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The Organic Foods Movement

05.31.04 (8:47 am) [edit]

[b]The Organic Foods Movement

Led By Heinz Corporation Or We The People?[/b]

In the past few weeks, the USDA has once again attempted to weaken the federal organics standards that so many Americans have worked hard to enshrine into federal law. These changes would have allowed food labeled as "USDA Organic" to contain hormones and antibiotics in dairy cattle, pesticides on produce and potentially contaminated fishmeal as feed for livestock. As happened with a number of other outrageous recent USDA actions, citizens groups and the organic food industry rallied in opposition, and were successful in reversing the proposed changes.

The newest round of protests against such changes reminds us of the more than 200,000 letters Americans sent to the USDA back in 1997/98 pleading with the agency to not allow toxic sludge, irradiated food, and GMOs to be included in a list of allowable food growing practices for the then-new federal organic food regulations. The USDA backed down then as well, in the face of the outpouring of public opinion. It seems we have won again. Or have we?

Could it be that handing regulatory authority over to the USDA regarding organic foods creates a larger problem than it solves? And is it conceivable that this problem could have been averted entirely if we the people had thought more critically about our safe food movement's own decision-making processes?

Let's review the history.

In the 1970s, the owners of many small local farms and food production companies realized that they needed a new standard of food production that would prohibit a wide variety of toxic processes from ever coming in contact with their foods. These local free-thinking individuals got together and drafted a set of proposed organic food standards designed to become law at the state level. No big food companies came out to oppose or weaken the legislation, because at the time, these companies hadn't yet envisioned the tremendous profitability of what has since become one of the fastest growing sectors of the entire American economy - organic food products.

State standards worked well in every state in which they were established. There was only one real problem with this new system. Because organic certification rules were slightly different from state to state, organic food growers and producers had to be aware of these variations in order to be able to market their products in every state. In states without their own standards, an organic product could be sold as such as long as it was certified by one of the other states' certifiers. But in spite of this difficulty, the organic industry grew rapidly; product choice kept expanding. The system worked.

If everything was humming along so smoothly, then why did more than 200,000 Americans write letters to the USDA in 1997/98 begging them to not allow GMOs, irradiation and toxic sludge as fertilizer on organic farms? As with so many other tragic stories we could be telling, this one also involves we the people handing our sovereignty over to a bunch of corporations - only this time they were organic food corporations with names like Cascadian Farm, Santa Cruz Organics, Hain, Muir Glen, Little Bear, and many others. And their owners had a similar goal to those of Monsanto's owners - ever increasing sales and profits.

State-based organic food certification might have worked just fine for an organics movement whose goals centered around public health and a sustainable economy, and whose leadership continued to be small-scale farmers and producers, and safe food advocates. But unfortunately, the safe food movement's numerous and diverse farmer-led and other organizations of the 1970s and 80s gradually ceded organic food policy decision-making authority to a small number of much more centralized organizations whose leaders (and/or funders) now included or were entirely comprised of organic food corporation representatives. And these corporate leaders had a different set of goals.

So the sad reality is that we no longer have a strong and united movement of grassroots citizens organizations working together to create an organic food system for this country. Instead, we primarily have a "national consumer watchdog group" (the Organic Consumers Association, OCA) which defines its constituents as mere consumers who yearn only for safe foods to vote for with their dollars, and a business organization (the Organic Trade Association, OTA) whose members include "growers, shippers, processors, certifiers, farmer associations, brokers, manufacturers, consultants, distributors and retailers" - in the US, Canada, and Mexico - working primarily to protect and expand its profitability in the global marketplace. And for this, we do need federal organic standards.

Notice, by the way, the lack of attention to the concerns of farm workers by either organization. They are invisible, though there are hundreds of thousands of them.

To fully realize the danger of our current situation, you merely have to view a list of the giant agribusiness corporations that are clamoring to get in on the organic foods market action, which at the current growth rate will constitute 10 percent of American agriculture by the year 2010. These huge companies now own most of the organic industry's leading brands.

* General Mills owns Muir Glen and Cascadian Farm
* Heinz owns Hain, Breadshop, Arrowhead Mills, Garden of Eatin', Farm Foods, Imagine Rice (and Soy) Dream, Casbah, Health Valley, DeBoles, Nile Spice, Celestial Seasonings, Westbrae, Westsoy, Little Bear, Walnut Acres, Shari Ann's, Mountain Sun, and Millina's Finest
* M&M-Mars owns Seeds of Change
* Coca-Cola owns Odwalla
* Kellogg owns Kashi, Morningstar Farms, and Sunrise Organic
* Philip Morris/Kraft owns Boca Foods and Back to Nature
* Tyson owns Nature's Farm Organic
* ConAgra owns LightLife
* Danone owns Stonyfield Farm
* Dean owns White Wave Silk, Alta Dena, Horizon, and The Organic Cow of Vermont
* Unilever owns Ben and Jerry's

And the list goes on and on and on.

And who (or what) leads the Organic Trade Association, which continues to play a leading role in the development of organic food legislation and policy-making? The board of directors includes employees of Whole Foods Market, Weetabix Canada, Stonyfield Farm, and Horizon companies. And the primary funding for the OTA's public policy and media advocacy work comes from Hain Celestial Group (i.e. Heinz Corp), Horizon Organic (i.e. Dean Corp), Cascadia Farm (i.e. General Mills Corp), Stonyfield Farm (i.e. Danone Corp), Tyson Foods, and many others.

Is the corporate leadership and funding of the OTA having an impact on its ability to maintain organizational integrity? You bet! At its annual convention in Texas, it hosted a panel discussion about whether organic and biotech agriculture can co-exist. Perhaps a better use of member time would have been a panel on the need for a ban on genetically modified organisms in the food supply, and how to achieve it. The fact that General Mills Corporation is a major donor may have had something to do with this. And last July, the OTA's Personal Care Task Force decided not to reappoint member company Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, the largest seller of natural soap in the U.S. According to several members, the company was being removed for speaking out against watering down standards for body care products.

Has anyone asked those small-scale food producers who launched this extraordinary organic foods movement back in the 1970's what they think about their movement (if you can even honestly still call it a movement) now being funded and led by a long list of giant corporations? The very nature of the modern corporate capitalist economy necessitates companies growing larger and larger in order to compete. Is this really the business model that the organic foods movement supports? In this democratic society, is this really the best we can do?

At this point, one has to ask a number of perhaps not-so-obvious questions:

If we the people had never allowed our organic food corporations to take control of our safe food movement's policy-making processes (via such groups as the OTA and the National Organic Standards Board), would we have lobbied to replace state-based certification with federal USDA certification? And if we had not turned this decision-making authority over to our corporations, would more than 200,000 concerned citizens have had to write letters to the USDA? Would we now be in the unenviable situation where we are continually on the defensive against the USDA's ongoing attempts to drive a tank through our new federal organics standards? Can social movement processes survive when corporations (including ally corporations) are given a political voice? Did it not occur to the safe food movement's leadership that our corporations might one day end up being owned by much larger agribusiness corporations that still wanted a seat at our policy-making tables?

When citizens unconsciously delegate their rightful decision-making authority to the corporate form of doing business, and when corporations wield Bill of Rights protections as "corporate persons," how can we possibly maintain any semblance of control over the key societal decisions which affect us all? How can we even honestly claim that the U.S. is a democratic society when we the people struggle to differentiate between a citizens' organization responsive to its members and committed to a specific set of goals relating to justice, fairness, or ecological sanity; and a trade association whose primary goal is maximizing market share? What is it going to take for the organic foods "movement" in this country - what's left of it - to recognize the threat posed by turning its decision-making authority over to organic foods corporations which are themselves owned by much larger corporations?

The situation in other countries is less serious, since their safe food advocacy groups are still led by citizens, not corporations. For example, the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) represents 570 member organizations in more than 100 countries. Its mission is "Leading, uniting and assisting the organic movement in its full diversity." IFOAM is "a democratic federation with all fundamental decisions taken at its general assemblies, where its World Board is also elected. It encourages farm workers to play an active role, which you'll never hear from the OTA or OCA.

The US does still have hundreds of grassroots citizen groups working on safe food issues. They are networked together through the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (NCSA) which "is dedicated to educating the public on the importance of a sustainable food and agriculture system that is economically viable, environmentally sound, socially just, and humane." Constituencies represented include "family farms, rural and urban communities, environmental and wildlife advocates, faith-based institutions, minority farmers, farmworker and social justice groups, community food security activists, and advocates for the humane treatment of animals."

Notice that this is not a consumer alliance. These hundreds of member organizations are made up of people who define themselves as citizens using democratic processes to further their goals. Some of these groups include: Baton Rouge Economic and Agricultural Development Alliance, Comte de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agricolas--Farmworker Support Committee, Community Nutrition Institute, Family Farm Defenders, Georgia Poultry Justice Alliance, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, Missouri Farmers Union, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Oregon Tilth, Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative, United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, Western Organization of Resource Councils, and Women, Food and Agriculture. The OCA and OTA are also members of this network.

Wouldn't you prefer your organic food legislation to be enshrined by state legislatures, and safeguarded by hundreds of thousands of real flesh-and-blood human beings who make up a strong interwoven national network of grassroots organizations and small farms like the ones mentioned above, rather than placing your trust in the hands (!?) of corporate "persons" which have been empowered to lead an international trade association, plus a federal agency corrupted by agribusiness? It's a no-brainer!

Perhaps the time has come for organic food advocates to admit that a huge strategic mistake has been made due to the fact that we have wandered so far from our literal roots. And that the best solution to this growing crisis is for thousands of us to stand together as citizens (rather than isolated as consumers) and insist that our organic food promoting organizations' leaders work with us to regain control of our movement from corporations of all kinds from this day forward by:

* Acknowledging our enormous mistake.

* Empowering only flesh-and-blood persons - not corporate persons - to participate in our movement's own policy decision making groups. (Let's show the nation how democratic decision making should be done by disempowering the supposed "right" to free-speech that corporate personhood has established under law, and which has so effectively devastated we the people's ability to take charge.)

* Withdrawing our support for USDA-defined and regulated organics standards, and returning to the old state standards. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it!)

* Insisting that the US pull out of all global trade treaties and processes which are not entirely transparent and democratic in their decision making structures.

* Working diligently to see ourselves again primarily as citizens who all have an inherent right to a safe food supply, rather than as mere consumers who vote with our dollars. (Imagine organic food advocates beginning to question the acceptability of a two-tier food supply in this country, where those of us who can afford to do so buy organic, and the rest of us eat irradiated and genetically modified food dosed with toxic chemicals. Imagine hundreds of grassroots groups working together to end this travesty.)

We have reached a critical moment in our nation's history. Are we up to the task?

-------

[b]Paul Cienfuegos co-founded Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County , and currently chairs the City of Arcata Committee on Democracy and Corporations. He first chimed in on this topic in 1997 with his published essay, "The USDA Organics Standards as a Symptom of Corporate Rule". Paul also owns an unusual online bookstore: . This essay will appear in an upcoming book on dismantling corporate rule, which he is co-authoring with Betsy Barnum, fellow of the Center for Prosperity in Minnesota. More info: .[/b] - http://www.zmag.org/content/s...

Impeach Cheney: Cheney Coordinated Halliburton Iraq Contract - Report

05.31.04 (8:39 am) [edit]

[b]Cheney Coordinated Halliburton Iraq Contract: Report [/b]

A Pentagon e-mail said Vice President Dick Cheney coordinated a huge Halliburton government contract for Iraq, despite Cheney's denial of interest in the company he ran until 2000.

The March 5, 2003 e-mail, from an Army Corps of Engineers official, said that top Pentagon official Douglas Feith got the job of shepherding the contract, according to the newsweekly Time that hits newsstands Monday.

Feith had approved the multi-billion-dollar deal "contingent on informing WH (the White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w(ith) VP's (vice president's) office," said the e-mail obtained by Time.

The newsweekly said it was three days later that Halliburton won the contract, although no other bids had been submitted.

"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" in September, Time said.

Cheney had been Halliburton's CEO until 2000, when he accepted the vice presidential spot.

Cheney's spokesman Kevin Kellems told the magazine that since 2000, the vice president "has played no role whatsoever in government-contract decisions involving Halliburton."

The e-mail was sent "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the vice president's staff a heads-up," a Pentagon spokesman said.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith was handed the job of coordinating the contract by his boss, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Time said.

Feith, Wolfowitz and Cheney, along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, form the core of Bush administration "hawks" who pushed for the war in Iraq. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

[b]Write to your representatives in Congress today and demand the impeachment of Cheney http://www.congress.org .[/b]

Impeach Cheney: Cheney Coordinated Halliburton Iraq Contract - Report

05.31.04 (8:37 am) [edit]

Even Some in G.O.P. Call for More Oversight of Bush

05.31.04 (8:33 am) [edit]

[b]Even Some in G.O.P. Call for More Oversight of Bush [/b]

Members of Congress have a proud tradition of asking witnesses tough questions at famous inquiries like the Watergate and Iran-contra hearings. Now the Iraqi prison abuse scandal has some lawmakers asking a hard question of themselves: What doesn't Congress know and why doesn't it know it?

The disclosures about the treatment of detainees, coupled with complaints from some quarters about the Bush administration's handling of antiterrorism money, have ignited a debate over whether Congress is keeping a close enough eye on the White House and staying adequately informed on developments in Iraq.

Democrats, not surprisingly, think much more scrutiny is necessary and have been complaining for months that the Republican leadership in Congress is refusing to hold its allies in the administration accountable on a range of subjects. Now even some Republicans say they worry that Congress is abdicating its oversight responsibility.

"I believe our failure to do proper oversight has hurt our country and the administration," said Representative Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican who traveled to Iraq to get a view of the situation outside administration control. "Maybe they wouldn't have gotten into some of this trouble had our oversight been better."

The issue burst into the open in recent days as the Senate and House took starkly different approaches to the prison abuse inquiry, with the Senate holding a series of high-profile hearings and the House one public session. House Republican leaders criticized the Senate for grandstanding on the issue, and the House rejected a Democratic push for a broader inquiry.

Frustrated Democratic leaders sent a letter to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last Monday, demanding that he direct the relevant committees to pursue the abuse issue.

"There does not seem to be an investigative agenda, and a work plan for fulfilling that agenda, in place anywhere in the House," said the letter, signed by the Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California; the Democratic whip, Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland; and the caucus chairman, Robert Menendez of New Jersey. "We believe that the House will be derelict in its institutional oversight responsibilities unless this situation changes soon."

Mr. Hastert dismisses the rising criticism of the House's oversight record as a partisan effort to build a political case against the Republican leadership. He said the majority had actively kept abreast of developments in Iraq, though it might not be conducting the "show trials" he said Democrats would prefer.

"In Iraq, we have literally sent scores of members there to take a look and see for themselves what is happening on a bipartisan basis," Mr. Hastert said.

Representative Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress had given undue attention to the abuse of prisoners. "Maybe we should cancel every piece of Congressional business for the entire year so that the issue at Abu Ghraib can be milked until the election," he said.

To other lawmakers and outside experts, the feud over how far to go in examining the scandal is symptomatic of the deeper question of whether the Republican Congress is being aggressive enough in monitoring the administration when their political fortunes are so closely linked.

"The Republican dominance of Congress and the White House has led to an attitude of 'We can keep it within the fold; it is our team and our team will understand us,' " said Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat who sits on the Armed Services Committee.

Democrats and others say Congress should have looked more closely at the administration's failure to provide full estimates of the cost of the new Medicare drug law and the leak of the identity of a covert C.I.A. worker, among other matters.

"Party has trumped institutional responsibility," said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The sense of shared political stakes bridging either end of Pennsylvania Avenue has overwhelmed any sense of institutional responsibility."

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a Republican who has made himself a thorn in the side of both Republican and Democratic administrations, says Congress rarely does enough oversight. "And I believe that is whether you have a Republican Congress versus a Republican president or a Democratic Congress versus a Democratic president," Mr. Grassley said. He recalled that Democrats had been all too eager to help him pursue wrongdoing in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush, but that when he kept at it in the Clinton era, "I lost the same allies."

Mr. Grassley pointed out that oversight can be tedious, unglamorous work, and that it sometimes takes years to tease out problems buried deep in the bureaucracy. Mr. Hastert acknowledged that Republicans were slow to acquire the investigatory skills honed by Democrats during their 40-year dominance of the House. Some say demands on the time of lawmakers and lack of experienced staff have also contributed to diminished oversight.

Yet there have been serious efforts by some committees to pursue lines of inquiry over Iraq - particularly in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its review of the upcoming transition of power, and in the House Government Reform Committee, which explored reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Even leading Republicans concede privately that the Bush administration resists energetic oversight, an attitude Democrats say is reflected in the administration's occasionally dismissive attitude toward lawmakers of both parties. They point to the allegation in Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack" that the administration diverted $700 million in post-Sept. 11 money to secretly begin planning the war with Iraq. In the past, such a charge could have led to a full-blown inquiry.

Congressional Republicans said the White House appeared to have acted within the wide latitude it was given by Congress to handle the money. But the disclosure about the movement of the money, when added to the fact that lawmakers got no advance warning of the scope of the prison abuse before it exploded into the news, seems to have stirred a more assertive attitude in some.

Besides the prospect of more Senate hearings on prison abuse, Republicans in both the House and the Senate joined Democrats in insisting that the additional $25 billion sought by the Bush administration for Iraq be much more tightly controlled than the previous war allocations.

"We really do need to preserve the important role that Congress plays," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, as the Armed Services Committee examined the administration's request. "It is our duty." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Even Some in G.O.P. Call for More Oversight of Bush

05.31.04 (8:32 am) [edit]

Sierra Club leader blasts Bush environment policies in new book

05.30.04 (12:18 pm) [edit]

[b]Sierra Club leader blasts Bush environment policies in new book[/b]

Carl Pope has helped turn the Sierra Club into a prominent voice in national politics by recruiting new members, lobbying government and motivating voters to think about the environment when they head to the polls.

The executive director of the nation's most influential conservation group is plunging deeper into politics this election year, writing a book that accuses the Bush administration of rewriting regulations to help polluters and stripping protections for 235 million acres of wilderness.

"Bush has done his best, in only three years, to break our national compact on environmental progress and turn the clock back - not years or decades but a full century," Pope writes in "Strategic Ignorance" with co-author Paul Rauber.

"This is what the American people do not know: The Bush administration is full of officials who believe ... that weaker laws on clean air, less funding to clean up toxic waste dumps, and national parks and forests run for private profit are actually good for the country."

Administration officials defend the president's record, saying Bush has built upon the last 30 years of environmental progress.

"It is a fact that the air is cleaner, the water is cleaner and the land is better protected" under the Bush administration, said Dana Perino, spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "We are working to accelerate the progress."

The San Francisco-based Sierra Club is planning an aggressive campaign against Bush's environmental policies. The group will formally endorse a presidential candidate this spring and plans to educate voters about the administration's "assault on the environment," said Greg Haegele, the Sierra Club's political director.

Pope said the Bush administration has abandoned the environmental principles first championed by President Theodore Roosevelt a century ago.

"They really don't accept the idea that one of the jobs of the federal government is to protect us from environmental risks," Pope said in an interview. "This administration is really quite consciously willing to risk the last century of environmental progress."

Pope, 58, is a veteran environmental leader known for his political savvy. Since he became the Sierra Club's executive director 12 years ago, the 112-year-old organization has grown by 200,000 members to 750,000 members and become more politically active in both local and national environmental issues.

A Harvard University graduate who grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, Pope rose through the Sierra Club's ranks over 30 years, serving as its conservation director and political director before landing the top job in 1992. He believes he shares the same views on the environment as most Americans.

"Wildness and wilderness are an important part of the American character, and I want to preserve that," Pope said. "I'm a strong believer in Teddy Roosevelt's notion that the government is the steward of our natural resources."

The political impact of "Strategic Ignorance," Pope's third book, is unclear in a year where the most important issues will be terrorism, Iraq and the economy.

"Voters who will make up their mind based on environmental matters are already lost to Bush," said John R. McNeill, an environmental historian at Georgetown University. "But with Iraq and unemployment, very few voters will make up their mind on the basis of environmental issues."

Pope's book reflects the depth of anger at the Bush administration among environmentalists eager to unseat the president. Pope also hopes to explain how and why the administration has acted.

"They've been very effective without passing much legislation," Pope said. "They mainly do it by denying us information. It's their strategy and our ignorance that they're counting on."

Bush supporters say Pope's book is politically motivated. Critics say environmental groups have been selective in choosing facts to criticize the administration.

"This is more about politics than anything else," said Frank Maisano, an energy industry lobbyist for Bracewell & Patterson in Washington, D.C. "Since the beginning of this administration, environmentalists have been playing politics with the environment." - http://www.mercurynews.com/ml...

[b]ON THE NET[/b]

Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org

Sierra Club leader blasts Bush environment policies in new book

05.30.04 (12:17 pm) [edit]

Sierra Club leader blasts Bush environment policies in new book

05.30.04 (12:16 pm) [edit]

Rumsfeld Protest Planned At West Point Graduation ...

05.30.04 (12:00 pm) [edit]

People opposed to the war in Iraq will demand Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's resignation when they gather outside the U.S. Military Academy tomorrow.

Rumsfeld is scheduled to speak at 9 a.m. to about 900 graduating cadets, who will receive their Bachelor of Science degrees and be commissioned as second lieutenants in the Army. The public may attend.

A noon protest will begin in Memorial Park in Highland Falls, outside the military academy gates. Participants will march to the gates to demand the secretary's resignation. The event has been organized by the Democratic Alliance of Orange County.

Organizers stressed that the protest, which is expected to draw participants from surrounding counties, is meant to be peaceful.

Some of those planning to join the protest said they were doing so because, in their opinion, the Bush Administration had lied to the American people about the reasons for going to war and the cost of fighting it. They also said they were protesting America's behavior in Iraq, including the torture of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

"What they are perpetuating in Iraq is not in our name," said Connie Hogarth of Fishkill in Dutchess County, who will be attending the protest. "There are those of us who are going to resist until we pull out of Iraq."

Hogarth was a co-founder of the Westchester People's Action Coalition 30 years ago. The organization, now called the Wespac Foundation, advocates global peace and justice. The Connie Hogarth Center for Social Justice is named in her honor at Manhattanville College in Purchase.

Jo Ann Hampton, whose son, Alex Hampton, will graduate tomorrow, said she did not mind that the protest would take place.

"I certainly support their right to protest," the Airmont woman said. "It's certainly the right of every American."

Alex Hampton, a graduate of Ramapo High School, could not be reached yesterday.

George Potanovic, who is president of the Stony Point Action Committee for the Environment, said the mishandling of the war by the Bush Administration had harmed America's reputation around the world.

"I'm angry at the way President Bush and the members of his administration have disgraced America and what America's values truly stand for," Potanovic said yesterday.

The Stony Point man, a registered Democrat who has run unsuccessfully on other party lines for political office, said it is the responsibility of all Americans to participate in their government and to voice concern when they feel it is warranted. Such action is a true form of patriotism, he said.

"Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has really disgraced America," Potanovic said. "He's shamed us as a nation. I think it's important that the people in America stand up and send a message to Mr. Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration that this is not something the American people condone." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Rumsfeld Protest Planned At West Point Graduation ...

05.30.04 (11:59 am) [edit]

Fascism, Deception, War, Theft, Treason & Right-Wingers: Dick Cheney's Dangerous Lies ...

05.29.04 (7:00 am) [edit]

In a series of public statements over the last few months, Vice President Cheney has given the American public a glimpse of how the world looks from his perspective. In Cheney World, Fox News is a bastion of journalistic integrity, Wal-Mart's poverty-level wages represent all that is good about the American economy, Don Rumsfeld's mishandling of/lying about Iraq makes him the best Defense Secretary ever, and Halliburton is a shining beacon of integrity even as it shafts American taxpayers and U.S. troops.

[b]CHENEY TOUTS FOX NEWS AS PINNACLE OF ACCURACY:[/b] Last month, the WP reported, "Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call with tens of thousands of Republicans." Although it is "unusual for a president or vice president to single out a commercial enterprise for public praise," Cheney said, "I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate" than other media. Of course, a University of Maryland poll last year found that Fox viewers were far more likely than viewers of any other network to have at least one misperception about the war in Iraq. All told, 80 percent of Fox News viewers believed at least one inaccurate fact about the war, compared to just 23 percent of PBS viewers.

[b]CHENEY TOUTS WAL-MART AS PINNACLE OF AMERICAN ECONOMY:[/b] In a visit to Arkansas, Cheney cited Wal-Mart as "one of our nation's best companies" and claimed that "the story of Wal-Mart exemplifies some of the very best qualities in our country - hard work, the spirit of enterprise, fair dealing, and integrity." Cheney did not mention that Wal-Mart pays its workers poverty-level wages, regularly violates environmental laws, and provides such paltry health care benefits that many of its workers are forced to rely on public assistance. Meanwhile, according to a study by the House Education & the Workforce Committee, "in the last few years, well over 100 unfair labor practice charges have been lodged against Wal-Mart throughout the country, with 43 charges filed in 2002 alone. Since 1995, the U.S. government has been forced to issue at least 60 complaints against Wal-Mart at the National Labor Relations Board." Wal-Mart's labor law violations range from "illegally firing workers who attempt to organize a union" to locking workers into workplaces, to "illegal doctoring of hourly employees' time records" to skimp on its already miniscule wages. Instead of noting this sordid record, Cheney said the problem was not Wal-Mart, but pesky workers who dare to challenge the behemoth's behavior. He said the answer is "litigation reform" to limit workers' ability to fight back against abuses.

[b]CHENEY TOUTS RUMSFELD AS BEST DEFENSE SECRETARY EVER:[/b] In the midst of the prison abuse scandal and with American casualties rising in the absence of a clear exit strategy, Cheney said "I think Donald Rumsfeld is the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had." Cheney's comments reward the fact that Rumsfeld and President Bush signed off on a secret order that "opened the door" to the abuse. It also ignored the fact that none of Rumsfeld's pre-war claims about Iraq's WMD have come true; he continues to lie to a national television audience about his pre-war claims; and he repeatedly pushes to slash benefits for troops, their families and veterans.

[b]CHENEY TOUTS DISCREDITED INFO AS 'BEST SOURCE' ON IRAQ:[/b] Earlier this year, when unable to provide any evidence the Saddam-al Qaeda link he said existed, Cheney said an article in the Weekly Standard was the "best source of information" to prove his point. He made this claim despite the fact that the Department of Defense had already dismissed the conclusions of the article as "inaccurate" and had condemned the leak of classified information as illegal. When asked about this by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) at a hearing, CIA Director George Tenet said that harsh criticism of Cheney's statement was "a fair point" and that "I will talk to [Cheney] about it."

[b]CHENEY TOUTS HALLIBURTON AS SHINING EXAMPLE:[/b] In the midst of an SEC investigation into its irregular accounting practices that may have bilked employees, Cheney gave a speech to tout Halliburton. He said, "I have great affection and respect for Halliburton. It's a fine company, and I'm pleased that I was associated with the company." Later, he said "Halliburton gets unfairly maligned simply because of their past association with me," even as Halliburton was itself admitting that it "accepted up to $6 million in kickbacks" in its no-bid contract work in Iraq, and the Pentagon cited the company for serving American troops in Iraq unsanitary food. Finally, he claimed "I severed my ties with Halliburton when I became a candidate for Vice President in August of 2000" – even though he "still receives about $150,000 a year" from the company, and owns more than 433,000 yet-to-be exercised Halliburton stock options that the Congressional Research Service said "represent a continuing financial interest" and "a potential conflict of interest." - http://www.americanprogress.o...

Fascism, Deception, War, Theft, Treason & Right-Wingers: Dick Cheney's Dangerous Lies ...

05.29.04 (6:58 am) [edit]

USDA Secretary Veneman Pulls Organic Food Directives But Major Program Reform Still Needed

05.29.04 (6:46 am) [edit]

[b]USDA Secretary Veneman Pulls Organic Food Directives But Major Program Reform Still Needed[/b]

At a news conference Wednesday USDA Secretary Ann Veneman announced that the agency is withdrawing its recent policy directives clarifying certain organic food production standards. The move comes amidst a rising tide of criticism from organic food producers, consumers and marketers who viewed the directives as a weakening of federal standards and an attack upon the integrity of organic agriculture.

“The Secretary’s announcement is great news for the organic food community,” said Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute. “This is a good first step, but the National Organic Program is still in need of major overhaul, even regime change,” Kastel added.

Farmers and consumer groups, who have been in conflict with the USDA over the past few years, over the implementation of rules governing organic agriculture, mobilized after the recent USDA guidance documents were published. These groups objected to provisions allowing for the use of antibiotics on dairy farms, organic pesticides that might also include toxic inert ingredients and allowing fish, pet food and other products to be labeled organic without third-party certification.

After making the announcement, Veneman indicated that she would ask agency staff to work with the National Organic Standards Board – a group of organic food experts appointed by the Agricultural Secretary – and the organic food industry for a resolution of the concerns that had been raised.

"Secretary Veneman has a wonderful opportunity, at this point, to overhaul the staff at the organic program. The directives that she is withdrawing are just symptomatic of a poisoned and adversarial relationship between the USDA and the organic community," Kastel said. Many agricultural observers are looking at how Veneman handles this crisis, reforms staff and makes new appointments to the National Organic Standards Board. "This will be the test, in this election year, to see whether the Bush administration is going to be friendly to this segment of agriculture, organics, which has helped so many family-scale farms survive."

Organic food has been a rapidly growing bright spot in the agricultural economy, with sales expected to top $12 billion this year. “Weakening organic standards could severely damage consumer interest and confidence in the organic food label,” noted Kastel. “We remain concerned that agency staff in National Organics Program seem unable or unwilling to protect us from those seeking to profit from loopholes and shortcuts in the production and quality of organic food.”

[b]CONTACT:[/b] The Cornucopia Institute
Mark Kastel 608-625-2042
Will Fantle 715-839-7731 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Bush's First Scapegoat

05.29.04 (6:36 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's First Scapegoat[/b]

The first scapegoat has been sentenced to the maximum: one year in prison and a bad conduct discharge.

Specialist Jeremy Sivits pleaded guilty to four criminal charges for his part in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. Sivits was the one who took the pictures of the human pyramid, and he also forced a prisoner onto the pile.

But Sivits, who is cooperating with prosecutors, is the least of the guilty parties in this whole sordid affair.

It becomes clearer and clearer with every passing day that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was not some isolated incident committed by low-ranking officers but a policy set at the highest levels to extract information from detainees.

Reports in The New Yorker and Newsweek indicate that the policy of prison abuse rises many links up the chain of command.

Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker reports that Rumsfeld himself expanded a secret unit that was empowered to engage in abusive tactics. "The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq."

This "special access program" had permissive rules for interrogating prisoners in Afghanistan. One former intelligence official told Hersh: "The rules are, 'Grab whom you must. Do what you want.' "

The same rules applied in Iraq once Rumsfeld and his deputy, Stephen Cambrone, got impatient in the hunt for those elusive weapons of mass destruction. They wanted "to get tough with those Iraqis in the Army prison system who were suspected of being insurgents," Hersh wrote.

Newsweek corroborates Hersh's account. "Some of the images from Abu Ghraib, like those of naked prisoners terrified by attack dogs or humiliated before grinning female guards, actually portray 'stress and duress' techniques officially approved at the highest levels of the government." Newsweek says Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft all "signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods."

So Specialist Sivits has been discharged for bad conduct and given a year behind bars.

Meanwhile, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cambrone, and Ashcroft are free men, still abusively wielding their arrogant power.

-- [b]Matthew Rothschild[/b] - http://www.progressive.org/we...

Bush's First Scapegoat

05.29.04 (6:35 am) [edit]

Apocalyptic Revelations ...

05.29.04 (6:31 am) [edit]

"[i]Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society[/i]." - Thomas Jefferson, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu...

[b]We live in a bizarre age when Evangelical Christian Nutjobs collaborate with Israeli Neo-Con Neo-Fascists in order to bring about some sort of insane[i] Apocalyptic End-of-the-World [/i]with the assistance & encouragement of the stupidest, most corrupt & incompetent president we've ever had the misfortune to be saddled with ... [/b]Of course, the inept, crooked buffoon-boy Bush who hijacked the Oval Office doesn't know American history http://www.tblog.com/template... and is therefore [i]deaf, dumb and blind [/i]to the separation of Church and State at the heart of our Republic ...

[b]Read Matt Bivens' [i]Daily Outrage[/i] http://www.thenation.com/outr... , The Nation ... It makes your [i]skin crawl [/i]...[/b]

In a recent rambling essay http://www.inthesetimes.com/s... , the novelist Kurt Vonnegut mused aloud about the odd absence of the teachings of Jesus from the canon of conservative thought:

... "How about Jesus' Sermon on the Mount http://www.biblepath.com/beat... , the Beatitudes?

[i]Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God[/i]."

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. "Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!" ...

It's an excellent question. Why [i]do[/i] all of the professionally self- proclaimed Christians -- the ones who, like the hypocrites Jesus warned http://www.htmlbible.com/kjv3... against, pray so loudly in public -- prefer the harsh first half of the Bible to the entirely Christian second book?

Who are these Old Testy Christians?

* * *

Perhaps the White House knows. After all, they apparently have top men designing a "road map" to peace in the Middle East by consulting ... the Bible. And, of course, apocalyptic Christians.

That's not[i] apoplectic[/i], or really angry, Christians -- as fitting as that might seem.

No, it's [i]apocalyptic[/i] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages... , as in: Christians who eagerly seek the end of the world (preferably via a Middle East conflagration) because they believe it will bring the rapture http://www.unknownnews.net/ap... -- a Second Coming of Christ.

As if Jesus Christ could be summoned inexorably back -- like a rock band agreeing to an encore after enough chanting people hold up cigarette lighters -- just because we draw the right-sized borders around Israel and erect the right-sized tower in the middle.

But back to the Bush Administration. We've long known that fundamentalist Christians are granted a staggering level http://www.unknownnews.net/ap... of White House attention, about which they brag regularly http://www.ninetyandnine.com/... .

Now, however,[i] The Village Voice [/i]reports http://www.ninetyandnine.com/... , "the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios."

That high-placed NSC aide would be yet another Reagan-era Iran- Contra retread: the unsinkable Elliott Abrams. As David Corn http://www.thenation.com/doc.... recounted after this Administration dusted Abrams off, Abrams is a man who denied massacres, lied to Congress, smeared his political enemies as "vipers", and had his testimony interrupted once by a Senator who said he wanted "to puke" after listening to him http://www.thenation.com/doc.... .

So, a natural fit as liaison to the Old Testies.

Abrams sat down on March 25 http://www.thenation.com/doc.... with leaders of the Apostolic Congress -- a group that keeps, among its modest website, a personal page http://www.apostoliccongress.... about George W. Bush, complete with photos of Karl Rove at bottom. The group's official symbol http://www.apostoliccongress.... -- much like that of the Presidential Prayer Team http://www.presidentialprayer... -- is a mirror of the US Presidential seal.

The opening passage of the group's own "about us" http://www.apostoliccongress.... description reflects a deep obsession with politics. It begins: "In 1981, early in the Reagan Administration, Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door for Apostolic Christians into the White House."

If you're wondering what the "Apostolic" (another A-word, sorry) stands for, it speaks to the group's belief that the original 12 apostles baptized converts directly in the name of Jesus -- and not in the name of a trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But really, what more do you need to know about a Christian group that, when it volunteers its testimony, feels there's no more important place to begin than with the date and time it pried open the door to the Reagan White House?

And does it make things clearer if you consider the group's representative in Israel "believed herself http://www.villagevoice.com/i... to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of [i]Harry Potter[/i]"? That she refers to converting Jews to Christianity as "Circumcision of the Heart"?

[i]The Village Voice [/i]reports http://www.villagevoice.com/i... these particular Old Testies oppose a Palestinian state -- on grounds that all of Old Testament Israel has to be in Jewish hands, and Solomon's Temple http://www.us-israel.org/jsou... rebuilt, before Christ will come back.

... "Abrams [[i]The Voice [/i]continues] attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb http://www.us-israel.org/jsou... or Rachel's tomb http://www.studylight.org/enc... and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."

Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long- standing US policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip." ...

Abrams was not the only top White House mind at the meeting with the rapture Christians this spring. Other officials spoke about how the 9-11 Commission is making America look bad; how same-sex marriage will change America; and how, as Karl Rove's lieutenant, Matt Schlapp, https://registration.realcities.com/reg/toolbar.do?dispatch=login&url=htt p%3A%2F%2Fwww.kansascity.com%2Fmld%2Fkansascitysta r%2F6148103.htm put it, the Bush Administration "is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level."

Gee, Schlapp makes them sound like ... Bolsheviks.

[b]Courtesy of SamAdams' CounterPoint[/b], http://samadams.tblog.com

The Bush Orthodoxy is in Shreds

05.28.04 (7:54 am) [edit]

[b]The Bush Orthodoxy is in Shreds[/b]

[i][b]A Series of Investigations has shattered Neocon Self-belief

by Sidney Blumenthal [/b][/i]

At a conservative thinktank in downtown Washington, and across the Potomac at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the US government and military?

The Iraqi neocon favorite, tipped to lead his liberated country post-invasion, has been identified by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency as an Iranian double-agent, passing secrets to that citadel of the "axis of evil" for decades. All the while the neocons cosseted, promoted and arranged for more than $30m in Pentagon payments to the George Washington manque of Iraq. In return, he fed them a steady diet of disinformation and in the run-up to the war sent various exiles to nine nations' intelligence agencies to spread falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction. If the administration had wanted other material to provide a rationale for invasion, no doubt that would have been fabricated. Either Chalabi perpetrated the greatest con since the Trojan horse, or he was the agent of influence for the most successful intelligence operation conducted by Iran, or both.

The CIA and other US agencies had long ago decided that Chalabi was a charlatan, so their dismissive and correct analysis of his lies prompted their suppression by the Bush White House.

In place of the normal channels of intelligence vetting, a jerry-rigged system was hastily constructed, running from the office of the vice president to the newly created Office of Special Plans inside the Pentagon, staffed by fervent neocons. CIA director George Tenet, possessed with the survival instinct of the inveterate staffer, ceased protecting the sanctity of his agency and cast in his lot. Secretary of state Colin Powell, resistant internally but overcome, decided to become the most ardent champion, unveiling a series of neatly manufactured lies before the UN.

Last week, Powell declared "it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that I'm disappointed, and I regret it". But who had "deliberately" misled him? He did not say. Now the FBI is investigating espionage, fraud and, by implication, treason.

A former staff member of the Office of Special Plans and a currently serving Defense official, two of those said to be questioned by the FBI, are considered witnesses, at least for now. Higher figures are under suspicion. Were they witting or unwitting? If those who are being questioned turn out to be misleading, they can be charged ultimately with perjury and obstruction of justice. For them, the Watergate principle applies: it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

The espionage investigation into the neocons' relationship with Chalabi is only one of the proliferating inquiries engulfing the Bush administration. In his speech to the Army War College on May 24, Bush blamed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal on "a few American troops". In other words, there was no chain of command. But the orders to use the abusive techniques came from the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

The trials and investigations surrounding Abu Ghraib beg the question of whether it was an extension of the far-flung gulag operating outside the Geneva conventions that has been built after September 11. The fallout from the Chalabi affair has also implicated the nation's newspaper of record, the New York Times, which published yesterday an apology for running numerous stories containing disinformation that emanated from Chalabi and those in the Bush administration funneling his fabrications. The Washington Post, which published editorials and several columnists trumpeting Chalabi's talking points, has yet to acknowledge the extent to which it was deceived.

Washington, just weeks ago in the grip of neoconservative orthodoxy, absolute belief in Bush's inevitability and righteousness, is in the throes of being ripped apart by investigations. Things fall apart: the military, loyal and lumbering, betrayed and embittered; the general in the field, General Sanchez, disgraced and cashiered; the intelligence agencies abused and angry, their retired operatives plying their craft with the press corps, seeping dangerous truths; the press, hesitating and wobbly, investigating its own falsehoods; the neocons, publicly redoubling Defense of their hero and deceiver Chalabi, privately squabbling, anxiously awaiting the footsteps of FBI agents; Colin Powell, once the most acclaimed man in America, embarked on an endless quest to restore his reputation, damaged above all by his failure of nerve; everyone in the line of fire motioning toward the chain of command, spiraling upwards and sideways, until the finger pointing in a phalanx is directed at the hollow crown. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

The Bush Orthodoxy is in Shreds

05.28.04 (7:53 am) [edit]

The Jesus Landing Pad

05.28.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

[b]Bush White House checked with rapture Christians before latest Israel move

[u]The Jesus Landing Pad[/u][/b]

It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.

"Everything that you're discussing is information you're not supposed to have," barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be "the Christian Voice in the Nation's Capital," the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and Solomon's temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won't come back to earth.

Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that "the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph's tomb or Rachel's tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace."

Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

In an interview with the Voice, Upton denied having written the document, though it was sent out from an e-mail account of one of his staffers and bears the organization's seal, which is nearly identical to the Great Seal of the United States. Its idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation tics also closely match those of texts on the Apostolic Congress's website, and Upton verified key details it recounted, including the number of participants in the meeting ("45 ministers including wives") and its conclusion "with a heart-moving send-off of the President in his Presidential helicopter."

Upton refused to confirm further details.

Affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Congress is part of an important and disciplined political constituency courted by recent Republican administrations. As a subset of the broader Christian Zionist movement, it has a lengthy history of opposition to any proposal that will not result in what it calls a "one-state solution" in Israel.

The White House's association with the congress, which has just posted a new staffer in Israel who may be running afoul of Israel's strict anti-missionary laws, also raises diplomatic concerns.

The staffer, Kim Hadassah Johnson, wrote in a report obtained by the Voice, "We are establishing the Meet the Need Fund in Israel—'MNFI.' . . . The fund will be an Interest Free Loan Fund that will enable us to loan funds to new believers (others upon application) who need assistance. They will have the opportunity to repay the loan (although it will not be mandatory)." When that language was read to Moshe Fox, minister for public and interreligious affairs at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, he responded, "It sounds against the law which prohibits any kind of money or material [inducement] to make people convert to another religion. That's what it sounds like." (Fox's judgment was e-mailed to Johnson, who did not return a request for comment.)

The Apostolic Congress dates its origins to 1981, when, according to its website, "Brother Stan Wachtstetter was able to open the door to Apostolic Christians into the White House." Apostolics, a sect of Pentecostals, claim legitimacy as the heirs of the original church because they, as the 12 apostles supposedly did, baptize converts in the name of Jesus, not in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Ronald Reagan bore theological affinities with such Christians because of his belief that the world would end in a fiery Armageddon. Reagan himself referenced this belief explicitly a half-dozen times during his presidency.

While the language of apocalyptic Christianity is absent from George W. Bush's speeches, he has proven eager to work with apocalyptics—a point of pride for Upton. "We're in constant contact with the White House," he boasts. "I'm briefed at least once a week via telephone briefings. . . . I was there about two weeks ago . . . At that time we met with the president."

Last spring, after President Bush announced his Road Map plan for peace in the Middle East, the Apostolic Congress co-sponsored an effort with the Jewish group Americans for a Safe Israel that placed billboards in 23 cities with a quotation from Genesis ("Unto thy offspring will I give this land") and the message, "Pray that President Bush Honors God's Covenant with Israel. Call the White House with this message." It then provided the White House phone number and the Apostolic Congress's Web address.

In the interview with the Voice, Pastor Upton claimed personal responsibility for directing 50,000 postcards to the White House opposing the Road Map, which aims to create a Palestinian state. "I'm in total disagreement with any form of Palestinian state," Upton said. "Within a two-week period, getting 50,000 postcards saying the exact same thing from places all over the country, that resonated with the White House. That really caused [President Bush] to backpedal on the Road Map."

When I sought to confirm Upton's account of the meeting with the White House, I was directed to National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones, whose initial response upon being read a list of the names of White House staffers present was a curt, "You know half the people you just mentioned are Jewish?"

When asked for comment on top White House staffers meeting with representatives of an organization that may be breaking Israeli law, Jones responded, "Why would the White House comment on that?"

When asked whose job it is in the administration to study the Bible to discern what parts of Israel were or weren't acceptable sacrifices for peace, Jones said that his previous statements had been off-the-record.

When Pastor Upton was asked to explain why the group's website describes the Apostolic Congress as "the Christian Voice in the nation's capital," instead of simply a Christian voice in the nation's capital, he responded, "There has been a real lack of leadership in having someone emerge as a Christian voice, someone who doesn't speak for the right, someone who doesn't speak for the left, but someone who speaks for the people, and someone who speaks from a theocratical perspective."

When his words were repeated back to him to make sure he had said a "theocratical" perspective, not a "theological" perspective, he said, "Exactly. Exactly. We want to know what God would have us say or what God would have us do in every issue."

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

The Middle East was not the only issue discussed at the March 25 meeting. James Wilkinson, deputy national security advisor for communications, spoke first and is characterized as stating that the 9-11 Commission "is portraying those who have given their all to protect this nation as 'weak on terrorism,' " that "99 percent of all the men and women protecting us in this fight against terrorism are career citizens," and offered the example of Frances Town-send, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, "who sacrificed Christmas to do a 'security video' conference."

Tim Goeglein, deputy director of public liaison and the White House's point man with evangelical Christians, moderated, and he also spoke on the issue of same-sex marriage. According to the memo, he asked the rhetorical questions: "What will happen to our country if that actually happens? What do those pushing such hope to gain?" His answer: "They want to change America." How so? He quoted the research of Hoover Institute senior fellow Stanley Kurtz, who holds that since gay marriage was legalized in Scandinavia, marriage itself has virtually ceased to exist. (In fact, since Sweden instituted a registered-partnership law for same-sex couples in the mid '90s, there has been no overall change in the marriage and divorce rates there.)

It is Matt Schlapp, White House political director and Karl Rove's chief lieutenant, who was paraphrased as stating "that the Presidents Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level."

Also present at the meeting was Kristen Silverberg, deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy. (None of the participants responded to interview requests.)

The meeting was closed by Goeglein, who was asked, "What can we do to assist in this fight for these issues and our nations [sic] foundation and values?" and who reportedly responded, "Pray, pray, pray, pray."

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

The Apostolic Congress's representative in Israel, Kim Johnson, is ethnically Jewish, keeps kosher, and holds herself to the sumptuary standards of Orthodox Jewish women, so as to better blend in to her surroundings.

In one letter home obtained by the Voice she notes that many of the Apostolic Christians she works with in Israel are Filipino women "married to Jewish men—who on occasion accompany their wives to meetings. We are planning to start a fellowship with this select group where we can meet for dinners and get to know one another. Please Pray for the timing and formation of such." Elsewhere she talks of a discussion with someone "on the pitfalls and aggravations of Christians who missionize Jews." She works often among the Jewish poor—the kind of people who might be interested in interest-free loans—and is thrilled to "meet the outcasts of this Land—how wonderful because they are in the in-casts for His Kingdom."

An ecstatic figure who from her own reports appears to operate at the edge of sanity ("Two of the three nights in my apartment I have been attacked by a hair raising spirit of fear," she writes, noting the sublet contained a Harry Potter book; "at this time I am associating it with witchcraft"), Johnson has also met with Knesset member Gila Gamliel. (Gamliel did not respond to interview requests.) She also boasted of an imminent meeting with a "Knesset leader."

"At this point and for all future mails it is important for me to note that this country has very stiff anti-missionary laws," she warns the followers back home. [D]iscretion is required in all mails. This is particularly important to understand when people write mails or ask about organization efforts regarding such."

Her boss, Pastor Upton, displays a photograph on the Apostolic Congress website of a meeting between himself and Beny Elon, Prime Minister Sharon's tourism minister, famous in Israel for his advocacy of the expulsion of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled lands.

His spokesman in the U.S., Ronn Torassian, affirmed that "Minister Elon knows Mr. Upton well," but when asked whether he is aware that Mr. Upton's staffer may be breaking Israel's anti-missionary laws, snapped: "It's not something he's interested in discussing with The Village Voice."

In addition to its work in Israel, the Apostolic Congress is part of the increasingly Christian public face of pro-Israel activities in the United States. Don Wagner, author of the book Anxious for Armageddon, has been studying Christian Zionism for 15 years, and believes that the current hard-line pro-Israel movement in the U.S. is "predominantly gentile." Often, devotees work in concert with Jewish groups like Americans for a Safe Israel, or AFSI, which set up a mostly Christian Committee for a One-State Solution as the sponsor of last year's billboard campaign. The committee's board included, in addition to Upton, such evangelical luminaries as Gary Bauer and E.E. "Ed" McAteer of the Religious Roundtable.

AFSI's executive director, Helen Freedman, confirms the increasingly Christian cast of her coalition. "We have many good Jews, of course," she says, "but they're in the minority." She adds, "The liberal Jew is unable to believe the Arab when he says his goal is to Islamize the West. . . . But I believe it. And evangelical Christians believe it."

Of Jews who might otherwise support her group's view of Jews' divine right to Israel, she laments, "They're embarrassed about quoting the Bible, about referring to the Covenant, about talking about the Promised Land."

Pastor Upton is not embarrassed, and Helen Freedman is proud of her association with him. She is wistful when asked if she, like Upton, has been able to finagle a meeting with the president. "Pastor Upton is the head of a whole Apostolic Congress," she laments. "It's a nationwide group of evangelicals."

Upton has something Freedman covets: a voting bloc.

She laughs off concerns that, for Christian Zionists, actual Jews living in Israel serve as mere props for their end-time scenario: "We have a different conception of what [the end of the world] will be like . . . Whoever is right will rejoice, and whoever was wrong will say, 'Whoops!' "

She's not worried, either, about evangelical anti-Semitism: "I don't think it exists," she says. She does say, however, that it would concern her if she learned the Apostolic Congress had a representative in Israel trying to win converts: "If we discovered that people were trying to convert Jews to Christianity, we would be very upset."

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- -----

Kim Johnson doesn't call it converting Jews to Christianity. She calls it "Circumcision of the Heart"—a spiritual circumcision Jews must undergo because, she writes in paraphrase of Jeremiah, chapter 9, "God will destroy all the uncircumcised nations along with the House of Israel, because the House of Israel is uncircumcised in the heart . . . It is through the Gospel . . . that men's hearts are circumcised."

Apostolics believe that only 144,000 Jews who have not, prior to the Second Coming of Christ, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah will be saved in the end times. Though even for those who do not believe in this literal interpretation of the Bible—or for anyone who lives in Israel, or who cares about Israel, or whose security might be affected by a widespread conflagration in the Middle East, which is everyone—the scriptural prophecies of the Christian Zionists should be the least of their worries.

Instead, we should be worried about self-fulfilling prophecies. "Biblically," stated one South Carolina minister in support of the anti-Road Map billboard campaign, "there's always going to be a war."

Don Wagner, an evangelical, worries that in the Republican Party, people who believe this "are dominating the discourse now, in an election year." He calls the attempt to yoke Scripture to current events "a modern heresy, with cultish proportions.

"I mean, it's appalling," he rails on. "And it also shows how marginalized mainstream Christian thinking, and the majority of evangelical thought, have become."

It demonstrates, he says, "the absolute convergence of the neoconservatives with the Christian Zionists and the pro-Israel lobby, driving U.S. Mideast policy."

The problem is not that George W. Bush is discussing policy with people who press right-wing solutions to achieve peace in the Middle East, or with devout Christians. It is that he is discussing policy with Christians who might not care about peace at all—at least until the rapture.

The Jewish pro-Israel lobby, in the interests of peace for those living in the present, might want to consider a disengagement. - http://www.villagevoice.com/i...

Win Without War Calls for End of U.S. Occupation, Setting of Date for Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq

05.28.04 (7:42 am) [edit]

[b]Win Without War Calls for End of U.S. Occupation, Setting of Date for Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq

[i]Fire Rumsfeld and Others, Let People of Iraq Govern Selves, Says Nation’s Largest Anti-War Coalition [/i][/b]

WASHINGTON - May 27 - A coalition of 42 national organizations making up the country’s largest anti-war organization called today for a date certain for withdrawing all American troops from Iraq.

"U.S. actions in Iraq are squandering precious lives, national treasure and international support," said former Congressman Tom Andrews (D-ME), National Director of Win Without War. "The prisoner abuse scandal has shamed America and increased the danger to U.S. troops. The occupation is shattering hopes for genuine Iraqi freedom and undermining U.S. and international security."

[u][b]The group announced a weekend of nationwide protests of the Bush Iraq policy on June 26 and 27[/b][/u], just days before the U.S. says it will hand sovereignty of Iraq to a UN chosen administration. The weekend action will be organized with [u]Win Without War[/u] http://www.winwithoutwarus.or... members [u]MoveOn.org[/u] http://www.moveon.org/front/ and the Internet based organization [u]TrueMajority[/u] http://www.truemajority.org/h... as well as the coalition [u]United for Peace and Justice[/u] http://www.unitedforpeace.org... .

In a statement released today, Win Without War said any rationale that once existed for the U.S. action in Iraq no longer works.

"There is no military solution in Iraq. We, therefore, call upon our government to commit to ending the military and economic occupation of Iraq and to withdrawing our troops by a date certain. There is no justification for letting any young American be the last to die for a mistake.

"Some see U.S. withdrawal as an admission of defeat, but the far greater failure would be to remain on the present course. The invasion of Iraq was flawed from the beginning, and the mistakes of the occupation have compounded that error. The war has overburdened the armed forces, drained the national treasury and sparked worldwide animosity toward U.S. policy," the group’s statement said.

Andrews called for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for his complicit involvement in decisions that led to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and for his consistent misreading of the situation in Iraq. Others responsible for the criminal treatment of Iraqis also must go, he said.

The statement of Win Without War, which represents a wide range of civil rights, human rights, peace, religious and political organizations, follows:

[b]End the U.S. Military Occupation of Iraq

Set a Date for the Withdrawal of our Soldiers

[i]Let the People of Iraq Govern Their Own Country – Support Humanitarian Relief and Economic Reconstruction

Fire Rumsfeld and Those Responsible for the Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners [/i][/b]

There is no military solution in Iraq. We therefore call upon our government to end the military and economic occupation of Iraq and to withdraw our troops by a date certain. There is no justification for letting any young American be the last to die for a mistake.

The U.S. has a moral and legal responsibility to help finance humanitarian relief and economic reconstruction. We must work with the UN and other international partners to enhance the security and economic development of a post-Saddam, post-American Iraq.

U.S. actions in Iraq are squandering precious lives, national treasure and international support. The prisoner abuse scandal has shamed America before world opinion and increased the danger to U.S. troops. The occupation is shattering hopes for genuine Iraqi freedom and undermining U.S. and international security.

A majority of Iraqis wants American forces to leave Iraq now. The mere presence of an unwelcome occupation force, exacerbated by the criminal treatment of Iraqi detainees, is fostering insurgency. Our soldiers have become vulnerable targets and are unable to restore order or get on with the business of rebuilding the country. More troops will not change the reality that Iraqis and most of the world view the American presence as illegitimate and unwelcome.

We demand full accountability for all those responsible for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners, including senior-level military and civilian officials. Lower-ranking troops must not be made scapegoats. The cavalier disregard for international law reflected in this scandal has characterized the entire U.S. mission in Iraq.

The plans for creating an interim government on June 30th should foster genuine Iraqi self-rule, not perpetuate U.S. control. Iraqis must have command over their own security forces, and the right to negotiate an agreement setting terms for the operation of foreign troops on their soil. The interim government should have authority over the Iraqi economy and oil revenues and the right to reverse or modify decisions made by the U.S. appointed governing authority. Absent these conditions, Iraqi "sovereignty" will be a sham.

We reject the argument that America cannot withdraw from a costly, bloody occupation that was mistaken from the beginning. Such a course will only doom more Americans and Iraqis to die for a dubious cause at costs we cannot afford. To those who claim that American credibility is at stake, we say that the best way to restore America’s credibility, respect and honor in the world is through the success of a vigorous citizen’s movement in ending the occupation and holding those responsible fully accountable. The Win Without War coalition is fully committed to this end.

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Win Without War
Jessica Smith or Kawana Lloyd (202) 822-5200 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Win Without War Calls for End of U.S. Occupation, Setting of Date for Withdrawal of Troops from Iraq

05.28.04 (7:41 am) [edit]

Bush Plan to Drill Rocky Mountain Front Would Yield Less Than One Week's Gas Supply

05.28.04 (7:35 am) [edit]

[b]Bush Plan to Drill Rocky Mountain Front Would Yield Less Than One Week's Gas Supply [/b]

An area in the Rocky Mountains identified by the Bush Administration as an important source of natural gas would actually supply the nation with less than one week's worth of this fuel and only 20 minutes of oil, according to a study released this month using federal government data. [1]

Now under study by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for possible new drilling, the Rocky Mountain Front could nonetheless prove profitable for those who hold the leases to extract oil and gas from these federally owned lands, Peter Aengst, a regional associate for The Wilderness Society http://www.wilderness.org/ , told BushGreenwatch. http://www.bushgreenwatch.org... But the destruction it would cause to the area would be devastating.

The Wilderness Society used data from the U.S. Geological Survey to analyze the amount of economically recoverable natural gas and oil in this pristine area of Montana -- a more-than-100-mile stretch from Glacier National Park to the area near Helena. The Front is home to one of the largest populations of grizzly bears south of Canada, as well as bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer and trout.

A small portion of this region, known as the Blackleaf area, lies at the center of the dispute because it is the subject of a new round of natural gas drilling proposals. The Wilderness Society study found drilling in this area would provide the nation with less than one day’s worth of natural gas and 14 minutes' worth of oil. [2]

"Many Montanans, particularly those who live near the proposed drill sites, do not want any drilling or other development in the Front," wrote Montana Sen. Max Baucus, in a May 17 letter to BLM State Director Martin Ott. "In their opinion, and in mine, the amount of recoverable gas and oil in the Front is not nearly enough to justify damaging the higher recreational, wildlife and scenic values" associated with this area. [3]

Sen. Baucus proposed instead that the BLM consider "analyzing the possibility of offering current leaseholders in the Blackleaf the option of trading out or selling their leases, for fair compensation."

Ott told the Associated Press in Montana that the senator’s request was "probably an idea we would want to explore" but that it would ultimately be up to the leaseholder, Star Tech Energy Corp. of Calgary, Alberta. Although a moratorium on federal oil and gas leases was issued for the Front in 1997, StarTech has proposed drilling under leases it holds that predate the moratorium. [4]

###

[b]TAKE ACTION[/b]:

Public comment on the Environmental Impact Statement for drilling in the Blackleaf area remains open until June 1. To comment: MT_blackleaf_eis@blm.gov.

###

[b]SOURCES[/b]: - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

[1] "A GIS Analysis of Economically Recoverable Gas and Oil in the Rocky Mountain Front of Montana," The Wilderness Society.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Letter from Sen. Max Baucus to Martin Ott, May 17, 2004.
[4] "Baucus proposes lease swap as alternative to Front drilling," Associated Press, May 17, 2004.

Bush Plan to Drill Rocky Mountain Front Would Yield Less Than One Week's Gas Supply

05.28.04 (7:34 am) [edit]

Bush Plan to Drill Rocky Mountain Front Would Yield Less Than One Week's Gas Supply

05.28.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

Bush's Failed "Leadership": Blind Faith Leading To Disaster, Chaos & More Terrorism ...

05.27.04 (6:37 am) [edit]

[b]Bush's blind leadership[/b]

IN NEED OF blind obedience as he stays the course in Iraq, President Bush went to the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., on Monday. Rows of military officers, with not a hint of dissent, clapped like choir boys as Bush said, "The terrorists and Saddam loyalists would rather see many Iraqis die than have any live in freedom."

This is the same Bush who chose to see between 4,000 and 11,000 Iraqi civilians die, according to human rights groups, in an invasion and occupation based on nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Bush said he will stay the course for an Iraq that "protects basic rights," even as a stream of photos exposing prison camp abuse by American soldiers is released.

Bush said, "A free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America." At the rate we are going, it will be any wonder if we will have any friends left in Iraq by the time it is "free." Last week, 40 people died in a US military airstrike on a house. The White House said that it was a safe house for terrorists. Residents who lived nearby said it was the site of a wedding party.

A Reuters story from the site of the airstrike said, "Standing over 3-year-old Kholoud al-Mohammed, who held a cookie in her hand and cried, Mamdouh Harajee listed off the names of the dead from a complex web of relatives who attended.

" 'She lost her mother and father. Another family of eight lost six members. Another family lost four,' he said as he looked down on the bandaged child. `It was just a wedding.' "

The top American military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, said: "There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration. There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

But the Associated Press obtained a videotape it said was shot by the wedding cameraman, who was killed in the attack. The videotape, according to the AP, showed "fragments of musical instruments, pots and pans, and brightly colored beddings used for celebrations, scattered about the bombed out tent." The AP story said the tape captured the travel of "a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert escorting the bridal car -- decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil."

On Monday, Kimmitt showed the press slides that he said indicated large amounts of illegal drugs, weapons, and materials to make bombs. "The activities that we saw happening on the ground were somewhat inconsistent with a wedding party," Kimmitt said. Furthermore, Kimmitt claimed, "we have no evidence of any children being killed on the ground."

But the AP actually interviews survivors, unlike the US government, which bombs them, waits for survivors to straggle into an office and then offers families an average of about $400 per dead Iraqi victim, compared to an average of $1.8 million being given to the victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Relatives said at least 10 children died in the airstrike. The bride and groom were said to have been killed.

As gruesome as any of the photos from the Abu Ghraib prison is the AP's interview with Haleema Shihab. When the bombing started, the 32-year-old Shihab said she started running, clutching her 7-month-old son Yousef in one arm, grabbing the hand of her 5-year-old son Hamza, and running alongside her 15-year-old son Ali. She fell and broke a leg. As she lay hurt, the explosion of another missile hurt her arm. Shihab said Hamza yelled "Mommy!" Ali, the oldest, said he was bleeding.

"That's the last time I heard him." Shihab said. "Hamza fell from my hand and was gone. Only Yousef stayed in my arms. Ali had been hit and killed. I couldn't go back."

Shahib said a stepdaughter found her. They hid in a bomb crater. "We were bleeding from 3 a.m. to sunrise." A US soldier came. Instead of asking for help, Shihab played dead as the soldier kicked her. She said the soldier was laughing. "I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," Shahib said.

This is called staying the course. The only course an immoral war can follow is one of unrelenting tragedy and permanent mistrust. It cannot be a surprise that a certain number of soldiers did not care about Iraqi prisoners when the commander in chief has yet to seriously acknowledge, let alone apologize for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. It cannot be a surprise that the military continues to make mistakes and then blithely tells the press the victims had evil intentions when the commander in chief has yet to apologize for a single mistake outside of the prison abuse scandal.

On Monday Bush issued a five-point plan to stabilize Iraq. No five-point plan can come from a president whose war had no point. Under him, staying the course will continue to mean the blowing to bits of brides, grooms, mothers, and children. The only credible plan is one where Bush announces that he has changed course -- right out of Iraq. - http://www.boston.com/news/gl...

PATRIOTIC GORE: AL GORE'S SPEECH WAS GREAT!!! BUSH'S WAR CROOKS SHOULD RESIGN!!!

05.27.04 (6:30 am) [edit]

[b]Gore: Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet Should Resign[/b]

Al Gore called the situation in Iraq a ``catastrophe,'' angrily blamed the White House for it and demanded the resignations of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and CIA director George Tenet.

The former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate attacked what he called the Bush administration's ``twisted values and atrocious policies'' in a speech Wednesday at New York University.

``Donald Rumsfeld ought to resign immediately,'' Gore bellowed. ``Our nation is at risk every single day Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of Defense. We need someone with good judgment and common sense.''

He added that Rice ``has badly mishandled the coordination of national security policy. This is a disaster for our country.''

Gore was gentler on Tenet, a Clinton administration appointee, describing him as a friend and ``honorable man'' who should nevertheless leave his position because of intelligence failures.

The Republican National Committee shot back at Gore, pointing out that he was vice president when terrorists attacked U.S. embassies in Africa, bombed the USS Cole and carried out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

``Al Gore's attacks on the president today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror or he has amnesia,'' RNC spokesman Jim Dyke said in a statement.

Gore also argued that the evolving scandal of abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not the product of individual misdeeds.

``What happened at that prison, it is now clear, is not the result of random acts of a few bad apples. It was the natural consequence of the Bush administration policy,'' he said.

The reservists photographed abusing prisoners ``were clearly forced to wade into a moral cesspool designed by the Bush White House,'' which, he said, had abandoned adherence to the Geneva Conventions.

Raising his voice to a yell, he drew early applause by angrily denouncing the administration.

``How dare they subject us to such dishonor and disgrace! How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison!''

Gore said the problems in Iraq have engendered fierce anti-American sentiment around the world and provided a strong recruiting tool for terror groups.

President Bush ``has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every town and city to a greater danger of attacks by terrorists because of his arrogance, willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornets nests that pose no threat whatsoever to us,'' Gore said.

The administration, he said, has also set up U.S. soldiers for ``payback the next time they are held as prisoners.''

The speech was one of several Gore appearances sponsored since August by MoveOn.org. The liberal interest group also has a television and radio ad calling for President Bush to fire Rumsfeld.

Gore said electing Democrat John Kerry was the first step toward dealing with Iraq.

He said Kerry should not ``tie his own hands'' while campaigning by offering any specific proposals for how he would handle a situation that is ``rapidly changing and, unfortunately, rapidly deteriorating.'' - http://www.nytimes.com/aponli...

[b]GO AL GORE!!! GO MAN GO!!! GREAT SPEECH!!![/b]

PATRIOTIC GORE: AL GORE'S SPEECH WAS GREAT!!! BUSH'S WAR CROOKS SHOULD RESIGN!!!

05.27.04 (6:26 am) [edit]

Rockin' for the Free World

05.27.04 (6:20 am) [edit]

To all you[i] Nation [/i] http://www.thenation.com readers with a punk rock heart, listen up: Here are two good reasons to yank out those Jane's Addiction T-shirts from your storage bins and get tickets for this year's Lollapalooza.

The first is that this year's lineup is the best of any package tour in years: The Pixies, PJ Harvey, Morrissey, Sonic Youth, Le Tigre, Wilco and Modest Mouse (among dozens of others) are all on the bill (check it out at Lollapalooza.com http://www.Lollapalooza.com ). The second is that Lollapalooza is going political. Through a new partnership with [u]MoveOn.Org[/u], tour organizers hope to politically mobilize the young and the hip en masse as they rock out in outdoor venues across the country this summer.

Organizers are calling this collaboration the "Revolution Solution." As the two-day festival tours, a MoveOn tent will travel and distribute literature on "RS" issues, including: renewable energy and the environment, free speech and media deregulation, trade policy and voting rights. Activists will conduct onsite voter registration drives, and street teams will infiltrate the crowd to chat folks up on the issues. Move.On will also run a "Real World"- style video booth where concertgoers can film their own political commentary while asking issue-related questions (select pieces of the footage will be used on an "RS" website down the road). "We want to get young people to talk about what's going on, and to feel empowered," explains Lollapalooza issues director Claudette Silver. "The young people who are our audience are primed for this."

Additionally, MoveOn will place huge media screens next to the main stage at select shows. Between musical sets, issue-oriented videos will air, featuring well-known thinkers, celebrities and some regular folks speaking about issues important to them. Additionally, MoveOn will arrange for well-known political speakers to briefly take the stage to discuss a chosen issue before the main act, which he or she will then introduce. Picture Al Gore chatting up the crowd about environmental issues and then introducing the Pixies. It's weird, but kind of cool, and will definitely get people talking.

And this--getting people talking--is ultimately the point. Lollapalooza mastermind and executive producer Perry Farrell, the tattooed and wild-eyed frontman of seminal LA rock band Jane's Addiction, explains the philosophy of the project this way: "Our plan is to unify the universal mind and gain favor through inspired speech, grandiose gatherings, sharing better ideas and voting decisively.... Never before in the history of mankind has there been such an opportunity to change the world through the power of one's own presence." Adds Silver: "We have such a long history of music as part of social change, and we're helping to put this into really concrete terms."

The tour will practice what it will preach. Lollapalooza's third performance stage (there are three total, which combined will feature thirty-odd bands at each event) will run entirely on solar energy throughout the tour. Additionally, the entire two days of performances in New York City on Randall's Island will be run "off the grid." Through a combination of solar, biodiesel and hydrogen fuel cells, the show will be produced without the use of any petroleum products whatsoever.

Yet Lollapalooza's most radical component might be as simple as its price. A two-day pass will average about $50 throughout the tour--a bargain in today's climate of overpriced entertainment. At that price, not only can you afford to be part of the "Revolution Solution." You can buy a T-shirt, too.

[i][b]Hillary Frey is The Nation's associate literary editor[/b][/i] - http://www.thenation.com

Rockin' for the Free World

05.27.04 (6:18 am) [edit]

Rockin' for the Free World

05.27.04 (6:15 am) [edit]

Rockin' for the Free World

05.27.04 (6:13 am) [edit]

New Report Finds Unprecedented Special Interest Access Under Bush

05.27.04 (6:07 am) [edit]

[b]New Report Finds Unprecedented Special Interest Access Under Bush [/b]

Special interests are enjoying unprecedented access to government under the Bush Administration, as documented in a report released today by Citizens for Sensible Safeguards, a government watchdog group. President Bush opened the door when he stacked his transition teams with industry representatives in 2001.

A nonprofit organization formed in 1995 in response to Newt Gingrich�s Contract with [i]America, Citizens for Sensible Safeguards[/i] http://www.sensiblesafeguards... has compiled a 148-page examination of President Bush�s close relationship with special interest groups dating back to their $200 million investment in his election. The report shows that executives from a wide spectrum of industries and trade associations now hold powerful, policy-setting positions throughout the Bush administration � positions they have quickly turned to the benefit of the industries and corporations they previously represented.

The result? Rollbacks on protections for public health and the environment; relaxed corporate oversight; relaxed enforcement of regulations; greatly increased government secrecy, including a clamp-down on granting public and Congressional requests for information; a growing lack of federal accountability, including awarding no-bid, secret government contracts; and the suppression and distortion of scientific information whenever it appears at odds with the administration�s political goals.

"Special interests have taken over our government from top to bottom, turning back years of progress on health, safety and the environment," concludes [u]Special Interest Takeover: The Bush Administration and the Dismantling of Public Safeguards[/u]. http://www.sensiblesafeguards... "That this puts the public and our natural resources at significant risk seems to be of little concern to the Bush administration. Rather, the administration appears to view government as an instrument to enrich its political allies."

For example, the report cites Bush's stacking of the Department of Energy's transition team with large-scale donors to his campaign, the so-called "Pioneers" who gave more than $100,000 in individual contributions to help get him elected. Pioneers Ken Lay, former CEO of Enron, Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, and Anthony Alexander, president of FirstEnergy, each held seats on the agenda-setting team.

The transition teams, in turn, helped to secure key agency positions for Jeffrey Holmstead, a lawyer for electric utilities (who became EPA's air administrator); Steven Griles, a lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry (deputy secretary of the Interior); Mark Rey, a timber industry lobbyist (head of the Forest Service); and David Lauriski, a mine industry executive (head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration).

"Once in place, these special-interest allies literally opened the doors of government for business," the report concludes. Rey scrapped forest protections to make way for clear-cutting; Lauriski weakened black lung and respiratory protections for miners; Griles gave former clients a boon by pushing to open more public land to drilling. And Holmstead outdid them all when the EPA directly adopted language written by lawyers at his former employer, Latham & Watkins, for use in rolling back clean air standards.

The long-term consequences of such unprecedented blurring of the lines between industry and government may be even greater due to the removal of corporate oversight. With nobody holding corporate or industrial America accountable, the report concludes, "the Bush administration is inviting irresponsible behavior that could lead to catastrophic consequences."

###

[b]TAKE ACTION[/b]

To take action and learn more visit www.sensiblesafeguards.org.

###

[b]SOURCES[/b]: - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

[1] "Special Interest Takeover: The Bush Administration and the Dismantling of Public Safeguards," Center for American Progress and OMB Watch, May 25, 2004.

New Report Finds Unprecedented Special Interest Access Under Bush

05.27.04 (6:06 am) [edit]

New Report Finds Unprecedented Special Interest Access Under Bush

05.27.04 (6:05 am) [edit]

The New Draft U.N. Resolution Allows for Perpetual Occupation

05.27.04 (6:01 am) [edit]

[b]The New Draft U.N. Resolution Allows for Perpetual Occupation[/b]

The new U.S.-British drafted Security Council resolution is a scam. Under cover of a �transfer of sovereignty,� it seeks to have the United Nations give the United States legal authority to continue the occupation indefinitely.

You wouldn�t know that listening to Bush or from following most media but it�s there in black and white in the text of the draft resolution.

The draft calls for a �review� of the status of the occupation troops at the end of 12 months, or at any time at the request of the �Transitional Government of Iraq�, by the U.N. Security Council. However, this review is meaningless since, of course, the United States has a veto over the U.N. Security Council.

In other words, the reviewer is the reviewee.

As some media accounts http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... openly acknowledge, �the force's mandate is open-ended unless the council adopts another resolution to withdraw the foreign troops.�

Let that sink for a moment. The Security Council cannot end the mandate of the occupation forces without a new resolution -- which would be subject to a U.S. veto.

Here�s the key passage:

�6. Reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force under unified command established under resolution 1511 (2003) � and decides further that the mandate for the multinational force shall be reviewed 12 months from the date of this resolution or at the request of the Transitional Government of Iraq;� (source http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm... )

As Rahul Mahajan of Empire Notes points out http://www.empirenotes.org/ma... , this overturns the key decision of the only previous resolution that refers to the status of occupation of forces, UNSCR 1511, passed in September 2003. Resolution 1511 has automatic expiration of the mandate built in. Here�s the relevant part:

�15. Decides that the Council shall review the requirements and mission of the multinational force referred to in paragraph 13 above not later than one year from the date of this resolution, and that in any case the mandate of the force shall expire upon the completion of the political process as described in paragraphs 4 through 7 and 10 above, and expresses readiness to consider on that occasion any future need for the continuation of the multinational force, taking into account the views of an internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq.� (source http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/mi... )

In other words, the mandate for the occupation would end the latest upon the �completion of the political process� which is defined basically as a constitutional conference and democratic elections.

Previously, the mandate of the occupation would end unless the U.N. Security Council *affirmatively* authorized its continuation. Now, it will continue unless the United States refrains from vetoing a new resolution ending the mandate. Effectively, all that a future �sovereign� government of Iraq could do would be to ask for the United States to review its own occupation, please.

It�s not like the U.S. is denying this state of affairs as Reuters reports http://in.news.yahoo.com/0405... , �Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham acknowledged there was no authority for Iraq to ask foreign troops to leave.�

In the meantime, the U.S.-led occupation force �shall have authority to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security.�

Tony Blair and Colin Powell have publicly stated that the troops would leave if asked by an Iraqi government but have not explained why they are refusing to incorporate that into the resolution.

�Just trust us,� they seem to be saying.

After all, it�s not like they would lie to us about weapons of mass destruction, �bullet-proof� evidence of al-Qaeda links, humanitarian treatment of prisoners, the bombing of wedding parties, or, for that matter, the real reasons for the war, is it?

[i][b]Zeynep Toufe has recently launched the blog http://www.underthesamesun.or... She can be reached at z@underthesamesun.org. [/b][/i] - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

The New Draft U.N. Resolution Allows for Perpetual Occupation

05.27.04 (5:59 am) [edit]

Are There Grounds To Try Bush For War Crimes? ... Yes, There Are ...

05.26.04 (7:47 am) [edit]

[b]Are There Grounds To Try Bush For War Crimes?[/b]

Bush tried to convince the UN and the world at large that Saddam possessed stockpiles of WMDs and had mobile plants to manufacture them. Saddam posed an "imminent threat" and a threat to international security. He had the capability to launch an attack within 45 minutes! Colin Powell was chosen to tell the UN that the US "had first hand descriptions". He used props in his presentation, including satellite photos. But the world was not convinced. India said that the evidence would not stand up in court, and Powell stated last week that some of the information was "deliberately" inaccurate.

UN Resolutions did not specifically allow military force against Iraq as Resolution 1441 only provided for "serious consequences", and it was agreed by all at the time, the a second resolution would be needed to authorize the use of force.

Bush had no room or path to move under the UN Charter with military forces against Iraq leaving him the only alternative to find a coalition of the willing. "This president deliberately exploited his nation's fear of terrorism in the aftermath of Sept 11 to lead it into the long, dark starless night of Iraq (NYT, NST, May 26 2004). A successful media campaign quickly whipped up public sentiments and public opinion at home and convinced the Congress to support a war to invade Iraq and topple Saddam by passing the War in Iraq Act 1998. Whether other nations in the coalition of the willing had similar declarations of war passed by the competent bodies to wage war in Iraq is not known.

There are reports from Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neil, Bob Woodward, and others that point to the fact Bush and members of his Administration had an obsession or a preoccupation or favored a military campaign to bomb targets in Iraq even before 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. And Congress paved the way to allow Bush to invade Iraq, bypassing the UN.

The UN Charter and UN Resolutions authorizing war or military force for liberation are the only legal instruments and provide the only acceptable framework to wage war. The only other way to wage war under international law is when provoked by military action or when the military or security threat is real and imminent or when under an actual attack or in response to an actual attack and in those circumstances there is a valid reliance on sovereign authority to use force or to respond with military force in self-defence or to defeat a real threat from Baghdad.

However, how Saddam could have actually landed a military threat or a WMD on US or Britisb or Australian soil or posed a threat to them or the fact that he could launch such an attack in 45 minutes was never substantiated. His proven military capabilities since 1990 were far below the sophistication than what Powell made it out to be in his landmark UN presentation. Saddam was nothing more than a notch above third world military forces and that was exactly the model Pentagon used in its war simulations and exercises before the invasion.

Pre-emptive military responses are valid only when there is evidence of a military strike building up or organized to strike targets or to overrun or to invade provided there is first the real and proven capability to strike or attack or invade or launch WMDs. In other words there must be a basis for pre-emptive strikes, not one based on false information or mere perceptions of the truth or impressions or uncorroborated intelligence. The only acceptable basis as a doctrine for pre-emptive strikes is that there must be the capabilities, the possession of the military hardware and the evidence of preparation to strike or to launch a strike must be documented or presented. Colin Powell's landmark presentation to the UN failed in this regard in standard and in fact or even reasonably coming close to it.

Bush opted for unilateralism. "Unilateralism is very troubling. Iraq is about unilateralism versus internationalism. In Iraq, we should have let the UN inspectors finish their job. Any military intervention, should have involved the UN and a broad multinational force, rather than the "coalition of the willing". That sums up the view of Bill Clinton in his audience with 1000 Brazilian business and political leaders (AFP, NST May 24 2004).

The entire fabric of Bush unilateralism is very troubling. It is particularly worrisome because it has designs colored with lies and deceit and if the War in Iraq followed by the abuse, sexual humiliation and torture of many innocent Iraqis and non-Iraqis in the same torture prisons of Saddam is examined, then a clear metamorphosis of democracy into a tainted fabric falling on Iraq as a dark shroud, emerges. It leaves one wondering if there are grounds to try Bush for war crimes.

The International Red Cross had filed reports of a systematic pattern of abuse, sexual humiliation and torture by US troops in Iraq. The invading troops opened up Saddam's torture chambers where many innocent Iraqis were abused, sexually humiliated, tortured and killed.

Now there are reports that "British troops in Iraq systematically beat and tortured a group in the presence of an officer, contradicting claims that any abuses were caused by rogue soldiers (The Independent, May 23 2004). Incidentally and interestingly the "abuse" by US troops is no different but widespread enough to tarnish the face of America, liberty, liberation, freedom and democracy. So degrading was the American torture that one victim, who was also tortured by Saddam said that Saddam's torture was better!

Another torture victim was kept naked for 18 days, 23 hours each day, which was the norm, says, "I was a man before but my manhood was taken away. Since this happened to me, I consider myself dead. My wedding is off". And he recalls the screams of a girl, he says was raped by US soldiers. When she started screaming you can't imagine how it sounded. I still hear the echoes of her screams in my head. What beasts could have done that?" (NST, May 19 2004).

Does such rape come across to anyone as a sane process of gathering intelligence? A girl in Iraq...an Alqaeda operative? Impossible. A brutal war crime...yes possible. So, the torture chambers and rape rooms of Saddam were oficially opened and operated by the invading troops. Did they do it on their own?

"A Swede of Iraqi origin was beaten unconscious, given an injection and taken to Abu Ghraib, where he and 12 other prisoners had their genitals tied together with a pylon string and were pushed around. He witnessed prisoners being forced to have sex with each other and saw them doused with bodily fluids. He saw guards shoot five prisoners and watched helplessly, a friend left to bleed to death" (AFP, NST May 18 2004).

The accounts are too many and too grisly. Sexual humiliation in mid-east culture is a degrading form of torture. Recounting these accounts would only stir your feelings or numb your senses while the need is to keep your mind objective to the facts surrounding the whole episode of invading Iraq and in its aftermath and let your heart decide if there were war crimes.

Rumsfeld might have triggered and precipitated the Abu Ghraib and other prison crimes against humanity when he declared that the US will not be bound by the Geneva Convention. Worse still, he describes these crimes as just a "bloody blow" but that "Washington's mission to create a democratic and stable Iraq would succeed in the end. Stunningly, he adds, "One day you're going to look back and you're going to be proud of your service and you're going to say it was worth it (Reuters, NST, May 14 2004). Wow, isn't that one of the most momentous statements in human history - as momentous as the moon landing. What in hell as descended on America? Or more precisely into the head of Rumsfeld. But, his statement seems to clearly lock back into not to be bound by the Geneva Convention on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners and followed through because it was "worth" in the context of "Washington's mission".

Evidence is mounting that intelligence officers sanctioned the prison misdeeds, abuse and torture and that generals and senior military officers knew or had seen that abuse, torture and misdeeds (AFP, NST, May 25 2004). Even more interesting is the allegation from The New Yorker magazine which said that Rumsfeld approved interrogation methods as part of a secret "special access programme" that gave advance approval to kill, capture or interrogate high value targets.

If the US did not want to be bound by any agreed international law or standards of treatment of prisoners, it did not want to be bound by any any standards or law. In the 1990s, Alabama officers used to routinely handcuff prisoners to a metal post in the sun! The US Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional (AFP, NST, May 18 2004). So, Rumsfeld and the US did not follow the standards set by US law either. All of these happened in the hands of three nations who champion democracy and democratic norms but what happened is in itself rogue behavior outside the norms of international law, standards set by laws in democracies and humanitarian decencies.

Beyond that lies a "humanitarian catastrophe". Jo Baker of the London based Child Victims of War says Iraqi children are living in conditions worse than those endured under Saddam and sanctions. The organization is worried about "children detained by the US-led coalition, in the light of revelations of torture in the US and British prisons and it warned that the use of depleted uranium weapons was producing horrible birth defects and high cancer rates in Iraq (AFP, NST May 14 2004).

The spotlight on Abu Ghraib and other prison misdeeds is colored. It is labeled as prison abuse when in fact the systematic pattern of rapes, abuse, sexual humiliation, torture and prison killings is part of war crimes and crimes against humanity as many are innocent women, children and young men. Add to this the recent helicopter bombing of a wedding in full celebration. The spotlight has successfully jaundiced the real issue and reduced it into court martials and credibility of the US, while the Bush Administration is trying to make a sucker of the UN to push through a UN Resolution to endorse the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq. Iraqi sovereignty was taken by the invading forces under US law. The UN had nothing to do with it. The UN has no locus standi in endorsing or legitimizing the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq and its actions to do so are void ab initio.

The larger issues have been drowned out by the media. A little recapitulation may help to bring them into focus. "In Vietnam, Lt Joe Medina butchered 500 Vietnamese with his friends. For this mass murder, he was given a three-day sentence, house arrest with color TV, alcohol and provided with female company (NST, May 25 2004). In other words, it was rest and recreation on-the-house. While Rumsfeld refused the US to be bound by any legal framework, here in history lies the precedent for warped justice and an insult to humanity.

Then there was Operation Phoenix - "an official American policy to assassinate over 25,000 suspected Vietcong supporters, perhaps as official as Rumsfeld's "special access programme" if proven true. Many had their tongues cut out. Finally, when Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War went to Vietnam, he cried openly and apologized, "I am sorry, it was all a big mistake" (NST, May 25 2004).

Now consider the official admission on NBC television by Secretary of State, Colin Powell that "the US had been fed disinformation about Saddam Hussein's suspect chemical and biological weapons and relayed it to the world without seriously questioning it. It turned out the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberately misleading. And for that I am disappointed and I regret it (AFP, NST, May 18 2004).

Thats it. It is just a disappointment and a regret for the US. At least Joe Medina got rest and recreation under a three-day house arrest (which means under good security) but the Bush Administration is getting away clean, like the good guys who just executed a heroic deed.

How does the War in Iraq Act deal with waging war based on false information which was presented as the truth and supported by US satellite photos?

The invasion of Iraq certainly cannot now be classified as a pre-emptive strike or to defend America against WMDs capable of being launched from Iraq or in self-defense or to defeat a threat. It is a war crime for heavens sake followed by more crimes against children and humanity and crimes in prisons. This is what experts and Congress have to examine and determine if the invasion of Iraq was indeed illegal and outside the ambit of the War in Iraq Act 1998.

If it is found to be solely within the intention to create a linchpin of democracy in the middle-east as Rice puts it or within "Washington's mission" to create a democratic and stable Iraq... as Rumsfeld puts it or within the unilateral notion of Bush as contained in his statement, "I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free... or liberate the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator then it does not fall within the legal ambit of defending America from a real threat or self-defense and it is for Congress to determine if those intentions, mission or notion have the force of law by provisions in the War in Iraq Act 1998. They certainly do not have the force of law under the UN Charter as there is no UN Resolution to carry them out by military force.

Interestingly, Congress has the additional job to hear, examine and determine how the Bush Administration created a cocktail of concoctions that told a tale of stockpiles of WMDs, mobile plants to make chemical weapons and imminent threat to the US, supported by satellite photos that led to the formation of the "coalition of the willing" but the rest of the world never believed in the truth of those concotions and why Bush chose to ignore the UN weapons experts who had first hand information.

Did the President come under a duty to "seriously question" the information before him on Saddam's WMDs and imminent threat to US to get to the truth of the situation? What standard is the minimum prescribed by law with regard to information to be put before Congress to pass an Act or for declaration of war?

Even if Congress chooses to give a Nelsons eye to true justice or the need for true justice and gives a "Medina sentence" it would be acceptable as a standard for the world knows the the Bush era is not about internationalism or democratic norms or standards established over decades in agreed conventions by sovereign nations.

Lastly, even if Congress stoops to acknowledge the Bush military adventure in Iraq on the same standing as Operations Phoenix, it is fine, including the "McNamara - its all a big mistake" one line restitution, but Congress must not shy away from its duty to determine and create some response because there is a foundational premise in the view of Bill Clinton as stated to his 1000 Brazilian audience and a duty under democracy to examine and determine if executive action is confined to law and the special Acts under which that action is carried out. - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported

Are There Grounds To Try Bush For War Crimes??? ... Yes, There Are ...

05.26.04 (7:45 am) [edit]

GOP Infighting Rises, Poll Standings Fall ...

05.26.04 (7:40 am) [edit]

[b]GOP Infighting Rises, Poll Standings Fall[/b]

WASHINGTON - One lawmaker lectures a second about the need for sacrifice in time of war. A third accuses others of preening for television cameras rather than working on Iraq. And that's just the Republicans, scuffling out of the Capitol for a 10-day break, legislative accomplishments hard to come by and their own election-year poll ratings in a slump that rivals President Bush's.

"They have no new ideas and no new answers for the American people," jabbed N.J. Rep. Robert Menendez, third-ranking Democrat in the House.

Republicans disagree strongly. And the Democrats have been fractious, too. Fifty-eight of them parted company with their party leaders on Thursday to support legislation making the federal child tax credit permanent.

The vote occurred a few hours after Bush visited the Capitol to deliver a pep talk designed to boost the spirits of lawmakers of his own party. "We are asking the world to do hard things," he told them, according to one Republican in attendance. He drew repeated ovations when he defended his policies on Iraq, the economy and more and proclaimed an eagerness to fight for a second term.

"To the last person in there, we are all behind him," said Rep. Deborah Pryce, R-Ohio, a member of the leadership.

There are several months left for Republicans to enact more of their legislative agenda, and there were indications this week that gridlock may yield to progress on some.

Senate Democrats reached a compromise with the White House to allow confirmation of 25 of the president's judicial nominees, and they agreed to allow formal House-Senate compromise talks on a highway bill.

But Democratic maneuvering is only one of the obstacles confronting the GOP.

The highway bill, which would send money and construction jobs to every corner of the country, has been stalled for months in a three-cornered dispute. The GOP-controlled Senate wants to spend more money than the GOP-controlled House, which wants to spend more than the Republican White House says it will tolerate in an era of record deficits.

The dispute peaked several weeks ago, when House Speaker Dennis Hastert said angrily in a meeting attended by Bush that he felt he'd been suckered by presidential aides.

Tempers have cooled and several GOP aides report progress toward a compromise. Passage of a bill is possible before lawmakers adjourn for the elections.

The prospects for a federal budget are more muddied.

After long delay, GOP leaders in the two houses reached agreement on a tax and spending plan this week and the House passed it on a near partyline vote. But action was put off in the Senate, where Republican leaders lack the votes to prevail. Four GOP rebels are balking at the prospect of large new deficit-swelling tax cuts, particularly given the growing cost of a war in Iraq that already has consumed $121 billion.

One of the four, Sen. John McCain, criticized fellow Republicans pointedly. "Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice. ... What have we sacrificed?" said the Ariz. Republican, who spent five years in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp a generation ago. "I don't remember ever in the history of warfare when we cut taxes."

Hastert saw it differently.

"If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women" recovering from their wounds at local military hospitals. "There's the sacrifice in this country," he said the next day. "We're trying to make sure that they have the ability to fight this war. ... At the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily but economically."

If taxes sparked one internal GOP clash, the war in Iraq and prisoner abuse by American military personnel prompted another.

With the Senate Armed Services Committee pushing deeper into the issue, the chairman of the counterpart House panel fumed.

It "disserves the military operation" in Iraq to summon commanders to testify, said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif. "I think the Senate has become mesmerized by cameras and I think that's sad."

Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate panel, did not respond directly. As courtly as Hunter can be fiery, Warner noted instead that the Constitution made the Congress a "co-equal branch of government" with powers of its own.

The sniping occurs against a backdrop of slumping polls for the majority Republicans in Congress and for the president.

A recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showed Bush's approval rating has fallen to 46 percent, and all surveys show him in a tight race with Democratic Sen. John Kerry. In an AP-Ipsos poll earlier this month, 50 percent of those surveyed said they would like to have Democrats in control of Congress. Forty-one percent said Republicans.

After a season of internal strife, Republicans seemed almost relieved when House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi criticized Bush as incompetent and said, "The emperor has no clothes."

That drew an across-the-board rebuke from Republicans despite the bickering among themselves.

Hastert said Pelosi's remarks "were meant to inspire her political base. But who else do they inspire? If we followed Mrs. Pelosi's advice, Saddam Hussein would still terrorize the citizens of Iraq." [Over 15,000 dead Iraqis would now be alive along with over 800 U.S. Soldiers killed for no reason by Bush and his Neo-Con War Criminals.] - http://www.independent-media....%20Reported

GOP Infighting Rises, Poll Standings Fall ...

05.26.04 (7:36 am) [edit]

The Day After Tomorrow Movie: Fact or Fiction?

05.26.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

[b]The Day After Tomorrow Movie: Fact or Fiction?[/b]

Tidal waves in Manhattan. Tornadoes in Los Angeles. A blizzard in Bombay. The culprit? Global warming. That�s the story in the new action thriller [i]The Day After Tomorrow.[/i]

According to a new campaign site, www.GetTheRealScoop.org, the scenario is over the top. But scientists say global warming is happening now, and that could mean real problems. The good news is, we have the know-how to stop the problem.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) has teamed up with 11 other environmental groups to launch www.GetTheRealScoop.org, a grassroots campaign supporting legislation to cut global warming pollution. Together, the twelve groups will send over 1 million emails to their members inviting them to visit www.GetTheRealScoop.org. Ben & Jerry�s is helping out with free ice cream.

Visitors to www.GetTheRealScoop.org can send letters to their representatives in Congress encouraging them to support the bi-partisan Climate Stewardship Act, and get a coupon for a free scoop of Ben & Jerry�s ice cream.

�The movie shines a new spotlight on global warming. People are asking about the problem, and what they can do to help,� says Dr. Daniel Lashof, chief scientist at the NRDC Climate Center. �A free scoop of ice cream is a cool reward for doing your part.�

The bipartisan Climate Stewardship Act by Arizona Republican John McCain and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman sets sensible limits on global warming emissions, and rewards innovative companies that beat the standard, while reducing overall costs for everyone. The measure came within just 7 votes of passing last fall, and is due up in the Senate again soon.

[b]CONTACT[/b]: Natural Resources Defense Council
Contact: Debra Rosen 202.478.6175 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

The Day After Tomorrow Movie: Fact or Fiction?

05.26.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

From Uranium and Coal to Wind - A Renewable Future for the Seventh Generation

05.26.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

[b]From Uranium and Coal to Wind - A Renewable Future for the Seventh Generation [/b]

"We can either give you coal or we can give you wind." So spoke first Native American, Robert Gough, Rosebud Tribal Attorney. So hopes Winona LaDuke, whose work with the Indigenous Women's Network and Indigenous Environmental Network, has informed and galvanized awareness and action here and around the world.

Ms. LaDuke sees a transformation of energy production from Indian reservations, which contribute ten percent of our nation's conventional energy resources -- coal, oil, gas and uranium, to renewable energy.

In a beautifully illustrated and factual 50 page booklet, she traces the history of energy development "in Indian country," and the terrible legacy of confiscation, looting, royalty underpayment, toxic lands and dying uranium workers. Even today, Indian tribes provide large supplies of energy and water resources to power the nation's electric grid but receive little in commensurate economic benefit.

She writes: "The Tribes in the Four Corners states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah provide the mineral and water resources that supply Southern California with one quarter of its electricity supply." Yet Indian consumers, as on the Navajo lands, pay among the highest electricity rates in the country and have the highest percentage of homes without electricity.

But "things are changing" declares LaDuke. They better. Just reading through her report on the nearly 1200 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo reservation that still expose the areas to radio active contamination, or the July 1979 disaster when a dam holding uranium tailings broke pouring 100 million gallons of radioactive water in to the Rio Puerco and Colorado Rivers, demonstrate the quest of her project Honor the Earth -- the Sun's many forms of renewable energy and the efficient use of energy.

Indian reservations are being eyed as dumping grounds for nuclear waste, especially the lands of the Western Shoshone territory in Nevada. LaDuke has a map of existing dumps and proposed dumps. She then takes the reader through coal country and the impact of the many dams built on Indian lands, the loss of salmon runs, the land erosion in the U.S. and Canada.

Next is the section on Alaska, thinly populated, but already the fourth most polluted state in the country. Alaska, the land of the earlier and earlier ice melts with forthcoming environmental consequences on wildlife and human life receiving less attention than a misbehaving actor.

On page 34 Winona LaDuke starts her trademark style -- showing how dire and costly conditions can be transformed. A renewable future for the Seventh Generation, she foresees, far longer than the short term objectives of Exxon/Mobil. The tribes are organizing around a better deal, around a future of wind power of which the reservations possess a great deal continually. Wind energy, she writes, "is now the fastest-growing renewable energy source across the country." North Dakota alone "has enough winds Class 4 and higher to supply 36% of the electricity needs of the lower forty-eight states." She has a graphic description of both wind resources and the wind projects underway on Indian lands.

Then there are the pages on "Solar Energy." Here she integrates the ancient traditions of the Tribes with the deployment of photovoltaic solar panels and the revolving loan funds to finance them for the communities. She is all about democratizing power production and becoming self-reliant while helping to convert the nation to survivable and sustainable energy futures.

If you wish to spread the alarms and hopes of this startling yetengrossing report, bulk copies at affordable rates are available from the website: www.honorearth.org or call 1-800-Earth-07. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Iraq's Interim Governing Council Dismayed Over Draft UN Resolution

05.26.04 (7:21 am) [edit]

[b]Iraq's Interim Governing Council Dismayed Over Draft UN Resolution [/b]

Members of Iraq's interim Governing Council reacted with dismay to a draft UN resolution submitted by the United States and Britain that sets no date for troops to leave Iraq and gives them wide powers to fight "terrorism.

Speaking on behalf of the council, the current president of the US-installed group, Ghazi al-Yawar, told reporters that "while it was very positive, in many regards it fell short of our expectations."

The draft Security Council resolution, which was presented Monday, pledges Iraqi sovereignty on June 30 but leaves unresolved key issues about the handover of power.

Diplomats at the UN headquarters in New York admitted that many blanks remained to be filled, and even the United States acknowledged some pieces of the puzzle were still missing.

Yawar, a Sunni Muslim, said the council's two main concerns were that the interim government must have the power to ask foreign troops to leave Iraq and that it excercise full control over funds to reconstruct the war-torn country.

Council spokesman Hamid al-Kifaey said the interim leadership would oppose any text that restricts its sovereignty.

"We don't wish the UN to impose anything on an Iraqi sovereign government which will restrict its sovereignty. That is something we do not like. Unless the troops are UN troops," he told AFP.

In London, Iraqi interim defence minister Ali Allawi said he expected foreign troops to remain in the country for "months rather than years".

"The multinational force, in as much as its presence is needed to maintain security, will need ... to be replaced by indigenous forces, by Iraqi forces".

Many Iraqis object to the presence of foreign troops, but see them as vital to prevent the country's rampant insecurity from degenerating into chaos.

Later, maverick Shiite council member Ahmed Chalabi, who cut his ties with the US-led coalition Thursday after a US-backed Iraqi police raid on his property, said any UN role in shaping a sovereign Iraq would be "dangerous".

"The envoy of the UN secretary general is organising a national conference to choose a consultative council. This is a dangerous idea that provokes instability," Chalabi told reporters at a Baghdad news conference.

He said replacing "the coalition's occupation in Iraq with a UN mandate will not give Iraqis a stake in their country."

Speaking to AFP, Kurdish council member Mahmud Othman criticised Britain and the United States for failing to consult the Governing Council before submitting the draft resolution.

"The Security Council is discussing what concerns Iraq and it's not fair. They should have invited Iraqis to be there at the discussions. We are upset about this," he said, branding the draft "disappointing".

He said the status of foreign troops should be discussed between a sovereign Iraqi government and the Americans, adding that such forces "should not be immune to any accountability," alluding to the US prison abuse scandal.

"I think Iraqis should have a say in the punishment and accountability," he said.

The Governing Council would draw up a formal response to the resolution after finishing talks on the matter Wednesday, he added.

Coalition spokesman Dan Senor said Tuesday US forces would remain in Iraq indefinitely until a secure and peaceful democracy had been built.

"Coalition forces will be on the ground here until we achieve our goal which is to hand over to the people of Iraq a sovereign and democratic Iraq which is stable ... and at peace with the world," coalition spokesman Dan Senor said.

"We recognise that there is still a significant terror threat in Iraq and we also recognise that Iraqi security forces are not in a position to defend against that terror threat on their own right now, so it may take some time to achieve the totality of the goal." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Iraq's Interim Governing Council Dismayed Over Draft UN Resolution

05.26.04 (7:19 am) [edit]

Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes

05.24.04 (6:20 am) [edit]

[b]Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes [/b]

A coalition of computer scientists, voter groups and state officials, led by California's secretary of state, Kevin Shelley, is trying to force the makers of electronic voting machines to equip those machines with voter-verifiable paper trails.

Following the problems of the 2000 election in Florida, a number of states and hundreds of counties rushed to dump their punch card ballot systems and to buy the electronic touch screens. Election Data Services, a consulting firm that specializes in election administration, estimates that this November 50 million Americans - about 29 percent of the electorate - may be voting on touch screens, up from 12 percent in 2000.

But in the last year election analysts have documented so many malfunctions, including the disappearance of names from the ballot, and computer experts have shown that the machines are so vulnerable to hackers, that critics have organized to counter the rush toward touch screens with a move to require paper trails.

Paper trails - ballot receipts - would let voters verify that they had cast their votes as they intended and let election officials conduct recounts in close races.

Not everyone agrees that paper trails are necessary, or even advisable. Numerous local election officials - the ones who actually conduct elections - argue that paper trails could create worse problems than the perceived ones that they are intended to cure. They warn of paper jams, voter confusion and delays in the voting booth while voters read their receipts.

There are no national standards to help resolve the disputes. The federal commission that Congress created after 2000 to guide states is behind schedule, and the research body that was supposed to set standards for November 2004 has not even been appointed. So states, prompted by voter organizations, are taking matters into their own hands.

Nevada, which is using touch screens in all its voting precincts this November, has become the first state to require the manufacturer to attach printers in time for Election Day.

California is requiring voter-verified paper trails for any electronic machines that counties in the state buy after November; for this November, it has banned touch-screen machines unless counties meet certain security standards. Three counties are suing the state to overturn the ban and a fourth has said it plans to use the touch screens anyway.

Mr. Shelley said he was requiring counties to allow voters to vote on paper if they wanted to, even if there were no apparent problems with the touch screens. "It's a voter-confidence issue," he said in an interview. "It should be a no-brainer."

More than a dozen other states are considering legislation to require paper backups, and Congress, which had left the matter on the back burner, is considering several similar proposals.

"People are demanding this," said Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who has introduced a bill to require that by November, all voters be able to cast ballots that they can verify. This would entail either retrofitting touch screens with printers or requiring a county to go back to a paper-based system like optical-scan equipment or even punch cards.

Election groups, spurred to organize after a report last July from computer security experts at Johns Hopkins University warned of touch-screen pitfalls, have encouraged a voter revolt. During the primaries this spring, groups like the Campaign for Verifiable Voting urged thousands of voters in various states to cast paper ballots rather than use touch screens without paper trails.

Unfortunately for voters in Maryland who followed that suggestion, though, local officials ruled that those paper ballots were invalid and did not count them.

"The Maryland primary was a very instructive learning experience for all activists," said Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a grass-roots watchdog group in Sacramento that is helping to organize voter groups across the country.

"There are movements in a lot of states, and we're sharing information," she said. She said she took it as a mark of success that 75 percent of the voting jurisdictions in the country will be using the same equipment in November as they used in 2000.

"I'd rather have voters vote on punch cards than on an electronic system that can't be verified," she said.

Ohio is the latest state to hit the paper trail. Earlier this month, Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, signed legislation requiring all counties to have paper trails with their touch-screen machines by November 2006. But the law also allows counties to use the machines this November without paper trails.

Some officials, like state Senator Teresa Fedor, Democrat of Toledo, said this made no sense. If a paper trail is so important, she asked, why should voters go through even one election without them - especially in a state where the presidential vote could be close. She successfully argued to the Legislature that Ohio counties should be able to postpone buying the machines. "There are too many concerns for us to keep a blind eye," she said.

As a result, elections boards in 31 counties are debating whether to postpone their purchases. Since Governor Taft signed the bill, 18 have voted to wait.

"Ohio is the big struggle state right now," said Will Doherty, executive director of VerifiedVoting.org, a group advocating for paper trails.

Doug Chapin of Electionline.org, a clearinghouse for election information set up by the Pew Charitable Trust, said that Ohio was "rolling the dice" to see whether paper trails were necessary.

"You can either build a fence around a cliff or put an ambulance in the valley," he said. "The paper trail is the ambulance in the valley. Certifying the machines and testing them in the first place to make sure they are secure is the fence around the cliff."

But even as some states clamor for paper trails, machines equipped to provide them are scarce.

David L. Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and founder of VerifiedVoting.org, said that models with paper trails had been tested in only a few counties. And a handful of small manufacturers provide them.

Officials from several large manufacturers have said that they could produce paper trails if they were required to, but they have so far resisted, arguing that they are unnecessary.

If more jurisdictions require them, though, vendors want to be first in line for the potentially lucrative contracts. Should a big state like New York, for example, which is considering making paper trails mandatory, joins California, the industry could probably gear up quickly.

Howard Cramer, vice president for sales at Sequoia Voting Systems, which is providing Nevada with its touch screens and printers, said that the company had no worries about the security and accuracy of its touch screens. He said he saw putting printers in Nevada as a useful experiment because other jurisdictions will require them, although he said he expected voters to become so comfortable with touch screens that they would soon drop the fad for paper trails. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes

05.24.04 (6:17 am) [edit]

Betrayal of Our Health & Safety: Bush Appoints Special-Interest Lobbyists as "Regulators"

05.24.04 (6:13 am) [edit]

[b]When Advocates Become Regulators[/b]

[i][b]President Bush has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee[/b][/i].

In a New York City ballroom days before Christmas, a powerful Bush administration lawyer made an unprecedented offer to drug companies, one likely to protect their profits and potentially hurt consumers.

Daniel E. Troy, lead counsel for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, extended the government's help in torpedoing certain lawsuits. Among Troy's targets: claims that medications caused devastating and unexpected side effects.

Pitch us lawsuits that we might get involved in, Troy told several hundred pharmaceutical attorneys, some of them old friends and acquaintances from his previous role representing major U.S. pharmaceutical firms.

The offer by the FDA's top attorney, made Dec. 15 at the Plaza Hotel, took the agency responsible for food and drug safety into new territory.

"The FDA is now in the business of helping lawsuit defendants, specifically the pharmaceutical companies," said James O'Reilly, University of Cincinnati law professor and author of a book on the history of the FDA. "It's a dramatic change in what the FDA has done in the past."

Troy's switch from industry advocate to industry regulator overseeing his former clients is a hallmark of President Bush's administration.

Troy is one of more than 100 high-level officials under Bush who helped govern industries they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates, a Denver Post analysis shows.

In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates.

The president's political appointees are making or overseeing profound changes affecting drug laws, food policies, land use, clean-air regulations and other key issues.

Government watchdogs call it a disturbing trend, not adequately restrained by existing ethics laws.

Among the advocates-turned-regulato rs are a former meat-industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a former drug-company lobbyist who influences prescription-drug policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while still accepting payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps determine how much of the West those former clients can use for oil and gas drilling.

"When you go to work in lobbying, it is clearly understood and accepted that your job is to advocate for the interests of those who hired you," said Terry L. Cooper, a University of Southern California ethics and government professor. "When you go to work in government, you are supposed to be responsible for upholding and maintaining whatever you can identify as the public interest."

The Bush administration says the regulators were chosen for their abilities.

"The president appoints highly qualified individuals who make their decisions based on the best interests of the American people," said White House spokesman Jim Morrell. "Any individual serving in the administration must abide by strict legal and ethical guidelines, including full disclosure of past lobbying activities."

Six of the former industry advocates have faced ethics investigations or resigned amid conflict-of-interest charges. Those and at least 14 others have been lambasted by public-interest groups.

Government ethics standards are part of the problem because they don't fully address the kind of issues that now permeate Washington, Cooper and some inside government say. The rules focus mainly on direct financial conflicts. Other, more nuanced conflicts aren't addressed

"There are so many ways around, over and under these (ethics) bans ... they almost never work," said Paul Light, who for decades has studied the appointment process for the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. "There're more screen doors than steel doors."

A March 16 report from the Interior Department's inspector general, for example, concluded that department's "byzantine" conflict-of-interest rules were "wholly incapable" of addressing ethical questions involving a former energy lobbyist, J. Steven Griles, as the department's No. 2 official.

The report called the department's ethics system "a train wreck waiting to happen."

Bringing bias to a federal job isn't new. Presidents of all political persuasions have appointed people who shared their party's values.

As president, Bill Clinton peppered the federal bureaucracy with Democratic state officials, lawyers and advocates from various environmental or public-interest groups.

Only a handful of registered lobbyists worked for Clinton, however.

Bush's embrace of lobbyists marks a key difference because it allows "those who are affected by the regulations to determine what the ground rules should be," said David Cohen, co-director of the Advocacy Institute, which helps teach nonprofits how to lobby in Washington.

While previous Republican presidents hired lobbyists, "the Bush administration has made it rise in geometric proportions," Cohen said, meaning Bush is "capturing the instruments of government and using them for the ends" that favor Bush's political supporters.

"In the Bush administration," said U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., "the foxes are guarding the foxes, and the middle-class hens are getting plucked."

Republicans and their lobbying allies reject the idea that industry is embedded in the administration.

"Foxes? No," Vice President Dick Cheney told The Denver Post. "I think we have a good track record."

The clout of industry is balanced by the power of labor unions, trial lawyers and public-interest groups, said Jerry Jasinowski, chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers.

"The notion that somehow business gets everything and we've gotten a free ride is absurd," he said.

Still, the lobbyists-turned-policyma kers control or influence health care, food safety, land use, the environment and other issues touched by government.

[b]HEALTH CARE[/b]

[i]Ann-Marie Lynch [/i]

The drug-industry lobbyist who fought price controls joined the Health and Human Services Department and has helped drug companies avoid the limits.

Top aides in the Department of Health and Human Services provide analysis and advice to the president on key consumer issues, including prescription-drug policies. In doing so, they consider the needs of pharmaceutical companies seeking revenue for future research, and consumers struggling to afford increasingly costly medications.

In June 2001 Bush installed Ann- Marie Lynch, a lobbyist for the drug- company trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, to help set those policies.

As a lobbyist, Lynch fought congressional attempts to cap prices for drugs. Price controls, she argued, would hamper medical innovation.

Thirteen months after Lynch became deputy assistant secretary in the office of policy, her division issued a report that praised brand- name drugs. It warned that "government-controlled restrictions on the coverage of new drugs could put the future of medical innovation at risk and may retard advances in treatment."

Consumer advocates say that's nonsense. Other countries innovate despite price controls, said Gail Shearer, director of health policy analysis for Consumers Union, nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports.

"They haven't taken as seriously their job of making medicines affordable to all Americans," Shearer said. "When you talk about the need for (drug) innovation, you have to put it in the context of, will people get the wonder drugs?"

Critics say the report influenced congressional debate over a Medicare drug policy that, among other things, banned government from using Medicare's buying power to cut drug prices. The legislation will mean an extra $139 billion in profit over eight years to drug companies, Boston University researchers said.

Republicans in Congress used arguments that came "directly out of Ann-Marie Lynch's mouth" and from the trade group she previously worked for, said Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, lead Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee's health subcommittee.

Lynch declined to talk to a reporter. HHS spokesman Bill Pierce said the report was not intended to sway Congress. Provisions banning Medicare from negotiating drug prices date to 2000, he said.

Lynch also blocked the release of about a dozen completed research reports that challenge drug-company claims, three former employees said. Pierce said Lynch decides research topics and which reports are released.

One 2001 report, for example, criticizes Medicare plus Choice (now known as Medicare Advantage). Its findings suggested that running the Medicare prescription-drug benefit through private health companies - the method the administration ultimately chose - would be more expensive and would not serve rural areas well.

"Very few of (the private companies) manage to bring in the benefit cost effectively," said Mark Merlis, the private health policy consultant who wrote the report.

[i]Thomas A. Scully [/i]

The former hospital lobbyist presided over an agency that helped a chain he once represented win a favorable settlement in a Medicare fraud case.

Thomas A. Scully represented the nation's for-profit hospitals as a lobbyist before being hired by the Bush administration in June 2001 to head the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Eight months after Scully arrived at the Medicare and Medicaid agency, it moved to settle final claims involving HCA Inc., a hospital chain that was the biggest member of Scully's former employer, the Federation of American Hospitals. HCA Inc. faced allegations it fraudulently overbilled the government for Medicare cases.

Under the terms agreed to in June 2002 by Scully's agency, HCA would have settled for $250 million. Medicare fraud cases typically are ironed out with Justice Department participation, but Scully agreed to those terms on his own, said John R. Phillips, an attorney who represented whistle-blowers in the case.

"The $250 million was a total sellout by Scully, who totally negotiated it behind Justice's back," Phillips said.

It also was handled in a way that protected the company from a full review of its cost reports and the triple- damage civil fines that can be imposed in fraud cases, he said.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Justice in October 2002 if that deal was "too lenient."

Justice delayed the settlement until June 2003.

HCA, the nation's biggest for-profit hospital company, eventually paid that $250 million, plus $631 million in civil penalties and damages and $17.5 million to states.

Scully's ethics agreement did not require him to officially avoid cases involving HCA. But Scully said he steered clear.

"I recused myself from everything involving HCA-specific issues or policy and was not involved in any way, shape or form," Scully said. "Every time anything came up (regarding) HCA, I left it to my deputies."

But Grassley in a June 25, 2002, letter to a Justice Department lawyer said comments by Scully "have given me great concern that there is an active, ongoing effort underway to change or modify enforcement (on Medicare fraud) policy that in my view could significantly undermine the (law)."

Scully has since left the administration for consulting jobs with a lobbying firm and an investment company that represent Medicare providers.

[i]Daniel E. Troy [/i]

The lawyer who represented major drug companies still fights for causes that benefit them as chief counsel at the Food and Drug Administration.

Daniel E. Troy was well-known at the FDA before he arrived in summer 2001 to work as chief counsel, the top legal position in the department.

As a lawyer in private practice, Troy repeatedly sued the FDA, arguing that it had only limited ability to regulate drug companies. He filed those suits through the Washington Legal Foundation, a group funded by businesses, including drug companies. Donors include charitable foundations run by Pfizer Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Eli Lilly & Co.

Troy also represented Pfizer through his firm, Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Troy said in an e-mail to a reporter that his Pfizer work was mainly communications and insurance law, and averaged only 80 hours a year.

At the FDA, Troy still is fighting for causes that benefit drug companies.

It's unclear whether any of pharmaceutical firms responded to his December request for lawsuits the FDA might get involved in.

By the time Troy made that offer, he had already intervened in three drug-company cases as FDA chief counsel. One involved Pfizer.

In court briefs, the FDA argued that it determines which warnings a drug company must give consumers. Lawsuits filed in state courts arguing that drug-company warnings are inadequate therefore were invalid, the FDA says. One of the cases Troy challenged involves thousands of consumers who say they were harmed by painful withdrawal from an antidepressant.

Lawsuits accusing drug companies of telling consumers too little about side effects constitute the largest category of cases against drug companies, law professor O'Reilly said.

If Troy's legal position prevails, O'Reilly said, it would be catastrophic for consumers hurt by drugs. He said it would bar cases like the one filed against the makers of fen-phen, the combination of diet medications tied to heart problems. The makers of those drugs are settling with consumers for $14 billion. That case predates Troy's policy.

Troy, who declined to be interviewed, said in a written statement that the FDA is intervening in the lawsuits to protect "the safety, effectiveness and availability of important medical products."

He said that would be "adversely affected if judges and juries acting under state law had the power to substitute their judgment for the expert determinations made by FDA scientists."

Clinton's Justice Department, he added, took the same legal position, arguing that federal law pre-empts state law.

But prior to Troy, professor O'Reilly and one FDA official said, the government got involved only when a judge asked. Troy, in contrast, is seeking cases in which to intervene.

And the FDA now is staking a new legal claim, experts say: that its authority to determine drug labeling always trumps any claims made in state court.

The FDA is "taking sides in private litigation," said Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas Law School professor and president of the Center for Progressive Regulation, which supports government regulation on health and safety issues.

The FDA asks drug-company attorneys to alert the agency to cases because otherwise "our rules might be undermined by contrary state findings" the agency is unaware of, said Peter Pitts, an FDA spokesman.

He added: "For people to infer that (FDA) decisions are made with anything but the public health as our focus is untrue, unfair and very ill-considered."

FDA officials also say they want to discourage frivolous lawsuits, which drive up costs.

A former FDA chief counsel in the Nixon administration, Peter Barton Hutt, said he supported the FDA's legal position but added, "I probably wouldn't be out there encouraging" lawsuits.

Troy oversees other FDA changes that provoked accusations that he is siding with drug companies.

In October 2001, the Health and Human Services Department gave Troy's office final approval over warnings telling companies they could be in violation of FDA rules. Those had previously been sent out by the FDA's drug-marketing division and district offices.

After that change, the number of warnings of questionable claims by pharmaceutical companies quickly dropped from an average of seven a month to two.

FDA spokesman Pitts said fewer letters were sent because the process was centralized.

"If you torture statistics long enough," Pitts said, "they confess to anything."

Others see this as dangerous to the public.

"This ... may be a welcome development for the drug industry, but it poses serious dangers to public health," Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, said in an Oct. 1, 2002, letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson.

Waxman said the bad policy decision was "exacerbated by the appointment of Daniel Troy."

The investigative arm of Congress, the General Accounting Office, in October 2002 also found that, under the new system, warning notices "have taken so long that misleading advertisements may have completed their broadcast life cycle before FDA issued the letters."

Waxman described the delays as "a development that benefits the powerful pharmaceutical industry at the expense of consumers."

[b]FOOD SAFETY[/b]

[i]Charles Lambert [/i]

As a USDA official, the former lobbyist for the meat industry who opposed labeling told a hearing that mad cow disease was not a threat.

Mad cow disease had yet to surface in the United States last June when a U.S. Department of Agriculture official - a meat-industry lobbyist only eight months earlier - bet his job on the promise that the ailment couldn't sneak into the country through imports.

Congress had just passed a law requiring meat labels to state which country a cow lived in before slaughter. Food safety groups say those labels could, among other things, help consumers avoid buying beef from countries with mad cow disease.

The USDA opposed such labeling. The person making the agency's case, Deputy Undersecretary Charles Lambert, knew the arguments against such labels. He'd made them as a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Lambert spent 15 years at the Cattlemen's Association working in Denver before coming to Washington, D.C., where he worked as lobbyist and chief economist. He left in December 2002 to join the USDA as undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.

When asked about mad cow and the labels, Lambert said mad cow disease wasn't a threat.

"Is there a possibility that it could get through?" Rep. Joe Baca, a California Democrat, asked Lambert at a hearing last June.

Lambert answered, "No, sir."

"None at all?" Baca asked.

"No," Lambert replied.

"You would bet your life on it - your job on it, right?"

Lambert answered, "Yes, sir."

The disease was discovered in the U.S. six months later - apparently brought here by a cow from Canada.

Lambert now says, "I overstated my case."

More than a dozen other high-ranking USDA officials appointed under Bush also have ties to the meat industry.

"Whether it's intentional or not, USDA gives the impression of being a wholly owned subsidiary of America's cattlemen," said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute. She served as a USDA assistant secretary in the Carter White House. "Their interests rather than the public interests predominate in USDA policy."

When he came to the USDA, Lambert signed an agreement stating that in his first year he would "not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which (Cattlemen's) is a party or represents a party, unless I am authorized to participate."

During that period he met at least 12 times with current or former members of Cattlemen's and its affiliates, an office calendar obtained by The Denver Post shows.

Lambert said that at any meeting where policy was discussed, he acted only as a facilitator and that another USDA person was present. The calendar shows meetings where other USDA people were present, although it is not always clear what was discussed.

The rest of those meetings were at social settings, he said.

"You're not required to sever all personal and past relationships ... when you come to federal employment," Lambert said in an interview.

[b]ENVIRONMENT[/b]

[i]Jeffrey Holmstead [/i]

The EPA official, a lawyer, formerly worked for a firm that represents utility companies, which are among the biggest air polluters.

When the Environmental Protection Agency issued proposed changes to air pollution rules Jan. 30, the wording troubled Martha Keating, a scientist with environmental advocacy group Clear the Air.

"It struck me that I had seen this before," Keating said.

At least 12 paragraphs were identical to or closely resembled a Sept. 4, 2003, proposal given to the Bush administration by Latham & Watkins, a law firm that represents utility companies.

The EPA official overseeing the proposed changes is Jeffrey Holmstead, who until he joined the EPA in October 2001 had worked as a lawyer at Latham & Watkins. His clients included a chemical company and a trade group for utility companies. Power plants are among the biggest air polluters.

Holmstead oversees the EPA division that governs air pollution.

Environmental groups say the rewrite poses a health threat because it slows the reduction of mercury emissions by as much as 11 years. Those emissions can end up in water where they contaminate fish. Forty-three states have issued advisories about fish consumption because of mercury pollution, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group said.

One effect of the proposal would be that 168 of 236 Western-based plants, including those in Colorado, would not be required to reduce those emissions at all, Keating said.

Lobbyists commonly suggest wording for legislation. But even EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt objects to how this language was lifted.

"To take something from a source without noting it doesn't seem to be the normal course of business, and it shouldn't have been done," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said, speaking for Leavitt.

Holmstead declined to comment.

Six Democratic senators are asking for an investigation. Ten attorneys general and 45 senators - including three Republicans - have asked Leavitt to void the proposed rule because of undue industry influence.

The inspector general hasn't decided whether to investigate. Bergman said the final pollution rule is still under development.

[b]LAND USE[/b]

[i]J. Steven Griles [/i]

The tenure of the veteran energy lobbyist at the Interior Department was labeled an "ethical quagmire" by the agency's inspector general.

At the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees some 507 million acres of national parks, refuges and rangeland, top officials weigh the competing merits of resource conservation and development.

Bush named J. Steven Griles, a veteran energy industry lobbyist, as the department's second-highest official in June 2001.

Griles earned $585,000 a year as a lobbyist, representing an array of oil, gas and other energy interests. As Interior's deputy secretary, he continues to receive $284,000 a year for four years to pay him for the value he had created for the firm by bringing in clients.

Upon entering the government, Griles had pledged to remove himself from deliberations that affected his former clients.

This year, the department's inspector general called Griles' tenure an "ethical quagmire."

"Mr. Griles' lax understanding of his ethics agreement and attendant recusals, combined with the lax dispensation of ethics advice given to him, resulted in lax constraint over matters in which the deputy secretary involved himself," the inspector general concluded.

That report or a subsequent review by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics found other issues:

A former business partner of Griles' hosted a party for Griles and top Interior officials for land and mining.

Also, a former Griles client, Advanced Power Technologies Inc., won some $2 million in no-bid contracts from his department after two people Griles supervised pressed APTI's case.

And Griles urged the EPA not to press concerns over a plan to open 8 million acres in Wyoming and Montana to gas drilling by companies including six of his former clients. The project is proceeding while a task force studies the matter.

The investigations of Griles found no illegalities. Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton announced that her right-hand man had been "cleared."

[b]Review of ethics guidelines [/b]

Neither the Bush administration nor Congress has called for a systematic review of government's ethics guidelines.

They should, says Stuart Gilman, president of the Ethics Resource Center, a nonprofit group in Washington that works with companies and government groups.

"The question is, are we dealing with the problems we're currently confronting in government?" Gilman said.

Complaints about ethical breaches within government in some cases can be politically motivated, said Gilman, who also worked in the Office of Government Ethics under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton.

At the same time, Gilman said, governmental leaders have a responsibility to eliminate both real and perceived conflicts of interest.

"For government to function, government must have the confidence of people," Gilman said. "If people don't believe the government is acting fairly, it encourages everyone to cheat."

[i][b]By Anne C. Mulkern. Denver Post staff writers John Aloysius Farrell and Mike Soraghan and researchers Tamania Davis, Barbara Hudson and Regina Avila contributed to this report[/b][/i]. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Betrayal of Our Health & Safety: Bush Appoints Special-Interest Lobbyists as "Regulators"

05.24.04 (6:11 am) [edit]

Betrayal of Our Health & Safety: Bush Appoints Special-Interest Lobbyists as "Regulators"

05.24.04 (6:08 am) [edit]

82% of Iraqis oppose U.S. occupation ... It's their country, isn't it?

05.23.04 (12:43 pm) [edit]

[b]82 percent of Iraqis oppose U.S. occupation [/b]

Four out of five Iraqis report holding a negative view of the U.S. occupation authority and of coalition forces, according to a new poll conducted for the occupation authority.

In the poll, 80 percent of Iraqis surveyed reported a lack of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and 82 percent said they disapprove of the United States and allied militaries in Iraq.

Although comparative numbers from previous polls are not available, "generally speaking, the trend is downward," said Donald Hamilton, a senior counselor to civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer. The occupation authority has been commissioning such surveys in Iraq since late last year, he said. This one was taken in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities in late March and early last month, before the surge in anti-coalition violence and the detainee-abuse scandal.

The findings appeared consistent with a poll taken about the same time by USA Today, CNN and Gallup, which found that 57 percent of Iraqis wanted foreign troops to leave immediately.

The new poll, which has not been released publicly, is a concern among occupation authority officials and in Washington, D.C., because the data provide evidence that the U.S. effort is not winning over Iraqi public opinion.

"How to ... win the hearts and minds of the people (in Iraq) is one of the things that we really have to work at," Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, head of Army intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee this week. "I mean, that is the key to solving not only that problem but the rest of the problems in the Middle East."

Hamilton, who said he oversees public-opinion issues for Bremer, declined to provide the number of Iraqis surveyed or other methodological details but said in an e-mail that "polls here are generally reliable" and that the new findings were consistent with those of other polls.

The new data reflect the fact that "the occupation, and the occupation forces, are getting increasingly unpopular," said Jeffrey White, a former Middle East affairs analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. "A lot of people, including me, have been getting very pessimistic."

Reflecting that trend, the proportion of Baghdad residents who reported worries about safety has increased steadily: 70 percent named security as the "most urgent issue," up from 50 percent in January, 60 percent in February and 65 percent in March.

Overall, 63 percent of those polled said security was the most urgent issue facing Iraq. In addition to Baghdad, the poll was conducted in the northern city of Mosul and the southern cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Karbala. Some questions were asked in the troubled western Ramadi.

There were a few bright spots. Iraqi police received a 79 percent positive rating, the best of seven institutions about which questions were asked. The reformed Iraqi army was not far behind, with a 61 percent positive rating.

Those polled were broadly divided on who should appoint the interim government that is supposed to take over limited power at the end of next month. The largest group, 27 percent, said the Iraqi people should appoint the new leaders, while 23 percent said judges should. Only one-tenth of 1 percent said that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council should name the government, which is supposed to run Iraq until elections are held next year. None said the occupation authority should.

Indicating a general skepticism of foreign involvement in their political future, 83 percent of those polled said that only Iraqis should be involved in supervising the 2005 elections. - http://seattletimes.nwsource....

Greens Demand Paper Trail for Electronic Voting Machines

05.23.04 (7:44 am) [edit]

[b]Greens Demand Paper Trail for Electronic Voting Machines[/b]

As Greens lead efforts in many states to defend democracy as the November election approaches, the central committee of the Green Party of the United States issued a resolution demanding voter-verified paper ballot audit trails for every electronic voting machine used in U.S. elections.

The resolution, appended below, cites the vulnerability of voting machines to error, equipment malfunction, and tampering.

"The stakes in this election are very high," said Linda Schade, lead plaintiff in Schade v. Maryland Board of Elections. Ms. Schade, a Maryland Green, is an organizer of the Campaign for Verifiable Voting in Maryland. "People of all political persuasions are coming out of the woodwork on this issue. No one wants another Florida and, in this cross partisan atmosphere, Greens are in a unique position because we can keep the focus on the issue and off partisan divisiveness."

Ms. Schade is leading a cross-partisan group of registered Maryland voters in a lawsuit against the state Board of Elections charging that Maryland's new Diebold AccuVote-TS electronic voting machines fail to comply with state and federal law. Hundreds of voters who were critical of the Diebold machines and asked for paper ballots on Maryland's primary election day (March 2) later learned that their paper ballots were discarded without being counted. A hearing before the State Election Board was held May 19.

Greens are participating in similar coalitions in California, Georgia, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. In California, such efforts have resulted in the passage of a law requiring a paper ballot trail for all voting machines by 2006; Secretary of State Kevin Shelley decertified Diebold's AcuVote-TSx system, which accounts for a third of the state's voting machines.

"We've been working with Democratic and Republican officeholders for this to move," said Nan Garrett, Georgia Green delegate to the national party. "15 state legislatures have passed legislation requiring paper trails for their electronic voting systems. An estimated 50 million voters in 38 states will be using the new technology in November, and we're racing to protect the integrity of elections."

"Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, has promised to 'deliver Ohio' to the Bush campaign," said Illinois Green Charles Shaw. "Should we be surprised that the Bush Administration is so vociferously pushing Diebold machines?"

RESOLUTION for Voter-Verified Paper Ballot Audit Trail

Adopted by the Coordinating Committee of the Green Party of the United States, April 19, 2004

WHEREAS, a pillar of Green values is grassroots democracy and the hundreds of thousands of Greens who are working to grow this fledgling party hold the right to vote as inviolate;

WHEREAS, the integrity of the vote is threatened by the new touch screen voting technology which has been shown to have numerous security vulnerabilities to human and programming error, equipment malfunction, and malicious tampering;

WHEREAS, state legislatures are updating voting equipment in response to the federal Helping America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2001 which requires upgrades in voting equipment by 2006;

WHEREAS, some states and counties are moving toward or have already installed paperless electronic voting machines in spite of research, expert opinion, the lack of national technical standards and real life election debacles showing the integrity of voting is at high risk from touch screen voting machines;

WHEREAS, some of the manufacturers of voting equipment are highly partisan raising the appearance of, if not actual conflicts of interest, e.g., Diebold Corporation has demonstrated blatant conflict of interests and ethical lapses given the 23 senior managers which have contributed to the Republican Party or the Bush campaign; the CEO of which has said he hopes to "deliver Ohio to Bush", add to this illegal installation of uncertified software, manipulative pricing, poor product performance;

WHEREAS, the use of secret proprietary software is unacceptable in a democracy, especially when that software is routinely unavailable to state election or elected officials, and under any circumstances ceding the responsibility to collect and count the vote to a private corporation is unacceptable;

WHEREAS, the disabled community has legitimate desire for full access to a secret and independent vote; and the technology exists today to build an electronic voting machine that incorporates a voter-verified paper audit trail that is accessible to vision-impaired voters;

WHEREAS, paper ballots are used in the UK, Canada, India and other sophisticated democracies;

WHEREAS, FOR COUNTIES AND STATES WHERE TOUCH SCREEN VOTING MACHINES ARE ALREADY IN PLACE, a voter-verified paper audit trail is the best protection available to guarantee that an individual's vote has been both recorded and counted correctly by an electronic voting machine (such as a touch screen) especially when coupled with random audits based on the paper trail;

WHEREAS, four states (Nevada, California, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin) have already required and guaranteed such a paper trail for their own citizens;

In jurisdictions where touch screen electronic voting machines are already in use, the Green Party of the United States resolves to support the growing national movement of citizens in calling for strict implementation, required use, and required random manual recounts of a voter-verifiable paper ballot audit trail, by which we mean a permanent paper record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy by the voter before the vote is submitted, and is difficult or impossible to alter after it has been checked.

The Green Party of the United States calls for full enfranchisement of all voters including language minorities, and those with disabilities.

The Green Party of the United States also calls for "publicly disclosed" election software that conforms to the highest public interest standards for ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of the vote.

[b]CONTACT: [/b] The Green Party of the United States
Nancy Allen, 207-326-4576
Scott McLarty, 202-518-5624 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

Greens Demand Paper Trail for Electronic Voting Machines

05.23.04 (7:42 am) [edit]

Greens Demand Paper Trail for Electronic Voting Machines

05.23.04 (7:40 am) [edit]

US May Be Violating International Ban on Biological Weapons

05.23.04 (7:33 am) [edit]

[b]US May Be Violating International Ban on Biological Weapons [/b]

Arms control advocates are warning the Bush administration that proposed research for a new Homeland Security center may violate an international ban on biological weapons and encourage other countries to follow.

In a statement posted on the Internet, three arms control experts say proposals for the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, established by Congress last year, appear to flout the prohibition on development of bioweapons.

"The rapidity of elaboration of American biodefense programs, their ambition and administrative aggressiveness and the degree to which they push against the prohibitions of the Biological Weapons Convention are startling," the authors said.

The writers are Milton Leitenberg, an arms control expert at the University of Maryland; James Leonard, who headed the U.S. delegation that negotiated the bioweapons ban in 1972; and former U.N. weapons inspector Richard Spertzel.

Their critique, posted by the journal "Politics and the Life Sciences," stemmed from a presentation last winter by Lt. Col. George W. Korch Jr., deputy director of the Homeland Security's center, to be housed on the grounds of Fort Detrick, Md.

Korch said in February that the center might study whether deadlier bacteria and viruses could be developed to ensure that U.S. defenses would be effective among the most dangerous pathogens. Other areas to be studied could include developing aerosols that contain deadly germs and new methods of delivering germ-warfare agents.

The department stressed that its institute would comply with the biowarfare convention's ban and all federal laws.

"I categorically deny that we will be developing offensive weapons," Gerald Parker, director of the department's office of science-based threat analysis and response, said Friday.

All sides acknowledge the difficulty of determining what constitutes defensive biological research, which the convention permits, and development of bioweapons, which it forbids.

Leitenberg said the administration should consider how research at the center, even if it would not violate the convention, will be interpreted by countries that may be eager to do similar research, also in the name of defense.

"Several of these (measures) all by themselves would be no problem at all," Leitenberg said. "The question is what this looks like as a whole." - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

US May Be Violating International Ban on Biological Weapons

05.23.04 (7:32 am) [edit]

US May Be Violating International Ban on Biological Weapons

05.23.04 (7:30 am) [edit]

Hubris and Hypocrisy: America is Failing to Honor Its Own Codes

05.23.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

[b]Hubris and Hypocrisy: America is Failing to Honor Its Own Codes [/b]

As an American, I have always been proud of being half-European; my mother left Brussels as a beautiful 23-year-old ing�nue to make her life in Charlottesville, Virginia, with my father. But in my many trips back and forth across the Atlantic to spend summers with my Belgian family, it was always clear to me that I was deeply and fundamentally American.

At lunch, which of course in Belgium was really dinner - the table set with white linen, china, silver, and glorious food and wine - my family members had vehement debates in French over whether the Marshall Plan had really been "altruistic" or simply a vehicle for American economic interests. We fought over racism and the Vietnam War.

My mother, who had taken her oath of citizenship at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, and had all the fervor of the newly converted, would speak of the warm-hearted, generous, idealistic people she had found in her new life. They were not "cultured," in the European sense of the term, but they were good.

My grandfather would pound his fist on the table and my uncle would sputter, but in the end these were family fights - not only within our own family, but also within the larger American-European family. After all, my grandfather had been at Dunkirk, scrambling to get across the English Channel as the Germans advanced. He had fought with the British in the dark days before the Americans entered the war.

Everyone around that table knew that without the willingness of American soldiers and taxpayers to sacrifice their lives and dollars, Belgium would have become a German protectorate. America might not always live up to her own ideals, but overall, American power made the world a better place.

Fast forward about 30 years to the second half of the 1990s, when I found myself teaching American law to 150 foreign students every year at Harvard Law School. Almost half of them were young Europeans, often deeply conflicted. They had chosen to study at Harvard because they knew that it offered a better legal education than they could generally get at home; the prestige of an American degree was also undeniable. They would profit from their stay in America, intellectually and materially; they also saw much that they would later seek to emulate back home.

Yet they railed against us. We spoke of the rule of law and human rights; they would ask why the United States would not join the International Criminal Court or the Land Mines Treaty, why we sought always to make rules that would apply to everyone except Americans.

We spoke of democracy and equal opportunity; they wondered out loud about the vast disproportion of black Americans on death row, about the appalling conditions in American prisons, about the refusal of American taxpayers to pay for decent schools or health care for vast numbers of American citizens.

When we spoke of generosity, they questioned why we have the lowest level of foreign aid, as a percentage of gross national product, in the developed world. They admired our ideals but insisted on measuring us by our performance; they increasingly saw us an arrogant, hypocritical hyper-power.

I agreed with many of their criticisms. Still, I could point to much good that the United States was doing in the world - taking the lead on Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that America was the "indispensable power," she meant not that we should go it alone, but that without us nothing got done.

Europe had talked a good game on the Balkans, but had done very little actually to stop Milosevic. Rwanda was our mutual shame, but the United States had drawn a much more activist lesson. Further, much of the anti-Americanism that I saw and heard could be dismissed as a pose or a fashion - it seemed de rigueur in many circles to wear black and be anti-American. And so much of it seemed outlandish, such as claims that the United States posed a greater threat to international security than Saddam Hussein.

No longer. Several weeks ago I traveled to Warsaw. Coming through Copenhagen Airport, with hideous pictures from Abu Ghraib staring out at me from every publication, I hesitated to show my passport. I felt tainted and ashamed. Not because I think that American soldiers are any worse than the soldiers of other countries; on the contrary, I know many U.S. soldiers and have the highest respect for their commitment to what they believe to be the cause of bringing democracy to Iraq and their professionalism in carrying out their mission.

But we Americans claim to be better; we claim to be setting an example for others, beginning with the Iraqis themselves. Indeed, we publicly divide the world along an axis of good and evil and present ourselves as a force of good. And yet we make a decision not even to count Iraqi deaths, military or civilian, in our casualty count; we preach human dignity and yet deny even the most basic rights to those we deem our enemies. When we fail so manifestly to honor our own professed convictions we can hardly blame others from seeking to investigate our "true motives" - oil or power or the protection of Israel.

Hubris and hypocrisy are a deadly combination. President George W. Bush should know this; doesn't the Bible tell him that pride goeth before a fall? It is human nature worldwide to revel in the humbling and indeed the humiliation of America. But just as anti-Americanism may seem increasingly justified, it obscures and distorts a far more important struggle between a Western liberal heritage of tolerance and individual rights versus a dark and twisted vision of 14th-century Islam.

While I was in Warsaw two Polish journalists were killed in Iraq. I could only pray that they will not prove to have died in vain, that the intense and growing enmity against Americans would not imperil us all. My mother hesitates to go back to Brussels to see her friends and family these days; she no longer knows what to say. Anguished Americans across the United States and around the world insist "this is not us. This is not who we are or what we stand for." But the world judges us by our deeds rather than our words, and has begun to hold us accountable for our government.

That is only fair: we Americans are the preachers and promoters of democracy. If America won't listen, won't consult, won't play by the rules, won't try to see the world through any lenses but its own, can we still be sure that American power is a force for good?

[i][b]Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University[/b][/i]. - http://www.commondreams.org/v...

Hubris and Hypocrisy: America is Failing to Honor Its Own Codes

05.23.04 (7:26 am) [edit]

SPECIAL MIS-LEAD: Bush Outsourced Fundraising & Voter Operations

05.22.04 (7:39 am) [edit]

[b]SPECIAL MIS-LEAD: Bush Outsourced Fundraising & Voter Operations[/b]

According to a new report, the Bush Administration has taken its strong support for outsourcing further than previously thought -- opting to move key political operations offshore. India's Hindustan Times reports that, during a 14 month period from 2002 to 2003 when the Republican Party was playing up patriotism, its fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign was performed in part by two call centers located in India1.

According to the report, the Republican National Committee shipped the India operation its voter database for 125 local staff to use to "solicit political contributions ranging between $5 and $3,000 from thousands of registered Republican voters." While the contract for running the campaigns was originally awarded to Washington-based Capital Communications Group, "for cost and efficiencies gains, the company outsourced the work to HCL Technologies that in turn sent it offshore."

Public pressure has forced President Bush has to downplay his support for outsourcing. But this new story is consistent with his Administration's actions in support of shipping American jobs overseas. Late last year, the New York Times reported that the Bush Commerce Department co-sponsored a conference at the lavish Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York that was designed to "encourage American companies to put operations and jobs in China"2. Then, this year, the President's top economic adviser said outsourcing was "a plus for the economy"3.

[b]Sources[/b]: - http://www.misleader.org/dail...

1. "Bush campaign ran from Noida call center", Hindustan Times, 05/16/2004.
2. "In business, Washington pursues two China policies", International Herald Tribune, 12/11/2003.
3. "Bush Econ Advisor: Outsourcing OK", CBS News, 02/13/2004.

SPECIAL MIS-LEAD: Bush Outsourced Fundraising & Voter Operations

05.22.04 (7:37 am) [edit]

Bush EPA Let Factory Farm Industry Draft Their Own Air Pollution Rules

05.22.04 (7:35 am) [edit]

[b]Bush EPA Let Factory Farm Industry Draft Their Own Air Pollution Rules [/b]

Internal documents made public this week reveal that the Bush Administration granted almost unbelievable influence to livestock industry lobbyists in a proposed amnesty deal for factory farm polluters. The favors included a series of secret meetings with government officials, and the opportunity to draft portions of the Environmental Protection Agency's power-point presentation on a proposed air pollution monitoring program. [1]

The documents formed the basis of a May 16 Chicago Tribune expose of the degree to which meat industry lobbyists controlled the direction and content of proposed federal air pollution regulations that would apply to them. According to the Tribune, industry was granted such an influential role over the development of air pollution controls that several EPA officials resigned. It also led state and local officials to walk out of EPA meetings on the subject. [2]

The meetings were closed to environmental groups or other opponents of the plan. What took place at these secret meetings � and in subsequent communications between meat industry lobbyists and EPA officials -- was unearthed largely as the result of a lawsuit brought by the Sierra Club last September under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

The Sierra Club requested the documents from EPA after word leaked out about the meetings and a sweetheart deal that would exempt factory farms from Clean Air Act and Superfund regulations. Under the deal, factory farms that agree to a two-year monitoring program become exempt from federal air pollution enforcement during that time. Furthermore, they are not held accountable for any previous violations of federal air pollution laws.

"They let everyone off the hook," said Barclay Rogers, an attorney with the Sierra Club, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. "Everyone who signs up gets protection. It's a 'get out of jail free' card." [3]

Giant factory farms dominate the U.S. meat industry - packing thousands of hogs, cattle and chicken onto a few massive farms. As a result, they are a major source of air emissions of hazardous gases and particulate matter proven to cause lung ailments and even premature death.

The internal EPA documents reveal a relationship between EPA officials and meat industry lobbyists so cozy it involves the EPA advising lobbyists on how to make their case to the agency.

In turn, meat industry lobbyists were allowed to develop legal language for the monitoring program and power-point slides for the agency to use in presenting its plans. There was even discussion of industry footing the bill for EPA travel costs, an idea later rejected when one EPA official admitted it had been a "no-no" for EPA to even ask. [4]

This is not the first time the Bush administration has allowed industry to heavily influence environmental rules by which it is supposed to live. After discovering that portions of EPA's proposal to regulate mercury emissions had been copied verbatim from energy industry lobbying materials, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Tom Allen (D-ME) wrote to EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt to complain that the agency�s rulemaking process had been "improperly influenced by industry at the potential cost of the health of future generations of children." [5]

### - http://www.bushgreenwatch.org...

[b]SOURCES[/b]:

[1] Sierra Club press release, May 17, 2004
[2] "Livestock Industry Finds Friends in EPA," Chicago Tribune, May 16, 2004.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Sierra Club press release, op. cit.
[5] Waxman-Allen letter, Feb. 12, 2004.

Bush's Defense of Energy Policy 'Doesn't Wash'

05.22.04 (7:32 am) [edit]

[b]Low-MPG Energy Policy[/b]

To hear President Bush tell it on Wednesday, had Congress passed his administration's energy bill, SUV owners would be using spare change instead of retirement funds to fill their gas guzzlers' tanks. But Bush's defense of his troubled energy policy during a brief news conference doesn't wash.

Start with the president's claim that opening more of the Alaskan wilderness to drilling would have kept skyrocketing gasoline prices in check. Oil companies might be able to economically extract 3.2 billion barrels of oil from these pristine lands, but that's only enough to satisfy U.S. demand for about six months, and it would take more than a decade for the oil to reach gas pumps. Tougher fuel-efficiency standards could save as much as 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, the equivalent of what the U.S. imports from Saudi Arabia.

Bush also chided Congress for failing to embrace his plan to cut dependence on foreign energy sources. Yet a recent three-part Times series confirms that it was Vice President Dick Cheney's handpicked energy task force that sent the U.S. down a dangerous road in 2001 by advocating strengthened ties with oil-rich regimes in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caspian region. Though Angola, Colombia, Kazakhstan and their neighbors are blessed with a wealth of oil, "The Politics of Petroleum" (www.latimes.com/oil) presents evidence that the oil revenues pouring into these countries are benefiting a small minority of wealthy people, increasing the gap between rich and poor and potentially sparking the instability the administration wants to prevent.

The series underscores the dangers of striking deals that serve the short-term interests of those regimes. American-trained troops in Colombia are defending an Occidental Petroleum pipeline and a rich oil field against rebels. Money generated by that pipeline has been used both to prop up Colombia's military and, by way of local provinces, to buy weapons for left-wing guerrillas.

A massive influx of dollars in Angola is failing to create promised jobs, even as government corruption grows. The country ranks 164th out of 175 countries on a United Nations index that measures citizens' quality of life. The Bush administration has awarded key trade concessions to oil-rich Kazakhstan by claiming significant improvements in its human rights, despite conclusions to the contrary by the State Department and other organizations.

Meanwhile, Cheney has dismissed conservation, the only sure way to reduce oil demand, as little more than "a possible sign of personal virtue." Cheney's faulty logic ignores the reality that conservation works. The U.S. economy is 50% more energy-efficient than it was in the 1970s because of tough conservation standards. Yet the Bush administration dragged its feet for three years before approving new efficiency standards for air conditioners and refuses to embrace more-stringent fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles and trucks.

The equation couldn't be any simpler. Putting more fuel-efficient vehicles on the road would ease pressure on consumers' pocketbooks as well as the need to side with regimes that risk creating the very problems that the United States wants to avoid. - http://www.latimes.com/news/o...,0,3474837.story?coll=la-news-commen t-editorials

U.S. Tries to Get Off the Hook on War Crimes - Ahead of U.N. Resolution on Iraq

05.22.04 (7:29 am) [edit]

[b]U.S. Tries to Get Off the Hook on War Crimes - Ahead of U.N. Resolution on Iraq, U.S. Tries to Exclude Its Troops from Prosecution[/b]

The United States is insisting that its troops be exempt from international war crimes prosecutions while serving in any U.N. force in Iraq, despite U.S. abuse of prisoners there, Human Rights Watch said today.

Without prior notice to members of the U.N. Security Council, the United States yesterday demanded an immediate vote to renew contentious Security Council Resolution 1487. This measure grants immunity to personnel in U.N. authorized or approved operations from states that have not ratified the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty.

A similar resolution granting immunity to U.S. peacekeepers was first adopted in July 2002, and was renewed by Resolution 1487 last year. Resolution 1487 does not require renewal for another five weeks.

"Given the recent revelations from Abu Ghraib prison, the U.S. government has picked one hell of a moment to ask for special treatment on war crimes," said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice program at Human Rights Watch. "The U.N. Security Council should not grant special favors to any country, including the United States."

Human Rights Watch said that the U.S. government wanted to push an ICC resolution through as quickly as possible so that the contentious issue would not overshadow efforts to win Security Council backing for the transfer of sovereignty to Iraqi authorities on June 30.

In 2002, the Bush administration's insistence on an ICC exemption for U.S. troops involved in U.N. operations seemed unnecessary at the time. In light of recent abuses by U.S. forces in Iraq, this insistence has taken on a more sinister meaning. Just hours before he proposed Security Council renewal of Resolution 1487, Ambassador James Cunningham, the Deputy U.S. Representative to the United Nations, said during a Council debate on Iraq that the "shameful acts" committed by U.S. forces against Iraqi detainees would be punished.

"The ICC can only prosecute the most serious crimes where national courts fail to punish those responsible," said Dicker. "It is time for the United States to demonstrate that it will abide by international standards and has nothing to fear from the ICC."

The ICC is a court of last resort. Credible U.S. war crimes trials or courts-martial would preclude the ICC prosecutor from taking up cases against U.S. military personnel.

Human Rights Watch opposes Resolution 1487. The resolution distorts the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the ICC. The Security Council has overstepped its authority under the U.N. Charter by seeking to amend a multilateral treaty in this way.

Renewal of the resolution was expected to occur sometime next month and generate a huge debate in a public meeting of U.N. member states at the Security Council. An open meeting will still take place, but the U.S. rush to early renewal with only 48 hours notice is a deliberate effort to curtail debate.

"The United States fears any meaningful discussion of this resolution," said Dicker. "Washington wants to steamroll renewal of Resolution 1487 in 48 hours to undercut growing objections to its campaign of special exemption from the rule of law. Last year three states didn't vote for the resolution, and this year that number will grow."

The ICC, based in The Hague, has broad international support. Currently 94 countries have ratified the Rome Statue establishing the court and nearly 140 have signed the treaty. Last year these states elected the court's first 18 judges and prosecutor. The court's first investigations in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to begin this year.

Iraq has neither signed nor ratified the ICC treaty.

For an analysis of Human Rights Watch's concerns about Resolution 1422/1487, see http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/...

For more information on the International Criminal Court, please visit http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/...

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Human Rights Watch
Newsroom: 212-290-4700 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

U.S. Tries to Get Off the Hook on War Crimes - Ahead of U.N. Resolution on Iraq

05.22.04 (7:28 am) [edit]

Neo-Con War Criminal: Pentagon's Feith Again at Center of Disaster

05.22.04 (7:25 am) [edit]

[b]Pentagon's Feith Again at Center of Disaster [/b]

Although it will take weeks, if not months, to sort out precisely who was responsible for what increasingly appears to have been the systemic abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi detainees, it should be no surprise if Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith is found to have played an important role.

Feith, who, according to Bob Woodward's new book, 'Plan of Attack', was described by the military commander who led last year's invasion, Gen Tommie Franks, as ''the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth'', has been at the center of virtually everything else that has gone wrong in Iraq, so there is no reason to think he was very far from this one.

US Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith
(AFP/File/Janek Skarzynski)

It was his office, for example, that created shortly after 9/11 the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans (OSP) which re-assessed 12 years of raw intelligence and the Arab press, to find evidence of ties between the regime of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group.

The OSP then ''stovepiped'' that information, unvetted by professional intelligence analysts, straight to Vice President Dick Cheney's office for use by the White House.

Similarly, it was Feith's office, along with the Defense Policy Group (DPG) whose members Feith appointed, that served as the point of entry and influence for Iraqi National Congress (INC) chief Ahmed Chalabi and his ''defectors'' who provided phony intelligence about Hussein's vast stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

It was Feith's office that was charged with planning the post-war occupation and reconstruction process, and, in so doing, effectively excluded input from Iraqi experts from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and even from the Iraqi-American community, who had participated in a mammoth project that anticipated most of the problems occupation authorities have since encountered.

And it was Feith's office that also housed the future undersecretary for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, who facilitated the transfer of Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that houses suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners, to Abu Ghraib prison in the interests of extracting more intelligence from detainees there about the fast-growing insurgency in Iraq.

Both Cambone and Miller, who brought high-pressure interrogation tactics barred by the Geneva Conventions with him from Guantanamo, are considered prime targets of ongoing congressional investigations into the prisoner abuse scandal.

But the announcement Tuesday by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner that he is seeking testimony in the coming weeks from Feith may have unwittingly cast new light on the reasons why Secretary of State Colin Powell is alleged by Woodward to have referred to Feith's operation as the ''Gestapo Office''.

Evidence of Feith's involvement in the prisoner abuse scandal rests primarily on reports that have appeared in 'Newsweek', the 'New York Times', and the 'Los Angeles Times'. They have reported that, even before the Iraq War, top officials in the Pentagon, acting on the advice of civilian lawyers, authorized a reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions to permit tougher methods of interrogation of prisoners of war (POWs).

This effort was strongly resisted by Powell, a retired army general, when it came to his attention, and by the Judge Advocates Generals (JAG) Corps, the formal name given to the military's lawyers. They argued, among other things, that the introduction of ''stress and duress'' techniques, sleep deprivation and other methods that violate the Conventions would not only result in dubious intelligence, but could also be cited as a precedent for use against U.S. soldiers who fell into enemy hands.

Dissenters, however, were essentially excluded from the discussion, and, according to 'Newsweek', new techniques were formally approved during the Iraq invasion in April 2003, although Feith's immediate superior, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz testified last week he was unaware of such a decision.

At the same time, senior Pentagon officials also authorized the exclusion of JAG officers from observing interrogations to ensure they complied with the Conventions. That was a major departure from the practice in the 1991 Gulf War, when JAG officers were present in all interrogation facilities and could intercede if they witnessed violations of the Conventions.

Even after the new orders came down, senior JAG officers did not give up. According to a number of accounts, a delegation of officers contacted Scott Horton, a former high-ranking JAG officer and chairman of the Committee on International Human Rights of the New York City Bar Association, to see if he and like-minded attorneys would intervene.

''They were extremely upset'', Horton told the 'Los Angeles Times'. ''They said they were being shut out of the process, and that the civilian political lawyers, not the military lawyers, were writing these new rules of engagement.''

According to Horton, the JAG officers identified the main forces behind loosening the rules as Feith and the Pentagon's general counsel, William Haynes, another political appointee.

''If we -- 'we' being the uniformed lawyers -- had been listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would not have occurred'', Rear Adm Don Guter, the Navy JAG from 2000 to 2002, told ABCNews.

Feith, who was also interviewed by ABC, denied there was any disagreement from JAG officers concerning rules and practices authorized by his office, but the issue is unlikely to rest with his word alone.

Indeed, the accounts given by JAG officers are fully consistent with what is already known about Feith's policy-making practices. As with the pre-war intelligence and pre-war planning for the occupation, the experts and professionals were either circumvented or systematically excluded from participating in the policy process, so that civilian ideologues with ideas about how to extract information from uncooperative Arabs, for example, would not have to address informed criticism before plunging ahead.

Like his mentor, former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle, Feith has long been a hardliner on foreign policy, arms control issues and Israel.

As a youth, his father, Dalck Feith, was active in pre-World War II Poland in Betar, a militantly Zionist movement and forerunner of Israel's Likud Party. His parents perished in the Nazi Holocaust, according to the neo-conservative 'Wall Street Journal', which last week demanded a public apology from Powell for his reference to Feith's operation as the ''Gestapo Office''.

Feith worked for Perle in the Pentagon under Ronald Reagan, and the two teamed up in the late 1980s to lobby on behalf of the Turkish government and build military ties between Turkey and Israel. In 1996 he participated in a private study by a right-wing Israeli think tank that called for ousting Saddam Hussein as a means to transform the balance of power in the Middle East in such a way that Israel could ignore pressure to trade ''land for peace'' with the Palestinians or Syria.

In 1997, Feith argued in 'Commentary' magazine for Israel to re-occupy the Occupied Territories and repudiate the Oslo accords, and the following year he signed an open letter to then-President Bill Clinton calling for Washington work with Chalabi's INC to oust Hussein. - http://www.commondreams.org/h...

Neo-Con War Criminal: Pentagon's Feith Again at Center of Disaster

05.22.04 (7:22 am) [edit]

Protestors Call for Resignations

05.22.04 (7:18 am) [edit]

[b]Where are the American protestors calling for the resignations of Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton and the rest of the neo-cons? Where are the American protestors calling for the impeachment of Bush?

[i]Hundreds of protesters have attended a rally in London to express dismay at the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by coalition troops[/i][/b].

Demonstrators dressed as soldiers led the march, pretending to torture others dressed in hoods.

The group marched alongside the River Thames from Embankment to Trafalgar Square in central London.

They called for freedom for Iraq and Palestine and for the US and British leaders to resign.

Police officers were monitoring the march, but there was no sign of trouble.

A letter of support from the father of Nick Berg, the US civilian beheaded in Iraq, was read out at the rally organised by the Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Great Britain and CND.

The Mayor of London Ken Livingstone addressed the event calling for US President George Bush to be "prosecuted for the war crimes he has overseen and unleashed" should he lose the forthcoming presidential elections.

He said: "There is nothing more to say than that the only way to end these horrors is by bringing our troops out of Iraq immediately."

Tony Benn, president of the Stop the War Coalition, said he wished the Labour Party had a leader prepared to take a stand against war.

[b]Downing Street rally [/b]

He said: "The soldiers were all sent there and are being ordered to commit war crimes.

"If we want to defend the truth then don't send them to Iraq, see that they are kept here at home."

Mr Benn called on Britain to adopt a policy of peace and demanded that America's military bases in this country should be closed.

A further rally is being held outside Downing Street on Saturday afternoon to highlight the human rights abuses of Palestinians. - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk...

Protestors Call for Resignations

05.22.04 (7:16 am) [edit]

Trickle-Down Morality ...

05.20.04 (5:41 am) [edit]

[i][b]I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

And there were no more bombs, of ours or theirs,
Not even an old flint-lock, not even a pikel.
But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael;
And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs[/b][/i].

- Wilfred Owen, "Soldier's Dream"

Back in November of 2003, retired Special Forces master sergeant Stan Goff played the role of prophet in an open letter he wrote to American soldiers engaged in the occupation of Iraq. In his letter, Goff wrote:

"[i]Bushfeld and their cronies are parasites, and they are the sole beneficiaries of the chaos you are learning to live in. They get the money. You get the prosthetic devices, the nightmares, and the mysterious illnesses. So if your rage needs a target, there they are, responsible for your being there, and responsible for keeping you there. I can't tell you to disobey...But it is perfectly legal for you to refuse illegal orders, and orders to abuse or attack civilians are illegal. Ordering you to keep silent about these crimes is also illegal[/i]."

Orders to abuse or attack civilians are illegal. Orders to keep soldiers silent about these crimes are also illegal. Six months after Goff wrote those words, we find ourselves drowning in the exact catastrophe he warned of. Seven U.S. service people are accused of visiting torture and abominations upon the bodies and souls of Iraqi prisoners in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. Prisoners were beaten, sodomized with chemical lights and bananas, raped, molested, attacked by dogs, and their dead bodies were mocked and defiled.

For the most part, these were captured civilians and not 'terrorists' or 'insurgents.' Photographs of this torture have reached all around the globe. One of the seven perpetrators has already been convicted. The Bush administration would have us believe this was a random aberration, the crazed behavior of seven sadists, and not a systematic process that came about because of direct orders from superiors.

This is, simply, not true.

Sgt. Samuel Provance of the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion knows for a fact it is not true. Provance's battalion was stationed at Abu Ghraib last September, while the abuses at that prison were going on. He gave an exclusive interview to ABC news, despite the fact that his superiors ordered him not to.

According to Provance, dozens of U.S. soldiers were involved in the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, not just the seven who have been scapegoated. "There's definitely a cover-up," he said to ABC. "People are either telling themselves or being told to be quiet. What I was surprised at was the silence. The collective silence by so many people that had to be involved, that had to have seen something or heard something. I would say many people are probably hiding and wishing to God that this storm passes without them having to be investigated (or) personally looked at."

As Provance is a member of Military Intelligence, and as it was Military Intelligence that was put in charge of Abu Ghraib, his perspective is noteworthy. The fact is that the horrors displayed in the photographs from Abu Ghraib are perfect depictions of interrogation tactics used to shake information loose from prisoners. The photo of dogs attacking a naked prisoner is a textbook example of 'stress and duress' interrogation. The photo of the hooded man standing with his fingers, toes and penis wired to electrodes is a tactic called 'The Vietnam.' Seven sick bastards did not invent this stuff. They were ordered to do it.

The road to Abu Ghraib was opened with deliberation and intent. According to a report by John Barry, Michael Hirsh and Michael Isikoff in Newsweek, "Bush, along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft, signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods. It was an approach that they adopted to sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war. In doing so, they overrode the objections of Secretary of State Colin Powell and America's top military lawyers - and they left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places."

This Newsweek article goes on to suggest that, "No one deliberately authorized outright torture," but a memo from White House lawyer Alberto Gonzales clearly shows that, even two years ago, Bush administration officials were worried about going to jail. Gonzales was particularly concerned about the War Crimes Act of 1996, which described war crimes as "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions, and which applied to "U.S. officials." Violators of the War Crimes Act faced either prison or the death penalty. Therefore, advised Gonzales, declaring that Taliban and al Qaeda fighters did not have Geneva Convention protections would, "substantially reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

It is safe to say that a majority of Americans would weep no bitter tears for any hard-core al Qaeda fighters left alone with several angry MI officers and a snarling dog, if such tactics would keep further 9/11 attacks from taking place. Such is the state of our morality in the 21st century, but for the moment, that is beside the point.

The point is four-fold:

a) The seven soldiers at the center of the Abu Ghraib scandal did not perpetrate these horrors on their own, but were ordered to do so. According to Sgt. Provance, those orders are now being covered up.

b) The torture took place because George W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft decided that Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners were not subject to the protections of the Geneva Conventions. The orders that created a torture-friendly environment came from the very, very top.

c) The strictures of the Geneva Conventions were deliberately removed because Bush administration officials feared war crimes prosecutions, as is clearly stated in the Gonzales memo.

d) The vast majority of Iraqis tortured in Abu Ghraib were not Taliban, were not al Qaeda, were not even 'insurgents.' They were civilians, among thousands swept up and jailed by American forces. However one may feel about terrorists being provided Geneva Convention protections, only a soulless fiend can devise a defense for the torture, rape, molestation and abuse absorbed by innocent people in Abu Ghraib.

A Marine named Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey served in this invasion and occupation of Iraq. In a recent interview with the Sacramento Bee, Massey described the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent Iraqi civilians at the hands of U.S. soldiers, who were also following orders. Seeing this carnage repeated over and over turned him against the war. At the end of the interview, Massey said:

"I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it. I've had an impeccable career. I chose to get out. And you know who I blame? I blame the president of the United States. It's not the grunt. I blame the president because he said they had weapons of mass destruction. It was a lie."

Massey is one of thousands of American soldiers victimized by what has taken place in Iraq. Beyond the 792 soldiers who have died there, beyond the thousands who have been wounded, there are whole divisions of soldiers whose humanity has been gutted and left hollow because they believed their leaders, because they did a soldier's duty and followed orders. They are not the only ones. We have all been made victims, moral casualties in this abominable catastrophe.

The Nuremberg defense has been disavowed for sixty years. Soldiers are responsible for their own behavior. Citizens, as well, are responsible for their own behavior. When leaders decree torture, revenge and bloodlust to be in the national interest, however, do not be surprised when morality ceases to exist among those tasked to defend and protect it.

[i][b]William Rivers Pitt is the senior editor and lead writer for t r u t h o u t. He is a New York Times and international bestselling author of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition is Silence.' [/b][/i]- http://truthout.org/docs_04/0...

Trickle-Down Morality ...

05.20.04 (5:39 am) [edit]

Trickle-Down Morality

05.20.04 (5:38 am) [edit]

History of Fraud, Waste and Corruption; Call to "Bring Halliburton Home"

05.20.04 (5:34 am) [edit]

[b]Broad Coalition to highlight Corporation's History of Fraud, Waste and Corruption; will call to "Bring Halliburton Home" and for Congressional inquiry into War Profiteers[/b]

Hundreds of peace, labor and consumer rights activists will gather outside the annual Halliburton Corporation shareholders meeting in Houston, Texas on May 19 to protest war profiteering and corporate cronyism as exemplified by Halliburton.

"We're going to tell the shareholders and CEO of Halliburton to bring their employees home from Iraq and stop ripping off U.S. taxpayers and Iraqis," said Andrea Buffa of Global Exchange, one of the groups organizing the protest.

The protest in Houston will begin with a rally at 8 AM at Root Memorial Park, 1400 Clay Street. Activists will then march two blocks to the Four Seasons Hotel, 1300 Lamar Street, where Halliburton will be holding its annual shareholders meeting.

"It's just wrong that Halliburton can get away with overcharging millions of dollars in Iraq, not to mention its other offensive practices, like dodging taxes through offshore subsidiaries and side-stepping federal laws. But because the company is 'embedded' in the Bush administration, they're just made more profitable instead of being held accountable," said Hadi Jawad of the Dallas Peace Center, who has organized a busload of activists from Dallas who plan to attend the protest.

Halliburton has been the number one beneficiary of Iraq "reconstruction" projects, raking in some $9 billion in contracts to rebuild the country's oil industry and service the U.S. troops. According to Halliburton's 2004 first quarter financial report, the company's revenues were 80 percent higher than the first quarter of 2003 thanks to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root's work in the Middle East.

News reports document a pattern of fraud, waste, and corruption by Halliburton. The allegations range from overcharges of $61 million for fuel and $24.7 million for meals, to confirmed kickbacks worth $6.3 million. Halliburton's pattern of fraud and corruption has been so pervasive that the Pentagon recently asked the Justice Department to investigate Halliburton for possible criminal wrongdoing related to its Iraq contracts. Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's CEO prior to his taking office and continues to receive annual payments from Halliburton in excess of $150,000.

The demonstration comes a day after Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. hosted a news conference to discuss new evidence of lax oversight of spending on Iraqi reconstruction, including Pentagon outsourcing of oversight.

"While U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians are killed almost every day, Halliburton has been making big profits off war - often by breaking the law," said Rania Masri of the Campaign to Stop the War Profiteers. "It's time to bring them home and start a full Congressional investigation into Halliburton and other war profiteers."

Watchdog groups associated with the protest will release a report about Halliburton - "Houston, We Have a Problem" - the day before the shareholders meeting. To obtain a copy of the report, email pchatterjee@igc.org. For details about the protest, see http://www.globalexchange.org...

[b]CONTACT:[/b] Campaign to Stop War Profiteers
Rania Masri: 919-604-7777
Andrea Buffa: 510-325-3653
Pratap Chatterjee: 510-759-8970 - http://www.commondreams.org/n...

History of Fraud, Waste and Corruption; Call to "Bring Halliburton Home"

05.20.04 (5:32 am) [edit]

150+ Groups Oppose Senate High-Level Waste Loophole, Extortion Plan

05.20.04 (5:30 am) [edit]

[b]150+ Groups Oppose Senate High-Level Waste Loophole, Extortion Plan[/b]

More than 150 national and local environmental groups are calling on U.S. Senators to strike sections of the Defense Authorization Act that allow the Department of Energy (DOE) to leave radioactive wastes in underground tanks at the Savannah River, South Carolina, weapons plant and hold back cleanup funds at its Hanford, Washington, and Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Laboratory facilities. Votes on amendments to eliminate the provisions, added by the Senate Armed Services Committee without public hearings, are expected later this week.

In a letter delivered to every member of the U.S. Senate today, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, 26 national organizations, including the League of Conservation Voters, National Council of Churches, and Union of Concerned Scientists, and 131 local groups charged that the Armed Services Committee provisions �will have serious detrimental consequences for vital water resources around the country� and �will undermine the rights of States and Tribes to protect their residents.� The letter was initiated by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a network of 33 groups representing the concerns of communities downstream and downwind from U.S. nuclear weapons facilities.

The controversial sections are designed to overturn a U.S. District Court decision, which blocked DOE�s plan to �reclassify� high-level radioactive wastes as less dangerous, so they would not have to be pumped out of storage tanks, some of which are already leaking. Instead, DOE wants to pour grout, or concrete, over the remaining materials. In addition to allowing reclassification and grouting at Savannah River, the Armed Services Committee proposal would allow DOE to suspend tank cleaning projects at Hanford and INEEL until the states of Washington and Idaho accepted similar proposals.

The groups� letter concluded, �We, the undersigned, represent communities and families that will be directly impacted by reducing the cleanup standards at the DOE sites. We do not want our health and environment to be further contaminated as a result of DOE�s failure to adequately clean up the legacy of nuclear weapons production.

Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne and New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid have also called on the Senate to eliminate the Armed Services Committee language.

Other signers of the letter included the Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace International, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Public Citizen.

[b]Strike DOE's Authority to Reclassify High-Level Radioactive Waste and Preserve the High-Level Waste Cleanup Requirements in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act[/b]

May 18, 2004

Dear Senator:

As national and local environmental and consumer organizations, we urge you to strike sections 3116 and 3119 of the Defense Authorization Bill that allow the Department of Energy (DOE) the authority to reclassify and abandon high-level radioactive waste in underground tanks at the Savannah River Site, South Carolina and to withhold funding to clean up high-level radioactive waste in South Carolina, Idaho, and Washington. Both provisions will have serious detrimental consequences for vital water resources around the country, will undermine the rights of States and Tribes to protect their residents, and will significantly alter the design of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), passed by Congress over two decades ago.

Chief among DOE's responsibilities for protecting public health and the environment is the cleanup of the 239 underground tanks containing approximately 100 million gallons of high-level waste in Washington, South Carolina, and Idaho. Agreements between the DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and affected states require that the tanks be fully cleaned up. DOE wants to reclassify some of the waste in the tanks as "incidental to reprocessing," even though the waste itself has not been altered and will still be dangerous for thousands of years. DOE would then pour concrete grout into the tanks, leaving highly radioactive waste. The DOE's attempts were declared illegal by the Idaho federal court in 2003. The DOE has filed an appeal, but in March 2004 the six most directly affected states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, South Carolina, New York, and New Mexico) filed a friend of the court brief in support of the Idaho court decision.

DOE wants to have Congress change the law, and Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina inserted language into the FY2005 Defense Authorization bill, without a minute of public hearing or debate. Section 3116 would (1) exempt DOE from complying with the requirements of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in South Carolina; (2) overturn an Idaho federal court ruling that DOE may not arbitrarily and unilaterally reclassify high-level radioactive waste; and (3) allow DOE sole discretion in deciding what is high-level radioactive waste in South Carolina.

Section 3119 of the Defense Authorization Bill allows DOE to withhold $350 million from necessary cleanup of the high-level waste tanks until Washington, Idaho, and South Carolina agree to accept DOE's lower cleanup standards. Failing to clean up the tanks will lead to severe and long-lasting pollution of the Columbia River, Snake River Aquifer, and the Savannah River, which provide drinking water for thousands of families and water for fish and crops that feed millions of people nationwide.

Both of the provisions would open the door to a rash of lawsuits and disputes for any nuclear waste crossing the South Carolina border, creating even more uncertainty regarding high-level waste disposal, have long-term, costly, and potentially catastrophic environmental and public health risks and squash States' rights.

We, the undersigned, represent communities and families that will be directly impacted by reducing the cleanup standards at the DOE sites. We do not want our health and environment to be further contaminated as a result of DOE's failure to adequately clean up the legacy of nuclear weapons production.

We urge you to strike sections 3116 and 3119 of the Defense Authorization Bill.

ENDORSERS OF HIGH-LEVEL WASTE LETTER

Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Fort Hall, ID

National Groups - 26

Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

American Rivers

Church Women United

Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers)

Friends of the Earth

Global Green

Greenpeace International

Indigenous Environmental Network

League of Conservation Voters

National Council of Churches

National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans

National Environmental Trust

Natural Resources Defense Council

NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Peace Action

Physicians for Social Responsibility

Public Citizen

The Episcopal Church, USA

U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Union of Concerned Scientists

Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

Women's Action for New Directions

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, US Section

20/20 Vision National Project

Individual Groups - 131

Abalone Alliance Safe Energy Clearinghouse, San Francisco, CA

Action for a Clean Environment, Alto, GA

American Friends Service Committee-Colorado Area Office, CO

Americans for a Safe Future, Sherman Oaks, CA

Amigos Bravos, Taos, NM

Arizona Toxics Information, Bisbee, AZ

Atlanta Women's Action for New Directions, GA

Bay Area Nuclear (BAN) Waste Coalition, San Francisco, CA

Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Glendale Springs, NC

Carolina Peace Resource Center, Columbia, SC

Center for Environmental Justice, Savannah, GA

Center for Health, Environment & Justice, Falls Church, VA

Central Pennsylvania Citizens for Survival, State College, PA

Citizen Action, Sandia Park, NM

Citizen Alert, Las Vegas, NV

Citizen Power, Pittsburgh, PA

Citizens Advocating Responsible Development, INC., Scotia NY

Citizens Awareness Network, Shelburne Falls, MA

Citizens Democracy Watch, Florence, OR

Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Lake Township, MI

Citizens for Safe Energy, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY

Citizens Resistance at Fermi Two, Livonia, MI

Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, Monroe, MI

Coalition for Health Concern, Kevil, KY

Coalition for Nuclear Justice, Brookport, IL

Coalition for Peace Action, Princeton, NJ

Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Waste, Springville, NY

Columbia Riverkeeper, White Salmon, WA.

Committee to Bridge the Gap, Los Angeles, CA

Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Santa Fe, NM

Connecticut Opposed to Waste, Broad Brook, CT

Consumers Health Freedom Coalition, New York, NY

Cumberland Countians for Peace & Justice, Pleasant Hill, TN

Don't Waste Michigan, Holland, MI

Don't Waste Oregon, Portland, OR

Earth Concerns of Oklahoma, Tulsa, OK

Educators for Responsibility Metro Area, New York, NY

Enviro-Health Concerns, Wichita, Kansas

Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power, State College, PA

Environmentalists, Inc., Columbia, SC

Escalante Wilderness Project, Escalante, UT

Eugene Media Action, Eugene, OR

Fernald Residents for Environmental, Safety & Health, Ross, OH

Georgia Conservation Voters, Atlanta, GA

Georgians Against Nuclear Energy, Atlanta, GA

Glen Canyon Group, Sierra Club, South-Eastern UT

Government Accountability Project, Washington, D.C

GRACE Public Fund, New York, NY

Grandmothers for Peace (Northland Chapter), Superior, WI

Grandmothers for Peace International, Elk Grove, CA

Grandmothers for Peace/San Luis Obispo County Chapter, San Miguel, CA

Green Party of Michigan, Lapeer, MI

Hanford Action of Oregon, Portland, OR

Hanford Watch, Portland, OR

Harrisburg-Hershey Chapter of PSR, PA

Heart of America Northwest, Seattle, WA

Heartwood, Bloomington, IA

Idaho Conservation League, Boise, ID

Izaak Walton League of America, Gaithersburg, MD

Justice and Witness Ministries, NY Conference, United Church of Christ

Justice Not War Coalition, Eugene, OR

LandWatch Lane County in Eugene, OR

Lane County Physicians for Social Responsibility, Eugene, OR

Lone Tree Council, Bay City, MI

Loretto Community, Denver, CO

Metro Detroit Alliance for Democracy, Redford, MI

Miamisburg Environmental Safety & Health, Inc., Miamisburg, OH

Mississippi 2020 Network Inc.,

New Hampshire Council of Churches, NH

New Jersey Peace Action, Montclair, NJ

No New Nukes, Clinton, IL

North American Water Office, Lake Elmo, MN

North Carolina Waste Awareness & Reduction Network, Durham, NC

North Dakota Peace Coalition, Bismarck, ND

Northwest Media Project, Eugene, OR

Northwest Regional Conservation Committee, Sierra Club, OR, WA, ID, MT

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, CA

Nuclear Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC

Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM

Obed Watershed Association, Pleasant Hill, TN

Oregon PeaceWorks, Salem, OR

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, Portland, OR

Oregon Toxics Alliance Eugene, OR

Peace Action New Mexico, Santa Fe. NM

Peace Action of Connecticut, Greenwich, CT

Peace Action Texas, Austin, TX

Peace Farm, Panhandle, TX

Physicians for Social Responsibility / Northeast Ohio Chapter, OH

Physicians for social Responsibility, SF-Bay Area Chapter, CA

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Atlanta, GA

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Baltimore, MD

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Greater Kansas City, MO

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Los Angeles, CA

Physicians for Social Responsibility/NYC, NY

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Philadelph ia, PA

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Sacramento , CA

Physicians for Social Responsibility/Western NC Chapter, Ashville, NC

Prairie Island Coalition, Minneapolis, MN

PRESS, McDermott, OH

Radiological Evaluation & Action Project, Great Lakes, Ewen MI

Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Boulder, CO

Sierra Club, Georgia Chapter, Atlanta, GA

Snake River Alliance, Boise, ID

S.P.L.A.S.H., Remus, MI

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Savannah, GA

Southwest Research and Information Center, Albuquerque, NM

STAND of Amarillo, TX

Stop Uranium Mining, Montclair, NJ

Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, Austin, TX

Temple Sinai Social Action Committee, Amherst, NY

The Colorado Coalition for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Denver, CO

The Environmental Justice Foundation, Provo, UT

The Greater Lansing Peace Education Center, MI

The RadioActivist Campaign, Belfair