Boulevard

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 02:57:00 +0000

I urge all of you who, like me, believe this next election will be the most important election of our lifetime to check-out the following Rapid Response connection with The Democratic Party.

It's not quite July 4, but let's remember the principles our forefathers founded and take back America from those who are un-doing our democracy and trying to replace it with an oligarchy.

-Boulevard

"Every day, the Democratic Party's research team prepares a document with all their latest, up-to-date information on the Republican 2008 presidential field. Please help us spread the word through blogs, email and word-of-mouth. Your work makes a difference."

- The Internet Team

The Daily Flipper

Read what the Republicans Wish You Wouldn’t ...

June 28, 2007

TOP HEADLINE: I Wanna Be A Secret Service Impersonator When I Grow Up: Trooper Garrity Expands His Resume

Palm Beach Post Tallahassee bureau chief S.V. Date says that Garrity, who is now on paid leave from the campaign while New Hampshire authorities investigate, tried in April to prevent Date from following Romney into the Florida Senate Office Building, and then again when Date tried to board an elevator Romney was taking to meet with Republican state senators.

After Date reminded Garrity (pictured above) that the building and the elevator were open to the public in Florida, Garrity, wearing a Secret Service style lapel pin and an ear bud, responded that such measures were necessary because of numerous security threats against the former Massachusetts governor.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/floridapolitics/entries/2007/06/27/we_thought_he_looked_familiar.html

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McCain: It’s Gonna Be An Ugly Second Quarter

Republican presidential candidate John McCain played down expectations Wednesday for his second-quarter fundraising and acknowledged a need to improve his standing in Iowa.

"I think I've got a lot of work to do in Iowa," McCain said in a Des Moines Register interview.

McCain said he expected to have raised an adequate amount, but not the most compared with his rivals when the quarter ends on Saturday.

"I am confident we'll have enough money to do what we need to do; I'm pretty confident we're not as good as some of the others," McCain said in the telephone interview. "I haven't seen theirs. I'm satisfied with the level. It's been very difficult."

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070628/NEWS09/706280388

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More McCain Staff Bails in NH . . . Money Issues

A state lawmaker said yesterday he could no longer support Sen. John McCain's campaign due to a proposed immigration bill in Congress. But McCain's campaign countered that state Rep. D.J. Bettencourt stepped down as Rockingham County co-chairman only after asking for - and being refused - a paycheck.

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070628/REPOSITORY/706280382

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Did Romney Save the Olympics or Did the Olympics Save Him?

The day Mitt Romney took over the scandal-tainted Salt Lake City Olympics in 1999, he pledged not to exploit the role for political gain and announced that he would not accept any severance pay when he finished the job. Public records indicate he did otherwise.

Romney not only accepted a $476,000 severance package from the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, according to federal tax records, but he helped to lobby the committee for similarly large pacts for his 25 senior managers, 17 of whom contributed to his 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial campaign or the state Republican Party soon after the Winter Games.

Romney donated the severance package money as well as his Olympic salary to charity, his spokesman says, and Romney himself says that soliciting campaign contributions from friends and colleagues is a common and legitimate practice.

In addition to tapping senior managers, Romney also solicited donations from the organizing committee's 53-member board of trustees, 14 of whom contributed to his campaign or political action committees during his governorship. Romney also received political funds from individuals associated with companies such as Nu Skin, Questar, and NBC that sponsored or did business with the organizing committee.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part5_side/

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It Is, After All, All About Mitt

But Romney's other agenda - buffing his own image for a political career - was never far from the surface, according to many former associates.

The man who was famous at Bain Capital for letting others take the credit suddenly was giving his permission for a series of Olympics promotional buttons bearing his own likeness, accompanied by slogans like ''Hey, Mitt, we love you!'' and ''Are we there yet, Mitt?'' There was even a superhero pin depicting Romney draped in an American flag.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/romney/articles/part5_main/

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Washington Lawyer Lobbyist Fred Thompson Criticizes the ‘Politics of Washington’

Fred Thompson -- actor, ex-senator, former lobbyist and Republican presidential aspirant -- appealed to fellow Southerners with his conservative pitch Wednesday and belittled foolishness in Washington.

The lawyer who has worked as a Washington lobbyist and lives just outside the capital chided Washington for its partisanship, especially concerning terrorism, and emphasized the need for U.S. leaders to work across the aisle.

"We pick up the newspaper and see what's going on in Washington and the foolishness there -- all things partisan, all the energy directed inwardly instead of trying to work together to do something good for this country, even with regard to something this important," he said.

In brief remarks to reporters, Thompson acknowledged his long tenure in Washington and defended his criticism of the ways of the federal government.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/06/28/news/politics/17_02_286_27_07.txt

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But Fred Surrounds Himself With Washington Insiders. . .

Fred Thompson's inner circle is small and deeply rooted in Tennessee.

But the next circle, the presidential campaign staff he has been constructing in recent weeks, is populated by skilled Washington veterans with strong ties to President George Bush and former President George H.W. Bush.

Some already draw criticism. Thompson staff member Tim Griffin is under fire from some Democratic senators. They asked this week that the U.S. Justice Department investigate claims that Griffin, a former aide to White House senior adviser Karl Rove, helped suppress voter turnout in Florida during the 2004 presidential race.

Thomas Collamore, who has led Thompson's campaign, has been criticized for his work at Altria Group Inc., the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070623/NEWS0206/706230348

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Thompson Continues To Run From His Record; Turns His Back On Campaign Finance Reform

Perhaps the biggest news to emerge, though, is that Thompson seems to be distancing himself from his previous strong support of McCain-Feingold. He admitted to "voting for the campaign finance reform bill" -- he was actually one of its first co-sponsors -- but said that he did so because he wanted to end soft money and "go back to the traditional way of placing reasonable limits on what a person can give to a politician."

"There was another part," Thompson continued, "that the Supreme Court addressed that I've been saying for some time hasn't worked."

But that was surpising to a rival campaign that, after they got wind of Thompson's statement, pointed out that Thompson "took the time to file an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court" in 2003 defending both the soft money prohibition in the bill and the restriction on issue ads that Court struck down this week and that Thompson spoke out against today.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0607/Fred_meets_the_press.html

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Giuliani’s Numbers Falling Across the Country

Likely GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson has made stunning gains on front-runner Rudy Giuilani in three key battleground states, including Florida, a poll released yesterday found.

Giuliani leads Thompson 27-21 percent among Florida Republican voters, according to the Quinnipiac Poll - a dramatic shrinkage of the former mayor's 32-point edge in April.

In April, 38 percent of Florida Republicans favored Giuliani, compared to 15 percent for John McCain, and just 6 for Thompson. Since then, Giuliani dipped by 11 points, while Thompson skyrocketed by 15 points.

In Ohio, Giuliani's lead over Thompson dwindled from 15 points to eight points over the two-month period. Giuliani now has 25 percent of the GOP vote in Ohioto 17 percent for Thompson.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06282007/news/nationalnews/rudy_losing_steam_nationalnews_carl_campanile.htm

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Rudy’ll Be Waiting For Fred In The Parking Lot . . .

Former GOP Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, speaking at a GOP gathering in South Carolina today, hit his usual core issues, tax cuts, and terrorism -- but also took an apparent shot at GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani's checklist of things he says a president needs to do to be successful.Thompson, in what seemed to be a direct criticism of Giuliani, said, "The question is what are your underlying principles what do you believe in?" The still unannounced candidate went on to say, "Anybody can talk from a mental checklist of talking points. What do you really believe in? Where are you coming from?"

Giuliani in speeches has outlined six things he says a leader needs to be successful, and said he has identified 12 "commitments" to voters if elected president.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/06/27/243939.aspx

. . .But Probably Not In The Parking Lot of a Church

Married three times, Giuliani simply isn't the Catholic candidate he claims to be. He can't have a confessor. He can't receive the sacraments of penance, the Eucharist, or marriage. While bishops disagree about whether or not a Catholic politician who supports abortion rights can receive the sacraments, there is no disagreement about the consequences of divorcing and remarrying outside the church, as Giuliani did a few years ago.

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0726,barrett,77041,6.html/full

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Anti-Immigrant Ads Produced Outside U.S.A.

Say it isn't so but it looks like a conservative video site, Hotair.com, may be outsourcing and offshoring its videos opposing the immigration bill being debated in the Senate.

If you look carefully at this TV commercial-style spot, the telephone has a sticker which appears to show a European Union-wide number for emergency assistance, 112.

I think I can even see the circle of stars on a blue background that is a symbol of the EU.

http://www.latestpolitics.com/blog/2007/06/hot-air-outsourcing-anti-amnesty.html

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After a Lifetime of Public Service, Liddy Dole Has, Well, Nothing To Show For It

If you scroll down to the bottom of Elizabeth Dole's official Senate biography, it seems that she agrees that she has accomplished nothing as a Senator.

http://senate2008guru.blogspot.com/

http://dole.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=AboutElizabeth.Biography

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The Sickly State of Health Insurance

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 01:33:00 +0000

The Sickly State of Health Insurance
By Nomi Prins, AlterNetPosted on September 12, 2006, Printed on September 12, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/41416/
The following is an excerpt from Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not) by Nomi Prins, PoliPointPress, 2006.
What do a successful ABC television producer, an ex-Los Angeles Laker turned actor, and a former meth addict turned PR god all have in common? First, they all spend way too much time in LA traffic. Second, they all think America's current health-care system sucks.
Poncho Hodges is a 34-year-old former LA Laker. He's the tallest person I've ever stood next to. I walk with him (Poncho used to live in New York, so is down with the whole walking thing) to a nearby Starbucks, on Magnolia and Lankershim Boulevard. My all-black outfit (yes, it is a New York thing) looked a little grim next to his red and white Yankee cap and red and white sneakers. His face was framed by bling studs and a thick gold chain necklace.
Poncho attended the University of Colorado on a basket-ball scholarship. He did a stint as power forward for the Lakers. He's perfectly healthy now, but having witnessed tons of sports injuries in his career, he knows the importance of coverage. "Health insurance?" he says with a voice as deep as James Earl Jones. "Been winging it."
Like other members in the Screen Actors Guild and vari-ous professional groups or unions, he gets insurance through group policies that are imbedded with obstacles. "I got the SAG one, but you need to gross like $15,000 a year to keep it. You have to gross about $25,000 to get dental."
For seven years, he played basketball all over Europe, and learned from his time there: "America needs to take lessons from other countries where if you're a citizen, you get health care, no matter who you are." Ideas like this separate Poncho from the thinking of our gov-ernment, even though he considers himself a Republican. "I like the things they stand for -- like on religion -- and I'm down with keeping American traditions. On the economic thing, it's different -- they don't care about the poor, they're too privileged." He is further proof that the need for decent health care cuts across political beliefs, and he is one more example of how out of touch conservatives are even with their own constituents.
After Poncho takes off in his size 15 Nikes, I have another latte. For this one, I'm joined by Jed Wallace, a super-lively PR person. Jed has an expensive individual health insurance plan, which also covers his two young daughters. He got it on-line. "It's Blue Cross/Blue Shield -- over $800 a month, a $10 deductible on office visits, $30 on prescription drugs, $500 on ER work, and an annual deductible of $750." Part of the reason the plan is so expensive is Jed's former ultra-Hollywood lifestyle. He craved the dream: "I wasn't exactly sure how, but my ego said I wanted to be rich and famous -- then you get pummeled by reality."
Reality for Jed started with smoking pot, then doing hallucinogens. It soon became a full-blown meth addiction. During the mid-'90s, he co-hosted a web radio spot and "Popcorn," a movie review show on MTV. He made, as he put it, "shitloads of money, burned through it, and started doing coke." MTV was short-lived, so he got into the bar business in Santa Monica. "It was 'on' from there -- partying, drugs, everything."
By April 2000, he was cruising high. The manager of one of the beer companies he bought along the way happened to be his drug dealer. "I was working 20- to 22-hour days -- I had to get into meth, the delusion that with a little, you could do anything."
He rationalized that he provided his two-year-old and wife with a home, money, and cars. He paid employees in drugs. Finally, his wife left him. Eventually she returned and created an inter-vention that led him to Life's Journey Center in Palm Springs. It was, as he put it, "a humbling experience. There, we also discovered I was bipolar -- that's why my insurance is so high."
Now, he speaks to kids in recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous. "Lots of people in treatment wind up dead, back on drugs, or in jail. I'm lucky. People helped me. 'Cause it's not covered by insurance." He's been clean for two years, having been to hell and back, and has met tons of lost people along the way. Many of them, he believes, were souls that could have been helped by wider reaching health care. "This government is totally detached from the real American psyche and spirit," he says, driving me back to my car. "You parked all the way over here?! Why?"
The next day, I hit ABC Studios, where it was definitely turning Christmas. A young intern was passing out ginger-bread cookies while I waited for Harry Phillips, a producer of Primetime. After a few minutes he arrived, a friendly man with a neatly trimmed gray beard and mustache, and offered me herbal tea from their kitchen.
Behind his desk are several bags of Christmas presents, mostly for his youngest daughter, Abigail. "She's 12 going on 20," he says. On his walls are several Emmy awards, a map of the United States, and a Norman Rockwell print of a young black girl in Mississippi.
He's been at ABC for 16 years. His health plan is through Disney/ABC, and is CIGNA/PPO, for which he pays $250 a month with a $350 annual deductible. Born in Canada on Memorial Day in 1952, he has been in the United States for 15 years but maintains dual citizenship. The biggest reason why? Yep: "Health care--socialized medicine." As far as he's concerned, Canada just flat out gives its citizens better care than we do. And it's hard to argue with him. Canada has the equivalent of an interlocking system of Medicare and Medicaid. Everyone's in the same risk pool and there are fewer administrative costs.
His ABC health-care plan is a good one, and Harry knows it. He also realizes how lucky he is compared to many of us: "I'd be willing to give up some of that privilege in return for others to have more access to health care in the U.S." Meanwhile, Harry is holding onto his Canadian national health care (CARE) card and his home in Canada because "retiring there makes a lot more financial sense." Sadly, most of us don't have this option. And after all, should we really have to feel "lucky" to have decent health care?
Rising Health Care Costs and Your Wallet
The private health-care system is filled with waste. In 2003, health-care bureaucracy cost the Americans who use it $400 billion. And health insurance companies don't even actually provide health care. It's not like GM, which provides cars (or tries to anyway).
Let's make no mistake about this: insurance companies are middlemen. Their sole job is to connect the dots that stand between you and your medical treatment. More often than not, it seems like their job is actually to create red tape between you and your wallet. Why do we put up with them? Because these companies are so entrenched in our daily lives that we can't imagine an alternative. But there are other options, whether or not the Bush conservatives want to acknowledge them. A recent study found that national health insurance, financed by the federal government instead of private insurance companies would save Americans about $286 billion annually in paperwork alone. This would be enough to give all uninsured Americans full prescription drug coverage.
President Bush goes out of his way to ignore these obvious statistics. He goes out of his way to bolster our current system, which is only getting worse. Medical expenses rose faster than inflation in the 1990s as insurance companies created plans to limit our treatment options through something they like to call "managed care." To me this translates as: we manage our (enormous) profits, you wing your (shoddy) coverage.
On top of that, the costs of plans have increased. Between 2000 and 2005, average monthly premiums for individual cov-erage shot from $342 to $603, and annual deductibles (the amount you put out before your insurance kicks in) almost doubled, to $323 from $175.
To make sure drugs companies weren't left behind as health insurance companies grabbed their enormous profits, the Bush Republicans introduced the prescription drug bill -- or "Medicare Part D"-- for Medicare beneficiaries, the 42 million Americans who are disabled or 65 or older.11 In far from conservative wisdom, the bill doesn't include the ability to bargain with drug companies for lower cost drugs. Since its inception, drug companies have substantially raised prices on nearly all drugs covered by the program. Plus, the cost of this drug-company orgy to our federal budget is projected to be a staggering $8.7 trillion between now and 2080.
The Medicare prescription drug bill was part of the 2003 Medicare law and took effect in January 2006. Your first $250 of drugs is free. Then comes the cloud, looming behind that slim silver lining: you pay a quarter of costs from $251 to $2,250, and all of the next $2,850. That "doughnut hole" lasts until you hit $5,100 in drug costs per year. After that, Medicare picks up most of the tab. All in all, the gap in coverage has only increased with the new plan, and with it, out-of-pocket expenses for the average participant. By January 2006, less than half of the elderly able to sign up for the prescription drug plan did. Why? The sign-up process was nearly impossible to figure out.
"The Bush administration knew that going in," Diane Archer, founder of the Medicare Rights Center, told me. "They banked on it. They didn't even keep the right to negotiate prices with the drug companies. Others who did sign up didn't get their plastic ID cards that confirmed they had, so they couldn't get the drugs they needed." And the problems aren't limited to the people who need those drugs. Before the bill, Medicare's overhead was only 4 percent of its total cost to the federal budget. After the prescription plan was adopted, overhead tripled. Nevertheless, Bush has decided the program is a raging success.
Unfortunately, Bush is not alone. Drug and health insurance companies felt the love that average citizens didn't feel, as they were second only to oil companies in 2005 stock market performance. Once again, those companies book the profits, and we Americans foot the ever-growing bill.
Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and is the author of Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not) PoliPointPress, 2006.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/41416/

How Bushs Metaphoric

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:08:00 +0000

How Bush's Metaphorical War Became Real
By George Lakoff and Evan Frisch, AlterNetPosted on September 11, 2006, Printed on September 12, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/41471/
Language matters, because it can determine how we think and act.
For a few hours after the towers fell on 9/11, administration spokesmen referred to the event as a "crime." Indeed, Colin Powell argued within the administration that it be treated as a crime. This would have involved international crime-fighting techniques: checking banks accounts, wire-tapping, recruiting spies and informants, engaging in diplomacy, cooperating with intelligence agencies in other governments, and if necessary, engaging in limited "police actions" with military force. Indeed, such methods have been the most successful so far in dealing with terrorism.
But the crime frame did not prevail in the Bush administration. Instead, a war metaphor was chosen: the "War on Terror." Literal -- not metaphorical -- wars are conducted against armies of other nations. They end when the armies are defeated militarily and a peace treaty is signed. Terror is an emotional state. It is in us. It is not an army. And you can't defeat it militarily and you can't sign a peace treaty with it.
The war metaphor was chosen for political reasons. First and foremost, it was chosen for the domestic political reasons. The war metaphor defined war as the only way to defend the nation. From within the war metaphor, being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic, to be against defending the nation. The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive. Once the war metaphor took hold, any refusal to grant the president full authority to conduct the war would open progressives in Congress to the charge of being unpatriotic, unwilling to defend America, defeatist. And once the military went into battle, the war metaphor created a new reality that reinforced the metaphor.
Once adopted, the war metaphor allowed the president to assume war powers, which made him politically immune from serious criticism and gave him extraordinary domestic power to carry the agenda of the radical right: Power to shift money and resources away from social needs and to the military and related industries. Power to override environmental safeguards on the grounds of military need. Power to set up a domestic surveillance system to spy on our citizens and to intimidate political enemies. Power over political discussion, since war trumps all other topics. In short, power to reshape America to the vision of the radical right -- with no end date.
In addition, the war metaphor was used as justification for the invasion of Iraq, which Bush had planned for since his first week in office. Frank Luntz, the right-wing language expert, recommended referring to the Iraq war as part of the "War on Terror" -- even when it was known that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and indeed saw Osama bin Laden as an enemy. Fox News used "War on Terror" as a headline when showing film clips from Iraq. Remember "Weapons of Mass Destruction?" They were invented by the Bush administration to strike terror into the hearts of Americans and to justify the invasion. Remember that the Iraq War was advocated before 9/11 and promoted as early as 1997 by the members of the Project for the New American Century, who later came to dominate in the Bush administration. Why?
The right-wing strategy was to use the American military to achieve economic and strategic goals in the Middle East: to gain control of the second largest oil reserve in the world; to place military bases right in the heart of the Middle East for the sake of economic and political intimidation; to open up Middle East markets and economic opportunities for American corporations; and to place American culture and a controllable government in the heart of the Middle East. The justification was 9/11 -- to identify the Iraq invasion as part of the "War on Terror" and claim that it is necessary in order to protect America and spread democracy.
What has been the result?
Domestically, the "War on Terror" has been a major success for the radical right. Bush has been returned to office and the radical right controls all branches of our government. They are realizing their goals. Social programs are being gutted. Deregulation and privatization are thriving. Even highways are being privatized. Taxpayers' money is being transferred to the ultra-rich making them richer. Two right-wing justices have been appointed to the Supreme Court and right-wing judges are taking over courts all over America. The environment continues to be plundered. Domestic surveillance is in place. Corporate profits have doubled while wage levels have declined. Oil profits are astronomical. And the radical rights social agenda is taking hold. The "culture war" is being won on many fronts. And it is still widely accepted that we are fighting a "War on Terror." The metaphor is still in place. We are still taking off our shoes at the airports, and now we cannot take bottled water on the planes. Terror is being propped up.
But while the radical right has done well on the domestic front, America and Americans have fared less well both at home and abroad.
What was the moral of 9/11?
To Osama bin Laden, the moral was simple: American power can be used against America itself. This moral has defined the post 9/11 world: the more America uses military force in the Middle East, the more damage is done to America and Americans.
The more Americans kill and terrorize Muslims, the more we recruit Muslims to become terrorists and fight against us.
The war in Iraq was over in 2003 when the US forces defeated Saddam's army. Then the American occupation began -- an occupation by insufficient troops ill-suited to be occupiers, especially in a country on the brink of a civil war, where neither side wants us there.
The number of lives lost on 9/11 is currently listed as 2973. As of this writing 2662 Americans have been sent to their deaths in Iraq, a Muslim country that did not attack us. At the current rate, within months more Americans will have been sent to their deaths by Bush than were murdered at the hands of bin Laden.
9/11 was a crime -- a crime against humanity -- and terrorism is best dealt with as crime on an international level.
It is time to toss the war metaphor into the garbage can.
The war metaphor is still intimidating progressives. To come out against "staying the course" is to be called unpatriotic, weak, and defeatist. To say, "no, we're just as strong, but we're smarter" is to keep and reinforce the war metaphor, which the conservatives have a patent on.
It is time for progressives to jettison the war metaphor itself. It is time to tell some truths that progressives have been holding back on. What has worked in stopping terrorism is just what has worked in stopping international crime -- like the recent police work in England. What has failed is the war approach, which just recruits more terrorists. In Iraq, the war was over when we defeated Saddam's army. Then the occupation began. Our troops are dying because they are not trained be occupiers in hostile territory on the cusp of a civil war.
Bush is an occupation president, not a war president, and his war powers should be immediately rescinded. Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution to do just that (H.R. 5875) should be taken seriously and made the subject of national debate.
I am suggesting a conscious discussion of the war metaphor as a metaphor. The very discussion would require the nation to think of it as a metaphor, and allow the nation to take seriously the truth of our presence in Iraq as an occupation that must be ended. You don't win or lose an occupation; you just exit as gracefully as possible.
Openly discussing the war metaphor as a metaphor would allow the case to be made that terrorism is most effectively treated as a crime -- like wiping out a crime syndicate -- not as an occasion for sending over a hundred thousand troops and doing massive bombing that only recruits more terrorists.
Finally, openly discussing the war metaphor as a metaphor would raise the question of the domestic effect of giving the president war powers, and the fact that the Bush administration has shamelessly exploited 9/11 to achieve the political goals of the radical right -- with all the disasters that has brought to our country. It would allow us to name right-wing ideology, to spell it out, look at its effects, and to see what awful things it has done, is doing, and threatens to keep on doing. The blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq, in New Orleans, in our economy, and throughout the country at large should be placed squarely where it belongs -- on right-wing ideology that calls itself "conservative" but mocks real American values.
Metaphors cannot be seen or touched, but they create massive effects, and political intimidation is one such effect. It is time for political courage and political realism. It is time to end the political intimidation of the war metaphor and the terror it has loosed on America.
George Lakoff is the author of 'Whose Freedom? The Batle Over America's Most Important Idea' (Farrar Straus Giroux). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
Evan Frisch is a technology strategist at the Rockridge Institute.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/41471/

In Search of Accurate Vote Totals

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:22:00 +0000

(image placeholder)
September 5, 2006
Editorial, The New York Times
In Search of Accurate Vote Totals
It’s hard to believe that nearly six years after the disasters of Florida in 2000, states still haven’t mastered the art of counting votes accurately. Yet there are growing signs that the country is moving into another presidential election cycle in disarray.
The most troubling evidence comes from Ohio, a key swing state, whose electoral votes decided the 2004 presidential election. A recent government report details enormous flaws in the election system in Ohio’s biggest county, problems that may not be fixable before the 2008 election.
Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, hired a consulting firm to review its election system. The county recently adopted Diebold electronic voting machines that produce a voter-verified paper record of every vote cast. The investigators compared the vote totals recorded on the machines after this year’s primary with the paper records produced by the machines. The numbers should have been the same, but often there were large and unexplained discrepancies. The report also found that nearly 10 percent of the paper records were destroyed, blank, illegible, or otherwise compromised.
This is seriously bad news even if, as Diebold insists, the report overstates the problem. Under Ohio law, the voter-verified paper record, not the voting machine total, is the official ballot for purposes of a recount. The error rates the report identified are an invitation to a meltdown in a close election.
The report also found an array of other problems. The county does not have a standardized method for conducting a manual recount. That is an invitation, as Florida 2000 showed, to chaos and litigation. And there is a serious need for better training of poll workers, and for more uniform voter ID policies. Disturbingly, the report found that 31 percent of blacks were asked for ID, while just 18 percent of others were.
Some of these problems may be explored further in a federal lawsuit challenging Ohio’s administration of its 2004 election. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who has been criticized for many decisions he made on election matters that year, recently agreed to help preserve the 2004 paper ballots for review in the lawsuit.
Ohio is not the only state that may be headed for trouble in 2008. New York’s Legislature was shamefully slow in passing the law needed to start adopting new voting machines statewide. Now localities are just starting to evaluate voting machine companies as they scramble to put machines in place in time for the 2007 election. (Because of a federal lawsuit, New York has to make the switch a year early.) Much can go wrong when new voting machines are used. There has to be extensive testing, and education of poll workers and voters. New York’s timetable needlessly risks an Election Day disaster.
Cuyahoga County deserves credit for commissioning an investigation that raised uncomfortable but important questions. Its report should be a wake-up call to states and counties nationwide. Every jurisdiction in the country that runs elections should question itself just as rigorously, and start fixing any problems without delay.

The Real Thing Is Getting So Hard to Find

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 20:24:00 +0000

The Real Thing Is Getting So Hard to Find
By Jay Walljasper, OdePosted on August 21, 2006, Printed on August 22, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/40501/
Victoria Beckham, also known to the world as Posh of the Spice Girls, was giving a performance for fans in Birmingham, England, and accidentally dropped the microphone. Her voice, however, continued ringing out of the speakers as if by magic. But it wasn't magic; Posh was lip-synching to a pre-recorded track. As if that weren't insincere enough, the lip ring she wore also turned out to be fake. Posh hadn't really pierced herself like so many of her young fans... she just wanted them to think so.
It's difficult to know what's real anymore. Politicians deceive us. Corporations cover up misdeeds with frothy PR. Photoshop makes it simple to fake photographs. Breast implants and facelifts are as common as Band-Aids.
This is nothing new. The pages of history are filled with stories of fraud going back at least as far as the Trojan Horse. The difference today is that high-powered technology can manipulate reality and disseminate falsehoods on a scale never before seen.
In response to this onslaught, it's easy to become cynical about almost everything. Yet rather than throwing up our hands and accepting a world that feels faux, many of us are rolling up our sleeves to maintain what's honest in our lives. American social scientist Paul Ray calls this as a historic social development. "Authenticity is so much in demand today," he declares.
Ray became fascinated by the subject through his research on "cultural creatives"--a sizable segment of the population he has identified who share common values about the environment, social justice, creative expression and personal growth. After extensive interviews with numbers of them, Ray uncovered another trait cultural creatives hold in common: a drive for authenticity. This means living in a way that "your inner self matches your outer self," he says.
Veteran British journalist and trend spotter David Boyle also sees the emergence of a new social sensibility based upon "a determined rejection of the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced.
"There is an obsession on all levels about what is real and what is fake," he notes in a recent interview. "At its core it is a search for what's still human in business, in politics, in culture and in our own lives."
Boyle sees our growing yearning for authenticity as a factor in the recent boom of organic and local food, holistic medicine and socially responsible business. He also points to the worldwide success of the raw Detroit blues-rock duo The White Stripes, the resurgence of public poetry in the UK and the popularity of vintage fabrics from fashion designer Stella McCartney as precursors of a coming "authenticity revolution."
In his book Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life, Boyle describes nine kinds of values that inspire us to seek out what's genuine in the world: ethical, natural, honest, simple, unspun, sustainable, beautiful, rooted and human.
You see people everywhere making choices that once would have seemed surprising. Forgoing a fancy holiday to embark on an eco-travel adventure or a volunteer vacation helping out in a poor community. Skipping the mall in favor of funky furnishings and fashions from thrift stores or handicraft shops. Deciding against a new house on the edge of town to take part in revitalizing an older neighbourhood. Tuning out powerful entertainment conglomerates in order to discover avant-garde, locally made or exotic artistic alternatives. Steering clear of the high-flying corporate track for a lower-paying career with more satisfaction.
"People feel contradictions more sharply than a generation ago," Boyle explains. "They are less willing to work for a company they dislike, or invest their pensions there, or buy their products. Businesses know this, but it's hard for a company to actually be authentic when it is big, globalized and virtual."
As hard as it may be, embracing authenticity represents the wisest, brightest future for business, according to Neil Crofts--a former British publishing executive, race-car driver and corporate-strategy specialist who founded the Authentic Business website.
The key to authentic business, and an authentic life, in Crofts' view, is knowing that some things matter more than money. "If you are doing something you believe in passionately and it fits with your talents, you will always do it better and you will attract the support of others," he asserts. "You will not only make more money, you'll be happier."
Crofts sees Patagonia, the outdoor clothing and gear company, as a prime example. "Their customers are hardly customers; they're more like fans." He also singles out two rising British firms that graphically illustrate the rewards of authentic business -- Yeo Valley Organic yogurt and Cafédirect coffee.
Yeo Valley ranks fourth among UK yogurt producers with six percent of the market and spends 700,000 pounds ($1.3 million U.S. or a million euros) a year on marketing, according to Crofts. Muller, the top-selling British brand, meanwhile controls 36 percent of the market and spends 40 million pounds ($79 million U.S. or 59 million euros) on marketing. "That's almost 60 times as much money to sell six times as much yogurt," Crofts calculates, noting that Yeo Valley's good reputation and organic ingredients sell themselves.
Cafédirect -- which sells fair-trade coffee -- was seeking new investment recently and raised 5 million pounds ($8.8 million U.S. or 7.3 million euros) in just five weeks, all of it from their customers. Every one of these new shareholders, Crofts notes, signed a statement endorsing the company's social principles and half of them agreed to forgo any dividends in the short run. Imagine what great opportunities that kind of financial arrangement offers a growing business.
"Who said business has to be ruthless and competitive and corrupt?" Crofts asks. "Business exists to serve the needs of society. And this is not some kind of new message. It is part of the perennial philosophy of humanity. Look at Buddha. Look at Christ."
While the principles of authenticity are enduring, the concept itself is rather new. In researching a coming book on the subject, Paul Ray could trace the idea back no further than the 17th century. He credits Enlightenment mathematician and philosopher René Descartes with coining the term. Much later it was taken up by existentialist philosophers in France and Beat generation poets in the U.S., eventually being introduced into mainstream culture thanks to the social movements of the 1960s. "It first went public with the women's movement, which emphasized the need for authenticity in relationships and with the slogan 'the personal is political.' But it's easily traced back to the civil-rights movement, where they called it, 'walking your talk.'"
Some of the big debates of our era look different when viewed through the lens of authenticity. The controversy over gay rights and same-sex marriage, for instance, is not simply a moral debate but a question about whether a person should acknowledge or repress authentic feelings from within. The resurgent movements for human rights, global justice and ecological restoration are all inspired by people no longer willing to hide their feelings about what's going on in the world.
"After making its mark on psychology and the social movements, authenticity is now hitting business. The one place it hasn't hit yet is mainstream politics," Ray notes. "In fact, one reason why Al Gore and John Kerry lost [in U.S. presidential elections] is that people didn't perceive them as authentic." Ray, Crofts, and Boyle, in fact, all mention Al Gore's recent transformation. Now that he's speaking out boldly on global warming and other issues, Ray observes, "he comes across as convincingly authentic after seeming so inauthentic in his campaign."
"Humanity's continuing evolution," is how Ray explains the rising interest in authenticity throughout the modern world. "You have people now who want to keep developing through their whole lives. For most people through history the idea that you keep growing emotionally through your whole life was not known, except for maybe the upper classes. Authenticity is showing up now because we are ready for it."
Neil Crofts sees this growing quest for authenticity as a new form of spiritual expression. "There is a huge spiritual vacuum going on in our society, a crisis of meaning." This leads some people to throw themselves headfirst into consumerism. Others seek clarity and comfort in fundamentalism -- which gropes for a sense of authenticity by holding up the Bible, Koran or other all-encompassing philosophy as the supreme truth.
"But true authenticity is not based on dogma," Crofts says, " it's based on what's meaningful to you. It's based on our intuition. We know when we are doing the wrong thing. That's what guides us on our authentic journey."
Jay Walljasper is the executive editor of Ode Magazine.

Blog Menace

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:37:00 +0000

Blog Menace
By Annalee Newitz, AlterNetPosted on August 7, 2006, Printed on August 9, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/40006/
Last week at the infamous computer security conference Black Hat in Las Vegas, Bob Auger announced what should have already been obvious: reading blogs isn't safe.
A security engineer with SPI Labs, Auger quietly revealed that the mere act of checking out somebody's RSS feed could allow bad guys to steal money from your bank account, post Web spam from your computer, and snoop on everything you've written anonymously in that online porn community you secretly visit. This is the new dark side of all that nice free speech that's been enabled by bloggish technologies.
Generally, free expression advocates worry about how businesses and governments censor the confessional, unedited style of bloggers. And they're right to be concerned. People posting personal rants have gotten fired for writing mean things about their bosses and been sued for criticizing litigious maniacs. These bloggers are receiving traditional retributions for speaking openly: They say bad things about someone or some corporate entity, and that person or entity smacks them down.
But as Auger and other researchers demonstrated at Black Hat, we're about to see a new threat to free expression. Massive groups of people will be punished not for what they say online but for using particular tools to say it. Auger investigated several popular RSS readers -- programs used to pull blog content onto your computer -- including Bloglines, RSS Reader, Feed Demon, and Sharp Reader, and discovered that many of them could be turned into delivery systems for malicious code designed to force computers to, for example, post spam on other people's blogs.
Known generally as "cross-site scripting" and "cross-site request forgery," these attacks work by covertly moving data from one location to another. And it could get worse than spamming. As Auger pointed out, everything you type into your banking Web site could get reposted elsewhere, thus allowing the bad guys to read your passwords and have fun with your money.
And blogs can spread their malicious code as quickly as they spread news. If I were a bad guy and wanted to steal a bunch of passwords, I would hide some malicious code inside a comment on a popular blog. As soon as your reader downloaded that comment, you'd be infected. Or I would start a blog that sounded particularly interesting (or pornographic), tempt a bunch of people into subscribing to my feed, and inject naughty code into their computers that way. When you consider how many people automatically repost other people's feeds onto their own blogs in a "what I'm reading" section or something like that, it's clear how bad things could get.
But even worse, in the process of using the Web's fastest free-speech engine to wreak havoc, the people injecting nasty code into blog feeds could undermine free speech itself.
Feed injection poses a whole new set of problems for people who want to promote free expression. We're dealing with a mechanism of censorship that isn't even aware of itself as such. People who do these hacks may not have our best interests in mind -- they're trying to lie, cheat, and steal -- but as an unintended consequence, they may also choke off a powerful avenue of open communication. If people begin to associate using blogs and feeds with being ripped off and spied on, many may stop reading them. Government and business couldn't have asked for a better self-censorship catalyst. Speaking out, no matter what you say, will turn you into a victim.
Luckily, there are fixes for the speech-stopping problems that Auger found -- just as there are legal and social remedies for traditional forms of censorship. After talking with Auger, developers at Bloglines fixed many of the bugs he pointed out. Other vendors are working on fixing them too. And fixes for a lot of cross-site scripting and cross-site request forgery attacks can be borrowed from more protected programs. So people making feed readers simply need to start thinking about security issues and using these fixes when they release the next version of their software.
As ever, what the geeks at Black Hat remind us is that free speech isn't just a matter of political freedom -- it's also about technical freedom. Getting your message out means being prepared to defend yourself ideologically -- and digitally too.
Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who has tragically been forced to stop using different silly e-mail addresses each week to defend herself against insane volumes of spam.

Ocean Power Can Be a Global Warming Cure

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:37:00 +0000

Ocean Power Can Be a Global Warming Cure
By Neil Peirce, Stateline.orgPosted on August 9, 2006, Printed on August 9, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/39755/
How shall we ever slake our ever-growing demand for electricity? Even as concerns about global warming escalate, are we doomed to create more of the same old polluting, coal- and oil-dependent power plants? Or can common sense -- and some radically new technologies -- serve us better?
There’s much talk of wind and solar power. But how about the oceans and their massive tidal and current patterns? Driven by the gravitational force of the sun and the moon, tides and currents represent a source that’s as infinite and everlasting as any force on earth.
A major pilot demonstration seems ready to launch in San Francisco Bay, where an immense tidal flow enters and exits every day at a narrow point of the Golden Gate. A gigantic energy-collection device vaguely reminiscent of a Ferris wheel, with a number of fins (or “wings”) to capture the power of the rapidly passing tides, will be lowered from a barge anchored in the narrows. Using maglev technology, it will produce electrical energy that can then be transmitted to shore by cable.
If the San Francisco experiment works, the way could be opened to vast “farms” of underwater energy generators, operating below the ocean surface off Florida’s Atlantic Coast and along such shorelines as New England and the Pacific Northwest. A major early target could be in the Gulf Stream as it flows between Florida and Bermuda, where the 6.1-mile-per-hour current is 23,000 times the magnitude of the river flow at Niagara Falls.
Dan Power, the former Air Force engineering officer who is president of Oceana Energy, a firm recently organized to develop tidal current power systems, says it’s too early to project the percentage of power needs the new technology could deliver. But along America’s heavily populated coasts, tidal currents could, he believes, become “a major future power source.”
First comes the next year focused on the San Francisco experiment, as Oceana works with engineers of the U.S. Navy’s Hydromechanics Directorate, local utilities and governments to model, test and install the pioneering generator at the Golden Gate.
Contrast that with last week’s estimate that over 150 coal-powered power plants, most powered by dirty, last-generation technologies, are now being planned by U.S. energy companies. The estimate, by U.S. PIRG, the national association of state Public Interest Research Groups, is based chiefly on information from the U.S. Energy Department. Already, quantities of the coal-fired plants are being announced, including 11 by TXU Corp. in Texas alone.
What will be the impact of all the new plants? A stunning 10 percent increase in U.S. global warming emissions, U.S. PIRG estimates -- at the very moment the United States, now responsible for over 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, should be reversing course, leading rather than hindering worldwide efforts to avert potentially catastrophic global climate change in this century.
Yet applying the same $137 billion the energy companies plan for coal-fired plants to energy conservation, U.S. PIRG calculates, would reduce our energy demand by 19 percent in 2025 -- obviating the need for all the new plants. Comparable investment in wind farms or solar power could also go far to obviate the need for the new coal plants (only 16 percent of which are projected to use new coal gasification technology).
But now comes ocean tidal power recovery -- a technology that Power claims is so benign it wouldn’t even impact fish life.
In one sense the idea of tapping tidal energy isn't new; even Ben Franklin, on his trans-Atlantic voyages, noticed the current and speculated on converting its power for human purpose. But not until recent advances in magnets as well as plastics that can protect underwater metal devices from corrosion has the technology become feasible.
Enter the 20-year-old Climate Institute, an early truth-teller on the perils of global warming. Several of its leaders -- Dan Power, President John Topping, environmentalist and businessman William Nitze, and former steel company executive Joe Cannon -- decided the institute’s powerful research and advocacy weren’t enough, that there was no substitute for real-world, economically feasible alternatives to fossil fuels. And that ocean tidal power, the hydraulic energy in the globe's waters, constituted a massive untapped potential.
So in 2005, they formed the for-profit Oceana Energy to do the hard work -- gathering new scientific data, pushing the engineering, recruiting capital and enlisting allies -- to harvest the freely flowing hydraulic energy in the globe’s waters.
One is tempted to liken energy competition to a David and Goliath story -- new upstarts, struggling for capital and market acceptance, against the entrenched fossil-fuel industries whose political clout delivers them more than $25 billion in federal subsidies each year.
With the new truths of global warming transforming the human environment and economics, the Davids will eventually triumph. But soon enough?
Neil Peirce is a member of the Washington Post Writers Group and is the founder of the Citistates Reports.

Republican Senator Faults Bid to Classify Report on Iraq

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:19:00 +0000

August 4, 2006, Intelligence, The New York Times
Senator Faults Bid to Classify Report on Iraq
By MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 — The Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee lashed out at the White House on Thursday, criticizing attempts by the Bush administration to keep secret parts of a report on the role Iraqi exiles played in building the case for war against Iraq.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, said his committee had completed the first two parts of its investigation of prewar intelligence. But he chastised the White House for efforts to classify most of the part that examines intelligence provided to the Bush administration by the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group.
“I have been disappointed by this administration’s unwillingness to declassify material contained in these reports, material which I believe better informs the public, but that does not — I repeat, does not — jeopardize intelligence operations, sources and methods,” Mr. Roberts said in a statement issued Thursday.
One completed section of the Senate report is said to be a harsh critique of how information from the Iraqi exile group made its way into intelligence community reports, said people who have read the report but spoke on condition of anonymity because it is still classified.
The second section compares prewar assessments of Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs and its links to terrorism with what American troops and intelligence operatives have found since the war began in March 2003.
The two parts of the report will not be made public for weeks, and neither is likely to present conclusions very different from past investigations into faulty prewar intelligence. Yet the current dispute is a sign that more than three years into the conflict, emotions remain raw over the role that the Iraqi group and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi — who was close to Pentagon officials and Vice President Dick Cheney — played in the administration’s decision to wage war against Saddam Hussein.
The group’s role in building the case against Mr. Hussein has been the source of fierce ideological arguments in Washington for years. The report also concludes that the group did provide useful information regarding the disposition of Iraq’s military. In the end, four Republicans on the committee and all seven Democratic members approved of the section of the report about the group. Four Republicans voted against it.
Congressional officials said Thursday that they were puzzled by White House efforts to keep large portions of that section classified. Mr. Roberts pledged in his statement to maintain the pressure to declassify all of the Senate’s conclusions.
“This Committee will not settle for anything less,” he said. “Neither will the American people.” A spokesman for the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, whose office is in charge of the declassification, declined to comment.
The committee approved the other section of the report 14 to 1.

Au Revoir, Freedom Fries

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 13:05:00 +0000

August 4, 2006, Editorial, The New York Times
Au Revoir, Freedom Fries
When Congress renamed the French fries sold in its cafeterias “freedom fries” before the Iraq war, Bob Ney, whose position as House Administration Committee chairman put him in charge of the cafeterias, said the change registered “the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France.” In the real world, it mainly allowed people to register their strong displeasure at how juvenile Congress was being.
In the last few weeks, as The Washington Times reported, Congress has quietly changed the name back. We could think of many good reasons for the move. “Freedom fries,” like the “mission accomplished” banner that President Bush stood in front of a few months later, is now a stale relic of a naïve time, when the war’s supporters were convinced that Iraqis would be free right after they finished greeting their liberators with rose petals.
The renaming also was the embodiment of President Bush’s my-way-or-the-highway diplomacy. A French Embassy spokeswoman gamely told The Associated Press at the time that “we are at a very serious moment dealing with very serious issues, and we are not focusing on the name you give to potatoes.” But “freedom fries” was intended to be, and was, a poke in France’s eye. Harassing the French is probably not the wisest course now that America may need their help negotiating a ceasefire in Lebanon.
We would like to think that such sound policy reasons — or just that “freedom fries” was so incredibly stupid — account for the change. But the real reason appears to be that Mr. Ney was forced to give up his chairmanship of the committee because of his extensive ties to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The current chairman, Vernon Ehlers of Michigan, seems more sensible about both intergovernmental affairs and cafeteria management.

The Sound of One Domino Falling

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 12:50:00 +0000

August 4, 2006, Editorial, The New York Times
The Sound of One Domino Falling
It’s been obvious for years that Donald Rumsfeld is in denial of reality, but the defense secretary now also seems stuck in a time warp. You could practically hear the dominoes falling as he told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that it was dangerous for Americans to even talk about how to end the war in Iraq.
“If we left Iraq prematurely,” he said, “the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they’d order us and all those who don’t share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines.” And finally, he intoned, America will be forced “to make a stand nearer home.”
No one in charge of American foreign affairs has talked like that in decades. After Vietnam, of course, the communist empire did not swarm all over Asia as predicted; it tottered and collapsed. And the new “enemy” that Mr. Rumsfeld is worried about is not a worldwide conspiracy but a collection of disparate political and religious groups, now united mainly by American action in Iraq.
Americans are frightened by the growing chaos in the Mideast, and the last thing they needed to hear this week was Mr. Rumsfeld laying blame for sectarian violence on a few Al Qaeda schemers. What they want is some assurance that the administration has a firm grasp on reality and has sensible, achievable goals that could lead to an end to the American involvement in Iraq with as little long-term damage as possible. Instead, Mr. Rumsfeld offered the same old exhortation to stay the course, without the slightest hint of what the course is, other than the rather obvious point that the Iraqis have to learn to run their own country.
By contrast, the generals flanking him were pillars of candor and practicality. Gen. John Abizaid, the U.S. commander in the Middle East, said “Iraq could move toward civil war” if the sectarian violence — which he said “is probably as bad as I’ve seen it” — is not contained. The generals tried to be optimistic about the state of the Iraqi security forces, but it was hard. They had to acknowledge that a militia controls Basra, that powerful Iraqi government officials run armed bands that the Pentagon considers terrorist organizations financed by Iran, and that about a third of the Iraqi police force can’t be trusted to fight on the right side.
As for Mr. Rumsfeld, he suggested that lawmakers just leave everything up to him and the military command and stop talking about leaving Iraq. “We should consider how our words can be used by our deadly enemy,” he said.
Americans who once expected the Pentagon to win the war in Iraq have now been reduced to waiting for an indication that at least someone is minding the store. They won’t be comforted to hear Mr. Rumsfeld fretting about protecting Spain from Muslim occupation.

Freedom of the Press

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 12:12:00 +0000

Freedom of the Press

Aug 04, 1735. Freedom of the press was established with an acquittal of John Peter Zenger. The writer of the New York Weekly Journal had been charged with seditious libel by the royal governor of New York. That jury said, "The truth is not libelous."

Wouldn’t it be appropriate if this date were declared a national holiday? This principle offers us protection from tyrants, would-be dictators (“deciders”), and elite cabals who steal our financial security as well as our dignity, privacy, and right to know what’s going on in our nation.

However, it seems that the corporate media has conveniently forgotten freedom of the press whenever the set-a-new-standard for secrecy Bush administration cows them. As my late friend, Boogie, used to say of his former paramours, “selective memory.” Like Boogie, the media barons who once upon a time enforced this principle are now dead. "Long live the talking points and the party line," says the new corporate media. Some television stations have gone so far as to run the administration's video press releases as news. How's that for lazy, and cowed, reporting?

We’re now informed by a national press corps of scribes, note-takers, talking-pointers, and public relations flacks. The free press, as we once knew it, has abandoned its post and gone to work for the other side. Afraid of losing “access,” the press has now lost a lot of its credibility. But, they've got their 401-k's.

Perhaps, instead, this date should become a national day of mourning for the former free press. The truth is now not only libelous, but also treasonous, or "unpatriotic" in the newspeak. It’s classified by our government and ignored by a lapdog press who say they're protecting us. But, aren't they really protecting themselves? From what? Us? Don't we have the right to know the truth?

GOP Green for the Green in PA

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:08:00 +0000

GOP Green for the Greens in PA
By Lindsay BeyersteinPosted on August 3, 2006, Printed on August 3, 2006http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lindsay/39840/
Paul Kiel of TPM Muckracker is exultant:
OK, we've done it. We've nailed it down: Every single contributor to the Pennsylvania Green Party Senate candidate is actually a conservative -- except for the candidate himself.The Luzerne County Green Party raised $66,000 in the month of June in order to fund a voter signature drive. The Philly Inquirer reported yesterday that $40,000 came from supporters of Rick Santorum's campaign (or their housemates). Also yesterday, we confirmed that another $15,000 came from GOP donors and conservatives. Only three contributions, totaling $11,000, remained as possible legit donations.Today, I confirmed that those came from GOP sources.
Bravo to Kiel for rolling up some AstroTurf in Pennsylvania.
[TPM Muckracker]
Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lindsay/39840/

Who Blows Joe

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:07:00 +0000

Who Blows Joe?
By Lindsay BeyersteinPosted on August 3, 2006, Printed on August 3, 2006http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lindsay/39843/
A contested primary is God's way of reminding you who your real friends are. So, who's in Joe Lieberman's corner as he faces down Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate Primary?
True friends of Joe Lieberman include:

George W. Bush

College Republicans

Right-wing slimelord David Horowitz

Indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

Not so keen on Joe: Real Democrats including scary hippies.
[My Left Nutmeg, DailyKos, Max Blumenthal, Crooks and Liars, Wis[s]e Words, Hullabaloo]
Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lindsay/39843/

Bye bye Freedom Fries

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:06:00 +0000

Bye bye, Freedom Fries
By Lindsay BeyersteinPosted on August 3, 2006, Printed on August 3, 2006http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lindsay/39845/
At the Congressional cafeteria, the taste treats formerly known as "freedom fries" and "freedom toast" have been discreetly reassigned their more familiar names:
Three years after House Republicans trumpeted the new names to get back at the French for snubbing the coalition of the willing in Iraq, congressmen don't even want to talk about french fries, which are actually native to Belgium, and toast.Neither Reps. Bob Ney of Ohio nor Walter B. Jones of North Carolina, the authors of the culinary rebuke, were willing this week to say who led the retreat, as it were, from the frying pan. But retreat there has been, as a casual observer can see for himself in the House's basement cafeterias. [Washington Times]
So, will the condoms in the Congressional vending machines be known once again as "French ticklers"?
Hat tip to Think Progress.
[Think Progress]
Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/lindsay/39845/

ACLU Cites Surveillance of Anti-War Protests

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 19:09:00 +0000

This reminds me of the 60’s when government agents infiltrated anti-war protests, and even encouraged violence, in an effort to discredit The Movement. - J. Boulevard

ACLU Cites Surveillance of Anti-War Groups

Jul 28, 7:25 AM (ET)By SCOTT LINDLAW
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union released a compilation of covert government surveillance of war protesters and other political activists in California, decrying it as evidence of a "greater expansion of government power and the abuse of power" since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The ACLU's Northern California branch said the findings show oversight of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies is too weak and called for the state to create a new watchdog over their activities.
"We recognize that much of what we've learned, we've learned by chance, and what that tells us is that this report is just the tip of the iceberg," said Dorothy Ehrlich, the group's executive director.
The ACLU cataloged several incidents of surveillance in recent years. Among those involving police infiltration of anti-war groups:
(image placeholder)

_Two Oakland police officers posed as demonstrators ahead of a 2003 march and got themselves elected as organizers for the march. The march was meant to protest a clash the previous month in which Oakland police fired non-lethal projectiles at anti-war demonstrators. The infiltrators helped plan the march route, according to the ACLU.
_The Fresno County Sheriff's Department sent a deputy into an anti-war group, Peace Fresno, posing as a fellow activist. "Aaron Stokes," who was actually Deputy Aaron Kilner, had attended rallies with the group and taken minutes at meetings in 2003. Attorney General Bill Lockyer opened an investigation in 2004, and later said he had "serious concerns" about the sheriff's methods, but he has taken no action against the department nor issued a report about the inquiry, which remains open.
_In 2004, union members at a demonstration identified two Contra Costa Sheriff's Department Homeland Security Unit members in attendance. When California Labor Federation leader Art Pulaski confronted the men, they claimed they were there to support the rally.
"Since the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, we have found an even greater expansion of government power and the abuse of power," Ehrlich said Thursday.
California law prohibits law enforcement officers from conducting undercover operations or engaging in surveillance of political activity in the absence of a reasonable suspicion of a crime, according to Lockyer.
The ACLU suggested the attorney general create "specific and direct" guidelines for local law enforcement agencies about the legal limits on collecting information and undercover monitoring of political activities. It also called for legislation to force local law enforcement to report their surveillance activities to the Legislature.
Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar said the attorney general had not yet read the report, released Thursday.
"While the AG believes law enforcement has made strides in better protecting civil liberties, he by no means has reached a comfort level," Dresslar said. "There is room for improvement, and we look forward to working with the ACLU and other interested parties to address legitimate issues raised in the report."
---
On the Net: http://aclunc.org/surveillance_report

Clinton Economists: A Storm Is Coming

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 14:19:00 +0000

Clinton Economists: A Storm Is Coming

By William Greider, The Nation
Posted on July 17, 2006, Printed on July 22, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/38981/

When Robert Rubin speaks his mind, his thoughts on economic policy are the gold standard for the Democratic Party. The former Treasury Secretary, now executive co-chair of Citigroup, captured the party's allegiance in the 1990s as principal architect of Bill Clinton's governing strategy, the conservative approach known as "Rubinomics" (or less often "Clintonomics"). Balancing the budget and aggressively pushing trade liberalization went hard against liberal intentions and the party's working-class base. But when Clinton's second term ended in booming prosperity, full employment and rising wages, most Democrats told themselves, Listen to Bob Rubin and good things happen.
So it's a big deal when Robert Rubin changes the subject and begins to talk about income inequality as "a deeply troubling fact of American economic life" that threatens the trading system, even the stability of "capitalist, democratic society." More startling, Rubin now freely acknowledges what the American establishment for many years denied or dismissed as inconsequential--globalization's role in generating the thirty-year stagnation of US wages, squeezing middle-class families and below, while directing income growth mainly to the upper brackets. A lot of Americans already knew this. Critics of "free trade" have been saying as much for years. But when Bob Rubin says it, his words can move politicians, if not financial markets.
Rubin has launched the Hamilton Project, a policy group of like-minded economists and financiers who are developing ameliorative measures to aid the threatened workforce and, he hopes, to create a broader political constituency that will defend the trading system against popular backlash. A strategy paper Rubin co-wrote defines the core problem: "Prosperity has neither trickled down nor rippled outward. Between 1973 and 2003, real GDP per capita in the United States increased 73 percent, while real median hourly compensation rose only 13 percent."
A storm is coming, Rubin fears. He wants a new national debate around these facts. In an interview, he explains the danger he foresees for global trade: "Where there's a great deal of insecurity, where median real wages are, roughly speaking, stagnant...where a recent Pew poll showed 55 percent of the American people think their kids will be worse off than they are, I think there is a real danger of heightened difficulty around issues that are already difficult, like trade.... Look at the difficulty around immigration." Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a Hamilton participant and Federal Reserve vice chair in the Clinton years, describes the "difficulty" in more ominous terms: "I think the prospects for the liberal trade order are not great," he says. "There's a whole class of people who are smart, well educated and articulate, and politically involved who will not just sit there and take it" when their jobs are moved offshore. He thinks CNN commentator Lou Dobbs, who has built a populist following by attacking globalization and immigration, "is just the beginning -- nothing compared to what's going to happen in the future."
What should we make of Rubin's heightened concern for the "losers" who, he now recognizes, include a vast portion of the populace? Many view the Hamilton Project as just more talk-talk. I regard it as an important event -- a "course correction" in elite thinking that, given Rubin's influence, may reshape the familiar trade debate, at least among Democrats. Rubin's central objective, however, is to control the terms of debate: to address the economic disparities globalization has generated but without disturbing anything fundamental in the global system itself.
His program consists mostly of familiar ideas that might soften the pain for displaced workers. But I doubt the Hamilton proposals will do much, if anything, to reduce the global forces that are depressing incomes for half or more of the American workforce. Even Rubin is uncertain. When I ask if his agenda will have any effect at all on the global convergence of wages -- the top falling gradually toward the rising bottom -- he says: "Well, I think that's a question to which nobody knows the answer. I think the proposals and approach we are proposing are the way to get the best possible outcome for the United States in a complicated world. ... But whether that's going to stop the global convergence of wages, I don't know the answer to that. I would guess the answer is no."
Despite my skepticism about his policy ideas, I think Rubin is providing a significant opening for the opposition -- a new chance for labor-liberal reformers to make themselves heard with a more fundamental critique of globalization. Up to now, the standard trade debate has been utterly simple-minded -- "free trade good, no trade bad" -- and anyone who opposes trade agreements or WTO rules is dismissed as a backward "protectionist." The enlightened position, as major media always explain, is to support the "win-win" promise of globalization.
Only Rubin is departing a bit from that script, effectively accepting the opposition's central complaint that "win-win" is a cruel distortion of what's happening. If so many Americans are actually losing ground, Rubin asks, shouldn't government do something about that? Yes, certainly, but that admission invites a different question: Are his establishment proposals actually likely to improve the American condition, or does the wage deterioration require more aggressive reforms?
Ideas do matter. My hope for more complex and honest debate may sound too wishful, but I was struck in our lengthy interview by Rubin's willingness to discuss contrary propositions, and by his disarmingly self-effacing and reflective manner. Several times, I was taken aback when his comments made tentative concessions to the opposition's argument. He even endorsed, though only in broad principle, some objectives for reforming global trade that his critics have long advocated.
I suggest that reformers test his sincerity. In the same spirit, they might try to initiate a conversation about what Rubin calls the "conceptual framework" for reform. He says he would welcome the discussion.
The Hamilton Project's early policy output, I concede, doesn't encourage a belief that reasoned dialogue with dissenters is what Rubin has in mind. Advisory board members see themselves as progressive-minded, but they do not stray from the mainstream's conventional wisdom -- lots of Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley, no one from the ranks of "free trade" skeptics. The twenty-five-member board includes thirteen investment bankers, venture capitalists and hedge-fund managers from Wall Street and the West Coast -- guys who, like Rubin, do the investment deals at home and abroad.
There's already a warm political glow. At the Hamilton launch in April, Senator Barack Obama hailed the group as "some of the most innovative, thoughtful policy-makers... the sort of breath of fresh air that I think this town needs." Senator Hillary Clinton's recent economic speeches are, not surprisingly, a good fit with Rubin's thinking, since the pair's political closeness is well-known. Washington's Clintonistas-in-waiting embrace and amplify Rubin's ideas. He helps them arrange financing for new projects, like John Podesta's Center for American Progress. Democratic candidates seeking Wall Street campaign money hope for Rubin's blessing, a seal of approval that can open checkbooks.
The "soft" ideas in the Hamilton Project playbook are mostly old ideas -- improve education and retraining, provide "wage insurance" payments to dislocated workers, increase public investment in industrial development and infrastructure. All are worthy things to do, but they seem like tinkering around the edges. Ron Blackwell, chief economist of the AFL-CIO, observes, "What they've got going are these little ideas that sound like they are forward-looking and respond to the problem of living standards, but they don't speak to power."
The right-of-center tilt of Rubin's group is reflected in some secondary proposals that are sure to rattle Democratic constituencies: Reform education by weakening teacher tenure, linking it to student performance; reform the system for tort litigation to eliminate what Rubin describes as "vast excess today" (his own firm suffered from tort litigation when it had to pay billions to settle investor lawsuits for Citigroup's role in the financial fraud at Enron and other corporate scandals).
The "hard" economic propositions in Rubin's agenda are essentially the same ones he pushed successfully in the Clinton Administration: Balance the budget to boost national savings and thereby (Rubin assumes) reduce the country's horrendous trade deficits and enormous capital borrowing from abroad, where the creditors are led by China and Japan; advance more trade agreements if possible, but don't tamper with the trading rules or international institutions that currently govern the system.
In other words, born-again Rubinomics. Peter Orszag, the young economist who is Hamilton's director, doesn't quarrel with the label, saying, "This is almost like Clintonomics 2.0." Rubin says, "The basic principles of sound economic policy I don't think change." The script sounds a lot like the "putting people first" platform Bill Clinton ran on back in 1992, though in office he abandoned most public investment in favor of deficit reduction.
Orszag calls it a "warm-hearted but cool-headed" agenda. But will it work? That's the question I would like to hear debated among Dems before they sign up for more Rubin magic. Clinton's second-term boom did temporarily reverse the downward wage trends, though economists still argue over the cause and effect. But balancing the budget again is unlikely to produce the same results, for lots of reasons. While increasing national savings is a very important goal, the world is now awash in surplus capital. And the United States is in a much deeper hole, borrowing $700 billion a year from abroad to sustain the domestic economy.
More to the point, Rubinomics in the 1990s did not reverse the long-term trend of rising trade deficits in goods and services or the deepening current-account deficits in capital borrowing from abroad, which could bring on a crisis if foreign lenders decide to pull the plug. In fact, both capital and trade deficits exploded at the very moment Clinton's budget was coming into balance. As the budget moved from deficit to surplus, the US current-account deficit nearly tripled, from 1.6 to 4.2 percent of GDP (it is now around 7 percent).
Rubin is sticking to his convictions, though respected conservative economists no longer believe in the "twin deficit" relationship. Studies by the Federal Reserve and the IMF found the relationship too weak to matter much. The IMF estimates that balancing the budget now would reduce the current-account deficit only slightly, while the required fiscal austerity would produce a five-year loss of more than $300 billion in economic output. Rubin defends his thesis by blaming the rising trade deficit on inflexible currency exchange with China and other Asian nations. Correct that and everything will be fine, he says. Further, he explains that the capital deficits in the Clinton years were actually a good thing because the high-tech investment boom was drawing in more foreign investors. He neglects to mention that the boom included the high-tech stock-market "bubble" that collapsed a year later on George W. Bush's watch, with $6 trillion in losses for investors.
In any case, Rubin sees nothing in the trading system itself that needs fixing. "Maybe I'm missing something," he says, "but I don't think there's anything in the design of the system we would have done differently."
Another debatable tenet in Rubin's thinking is the familiar mantra that more education will save us in the long run--that is, improving Americans' skills and knowledge will offset the low-wage competition. Rubin's tone is sympathetic to workers, but some acolytes pushing this logic sound like they are "blaming the victim." US educational attainment levels, after all, rose robustly during the last generation with no effect on job losses or wage stagnation. "I actually think education is key," Rubin insists. "I'm granting I think your point is right--the cost gap," the cheaper labor abroad, which may pull down US wages for another generation. But to some extent, he says, "the cost gap will, over time actually, probably get partially solved by their increasing wages [in China and India], hopefully with as little as possible our wages coming down. ... The more productive we are, the better we can compete with them."
There's one large and looming problem with that logic: The number of "losers" whose jobs are outsourced to foreign labor markets is getting much larger than the establishment had envisioned, and the job losses are creeping up the income ladder to undermine people in well-educated, highly paid occupations. In a startling Foreign Affairs essay, Alan Blinder warned that "tens of millions" of job losses are ahead from outsourcing, not for the already decimated blue-collar workers in manufacturing but for accountants, software designers and other high-status professions. These are people who presumably did the "right thing" by getting advanced educations. How, I ask Blinder, does educational improvement help them, since they are already well educated? "I wish I knew the answer to that," Blinder replies. "On balance, more education is better than less education, but it's not a panacea." He talks vaguely of changing the style of American schooling.
Blinder's ominous forecast for high-skilled jobs is another belated recognition by establishment authorities that they were wrong, since the process of moving engineering work to Asia, where they could hire cheaper engineers, started two decades ago. Free-trade advocates like Blinder are complacent about the loss of manufacturing jobs, comparing it to the technological changes that wiped out agricultural employment a century ago. "It's pretty inevitable," he says. They seem more worried now that white-collar jobs are being wiped out. But they think it would be a big mistake to interfere. "It's like global warming," he explains. "If there is severe global warming, you may have to change the preparations for bad weather." But Blinder's "global warming" metaphor actually expresses the viewpoint of the other side. Like global warming, the trading system is not an act of nature. It is a set of man-made rules -- protecting capital and ignoring labor. Finance and industry persuaded government to adopt these terms. But they can be altered, just as government can order industry to reform itself to curb the dangers of global warming. That difference -- deference to the status quo versus a vision for reform -- is the nut of the argument between the two sides.
When I asked Rubin to consider labor's critique and its argument for global labor standards, I was pleasantly surprised that he did not brush off the question. Instead, we had an engaging back and forth.
Without global rights for workers to organize and some version of a minimum wage pegged to each country's economic conditions, the "race to the bottom" is sure to continue, I suggest. When workers start mobilizing for higher wages, multinationals counter by moving production to the next available cheap labor market. Middle-class wages fall at the top, but the bottom does not rise as rapidly as it should. "But it's a complicated question," Rubin responds. Improving the distribution of incomes in poorer countries "is in everybody's interest," he agrees. "On the other hand, I've had exposure to people who make that argument, and I think they make it as a way to prevent trade liberalization. ... The one hope some of these countries have to take people out of abject poverty is that their labor-cost advantage will result in a shift of production to their countries. ... Would you say the people of Sri Lanka have to stay in abject poverty to keep that from happening?"
Labor rights, I counter, do not prevent the very poorest countries from developing on the advantage of their cheap labor, but reform would require all developing countries to operate so that wage levels can rise proportionate to the economy's rising productivity and profit, however that is measured. "Something like that ought to be an objective of the global system," Rubin agrees. But he says he has never seen a convincing model of how this might work. He remains skeptical. He admits it is disturbing that economic advances in some countries "still have had very little effect on the poverty rate, and middle-income people haven't done all that well either. So the political economic elites had all this economic benefit, and they were indifferent to poverty, to the poor."
The global system, I point out, protects capital by imposing dense rules on how a developing nation must treat investment capital, banking, patents and intellectual property rights. If a poor country doesn't accept the rules for capital, it doesn't get to play in the global system. Yet when organized labor seeks basic rights for working people around the world to organize unions and bargain collectively, they are denounced as "protectionist" and denied any recognition. Is that fair? "Well, I guess it's true," Rubin says hesitantly. "You can say, Why distinguish between those [rules for capital] and labor conditions?" Perhaps it is justified, he says, because labor and especially environmental rights are "a bit further removed" from trade. "I think it's the right objective," Rubin says. "But I still think it's a very complicated question whether you put labor conditions in an agreement. I would not hold back from going ahead on a trade agreement because another country refused to accept labor standards."
To my surprise, Rubin next recalls the work of John Kenneth Galbraith and his famous concept of "countervailing powers." Market-based capitalism, Rubin explains, is kept stable, broadly prosperous and equitable because its excesses are checked by labor unions, government and other institutions with countervailing power. "If you have a big company negotiate with its workers and the workers aren't organized, it isn't real negotiations," he says, adding, "If one side has no negotiating power, that isn't really a market-based system. It's an imposition of one on the other." This is a startling statement: The man from Citigroup has articulated the essential reasoning that makes the case for including labor rights in the global trading system. That conversation has convinced me that outgunned reformers ought to make use of Rubin's musings.
Knock on his door and try to initiate a dialogue. If the critics come forward and offer their ideas on a "conceptual framework" for reform, I ask, would the Hamilton Project be willing to discuss them? Rubin reiterates his doubts and reservations. "But the answer is yes," he says. "The answer is absolutely yes." Skeptical friends and kindred spirits will probably say to me, You have been conned. I would say back to them, What have you got to lose by talking to the man?
The Hamilton Project is a sophisticated example of what I call "deep lobbying" -- developing well in advance of the 2008 presidential election an agenda that safely avoids critical challenges to the global system and defines the terms of debate in very limiting ways. Democratic hopefuls who sign on can gain the cover of Rubin's respectability. Long before voters even know who the candidates are, the party's debate might be over before it begins.
Given this prospect for premature consensus, it might be a good idea to start the debate right now.
In some ways, Robert Rubin reminds me of the original Progressives of the early twentieth century, reformers drawn from the emerging middle class of managerial and professional people. They tried in various ways to reconcile the tumultuous conflicts between capital and labor but without getting blood on their hands. They were horrified by the greed and inhumanity of industrial capitalism but also wished to keep their distance from Socialists and the struggling labor movement.
Rubin is a "nice guy" -- even adversaries say so -- and I suspect he feels similar tensions. He sincerely would like to work things out -- find some kind of reasonable balance -- but without interrupting the creative destruction under way in the global system. The big difference separating him from the Progressives is that Rubin and his investment-banking colleagues are men of capital. At Goldman Sachs, Rubin was doing major deals in Mexico before he came to Washington to push NAFTA and balanced budgets. At Citigroup he travels to Beijing and Shanghai, promoting client interests. I don't question his sincerity. But as a reformer, he has competing demands on his loyalty.
My hunch is that Rubin won't succeed any more than the original Progressives in reconciling the competing forces (the New Deal eventually did). The tumult most likely will grow louder and possibly violent before reformers gain the political power to accomplish their serious goals.
Meanwhile, if popular anger does erupt here and around the world, there won't be much space left for "nice guys" seeking a reasonable discussion.
William Greider is the author of, most recently, "The Soul of Capitalism" (Simon & Schuster).
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/38981/

They Don't Call It the White House for Nothing

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 13:51:00 +0000

They Don't Call It the White House for Nothing

By Greg Palast, GregPalast.com.
Posted July 22, 2006.

God lost this time. I counted: Bush mentioned God only six times in his speech to the NAACP yesterday. The winner was "faith" -- which got seven mentions, though if you count "The Creator" as God, well, then the Lord tied it.
Coming in right behind God and Faith, other big mentions in the First Home Boy's rap included: The Voting Rights Act, his family's "commitment to civil rights," the "death tax," rebuilding New Orleans, "public school choice" and "soft bigotry."
As the philosopher Aretha Franklin once said, "Who's zoomin' who?"
Let's take it one point at a time.
Voting Rights Act -- This was a big applause line. Bush gloated about his convincing the White Sheets Caucus of the Republican Party to go along with the renewal of the Voting Rights Act. But he forgot to mention the fine print. The Southern GOP only went along with renewing the law on the understanding that the law would never be enforced.
Think I'm kidding? Check this: in July 2004, the US Civil Rights Commission voted to open a civil and criminal investigation of his brother's Administration in Florida for knowingly conducting a racially-biased scrub of voter rolls. In April 2004, Governor Jeb Bush, of the "family committed to civil rights," personally ordered this new purge of "felons" from voter rolls, despite promising never to repeat the infamous scrub of 2000. The new purge violated a settlement he signed with the, uh, the NAACP.
It also violated the Voting Rights Act. The Civil Rights Commission turned the case over to the US Justice Department which, two years on, has yet to begin the investigation. That's not to say President Bush did nothing. He swiftly removed every member of the Commission who voted to investigate his brother.

Court Tells Bush: Can't 'Sacrifice Liberty'

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:01:00 +0000

Court tells Bush: Can't 'Sacrifice Liberty'
By Evan Derkacz

Posted on July 21, 2006, Printed on July 21, 2006http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/evan/39307/

Despite the Bush administration's defense that even to acknowledge the existence of its AT&T-assisted eavesdropping program (well, we could tell you, but then we'd have to kill you...) would jeopardize national security secrets the Bush Sr.-appointed judge said: ah-ah... no dice.
Here's a description of the suit from the good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
EFF filed the class-action suit against AT&T in January, alleging that the telecommunications company has given the National Security Agency (NSA) secret, direct access to the phone calls and emails going over its network and has been handing over communications logs detailing the activities of millions of ordinary Americans.
According to Glenn Greenwald, the court's decision to let the case go forward (both against the admin and AT&T) was partly based on the recent Hamdi case which limited Bush's "wartime" powers, "yet another reminder that the Bush administration's claims of unlimited presidential power have no place in our system of government..."
From the ruling:
"Even the state secrets privilege has its limit. While the court recognizes and respects the executive's constitutional duty to protect the nation from threats, the court also takes seriously its constitutional duty to adjudicate the disputes that come before it."
Greenwald notes that not only will this decision be almost immediately appealed but that pending legislation threatens to remove all NSA cases to the secret FISA court system displacing the traditional courts.
But then: "Those caveats to the side, the importance of this victory cannot be overstated."
One final note of Bush admin irony. The Justice Dept was originally investigating the legality of the NSA program but Bush halted it on the grounds that while the AT&T employees in the know had the security clearance to assess the situation, our Justice Dept's lawyers, umm, didn't. (UnclaimedTerritory, Balkinization)
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Evan Derkacz is a New York-based writer and contributor to AlterNet.

Dont Let the Neocons Frame a War on Terror

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:59:00 +0000

Don't Let the Neocons Call It a 'War on Terror'
By Joshua Holland,

AlterNetPosted on July 21, 2006, Printed on July 21, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/39235/

There's never been a global war on terror. It's a sham, a ruse. The conflict that's broken out between Israel and Hezbollah shows us, again, how important it is to articulate that. It's a real war, and it has both neocons and Islamic extremists praying that it will escalate into the global Clash of Civilizations that they've long lusted after.
Bush and Congress gave Israel the green light to pummel Lebanon for a while because "Israel is fighting a brave battle in a dangerous front in the War on Terror." And what can we, as Americans, really say about that? After all, we accepted the idea (some of us grudgingly) that there was a global "War on Terror" ourselves -- why shouldn't Lebanon be the next front?
When the media and our political class accepted the war frame, the hawks got a blank check. Everything that followed -- invasions, illegal surveillance and prisoners held in limbo, are all expected during times of war. Once we went to "war," resisting those policies became an uphill fight. War talk justifies powerful states responding to terrorist or insurgent attacks with disproportionate force. That makes the hawks feel macho and will likely create a whole new generation of potentially violent radicals who hate our guts.
We should have fought the "War on Terror" narrative from the beginning. Calling it a "war" is a numerical error, not an ideological difference. There are a few tens of thousands of potentially violent extremists dispersed around the world. They're not gathered in large groups, and you can't distinguish them from ordinary civilians. That makes it fundamentally an intelligence and law enforcement problem (which may require some military support).
But it goes further than that. There's no global war between East and West because there are no discrete sides. First of all, there's no 'Us.' The Western democracies agree that terrorism is a problem, but they are perfectly divided about how to address it. The United States and Israel stand alone in their "wars," the Russians have their "war" with the Chechens and the rest of the world does what simple logic dictates: investigate terror cells and arrest the participants. Sometimes security forces kill them. They've had quite a bit of success.
What's more, we don't really care about Islamic extremism per se. We are no more allied with the Russians in their war with Chechen separatists than we have been with the Chinese as they've cracked down on Islamic groups in Xinjiang. Where U.S. "interests" aren't involved, we're indifferent.
Much more important -- and so many Americans don't get this -- there's no "them." The image of a well-organized global Islamic insurgency is a fantasy. Al Qaeda was one of a dozen Islamic extremist groups that emerged in the 1990s, and Bin Laden was one of a few dozen influential and charismatic militant leaders. Individual groups were fighting separate, distinctly domestic battles; Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya opposed the Egyptian government, Hezbollah was formed to beat back the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, the Group Islamique Armé rose up to topple Algeria's government, and so on.
All of those conflicts had their own unique contexts and histories, and almost all of those movements had legitimate gripes with some rather unsavory governments. Most Americans couldn't tell you what the struggle between the Philippine government and Abu Sayyaf is all about, and why should they? That battle has little to do with us, as so many of them don't. Some of these "terror groups," remember, were called "freedom fighters" when they were pointed at the Soviets or their client states.
In that landscape, Al Qaeda was unique in one important way: Bin Laden, like his neocon counterparts, saw the world gripped in an existential struggle between East and West. He was jockeying for position with dozens of other movements, none of which were based on a broad, global effort against the United States and its allies. Bin Laden focused on US support for the Saudi government, for Israel, for Egypt's repressive regime (a government that imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands of political Islamists) and he preached that the United States was the head of the snake. First defeat America, and then all those individual, national and very particular battles could be won.
This was not an easy sell. Messing with the U.S., it was widely acknowledged, was not a terribly smart course of action, and many militants had a narrowly focused hatred of their own domestic ideological opponents. It also didn't sit well with Bin Laden's hosts. As Jason Burke writes in his excellent book, Al Qaeda, "it is important to recognize that [Islamist movements] in Yemen and Afghanistan, and the regime in the Sudan, have roots in local contingencies that pre-date Bin Laden." They used the sheik and allowed themselves to be used by him, but their conflicts, too, were domestic in nature. In early 1996, the Sudanese government approached the United States and Saudi Arabia and offered to turn Bin Laden over to their security services. They refused. In May of that year, he returned to Afghanistan, where he had developed a reputation fighting the Soviets.
Here we come to a crucial part of the story of the rise of international Islamism -- a narrative the American media has been criminally complicit in ignoring. In August of 1998, independent groups loosely affiliated with Al Qaeda attacked U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Rather than treating the attacks as a security problem that cried out for better intelligence, Bill Clinton reacted by using the tools of war, launching over a hundred cruise missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan in Operation Shortsighted Violence ("Infinite Reach"). The missiles were primarily for domestic consumption -- to deflect attention from Monica's cum-stained dress and to assuage the bloodthirsty right -- and had little effect on violent extremists. But they did knock out Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant, precipitating a disease epidemic that killed tens of thousands of people -- a story ignored by the Western press.
Meanwhile, the Taliban had grown weary of Bin Laden's shtick. They were sick of his public attacks against the "crusaders and Zionists," and while the Taliban's leaders were terribly provincial, they understood that the heat Bin Laden was bringing down on them wasn't helping their cause. Remember, this was a group that was negotiating with Texas oilmen from Unocal to install a major pipeline in Afghanistan; they wanted foreign investment and recognition.
In mid-1998, the Taliban, like the Sudanese before them, cut a deal to turn Bin laden over to Saudi Arabia, where he would be tried for treason and in all likelihood executed. All that the Taliban asked in return was for a group of religious authorities loyal to the Saudi government to issue a statement justifying the move under Islamic law -- a mere technicality.
In July of that year, the deal was confirmed and, in early September, two planes landed in Kandahar carrying Prince Turki and a group of Saudi commandos to collect Bin Laden. But the deal had run into a snag three weeks earlier, when the United States had launched its cruise missiles. The Saudis arrived only to be told the deal was off and to be dressed down by Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The strikes had changed everything.
The missile attack was a disaster with far-reaching consequences. Those Tomahawks validated all of Bin Laden's claims. The United States, it seemed, really was unconcerned with the deaths of thousands of innocent Muslims. Hundreds of extremists who had come to Afghanistan to train for their local fights in Kashmir or the Philippines or wherever suddenly flocked to Al Qaeda, convinced that Bin Laden's epic struggle against the West was their own.
They didn't necessarily share his priorities, but our military response showed he had gotten to us, and he became a hero. It was the beginning of of a trend that continues today: the United States, where political leaders explain complex geopolitical issues in simple binaries (freedom-loving/terror-loving) and are unable to differentiate between a war and a law enforcement problem, stumbles blindly into a full-blown attack on a sovereign country -- pressed ever forward by its psychotic and racist right wing -- with disastrous and unintended consequences. Iraq wasn't the first, and Bush didn't start it -- Clinton did.
9/11 was destined to happen one way or another, even if Bush had paid attention to that famous briefing at his ranch in Crawford. That's because the fuse that set off 9/11 was laid out decades ago in the Reagan era. His administration joined the Saudi regime (and Pakistani intelligence) in promoting an extremist form of Islamic fundamentalism to counter the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Pan-Arabists in the Gulf -- and it was lit by Clinton's fireworks display.
After 9/11, we could have knocked the hell out of Al Qaeda and fractured the delicate coalition that Bin Laden had managed to cobble together after the East Africa bombings. Instead, we launched a "war" on terror, and we again proved to a receptive audience that we're the enemy they should focus on. Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Gitmo -- these are recruiting posters for global Jihad.
We may yet end up with a unified opponent against whom we can fight a global war. But if we do, it will be one of our own making. It'll be because we didn't nip the war talk in the bud.
An earlier version of this article first appeared in The Mix. Read the original here.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39235/

RFK Jr Blows the Whistle on Diebold

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:47:00 +0000

RFK Jr. Blows the Whistle on Diebold
By John Ireland, In These Times

Posted on July 21, 2006, Printed on July 21, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/39152/

On July 13, the Pensacola, Fla.-based law firm of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed a "qui tam" lawsuit in U.S. District Court, alleging that Diebold and other electronic voting machine (EVM) companies fraudulently represented to state election boards and the federal government that their products were "unhackable."
Kennedy claims to have witnesses "centrally located, deep within the corporations," who will confirm that company officials withheld their knowledge of problems with accuracy, reliability and security of EVMs in order to procure government contracts. Since going into service, many of these machines have been linked to allegations of election fraud.
In the wake of alleged vote count inconsistencies and the "hanging chad" debacle of 2000, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. HAVA appropriated $3 billion to replace voting equipment and make other improvements in election administration. Diebold, Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Systems secured the lion's share of nearly half that sum in contracts to purchase EVMs. All 50 states have received funds and many are hurriedly spending it on replacing lever and punch card machines in time for November.
According to the Election Assistance Commission, more than 61 percent of votes in the 2004 presidential election were cast and/or tallied by EVMs. Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, estimates that the figure will jump to 80 percent by November, which will see elections for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives.
Matt Schultz, an attorney with Kennedy's law firm, Levin Papantonio, describes the process of competition for HAVA's $300 million of contractor funds as "a race to the bottom." "There is no question in my mind that these companies sacrificed security and accuracy, mass-producing a cheap product to cash in on tons of federal money," Schultz says. "It's an industry-wide problem."
Qui tam lawsuits stem from a provision in the Civil False Claims Act, which Congress passed in 1863 at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln to respond to price gouging, use of defective products and substitution of inferior material by contractors supplying the Union Army. The provision allows private citizens to file a suit in the name of the U.S. government charging fraud by government contractors and other entities that receive or use government funds.
Long known as "Lincoln's Law," it is now commonly referred to as the "Whistleblower Law." Since the mid-'80s, qui tam recoveries have exceeded $1 billion, mostly after exposing medical and defense overcharging.
Mike Papantonio, partner in the law firm and co-host with Kennedy on "Ring of Fire," a weekly radio show on the Air America Network, explains the value of the qui tam approach. "The problem with injunctive relief, or [a writ of] mandamus, or prohibition-type writs, is it all comes down to politics. ... How do you bring injunctive relief with [Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth] Blackwell? How do you get [Florida Governor] Jeb Bush to do anything? They won't. You have to move outside of that political realm."
In 2004, Blackwell was in charge of implementing state and federal election laws, while, at the same time, co-chairing the state's 2004 Bush/Cheney Campaign. Under his watch, election officials neglected to process registration cards from Democratic voter drives, purged tens of thousands of voter registrations and distributed EVMs unevenly, leaving some voters waiting up to 12 hours. According to Kennedy, "at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted." Ohio was decided by 118,601 votes.
The contents of the suit could be under judicial seal for at least 60 days while the U.S. Department of Justice considers whether or not to join the suit. If U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decides not to join the suit, Levin Papantonio may approach individual state attorneys general. If no one joins, the firm is free to, as Papantonio puts it, "stand in the shoes of the Attorney General and fight on behalf of the taxpayers and the nation."
"The single greatest threat to our democracy is the insecurity of our voting system," warns Kennedy. "Whoever controls the voting machines can control who wins the votes."
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39152/

Judge Declines to Dismiss Privacy Suit Against AT&T

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 12:27:00 +0000

July 21, 2006, The New York Times

Judge Declines to Dismiss Privacy Suit Against AT&T
By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20 — A federal judge on Thursday rejected a motion by the Bush administration to dismiss a lawsuit against AT&T over its cooperation with a government surveillance program, ruling that state secrets would not be at risk if the suit proceeded.
The case was filed in February by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, and alleged that AT&T was collaborating with the National Security Agency in a surveillance program tracking the domestic and foreign communications of millions of Americans.
In rejecting the motion brought by the Justice Department, Vaughn R. Walker, chief judge of the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, ruled that the government had already disclosed in broad terms whose communications it monitored, and that it was generally interested in calls between the United States and other countries.
“The government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communications content,” Judge Walker wrote.
“Because of the public disclosures by the government and AT&T,’’ he added, “the court cannot conclude that merely maintaining this action creates a ‘reasonable danger’ of harming national security.”
The judge also rejected a separate motion to dismiss by AT&T, which had argued that its relationship with the government made it immune from prosecution.
Judge Walker noted that his ruling should not be interpreted as an indication that his review of classified material presented by the government confirmed the accusations in the suit.
The government’s surveillance of telephone and Internet activity as part of its effort to track terrorists was disclosed in an article in The New York Times last December. In filing its lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation cited the testimony of a former AT&T technician who disclosed technical documents about the installation of monitoring equipment at an AT&T Internet switching center in San Francisco.
“This cases arises against the backdrop of the accountability of the government as it pursues its surveillance program,” said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group based in Washington. “This is a significant victory for the principle of government accountability.”
Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the lawsuit was one of about 35 filed in different states in response to disclosures about the surveillance program, which the Bush administration has acknowledged. Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has introduced legislation to consolidate those cases before a special court that had previously been established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to deal with such issues.
Separately, at the request of AT&T, Verizon and the government, a federal court in Chicago has begun to consider whether the cases should be consolidated or heard before separate federal courts.
An AT&T spokesman, Walt Sharp, said the company was evaluating its options in light of the judge’s ruling. Mr. Sharp emphasized that the company was committed to protecting the privacy rights of its customers.
A Justice Department spokesman did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
In a separate lawsuit filed before a federal court in Detroit, the American Civil Liberties Union is suing the National Security Agency over the surveillance program.
Lawyers for the Electronic Frontier Foundation said they assumed the government would appeal the ruling, and said the next phase of the case would deal with whether the judge would permit the discovery phase of the trial to continue during the appeal process.
“Everyone expects the government to appeal, and that could take some time,” said Robert D. Fram, a partner at Heller Ehrman, the San Francisco firm representing the foundation in the case.

The US Descends on Paraguay

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 01:13:00 +0000

The U.S. Descends on Paraguay
By Benjamin Dangl, The Nation

Posted on July 20, 2006, Printed on July 20, 2006http://www.alternet.org/story/39283/

While hitchhiking across Paraguay a few years ago, I met welcoming farmers who let me camp in their backyards. I eventually arrived in Ciudad del Este, known for its black markets and loose borders. Now the city and farmers I met are caught in the crossfire of the US military's "war on terror."
On May 26, 2005, the Paraguayan Senate allowed US troops to train their Paraguayan counterparts until December 2006, when the Paraguayan Senate can vote to extend the troops' stay. The United States had threatened to cut off millions in aid to the country if Paraguay did not grant the troops entry. In July 2005 hundreds of US soldiers arrived with planes, weapons and ammunition. Washington's funding for counterterrorism efforts in Paraguay soon doubled, and protests against the military presence hit the streets.
Some activists, military analysts and politicians in the region believe the operations could be part of a plan to overthrow the left-leaning government of Evo Morales in neighboring Bolivia and take control of the area's vast gas and water reserves. Human rights reports from Paraguay suggest the US military presence is, at the very least, heightening tensions in the country.
Paraguay is the fourth-largest producer of soy in the world. As this industry has expanded, an estimated 90,000 poor families have been forced off their land. Campesinos have organized protests, road blockades and land occupations against displacement and have faced subsequent repression from military and paramilitary forces. According to Servicio, Paz y Justicia (Serpaj), an international human rights group that has a chapter in Paraguay, one method used to force farmers off their land is to spray toxic pesticides around communities until sickness forces residents to leave.
GRR said Cabrera was killed by paramilitaries connected to large landowners and soy producers, who are expanding their holdings. The paramilitaries pursue farm leaders who are organizing against the occupation of their land. Investigations by Serpaj demonstrate that the worst cases of repression against farmers have taken place in areas with the highest concentration of US troops. Serpaj reported that in the department of San Pedro, where five US military exercises took place, there have been eighteen farmer deaths from repression, in an area with many farmer organizations. In the department of Concepcion there have been eleven deaths and three US military exercises. Near the Triple Border, where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, there were twelve deaths and three exercises.
"The US military is advising the Paraguayan police and military about how to deal with these farmer groups.... They are teaching theory as well as technical skills to Paraguayan police and military. These new forms of combat have been used internally," Orlando Castillo of Serpaj told me over the phone. "The US troops talk with the farmers and get to know their leaders and which groups, organizations, are working there, then establish the plans and actions to control the farmer movement and advise the Paraguayan military and police on how to proceed.... The numbers from our study show what this US presence is doing. US troops form part of a security plan to repress the social movement in Paraguay. A lot of repression has happened in the name of security and against 'terrorism.' "
Tomas Palau, a Paraguayan sociologist at BASE-IS, a Paraguayan social research institute, and the editor of a recent book on the militarization of Latin America, said, "The US conducts training and classes for the Paraguayan troops. These classes are led by North Americans, who answer to Southern Command, the branch of the US military for South America."
Like Castillo, Palau said there is an association between the US military presence and the increased violence against campesinos. "They are teaching counterinsurgency classes, preparing the Paraguayan troops to fight internal enemies," he told me.
The US Embassy in Asuncion rejects all claims that the US military is linked to the increased repression against campesino and protest groups, either through exercises or instruction. In an e-mail response to the charges, Bruce Kleiner of the Embassy's Office of Public Affairs writes that "the U.S. military is not monitoring protest groups in Paraguay" and that "the U.S. military personnel and Paraguayan armed forces have trained together during medical readiness training exercises (MEDRETEs) to provide humanitarian service to some of Paraguay's most disadvantaged citizens." However, the deputy speaker of the Paraguayan parliament, Alejandro Velazquez Ugarte, said that of the thirteen exercises going on in the country, only two are of a civilian nature.
According to BASE-IS, Paraguayan officials have recently used the threat of terrorism to justify their aggression against campesino leaders. One group, the Campesino Organization of the North, has been accused of receiving instructions from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), that country's largest leftist guerrilla movement. The FARC has also been accused of colluding in the kidnapping and murder of the daughter of former Paraguayan President Raul Cubas Grau last year. A June 23 report from the Chinese news service Xinhua said that Colombia's defense minister, Camilo Ospina, spoke with Paraguay's attorney general, Ruben Candia, about the presence of the FARC in Paraguay. Ospina said the FARC was consulting organized crime groups and "giving criminals advice on explosives" in Paraguay.
The Association of Farmers of Alto Parana (ASAGRAPA), a campesino group near the Triple Border, reported that a local politician offered one of the organization's leaders a sum of money equivalent to a monthly salary, in return for which the ASAGRAPA member was told to announce that other leaders in the organization were building a terrorist group and receiving training from the FARC. BASE-IS reports suggest that this type of bribery and disinformation is part of an effort to guarantee the "national security of the US" and "justify, continue and expand the North American military presence."
"All of these activities coincide with the presence of the US troops," Palau explained about the violence against farmers. "The CIA and FBI are also working here. It's likely they are generating these plans for fabricating lies about guerrilla and terrorist activities. They need to find terrorists to use as an excuse for militarization." Last October the Cuban media outlet Prensa Latina reported that FBI director Robert Mueller arrived in Paraguay to "check on preparations for the installation of a permanent FBI office in Asuncion...to cooperate with security organizations to fight international crime, drug traffic and kidnapping."
Journalist Hugo Olazar of the Argentine paper Clarin reported last September that US troops were operating from an air base in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay. He visited the base last year and said it had an air-traffic control tower, a military encampment and was capable of handling large aircraft. Though the United States denies it is operating at the base, it used the same rhetoric when first discussing its actions in Manta, Ecuador, which is currently home to an $80 million US military base. The base there was first described in 1999 as an archaic "dirt strip" used only for weather monitoring. Days later, the Pentagon said it would be utilized for security-related missions.
Other indications that the US military might be settling into Paraguay come from the right-wing Paraguayan government. Current President Nicanor Duarte Frutos is a member of the Colorado party, which has ruled the country for more than fifty years. It was this party that established the thirty-five-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Soon after his election in 2003, Duarte became the first Paraguayan president to be received at the White House. Last August Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld flew to Paraguay. Shortly afterward, Dick Cheney met with Paraguay's vice president.
Last year, Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel commented on the situation in Paraguay, "Once the United States arrives, it takes it a long time to leave. And that really frightens me."
Counterfeit Rolling Papers and Viagra
Washington has justified its military presence in Paraguay by stating that the Triple Border area at Ciudad del Este is a base for Islamist terrorist funding. In a June 3, 2006, Associated Press report, Western intelligence officials, speaking anonymously, claimed that if Iran is cornered by the United States, it could direct the international network of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah to assist in terrorist attacks. The Justice Department has indicted nineteen people this year for sending the profits from the sale of counterfeit rolling papers and Viagra to Hezbollah. "Extensive operations have been uncovered in South America," the AP article states, "where Hezbollah is well connected to the drug trade, particularly in the region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet."
Other claims about terrorist networks said to be operating in the Triple Border region include a poster of Iguacu Falls, a tourist destination near Ciudad del Este, discovered by US troops on the wall of an Al Qaeda operative's home in Kabul, Afghanistan, shortly after 9/11. Aside from this, however, the US Southern Command and the State Department report that no "credible information" exists confirming that "Islamic terrorist cells are planning attacks in Latin America."
Luiz Moniz Bandeira, who holds a chair in history at the University of Brasilia and writes about US-Brazilian relations, was quoted in the Washington Times as saying, "I wouldn't dismiss the hypothesis that US agents plant stories in the media about Arab terrorists in the Triple Frontier to provoke terrorism and justify their military presence."
Throughout the cold war, the US government used the threat of communism as an excuse for its military adventures in Latin America. Now, as leaders such as Bolivia's Evo Morales and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez move further outside the sphere of Washington's interests, the United States is using terrorism as an alibi for its military presence. As Greg Grandin pointed out, the Pentagon now has more resources and money directed to Latin America than the Departments of State, Agriculture, Commerce and Treasury combined. Before 9/11 the annual US military aid to the region was around $400 million. It's now nearly $1 billion. Much of this goes to training troops.
Making wild allegations about Paraguayan farmers being terrorists is one way to justify the increased spending and military presence in the region. "The US government is lying about the terrorist funding in the Triple Border, just like they did about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," said an exasperated Castillo of Serpaj. Indeed, the street markets I walked through in Ciudad del Este, and the farmers I met along the way, seemed to pose as much of a threat to US security as a pirated Tom Petty CD or a bottle of counterfeit whiskey.
Benjamin Dangl is the editor of Upside Down World, an online magazine uncovering activism and politics in Latin America. Email ben(at)upsidedownworld.org
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/39283/

Wiretapping Review Is Criticized

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 14:53:00 +0000

July 15, 2006, The New York Times

Wiretapping Review Is Criticized
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, July 14 — Critics of the Bush administration’s program for wiretapping without warrants said Friday that they would fight a new White House agreement to let a secret court decide the constitutionality of the operation, and the compromise plan failed to deter lawmakers from offering up competing proposals of their own.
The agreement, completed Thursday by Senator Arlen Specter after negotiations with the White House, drew immediate scrutiny in Washington, as politicians, national security lawyers and civil rights advocates debated its impact and legal nuances.
The plan would allow the secret court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which normally issues wiretapping warrants in terror and spying cases, to review the program and decide on its legality. The proposal would have to be approved by Congress.
Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who has been critical of the National Security Agency wiretapping program, said in an interview Friday that he saw the White House-Specter proposal as “a further abdication” of the role of Congress in setting rules for federal surveillance and wiretapping.
“We’re going to let a secret court decide for us what to do?” Mr. Schiff asked. “I think it’s a cop-out.”
Mr. Schiff and three other lawmakers, including one Republican, introduced an amendment last month to the Defense Department appropriations bill seeking to block the use of any money on the N.S.A. program unless intelligence warrants are used. The amendment failed, but it drew 23 Republican supporters, an increase from four Republicans in an earlier vote.
“The momentum is clearly moving in the direction of reining in the program,” Mr. Schiff said.
He said he planned to introduce the de-financing proposal again and would also pursue a separate bipartisan bill proposed this year affirming that the government must obtain a court warrant for eavesdropping.
Meanwhile, Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican who leads the intelligence subcommittee with oversight of the N.S.A., proposed legislation Friday that she said would strengthen Congressional oversight of the surveillance program and “modernize” intelligence-gathering techniques. Among other provisions, Ms. Wilson’s bill would allow the government to monitor the communications of suspected terrorist targets without a court order “for a period not to exceed 45 days following a terrorist attack” and require Congressional certification for any extensions.
“We can gather intelligence about terrorist organizations and prevent them from attacking us while also protecting civil liberties,” Ms. Wilson said in a telephone interview Friday, “and you do that by dividing power among the three branches of government.”
She said that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was ill-suited to rule on the constitutionality of the wiretapping program and that Mr. Specter’s agreement with the White House seemed “a little odd to me.”
Civil rights advocates attacked the Specter plan in even stronger terms.
“Senator Specter has sold out his committee by caving to everything the White House requested to continue illegal, warrantless spying on American citizens,” Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which is suing the government over the N.S.A. program, said Friday. “This is not a compromise. It is a sellout.”
Civil rights groups and privacy advocates said they were concerned not only that the secret intelligence court would rule on the constitutionality of the security agency’s program, but also by the fact that Mr. Specter’s proposal would consolidate all the legal challenges to the program now pending in federal courts around the country and allow the intelligence court to hear all those challenges. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is suing the government in federal court in California over the wiretapping program, called the proposal “a rubber stamp” for spying programs.
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, noted that the only ruling ever issued by the intelligence court’s appellate panel, in 2002, cited “the president’s inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance.”
“I think the government clearly expects that if these challenges are transferred to the FISA court, their chances of winning are greatly increased,” Ms. Martin said.
Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview Friday that he was surprised by the strong attacks on his proposal, which was developed after three weeks of talks between him and White House officials, including President Bush.
The senator said civil rights advocates should take some satisfaction from the idea that the intelligence court would be allowed to rule on the program’s legitimacy.
“I can understand if they’d like more, but this is an important step,” Mr. Specter said. “I want to know whether the program is unconstitutional. The question is whether you’re going to have some sort of court review or nothing.”

Bush Would Let Secret Court Sift Wiretaps

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:37:00 +0000

July 14, 2006, The New York Times

Bush Would Let Secret Court Sift Wiretap Process
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, July 13 — After months of resistance, the White House agreed Thursday to allow a secret intelligence court to review the legality of the National Security Agency’s program to conduct wiretaps without warrants on Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists.
If approved by Congress, the deal would put the court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in the unusual position of deciding whether the wiretapping program is a legitimate use of the president’s power to fight terrorism. The aim of the plan, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told reporters, would be to “test the constitutionality” of the program.
The plan, brokered over the last three weeks in negotiations between Senator Arlen Specter and senior White House officials, including President Bush himself, would apparently leave the secretive intelligence court free to consider the case in closed proceedings, without the kind of briefs and oral arguments that are usually part of federal court consideration of constitutional issues. The court’s ruling in the matter could also remain secret.
The court would be able to determine whether the program is “reasonably designed” to focus on the communications of actual terrorism suspects and people in the United States who communicate with them. That determination is now left entirely in the hands of the security agency under an internal checklist.
If the court were to rule the program unconstitutional, the attorney general could refine and resubmit it or, conversely, appeal the decision to the FISA appellate court and ultimately perhaps the Supreme Court, officials said.
Mr. Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, predicted that the proposal, with the White House’s backing, would win approval in the Senate and the House. But it met with some immediate skepticism on Thursday from both Republicans and Democrats over whether it went far enough — or too far — in checking the president’s authority.
The proposed legislation represents a middle-ground approach among the myriad proposals in Congress for dealing with the wiretapping controversy, which has allowed the security agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mail of thousands of people in the United States with ties to terrorism suspects.
Some Democratic critics of the program have proposed that it effectively be banned and that all wiretapping should have to be approved by the intelligence court. Some Republican supporters have sought to sanction its continued use without any judicial oversight at all.
By giving the intelligence court a clear role in the program, Mr. Specter said, the proposal seeks to create balance between giving the president the powers he needs to fight terrorism and ensuring some measure of judicial oversight to guard against abuses.
“It’s an acknowledgment to the president that he can fight terrorism and still have the court review his program,” Mr. Specter said. “And I think it allays a lot of concerns.”
The Bush administration had argued since the program’s disclosure last December that no Congressional or judicial oversight was needed because the surveillance fell within the president’s constitutional authority.
Some critics of the program saw the White House’s reversal on that issue as a significant concession. But Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico, who leads the intelligence subcommittee that oversees the National Security Agency, said Thursday in an interview that she found the idea of the court ruling on the legality of the entire program “a little odd.”
“That to me is not what the FISA court is set up to do,” she said. “The judges approve warrants — they’re not there to rule on matters of constitutionality.”
Ms. Wilson plans to announce a legislative proposal of her own on Friday that will seek to toughen Congressional oversight of the program and “modernize” electronic surveillance tools.
In a separate interview, Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said she saw the Specter-White House agreement as an “end run” around the FISA law requiring the approval of individual wiretapping warrants.
“I have great respect for this guy,” she said of Mr. Specter, “but he hasn’t been briefed on this program, and he’s giving away in this legislation a core Fourth Amendment protection by basically saying that the FISA court has permission to bless the entire program, which will abandon as best I can tell the requirement of individualized warrants.”
Ms. Harman, who has introduced legislation of her own to restrict the program, said, “If we want to abandon a core Fourth Amendment protection, we should get on the Specter train, and I don’t plan to get on that train.” Similarly, the American Civil Liberties Union called the agreement a “sham” that was “nothing short of a capitulation by Chairman Specter to the White House.”
Mr. Specter, however, saw the deal as an effective compromise that would bring needed judicial oversight to the program. “I think we’ve got a result which is really good for the country,” he said.
The deal was a result of more than three weeks of intense discussions between his staff and the White House, Mr. Specter said. The discussions followed a public flare-up between him and Vice President Dick Cheney over what the senator saw as the vice president’s meddling in his efforts to subpoena telephone company executives to appear before his committee about their role in the security agency activities.
After an exchange of tense letters on the issue, Mr. Cheney indicated in a phone conversation with Mr. Specter that “the White House was serious on negotiating” about the possibility of having the FISA court review the security agency program, the senator told reporters.
The White House has said for months that while it was open to listening to ideas from Congress on the program, it saw no need for Congress or the courts to intervene. Mr. Cheney said in a television interview in February, for instance, that he was confident “we have all the legal authority we need” and that “legislation would not be helpful.”
But in the recent discussions the White House, which has come under fire even from some Republicans over the program, agreed to support the FISA court’s review. The White House insisted that the language of Mr. Specter’s proposal make it optional, rather than mandatory, for the administration to submit the program to the court because Mr. Bush was concerned about lessening “the institutional authority of his office,” Mr. Specter said.
Nonetheless, Mr. Bush committed to taking the program before the court if the legislation was enacted as now drafted, Mr. Specter and administration officials said.
But there is no assurance that any determination by the FISA court on the program will ever be made public. Mr. Specter said he hoped that such a decision would become public, but he acknowledged that the decision was up to the court. The court, whose 11 members are appointed by the chief justice of the United States, operates in secret, and while the FISA appellate panel did issue one public ruling in 2002, the court itself has never publicly issued a decision.
While some critics brand the FISA court as a “rubber stamp” for government wiretapping, the judge who leads the court, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, is known to have voiced strong concerns about aspects of the security agency program while it was still secret. After it was publicly disclosed last December, another member of the court, Judge James Robertson, resigned in apparent protest over the fact that the full court had never been informed of the program.
The proposal does include some concessions sought by the White House. In a bow to the president’s inherent authority as commander in chief, the measure states that it “does not unconstitutionally retract any constitutional authority the president has” to collect information from foreign nations and their agents.
It would also give the Justice Department greater flexibility to impose “emergency” wiretaps with a retroactive court order and to conduct “roving” wiretaps and use other technology in surveillance, and it would allow the FISA court to hear all challenges to the program, including several civil suits pending in the federal courts by the A.C.L.U. and other groups. Some critics of the program said the consolidation of the civil suits before the secret court could effectively derail them.
“This is the president and the Congress coming together to codify the capacity for future presidents to take actions to protect the country,” said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman.

House Approves Voting Rights Act

noreply@blogger.com (J. Boulevard) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:33:00 +0000

July 14, 2006, The New York Times

After Challenges, House Approves Renewal of Voting Act
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, July 13 — The House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to renew expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act after supporters of it defeated challenges mounted by conservative opponents.
The 390-to-33 vote on the landmark civil rights act capped a day of impassioned debate that heightened the politically charged atmosphere surrounding race and ethnicity, already aggravated by the recent fight in Congress over immigration.
In urging adoption of the act, Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, recalled marching on Bloody Sunday, a turning point in the movement for black voting rights in 1965, when the police in Selma, Ala., beat 600 civil rights demonstrators.
“I gave blood,” Mr. Lewis said, his voice rising, as he stood alongside photographs of the clash. “Some of my colleagues gave their very lives.”
“Yes, we’ve made some progress; we have come a distance,” he added. “The sad truth is, discrimination still exists. That’s why we still need the Voting Rights Act, and we must not go back to the dark past.”
For weeks, the outcome of the battle to extend the act had been in doubt. Republican leaders had planned a vote in June. But they abruptly canceled it after conservative lawmakers objected to several provisions of the act, including one that requires the Justice Department to review any proposed changes to voting procedures in states covered by the law, most of them in the South. They said the provisions were unnecessary.
The rebellion was an embarrassment for the Republican leadership. In early May, House and Senate leaders of both parties assembled on the steps of the Capitol to pledge their support for the act and celebrate what they described as its imminent approval. President Bush had also thrown his support behind it.
To mollify those conservatives, House leaders agreed to allow them to offer four amendments on Thursday, including one that would have required the Justice Department to demonstrate why the voting procedures in certain states should still be under federal oversight.
Representative Phil Gingrey, Republican of Georgia, argued that his state, for one, had made great strides in voting rights for minorities. “A lot has changed in 40-plus years,” Mr. Gingrey said. “We should have a law that fits the world in 2006.”
But in the end, Republicans joined with Democrats to defeat the amendments, allowing both parties to cast themselves as champions of minority voters.
“This legislation proves our unbending commitment to voting rights,” said Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
The focus now shifts to the Senate, where the Judiciary Committee is expected to take up the Voting Rights Act next week.
Senate Democrats urged quick passage.
“For two months, we have wasted precious time as the Republican leadership played to its conservative base,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. “There are only 21 legislative days left in this Congress, and the time to act is now.”‘
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in August 1965 after a string of violence in Southern states surrounding efforts to ensure that blacks were afforded full rights to vote.
The law instituted a nationwide prohibition against voting discrimination based on race, eliminated poll taxes and literacy tests and put added safeguards in regions where discrimination had been especially pronounced.
Those included the requirement for the Justice Department to review any proposed changes to voting procedures to determine whether they would be discriminatory. That “preclearance” requirement would be retained for the nine states entirely covered by the law, most of them in the South, and parts of seven others.
While critics of that requirement say it is now outdated, supporters of the act said the history of discrimination in those particular states justified their status. Beyond that, they argued that leaders who believed their states or localities should be exempt from the requirements could apply to “bail out” through a federal review.
On the floor Thursday, many Democrats, as well as Republicans, denounced the amendments offered by conservatives as an effort to derail renewal of the act. Democrats had warned from the start that they would vote against the act if any of the amendments were tacked on to it.
“Their goal has been one thing and one thing only: to kill the Voting Rights Act,” said Representative David Scott, Democrat of Georgia.
Another provision of the act that drew fire from conservatives requires bilingual ballots in political jurisdictions with a high number of citizens who have difficulty with English. Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, offered an amendment that would have eliminated it.
Mr. King and his supporters argued that naturalized citizens should have had to prove English proficiency as part of their citizenship test. In the end the amendment, which would have allowed local voting officials to provide language assistance at the polls, was defeated 238 to 185.
“This is multiculturalism at its worst,” Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, said, referring to bilingual ballots. “When we come from various ethnic groups and races, what unites us? It’s our language, the English language. We’re hurting America by making it easier for people not to learn English.”