulemaking process to do what could not be done in Congress, as legislation to exempt funeral directors and embalmers has been unsuccessful in the last several congresses. (New Section 541.301(e)(9));

- Athletic trainers will be exempt. (New Section 541.301(e)(8));

- The rule eliminates almost all duty and salary requirements for exemption of employees who have a 20% interest in their employer. (New Section 541.101);

- Contrary to claims of the Bush Administration, the final overtime regulation will negatively affect the overtime rights of some “blue collar” workers, most notably those who fall within the final regulation’s expanded exemptions for “administrative” employees.

In addition, the following provisions will strip overtime rights for many other middle-income earners who make as little as $23,660 a year:

[b]Elimination of 50% rule of thumb. [/b]A new section eliminates the “50 % rule of thumb” eliminating overtime for many employees who spend less than 50% of their time on administrative management work. (New Section 541.700)

[b]Independent judgment and discretion.[/b] The new rule has a weaker requirement that the primary duty of administrative employees must “include” the exercise of discretion and independent judgment. The primary duty no longer needs to occupy 50 percent of the employee’s time for the employee to be exempt. (New Section 541.200(a)(3))

[b]Work experience. [/b]New Section 541.301(d) will strip overtime rights from many workers who lack the standard requirement of a professional degree if they “have substantially the same knowledge level and perform substantially the same work as the degreed employees, but attained advanced knowledge through a combination of intellectual instruction and work experience.” This is the exact same argument DOL used to justify exemption of veterans who have received training in the armed forces.

[b]Elimination of 20% tolerance test. [/b]New Section 541.500 eliminates the requirement that outside sales employees spend no more than 20% of their time on work unrelated to outside sales and contract solicitation. This and other changes in the provision will strip overtime rights from many drivers who sell and from inside sales employees.

[b]Income cap.[/b] The final overtime regulation effectively places, for the first time, an income ceiling on overtime eligibility. This income ceiling is not indexed for inflation, so each year it will strip overtime rights from more workers.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] AFL-CIO
Suzanne Ffolkes 202-637-5018 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Statement on the Bush Administration's New Overtime Pay Restrictions

04.22.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

Blasphemer Dubya Cynically Exploits GOD In Order To Break The Law!

04.21.04 (8:19 am) [edit]

[b]With God on His Side ...

By Invoking a Higher Power, Bush Sidesteps Pesky Constitutional Issues[/b]

So, it was a holy war, a new crusade. No wonder George W. Bush could lie to Congress and the American public with such impunity while keeping the key members of his Cabinet in the dark. He was serving a higher power, according to Bob Woodward, who interviewed the president for a new book on the months leading up to the Iraq invasion.

Of course, as a self-described "messenger" of God who was "praying for strength to do the Lord's will," Bush was not troubled about shredding a little secular document called the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution reserves to Congress the authority to allocate funds and to declare war. Thus it would seem to be an impeachable offense to misappropriate $700 million that had been earmarked to restore order to Afghanistan and put it toward planning an invasion of Iraq — in a secret scheme hatched, according to Woodward, only 72 days after 9/11.

But not only has the president rejected the checks and balances installed by the nation's founders to avoid the "foreign entanglements" George Washington warned us about, he again is shown to have pursued a foreign policy that stands as a sharp rebuke to his more worldly and cautious father. During the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush wisely heeded the concerns of Congress, as well as a broad coalition of regional and international allies, and kept to clear, limited and sound goals.

In contrast, the younger Bush vocally disdains world opinion and international bodies like the United Nations, seeming instead to relish his role as an avenging Christian crusader who seeks — under the guiding hand of the Almighty — to cleanse the Arab world of "evildoers."

Asked by Woodward, an assistant managing editor at the Washington Post, if he had ever consulted the former president before ordering the invasion of Iraq, Bush replied that "he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that I appeal to."

Reading the elder Bush's books and even his speeches before the latest Iraq war, one finds that the former president at least seems to understand that diplomacy, international cooperation and patience are not just the tools of naive do-gooders but in fact are far more effective at advancing global stability and American aims than reckless adventures like the current quagmire in Mesopotamia. Religious crusades are often counterproductive; they tend to end up in unsustainable occupations of people who — surprise! — believe they have their own pipeline to the Almighty.

Thus, if George W. had consulted his father, he probably would have heard the message that he didn't want to hear from Secretary of State Colin Powell about the "Pottery Barn rule" — the idea that you own what you break. What Powell meant is not that you own Iraq's oil and the lucrative contracts that you parcel out to your friends at Halliburton and Bechtel. Rather, it is that if you occupy a failed state, you are stuck with the difficult, costly and lengthy task of nation-building.

That Powell and the first President Bush did not break more forcefully with the current president over their apparent differences on Iraq is not excusable, despite their party and familial ties. As both men seem to have expected, what we have now is a deadly mess that has weakened us in the war on terror, both as a distraction and by inflaming the Muslim world's latent mistrust of the West.

After the bloodiest month of the entire war and occupation, we are told by the nation's media and political elites that we must "stay the course," "get it right" and, in the words of the president himself, "honor the fallen." How do we honor the fallen by sending more soldiers to die in a war based on lies now amply documented by insiders?

Surely the best way to honor them is to right our course and turn to the United Nations, not as a fig leaf to conceal an ongoing disaster but to admit that it was wrong to undermine the best mechanism we have for international cooperation. An honorable retreat from this calamity requires U.N. supervision of an orderly withdrawal.

The president conceded to Woodward that he had the good sense not to "justify war based upon God" but would ask for forgiveness if he took the wrong path. It is time he found God's grace in the exercise of humility rather than plunging deeper into this madness.

[b]By Robert Scheer, L.A. Times[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

New Report: Air Pollution from Top 100 Electric Companies Shows Carbon Dioxide Pollution Increasing

04.21.04 (8:15 am) [edit]

[b]New Report Benchmarking Air Pollution from Top 100 Electric Companies Shows Carbon Dioxide Pollution Increasing [/b]

A new report rating air pollution emissions performance of America's 100 largest electric power producers reveals important trends in the industry, and sharp contrasts between the best and worst emissions performers. The report shows overall emissions of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are dropping, thanks largely to standards created in the Clean Air Act of 1990. Meanwhile emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), which remain unregulated, are soaring.

The report found that wide disparities in pollution rates persist industrywide, with some companies responsible for far higher pollution rates than their total electricity production would account for, and that few power plants use currently available, state-of-the-art emissions control technologies to lower their emissions. A decade after the Clean Air Act Amendments mandated SO2 and NOx reductions from the electric power industry, the researchers say coal plants -- many of which are not required to install state-of-the-art controls -- are being used more intensively, contributing to a rise in CO2 emissions.

The report comes at a time of intensifying debate over the future of regulation in the electric power industry, increasing uncertainty for the companies over future regulation of pollutants mercury and carbon dioxide, and rising investor concern about risk exposure of companies with continued high emissions. Public awareness of the dangers of power plant pollution has also been on the rise with increasing bans on fish consumption for fear of mercury poisoning, and rising asthma rates among children in urban areas.

'Benchmarking Air Emissions of the 100 Largest Electric Generation Owners in the U.S. -2002', was released by CERES, a national coalition of environmental and investor groups, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Public Service Enterprise Group Incorporated (PSEG), one of the electric power generation companies included in the report.

The report analyzes 2002 data submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration (EIA) by the 100 largest power companies in the United States. These companies account for about 90% of all power plant air emissions in the nation. The report includes mercury emissions data reported to government agencies in 1999, the only year for which power plant mercury emissions have been reported. Environmental and public health impacts associated with the emissions evaluated include: acid deposition in forests, lakes, and streams (NOx, SO2); ground-level ozone, or "smog," a lung irritant (NOx); fine particulates implicated in lung disease (NOx, SO2); regional haze (NOx, SO2); and global warming (CO2). In addition, mercury is a neurotoxin that can collect in tissues of fish and is especially dangerous to pregnant women.

The study found that a small number of companies produce a relatively large amount of electric power industry emissions, with three companies-American Electric Power, Southern Company, and Tennessee Valley Authority-responsible for 25% of the SO2 emissions, 21% of the NOx emissions, 18% of the CO2 emissions, and 24% of the mercury emissions from the electric power industry. Less than 20 companies account for half of the industry's total SO2, NOx, CO2, and mercury emissions.

The benchmarking effort also found wide disparities in emission rates - the amount of pollution generated for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced - reflecting differences in both management strategies and generating assets.

Power plant air emissions are concentrated in states along the Ohio River Valley and in the South. Five states- Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia- are the source of 30% of the electric power industry's NOx and CO2 emissions, and nearly 40% of its SO2 and mercury emissions.

The report also found disparities in pollution rates unaccounted for by the amount of electricity generated. For example, although Southern Company produced four times more electricity than Calpine, the company was responsible for 6,300 times more SO2 emissions. American Electric Power produced 28 times more electricity than Panda Energy, but 436 times more NOx emissions. Xcel Energy produced 18 times more electricity than Avista, but emitted 52 times more CO2. The Tennessee Valley Authority produced 24 times more electricity than Cogentrix, but 377 times more mercury emissions.

According to the report's sponsors, this kind of comparative analysis is useful for financial analysts and investors assessing company risk exposure in emerging regulatory scenarios and even potential legal actions.

David Gardiner, Senior Advisor, CERES, and former Assistant Administrator of the EPA in the Clinton Administration, said, "It is clear from this report that when emissions standards are set and enforced, pollution goes down, and companies are less exposed to financial, legal, and regulatory risk. It's a win for the public and a win for investors. For an industry that is generally short on cash, the disparities could translate into significant losses for individual companies and their investors if proactive measures are not taken to set standards that will lower emissions industry-wide."

In addition to Congressional power industry-specific proposals, both the House and Senate are considering a nationwide limit on carbon dioxide emissions that would be enacted in a "cap and trade" scenario. Similar measures enacted to limit SO2 and NOx resulted in reductions of those pollutants.

Dr. Daniel Lashof, Science Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council, said: "This report shows that not enough is being done right now to protect the public health, ensure the long-term viability of this industry and prevent global warming. We have the technology now to reduce pollution, but polluters need to stop staving off pollution controls and get to work fixing the problem."

Investor concern has been particularly focused on carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that causes global warming and is not currently regulated at the federal level. Some of the nation's largest CO2 emitters -American Electric Power, Southern Company, TXU, Xcel, and Cinergy- received shareholder resolutions this year requesting reports on their preparedness for regulation, and some have agreed to report to shareholders as requested.

A number of electric power companies have worked with the investors and other groups seeking a near-term decision on carbon dioxide regulation.

Ronald Drewnowski, Director - Environmental Strategy and Policy, PSEG, said "The comparative emissions information included in the report helps us understand how our environmental performance stacks up against competitors and also helps us integrate environmental targets into comprehensive business strategies. We share the view that our industry requires clarity and certainty about future environmental requirements so that we can rationalize investment decisions on behalf of shareowners. The report provides important context for the public policy process that will determine what these requirements will be."

[b]CONTACT:[/b] CERES
Nicole St. Clair 617-247-0700 x 20 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush's Dramatic Flip-Flop in Mideast

04.21.04 (8:13 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's Dramatic Shift in Mideast [/b]

If President Bush wants to give land away, there is always his 1,600-acre ranch at Crawford, Texas.

But he has no right to endorse the Israeli claim to the captured or settled property on the West Bank that belongs to the Palestinians.

Bush had Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in glowing smiles Wednesday when he praised Sharon's plan to retain permanent possession of parts of the West Bank that Israel seized in the 1967 war.

The president also backed Israel's declaration that Palestinian refugees have no right of return to their homes in the territory Israel has conquered.

The dramatic switch in U.S. policy on the West Bank comes against the background of near silence on the part of the Bush administration about the wall that Israel is building on Palestinian land, a construction project that will effectively add more territory -- described as the size of the state of Rhode Island -- to Israel.

Sharon wasn't shy about proclaiming his triumph after meeting with Bush.

The Washington Post quoted an unidentified White House official as spinning the U.S. cave-in in terms of alleged administration fears that Sharon would lay claim to the entire West Bank. This scenario would have us believe that the administration boldly insisted that the Israeli leader settle only for mere chunks.

Bush's backing of the West Bank land grab was a historic reversal of U.S. policy. And, again, Bush has put the United States in a go-it-alone posture.

Javier Solana, foreign policy chief for the European Union, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying Europe would not accept any change to Israel's borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war unless both Israel and the Palestinians agreed to it.

"Final status issues can only be resolved by mutual agreement between parties," Solana said.

Several Arab leaders said Bush had doomed the peace process in the Middle East because of his new policy.

Bush's endorsement of Israel's West Bank settlements isn't a mere "tilt" toward Sharon's policy -- it is a total embrace that has stunned those who hoped the United States would have an "honest broker" role in Middle East affairs.

Bush has not made the slightest effort to appear even-handed. He failed to consult any Palestinians before announcing the new U.S. policy toward the West Bank.

Since he came into office Bush has ignored Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader who has negotiated with several presidents in the past.

Bush still talks lamely about his "road map" for peace in the Middle East but his new West Bank policy has destroyed any shred of legitimacy that the plan may have had. What's left to negotiate?

Secretary of State Colin Powell defended the new policy, saying it recognized "realisms that exist on the ground."

And Americans wonder why the Arabs -- who once revered us for our political ideals -- now despise U.S. policies? Preach on, Mr. President, about democracy and freedom in the Middle East.

The new Bush stance is interpreted by some political pundits as a bid for the Jewish vote in the November election in order to boost the president's prospects in battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Bush's moves also could help his continuing pursuit of Christian fundamentalists, who established close ties with Israel when Menachem Begin and Jerry Falwell made common cause in the Carter era.

Pollster John Zogby -- who has his finger on the pulse of the Arab world -- said: "This is pretty much the final nail in the coffin of the peace process as far as Arabs are concerned. It's not even a political issue. It's a bloodstream issue."

Zogby was referring to the blow to the entire history of the search for Middle East peace.

Americans concerned that Bush has taken the wrong turn shouldn't look to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. Kerry signed on to the Bush-Sharon bargain in embarrassing haste, without blinking an eye.

"I think that could be a positive step," Kerry said. "What's important, obviously, is the security of the state of Israel, and that's what the prime minister and president, I think, are trying to address," Kerry added.

This is a time when peace prospects for the Middle East have never looked grimmer.

[b]By Helen Thomas, Seattle-Post Intelligencer[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Earth Day Rally To Call Upon The Bush To Strengthen, Not Weaken Environmental Protections

04.21.04 (8:10 am) [edit]

[b]Earth Day Rally To Call Upon The Bush Administration To Strengthen, Not Weaken Environmental Protections[/b]

[b]WHAT:[/b] Before President Bush’s arrival in Wells, Maine on Thursday, citizens and environmental groups will gather by the hundreds to highlight the real impact of the Bush administration’s environmental record: more mercury, smog and soot.

Environment Maine will also be distributing their report, Maine’s Environment at Risk, covering 8 environmental issues where the Bush administration has promoted policies that threaten Maine’s environment and health and factsheet, Maine’s Waterways at Risk, discussing specific Bush administration policies and actions that could harm our waterways.

[b]WHO:[/b] Matthew Davis, Advocate, Environment Maine

Maureen Drouin, NE Regional Representative, Sierra Club

Kate Moffat, Kennebunk resident, teacher and Sierra Club volunteer

Andy Burt, Environmental Justice Coordinator, Maine Council of Churches

Amy Thompson, Portland Organizer, Maine Peoples’ Alliance

Maggie Drummond, Maine Organizer, Toxics Action Center

[b]WHEN:[/b] Thursday, April 22nd, 2004, 8:00am

[b]WHERE:[/b] Parking lot adjacent to Wells Town Offices, on Route 109/Sanford Road

[b]DIRECTIONS:[/b] Take exit 2 off of I-95 for Route 109/Route 9, take a left onto Route 109/Sanford Road towards Wells, the town offices are on the left at 208 Sanford Road.

[b]MORE INFO:[/b] The report, Maine’s Environment At Risk, will be released and posted at www.environmentmaine.org on April 21st. The factsheet, Maine’s Waterway’s At Risk, can be downloaded from http://www.environmentmaine.o...

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Environment Maine
Matthew Davis, 207-253-1965
Maureen Drouin, 207-485-0215 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Pretending That GOD(?!?) Is On His Side? Doesn't That Sound Manipulative?

04.21.04 (8:06 am) [edit]

[b]With God on His Side ...

[i]By Invoking a Higher Power, Bush Sidesteps Pesky Constitutional Issues[/i][/b]

So, it was a holy war, a new crusade. No wonder George W. Bush could lie to Congress and the American public with such impunity while keeping the key members of his Cabinet in the dark. He was serving a higher power, according to Bob Woodward, who interviewed the president for a new book on the months leading up to the Iraq invasion.

Of course, as a self-described "messenger" of God who was "praying for strength to do the Lord's will," Bush was not troubled about shredding a little secular document called the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution reserves to Congress the authority to allocate funds and to declare war. Thus it would seem to be an impeachable offense to misappropriate $700 million that had been earmarked to restore order to Afghanistan and put it toward planning an invasion of Iraq — in a secret scheme hatched, according to Woodward, only 72 days after 9/11.

But not only has the president rejected the checks and balances installed by the nation's founders to avoid the "foreign entanglements" George Washington warned us about, he again is shown to have pursued a foreign policy that stands as a sharp rebuke to his more worldly and cautious father. During the first Gulf War, George H.W. Bush wisely heeded the concerns of Congress, as well as a broad coalition of regional and international allies, and kept to clear, limited and sound goals.

In contrast, the younger Bush vocally disdains world opinion and international bodies like the United Nations, seeming instead to relish his role as an avenging Christian crusader who seeks — under the guiding hand of the Almighty — to cleanse the Arab world of "evildoers."

Asked by Woodward, an assistant managing editor at the Washington Post, if he had ever consulted the former president before ordering the invasion of Iraq, Bush replied that "he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that I appeal to."

Reading the elder Bush's books and even his speeches before the latest Iraq war, one finds that the former president at least seems to understand that diplomacy, international cooperation and patience are not just the tools of naive do-gooders but in fact are far more effective at advancing global stability and American aims than reckless adventures like the current quagmire in Mesopotamia. Religious crusades are often counterproductive; they tend to end up in unsustainable occupations of people who — surprise! — believe they have their own pipeline to the Almighty.

Thus, if George W. had consulted his father, he probably would have heard the message that he didn't want to hear from Secretary of State Colin Powell about the "Pottery Barn rule" — the idea that you own what you break. What Powell meant is not that you own Iraq's oil and the lucrative contracts that you parcel out to your friends at Halliburton and Bechtel. Rather, it is that if you occupy a failed state, you are stuck with the difficult, costly and lengthy task of nation-building.

That Powell and the first President Bush did not break more forcefully with the current president over their apparent differences on Iraq is not excusable, despite their party and familial ties. As both men seem to have expected, what we have now is a deadly mess that has weakened us in the war on terror, both as a distraction and by inflaming the Muslim world's latent mistrust of the West.

After the bloodiest month of the entire war and occupation, we are told by the nation's media and political elites that we must "stay the course," "get it right" and, in the words of the president himself, "honor the fallen." How do we honor the fallen by sending more soldiers to die in a war based on lies now amply documented by insiders?

Surely the best way to honor them is to right our course and turn to the United Nations, not as a fig leaf to conceal an ongoing disaster but to admit that it was wrong to undermine the best mechanism we have for international cooperation. An honorable retreat from this calamity requires U.N. supervision of an orderly withdrawal.

The president conceded to Woodward that he had the good sense not to "justify war based upon God" but would ask for forgiveness if he took the wrong path. It is time he found God's grace in the exercise of humility rather than plunging deeper into this madness.

[b]By Robert Scheer, L.A. Times[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/v...

CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?

04.20.04 (7:23 am) [edit]

[b]CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?[/b]

As the casualties mount in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, Qatar-based Al Jazeera has been one of the only news networks broadcasting from the inside, relaying images of destruction and civilian victims-- including women and children. But when CNN anchor Daryn Kagan interviewed the network's editor-in-chief, Ahmed Al-Sheik, on Monday (4/12/04)-- a rare opportunity to get independent information about events in Fallujah-- she used the occasion to badger Al-Sheik about whether the civilian deaths were really "the story" in Fallujah.

Al Jazeera has recently come under sharp criticism from U.S. officials, who claim the Iraqi casualties are 95 percent "military-age males" (AP, 4/12/04). "We have reason to believe that several news organizations do not engage in truthful reporting," CPA spokesman Dan Senor said (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 4/14/04). "In fact it is no reporting." Senior military spokesman Mark Kimmitt had a suggestion for Iraqis who saw civilian deaths on Al Jazeera (New York Times, 4/12/04): "Change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources. That is propaganda, and that is lies."

Acting as the substitute anchor on CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports, Kagan began the interview by asking Al-Sheik to respond to those accusations, citing U.S. officials "saying the pictures and the reporting that Al Jazeera put on the air only adds to the sense of frustration and anger and adds to the problems in Iraq, rather than helping to solve them." After Al-Sheik defended Al Jazeera's work as "accurate" and the images as representative of "what takes place on the ground," Kagan pressed on:

"Isn't the story, though, bigger than just the simple numbers, with all due respect to the Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives-- the story bigger than just the numbers of people who were killed or the fact that they might have been killed by the U.S. military, that the insurgents, the people trying to cause problems within Fallujah, are mixing in among the civilians, making it actually possibly that even more civilians would be killed, that the story is what the Iraqi insurgents are doing, in addition to what is the response from the U.S. military?"

CNN's argument that a bigger story than civilian deaths is "what the Iraqi insurgents are doing" to provoke a U.S. "response" is startling. Especially in light of official U.S. denials of civilian deaths, video footage of women and children killed by the U.S. military is evidence that needs to be seen.

And Al Jazeera is not alone in reporting a reality very different from the one U.S. officials describe. Authorities have been able to keep a tight rein on the information flow from Fallujah, with only one small television network pool in the city that "travels and operates" under the watch of the Marines (Television Week, 4/12/04). (It's noteworthy that the U.S. has reportedly demanded, as a condition for lifting the siege of Fallujah, that Al Jazeera cameras be removed from the city-- IslamOnline.net, 4/9/04.)

But independent journalists reporting from Fallujah have described a scene consistent with the one broadcast by Al Jazeera. Rahul Mahajan, a U.S. journalist in Fallujah, estimated that of the 600 Iraqis killed in Fallujah, 200 were women and 100 young children, with many of the adult male casualties also non-combatants. He reported witnessing "a young woman, 18 years old, shot in the head" and "a young boy with massive internal bleeding" at a clinic (CommonDreams.org, 4/12/04). Mahajan recounted that during the "cease-fire," "Americans were attacking with heavy artillery but primarily with snipers"-- with ambulances among the targets. The sniper activity was also reported by U.S. journalist Dahr Jamail (NewStandardNews.net, 4/11/04): "Fallujah residents say Marines are opening fire randomly on unarmed civilians and have attacked clearly marked ambulances."

When reports from the ground are describing hundreds of civilians being killed by U.S. forces, CNN should be looking to Al Jazeera's footage to see if it corroborates those accounts-- not badgering Al Jazeera's editor about why he doesn't suppress that footage.

[u]ACTION[/u]: Please tell CNN that there is no bigger story in Fallujah than the deaths of civilians. Ask the network to report the reality of the siege-- including eyewitness accounts and video footage shot by non-embedded journalists-- before dismissing civilian victims as the responsibility of the resistance.

[u]CONTACT[/u]: CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports mailto:wolf@cnn.com

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
Newsroom: (212) 633-6700 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

What John Kerry Should Say: Because You Lied to Me, Dick

04.20.04 (7:20 am) [edit]

[b]Because You Lied to Me, Dick [/b]

There was Dick Cheney speaking to an NRA crowd last week, firming up the base, getting in the administration's favorite Kerry dig: Kerry could try to "explain or explain away all he wants" his vote to authorize the Iraq war, but such vacillation, was, to Mr. Cheney's way of thinking, unbecoming in a man who would be Commander in Chief.

Incredibly, Kerry has allowed this issue to remain an issue, via his thread-the-needle, what-I-really-meant parsings ever since his former primary opponents started lobbing his war vote at him, now continuing to allow it after the GOP has taken it up, using it as the polishing cloth to burnish up their frame around Kerry's flip-flop image.

Incredible because this was, and is, an issue easily dealt with. When Cheney demands to know how Kerry can justify his shameful, unmanly, indecisive, poll-driven equivocation on the war -- how it is that he now opposes what he once obviously supported -- he need only reply as follows:

"Because you lied to me, Dick. Remember? The White House sent its managers to Congress before the vote, and they briefed the House and Senate Intelligence committees on the dire threat of Saddam. The reconstituted nuclear program. The mushroom clouds that would be appearing over New York and Washington in a few years. The lie you were telling the American people in general terms, you told us with specific, impressive-sounding statistics and authoritative reports -- that legendary 'bad intelligence.' It was on that basis and that basis alone -- the basis of imminent threat to America from weapons of mass destruction -- that my colleagues and I voted to give your boss the authority to invade. Now we know better.

"I accept my share of responsibility for the thousands who have since died and are still dying in an elective war that had nothing to do with the war on terrorism but which you and your fellow extremists at the Project for a New American Century had been lusting after since 1992, a war you wanted so badly you lied to Congress and the American people to get it, you dark and terrible man. I was not cynical enough. I know I must make amends for my mistake. But first, come November, the American people must fix another mistake."

Scratch one campaign issue for the Bush re-election team.

Will Kerry ever say anything like it? Or will he continue uttering the careful, measured statements of a major-party candidate seeking swing voters? It's the kind of thing that makes you wish Howard Dean were still in the running, keeping Kerry combative. Failing that outside influence, you have to hope that at some point Bush-Cheney will shove Kerry in the chest once too often, apply an excess of Dutch rubs, noogies and wedgies, and Kerry will stop running for Ambassador to the Court of Saint James; will finally arise from the playground tarmac, rely on instinct, let his fingers form into fists, and figure out what it is that people vote for.

[b]Andrew Christie is an environmental activist in San Luis Obispo, CA [/b]- http://www.commondreams.org/v...

It's Worse Than Fascism: Bush's Gestapo Pentagon as Global Slumlord

04.20.04 (7:17 am) [edit]

[b]The Pentagon as Global Slumlord [/b]

The young American Marine is exultant. "It's a sniper's dream,' he tells a [i]Los Angeles Times [/i]reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. "You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."

"Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot."

"To take a bad guy out," he explains, "is an incomparable "adrenaline rush." He brags of having "24 confirmed kills" in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.

Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting.

The battle of Fallujah, together with the conflicts unfolding in Shiia cities and Baghdad slums, are high-stakes tests, not just of U.S. policy in Iraq, but of Washington's ability to dominate what Pentagon planners consider the "key battlespace of the future" -- the Third World city.

The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighborhood militias inflicted 60% casualties on elite Army Rangers, forced U.S. strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT: "Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain." Ultimately, a National Defense Panel review in December 1997 castigated the Army as unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World.

As a result, the four armed services, coordinated by the Joint Staff Urban Working Group, launched crash programs to master street-fighting under realistic third-world conditions. "The future of warfare," the journal of the Army War College declared, "lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world."

Israeli advisors were quietly brought in to teach Marines, Rangers, and Navy Seals the state-of-the-art tactics -- especially the sophisticated coordination of sniper and demolition teams with heavy armor and overwhelming airpower -- so ruthlessly used by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza and the West Bank.

Artificial cityscapes (complete with "smoke and sound systems") were built to simulate combat conditions in densely populated neighborhoods of cities like Baghdad or Port-au-Prince. The Marine Corps Urban Warfighting Laboratory also staged realistic war games ("Urban Warrior") in Oakland and Chicago, while the Army's Special Operations Command "invaded" Pittsburgh.

Today, many of the Marines inside Fallujah are graduates of these Urban Warrior exercises as well as mock combat at "Yodaville" (the Urban Training Facility in Yuma, Arizona), while some of the Army units encircling Najaf and the Baghdad slum neighborhood of Sadr City are alumni of the new $34 million MOUT simulator at Fort Polk, Louisiana.

This tactical "Israelization" of U.S. combat doctrine has been accompanied by what might be called a "Sharonization" of the Pentagon's worldview. Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic "terrorist" insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing megaslums.

To help develop a geopolitical framework for urban war-fighting, military planners turned in the 1990s to the RAND Corporation: Dr. Strangelove's old alma mater. RAND, a nonprofit think tank established by the Air Force in 1948, was notorious for war-gaming nuclear Armageddon in the 1950s and for helping plan the Vietnam War in the 1960s. These days RAND does cities -- big time. Its researchers ponder urban crime statistics, inner-city public health, and the privatization of public education. They also run the Army's Arroyo Center which has published a small library of recent studies on the context and mechanics of urban warfare.

One of the most important RAND projects, initiated in the early 1990s, has been a major study of "how demographic changes will affect future conflict." The bottom line, RAND finds, is that the urbanization of world poverty has produced "the urbanization of insurgency" (the title, in fact, of their report).

"Insurgents are following their followers into the cities," RAND warns, "setting up 'liberated zones' in urban shantytowns. Neither U.S. doctrine, nor training, nor equipment is designed for urban counterinsurgency." As a result, the slum has become the weakest link in the American empire.

The RAND researchers reflect on the example of El Salvador where the local military, despite massive U.S. support, was unable to stop FMLN guerrillas from opening an urban front. Indeed, "had the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front rebels effectively operated within the cities earlier in the insurgency, it is questionable how much the United States could have done to help maintain even the stalemate between the government and the insurgents."

More recently, a leading Air Force theorist has made similar points in the[i] Aerospace Power Journal[/i]. "Rapid urbanization in developing countries," writes Captain Troy Thomas in the spring 2002 issue, "results in a battlespace environment that is decreasingly knowable since it is increasingly unplanned."

Thomas contrasts modern, "hierarchical" urban cores, whose centralized infrastructures are easily crippled by either air strikes (Belgrade) or terrorist attacks (Manhattan), with the sprawling slum peripheries of the Third World, organized by "informal, decentralized subsystems, "where no blueprints exist, and points of leverage in the system are not readily discernable." Using the "sea of urban squalor" that surrounds Pakistan's Karachi as an example, Thomas portrays the staggering challenge of "asymmetric combat" within "non-nodal, non-hierarchical" urban terrains against "clan-based" militias propelled by "desperation and anger." He cites the sprawling slums of Lagos, Nigeria, and Kinshasa in the Congo as other potential nightmare battlefields.

However Captain Thomas (whose article is provocatively entitled "Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights"), like RAND, is brazenly confident that the Pentagon's massive new investments in MOUT technology and training will surmount all the fractal complexities of slum warfare. One of the RAND cookbooks ("Aerospace Operations in Urban Environments") even provides a helpful table to calculate the acceptable threshold of "collateral damage" (aka dead babies) under different operational and political constraints.

The occupation of Iraq has, of course, been portrayed by Bush ideologues as a "laboratory for democracy" in the Middle East. To MOUT geeks, on the other hand, it is a laboratory of a different kind, where Marine snipers and Air Force pilots test out new killing techniques in an emergent world war against the urban poor.

[b]Mike Davis is author, most recently, of the kids' adventure, [i]Land of the Lost Mammoths [/i](Perceval Press, 2003) and co-author of [i]Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never See [/i](New Press, 2003) among other books[/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Outrageous Treason by Bush: Saudi Envoy Promised Bush a Drop in Oil Prices Ahead of Election

04.20.04 (7:10 am) [edit]

[b]Saudi Envoy Promised Bush a Drop in Oil Prices Ahead of Election [/b]

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S. has promised President George W. Bush the Saudis will reduce oil prices before this November's election to help the U.S. economy, according to Bob Woodward, author of a new book about the Iraq war.

Oil prices are ``high, and they could go down very quickly,'' Woodward said last night in an interview on CBS's ``60 Minutes.''

``That's the Saudi pledge,'' said Woodward. ``Certainly over the summer or as we get closer to the election they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.''

In his book, titled ``[i]Plan of Attack[/i],'' Woodward also says that the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, was given advance information about plans to invade Iraq by Vice President Richard Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Saudis trimmed their output by 1 million barrels a day in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg data.

Crude oil has risen 15 percent to more than $37 a barrel this year. The rise in crude has helped send gasoline prices to a record average of $1.79 a gallon in the U.S., according to the AAA, formerly the American Automobile Association.

The record gasoline prices may blunt the economic benefits of President Bush's tax cuts and become an issue in the presidential election. Democratic candidate John Kerry, 60, a four-term Democratic senator from Massachusetts, cited higher gasoline prices as one reason for a rising `misery index'' he released last week that he said shows Bush's economic policies have hurt working families.

Bandar Briefed Before Powell

Bandar learned of the attack plans on Jan. 11, 2003, two days before U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was told of the decision, according to Woodward.

In a meeting on Jan. 11 with Cheney, Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bandar was shown a map laying out plans for attacking Iraq, Woodward writes in the book. The map was marked TOP SECRET NOFORN, meaning the classified material wasn't to be shown to non-U.S. officials, according to Woodward.

At the meeting Bandar asked for assurances that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein wouldn't survive the war as he did the 1991 Persian Gulf War led by Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush. Cheney responded, ``Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast,'' according to Woodward.

Bandar said he would take the message to the Saudi leadership if he got the same information he had just received directly from Bush. On Jan. 13 Bandar was called to meet with Bush, who said: ``Their message is my message,'' said Woodward. Powell was told of Bush's decision the same day.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter and the most influential member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps a third of the world's oil.

OPEC on March 31 agreed to reduce its production quotas to keep prices from dropping.

Before the March 31 meeting in Vienna at which OPEC announced it was cutting its quotas, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali al- Naimi, said that the kingdom was already implementing its share of production cuts for April.

[b]Bloomsberg News[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Gestapo Lunacy: Is Dick Cheney God? Perhaps So For Idiot Bush!

04.19.04 (8:45 am) [edit]

[b]God Made Me Do It [/b] - http://www.tompaine.com/blog....

Is [b]Dick Cheney [/b]God? If you read the Gospel According to Woodward, it's clear that the president seems to think so.

A few months ago, I wrote a profile of the Rev. Tim LaHaye for [i]Rolling Stone[/i]. LaHaye is the author of [i]Left Behind[/i], the best-selling series of books on the End of the World, a hyped up version of alleged Biblical prophecies that predict that Jesus Christ will return to earth after a climactic battle between God and Satan at Armageddon. Satan, of course, happens to set up his headquarters in Babylon, just south of where Baghdad is today. LaHaye is a highly influential organizer of the Christian right—he founded the Moral Majority and the secretive Council on National Policy—and he helped elect Bush by swinging skeptical Christian-right leaders behind him in 2000. LaHaye and his fundamentalist flock often equated Saddam with the Antichrist-literally, not figuratively. In [i]Rolling Stone[/i], I speculated that LaHaye's weird beliefs might have influenced the president, a born-again Christian whose decision to go war in Iraq seems to have been directed as much at Satan as against Saddam.

Maybe I was right.

Yesterday in [i]The Washington Post [/i]and on [i]60 Minutes[/i] , Bob Woodward presented a terrifying picture of a president obsessed. Bush demonized Saddam, creating a Manichean world in which America was a God-inspired nation combating the Beelzebub-led hell of Iraq. It's not clear whether Bush believed—like LaHaye—in the necessity of a climactic struggle with Satan's legions from Babylon, but the president's crusade had all the same fervor.

Apparently he talked to the wrong father. Reports Woodward and [i]60 Minutes[/i]:

Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? "I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, 'Well no,' and then he got defensive about it," says Woodward. "And then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, 'He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.' And then he said, 'There's a higher father that I appeal to.'"

Perhaps Bush believes that he has a pipeline to God, that he can ask God for advice about which wars to launch. By all accounts, however, his real father—the earthly one, not the imaginary one in the sky—was against the war. Or, perhaps Bush mixed up God and Dick Cheney. Woodward makes it startlingly clear that Cheney was the driving force behind the Iraq misadventure. But for Bush, war in Iraq wasn't Cheney's will, it was God's:

Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. I'm surely not going to justify the war based on God. . . Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then of course I pray for personal strength and forgiveness.

Says Woodward, succinctly, of Bush: "He's not an intellectual." He's not. But Woodward makes clear that Bush is perfectly capable of disguising his godly work from people who disagree, such as Colin Powell, who wasn't told of the decision to go to war even after war planning was well underway:

And there's this low boil on Iraq until the day before Thanksgiving, Nov. 21, 2001. This is 72 days after 9/11. This is part of this secret history. President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically, and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, "What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret."

There's lots more in the book. It ought to be required reading for anyone planning to cast a vote in November. With at least 11 more Americans killed this weekend, with well over a thousand Iraqis killed since April 1, with U.S. troops poised for massive assaults on Najaf and Fallujah, with Iraq's Governing Clowncil crumbling fast, with civil war looming in Iraq,, and with the growing possibility that the crisis in Iraq could spill over into Iran and Syria, too, Americans are asking: How did we stuck in this mess? Woodward has answered that question better than anyone else so far.

[b]Gestapo Lunacy [/b]- http://www.tompaine.com/blog....

Who Really Pays Taxes in America? Not Bush, Not Bush's Corporate Cronies, Not Bush's Rich Buddies ..

04.19.04 (8:38 am) [edit]

[b]Who Really Pays Taxes in America?[/b]

Recent news articles about skyrocketing tax fraud and corporate tax dodging have prompted a high level of public concern about the overall fairness and effectiveness of our current tax system. AskQuestions.org – an online news site that addresses issues raised by public demand – released a report today on “Who Really Pays Taxes in America?”

Drawn primarily from government statistics, the report describes not only how the tax burden has shifted from corporations to private citizens over the past 20 years, but also a disturbing new twist: the richest American households pay about 30 percent less tax – which includes federal, state, and local taxes combined -- than middle-income households pay. And the public apparently understands what’s going on: an AP poll released Tuesday reports that 49 percent of Americans believe their taxes have gone up, not down, as a result of the Bush tax cuts, consider all the new local and state taxes imposed in response to withering Federal grants to the states. And new CNN/Money Magazine poll reports that, "60% of Americans said the Bush tax cut did not personally help them."

In his proposed budget for 2005, President Bush cuts another $6 billion in federal aide to states, even though 30 states already face shortfalls totaling about $40 billion next year and more cutbacks in state spending are inevitable, as well as more increases in local taxes. While there are no national statistics that add up the costs, anecdotal evidence is clear. One California couple received a $100 tax refund from President Bush for 2003, but paid $515 in new local taxes. A self-employed man living in Nassau County, NY got a $300 tax rebate last year, but his property taxes went up $2,250.

While honest taxpayers deal with their growing burden, the independent IRS Oversight Board reported that tax fraud is $311 billion dollars per year – more than federal spending on Medicare in 2003 and greater than the gross revenues of either Walmart or General Electric. The Board continually requests funding to strengthen resources for IRS enforcement, but because some of the biggest campaign contributors may be the country’s worst tax cheaters, the incentives for auditing tax cheats is nil. As a result, audits are focused on those at the bottom of the income scale.

Yesterday, David Cay Johnston reported in The New York Times that corporate audit rates have dropped by half in recent years, and noted that in 2003 the IRS conducted face-to-face audits with only seven out of 1000 corporations (compared to 29 per thousand in 1992).

“If we simply collected the taxes cheaters are withholding from the system, we would have enough money to pay the college fees of every student in America, or to provide health insurance for small business employees,” says the AskQuestions.org report.

AskQuestions.org practices “bottom-up” journalism by inviting the public to submit questions. The most popular questions are handed over to professional researchers and reporters. Answering “Who Really Pays Taxes?” required the AskQuestions.org team to assemble a dozen practical suggestions from a range of experts about increasing the fairness of the tax code while also making it more effective at stimulating sustained economic growth.

Neither Presidential candidate is likely to talk about fraud and favoritism during the election campaign, but voters apparently want answers on these very issues. And the AskQuestions report frames the debate from a voter’s perspective, so that people will be armed with the information they need in order to raise their concerns with the candidates.

[b]By Cheryl Woodard - Authored by the Executive Director of AskQuestions.org, Cheryl Woodard, the full report is available online, along with the public questions and comments that prompted the article at http://www.askquestions.org/d...

[i]Woodard is a co-founder of several computer magazines, including PC Magazine and Macworld. A full-time business consultant to magazine publishers, Woodard sits on the board of directors at the Independent Press Association. The AskQuestions.org project is a collaboration between Woodard and journalist Mark Dowie, Berkeley city councilmember Linda Maio, and writer/publisher Ted Nace. Woodard's email is cheryl@askquestions.org[/i].[/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

America Waking Up: Bush Losing Ground in Rural America

04.19.04 (8:33 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Losing Ground in Rural America

[i]Voters in struggling outlying areas tend to identify with his values, but economic concerns are alienating some lifelong Republicans[/i][/b].

Like much of rural America, this isolated community south of the Columbia River Gorge is a place where people — like their parents before them — vote Republican when they pick their presidents. They went with George W. Bush four years ago. And most are likely to support him again this year.

But cracks have surfaced in President Bush's once-solid rural constituency. From places like Sherman County to Montcalm County, Mich., and Mahoning County, Ohio, some Republicans are so concerned about crop prices and high unemployment that they're considering voting Democratic for the first time.

They're hardworking people like Sherman County farmer Tom Martin. As he plows the stubble of last autumn's wheat harvest on his 12,000-acre spread, the 60-year-old hears mostly grim economic news on his radio.

"I'm right there on the fence," Martin said. "Bush has lost my vote, but I'm just not excited about [John F.] Kerry either. From where I sit, neither party has much regard for the little man. And that includes farmers."

For Bush, winning the rural vote looms more important than ever — especially in such swing states as Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2000, rural voters overwhelmingly backed him over Democrat Al Gore, giving Bush the boost he needed to win in some states.

Although analysts predict the president this year will again capture the majority of votes in outlying communities, they say he must win by a decisive margin to remain in the White House.

A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed that among rural voters, Bush leads Democrat John F. Kerry, 47% to 41%. But the president's support has slipped — down from 55% in November — for reasons ranging from the troubled economy to growing dissatisfaction over the war in Iraq.

Perhaps Bush's greatest strength with rural voters is an emotional bond based on cultural values. They view him as someone who thinks like they do — a president who speaks their mind on issues like property rights, abortion and gay marriage.

In a seeming attempt to capitalize on that relationship, Republicans last week opened a new front against Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, highlighting Bush's more conservative views on cultural issues.

"Social issues are something that Republicans have used as wedge issues, especially among rural, Midwestern and Southern voters," said Rick Farmer, a political scientist at Akron University in Ohio.

"They'll look for inconsistencies on Kerry's stance on some of these controversial issues. And in close battleground states, especially those with large rural populations, it could make a difference."

[b]'Used to Making Do' [/b]

Marked by its rolling wheat fields and steep, narrow canyons, Sherman County can feel a lot farther from Portland than a mere 100 miles.

Locals drive an hour to fill a prescription, shop at a supermarket or order pizza. There are no practicing attorneys, no funeral parlors, one video store and only one part-time doctor. The county's only blinking-yellow traffic light at Biggs Junction was removed this year after officials decided it wasn't needed.

Such isolation sows self-sufficiency — a legacy of the Oregon Trail pioneers who settled here 150 years ago. Farmers don't need a tow truck; they can fix their own broken tractors. And they own guns to scare off intruders. No police needed, thank you.

When choosing politicians, people go by a gut instinct framed by their interest in farm prices and a natural bent toward conservatism.

Along the county's dusty back roads, past fallow wheat fields and rooster-red farmhouses, pro-Bush bumper stickers adorn tractors and silos.

"We're country people, and that's what George W. Bush represents: He's country," said Ray Smith, 57, whose wheat farm spans 3,000 acres. "I'm not going to go crying to the president over dollars and cents. He believes in the same things I do. That's good enough for me."

Farmer Chris Moore says the Bush administration has meant more freedom for folks to run their own affairs without nosy government intervention. The other party, he says, keeps pushing environmental programs that pay more heed to some endangered insect than the economic plight of the American farmer.

"The Democrats don't trust us as stewards of the land. They're in our face with regulations to make the ground we farm one big national park," Moore said.

"They took down big timber first, and farming is next. President Bush may be the only defense we have left."

Prolonged hard times, however, make others uneasy.

"Bush is scaring the heck out of me," said farmer Gary Irzyk, who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 because he thought Bush was too influenced by the religious right. On the economy and foreign affairs, Irzyk says, "He's way in over his head."

When times were good, Sherman County was among the Northwest's richest. Old-timers recall a rural kingdom that flourished beneath the shadow of snow-capped Mt. Hood, a place where private Cessnas seemed as numerous as John Deere tractors.

But a five-year drought and the lowest wheat prices in a generation have caused the community's collective fortunes to plummet. The county now ranks as the fourth-poorest in the nation, with an unemployment rate of 12% — Oregon's highest.

In the last six years, Sherman County has lost nearly a third of its school-age children as families have moved away to look for jobs. Now most wives work part time, and many families collect food stamps.

Last year, Smith offered 100 free acres to anyone willing to bring a good-sized company — and hourly wages of $15 or more — into the county. So far, there have been no takers.

But across the nation's countryside, Democrats have yet to capitalize on Republican vulnerabilities.

In Blaine County, Neb., the nation's second-poorest in per capita income, Republican chairwoman April Wescott said rural Americans didn't believe in pointing fingers at politicians.

"We're used to making do with what we have. We're less spoiled than most Americans," she said. "When hard times come, you just get through them. You don't blame the president or your neighbors. That's just the way it is."

Kerry has been unable to define himself in the eyes of rural voters or articulate a plan of economic recovery, according to a bipartisan poll sponsored last week by George Washington University.

"You see a great deal of discontent in rural America, but people there don't see any options," said James Moore, an independent political analyst in Portland.

"They don't hear Kerry talk about issues that concern them, such as water rights and federal ownership of land."

Don DeGrange, a retired contractor with coral-blue eyes and worn suspenders, sees Bush as a "Christian president" protecting the world from terrorism.

"Frankly, I don't even know who this Kerry fella is," he said. "And I'm going to go with who I know."

[b]Some Just Sitting It Out [/b]

Not long ago, Lloyd Walker committed a near-unforgivable conservative faux pas.

The mayor of tiny Greenville, Mich., was miffed that a major refrigerator maker had announced plans to pull up stakes for Mexico, taking with it 2,700 local jobs.

The veteran politician blamed not only the Electrolux factory owners, but U.S. policies that allowed big business to abandon rural towns without the slightest economic penalty.

Speaking at a nationally televised news conference last fall after the Electrolux announcement, Walker lost his cool.

"I said I had never in my life voted for anyone but a Republican for president," he said in a recent interview. "But then I looked right into the bright lights and admitted it: That may change this year."

The town's Republican congressman called from Washington to question Walker's loyalty to the party. Colleagues clamored for Walker to resign from the Montcalm County Republican Committee.

Walker has stood his ground. "I'm wringing my hands over this election," he said. "Bush assures us things are getting better. But I don't see it."

Rural America is feeling the pinch. As the number of farmers and ranches declines and manufacturers leave, unemployment and personal bankruptcies rise.

"Look around these places and you won't see any young people," said Jon M. Bailey, a research director for the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Neb.

"The couples of child-bearing age and kids in school, they're all gone. There's no one to do volunteer work that rural towns depend on, from the fire department to the school board."

Analysts suggest that support for Bush has waned among those who remain — the elderly, who become reliant on Social Security and Medicare.

"Some realize they can't make it under the current economic situation. And they're turning away from the Republicans," said Ed Sarpolus, an independent pollster in Lansing, Mich.

But while dissatisfied with Bush, Republicans won't necessarily vote for his opponent, Sarpolus said: "Some will choose to sit out the election. That's not good for either candidate."

If rural Robeson County, N.C., is any indicator, both major parties may be in trouble. Devastated by the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs after trade accords such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, residents took their concerns to Congress last month.

A social services director told the Rural Jobs Caucus and Economic Development Task Force that neither Republican nor Democratic strategies worked.

"These factory pullouts have brought a rise in crime, public assistance and a deep sense of hopelessness," Mac Legerton, who directs the Center for Community Action in Robeson County, said afterward.

"We're not just talking about a loss of jobs; we're talking a way of life. There's a crisis in rural America. And neither party is doing enough to solve it."

In Sherman County, Ore., wheat farmer Steven Burnet has watched the economic drought slowly squeeze the joy out of his life. For one thing, he sees his wife, Patty, less often: She's been forced to go back to work as a substitute teacher.

Something else distresses him almost as much.

"People around here don't smile as much as they used to," said Burnet, 63. "You see them and they just don't look as happy as they once did. It's just the weight of this bad economy hanging on their shoulders."

Burnet sees little chance things would improve with the election of a new president. So, just as he's done for the last 45 years, he'll vote Republican.

"I'm going to vote with my conservative values in mind, just like I always have."

[b]By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Corporate Polluters Enjoy Tax Holiday As Average American Taxpayers Foot the Bill

04.16.04 (7:15 am) [edit]

[b]Corporate Polluters Enjoy Tax Holiday As Average Americans File Returns: Taxpayers Continue to Foot the Bill for Superfund Toxic Waste Site Cleanups[/b]

Regular taxpayers will pay 315 percent more in 2004 to clean up toxic waste sites than in 1995, the year Superfund’s polluter pays fees expired. As average taxpayers file returns this April 15th, corporate polluters nationwide continue to enjoy a $4 million-a-day tax holiday.

“Every April 15th, American families pay their taxes, but corporate polluters are let off the hook for toxic waste site cleanups,” said Julie Wolk, Environmental Health Advocate for U.S. PIRG. “By opposing the reinstatement of Superfund’s polluter pays fees, the Bush administration is charging regular taxpayers, instead of polluting industries, for toxic cleanups,” she said.

Since Congress allowed Superfund’s polluter pays fees to expire in 1995 and the trust fund is now essentially bankrupt, the cost to American taxpayers has increased from $300 million to $1.27 billion, a 315 percent increase. This comes at a time when revenues from corporate taxes nationwide fell from $207 billion in 2000 to $132 billion in 2003, a decrease of 36 percent (Center for Budget Policy and Priorities). The Bush administration is the first administration that has not collected or supported reinstating the fees in the program’s 23 year history, and the Senate recently rejected an amendment to reinstate the fees by a narrow margin.

“Without the polluter pays fees, toxic waste cleanup competes with every other government program for scarce taxpayer money“ said Wolk. “Reinstating the fees would not only shift the burden of paying for toxic cleanups back on to polluting industries, but would also provide a dedicated funding source for the cash-strapped program,” she continued.

Last year, the Bush administration cleaned up only 40 Superfund toxic waste sites compared to an average of 87 sites per year in the middle and late 1990’s. The EPA Inspector General recently reported a $175 million funding shortfall for fiscal year 2003, and a recent General Accounting Office letter showed a 35 percent decrease in funding for the program since 1993.

“Communities across the country are at risk of chemical exposure and disease, and now they’re being charged with the cleanup costs as well,” said Wolk. “Congress should reinstate Superfund’s polluter pays fees, re-fund the program, and demand that the Bush administration start cleaning up more toxic waste sites,” she concluded.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] U.S. PIRG
Julie Wolk (202) 546-9707 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

This is Bush's Vietnam - the Wrong War, at the Wrong Time, in the Wrong Place

04.16.04 (7:12 am) [edit]

[b]This is Bush's Vietnam - the Wrong War, at the Wrong Time, in the Wrong Place[/b]

[i][b]There was no Popular Clamor for War. If we had not gone to War, Few Americans would even have Noticed[/b][/i]

This has been a rough time for Americans. Just a year ago, Americans and Iraqis triumphantly pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. A year later, a spreading anti-American insurgency ripped across Iraq, accompanied by Iraqi mobs mutilating dead Americans and shouting hatred of the occupiers. An American year of miscalculations and misjudgments seems to have led Iraq into a chaos bordering on anarchy.

Senator Kennedy's crisp assertion - "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam'' - crystallizes emotions in the United States and stirs powerful memories. "Failure is not an option'' had been a favorite Pentagon cliché, but Pat Buchanan, an isolationist of the old school, now declares, "what Fallujah and the Shia attacks tell us is that failure is now an option.''

A respected professional diplomat Morton Abramowitz, asks "Does Iraq Matter?'' in The National Interest, a sober conservative journal. "America's pre-eminent power position in the world,'' Ambassador Abramowitz argues, "can endure an early withdrawal from Iraq. US forces are so overstretched that a withdrawal might enhance our overall power position and our capacity to do more about Osama bin Laden and other terrorist groups.'' After all, did US withdrawal from Vietnam seriously undermine the American position in the world?

Vietnam and Iraq are dissimilar in vital respects. In Vietnam we Americans inserted ourselves in an ongoing civil war; in Iraq we imposed war on the country for reasons that turned out to be false. But Vietnam and Iraq are indeed similar in the "quagmire'' effect - and in the lack of historical experience and cultural knowledge and the consequent ignorance and arrogance that lead us into quagmires.

Meanwhile a battle of the books is taking place for the hearts and minds of the American people. Against All Enemies an indictment of the Bush administration by Richard Clarke, counter-terrorism director for Presidents Clinton and Bush, tops the New York Times best-seller list. Second is Deliver us from Evil by Sean Hannity, a television pundit who defines "evil'' as liberalism. The fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth and 10th books on the list are anti-Bush; the ninth and 14th are anti-liberal. A new contender, moving to the top, is Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W Bush by John W Dean, one time counsel to President Nixon.

Of course 2004 is the year when Americans indulge in the quadrennial ritual of electing a president. The situation today is that roughly 45 per cent of the electorate, according to most polls, love George Bush; and roughly 45 per cent loathe him. Most of the 90 per cent have made up their minds and are unlikely to change their votes.

The remaining 10 per cent consists of undecided independents, largely in the suburbs, economically conservative but culturally tolerant. The outcome in November will depend partly on that 10 per cent. It will also depend on the turnout of each candidate's basic source of support. The Bush base lies in the religious right; the Kerry base lies in the anti-corporate left. The dilemma each candidate faces is that the positions he takes to please his base may well displease the undecided 10 per cent.

Thus President Bush, worried about his base, seeks to reassure the religious right by proposing an amendment to the US Constitution banning homosexual marriage. That will very likely hurt him among the undecided 10 per cent, who think that government should not interfere with private lives.

Senator Kerry has a similar dilemma. He faces the challenge of Ralph Nader, the anti-corporate crusader, who four years ago took enough votes away from the Democrats to defeat Al Gore and elect George Bush. Yet Senator Kerry, in moving to the left in order to defend himself against Nader, risks upsetting the undecided 10 per cent, mostly moderate in their views.

But will not the war be the decisive issue? It is, after all, President Bush's war. There was no popular Clamor for a war against Iraq. If we had not gone to war, few Americans would have cared. Few would even have noticed.

Why was President Bush, as both Richard Clarke and the former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill have testified, so obsessed with Iraq? I do not think it is for petty reasons. Mr Bush very likely buys into the neo-conservative fantasy that the victory of democracy in Iraq will democratize the entire Islamic world and establish his own place in history. "A free Iraq," as President Bush said yesterday, "will stand as an example to reformers across the Middle East."

Other reasons - oil, Israel, the search for military bases in place of Saudi Arabia, liberation of Iraq from a monstrous tyrant - are secondary compared to the historic mission for which the Almighty has chosen him.

To accomplish the mission, Mr Bush has transformed the basis of American foreign policy. For the nearly half century of the Cold War, US foreign policy was founded on containment plus deterrence. Mr Bush scrapped that. The new basis of US foreign policy is preventive war. As President Bush has said, "We must take the battle to the enemy... and confront the worst threats before they emerge.''

The immediate reason that Mr Bush opened Pandora's box in the Middle East and invaded Iraq was his moral certitude that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was working in close partnership with Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'ida. Those convictions turned out to be delusions. This denouement does great harm to Mr Bush's credibility and to that of the United States; it has got us into a ghastly mess in Iraq; and it has diverted attention, resources and military might from the war that should have commanded the Bush administration's highest priority - the Afghan war against al-Qa'ida and international terrorism. Meanwhile Afghanistan is a mess too. Mr Bush chose the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The impact of the war on the election is hard to predict. In international crises, the American instinct is to rally round the flag and the President - for a while at least. Thus far, the protests against the war have not been extensive. But Fallujah has been compared to the Viet Cong's Tet offensive in 1968, which set in motion a process that drove President Lyndon B Johnson from the White House.

The war's impact depends on the success of the American occupation in stopping the disintegration of Iraq and achieving a measure of stability. It depends on the possible capture of Osama bin Laden. It depends on the possible trial of Saddam Hussein. It depends on all sorts of unforeseeable variables. As Harold Wilson used to say, "In politics, a week is a very long time.'' Six months is an eternity.

In a democracy, elected leaders must be held accountable. The war on Iraq was a matter of presidential choice, not of national necessity. The rekindled memory of Vietnam calls to mind a highly decorated young naval lieutenant returning from Vietnam named John Forbes Kerry, who put a poignant question to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 22 April 1971: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?''

[b]The author is a former Special Assistant to President Kennedy, 1961-4, and author of 'The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, 1941-1966' [/b] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

While Corporations and the Wealthy Benefit from Huge Tax Cuts Poor Families Still Struggle

04.15.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

[b]While Corporations and the Wealthy Benefit from Huge Tax Cuts Poor Families Still Struggle[/b]

Huge tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans have robbed the federal government of much needed revenue that could help fund programs for children, the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) said today. According to statistics released by CDF, the lost revenue could provide enough funds in 2004 to pay for Head Start for all eligible children, provide comprehensive health insurance for the nation's more than nine million uninsured children, and ensure that all poor families have affordable housing.

The Bush Administration's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 heavily favored wealthy Americans while offering little or nothing to working families. In 2004, the average millionaire can expect to receive a tax cut of over $100,000. By 2010 when the tax cuts are fully implemented, the richest 1 percent of Americans will have received 52 percent of the benefits from the tax cuts, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Corporations are also reaping huge benefits from the new tax cuts. Business tax cuts alone amounted to $44.3 billion in fiscal year 2002 and are projected to be $64 billion in FY 2004. These tax breaks, combined with the increased use of tax loopholes, shelters, and subsidies, have resulted in corporate tax levels that are among the lowest seen in the last 70 years. According to a recent GAO report, between 1996 and 2000, 61 percent of American corporations paid no income taxes at all, and in 2000, 94 percent paid less than 5 percent of their total income in taxes. The revenue lost as a result of the business tax cuts in 2002 would have provided enough income to allow all of the nation's 5.4 million poor families with children to escape from poverty that year.

At the same time that the Administration pursued generous tax cuts for the wealthy?which were not paid for in the budget?it failed to aid 12 million American children by speeding up the refundability of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). It would also have provided the average poor family of three with an additional $193. The Administration fought for more tax breaks for millionaires, while denying poor families this modest amount that would have cost roughly 1 percent of the 2003 tax bill.

"This April 15th should serve to remind us that the Administration is favoring corporations and the wealthy rather than aiding the millions of families with children who are the backbone of this nation, many of whom are struggling to stay afloat," said Deborah Cutler-Ortiz, Director of the Family Income Division at the Children's Defense Fund.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Children's Defense Fund
John Norton (202) 662-3609 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

A Scary Performance, and a Signal for Slaughter

04.15.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

[b]A Scary Performance, and a Signal for Slaughter [/b]

George Bush's press conference on April 13 was a scary performance.

Not because his second sentence was ungrammatical: "This has been tough weeks in that country."

Not because he pronounced "instigated" as "instikated" in his fourth sentence.

Not because he said Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of State.

Not because of his foolish comment that before 9/11 "we assumed oceans would protect us." (Ever since the Russians built their first ICBMs fifty years ago, the oceans haven't protected us.)

Not because he said of the August 6 briefing, "Frankly, I didn't think it was anything new"!

Not because he said that even if he had known beforehand that Iraq did not have WMD stockpiles, he still would have gone to war against Saddam Hussein.

Not because he had no coherent answer as to why Dick Cheney must hold his hand when he testifies to the 9/11 commission.

Not because he said that no one in his Administration had "any indication that bin Laden might hijack an airplane and run it into a building," when in fact, at the Genoa G-8 summit, there were precautions taken against incoming airplanes as missiles.

And not because he repeatedly refused to take a shred of personal responsibility for allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen on his watch.

No, his performance was scary because he plunged the United States deeper into a no-win war in Iraq.

"We will finish the job of the fallen," he said.

He gave only a pro forma nod toward the additional innocent Iraqis the United States may kill in the process.

"We will continue taking the greatest care to prevent harm to innocent civilians; yet we will not permit the spread of chaos and violence," he said. "I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force, if necessary, to maintain order and to protect our troops."

He reiterated this point later, saying, "Our commanders on the ground have got the authority necessary to deal with violence, and will--and will in firm fashion."

Here is the President warning that U.S. troops, who have already killed more than 600 Iraqis in the last week, will have a free hand.

That is a signal for slaughter.

He also continued to underestimate the resistance the United States is facing in Iraq. He called it "a power grab by extremist and ruthless elements." He said, "It is not a civil war. It is not a popular uprising." And, astonishingly, he asserted, "Most of Iraq is relatively stable."

That is not what many reporters have seen with their own eyes, and it is not what the TV screens are portraying.

What's more, Bush's vow to unleash "decisive force" will only make things worse.

He indicated that he will go after Moqtada al-Sadr, saying the cleric "must answer the charges against him and disband his illegal militia." This strongly suggests that Bush will order his troops to, as one senior commander said, "kill or capture" al-Sadr. And if that happens, all hell could break loose.

In his Manichaean worldview, Bush lumped the Iraqi insurgents in with the terrorists of 9/11. They are all "enemies of civilization," he said, and they share "a fanatical political ideology."

But many of those who are fighting against the U.S. occupation are not Al Qaeda members who want to destroy America and are not subscribers to the "ideology of terror." Rather, many are Iraqi nationalists who want to expel America from their own country because they have seen the brutality of the U.S. occupation.

That's a huge difference, and Bush makes a terrible mistake by conflating the two.

He also seems to have a static view of who the enemy is. He sees it as a finite group of innate murderers and evildoers. He thinks that all he needs to do is kill all the bad guys and victory is his.

But he doesn't understand that his policy is creating new enemies by the thousands every single day.

He warned that if the United States does not take "resolute action" and does not "stay the course" in Iraq, it will "recruit a new generation of killers."

What he failed to grasp is that by maintaining the brutal occupation, he himself is recruiting that generation.

And the more "firm" and "decisive" the U.S. military response, the more recruits Bush will be enlisting to fight against the United States.

Interestingly, the first question Bush got was on the Vietnam comparison.

But Bush did not want to hear anything about it. "The analogy is false," he said, without explaining why.

He did, however, suggest that it was almost treasonous to raise the specter of Vietnam. "That analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and to the enemy," he said.

(This is an echo of John Ashcroft's infamous statement that "those who scare peace-loving people with the phantoms of lost liberty" are giving "aid" and "ammunition" to America's enemies.)

In previous remarks, Bush has made clear that he believes the lesson of Vietnam is two-fold: first, that the political leaders interfered with the generals, and second, that the United States did not use overwhelming force.

If that is the lesson he applies here, the generals will run the war, and overwhelming force will be the order of the day.

Expect more troops to be sent over soon, or to have their tours extended. Bush said if General Abizaid wants more troops, which he does, he'll get them.

Bush also displayed again the full fervor of his messianic militarism.

Several times he mentioned that the war offered a "historic opportunity to change the world."

In one of his most emphatic moments, he said, "I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom."

This is Bush saying that he is doing God's work in Iraq. That is a particularly inappropriate claim to make, leaving aside the obvious leaping of the church/state wall. Given that Bush has chosen to wage war in an Islamic country, it is unlikely that there are many Iraqis who are anxious to hear Bush's theological justifications.

Bush's rhetoric is proof once again that the government of the United States is in the hands of a crude and deluded leader, whose war policy in Iraq promises more disasters to come.

"Our work may become more difficult before it is finished," he said.

With Bush's approach, that is a guarantee.

[b]Matthew Rothschild is the editor of [i]The Progressive[/i][/b]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

My Question of the Day: Is George W. Bush Really A Communist???

04.14.04 (8:38 am) [edit]

[b]My Question of the Day

Is George W. Bush Really A Communist???[/b]

Communists believe in sharing everything equally.

Last night, Bush said he wants to "Change the World" sounding alot like Vladmir Ilyich Lenin. He went on to say that "everyone deserves the same freedoms as Americans".

Ergo, people don't have to fight for their own freedoms according to Bush-- We're going to impose it upon them. That sounds like the Communist Revolution. (Of course, Bush didn't tell us what the costs, the impact upon our own nation for such exhorbitant sacrifices, who precisely would make the sacrifices, and the consequences of such an ambitious endeavour!!!) ... If it was so easy to install freedom around the world, why hasn't anyone done so: It's one thing to say you want something / It's another thing to gather the resources to achieve it ... But Bush has never been very good at History, Economics and/or Strategic & Tactical Planning, since his Poppy has paid for his bills his entire life ... So, Bush has child-like fantasies that he expects the rest of us to sacrifice, die and pay for ... Hmmm ...

[b]However, if Bush believes that everyone deserves the same freedoms, why doesn't everyone deserve the same level of prosperity???

My Question of the Day!!![/b]

Army Strategist Criticizes Bush Administration Conduct of Iraq War

04.14.04 (8:20 am) [edit]

[b]Army Strategist Criticizes Bush Administration Conduct of Iraq War [/b]

In a broadside fired at the conduct of the war in Iraq, a senior Army strategist has accused the Bush administration of seeking to win "quickly and on the cheap" while ignoring the more critical strategic aim of creating a stable, democratic nation.

While the United States easily won the initial battles that toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago, the administration "either misunderstood or, worse, wished away" the difficulties of transforming that victory into the larger political goal, Army Lt. Col. Antulio J. Echevarria of the U.S. Army War College writes in a new paper.

President Bush and other senior officials have consistently cited this larger context for intervening in Iraq: establishing democracy there as a foothold to transform the Middle East and win the global war on terrorism.

Yet the Pentagon's civilian leadership, centered in the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, focused "on achieving rapid military victories" with a force "equipped only to win battles, not wars," Echevarria, director of national security studies at the War College's Strategic Studies Institute, writes in the paper published in March.

The military force that invaded Iraq a year ago "proved insufficient to provide the stabilization necessary for political and economic reconstruction to begin," he writes. As a result, "the successful accomplishment of the administration's goal of building a democratic government in Iraq, for example, is still in question, with an insurgency growing rapidly."

The White House National Security Council and the Pentagon declined to comment.

The paper, posted on the Strategic Studies Institute's Web site, http://www.carlisle.army.mil/... carries the standard warning that the views are Echevarria's own and "do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government."

While the paper specifically criticizes the Bush administration, Echevarria said in an interview that he wrote about the administration's approach in a broader context. "As a historian, I am looking at a longer trend than just the immediate situation," he said. Both the problem and potential solutions "go beyond the Bush administration."

Col. John R. Martin, deputy director of the Strategic Studies Institute, stressed that the study "covers multiple administrations." By definition, he added, strategic analysis focuses on problems -- not on successes.

But the critique reflects frustration among some active-duty and retired officers about how Rumsfeld and his top advisers seized control of planning for and execution of the invasion and occupation. Indeed, Echevarria said the reaction to his paper from within the Army "has been pretty positive."

Many officers still are rankled by the treatment of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki, who last spring was sharply criticized in public by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for suggesting the occupation would require significantly more troops than the initial war. At Rumsfeld's direction, the number was whittled back, with Rumsfeld and other senior officials arguing that "shock and awe" would collapse any opposition and the Iraqi people, as Vice President Dick Cheney said in a March 16, 2003 interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," would greet U.S. troops "as liberators."

Military officers, by tradition and temperament, are reluctant to criticize the civilian leadership, especially in wartime.

"I know of the frustration of dealing with the ideologues in the Pentagon," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a West Pointer who commanded an armored brigade in Desert Storm and led U.S. troops into Bosnia in 1996. "But these guys are very loyal and they are not going to grumble."

Nash and others argue that the U.S. campaign in Iraq has gotten off track by focusing on short-term military problems.

For example, U.S. Marines won tactical battles in Fallujah last week, systematically sweeping city blocks of insurgents. But the battles inevitably cost civilian lives and, judging by editorials in the Arab press, eroded American legitimacy. At one point the Web site of the popular Arab satellite television station, Al-Jazeera, featured what it said were photographs of children killed by American weapons.

Gen. John Abizaid, overall U.S. military commander in the region, seemed to recognize the costs of negative press when he complained Monday that Arab media were portraying the Marines' actions "as purposefully targeting civilians."

"They have not been truthful in their reporting," Abizaid said in a press briefing. "American forces are doing their very best to protect civilians."

Echevarria, a West Point graduate with M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Princeton University, served as operations officer of a cavalry squadron, among other assignments, and has written widely on strategy.

Historically, the American military has tended to "shy away" from the difficult process of turning military battlefield triumphs into strategic successes, he writes in his paper.

His words reflect the work of the late Army combat officer and strategist Harry Summers Jr., who bitterly observed to a North Vietnamese officer after the Vietnam War that "you never defeated us on the battlefield." That is so, the North Vietnamese replied, "but it is also irrelevant."

As they struggled to understand the lessons of Vietnam, Summers and others came to recognize that the concentration on individual battles neglected the building and defending of a progressive democratic government in South Vietnam.

In both Afghanistan and Iraq, Echevarria writes, the American effort has mistakenly "placed more emphasis on destroying enemy forces than securing population centers and critical infrastructure and maintaining order."

During planning for Iraq, he writes, "senior military officials argued that, while a small coalition force moving rapidly and supported by adequate firepower might well defeat the Iraqi army, a larger force would still be necessary for the ensuing stability operations." Yet Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials "dismissed such arguments as old-think or perceived them as foot-dragging by a military perhaps grown too accustomed to resisting civilian authority."

Fixing this long-term problem, Echevarria suggests, requires rebalancing the roles of military professionals and civilians in strategic decision-making. Moreover, he writes, the United States must develop a better capacity for nation-building and stability alongside its warfighting skills.

Echevarria does not spell out what needs to be done in Iraq now.

Nash termed that "a hard question," adding, "it's real easy to sit here in Washington and give counsel."

"But once you understand that the political objectives are supreme, you understand that you have to broaden the political coalition internationally, regionally and locally" to support nation-building in Iraq, he said.

"That's hard to do, and even harder if you have to swallow your pride," Nash said.

[b]By David Wood, Newshouse News Service[/b], http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"

04.13.04 (9:39 am) [edit]

[b]Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"[/b]

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a September 28, 1821 letter, "[i]The government of the United States, at a very early period, when establishing its tariff on foreign importations, were very much guided in their selection of objects by a desire to encourage manufactures within ourselves[/i]."

Conservatives don't want you to know this, and - even more frenetically - are working to prevent any discussion of "protectionist" tariffs on labor. Their main argument - a straw man - is that "productivity" is responsible for the loss of American jobs, not a fundamental realignment in the rules of the game of business starting in the Reagan era and climaxing with NAFTA and GATT/WTO.

Business publications love to quote 19th century economist David Ricardo as saying, in "On Wages," his 1817 work, "[i]Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price[/i]."

Thus, they say, it's natural that American wages should have been in a free fall ever since Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT: America's roughly 100-million workers now have to compete "on a level playing field" with five billion impoverished people around the world. Offshoring is simply the normal extension, they say, of Ricardo's classic view of economics.

What they forget is that Ricardo also wrote, in the following sentence, "[i]The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, one with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution[/i]."

In other words, labor is part of the game of business, and one of the first goals of the game of business is "to perpetuate" the working class's existence.

Yet everybody knows that games played without rules won't work. Boxers are divided into categories to ensure relative fairness in fights; baseball rules define the type of bats that can be used; football players are limited in how they can use their hands so they don't injure opponents or get unfair advantage.

What's lost on many Americans is that business is a game, too. The rules are defined by We the People through our elected representatives, and the goal is to provide for the "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" of American citizens.

The question Americans have faced since the first arguments between Jefferson and Hamilton in the 1780s was whether the game of business should be played with the primary goal of enriching the few, or - while allowing the few to enrich themselves - to enhance the quality of life of the many at the same time.

Modern conservatives suggest that if the rich win first, benefits will "trickle down" on the rest of us. Protecting workers, they say, will produce dislocations and abnormalities from the "free market." For example, they suggest that when minimum wages are fixed by government, and labor can lawfully bargain to increase wages by increasing scarcity of labor through union actions, that results in an increase in prices, ultimately hurting "the working person."

But Ricardo disagreed that rising wages first increased prices. He noted, [i]"On the contrary, a rise of wages, from the circumstance of the labourer being more liberally rewarded, or from a difficulty of procuring the necessaries on which wages are expended, does not, except in some instances, produce the effect of raising price, but has a great effect in lowering profits[/i]."

And when wages go down, profits go up. American wages have been going down steadily since Reagan first reintroduced conservative economics in 1980, and American corporations just reported two of their most profitable quarters in decades. In part, this is because wages are not only going down within the US, but because US-level wages are being replaced by India- and China-level wages through outsourcing and offshoring.

"But offshoring isn't the problem for American workers!" conservatives shout. "It's the increase in productivity. American businesses need fewer workers because automation and hard work have made our workers more productive."

This is a tragic lie, and it's been bought hook, line, and sinker by most American politicians and even many economists.

Productivity is, very simply, the measurement of how many products or services can be produced for how many dollars of labor expended. But offshoring distorts productivity figures in two ways.

First, foreign labor is cheaper, but produces nearly identical amounts of product or service. The result is "increased productivity."

Second, many corporations don't put offshore labor onto their balance sheets as a labor expense. Because they hire offshore companies as subcontractors to do work previously done by their own employees, they get to reduce the number and cost of their employees while having an only slightly increased line-item on their P&L for the subcontractor. The result is that it looks like their remaining employees are getting more done, because the offshore employees are no longer counted in the productivity figures.

But the Indians and Chinese know something you won't hear on conservative "business" programs. While China and India eagerly let multinational corporations move work from America to their nations, they fiercely protect their own domestic industries primarily through the use of tariffs - taxes on imported goods - and the strict regulation of imported labor.

We should do the same. To return balance to the international game of business, America can again use tariffs to balance trade relationships. This is not a new idea, by the way - it's how America has protected its economy from the founding of this nation right up until Clinton signed NAFTA and GATT.

For example, Jefferson wrote in his diary on March 11, 1792, "[i]Hamilton had drawn Ternant into a conversation on the subject of the treaty of commerce recommended by the National Assembly of France to be negotiated with us.[/i]" France wanted concessions from America as a way of enhancing international relations, but was unwilling to reduce her own tariffs. Jefferson noted, "[i]Hamilton communicated this to the President, who came into it, and proposed it to me. I disapproved of it, observing, that such a volunteer project would be binding on us, and not them; that it would enable them to find out how far we would go, and avail themselves of it[/i]."

George Washington was more of Hamilton's mind. "[i]However[/i]," Jefferson wrote, "[i]the President thought it worth trying, and I acquiesced. I prepared a plan of treaty for exchanging the privileges of native subjects, and fixing all duties forever as they now stood. Hamilton did not like this way of fixing the duties, because, he said, many articles here would bear to be raised, and therefore, he would prepare a tariff. He did so, raising duties for the French, from twenty-five to fifty per cent. So they were to give us the privileges of native subjects, and we, as a compensation, were to make them pay higher duties[/i]."

The deal ultimately fell through - Jefferson saw it as Machiavellian scheme by Hamilton to try to irritate England - but it shows how tariffs were an important aspect of American foreign policy from the administration of George Washington up until Bill Clinton got us into the World Trade Organization, thus eliminating most tariffs and trade "restrictions," letting multinational corporations instead of sovereign nations write the rules of international business.

To solve the crisis of the disappearance of America's middle class the United States should pull out of the WTO and other multilateral treaties that give corporations the power to enforce their will on our government and on our workers. This will again allow us to impose leveling tariffs on work done overseas. Offshore labor can then be set in price - by adding tariffs to it - to equal a living wage in the United States.

If a company wants to hire people to answer the phone in India for two dollars an hour, fine. Let them do it - and pay a $10/hour tariff on top of the $2/hour wage. Most will simply return to the United States for their labor, and those that don't will enhance government coffers with funds that can be used for national healthcare and education of our workforce.

By walking away from the ABM and Kyoto accords, George W. Bush taught Americans that we really do have the power to simply ignore or disavow international treaties we've already committed to. It's time to apply that experience to GATT/WTO/NAFTA and return to our Founders' ideal of a nation where the rules of trade and business are, as Jefferson said, "very much guided" by the interests of We the People, rather than a handful of multinational corporations.

[i][b]Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is an award-winning best-selling author and the host of a nationally syndicated daily talk show. www.thomhartmann.com. His most recent book is titled "We The People: A Call To Take Back America."[/b][/i] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Exposing the Conservative Straw Man - "Productivity"

04.13.04 (9:34 am) [edit]

Nationwide Events to Protest Taxes for War

04.13.04 (8:11 am) [edit]

[b]Nationwide Events to Protest Taxes for War[/b]

BROOKLYN, NY - April 9 - While millions of people in the U.S. are questioning the truth and consequences of the war in Iraq, more and more taxpayers are asking themselves how they can in good conscience pay for it, and many will be taking their protest to the street. On Tax Day, April 15, people around the country will be holding demonstrations and vigils or just leafleting with educational flyers in front of IRS offices and post offices around the U.S.

In Portland, Oregon, protesters will gather at Pioneer Courthouse Square wearing barrels and not much else. Their message: "Military spending has stripped us of our resources for schools, healthcare, etc."

At the Oakland, California, Federal Building, a press conference and creative nonviolent protest will announce, "We will not fund war and occupation." Joining this event will be Julia Butterfly Hill, who was recognized around the world for her two-year tree sit in the ancient redwood known as Luna. Last year, Ms Hill announced that she was making the largest single act of war tax resistance in history by reallocating over $100,000 in federal taxes to nonprofit organizations. Ms. Hill's tax bill was the result of a lawsuit settlement in which she donated 100% of the pro-ceeds to charity. She says, "Thousands of others before me have taken this stand. I am not avoiding paying taxes. I have thought through this very carefully, and with a clear mind and heart I am humanely re-directing my tax payments to where they belong, because our current federal government refuses to do so."

The office of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC) collects a listing of tax day actions, which appears at the bottom of this release. NWTRCC has supported war tax resisters -- people who refuse to pay for killing -- for 25 years, but this year a new group of people are considering resistance for the first time. They are people who want to pay their taxes and are not anxious to tangle with the IRS, but are increasingly troubled by how U.S. tax dollars are being used. "I just can't give them more for this war," said a caller to NWTRCC from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Well known poet and Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh Dennis Brutus is one of these people. In regard to his federal tax bill he says, "I am prepared to pay taxes where these are due but have decided not to pay taxes that will be used to purchase arms for immoral and unjust actions such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, among many other actions. I am prepared to become a Tax Resister to protest the use of taxes for unjust and immoral military action. I am willing to pay legitimate taxes, if this can be agreed upon and have asked to know what percent-age of my taxes will be used for military purposes and have not yet received information."

At a time when states and cities are forced to cut services such as meals for the elderly, library hours, and school maintenance, in February the Bush Administration proposed a budget for 2005 that dramatically increased military spending for weapons systems, but didn't even include money for the war on terrorism. While Defense Secretary Rumsfeld testified July 9, 2003, to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the war in Iraq is costing about $3.9 billion a month, the Administration said in February that it could not estimate the cost of war. Instead they an-nounced that a request for paying for the war would come "after the elections" and would be about $50 billion.

[b]Tax Day Actions[/b]

Along with individual resisters, people who are just plain mad about federal budget priorities will take action in their communities on April 15, tax day. Small and large groups in towns and cities around the country will hand out educational leaflets about military spending at post offices and IRS offices. These events include:

Tax Day Actions April 2004, listed by state at: http://www.nwtrcc.org/taxday2...

Activities are on April 15, unless otherwise noted. In most cases phone numbers are listed for further details, or call NWTRCC (718) 768-3420 for information.

Allentown, PA - LEPOCO Peace Center. (610) 691-8730. Leafletting at post offices.

Amherst, MA - Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters. (413)-773-8655 or scobb.homeopath@verizon.net. Leafletting at the post office, 2-4 pm.

Andover, MA - Bread and Roses Affinity Group & others. (978) 683-3967 or www.deathandtaxesfest.org. April 10, 12:00 noon, annual "Death and Taxes" march from the IRS (RT. 133, Andover) to Raytheon; on April 15, file calling for prosecution of Raytheon for war crimes.

Ann-Arbor/Ypsilanti, MI - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom joined by other local peace groups. (734) 483-0058 or bruthgraves@provide.net. Tax Day Demonstration with speeches at the Ann Arbor Federal Building, Liberty at 5th, Noon to 1 pm.

Asheville, NC - Fools of Conscience. (828) 277-0758 or clafey@main.nc.us. Around 4/1 and 4/15. Actions and coordination of donations to/from the Taxes for Life! Alternative Fund.

Athens, OH - Appalachian Peace and Justice Network. (740) 592-2608. Penny poll at post of-fice, 11 am - 7 pm.

Augusta, ME - Peace Action Maine, others including Vets for Peace. (207) 525-7776 or invert@acadia.net. Leafletting at post office.

Austin, TX - Austin Conscientious Objectors to Military Taxation. (512) 467-2946. Press con-ference to give away redirected taxes. Leafletting at Central P.O.

Bangor, ME - Peace and Justice Center and others. (207) 942-9343 or invert@acadia.net. Leaf-letting on budget priorities at post office.

Belfast, ME - (207) 525-7776 or invert@acadia.net. Leafletting on budget priorities at the post office.

Bellingham, WA - Whatcom Peace and Justice Center (WPJC). (360) 734-0217. Showing documentary "Just Say No" by local filmmaker Jerry Swan. Benefit for the WPJC, sponsored by Community Food Co-op and the Whatcom Film Association. Music by Raging Grannies.

Bethlehem, PA - LEPOCO Peace Center. (610) 691-8730. Leafletting at post offices.

Boulder, CO - Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center. (303) 444-6981. Street theatre and leafleting at mall/ main post office.

Brattleboro, VT - Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters (PVWTR). (413) 773-8655. Penny poll, redirecting war tax resisted money, giving away pens with military spending chart.

Brunswick, ME - Peace Action and others. (207) 729-0517 or invert@acadia.net. Leafletting on budget priorities at post office.

Cambridge, MA - New England War Tax Resistance and Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights. mingaborne@aol.com. Protest with music by Raging Grannies, penny poll, leafleting. Central Square Post Office, Pleasant St. & Mass. Ave., 5:30 - 8 pm.

Chicago, IL - Chicago Area War Resisters Support Group. (773) 784-8065 or info@vitw.org. Penny poll, music, speakers, bannering, leafletting and possibly samples of fair-trade organic coffee. Federal Plaza, downtown Chicago, 11am - 2 pm.

Cleveland, OH - Coalition (Joining Forces) including Cleveland Nonviolent Network and Inter-religious Task Force. (216) 961-0003. "War Costs Too Much" events include leafletting at all post offices in Cleveland; 5 pm rally/street theater at Public Square downtown, then walk to main post office/vigil.

Corvallis, OR - Corvallis WTR. glasslab@justice.com. Leafletting at the post office.

Des Moines, IA - Iowa Peace Network. (515) 255-7114. Nollen Plaza, 11:30 - 1:30 and Main Post Office, 4:30 - 6:00. Leafletting, drummers, penny poll.

Dubuque, IA - Citizens' Tax Moratorium. (563) 583-2586. Vigil/leafletting at U.S. Courthouse, 6th and Locust, 5-7 pm.

Easton, PA - LEPOCO Peace Center. (610) 691-8730. Leafletting at post offices.

Eugene, OR - Military Tax Resisters of Lane County. (541) 465-9240 or chorne@efn.org. Ta-bling at the main post office.

Farmington, ME - Peace Action Maine and others. (207) 645-4755 or invert@acadia.net. Leaf-letting on budget priorities at the post office.

Fort Collins, CO - Center for Justice, Peace & Environment. (970) 484-8039. Distribute litera-ture and hand out pieces of pie to "take back the pie chart." Penny poll.

Greenfield, MA - Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters (PVWTR). (413) 773-8655. Penny poll and 2nd year of "Starve the Pentagon, Feed the People" redirection of tax dollars campaign. International Falls, MN - (218) 286-5819. Leafletting at City Hall and county offices near tax time, weather permitting!

Louisville, KY-Fellowship of Reconciliation (502) 458-8056 or edwardsfor@aol.com. Hand-ing out the pie chart at March 19 rally. Leafletting on April 14. Hosting a speaker on April 15. Madison, WI -WILP