Governor Schwarzenegger Backs Aerial Biochemical Spraying That Harms Children
On September 9th, 2007 several planes hired by the State of California Food and Agricultural Department (CDFA) flying at an altitude of approximately 500ft sprayed the untested biochemical, CheckMate®OLR-F, on over 30,000 citizens in Monterey and other surrounding cities in California. This occurred without the permission of the citizens. The spraying continued for three nights from approximately 8pm to 5am. About 1,500 pounds of biochemical were dumped on the cities. Many citizens did not even know what was happening when the planes were buzzing overhead.
An 11 month old child nearly died from breathing difficulties. A six year old child developed asthma as a result of the aerial spraying. Over one hundred people signed affidavits stating that they got sick from the spraying. Hundreds of people had symptoms like; shortness of breath, headaches, dizziness, burning lungs, nausea, and muscle aches.
The excuse for aerial spraying is not a deadly disease carrying mosquito, but a moth whose larva may eat some leaves of some plants; called the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM). The CDFA considers the moth an invasive species since it is from Australia. Yet, evidence suggests that the moth has been in California for many years, living peacefully. In response to the moth, the CDFA set up relatively harmless sticky traps, which have captured nearly every Light Brown Apple Moth in the Northern California region.
Governor Schwarzenegger is a strong supporter of the declared emergency; the need to spray untested biochemicals on humans to stop the LBAM from destroying crops.
This aerial spraying violates several state, federal and international laws. It violates the right to personal safety given by the California State Constitution, the very document that creates the California government. It violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people with chemical sensitivities and other disabilities from discrimination. It violates the Federal constitutional right to personal liberty. It violates the EPA's laws against spraying pesticides on people. It violates human rights laws that say that human experimentation without consent is unethical and immoral. It violates criminal laws that claim it is a crime to poison children, or anyone else. It violates pollution laws to spray a toxic substance over plants, animals, and waterways. It violates laws against organized crime and it violates the very tenants of our democracy; a system of government designed to represent the people, not to poison the people to represent private agri-business interests.
Recently, in a series of rapid fire events, the CDFA declared a state of emergency relating to the LBAM claiming that the moths are about to destroy a huge portion of the state's agricultural crops. The claim is that the LBAM will cause hundreds of millions of dollars of crop damage. Due to this supposed “emergency,” the CDFA claims it must immediately spray an untested biochemical to eliminate this threat as soon as possible despite the reported harms. Mind you, these moth's only travel within a 20-30 yard diameter of their birth place during their entire life.
The state of emergency is a false declaration because the CDFA cannot produce any meaningful evidence that the LBAM can or would destroy crops and the sticky traps are effective at containing the moths. In Hawaii, the LBAM has been a help to the ecosystem by destroying invasive species and there's no evidence of crop harm for the last 100 years.
The only emergency seems to be that the State of California, under Governor Schwarzenegger's helm, has an urgent need to spray as many humans; men, women, children, pregnant women, people with allergies, the elderly, and the sick, with chemicals. There is no sensible explanation as to why they want to do this, nor is there any explanation as to why they think that spraying pesticides on people is a good thing to do.
Spraying chemicals, safe or not safe, on humans against their will is illegal. It is a crime! The Nuremberg Code, established after the horrors of World War II, prohibits human experimentation without the consent of the person who is being experimented upon.
The state does not care about the over 200 health complaints, nor the laws they are violating, but rather cares about the commercial agricultural business. Trade partners with the US may not accept shipments of plants or produce that may have the LBAM. The CDFA has given various figures of the estimated crop damage that the LBAM will cause. Their estimates range from 100 million to 2.7 billion dollars. Now, these estimates are not based on any scientific survey but rather on their opinion and fears.
Even if the harmless moth could cause such damage, it is a dangerous precedent to place the health and safety of United States citizens, especially infants and children, secondary to money. So the CDFA and Governor Schwarzenegger has determined that 100 million dollars of possible damage gives them justification to poison children with chemicals. In this case, economic factors have been given priority over liberty and human value.
And the question I have been asking myself is - who is going to protect the children who will be sprayed?
So what chemicals make up Checkmate OLR-F and LBAM-F Products?
This has been the technical question many people have been asking. The specific details of the chemicals seem to be of less importance than the simple fact that these are chemicals. Synthetic chemicals do not have a place on our bodies without our permission. And they do not have a place in our children's bodies who have a much lower tolerance to environmental toxins!
My understanding is that approximately 15-20% of the main biochemical is made up of a synthetically derived moth pheromone. This pheromone supposedly confuses the moths and disrupts their mating cycles. I am unaware of any scientific evidence to prove that the pheromone is effective at controlling the LBAM population. I supposed the CDFA's plan is to see how it works after a year or more of spraying. This is essentially biochemical testing. And the problem is that they are doing it on the public on a large scale, against the people's will. Due to the declaration of an emergency, the CDFA allow themselves to bypass the normal environmental review process meant to examine such questions.
The concern with the Checkmate chemicals is not so much about the pheromone, but rather the pheromone distribution system. The pheromone is encapsulated in a micro-capsule (like a miniature pill) which the CDFA brags is biodegradable. What they do not tell you is that the capsule needs to dry out to biodegrade. In water environments (like your body), the pheromone stays encapsulated. The micro-capsule takes approximately 30 days to degrade. The full degradation occurring within 30 days is unlikely because Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties experience frequent rain and dampness from the Pacific Ocean. Thus, the people in the areas that are sprayed will be inhaling and touching miniature pills. Once in their bodies, the capsule will likely slowly degrade causing moth pheromone to be released directly into people's bloodstream.
The micro-capsule is made out of what are falsely called “inert” ingredients. Again, the EPA brags that these “inert” ingredients are mostly ionized water. However, they forget to tell you that there are also two known dangerous toxic substances in the inerts - tricaprylyl methyl ammonium chloride (TMAC) and polymethylene polyphenyl isocyanate (PPI).
The breathing problems and asthma-like conditions are known side effects of PPI. So how is the state legally able to spray it on people?
The way they illegally avoid the law and lie to people, so that people will be lulled into a stupor, is by saying that PPI, along with other ingredients, are actually not in the pesticide. Well, this is about 5% true and 95% a lie. Say you are baking a cake; you use flour, sugar, some eggs and other ingredients, and you bake it. One could argue that, in the final cake product, there is no flour but rather a new chemical compound called cake. In the same way, when PPI and other ingredients are processed, they meld and bind together and change their chemical form. They no longer resemble exactly their original substances, just like cake does not look much like the flour it was made of. When you examine the final biochemical, you will see no PPI but rather some new toxic substance.
Since there is no independently verifiable evidence that these new chemical compounds are toxic or not, other than 117 signed affidavits of people who got sick, and since there is a so-called “emergency”, no thorough testing needs to be done. It is a devious way to avoid the law. The end result is that we must “trust” the EPA to say the chemicals are safe. It's hard to trust the EPA because, for example, with water fluoridation the entire employee's union at the EPA came out to say that water fluoridation is dangerous and harmful while the official position of the EPA is that water fluoridation is a good thing. It also becomes more difficult to win a court case against the aerial spraying when you cannot get any evidence that the chemicals are dangerous because you are not allowed to independently verify anything that the EPA alleges.
Strangely, the CDFA came out with precautions for this “non-toxic” chemical. Recommendations such as; to close all your windows during the spray, to stay inside, to hose everything off in the morning before you touch it, and to not touch anything that is covered with the chemical residue (anything outside) were encouraged. These warnings are good ideas since the micro-capsule can easily be inhaled, stays stuck on things, or remains in the air. I recently checked the CDFA website looking to quote this document and they had removed all warnings about the chemical, claiming now that it is totally safe. Perhaps this was spurred by the CDFA Secretary of Agriculture A.G. Kawamura's concern that citizens would waste too much water following the CDFA's instructions to wash the chemical off of things before touching them. It is eerie how A.G. Kawamura is concerned about saving water and our environment, but is totally oblivious to the fact that hundreds of people have been poisoned due to his aerial spraying efforts.
Another concern is the Checkmate OLR-F and LBAM-F warning label from the manufacturer:
“Keep Out of Reach of Children"
"Caution: Harmful if absorbed through the skin. Causes moderate eye irritation. Avoid contact with skin, eyes, or clothing. Harmful if inhaled. Avoid breathing vapor or spray mist.” The criminals at the CDFA claim we should not worry about this warning label. According to the CDFA's toxicity theory, since the biochemical is going to be inhaled and touched in smaller doses, this warning is no longer necessary as it refers only to those who handle the chemicals."
Due to this premise, the CDFA insists that the 117 documented complaints of illnesses are psychosomatic and are not caused by the Checkmate. They continue to spray without thoroughly investigating these health claims. Infants cannot get psychosomatic illnesses because they are too young to make things up like that. The CDFA are hypocrites because when a doctor reports that someone is sick to the CDFA, and if that person had recently ingested certified raw milk, they automatically shut down the milk business even without evidence that the milk caused the illness. (The milk, in this case, is never the source of illness because the cows are healthy.) On one hand, they overly penalize raw milk producers for things that might cause illness and on the other hand they ignore cases which definitely cause illness by their own hands.
Spraying chemicals on people is a crime, safe or not.
This is an outrage and this is sickening.
It used to be easy to turn a blind eye to government corruption because we could avoid it. You can avoid vaccinations by claiming an exemption. You can avoid polluted soaps and shampoos by buying natural ones, and you can avoid pesticide ridden foods by choosing organic. (In case you are wondering, strawberries and other produce sprayed with Checkmate will still be certified organic by the State, so you won't know you are eating pesticide ridden produce.) But the citizens of Monterey, Santa Cruz, Seaside, Los Lomas and other communities consisting of over 100,000 people who are scheduled to be spray bombed, some beginning today for up to six nights in a row, do not have the choice. Their personal boundaries have been violently violated by the CDFA.
Now, you cannot turn a blind eye anymore to what the government does. We need to acknowledge that these things are wrong, whether we can avoid them or not. When we do not stand up against evil, we affirm it. When we say what is happening is smart, we affirm that the evil doer is good because we do nothing to stop them.
I encourage you, in every way possible, to not sit back here. When you see someone doing wrong, whether it is a relative, a neighbor, or the local government, speak up. We need to stop this juggernaut. It is truly a terrifying experience because I have a pregnant partner and a young child and I have to move away from here to avoid being sprayed, to avoid being force vaccinated with synthetic moth hormone. The last bastion of hope is that the Santa Cruz City Council narrowly voted to sue the criminals doing this. It is unclear whether their lawsuit will be effective.
Checkmate.
The name for the biochemical Checkmate has two meanings. First, to check (stop) mating. Although there is no reliable evidence that it will check mating, for all we know, it could cause the moths to mutate and mate more. The second meaning of checkmate is a position in the game of Chess. This is a position when you have your opponent trapped no matter what move they do. They cannot win so they must resign and lose the game. Ironically, it is not the moths who are in the position of checkmate, but rather the citizens of Monterey, Marina, Pacific Grove, Sand City and Seaside (cities near Carmel and the famous Pebble Beach Golf course). These citizens must literally run, and escape, for the sake of their children from their own homes because a toxic cloud of government corruption is about to rain down upon them. It is these citizens who are in the position of checkmate. The difference here is that losing can mean a chronic disease, illness, and perhaps worse.
What you can do is call your state and federal representatives and encourage them to push through laws that prohibit aerial spraying. Encourage California State Senators and Federal Representatives to engage in a criminal investigation because poisoning people, children, and the elderly is a crime. Just because the people engaged in this work for the government, it doesn't make them immune to our laws. Support 1hope.org, and the City of Santa Cruz, to fight back.
Tell everyone!
Spread this news. Let's tell the whole world the truth about civil rights in the good ole' US of A.
If enough people know, this cause will be greatly advanced. Also, process your feelings about this, the anger, the rage, the terror, and the hatred it brings up. Feel how you want to protect those in the aerial spray path, that inner voice speaking within you saying, “NO! this is wrong, it must stop".
May the criminals face the real consequences of their crimes and be brought to justice. And may the people of Northern California be protected from untested synthetic chemicals forced upon them.
See below for more information, action items, and pesticide ingredients.
More information:
See 1hope.org, www.lbamspray.info, and www.stopthespray.org (You can sign the petition)
Also California State Senator Laird has written an excellent letter, opposing the spraying, citing dozens of unawsererd questions about the CDFA's shameful behavior. This can help you understand the issue better. (democrats.assembly.ca.gov/MEMBERS/A27/moth.htm)
Published Pesticide Ingredients Scheduled For Human Experimentation beginning Wednesday 10/24/07 (There may be other unpublished ones)
polymethylene polyphenyl isocyanate (Pesticide manufacturer Suterra acknowledges this ingredient is used to make Checkmate, but EPA claims ingredient is not in final product)
(E)-11-Tetradecen-1-yl Acetate
(E,E) -9,11 Tetradecadien-1-yl Acetate
Crosslinked polyurea polymer
Butylated Hydroxytoluene
Polyvinyl Alcohol
Tricaprylyl Methyl Ammonium Chloride
Sodium Phosphate
Ammonium Phosphate
1,2-benzisothiozoli-3-one
2-hydroxy-4-n-octyloxybenzophenone
Action List:
The best thing you can do is contact Governor Schwarzenegger, even if you are not a California citizen. Governor Schwarzenegger has the power to stop this. Right now, he clearly supports the program claiming such aerial spraying is necessary. Tell him you are opposed to his need to spray toxic chemicals on children to stop a harmless moth.
GOVERNOR ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
General information: (916) 445-2841 2841 (press #1, #5, #0)
Fax: (916) 445-4633
Email governor@govmail.ca.gov
Chief of Staff is Susan Kennedy
CA DEPARTMENT OF FOOD AND AGRICULTURE
Public Affairs Officer: (916) 654-0462 or
(800) 491-1899 (press #1, #6)
cdfapublicaffairs@cdfa.ca.gov
Secretary A.G. Kawamura (he makes the final decision on spraying):
akawamura@cdfa.ca.gov
John Connell, the state’s expert in insect eradication: jconnell@cdfa.ca.gov
Steve Lyle (public affairs) in charge of public communication: slyle@cdfa.ca.gov
Nancy Lungren (spokesperson for Kawamura): nlungren@cdfa.ca.gov
CA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
General Information: (916) 558-1784
Director, Mark B. Horton, MD, MSPH: (916) 558-1700, mark.horton@cdph.ca.gov
Kevin Reilly, Deputy Director: Kevin.Reilly@cdph.ca.gov
Online feedback/email:
http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programservices/contact/Pages/default.aspx
ASSEMBLYMAN JOHN LAIRD (strongly opposes current spray plans)
(831) 649-2832 or (916) 319-2127
Assemblymember.Laird@assembly.ca.gov
SENATOR ABEL MALDONADO
(831) 657-6315 or (916) 651-4015 or go to his web page to send him an email
REPRESENTATIVE SAM FARR
c/o Alec.Arago@mail.house.gov
DIANE FEINSTEIN
c/o daniel_chen@feinstein.senate.gov
About the author Rami Nagel is a father who cares about the way we affect each other, our children, and our planet through our lifestyle choices. His health background is in hands-on energy healing, Hatha & Bhakti yoga and the Pathwork.
Rami is author of several health resources, http://www.healingourchildren.net ,
Original article posted here.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Our own death loving lunatic fundamentalists
America’s Armageddonites
Utopian fantasies have long transfixed the human race. Yet today a much rarer fantasy has become popular in the United States. Millions of Americans, the richest people in history, have a death wish. They are the new “Armageddonites,” fundamentalist evangelicals who have moved from forecasting Armageddon to actually trying to bring it about.
Jon Basil Utley
Most journalists find it difficult to take seriously that tens of millions of Americans, filled with fantasies of revenge and empowerment, long to leave a world they despise. These Armageddonites believe that they alone will get a quick, free pass when they are “raptured” to paradise, no good deeds necessary, not even a day of judgment. Ironically, they share this utopian fantasy with a group that they often castigate, namely fundamentalist Muslims who believe that dying in battle also means direct access to Heaven. For the Armageddonites, however, there are no waiting virgins, but they do agree with Muslims that there will be “no booze, no bars,” in the words of a popular Gaither Singers song.
These end-timers have great influence over the U.S. government’s foreign policy. They are thick with the Republican leadership. At a recent conference in Washington, congressional leader Roy Blunt, for example, has said that their work is "part of God's plan." At the same meeting, where speakers promoted attacking Iran, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay glorified “end times.” Indeed the Bush administration often consults with them on Mideast policies. The organizer of the conference, Rev. John Hagee, is often welcomed at the White House, although his ratings are among the lowest on integrity and transparency by Ministry Watch, which rates religious broadcasters. He raises millions of dollars from his campaign supporting Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including much for himself. Erstwhile presidential candidate Gary Bauer is on his Board of Directors. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson also both expressed strong end-times beliefs.
American fundamentalists strongly supported the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. They consistently support Israel’s hard-line policies. And they are beating the drums for war against Iran. Thanks to these end-timers, American foreign policy has turned much of the world against us, including most Muslims, nearly a quarter of the human race.
The Beginning of End Times
The evangelical movement originally was not so “end times” focused. Rather, it was concerned with the “moral” decline inside America. The Armageddon theory started with the writings of a Scottish preacher, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). His ideas then spread to America with publication in 1917 of the Scofield Reference Bible, foretelling that the return of the Jews to Palestine would bring about the end times. The best-selling book of the 1970s, The Late, Great Planet Earth, further spread this message. The movement did not make a conscious effort to affect foreign policy until Jerry Falwell went to Jerusalem and the Left Behind books became best sellers.
Conservative Christian writer Gary North estimates the number of Armageddonites at about 20 million. Many of them have an ecstatic belief in the cleansing power of apocalyptic violence. They are among the more than 30% of Americans who believe that the world is soon coming to an end. Armageddonites may be a minority of the evangelicals, but they have vocal leaders and control 2,000 mostly fundamentalist religious radio stations.
Although little focused on in America, Armageddonites attract the attention of Muslims abroad. In 2004, for instance, I attended Qatar’s Fifth Conference on Democracy with Muslim leaders from all over the Arabian Gulf. There, the uncle of Jordan’s king devoted his whole speech to warning of the Armageddonites’ power over American foreign policy.
Armageddonite Foreign Policy
The beliefs of the Armageddon Lobby, also known as Dispensationalists, come from the Book of Revelations, which Martin Luther relegated it to an appendix when he translated the Bible because its image of Christ was so contrary to the rest of the Bible. The Armageddonites worship a vengeful, killer-torturer Christ. They also frequently quote a biblical passage that God favors those who favor the Jews. But they only praise Jews who make war, not those who are peacemakers. For example, they vigorously opposed Israel’s murdered premier Yitzhak Rabin, who promoted the Oslo Peace Accords.
Based on this Biblical interpretation, the Armageddonites vehemently argue that America must protect Israel and encourage its settlements on the West Bank in order to help God fulfill His plans. The return of Jews to Palestine is central to the prophetic vision of the Armageddonites, who see it as a critical step toward the final battle, Armageddon, and the victory of the righteous over Satan’s minions. There are a couple internal inconsistencies with this prophecy, such as the presence of Christians already living in the Holy Land and the role of Jews in the final dispensation. In the first case, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and other Religious Right leaders tried to pretend that Christians already in the Holy Land simply didn’t exist. As for Jews, they needed to become “born again” Christians to avoid God’s wrath (or, according to some Armageddonites, a separate Jewish covenant with God will gain them a separate Paradise).
Everyone else -- Buddhists, Muslims (of course), Hindus, atheists, and so on – are then slated to die in the Tribulation that comes with Armageddon. As described in the bestselling Left Behind series, this time of human misery ends with Christ then ruling a paradise on earth for a thousand years.
Armageddonites know little about the outside world, which they think of as threatening and awash with Satanic temptations. They are big supporters of Bush’s “go it alone” foreign policies. For example, they love John Bolton. They were prime supporters for attacking Iraq. And, with very few exceptions, they were noticeably quiet about, if not supportive, of torturing prisoners of war (only with a new leadership did the National Association of Evangelicals finally condemn torture in May, 2007). Their support of the Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani shows that they consider aggressively prosecuting Mideast war (to help speed up the apocalypse) more important than the domestic programs of these socially liberal politicians.
On other foreign policy issues, they are violently against the pending Law of the Seas Treaty, indeed any treaty which possibly circumscribes U.S. power to go it alone. They want illegal immigrants expelled and oppose more immigration. They fear China’s growth. They despise Europeans for not being more warlike. The UN figures prominently in their fears, and the Left Behind books present its Secretary General as the Antichrist. Domestically, they strongly support the USA PATRIOT Act and all of President Bush’s actions, legal or illegal.
Armageddonites and Fascism
Author and former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges argues that worldview and reasoning of the Armageddonites tend toward fascism. In his book American Fascists, Hedges focuses on their obedience to leadership, their feelings of humiliation and victimhood, alienation, their support for authoritarian government, and their disinterestedness in constitutional limits on government power. Theirs was originally a defensive movement against the liberal democratic society, particularly abortion, school desegregation, and now globalization, which they saw as undermining their communities and families, their values, and livelihood. Their fundamentalism is very fulfilling and, Hedges writes, “they are terrified of losing this new, mystical world of signs, wonders and moral certitude, of returning to the old world of despair.”
Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, also shows that fundamentalists are quite selective. They don’t take the Bible literally when it comes to justifying slavery or that children who curse a parent are to be executed. The movement is also very masculine, giving poor men a path to re-establish their authority in what they perceive as an overly feminized culture. Images of Jesus often show Him with thick muscles, clutching a sword. Christian men are portrayed as powerful warriors.
The overwhelming power and warmongering of the Armageddonites has inspired some resistance from other fundamentalists, but they are a minority. Theologian Richard Fenn writes, “Silent complicity (by mainline churches) with apocalyptic rhetoric soon becomes collusion with plans for religiously inspired genocide.” Their death-wishing “religion” is actually anti-Christian and should be challenged openly by traditional Christians.
The next election will likely loosen their grip on the White House. However, their growing ties to the military industrial complex will remain. Exposure of their war wanting as a major threat to America and the world may well become as destructive for them as was the famous Scopes trial in the 1920s. But that will only happen if Americans become as concerned as foreign observers about the influence of the Armageddonites.
Jon Basil Utley is associate publisher of The American Conservative. He was a foreign correspondent in South America for the Journal of Commerce and Knight Ridder newspapers and former associate editor of The Times of the Americas. He was for 17 years a contract commentator on third world issues for Voice of America. He is a writer and advisor for Antiwar.com, a chairman of ConservativesForPeace.com, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. For more articles in the Religion and Foreign Policy strategic focus, visit http://www.fpif.org/fpifinfo/4590.
Original article posted here.Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Iraq's upcoming Katrina
Iraqi dam 'at risk of collapse'
An aerial view of the Mosul dam and its flood plain.
Enlarge ImageMosul Dam has been a problem for engineers since it was built in 1984
The largest dam in Iraq is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul, a city of 1.7m people, the US has warned.
In May, the US told Iraqi authorities to make Mosul Dam a national priority, as a catastrophic failure would result in a "significant loss of life".
However, a $27m (£13m) US-funded reconstruction project to help shore up the dam has made little or no progress.
Iraq says it is reducing the risk and insists there is no cause for alarm.
An aerial view of the Mosul dam and its flood plain.
However, a US watchdog said reconstruction of the dam had been plagued by mismanagement and potential fraud.
In a report published on Tuesday, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said US-funded "short-term solutions" had yet to significantly solve the dam's problems.
SIGIR found multiple failures in several of the 21 contracts awarded to repair the dam.
Among the faults were faulty construction and delivery of improper parts, as well as projects which were not completed despite full payments having been made.
'Fundamentally flawed'
The dam has been a problem for Iraqi engineers since it was constructed in 1984.
It was built on water-soluble gypsum, which caused seepage within months of its completion and led investigators to describe the site as "fundamentally flawed".
In September 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers determined that the dam, 45 miles upstream of Mosul on the River Tigris, presented an unacceptable risk.
"In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world," the corps warned, according to the SIGIR report. "If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely."
A catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam would result in flooding along the Tigris River all the way to Baghdad
US letter to Iraqi government
The corps later told US commanders to move their equipment away from the Tigris flood plain near Mosul because of the dam's instability.
The top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, and US ambassador Ryan Crocker then wrote to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki urging him to make fixing the dam a "national priority".
"A catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam would result in flooding along the Tigris River all the way to Baghdad" the letter on 3 May warned.
"Assuming a worst-case scenario, an instantaneous failure of Mosul Dam filled to its maximum operating level could result in a flood wave 20m deep at the city of Mosul, which would result in a significant loss of life and property."
If that were to happen some have predicted that as many as 500,000 people could be killed.
Alarm bells
Iraqi authorities, however, say they are taking steps to reduce the risk and they do not believe there is cause for alarm.
The Iraqi Minister for Water Resources, Latif Rashid, told the BBC that a number of steps were being taken to tackle the problem, including a reduction in water levels in the reservoir and a round-the-clock operation to pump grouting into the dam's foundations.
Work would also begin next year on a longer-term plan to make the foundations safe by encasing them in a concrete curtain, he added.
The BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad says the debate over the dam has gone on largely behind the scenes so as not to cause public panic or attract the interest of insurgents.
Original article posted here.
Waste, waste and more waste. The trashing of the US economy
The mystery of the missing $2.9 trillion
Economists scour the US to find out why we're more in debt than the Department of Commerce says we are.
By David R. Francis
Like most people, economists love a mystery – especially if it involves not a missing person but a missing $2.9 trillion in United States debt.
That's $2.9 with 11 zeros after it.
Some words of explanation: Every quarter the Department of Commerce comes up with the US "International Investment Position." At the end of 2006, for instance, the US had a net negative position – by this measurement of international assets and liabilities – of $2.6 trillion. In other words, the country is by far the world's biggest debtor nation.
A quarter century ago, the US was the world's largest creditor nation.
The economists at Commerce count American-owned private assets in foreign nations (plants, equipment, retail outfits, property, corporate stocks and bonds, etc.), US official international reserves (gold, special drawing rights, foreign currencies), and other US assets abroad. The measurements get complicated. Then these economists count what foreigners own of American assets, looking at the same list of assets.
Subtracting the value of American international assets from what foreigners own of American assets, they come up with how much Americans are in debt to other nations and their peoples.
But if you look at the current account of the US balance of payments, which measures primarily the balance of trade, and also flows of interest and dividends, foreign aid, and other international transfers, the US should be far deeper in hock – $2.9 trillion more over the years from 1990 through 2006 than the official $2.6 trillion. Every month, the Commerce Department has reported huge deficits in trade and the broader current account. These deficits have to be financed somehow by foreigners, and so the US should be piling up its international debts in grand style.
Last year the US international deficit was running at a level equivalent to 6.5 percent of our gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services. In a sense, Americans were living 6.5 percent better than they would if they weren't putting on the national tab, in effect, so many toys, shirts, computers, etc.
"Why aren't we more indebted?" asks Barry Bosworth, an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
One related mystery is that American investments in foreign nations earn a much higher rate of return than do the investments by foreigners in the US.
"Why?" asks Mr. Bosworth in a working paper written with Susan Collins of the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a graduate student, Gabriel Chodorow-Reich.
One-third of the gap in the return on investments can be attributed to US corporations reporting "extra" income in low tax jurisdictions of their foreign affiliates, the National Bureau of Economic Research paper finds. For example, Microsoft sells its software in foreign countries from an affiliate in Ireland – after making some changes in the software, says Bosworth. There, it pays only a 10 percent tax on its corporate profits, rather than the 38 percent corporate rate in the US. Other US firms set up affiliates in such tax havens as Barbados, the Bahamas, and Bermuda.
US firms are "quite aggressive" in taking advantage of such tax havens, notes Bosworth. It probably means that these companies avoid billions of dollars in taxes that otherwise would go to Uncle Sam. It also distorts the official balance-of-payments figures. "The data are very bad," says Bosworth.
Another economist intrigued by this international investment mystery is Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas of the University of California, Berkeley. He finds that the reason the US is earning so much more on its foreign assets than it is paying on its foreign liabilities is partly because US investors often take more risk and thus get a higher return. The American money goes into foreign direct investment (plant and equipment, etc.) and into foreign stock, for example. Many foreigners, especially central banks, tend to be more cautious in choosing American investments. They buy ultrasafe US Treasuries or relatively safe bonds issued by US corporations, for instance. "The US offers nice, liquid, safe investments," says Professor Gourinchas. The risk of default can be low.
The US is an entrepôt, says Jane D'Arista, of the Financial Markets Center, Philomont, Va. That is, it takes in savings from the world at relatively low cost and invests some of that money abroad at a higher return.
There's more to the mystery than that, however. One advantage for the US is that the dollar is the primary currency used in international reserves of other nations and for invoicing international trade and investment, such as for oil and other commodities.
So when the dollar loses value, foreign holders of dollar assets lose on their dollar investments. Almost all US foreign liabilities are in dollars and about 70 percent of US foreign assets are in foreign currencies.In what Gourinchas calls an "eye-catching, back-of-the-envelope calculation," a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar represents a transfer of 5.3 percent of US GDP from the rest of the world to the US. America's GDP is currently $13.7 trillion, and the dollar is down 20.6 percent since 2002. So foreigners have – in effect – given the US about $1.3 trillion.
It's not really that simple, emphasizes Gourinchas. Nonetheless, the US has had a free lunch.
Original article posted here.
Economists scour the US to find out why we're more in debt than the Department of Commerce says we are.
By David R. Francis
Like most people, economists love a mystery – especially if it involves not a missing person but a missing $2.9 trillion in United States debt.
That's $2.9 with 11 zeros after it.
Some words of explanation: Every quarter the Department of Commerce comes up with the US "International Investment Position." At the end of 2006, for instance, the US had a net negative position – by this measurement of international assets and liabilities – of $2.6 trillion. In other words, the country is by far the world's biggest debtor nation.
A quarter century ago, the US was the world's largest creditor nation.
The economists at Commerce count American-owned private assets in foreign nations (plants, equipment, retail outfits, property, corporate stocks and bonds, etc.), US official international reserves (gold, special drawing rights, foreign currencies), and other US assets abroad. The measurements get complicated. Then these economists count what foreigners own of American assets, looking at the same list of assets.
Subtracting the value of American international assets from what foreigners own of American assets, they come up with how much Americans are in debt to other nations and their peoples.
But if you look at the current account of the US balance of payments, which measures primarily the balance of trade, and also flows of interest and dividends, foreign aid, and other international transfers, the US should be far deeper in hock – $2.9 trillion more over the years from 1990 through 2006 than the official $2.6 trillion. Every month, the Commerce Department has reported huge deficits in trade and the broader current account. These deficits have to be financed somehow by foreigners, and so the US should be piling up its international debts in grand style.
Last year the US international deficit was running at a level equivalent to 6.5 percent of our gross domestic product, the nation's total output of goods and services. In a sense, Americans were living 6.5 percent better than they would if they weren't putting on the national tab, in effect, so many toys, shirts, computers, etc.
"Why aren't we more indebted?" asks Barry Bosworth, an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
One related mystery is that American investments in foreign nations earn a much higher rate of return than do the investments by foreigners in the US.
"Why?" asks Mr. Bosworth in a working paper written with Susan Collins of the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy in Ann Arbor, Mich., and a graduate student, Gabriel Chodorow-Reich.
One-third of the gap in the return on investments can be attributed to US corporations reporting "extra" income in low tax jurisdictions of their foreign affiliates, the National Bureau of Economic Research paper finds. For example, Microsoft sells its software in foreign countries from an affiliate in Ireland – after making some changes in the software, says Bosworth. There, it pays only a 10 percent tax on its corporate profits, rather than the 38 percent corporate rate in the US. Other US firms set up affiliates in such tax havens as Barbados, the Bahamas, and Bermuda.
US firms are "quite aggressive" in taking advantage of such tax havens, notes Bosworth. It probably means that these companies avoid billions of dollars in taxes that otherwise would go to Uncle Sam. It also distorts the official balance-of-payments figures. "The data are very bad," says Bosworth.
Another economist intrigued by this international investment mystery is Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas of the University of California, Berkeley. He finds that the reason the US is earning so much more on its foreign assets than it is paying on its foreign liabilities is partly because US investors often take more risk and thus get a higher return. The American money goes into foreign direct investment (plant and equipment, etc.) and into foreign stock, for example. Many foreigners, especially central banks, tend to be more cautious in choosing American investments. They buy ultrasafe US Treasuries or relatively safe bonds issued by US corporations, for instance. "The US offers nice, liquid, safe investments," says Professor Gourinchas. The risk of default can be low.
The US is an entrepôt, says Jane D'Arista, of the Financial Markets Center, Philomont, Va. That is, it takes in savings from the world at relatively low cost and invests some of that money abroad at a higher return.
There's more to the mystery than that, however. One advantage for the US is that the dollar is the primary currency used in international reserves of other nations and for invoicing international trade and investment, such as for oil and other commodities.
So when the dollar loses value, foreign holders of dollar assets lose on their dollar investments. Almost all US foreign liabilities are in dollars and about 70 percent of US foreign assets are in foreign currencies.In what Gourinchas calls an "eye-catching, back-of-the-envelope calculation," a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar represents a transfer of 5.3 percent of US GDP from the rest of the world to the US. America's GDP is currently $13.7 trillion, and the dollar is down 20.6 percent since 2002. So foreigners have – in effect – given the US about $1.3 trillion.
It's not really that simple, emphasizes Gourinchas. Nonetheless, the US has had a free lunch.
Original article posted here.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Congress as an aider and abetter of fascism
Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?
By Jim Hightower
Where is Congress? It's way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being trampled, the very form of our government is being perverted, and nothing less than American democracy itself is endangered -- a presidential coup is taking place. I think of Barbara Jordan, the late congresswoman from Houston. On July 25, 1974, this powerful thinker and member of the House Judiciary Committee took her turn to speak during the Nixon impeachment inquiry.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total," she declared in her thundering voice. "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."Where are the likes of Barbara Jordan in today's Congress? While the BushCheney regime continues to establish a supreme, arrogant, autocratic presidency in flagrant violation of the Constitution, members of Congress largely sit there as idle spectators -- or worse, as abettors of Bush's usurpation of their own congressional authority.
Why it matters
Separation of powers. Rule of law. Checks and balances. These may seem to us moderns to be little more than a set of dry, legal precepts that we had to memorize in high-school history class but need not concern us now. After all, the founders (bless their wigged heads!) established these principles for us back in 17-something-or-other, so we don't really have to worry about them in 2007. Think again. These are not merely arcane phrases of constitutional law, but the very keystones of our democracy, essential to sustaining our ideal of being a self-governing people, free of tyrants who would govern us on their own whim. The founders knew about tyranny. The monarch of the time, King George III, routinely denied colonists basic liberties, spied on them and entered their homes at will, seized their property, jailed anyone he wanted without charges, rounded up and killed dissidents, and generally ruled with an iron fist. He was both the law and above the law, operating on the twin doctrines of "the divine rule of kings" and "the king can do no wrong."
(Alert: Ready or not, the following is a high-school refresher course on American government. There will be a test.) At the front of the founders' minds was the necessity of breaking up the authority of their new government in order to avoid re-creating the autocracy they had just defeated. The genius of their structure was that legislating, administering, and judging were to be done by three separate but coequal branches, each with powers to check the other two, and none able to aggregate all three functions into its own hands (a result that James Madison called the very definition of tyranny). Just as important, to deter government by whim, all members of the three branches were to be subject to the laws of the land (starting with the Constitution and Bill of Rights), with no one above the law. As Thomas Paine said, "The law is king."
These were not legal niceties but core restraints designed to protect citizens from power grabs by ambitious autocrats. Such restrictions also make our country stronger by vetting policies through three entities rather than one. This balanced authority helps avoid many serious policy mistakes (or at least offers a chance to correct them later), and it is intended to prevent the one mistake that's fatal to democracy -- allowing one branch to seize the power to rule unilaterally.
Of course, sound schemes are oft screwed up by unsound leaders, and we've had some horrible hiccups over the years. John Adams went astray early in our democratic experiment by claiming the unilateral authority to imprison his political enemies; Abe Lincoln took it upon himself to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson launched his notorious Palmer Raids; FDR rounded up and imprisoned Japanese-Americans; J. Edgar Hoover and the infamous COINTEL program spied on and arrested thousands in the Vietnam War years; and Ronnie Reagan ran his own illegal, secret war out of the White House basement.
In all these cases of executive excess and abuse, however, outrage flowed from the public, courts stood up to the White House, congressional investigations ensued, and the American system regained its balance relatively quickly. As Jefferson put it when he succeeded Adams and repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts, "Should we wander [from the essential principles of our government] in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
This time is different
Now, however, come two arrogant autocrats like we've never seen in the White House. George W and his snarling enabler, Dick Cheney, are making a power grab so unprecedented, so audacious, so broad and deep, so secretive, so stupefying, and so un-American that it has not yet been comprehended by the media, Congress, or the public. The dictionary defines "coup" not just as an armed takeover in some Third World country, but as "a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one affecting a change of government illegally or by force."
Constantly waving the bloody flag of 9/11 and swaggering around in commander-in-chief garb, the BushCheney duo are usurping authority from Congress, the courts, and the people, while also asserting arbitrary power that does not belong to the presidency. Their coup is changing our form of government, rewriting the genius of the founders by imposing a supreme executive that functions in secret and insists that it is above the law, unaccountable either to congressional oversight or to judicial review.
As Al Gore pointed out in a powerful speech he gave last year (read it here), the BushCheney push for imperial power is much more dangerous and far-reaching than other presidential excesses for a couple of big reasons. First, the Bushites make no pretension that they want these powers only temporarily, instead contending that a super-powerful presidency is necessary to cope with a terrorist threat that they say will last "for the rest of our lives." Second, they are not merely pushing executive supremacy as a response to an outside threat, but as an ideological, right-wing theory of what they allege the Constitution actually meant to say.
Called the "unitary executive theory," this perverse, antidemocratic construct begs us to believe that the president has inherent executive powers that cannot be reviewed, questioned, or altered by the other branches. Bush himself has asserted that his executive power "must be unilateral and unchecked." Must? Extremist theorists aside, this effectively establishes an executive with arbitrary power over us. It creates the anti-America.
The list of Bushite excesses is long...and growing:
* Their sweeping, secret program of warrantless spying on Americans -- in direct violation of a long-standing federal law intended to forestall such flagrant intrusions into people's privacy.
* The usurpation of legislative authority by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by Congress, openly asserting Bush's intention to disobey or simply ignore the laws. He has used this artifice to challenge over 1,150laws, even though the Constitution and the founders never conceived of such a dodge (signing statements were concocted by Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, and were pushed at that time by a young Reaganite lawyer who is now ensconced for life on the Supreme Court, Sam Alito).
* Suspension of habeas corpus for anyone whom Bush deems to be an "enemy combatant"-allowing innocent people to be detained indefinitely in prison without charges or civil trial, subjected to abuse and even torture, and denied access to judicial review of their incarceration (thus usurping the power of the courts). The routine and illegal assertion of "executive privilege" to stonewall Congress's legitimate efforts to perform its constitutional obligation of executive oversight and to prevent the questioning of top officials engaged in outright violations of American law.
* The assertion of a "state secrets" doctrine to prevent citizens and judges from pursuing legitimate lawsuits on the spurious grounds that even to have the executive's actions brought before the court would endanger national security and infringe on executive authority.
* An ever-expanding grab bag of autocratic actions, including using "national security letters" to sidestep the courts and spy on American political groups and individuals with no connection at all to terrorism; censoring executive-branch employees and government information for political purposes and using federal officials and tax dollars to push the regime's political agenda; and, of course, outright lying to Congress and the public, including lying for the most despicable purpose of all -- putting our troops, our public treasury, and our nation's good name into a war based on nothing but hubris, oil, and ideological fantasies (including Bush's latest blatant lie that "progress" in Iraq warrants the killing and maiming of additional thousands of American troops -- none of whom comes from his family).
Democratic capitulation
What we have is a lawless presidency. But our problem is not Bush. He is who he is -- a bonehead. He won't change, and why should he? He's getting away with his power grab! So he has no reason to step back, and every reason to keep pushing and to keep trying to institutionalize his coup.
Rather, our problem is those weaselly, wimpy, feckless members of Congress who have failed to confront the runaway executive, who have sat silent or (astonishingly) cheered and assisted as their own constitutional powers have been taken and their once-proud, coequal branch has been made subservient to the executive.
In the first six years of BushCheney, the Republican Congress operated as no more than a rubber stamp for the accretion of presidential power, shamelessly surrendering its own autonomy in a burst of mindless partisan zeal. Too many Democrats just went along, either buying the lies or being cowed by the unrelenting politics of fear and intimidation whipped up by Bush and Cheney. (The Bushites are still using these bullying tactics, as when they demanded this past summer that Congress legalize their illegal domestic spy program and CIA chief Mike McConnell warned publicly that "Americans are going to die" if Democrats failed to pass it.)
Which brings us to the new Congress run by Democrats. Where are they? Yes, I know they have only slim majorities and that the GOP uses veto threats, filibusters, and demagogic lies to fight them -- but, come on, suck it up! At least stop voting for "the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." For example, the party now in charge did indeed cave in to Bush's summer demand that it legalize his warrantless spying on Americans (a Lowdowner sent an email to me saying he hopes Bush gets caught smoking pot, because then the Democrats will immediately legalize it).
The founders would be stunned that Congress has failed to assert itself. They saw checks and balances not as an option but as an obligation, a fundamental responsibility that goes to the very heart of each lawmaker's oath faithfully to support and defend the Constitution.
It's important to note that Congress is not a weak institution. It has powerful muscles to flex, including control of the purse, which Congress used in 1973 to tell Nixon, "No, we will not provide money for you to extend the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia." Nixon had to back off. Legislators also have clear constitutional mandates to oversee, probe, and expose presidential actions (remember the extensive Fulbright hearings in the '60s and the Church investigations of the '70s, for example). Members of Congress have wide-ranging subpoena power, as well as something called "inherent contempt" power to make their own charges against outlaw executive officials and to hold their own trials. And, of course, they have impeachment power -- which the founders saw not only as a way to remove an outlaw president (or veep or cabinet officer), but also as a means to compel a recidivist constitutional violator to come before the bar of Congress and to be held accountable. The process itself, even if it does not lead to conviction in the Senate, is educational and chastening, putting the executive branch back in its place.
None of this is about making a partisan attack on BushCheney. It's really not about them at all. Rather, Congress must find its backbone because our democracy cannot function without a vigilant legislative branch. Outlaw presidents must finally leave office, but their precedents live beyond them if left unchecked. As historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote of the power-grabbing Nixon administration, "If the Nixon White House escaped the legal consequences of its illegal behavior, why would future presidents not suppose themselves entitled to do [the same]?"
Bang pots and pans
Sam Adams, the organizer of the Boston Tea Party, knew that it is the citizenry itself that ultimately has to do the heavy lifting of democracy building. "If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats of government," he declared, "our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
That's us. And now is that time.
What can we do? We can do what millions have been doing-only more of it, more insistently, more loudly, more creatively. Our friend Molly Ivins, just before she died this year, urged us to start "banging pots and pans" to make the bastards hear us. Raise a ruckus through street demonstrations, peace actions, visits (and/or confrontations) with lawmakers, political campaigns, alliances with military families, religious ceremonies, coalitions with constitutional conservatives, outreach to young people, and grassroots media action, including blogs, email blasts, call-in radio, letters to editors, op-eds, bumperstickers, and whatever you've got. Make a mighty noise.
Don't forget our friends in office. Such Democrats as John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, and Dennis Kucinich are all over Bush and Cheney with investigations, subpoenas, censure motions, impeachment bills, and exposes -- not only on the war, but most emphatically on constitutional abuses. Thank them, find out what you can do to help them, demand that your own Congress critter join them.
And here's a creative idea from Garret Keizer. I have no idea who he is, but he wrote a punchy piece in the October issue of Harper's Magazine (read it here) that I like and that Lowdowners might want to embrace. He's calling for a general strike. Not by unions, but by us-you and me. As a symbolically appropriate day, he suggests the first Tuesday of November, the traditional date for our elections -- this year, Nov. 6. He dubs it "The Feast of the Hanging Chads."
A general strike means that We The People, as many of us as possible, would disobey the inept, corrupt, undemocratic (add your own adjective here) system by withholding our presence at for least one day. Don't go to work. Stay home. Better yet, take some political action. Also, don't go to the mall, the supermarket, or the bank; don't use your credit card or make any commercial transaction. This would be the ultimate affront to the corporate president who so pathetically told us after 9/11 that our highest patriotic response to the attack was to "go shopping." So don't fly, use your cell phone (hard, I know), watch TV, or otherwise participate. Sometimes, silence is the loudest sound of all. As Keizer says, "As long as we're willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup."
On one level, the strike http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.italic.gif
lisää kursiivikoodiis against the war, against Bush thumbing his nose at the American majority that has already emphatically said -- OUT! -- and against the Democratic leadership that can't seem to muster the will to rein in the Bush administration. On another level, however, this is a strike for the Constitution, a strike against the betrayal of the rule of law and our democratic ideals. It's a strike for the America we thought this was. It's an affirmation that the people are the only "larger force" that can stop the BushCheney coup and make America whole again.
From "The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, October 2007. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back.
Original article posted here.
By Jim Hightower
Where is Congress? It's way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being trampled, the very form of our government is being perverted, and nothing less than American democracy itself is endangered -- a presidential coup is taking place. I think of Barbara Jordan, the late congresswoman from Houston. On July 25, 1974, this powerful thinker and member of the House Judiciary Committee took her turn to speak during the Nixon impeachment inquiry.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total," she declared in her thundering voice. "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."Where are the likes of Barbara Jordan in today's Congress? While the BushCheney regime continues to establish a supreme, arrogant, autocratic presidency in flagrant violation of the Constitution, members of Congress largely sit there as idle spectators -- or worse, as abettors of Bush's usurpation of their own congressional authority.
Why it matters
Separation of powers. Rule of law. Checks and balances. These may seem to us moderns to be little more than a set of dry, legal precepts that we had to memorize in high-school history class but need not concern us now. After all, the founders (bless their wigged heads!) established these principles for us back in 17-something-or-other, so we don't really have to worry about them in 2007. Think again. These are not merely arcane phrases of constitutional law, but the very keystones of our democracy, essential to sustaining our ideal of being a self-governing people, free of tyrants who would govern us on their own whim. The founders knew about tyranny. The monarch of the time, King George III, routinely denied colonists basic liberties, spied on them and entered their homes at will, seized their property, jailed anyone he wanted without charges, rounded up and killed dissidents, and generally ruled with an iron fist. He was both the law and above the law, operating on the twin doctrines of "the divine rule of kings" and "the king can do no wrong."
(Alert: Ready or not, the following is a high-school refresher course on American government. There will be a test.) At the front of the founders' minds was the necessity of breaking up the authority of their new government in order to avoid re-creating the autocracy they had just defeated. The genius of their structure was that legislating, administering, and judging were to be done by three separate but coequal branches, each with powers to check the other two, and none able to aggregate all three functions into its own hands (a result that James Madison called the very definition of tyranny). Just as important, to deter government by whim, all members of the three branches were to be subject to the laws of the land (starting with the Constitution and Bill of Rights), with no one above the law. As Thomas Paine said, "The law is king."
These were not legal niceties but core restraints designed to protect citizens from power grabs by ambitious autocrats. Such restrictions also make our country stronger by vetting policies through three entities rather than one. This balanced authority helps avoid many serious policy mistakes (or at least offers a chance to correct them later), and it is intended to prevent the one mistake that's fatal to democracy -- allowing one branch to seize the power to rule unilaterally.
Of course, sound schemes are oft screwed up by unsound leaders, and we've had some horrible hiccups over the years. John Adams went astray early in our democratic experiment by claiming the unilateral authority to imprison his political enemies; Abe Lincoln took it upon himself to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson launched his notorious Palmer Raids; FDR rounded up and imprisoned Japanese-Americans; J. Edgar Hoover and the infamous COINTEL program spied on and arrested thousands in the Vietnam War years; and Ronnie Reagan ran his own illegal, secret war out of the White House basement.
In all these cases of executive excess and abuse, however, outrage flowed from the public, courts stood up to the White House, congressional investigations ensued, and the American system regained its balance relatively quickly. As Jefferson put it when he succeeded Adams and repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts, "Should we wander [from the essential principles of our government] in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
This time is different
Now, however, come two arrogant autocrats like we've never seen in the White House. George W and his snarling enabler, Dick Cheney, are making a power grab so unprecedented, so audacious, so broad and deep, so secretive, so stupefying, and so un-American that it has not yet been comprehended by the media, Congress, or the public. The dictionary defines "coup" not just as an armed takeover in some Third World country, but as "a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one affecting a change of government illegally or by force."
Constantly waving the bloody flag of 9/11 and swaggering around in commander-in-chief garb, the BushCheney duo are usurping authority from Congress, the courts, and the people, while also asserting arbitrary power that does not belong to the presidency. Their coup is changing our form of government, rewriting the genius of the founders by imposing a supreme executive that functions in secret and insists that it is above the law, unaccountable either to congressional oversight or to judicial review.
As Al Gore pointed out in a powerful speech he gave last year (read it here), the BushCheney push for imperial power is much more dangerous and far-reaching than other presidential excesses for a couple of big reasons. First, the Bushites make no pretension that they want these powers only temporarily, instead contending that a super-powerful presidency is necessary to cope with a terrorist threat that they say will last "for the rest of our lives." Second, they are not merely pushing executive supremacy as a response to an outside threat, but as an ideological, right-wing theory of what they allege the Constitution actually meant to say.
Called the "unitary executive theory," this perverse, antidemocratic construct begs us to believe that the president has inherent executive powers that cannot be reviewed, questioned, or altered by the other branches. Bush himself has asserted that his executive power "must be unilateral and unchecked." Must? Extremist theorists aside, this effectively establishes an executive with arbitrary power over us. It creates the anti-America.
The list of Bushite excesses is long...and growing:
* Their sweeping, secret program of warrantless spying on Americans -- in direct violation of a long-standing federal law intended to forestall such flagrant intrusions into people's privacy.
* The usurpation of legislative authority by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by Congress, openly asserting Bush's intention to disobey or simply ignore the laws. He has used this artifice to challenge over 1,150laws, even though the Constitution and the founders never conceived of such a dodge (signing statements were concocted by Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, and were pushed at that time by a young Reaganite lawyer who is now ensconced for life on the Supreme Court, Sam Alito).
* Suspension of habeas corpus for anyone whom Bush deems to be an "enemy combatant"-allowing innocent people to be detained indefinitely in prison without charges or civil trial, subjected to abuse and even torture, and denied access to judicial review of their incarceration (thus usurping the power of the courts). The routine and illegal assertion of "executive privilege" to stonewall Congress's legitimate efforts to perform its constitutional obligation of executive oversight and to prevent the questioning of top officials engaged in outright violations of American law.
* The assertion of a "state secrets" doctrine to prevent citizens and judges from pursuing legitimate lawsuits on the spurious grounds that even to have the executive's actions brought before the court would endanger national security and infringe on executive authority.
* An ever-expanding grab bag of autocratic actions, including using "national security letters" to sidestep the courts and spy on American political groups and individuals with no connection at all to terrorism; censoring executive-branch employees and government information for political purposes and using federal officials and tax dollars to push the regime's political agenda; and, of course, outright lying to Congress and the public, including lying for the most despicable purpose of all -- putting our troops, our public treasury, and our nation's good name into a war based on nothing but hubris, oil, and ideological fantasies (including Bush's latest blatant lie that "progress" in Iraq warrants the killing and maiming of additional thousands of American troops -- none of whom comes from his family).
Democratic capitulation
What we have is a lawless presidency. But our problem is not Bush. He is who he is -- a bonehead. He won't change, and why should he? He's getting away with his power grab! So he has no reason to step back, and every reason to keep pushing and to keep trying to institutionalize his coup.
Rather, our problem is those weaselly, wimpy, feckless members of Congress who have failed to confront the runaway executive, who have sat silent or (astonishingly) cheered and assisted as their own constitutional powers have been taken and their once-proud, coequal branch has been made subservient to the executive.
In the first six years of BushCheney, the Republican Congress operated as no more than a rubber stamp for the accretion of presidential power, shamelessly surrendering its own autonomy in a burst of mindless partisan zeal. Too many Democrats just went along, either buying the lies or being cowed by the unrelenting politics of fear and intimidation whipped up by Bush and Cheney. (The Bushites are still using these bullying tactics, as when they demanded this past summer that Congress legalize their illegal domestic spy program and CIA chief Mike McConnell warned publicly that "Americans are going to die" if Democrats failed to pass it.)
Which brings us to the new Congress run by Democrats. Where are they? Yes, I know they have only slim majorities and that the GOP uses veto threats, filibusters, and demagogic lies to fight them -- but, come on, suck it up! At least stop voting for "the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." For example, the party now in charge did indeed cave in to Bush's summer demand that it legalize his warrantless spying on Americans (a Lowdowner sent an email to me saying he hopes Bush gets caught smoking pot, because then the Democrats will immediately legalize it).
The founders would be stunned that Congress has failed to assert itself. They saw checks and balances not as an option but as an obligation, a fundamental responsibility that goes to the very heart of each lawmaker's oath faithfully to support and defend the Constitution.
It's important to note that Congress is not a weak institution. It has powerful muscles to flex, including control of the purse, which Congress used in 1973 to tell Nixon, "No, we will not provide money for you to extend the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia." Nixon had to back off. Legislators also have clear constitutional mandates to oversee, probe, and expose presidential actions (remember the extensive Fulbright hearings in the '60s and the Church investigations of the '70s, for example). Members of Congress have wide-ranging subpoena power, as well as something called "inherent contempt" power to make their own charges against outlaw executive officials and to hold their own trials. And, of course, they have impeachment power -- which the founders saw not only as a way to remove an outlaw president (or veep or cabinet officer), but also as a means to compel a recidivist constitutional violator to come before the bar of Congress and to be held accountable. The process itself, even if it does not lead to conviction in the Senate, is educational and chastening, putting the executive branch back in its place.
None of this is about making a partisan attack on BushCheney. It's really not about them at all. Rather, Congress must find its backbone because our democracy cannot function without a vigilant legislative branch. Outlaw presidents must finally leave office, but their precedents live beyond them if left unchecked. As historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote of the power-grabbing Nixon administration, "If the Nixon White House escaped the legal consequences of its illegal behavior, why would future presidents not suppose themselves entitled to do [the same]?"
Bang pots and pans
Sam Adams, the organizer of the Boston Tea Party, knew that it is the citizenry itself that ultimately has to do the heavy lifting of democracy building. "If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats of government," he declared, "our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
That's us. And now is that time.
What can we do? We can do what millions have been doing-only more of it, more insistently, more loudly, more creatively. Our friend Molly Ivins, just before she died this year, urged us to start "banging pots and pans" to make the bastards hear us. Raise a ruckus through street demonstrations, peace actions, visits (and/or confrontations) with lawmakers, political campaigns, alliances with military families, religious ceremonies, coalitions with constitutional conservatives, outreach to young people, and grassroots media action, including blogs, email blasts, call-in radio, letters to editors, op-eds, bumperstickers, and whatever you've got. Make a mighty noise.
Don't forget our friends in office. Such Democrats as John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, and Dennis Kucinich are all over Bush and Cheney with investigations, subpoenas, censure motions, impeachment bills, and exposes -- not only on the war, but most emphatically on constitutional abuses. Thank them, find out what you can do to help them, demand that your own Congress critter join them.
And here's a creative idea from Garret Keizer. I have no idea who he is, but he wrote a punchy piece in the October issue of Harper's Magazine (read it here) that I like and that Lowdowners might want to embrace. He's calling for a general strike. Not by unions, but by us-you and me. As a symbolically appropriate day, he suggests the first Tuesday of November, the traditional date for our elections -- this year, Nov. 6. He dubs it "The Feast of the Hanging Chads."
A general strike means that We The People, as many of us as possible, would disobey the inept, corrupt, undemocratic (add your own adjective here) system by withholding our presence at for least one day. Don't go to work. Stay home. Better yet, take some political action. Also, don't go to the mall, the supermarket, or the bank; don't use your credit card or make any commercial transaction. This would be the ultimate affront to the corporate president who so pathetically told us after 9/11 that our highest patriotic response to the attack was to "go shopping." So don't fly, use your cell phone (hard, I know), watch TV, or otherwise participate. Sometimes, silence is the loudest sound of all. As Keizer says, "As long as we're willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup."
On one level, the strike http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.italic.gif
lisää kursiivikoodiis against the war, against Bush thumbing his nose at the American majority that has already emphatically said -- OUT! -- and against the Democratic leadership that can't seem to muster the will to rein in the Bush administration. On another level, however, this is a strike for the Constitution, a strike against the betrayal of the rule of law and our democratic ideals. It's a strike for the America we thought this was. It's an affirmation that the people are the only "larger force" that can stop the BushCheney coup and make America whole again.
From "The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, October 2007. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back.
Original article posted here.
And you thought the dollar was bad now?
IMF brushes off drop of U.S. dollar to record lows
JIDDA: The International Monetary Fund shrugged off the tumble of the U.S. dollar to record lows against other currencies, saying that global foreign-exchange markets were tracking economic fundamentals.
The dollar fell to fresh lows against the euro and a basket of currencies recently after the Group of Seven failed to address its decline, suggesting to the market that it would not step in to prop it up.
The growing likelihood that an expected U.S. Federal Reserve Board interest rate cut this week would not be the last sent the dollar to new lows against the euro and a basket of currencies Friday.
"The important thing on currencies is certainly that we avoid abrupt changes and that the recent moves in currencies are in line with fundamentals," the managing director of the IMF, Rodrigo Rato, said Saturday.
As in a G-7 communiqué Oct. 19, Rato explicitly mentioned only one currency, the yuan, in his comments.
China and other Asian states should introduce greater flexibility of exchange rate regimes to smooth out global trade imbalances, Rato said.
The yuan climbed to a post-revaluation high against the dollar recently as international pressure mounted on China to allow the currency float freely.
"Some Asian currencies would help their countries more by reflecting the movements of supply and demand better," Rato said, explaining that he was referring to the yuan.
"Global imbalances, for one, will not be solved only on exchange rate movements," he said.
The dollar has been bruised by weak economic data and losses at big financial institutions in the United States from a global credit crisis, triggered in July by a meltdown in mortgages.
The impact of the credit crunch on the world economy would be bigger in 2008 than this year and would hit the United States the hardest, Rato said.
"The consequences of the crisis have not yet been seen fully," Rato said.
"There's going to be a mild slowdown in the world economy. It will be felt more in the United States and a little bit in Europe. But the rest of the world economies - to now we don't see strong consequences," he said.
Rato was in Jidda as Gulf finance ministers and central bankers met to review the 2010 deadline for creating a single currency in the top oil-exporting region. Gulf Arab rulers will decide in December whether to delay monetary union among six oil producers that are divided over how to respond if more U.S. interest rate cuts test currency pegs to the sliding dollar.
With a widely anticipated delay prompting investors to bet on the appreciation of dollar-pegged Gulf currencies, the six states agreed to keep foreign-exchange policy unchanged, although each would steer its own course on interest rates.
"There is a margin for each state to follow monetary policies that correspond to its domestic conditions," Hamad Saud al-Sayyari, the governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said after the talks.
Original article posted here.
JIDDA: The International Monetary Fund shrugged off the tumble of the U.S. dollar to record lows against other currencies, saying that global foreign-exchange markets were tracking economic fundamentals.
The dollar fell to fresh lows against the euro and a basket of currencies recently after the Group of Seven failed to address its decline, suggesting to the market that it would not step in to prop it up.
The growing likelihood that an expected U.S. Federal Reserve Board interest rate cut this week would not be the last sent the dollar to new lows against the euro and a basket of currencies Friday.
"The important thing on currencies is certainly that we avoid abrupt changes and that the recent moves in currencies are in line with fundamentals," the managing director of the IMF, Rodrigo Rato, said Saturday.
As in a G-7 communiqué Oct. 19, Rato explicitly mentioned only one currency, the yuan, in his comments.
China and other Asian states should introduce greater flexibility of exchange rate regimes to smooth out global trade imbalances, Rato said.
The yuan climbed to a post-revaluation high against the dollar recently as international pressure mounted on China to allow the currency float freely.
"Some Asian currencies would help their countries more by reflecting the movements of supply and demand better," Rato said, explaining that he was referring to the yuan.
"Global imbalances, for one, will not be solved only on exchange rate movements," he said.
The dollar has been bruised by weak economic data and losses at big financial institutions in the United States from a global credit crisis, triggered in July by a meltdown in mortgages.
The impact of the credit crunch on the world economy would be bigger in 2008 than this year and would hit the United States the hardest, Rato said.
"The consequences of the crisis have not yet been seen fully," Rato said.
"There's going to be a mild slowdown in the world economy. It will be felt more in the United States and a little bit in Europe. But the rest of the world economies - to now we don't see strong consequences," he said.
Rato was in Jidda as Gulf finance ministers and central bankers met to review the 2010 deadline for creating a single currency in the top oil-exporting region. Gulf Arab rulers will decide in December whether to delay monetary union among six oil producers that are divided over how to respond if more U.S. interest rate cuts test currency pegs to the sliding dollar.
With a widely anticipated delay prompting investors to bet on the appreciation of dollar-pegged Gulf currencies, the six states agreed to keep foreign-exchange policy unchanged, although each would steer its own course on interest rates.
"There is a margin for each state to follow monetary policies that correspond to its domestic conditions," Hamad Saud al-Sayyari, the governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, said after the talks.
Original article posted here.
Trading accusations as Washington continues its war dance
Iran says documents show U.S. backing "terrorists"
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has access to evidence of U.S. support for terrorist groups in the Middle East, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Iran's new chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, made the allegation in comments to visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, whose country may soon send troops to hunt down Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.
Tehran says the rebels are operating in Iraq with U.S. forces present in the country and this shows Washington is refraining from tackling them.
Like Turkey, Iran also has faced cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels and has shelled targets inside Iraq in response.
"Escalation of terrorism in the region is one of the direct results of the presence of occupiers in Iraq, particularly America," Jalili, an ally of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said according to the country's state broadcaster.
"And there are documents and information available proving America's support for terrorist groups in the region," he said, without giving details. Jalili is also the new secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
The United States often accuses Iran of backing and training militias responsible for some of the bloodshed threatening to tear Iraq apart. Tehran denies the charge and blames the violence in Iraq on the presence of U.S. forces.
The two countries are also locked in a stand-off over Tehran's nuclear program, which Western powers suspect is aimed at developing bombs. Iran says it only wants to generate electricity.
Washington last week dubbed Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and accused its Qods force of backing terrorists. It also imposed sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, major banks and individuals.
At a joint news conference with Babacan, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday also accused the United States and Israel of involvement in terrorism in the region.
"We see ... their hand behind some of the regional terrorist activities," Mottaki said.
Babacan, whose country's ties with the United States have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks, thanked Iran for helping Turkey fight the PKK guerrillas and said the two sides had talked about continuing their cooperation.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launched its campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey in 1984. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict since then.
Jalili on October 20 replaced Ali Larijani as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, a move analysts saw as signaling a toughening of Tehran's position in the atom row.
Original article posted here.
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has access to evidence of U.S. support for terrorist groups in the Middle East, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Iran's new chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, made the allegation in comments to visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, whose country may soon send troops to hunt down Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.
Tehran says the rebels are operating in Iraq with U.S. forces present in the country and this shows Washington is refraining from tackling them.
Like Turkey, Iran also has faced cross-border attacks by Kurdish rebels and has shelled targets inside Iraq in response.
"Escalation of terrorism in the region is one of the direct results of the presence of occupiers in Iraq, particularly America," Jalili, an ally of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said according to the country's state broadcaster.
"And there are documents and information available proving America's support for terrorist groups in the region," he said, without giving details. Jalili is also the new secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.
The United States often accuses Iran of backing and training militias responsible for some of the bloodshed threatening to tear Iraq apart. Tehran denies the charge and blames the violence in Iraq on the presence of U.S. forces.
The two countries are also locked in a stand-off over Tehran's nuclear program, which Western powers suspect is aimed at developing bombs. Iran says it only wants to generate electricity.
Washington last week dubbed Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and accused its Qods force of backing terrorists. It also imposed sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, major banks and individuals.
At a joint news conference with Babacan, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Sunday also accused the United States and Israel of involvement in terrorism in the region.
"We see ... their hand behind some of the regional terrorist activities," Mottaki said.
Babacan, whose country's ties with the United States have deteriorated sharply in recent weeks, thanked Iran for helping Turkey fight the PKK guerrillas and said the two sides had talked about continuing their cooperation.
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) launched its campaign for a Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey in 1984. More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict since then.
Jalili on October 20 replaced Ali Larijani as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, a move analysts saw as signaling a toughening of Tehran's position in the atom row.
Original article posted here.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Seems like the warmongers are hell bent on WWIII (and have been saying as much). Seems like that assassination plot against Putin was from US
A few weeks ago you might remember seeing articles like this:
Putin says Iran assassination plot was a bid to 'wreck' visit
Putin says Iran assassination plot was a bid to 'wreck' visit
MOSCOW (Thomson Financial) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that reports of an assassination plot against him in Iran were an attempt to 'wreck' his landmark visit there this week. 'It was nothing other than an attempt to wreck the visit,' Putin said during a televised question-and-answer session, referring to a report ahead of his visit on Tuesday that suicide bombers were preparing to assassinate him. Turns out there might have been more to it than that. Please check links: US War Leaders Implicated In Putin Assassination Attempt By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers Kremlin reports are stating today that the United States War Leaders are in a ‘state of panic’ over the unraveling of their abortive attempt to attack The Americans plan, according to these reports, was for the Russian President to be killed during the nuclear missile strike on The chilling details of these reports, however, state that immediately prior to President Putin’s October 16th visit to Iran the Kremlin was informed by high ranking US Military Officers of the intended nuclear strike against Iran, and assassination plan of Putin himself, whereupon Putin ordered Russia’s Nuclear Forces to respond with an ‘immediate’ counter-strike against American Military targets in the Middle East if the attack was launched. On October 16th, almost immediately after Putin had arrived in Iran, American Military Forces in Qatar launched a nuclear-armed missile towards the Iranian capital city of Tehran, but which, ‘almost immediately’ after the launch, was destroyed in flight and ‘explained away’ by the US Military as an ‘inadvertent and mysterious’ launch of a Patriot Missile. According to the US Army spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, and as reported by the Washington Post News Service, the Patriot Missile launch was "… unexplained and accidental launch, it is under investigation." Russian Military Intelligence reports are stating that after the aborted US nuclear missile launch against Iran, the 3-person crew of the Patriot Missile Battery in Qatar were ‘moved’ to the giant US Naval Support Activity base in Bahrain, and which after their ‘interrogation’ 2 of the US Soldiers, Genesia Mattril Gresham and Anamarie Sannicolas Camacho, were immediately killed and the third US Soldier involved, Clarence Jackson, was shot through the brain and was not expected to survive. [ These reports go on to state that after US Military investigators determined that the nuclear material used in the aborted strike against Iran came from one of their own Los Angeles Class Nuclear Submarines it was ordered back to its port in San Diego whereupon its commander was placed under arrest with several members of his crew also being charged. US reports on this incident, and as we can read as reported by the CNN News Service, state: "The commander of the nuclear-powered submarine USS Hampton has been relieved of his command amid an inquiry into misconduct by crew members, the U.S. Navy said Friday. Cmdr. Michael B. Portland lost his post "due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command," the Navy said in a statement. Cmdr. William J. Houston will replace Portland. This latest attempt by "This can be further evidenced by this past few weeks unprecedented announcement by the United States Air Force that 6 nuclear armed cruise missiles were removed, without authorization, from their secure holding facility, located in North Dakota at the Minot Air Force Base, and flown to Barksdale Air Force Base, located in Louisiana, where they were left ‘unattended’ for ‘nearly 10 hours’." So concerned has Putin become with the dangerous actions of the American War Leaders towards the Middle East that yesterday he labeled them ‘Madmen’, and further stated that the action of the US against Russia are nearing our World towards a crisis point not known since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Americas War Leaders, though, appear undaunted in their continued effort to engage the World in Total War, even to the suffering of their own people as oil continues its rapid climb to $100 a barrel and the US dollar continues its apocalyptic collapse.
NB: weazl is not a coincidence theorist |
Ghouliani's more bullshitting on 911 (and he hasn't begun to come clean yet) And reveals the farce, sham and complicity of the US selection
MSNBC: Leaked memos show Giuliani's ignorance of terrorism before 9/11
Mike Aivaz and Muriel Kane
David Shuster, substituting for Keith Olbermann as host of Countdown, reported on Thursday that Rudy Giuliani's description of himself as the only candidate who foresaw the danger posed by al Qaeda before 9/11 has now been refuted by a leaked document.
Typical of Giuliani's claims on the campaign trail is a speech he gave last summer in which he said of the pre-9/11 period, "Bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it. ... I thought it was pretty clear at the time -- but a lot of people didn't see it, couldn't see it."
Wayne Barrett, a reporter for New York's Village Voice and author of Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11, has now obtained leaked memos describing Giuliani's testimony before the 9/11 Commission which directly contradict that claim.
Barrett told Shuster that taken as a whole, Giuliani's testimony "was a confession of ignorance. He basically said, 'I knew nothing about al Qaeda.'"
For example, Giuliani acknowledged that even though he had received information on threats between 1998 and 2001, "At the time I had no idea it was al Qaeda." He further told the commission that after 9/11, "we brought in people to brief us on al Qaeda. ... We had nothing like this pre 9/11, which was a mistake."
Giuliani's testimony, like that of other witnesses describing New York City's response on 9/11, was supposed to remain secret until after the 2008 presidential election.
Barrett also emphasized Giuliani's continuing ignorance of technological systems involved in the fight against terrorism. As late as April 2004, when he testified before the commission, Giuliani admitted that he didn't know much about a New York Police Department system called ComStat -- which he's now saying he'd like to see extended nationwide. He was also unable to answer questions about the malfunctioning radios which caused many deaths among firefighters or about a repeater installed in the World Trade Center after the 1993 bombing to amplify radio communications.
"He still wasn't studying the response issues," Barrett said.
Blame anybody but US
Explosive charge blows up in US's face
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - When the United States military command accused the Iranian Quds Force in January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years, a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows.
The record also shows that the US command had considerable evidence that the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had received the technology and the training on how to use it from Hezbollah, rather than Iran.
The command, operating under close White House supervision, chose to deny these facts in making the dramatic accusation that became the main rationale for the present aggressive US stance toward Iran. Although the George W Bush administration initially limited the accusation to the Quds Force, it has recently begun to assert that top officials of the Iranian regime are responsible for arms that are killing US troops.
British and US officials observed from the beginning that the EFPs being used in Iraq closely resembled the ones used by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, both in their design and the techniques for using them.
Hezbollah was known as the world's most knowledgeable specialists in EFP manufacture and use, having perfected this during the 1990s in the military struggle with Israeli forces in Lebanon. It was widely recognized that it was Hezbollah that had passed on the expertise to Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups after the second Intifada began in 2000.
US intelligence also knew that Hezbollah was conducting the training of Mahdi Army militants on EFPs. In August 2005, Newsday published a report from correspondent Mohammed Bazzi that Shi'ite fighters had begun in early 2005 to copy Hezbollah techniques for building the bombs, as well as for carrying out roadside ambushes, citing both Iraqi and Lebanese officials.
In late November 2006, a senior intelligence official told both CNN and the New York Times that Hezbollah troops had trained as many as 2,000 Mahdi Army fighters in Lebanon.
The fact that the Mahdi Army's major military connection has always been with Hezbollah rather than Iran would also explain the presence in Iraq of the PRG-29, a shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon. Although US military briefers identified it last February as being Iranian-made, the RPG-29 is not manufactured by Iran but by the Russian Federation.
According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, RPG-29s were imported from Russia by Syria, then passed on to Hezbollah, which used them with devastating effectiveness against Israeli forces in the 2006 war. According to a June 2004 report on the well-informed military website Strategypage.com, RPG-29s were already turning up in Iraq, "apparently smuggled across the Syrian border".
The earliest EFPs appearing in Iraq in 2004 were so professionally made that they were probably constructed by Hezbollah specialists, according to a detailed account by British expert Michael Knights in Jane's Intelligence Review last year.
By late 2005, however, the British command had already found clear evidence that the Iraqi Shi'ites themselves were manufacturing their own EFPs. British Army Major General J B Dutton told reporters in November 2005 that the bombs were of varying degrees of sophistication.
Some of the EFPs required a "reasonably sophisticated factory", he said, while others required only a simple workshop, which he observed, could only mean that some of them were being made inside Iraq.
After British convoys in Maysan province were attacked by a series of EFP bombings in late May 2006, Knights recounts, British forces discovered a factory making them in Majar al-Kabir north of Basra in June.
In addition, the US military also had its own forensic evidence by the autumn of 2006 that EFPs used against its vehicles had been manufactured in Iraq, according to Knights. He cites photographic evidence of EFP strikes on US armored vehicles that "typically shows a mixture of clean penetrations from fully-formed EFP and spattering ..." That pattern reflected the fact that the locally made EFPs were imperfect, some of them forming the required shape to penetrate but some of them failing to do so.
Then US troops began finding EFP factories. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reported in the Los Angeles Times in mid-February that US troops had raided a Baghdad machine shop in November 2006 and discovered "a pile of copper discs, five inches in diameter, stamped out as part of what was clearly an ongoing order".
In a report on February 23, NBC Baghdad correspondent Jane Arraf quoted "senior military officials" as saying that US forces had "been finding an increasing number of the advanced roadside bombs being not just assembled but manufactured in machine shops here".
Nevertheless, the Bush administration decided to put the blame for the EFPs squarely on the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, after Bush agreed in autumn 2006 to target the Quds Force within Iran to make Iranian leaders feel vulnerable to US power. The allegedly exclusive Iranian manufacture of EFPs was the administration's only argument for holding the Quds Force responsible for their use against US forces.
At the February 11 military briefing presenting the case for this claim, one of the US military officials declared, "The explosive charges used by Iranian agents in Iraq need a special manufacturing process, which is available only in Iran." The briefer insisted that there was no evidence that they were being made in Iraq.
That lynchpin of the administration's EFP narrative began to break down almost immediately, however. On February 23, NBC's Arraf confronted Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, who had been out in front in January promoting the new Iranian EFP line, with the information she had obtained from other senior military officials that an increasing number of machine shops manufacturing EFPs had been discovered by US troops.
Odierno began to walk the Iranian EFP story back. He said the EFPs had "started to come from Iran", but he admitted "some of the technologies" were "probably being constructed here".
The following day, US troops found yet another EFP factory near Baqubah, with copper discs that appeared to be made with a high degree of precision, but which could not be said with any certainty to have originated in Iran.
The explosive expert who claimed at the February briefing that EFPs could only be made in Iran was then made available to the New York Times to explain away the new find. Major Marty Weber now backed down from his earlier statement and admitted that there were "copy cat" EFPs being machined in Iraq that looked identical to those allegedly made in Iran to the untrained eye.
Weber insisted that such Iraqi-made EFPs had slight imperfections which made them "much less likely to pierce armor". But NBC's Arraf had reported the previous week that a senor military official had confirmed to her that the EFPs made in Iraqi shops were indeed quite able to penetrate US armor. The impact of those weapons "isn't as clean", the official said, but they are "almost as effective" as the best-made EFPs.
The idea that only Iranian EFPs penetrate armor would be a surprise to Israeli intelligence, which has reported that EFPs manufactured by Hamas guerrillas in their own machine shops during 2006 had penetrated eight inches of Israeli steel armor in four separate incidents in September and November, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Center in Tel Aviv.
The Arraf story was ignored by the news media, and the Bush administration has continued to assert the Iranian EFP charge as though it had never been questioned.
It soon became such an accepted part of the media narrative on Iran and Iraq that the only issue about which reporters bother to ask questions is whether the top leaders of the Iranian government have approved the alleged Quds Force operation.
Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.
Original article posted here.
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - When the United States military command accused the Iranian Quds Force in January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years, a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows.
The record also shows that the US command had considerable evidence that the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had received the technology and the training on how to use it from Hezbollah, rather than Iran.
The command, operating under close White House supervision, chose to deny these facts in making the dramatic accusation that became the main rationale for the present aggressive US stance toward Iran. Although the George W Bush administration initially limited the accusation to the Quds Force, it has recently begun to assert that top officials of the Iranian regime are responsible for arms that are killing US troops.
British and US officials observed from the beginning that the EFPs being used in Iraq closely resembled the ones used by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, both in their design and the techniques for using them.
Hezbollah was known as the world's most knowledgeable specialists in EFP manufacture and use, having perfected this during the 1990s in the military struggle with Israeli forces in Lebanon. It was widely recognized that it was Hezbollah that had passed on the expertise to Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups after the second Intifada began in 2000.
US intelligence also knew that Hezbollah was conducting the training of Mahdi Army militants on EFPs. In August 2005, Newsday published a report from correspondent Mohammed Bazzi that Shi'ite fighters had begun in early 2005 to copy Hezbollah techniques for building the bombs, as well as for carrying out roadside ambushes, citing both Iraqi and Lebanese officials.
In late November 2006, a senior intelligence official told both CNN and the New York Times that Hezbollah troops had trained as many as 2,000 Mahdi Army fighters in Lebanon.
The fact that the Mahdi Army's major military connection has always been with Hezbollah rather than Iran would also explain the presence in Iraq of the PRG-29, a shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon. Although US military briefers identified it last February as being Iranian-made, the RPG-29 is not manufactured by Iran but by the Russian Federation.
According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, RPG-29s were imported from Russia by Syria, then passed on to Hezbollah, which used them with devastating effectiveness against Israeli forces in the 2006 war. According to a June 2004 report on the well-informed military website Strategypage.com, RPG-29s were already turning up in Iraq, "apparently smuggled across the Syrian border".
The earliest EFPs appearing in Iraq in 2004 were so professionally made that they were probably constructed by Hezbollah specialists, according to a detailed account by British expert Michael Knights in Jane's Intelligence Review last year.
By late 2005, however, the British command had already found clear evidence that the Iraqi Shi'ites themselves were manufacturing their own EFPs. British Army Major General J B Dutton told reporters in November 2005 that the bombs were of varying degrees of sophistication.
Some of the EFPs required a "reasonably sophisticated factory", he said, while others required only a simple workshop, which he observed, could only mean that some of them were being made inside Iraq.
After British convoys in Maysan province were attacked by a series of EFP bombings in late May 2006, Knights recounts, British forces discovered a factory making them in Majar al-Kabir north of Basra in June.
In addition, the US military also had its own forensic evidence by the autumn of 2006 that EFPs used against its vehicles had been manufactured in Iraq, according to Knights. He cites photographic evidence of EFP strikes on US armored vehicles that "typically shows a mixture of clean penetrations from fully-formed EFP and spattering ..." That pattern reflected the fact that the locally made EFPs were imperfect, some of them forming the required shape to penetrate but some of them failing to do so.
Then US troops began finding EFP factories. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reported in the Los Angeles Times in mid-February that US troops had raided a Baghdad machine shop in November 2006 and discovered "a pile of copper discs, five inches in diameter, stamped out as part of what was clearly an ongoing order".
In a report on February 23, NBC Baghdad correspondent Jane Arraf quoted "senior military officials" as saying that US forces had "been finding an increasing number of the advanced roadside bombs being not just assembled but manufactured in machine shops here".
Nevertheless, the Bush administration decided to put the blame for the EFPs squarely on the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, after Bush agreed in autumn 2006 to target the Quds Force within Iran to make Iranian leaders feel vulnerable to US power. The allegedly exclusive Iranian manufacture of EFPs was the administration's only argument for holding the Quds Force responsible for their use against US forces.
At the February 11 military briefing presenting the case for this claim, one of the US military officials declared, "The explosive charges used by Iranian agents in Iraq need a special manufacturing process, which is available only in Iran." The briefer insisted that there was no evidence that they were being made in Iraq.
That lynchpin of the administration's EFP narrative began to break down almost immediately, however. On February 23, NBC's Arraf confronted Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, who had been out in front in January promoting the new Iranian EFP line, with the information she had obtained from other senior military officials that an increasing number of machine shops manufacturing EFPs had been discovered by US troops.
Odierno began to walk the Iranian EFP story back. He said the EFPs had "started to come from Iran", but he admitted "some of the technologies" were "probably being constructed here".
The following day, US troops found yet another EFP factory near Baqubah, with copper discs that appeared to be made with a high degree of precision, but which could not be said with any certainty to have originated in Iran.
The explosive expert who claimed at the February briefing that EFPs could only be made in Iran was then made available to the New York Times to explain away the new find. Major Marty Weber now backed down from his earlier statement and admitted that there were "copy cat" EFPs being machined in Iraq that looked identical to those allegedly made in Iran to the untrained eye.
Weber insisted that such Iraqi-made EFPs had slight imperfections which made them "much less likely to pierce armor". But NBC's Arraf had reported the previous week that a senor military official had confirmed to her that the EFPs made in Iraqi shops were indeed quite able to penetrate US armor. The impact of those weapons "isn't as clean", the official said, but they are "almost as effective" as the best-made EFPs.
The idea that only Iranian EFPs penetrate armor would be a surprise to Israeli intelligence, which has reported that EFPs manufactured by Hamas guerrillas in their own machine shops during 2006 had penetrated eight inches of Israeli steel armor in four separate incidents in September and November, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Center in Tel Aviv.
The Arraf story was ignored by the news media, and the Bush administration has continued to assert the Iranian EFP charge as though it had never been questioned.
It soon became such an accepted part of the media narrative on Iran and Iraq that the only issue about which reporters bother to ask questions is whether the top leaders of the Iranian government have approved the alleged Quds Force operation.
Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.
Original article posted here.
Clinton 911 denial. How dare us? I was BORN in New York. my family LIVES in New York, and am not some Arkansas Carpetbagger. 911 was an inside job.
Bill Clinton Takes on 9/11 Truthers at Hillary Fundraiser
By Noel Sheppard | October 26, 2007 - 09:56 ET
Following in Bill Maher's footsteps, former President Bill Clinton told off some 9/11 truthers that were heckling him during a 50-minute speech he was giving at a fundraiser for his wife in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Tuesday.
Sadly, he didn't say anything about Rosie O'Donnell.
However, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, what the former President did say -- as shouts came from the crowd about 9/11 being an inside job -- was rather delicious (video available here, emphasis added, h/t NB reader Don Deskins):
Early in his speech, Clinton was sporadically heckled. One heckler shouted that 9/11 was a fraud, and Clinton bristled. "No, it wasn't a fraud. I'll be glad to talk about it if you'll shut up and let me talk." The heckling continued, and he told another heckler "these people did not come here to hear you speak. If you don't have any self-control, we can deal with that."
When a third called 9/11 an "inside job," Clinton snapped back "How dare you? I live in New York, and I know who did that. You guys have got to be careful, or you're going to give Minnesota a bad reputation."
Wow. In the span of a week, I've agreed with Bill Maher and Bill Clinton.
What's a conservative to do?
Original article posted here.
ebay: Working to selling your conversations to the CIA
EBay One of Few Companies to Lobby CIA
By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Online auctioneer eBay Inc. spent almost $2 million lobbying various departments of the federal government in the past year, including an entity rarely named on federal disclosure forms: the Central Intelligence Agency.
According to a database maintained by the Senate's public records office, eBay is one of eight groups and companies to lobby the spy agency. The company listed the CIA on a form covering its lobbying activities for the first six months of 2007.
Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said that listing was an error. But, he said the company did meet with CIA officials in the second half of 2006 to discuss amendments to a 1994 law — the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act — that required Internet phone companies to ensure their equipment can accommodate wiretaps.
EBay owns the Internet phone company Skype.
In a 2006 disclosure form, the company said it lobbied the CIA and other agencies on "law enforcement access to Internet communications."
A spokesman for CIA did not respond to a request for comment.
Only eight entities lobbied the CIA in the first half of 2007, according to the Senate's public records office, including the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy and the U.S. Awami League.
The Alliance is an industry group focused on the regulation of ozone-depleting chemicals, while the Awami League is a political party in Bangladesh.
Lockheed Martin Corp. and Sybase Inc. were the only other public companies to lobby the intelligence agency this year, according to the Senate's database.
By comparison, more than 1,100 companies and trade associations lobbied the Defense Department in the same period, while over 300 lobbied the U.S. Trade Representative's office, the Senate's database showed.
According to a disclosure form posted online Aug. 14, eBay lobbied Congress and many federal agencies in the first six months of this year, including the White House, U.S. Trade Representative, FBI, Federal Communications Commission, Internal Revenue Service and the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Defense, State and Treasury.
The company lobbied on a wide range of issues, including patent reform, copyright enforcement, data security, identity theft prevention, legislation intended to protect children from online predators, immigration reform, sales taxes, the Internet tax exemption and spectrum auctions.
The company spent $985,000 lobbying in the first half of 2007, and $890,000 in the last six months of 2006.
Under a federal law enacted in 1995, lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches. They must register with Congress within 45 days of being hired or engaging in lobbying.
Original article posted here.
By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER
WASHINGTON (AP) — Online auctioneer eBay Inc. spent almost $2 million lobbying various departments of the federal government in the past year, including an entity rarely named on federal disclosure forms: the Central Intelligence Agency.
According to a database maintained by the Senate's public records office, eBay is one of eight groups and companies to lobby the spy agency. The company listed the CIA on a form covering its lobbying activities for the first six months of 2007.
Hani Durzy, an eBay spokesman, said that listing was an error. But, he said the company did meet with CIA officials in the second half of 2006 to discuss amendments to a 1994 law — the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act — that required Internet phone companies to ensure their equipment can accommodate wiretaps.
EBay owns the Internet phone company Skype.
In a 2006 disclosure form, the company said it lobbied the CIA and other agencies on "law enforcement access to Internet communications."
A spokesman for CIA did not respond to a request for comment.
Only eight entities lobbied the CIA in the first half of 2007, according to the Senate's public records office, including the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy and the U.S. Awami League.
The Alliance is an industry group focused on the regulation of ozone-depleting chemicals, while the Awami League is a political party in Bangladesh.
Lockheed Martin Corp. and Sybase Inc. were the only other public companies to lobby the intelligence agency this year, according to the Senate's database.
By comparison, more than 1,100 companies and trade associations lobbied the Defense Department in the same period, while over 300 lobbied the U.S. Trade Representative's office, the Senate's database showed.
According to a disclosure form posted online Aug. 14, eBay lobbied Congress and many federal agencies in the first six months of this year, including the White House, U.S. Trade Representative, FBI, Federal Communications Commission, Internal Revenue Service and the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Defense, State and Treasury.
The company lobbied on a wide range of issues, including patent reform, copyright enforcement, data security, identity theft prevention, legislation intended to protect children from online predators, immigration reform, sales taxes, the Internet tax exemption and spectrum auctions.
The company spent $985,000 lobbying in the first half of 2007, and $890,000 in the last six months of 2006.
Under a federal law enacted in 1995, lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches. They must register with Congress within 45 days of being hired or engaging in lobbying.
Original article posted here.
War criminal Dummy Rummy can run but not hide
Rumsfeld hit with torture lawsuit while visiting Paris
Jason Rhyne
Former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's jaunt to France was interrupted today by an unscheduled itinerary item -- he was slapped with a criminal complaint charging him with torture.
Rumsfeld, in Paris for a discussion sponsored by the magazine Foreign Policy, was tracked down by representatives of a coalition of international human rights groups, who informed the architect of the US invasion of Iraq that they had submitted a torture suit against him in French court.
The filed documents allege that during his tenure, the former defense secretary "ordered and authorized" torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The head of one of the groups responsible for bringing the charges, the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights, told RAW STORY today by phone that the suit was a long time coming.
"We've been working on cornering Rumsfeld and getting him indicted somewhere going on three years now," said the Center's president, Michael Ratner. "Four days ago, we got confidential information he was going to be in France."
Joined by activists, attorneys for the human rights groups caught up with Rumsfeld on his way to a breakfast meeting. "He was walking down the street with just one person," said Ratner.
"Around 20 campaigners gave Rumsfeld a rowdy welcome...yelling 'murderer,' waving a banner and trying to push into the building," reports AFP.
Ratner, who wasn't personally at the scene, says his sources told him that the former defense secretary made some pre-scheduled remarks at the meeting before ducking through a door leading to the US Embassy.
According to Ratner, France has a legal responsibility under international law to prosecute Rumsfeld for torture abuses.
"If a torturer comes into your territory," he said, "there's an obligation to either prosecute the person or return him to a place where he will be prosecuted."
The rights groups notably cite three memorandums signed by the defense secretary between October 2002 and April 2003 "legimitizing the use of torture" including the "hooding" of detainees, sleep deprivation and the use of dogs.
Although his group has been a part of previous attempts to bring charges against Rumsfeld, including two former tries in Germany, Ratner believes French court has the highest chance of success.
"There are Guantananamo detainees who were tortured that are living in France," he said. "It gives French courts another reason to prosecute."
Ratner says Europe is "getting very hot for Rumsfeld," and suggests a French court could at least issue its version of a subpoena.
"We hope that this case will move forward," he said, "especially as the US says it can continue to torture people."
Other groups involved in the complaint include the International Federation of Human Rights, the French League for Human Rights and Germany's European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.
More details about the lawsuit are available at the website of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Original article posted here.
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