destruction

Two Percent At a press conference on October 4, President Bush argued that he was the right person to bridge the racial divide in America: You address the racial divide in a variety of ways. And, obviously, the tone matters from leadership. It matters what leaders say. It matters that somebody, first of all, understands there’s a problem and is willing to talk about it. And I will continue to do so as the President. Apparently, it isn’t working so well. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that just 2 percent of African-Americans approve of his leadership. NBC’s Tim Russert — who called the number “a dramatic setback” — looked into it, and he could not “find a pollster who can remember any President ever getting just 2 percent approval from African-Americans.” Watch in QuickTime Streaming. To be fair, the margin of error on the poll is 3.4%. So Bush’s actual approval among African Americans could be anywhere from -1.4% to 5.4%. Transcript below: RUSSERT: And Matt, the most astounding number in this: 2 percent – just 2 percent - of African-Americans give George Bush a positive rating for his performance as President. The memories of Katrina very much in their minds. LAUER: Is that what this is all about? I mean, obviously that is just a startling number, 2 percent of African-Americans. Is this all about the aftermath of Katrina? RUSSERT: Well, the imagery of that along with the economy and fuel prices and Iraq, but that event, Matt, really did have a searing effect. George Bush and the Republican Party has tried very hard to reach out to African-American voters, but this is a very dramatic setback. I cannot find a pollster who can remember any President ever getting just 2 percent approval from African-Americans.

We need to be told When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth, the consequences can be catastrophic - as one largely forgotten instance demonstrates. By John Pilger 10/13/05 "ICH" -- -- ''The propagandist's purpose," wrote Aldous Huxley, "is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." The British, who invented modern war propaganda and inspired Joseph Goebbels, were specialists in the field. At the height of the slaughter known as the First World War, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided to C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know." What has changed? "If we had all known then what we know now," said the New York Times on 24 August, "the invasion [of Iraq] would have been stopped by a popular outcry." The admission was saying, in effect, that powerful newspapers, like powerful broadcasting organisations, had betrayed their readers and viewers and listeners by not finding out - by amplifying the lies of Bush and Blair instead of challenging and exposing them. The direct consequences were a criminal invasion called "Shock and Awe" and the dehumanising of a whole nation. This remains largely an unspoken shame in Britain, especially at the BBC, which continues to boast about its rigour and objectivity while echoing a corrupt and lying government, as it did before the invasion. For evidence of this, there are two academic studies available - though the capitulation of broadcast journalism ought to be obvious to any discerning viewer, night after night, as "embedded" reporting justifies murderous attacks on Iraqi towns and villages as "rooting out insurgents" and swallows British army propaganda designed to distract from its disaster, while preparing us for attacks on Iran and Syria. Like the New York Times and most of the American media, had the BBC done its job, many thousands of innocent people almost certainly would be alive today. When will important journalists cease to be establishment managers and analyse and confront the critical part they play in the violence of rapacious governments? An anniversary provides an opportunity. Forty years ago this month, Major General Suharto began a seizure of power in Indonesia by unleashing a wave of killings that the CIA described as "the worst mass murders of the second half of the 20th century". Much of this episode was never reported and remains secret. None of the reports of recent terror attacks against tourists in Bali mentioned the fact that near the major hotels were the mass graves of some of an estimated 80,000 people killed by mobs orchestrated by Suharto and backed by the American and British governments. Indeed, the collaboration of western governments, together with the role of western business, laid the pattern for subsequent Anglo-American violence across the world: such as Chile in 1973, when Augusto Pinochet's bloody coup was backed in Washington and London; the arming of the shah of Iran and the creation of his secret police; and the lavish and meticulous backing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, including black propaganda by the Foreign Office which sought to discredit press reports that he had used nerve gas against the Kurdish village of Halabja. In 1965, in Indonesia, the American embassy furnished General Suharto with roughly 5,000 names. These were people for assassination, and a senior American diplomat checked off the names as they were killed or captured. Most were members of the PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party. Having already armed and equipped Suharto's army, Washington secretly flew in state-of-the-art communication equipment whose high frequencies were known to the CIA and the National Security Council advising the president, Lyndon B Johnson. Not only did this allow Suharto's generals to co-ordinate the massacres, it meant that the highest echelons of the US administration were listening in. The Americans worked closely with the British. The British ambassador in Jakarta, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, cabled the Foreign Office: "I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change." The "little shooting" saw off between half a million and a million people. However, it was in the field of propaganda, of "managing" the media and eradicating the victims from people's memory in the west, that the British shone. British intelligence officers outlined how the British press and the BBC could be manipulated. "Treatment will need to be subtle," they wrote, "eg, a) all activities should be strictly unattributable, British [government] participation or co-operation should be carefully concealed." To achieve this, the Foreign Office opened a branch of its Information Research Department (IRD) in Singapore. The IRD was a top-secret, cold war propaganda unit headed by Norman Reddaway, one of Her Majesty's most experienced liars. Reddaway and his colleagues manipulated the "embedded" press and the BBC so expertly that he boasted to Gilchrist in a secret message that the fake story he had promoted - that a communist takeover was imminent in Indonesia - "went all over the world and back again". He described how an experienced Sunday newspaper journalist agreed "to give exactly your angle on events in his article . . . ie, that this was a kid-glove coup without butchery". These lies, bragged Reddaway, could be "put almost instantly back to Indonesia via the BBC". Prevented from entering Indonesia, Roland Challis, the BBC's south-east Asia corres-pondent, was unaware of the slaughter. "My British sources purported not to know what was going on," Challis told me, "but they knew what the American plan was. There were bodies being washed up on the lawns of the British consulate in Surabaya, and British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so that they could take part in this terrible holocaust. It was only later that we learned that the American embassy was supplying names and ticking them off as they were killed. There was a deal, you see. In establishing the Suharto regime, the involvement of the IMF and the World Bank was part of it . . . Suharto would bring them back. That was the deal." The bloodbath was ignored almost entirely by the BBC and the rest of the western media. The headline news was that "communism" had been overthrown in Indonesia, which, Time reported, "is the west's best news in Asia". In November 1967, at a conference in Geneva overseen by the billionaire banker David Rockefeller, the booty was handed out. All the corporate giants were represented, from General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank and US Steel to ICI and British American Tobacco. With Suharto's connivance, the natural riches of his country were carved up. Suharto's cut was considerable. When he was finally overthrown in 1998, it was estimated that he had up to $10bn in foreign banks, or more than 10 per cent of Indonesia's foreign debt. When I was last in Jakarta, I walked to the end of his leafy street and caught sight of the mansion where the mass murderer now lives in luxury. As Saddam Hussein heads for his own show trial on 19 October, he must ask himself where he went wrong. Compared with Suharto's crimes, Saddam's seem second-division. With British-supplied Hawk jets and machine-guns, Suharto's army went on to crush the life out of a quarter of the population of East Timor: 200,000 people. Using the same Hawk jets and machine-guns, the same genocidal army is now attempting to crush the life out of the resistance movement in West Papua and protect the Freeport company, which is mining a mountain of copper in the province. (Henry Kissinger is "director emeritus".) Some 100,000 Papuans, 18 per cent of the population, have been killed; yet this British-backed "project", as new Labour likes to say, is almost never reported. What happened in Indonesia, and continues to happen, is almost a mirror image of the attack on Iraq. Both countries have riches coveted by the west; both had dictators installed by the west to facilitate the passage of their resources; and in both countries, blood-drenched Anglo-American actions have been disguised by propaganda willingly provided by journalists prepared to draw the necessary distinctions between Saddam's regime ("monstrous") and Suharto's ("moderate" and "stable"). Since the invasion of Iraq, I have spoken to a number of principled journalists working in the pro-war media, including the BBC, who say that they and many others "lie awake at night" and want to speak out and resume being real journalists. I suggest now is the time. John Pilger's book Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its triumphs is published in paperback by Vintage. To contact the Free West Papua Campaign, e-mail [samoxen@aol.com] or phone 01865 241 1200

Please Don’t Support My Troop By Michael Gaddy 10/12/05 "ICH" -- -- My son returned from Iraq last weekend after a year’s service. I confess to breathing much easier now that he is out of that quagmire. I have a personal request for all of you George W. Bush supporters and Christian warhawks: please do not support my troop. I have visions and aspirations of having him around, seeing him settle down and start a family at some point, and being near as I grow older. Your support would mean that he would be sent back to this war started and continued on lies to become a target for those who would rather live their lives without the interference of a foreign, empire-seeking, new-world-order, invader. Actually, my son completed his contractual obligation to the military several months ago, but thanks to your support, he has been stop-lossed and has no idea when he will be allowed to resign his commission. Why would I not want your support for my troop, you ask? Considering your support of our criminal government has led to the death, destruction and misery of millions of people on this planet, that is basically a no-brainer. Of course you supported the troops back in WWII and thought that was a good thing, but somewhere along the line your support of the State led to the leaving behind of over 20,000 of our soldiers, those liberated from German POW camps by the Russians, never to be heard from again. I’m sure those families appreciated your support. Back in 1950, you supported my father as he left my mother and me to go to war in Korea. He never returned, giving his life somewhere in that foreign land. Because of the loss of my father, my mother put a vodka bottle to her head and pulled the trigger. Your wonderful support took both my parents. Thanks again! Your continued support in Korea led to the abandonment of over 8,000 POW’s and MIA’s to the enemy. Do you wonder why many find your support lacking? Just ask the families of those who have been left behind by this government you support blindly. Some of you supported us as we went to the jungles of Southeast Asia; some chose not to. The results were the same; with or without your support, our criminal government cares nothing for those in uniform! Those of you who supported us claimed that those who didn’t were responsible for us losing the war. Horse Apples! We lost that war for the same reason we will lose the one in Iraq: wars started on lies to increase the bottom line of campaign contributors are seldom won because the war must be extended for as long as possible to insure the corporatocracy gets a full return on its money. There is a black granite wall in DC so all of you warhawks can go there and read the names of the 58,000+ charred souls you killed with your support. Just exactly where did that get us? Does Vietnam have a "democracy" today? Your continued support for a corrupt government led to over 2,000 military personnel being left behind in that war; with grieving families never knowing what happened to their loved ones. Your support in Beirut cost the lives of hundreds of Marines and Soldiers as people who wanted us to hell out of their country destroyed our soldiers' poorly protected barracks. Please give me the upside to this loss. Is Lebanon better off today because those good soldiers gave their lives? I can still see the faces of the young Army Rangers that were killed in the illegal invasion of Panama. With your support, they gave their lives to assist in serving a drug warrant on a foreign Head of State, one our government had supported for years. Is it not ironic that we later went to war with Iraq for doing to Kuwait the same thing you supported our soldiers doing to Panama? Your wonderful support led to the unspeakable horrors inflicted on those soldiers who were in Somalia! You should be especially proud of that one. Those dead soldiers dragged through the streets would not have been there had it not been for your "support." If you have trouble remembering this, some time spent with the book Black Hawk Down should jog your memory. Only in a true Orwellian society could citizens send off poorly trained and equipped soldiers, serving in a politically correct military, led by a civilian leadership that has spent the majority of their adult lives in a revolving door between the military industrial complex and government service, and call the damn thing, "supporting the troops." Why do we call people who prefer to live their lives without having their land bombed, their women, children and old folks killed, their national infrastructure destroyed and foreign soldiers on their soil, terrorists? Have you ever wondered what word the American Indian had for the U.S. government back in the middle to late 19th Century? History tells us we referred to them as "savages" and "those Red Devils" because they fought and died for their land and their culture. What did our ancestors call the British who were doing to the colonists precisely what our government does to others today? Time to come clean, America: you do not in any way support troops by sending them to die for Halliburton and Bechtel’s bottom line. This is analogous to sending your teenager out in a car with no brakes and bald tires, accompanied by a child rapist high on crystal meth, and calling that "supporting" your children. Rush Limbaugh was actually right for a change: there can be no support for the troops without supporting the war and the government that sent them there. Your misplaced support for the troops is actually support for a criminal enterprise in which the military serves as the enforcement arm of that enterprise. If you want to support the troops, do not allow the State to send them to their deaths for corporate profits in wars sired by lies! Michael Gaddy, <mgnc46@yahoo.com> is an U.S. Army veteran of Vietnam, Grenada, and Beirut, lives in the Four Corners area of the American Southwest.

"President Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People..." DAMN RIGHT! AND THAT’S NOT THE HALF OF IT Revolution #018, October 16, 2005, posted at revcom.us When Kanye West dared to tell the truth on national network television, people like Laura Bush were scandalized. . . but the rest of us were inspired. For the oppressed and for those who hate oppression, for all enemies of racism and hypocrisy, it was a great moment. But, without taking anything away from Kanye West, the whole truth goes a lot deeper than "doesn’t care." George W. Bush has a whole program for Black people that fits into his overall fascist agenda. This program has strong genocidal implications and people within it who support genocide for Black people. The outrages around Hurricane Katrina provide a glimpse of that progam--and why it is so urgent to stop it. The Bush Regime must be driven out. Katrina First off, Bush allowed all the death and misery after Katrina to go down the way it did. He was fine with the people trapped in the city, he was fine with the bodies floating in the water, and he was fine with masses of poor and working people--in their great majority Black--forced into truly desperate and traumatic conditions. Bush knew damn well what was up when he told his head of FEMA, Michael Brown, "you’re doing a great job, Brownie"--and just because he had to dump Brown a few days later in the face of mass outrage doesn’t change that. In fact, the whole government knew for years--both from their own studies and from hundreds of scientific studies and journalistic investigations--exactly what would happen. They predicted that the Black neighborhood of the 9th Ward, and the mainly working class neighborhood of St. Bernard, would be flushed away . . . and that the industrial districts and the wealthy neighborhoods would make it through. The levees were built and reinforced in such a way as to make that all but inevitable. In fact, if New Orleans had been hit with the "Category 5" storm that people were expecting, it’s estimated that 85,000 to 100,000 people would have been drowned. Think about it--100,000 people. But what did they do with all their advance knowledge? Congress actually slashed the funds for the levees, and then Bush cut them some more! And what has gone on since? Masses of Black people have been driven out of New Orleans, herded into shelters and now dispersed all over the country. In an outrage recalling slavery days, many people are still separated from their loved ones. Some have been put in jail, as old warrants get run on them when they check into the shelters. Some have even been deported when they went to the shelters. People have been put into what are in fact refugee camps, far from the family ties and social networks that sustain them, where the only jobs are minimum-wage and where the authorities fan suspicion and hatred against "the newcomers." Within all this, the level of repression and control is huge and intense--from the soldiers with bayonets patrolling the streets of New Orleans to the atmosphere in the shelters, where no criticism of the government is allowed and where government agents snitch and spread lies. At the same time, Bush has funneled money into extreme right-wing religious groups in the form of "helping them do charitable works," developing "charter schools," etc. He has suspended any affirmative action regulations in handing out contracts in New Orleans, and he has overruled federal laws that mandate a living wage for workers on federally funded projects. Meanwhile the master plan for New Orleans--to rebuild it as a Las Vegas on the Mississippi, with just enough Black people to service the bars and casinos and the rest dispersed to who-knows-where--goes forward at warp speed. Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker let the cat out of the bag when he said, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did." Under Bush, the floodwaters in New Orleans got harnessed to "ethnic cleansing." But again, it was and is more than that: it is a preview of the future he has in mind. An Overall Attack To understand this, we have to step back a bit. Despite the struggles of the ‘60s, and despite the growth of the Black middle class, the conditions for the masses have either remained the same or actually become much much worse. This is connected to changes in global capitalism and in society as a whole. (See "The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy...And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer," by Bob Avakian, Revolutionary Worker #1255 [October 17, 2004].) In the face of those changes, the ruling class as a whole--both the Democrats and Republicans--have over the past 25 years agreed on a certain agenda to deal with African-Americans. The key elements have included flooding the inner cities with drugs while unleashing police terror; massively imprisoning Black youth (from under 100,000 in 1970 to over 1 million today!); slashing social services; and then systematically blaming the masses of Black people themselves for the very situation created by the rulers. Again, both the Democrats and Republicans agree on the key elements of this--but Bush has carried some of this further. These have included: the further cuts in public housing andhealth care, and the plan to destroy Social Security; the "No Child Left Behind" program, which in essence aims to drive a huge section of youth out of school and shut down public education in large parts of the inner cities--what Jonathan Kozol calls called "The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America"; the systematic elimination of any form of Black political organization not under Bush’s direct control, extending to systematic attempts to deprive millions of Black people of even the right to vote, through legislation, police intimidation, and fraud--both disguised and shamelessly open. Again, Bush’s plan for the aftermath of Katrina illustrates all of this. Rebuild public housing, but in a way that actually provides decent shelter and support for people? Hell no, says Bush; instead, promise people free land and the chance to own your own homes, while in reality give the land to the big real estate interests. Increase funding for public schools, but in a way that would actually educate our children for something beyond a life in the army, low-wage jobs, prison, or all three? Hell no, says Bush; instead pour money into the "charter schools", in which kids get the same lousy education but with forced religious--and political--indoctrination added to it. Immediately find the ways to reunite families and enable people to return to their homes, and the friends and relatives who sustain them? Hell no, says Bush; promise them 2000 dollars and then disperse them to "east-hell-and-gone," where they are totally isolated--and therefore unable to speak out and act with any effectiveness. The "Armies of Compassion," and The Buildup of a Christian Fascist Core All this is part of a larger agenda. Bush represents forces in the ruling class of this country which wants a much more openly imperialist policy toward the world, and a fascist form of rule within the U.S. They have a built up a Christian fascist movement to serve as a battering ram for this program, and this movement has become a driving force inside the Bush Regime. Christian fascists are no ordinary Christians. They are dangerous fanatics who aim to make the U.S. a religious dictatorship and to force this upon the world. And these Christian fascists are not going to be satisfied, as Bob Avakian has written, until this country is ruled as "a Biblically based, militarized, patriarchal and male supremacist, and yes, white supremacist society--that is in essence the Christian Fascist program." (See Revolution #1, May 1, 2005, "Changes in the World and the ‘Clash of Civilizations’–Within This Civilization.") The racist and even genocidal edge of this program can again be seen in what went down after Katrina. What does it mean when a Republican Congressman says that the flood was god’s attempt to get rid of public housing? What does it mean when fascists and racists are given control of the radio, as well as TV outlets like FOX News, to spread lies (like the baby-raping rumor) and incite backward white people to vigilante, Klan-type violence? What does it mean when a commander of troops in New Orleans says that he is preparing for a "little Somalia?" What does it mean when the president’s own mother says that the ordeal of the hurricane, and the diplacement that followed, was good for "these people?" What does it mean when William Bennett, a former cabinet official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and a major "player" in the Republican Party, feels that he can and must float the idea that "if you wanted to reduce crime . . . you could abort every Black baby in this country?" And what does it mean when Bush himself refuses to comment on any of these things, other than to mildly label--through a spokesperson, yet--Bennett’s outrageous call for genocide "inappropriate?" It means that the Bush regime has seized on Hurricane Katrina to justify and even call for extreme and even genocidal measures against Black people, whipping up its social base and trying to make these ideas acceptable in society broadly. What does it mean when Bush uses Katrina to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to "charities" that are nothing more than fronts for Christian Fascist organizations? To take just one example, FEMA put Pat Robertson’s charity as the number three recommended fund to give to. Robertson is not a nobody, but a major figure in the Republican Party and in the Christian Fascist movement in particular. He has called for replacing the current penal system with public whipping and the execution of people who "defile the land" and "destroy the fabric of society" through "unseemly acts." As Bob Avakian has pointed out: "It is necessary to place this in the context of American society today, in which, through conscious governmental policy as well as the "normal operation" of the laws of capitalist accumulation and competition, whole sections of people are being consigned to the ranks of "unemployables," people for whom the only viable alternative within this system may be participation in the undergound economy. With this in mind, we cannot avoid recognizing that the logic of Robertson’s call for applying "the biblical model" for crime and punishment involves an unmistakable suggestion of a "final solution" against the masses of people in the inner cities..." ("The Truth About Right-Wing Conspiracy...And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer," Revolutionary Worker #1255 [October 17, 2004].) It’s important here to remember that things in Germany didn’t just jump from Hitler’s election in 1933 to the gas chambers in 1941. There was a process and there was, to quote Richard Pryor, "a logic to the logic." And part of the process was for Hitler to let his minions get out there with the open calls to kill the Jews, while he himself played at being "above it all." Sound familiar? Betrayers From Within But the Bush Regime is also building up a fascist social and political machine within the Black community. In particular, through his faith-based initiative program, as well as the machinery of the Republican Party, Bush has built up a political machine of reactionary preachers. These preachers get big financial grants to "provide services." But their main services are spreading ignorance and bigotry, and snitching for the powers-that-be. Again, Katrina provides a good idea of what this is all about. First, Bush drew on a number of Black preachers--some who were solidly in his machine, some who were "independent"--to meet with him and even to travel with him in the shelters, as "political bodyguards." Mind you, this at a time when Bush was finally standing naked before the entire world as the smirking racist criminal he really is. But, in the words of Malcolm X, "these Uncle Toms can’t pass up the coffee"--and in doing so, they provided Bush with invaluable political camouflage. This was an act of political treason to the masses. Second, these preachers have been trying to blame the masses themselves for the hurricane. . . and to get the Bush regime off the hook! Party members and supporters around the country tell of preachers who are claiming that "God did this to punish the people of New Orleans" for--take your pick--gambling, abortions, drugs, Mardi Gras, gay pride days, or even voodoo. This is nonsense, but it is dangerous nonsense indeed. When people question why this happened, these prostituted preachers tell the people that they brought this on themselves and somehow deserved it. When people want to struggle, these puppets instruct them to "pray to the lord" and even to "give thanks" for "new opportunities!" These bootlickers have actively organized to prevent people from struggling or even questioning, including through snitching on the people who are organizing to resist. All this has confused and misdirected some people, it has helped the authorities in their repression, and it is nothing less than CRIMINAL BETRAYAL. There was no "divine hand" in Katrina. It was a very un -mysterious natural disaster, easily explained by science (which is another thing the Bush Regime has been attacking). What happened after it hit is also explainable: the "earthly powers" that run this system first abandoned the masses and then used the disaster to push their agenda of exploitation, oppression and fascism. These people remind us of nothing so much as the Judenrat under the Nazis--Jews who were given special perks and power by the Nazis and who convinced themselves that things would go better for everyone if they rounded up their fellow Jews, instead of forcing the Nazis to do it. These Judenrat also told people not to resist and worked against and even snitched on those who did. Of course, by the end, the Judenrat betrayers also ended up in the Nazi gas chambers. History has judged the Judenrat harshly, and will likewise judge their present-day counterparts. Drive Out the Bush Regime! All this comes on top of a host of other outrages: the war in Iraq, the use and legitimation of torture, the systematic attempts to force women and gay people further into positions of oppression, and so on. The fact is this: WE CANNOT TOLERATE THREE MORE YEARS OF THE BUSH REGIME AND ITS PROGRAM! And there IS something to do about this. In this paper, there is the call for massive political mobilization on November 2 to actually drive out the Bush Regime. That is a day in which everyone who opposes this regime MUST act, with unity and daring. It is a serious call designed to get things to a whole other place in this country--to unite tens and then hundreds of thousands, and then millions, to actually OUST this regime. We are not putting our hopes and energies into some politician. Instead, we must rely on ourselves to draw forward the millions and tens of millions who really do hate where the society is heading and to change the whole political direction of this country. November 2 will be the beginning of that, the Day that history starts to change--"a giant first step in forcing Bush to step down and a powerful announcement that we will not stop until he does so." Katrina tore the mask off the "compassionate conservative" and showed the real ugly face of the Bush regime. Bush is now trying to recoup, to seize on Katrina for his own reasons and with his own agenda. He is desperate, and desperate people do desperate things. But Katrina also unleashed something else--serious outrage, serious questions and a serious new spirit of resistance. Take that outrage and spirit to the next level. On to November 2. DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME! A Positive Program Many of you reading this will have gotten this paper at the Millions More events in Washington, D.C. You have come out in opposition to the oppression now going on and in the hope of a positive program. There is nothing more positive right now than getting rid of the Bush Regime. There is nothing more urgent right now than joining with the movement to do that, taking the word back to where you live and work and go to school, and mobilizing others. Read the Call to November 2 in this issue, and take hundreds of them home with you. Go to the worldcantwait.org website every day, finding out the news and getting connected to this movement. Find the people in your community who are building this . . . or start your own group. Make your plans for November 2, and organize others to go with you. Some Questions For Those Who Say Katrina Was "God’s Punishment" We would like to ask you respected gentlemen (and ladies) of the cloth who have said that Katrina is god’s punishment: did Black people "bring slavery on themselves"? Was this too a "divine punishment?" And did Black people pray their way out of it? Or was slavery brought on by the needs of this depraved capitalist system, and ended only through a civil war in which the slaves themselves rose up and went to the very front lines, dying out of all proportion to their numbers?

"Threats," Clampdowns, and Torture Revolution #018, October 16, 2005, posted at revcom.us On Thursday October 6, New York City Mayor Bloomberg announced a "threat to NYC subways." Thousands of extra police officers took over the city’s subway system, pulling people out of rush-hour crowds, racially profiling travelers, rifling through people’s bags, backpacks, and briefcases. Days after the supposed threat was to take place, and even though the supposed threat had nothing to do with any sporting event, police will blanket Game Four of the American League playoffs at Yankee Stadium with teams of "counter-terror" officers. NYPD "Atlas teams" will board trains bound for the game and patrol around the stadium. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff--fresh from "protecting" the people of New Orleans--applauded the crackdown, saying "The security precautions being taken by Mayor Bloomberg and other New York officials are absolutely an appropriate response." Mayor Bloomberg called the threat, on which he based the clampdown, the most specific terrorist threat that New York officials had received. But the Department of Homeland Security memo said that Homeland Security and FBI agents doubted the credibility of the threat. Next, think about the source of the "information" on which this crackdown was based. Supposedly acting on an "anonymous tip," the U.S. authorities arrested three Iraqis -- and the "details" of the "threat" were then extracted from them. How do you suppose this "information," whatever that would mean, was obtained from these "captured Iraqis"? Bush is currently threatening to veto a law that would even in words prohibit U.S. troops and agents from carrying out "torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." (see "Bush, Torture, and No Referee" on page 7).The San Francisco Chronicle reported that at least 45 detainees in Iraq have died in U.S. custody since Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was informed of the abuses at Abu Ghraib on January 16, 2004. And the torture that takes place in the many U.S. secret detention centers around Iraq and in the region is reportedly much worse than even the horrors that have been revealed in the photos from Abu Ghraib. *** Some argue there is a "trade-off" between the increasing control over people’s lives, and "security." Instead, this whole incident reveals an agenda to manufacture and maintain a constant state of "terror alerts" to get the populace to go along with having police rifle through their bags and run their lives. And beneath that, a global network of torture backed by presidential veto. Does accepting all this involve a "trade-off between security and civil liberties?" Or a pact with the devil?

"We can support our troops without supporting our president." -- FORMER Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott

That's because underqualified people are good for high level goverment positions so as long as they say how high when Bush says jump.

Bush Discredits Everything – Including the Bushes by Jack Kenny Help us, Lord! Is there anything George W. Bush has not yet discredited? Perhaps, in a perverse sort of way, he has succeeded in not discrediting his father. Indeed, the longer Bush ’43 carries on his fanatical war, redoubling his efforts when he has forgotten his aim, and "grows" the national debt, the more credible Bush ’41 looks by comparison. But the same kind of comparison makes Carter ’39 look like a tower of competence and Dukakis "00" appears a prophet before his time. Do you remember what Michael Dukakis said when he stood before the delegates and the nation to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1988? He said the election would not be about ideology, but about competence. He then proceeded to get buried by the most ideologically driven campaign in memory. But four years later, the chickens came home to roost. At the convention in Madison Square Garden that first nominated Bill Clinton, New York Governor Mario Cuomo gave an interview in which he said that Republicans were supposed to be good at two things: waging war and managing money. They still looked pretty competent when it came to war, he conceded, but even after the much publicized "biggest tax increase in American history" the "borrow and spend" Bush administration, with its $200 billion and $300 billion deficits, was giving the lie to the Republicans’ claim to "fiscal conservatism." So today we have George the son (Spare us, O Lord, George the Holy Ghost) with deficits far exceeding those of his father. (As I have said before, money doesn’t grow on trees in Washington, but deficits grow under Bushes.) And this president, Lyndon Baines Bush, along with Defense Secretary Donald "Strange" "McNaRummy" (to borrow Maureen Dowd’s nickname for the defense chief) has created his own little Vietnam in an ill-conceived invasion and poorly planned occupation of a country that was neither attacking nor threatening to attack us. We are the aggressors in the war we are in with no idea of how or when we’re going to get out. That leaves us to wonder what claim the Republicans have left to any competence at all. It would be bad enough if this Republican president had merely devalued, as Nixon did, the currency. But he has a more all-encompassing reverse Midas touch. He devalues and discredits everything he touches. He has even devalued "values" as an issue for Republicans. Republicans got that cute idea a few election cycles ago. They stopped taking seriously, if they ever had, their own rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, reducing the size of government, yadda, yadda yadda! They decided the issue to beat the Democrats with was "values," sometimes called "family values." Nobody could quite tell you what that meant, but if you complained of its ambiguity, Republicans of the "Poppy" Bush variety, circa 1992, would tell you it was because you weren’t looking at it in the right "thousand points of light." Four years earlier, Dukakis had complained about that verbal evasion. "The issue (or the question) was housing and he’s talking about a thousand points of light," Dukakis complained in the first of their two debates. "I don’t even know what that means!" (Whoever played Dukakis in a Saturday Night Live debate said it even better: "I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy!") As we know, "Poppy" and the Republicans lost that ’92 election, but never mind. You can blame it on Ross Perot (as though those Perot voters would have voted for Bush!). But the "values" theme has endured. As someone said of the difference between Reagan and the Democrats, Reagan understood that while congressional politics is largely about who gets what, presidential politics is essentially a debate about who we are and what we cherish as a people. Values matter. So what do we value as Americans? What do we cherish, according to the "values" the Republicans uphold? Well, forget frugality or a responsible handling of the people’s money. There may be a few Republican "deficit hawks" left in Congress, but they are very few and at the presidential level, the party is being run by triple-digit deficit lovers and deficits-don’t-matter dingbats. We used to hold more or less loosely to the value of peace and to the belief we would go to war only "as a last resort." Forget that, too. How about the ethical treatment of prisoners? Torture is something the Japanese did and the Chinese, surely the Vietnamese and, of course, the Russians. But not America, right? America is humane, decent and respects fair play, right? Well, okay, let’s not carry this "values" thing too far. The U.S. Senate last week attached an amendment to the mammoth ($440 billion) defense appropriation bill, outlawing the use of "cruel and inhumane" treatment of prisoners captured by the United States in our ongoing, and apparently endless, "war on terror." It was sponsored, appropriately enough, by Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, a former Navy pilot who was held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for several years. One of the reasons why so many military men favor humane treatment of the prisoners we capture is that it increases the chances that our own military personnel will be treated humanely when they are captured by the enemy. The measure passed the Senate 90-9. The House version of the appropriation bill has no such provision. But the Bush administration apparently believes at least an occasional use of torture will enable us to extract information from prisoners that may save American lives. So George W. Bush, our great "values" president, the "compassionate conservative," the champion of "life" (as long as it doesn’t get in the way of our compassionate and conservative mortars and rockets, bombs, tanks and planes) has threatened to veto the defense bill if it reaches his desk with the Senate amendment attached. Oh, my! That is quite a threat, coming from a president who, in his nearly five years in the White House, has yet to veto anything. He has never seen an appropriations bill too pork-laden for him to sign. He has never met a blatantly unconstitutional measure like the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill that he would not sign. But give him a defense bill banning the use of torture and the Maximum Leader will find his veto pen, and compassion be damned! What a wonderful statement to the world. What a wonderful tool for propaganda! Won’t this be a marvelous way for America to win "hearts and minds" for Democracy in the Arab world. What an ingenious way to remind the world that what Lord Acton said of men is also true of nations: "Power corrupts men; absolute power corrupts absolutely." October 13, 2005 Manchester, NH, resident Jack Kenny [send him mail] is a freelance writer. Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com Jack Kenny Archives http://www.lewrockwell.com/kenny/kenny16.html

World > Terrorism & Security posted October 11, 2005 at 11:30 a.m. Pentagon wants new spying powers in US Pentagon says it won't spy on 'innocent' Americans, but critics say past record shows this is false. By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com Claiming it needs greater latitude for the war on terror, the US Senate Intelligence Committee has approved a request from the Pentagon for the right to "covertly" gather intelligence on US citizens in order to determine whether they can recruit them as informants, without telling them that they are doing so on behalf of the US government. Reuters reported Friday that the Pentagon said the measure, which is aimed at the Muslim community in the US, could help them fight insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We believe there are people in the United States who have information of value to us," said Jim Schmidli, deputy general counsel for operations at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. "That information is within different ethnic communities in this country -- recent additions to our population from distressed areas of the world, primarily the Middle East." But civil libertarians and leaders of the Muslim community charge, however, that the Pentagon is using the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to reclaim domestic spying powers that Congress had taken away from it after those powers were abused to spy on Americans during the Vietnam era. The intelligence committee has backed the request as part of the 2006 intelligence spending authorization bill. The full Senate will take up the bill later this month. The Pentagon's request was not included in the House version of the bill, which was passed in June. The bill will now go to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Newsweek reported recently that this is not the first time the Pentagon has asked for these powers. The provision was included in last year’s version of the same bill, but was knocked out after its details were reported by Newsweek and critics charged it could lead to “spying†on US citizens. But late last month, with no public hearings or debate, a similar amendment was put back into the same authorization bill—an annual measure governing US intelligence agencies—at the request of the Pentagon. A copy of the 104-page committee bill, which has yet to be voted on by the full Senate, did not become public until last week. Newsweek also reported that the committee included two other controversial amendments in the spending bill: one that would allow intelligence agencies greater access to databases on US citizens, and one that would grant the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency the right not to disclose "operational files" under the Freedom of Information Act. The Los Angeles Times reports that supporters of the bill say it gives Pentagon intelligence officers the same authority that the CIA has to approach Americans abroad. The CIA cannot spy on US citizens, but its agents "routinely approach American business executives and overseas travelers to provide information on foreign targets." The Washington Post reported Saturday that the Pentagon defended its request for the new powers last week, saying that as the Pentagon expands its role in counterterrorism, it needs more flexibility. "This is not about spying on Americans," [DIA general counsel George Peirce] said in an interview in which he defended legislative language approved last week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence ..."We are not asking for the moon," Peirce said. "We only want to assess their suitability as a source, person to person" and at the same time "protect the ID and safety of our officers." The CIA and the FBI already have such authority, he added, and the [Defense Intelligence Agency] needs it "to develop critical leads" because "there is more than enough work for all of us to do." In a separate article, the Post reports that the idea has not been well received in the US Muslim community, or by other critics of the new power. "This has a back-alley, dead-of-night feel to it that I don't think would be received well by the Muslim community," said Ibrahim Cooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations. Lisa Graves of the American Civil Liberties Union scoffed at a defense official's assertion that the proposed change would not allow for carte blanche Pentagon spying inside the United States. "That's some spin," Graves said. "The change would allow them to gather information on Americans surreptitiously. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck." In late September, The New York Times reported that Republican members of Congress were expressing concerns that the Pentagon "may be carrying out new intelligence activities through programs intended to escape oversight from Congress and the new director of national intelligence," John D. Negroponte. “We see indications that the [Pentagon] is trying to create parallel functions to what is going on in intelligence, but is calling it something else,†Rep. Peter Hoekstra ® of Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. Mr. Hoekstra said he believed the activities were designed to "obscure" the Pentagon's intelligence activities in order to keep them out of Mr. Negroponte's jurisdiction. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1011/dailyUpdate.html

Iraq rebuilding slows as U.S. money for projects dries up By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY Mon Oct 10, 7:33 AM ET On paper, the Iraqi Army barracks was a gleaming example of the future Iraq. The plans called for a two-story, air-conditioned barracks housing 850 soldiers, a movie theater, classrooms, basketball courts, a shooting range, even an officer's club. But when the $10 million project in southern Iraq is finished this month, it will fall far short of those ambitious plans. The theater, classrooms, officer's club, basketball courts and shooting range have all been scrapped. The barracks will be one story instead of two. The reason for scaling back the barracks? The U.S. government is running out of money. The higher than expected cost of protecting workers against insurgent attacks - about 25 cents of every reconstruction dollar now pays for security - has sent the cost of projects skyward. The result: Some projects have been eliminated and others cut back. "American money has dried up," says Brent Rose, chief of program/project management for the Army Corps of Engineers in southern Iraq. And tracking the billions of dollars that flooded into a war zone in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion has proved difficult, too. Nearly $100 million in reconstruction money is unaccounted for. The ultimate price of a slowdown in Iraq's reconstruction could be steep. U.S. strategy here is based on the premise that jobs and prosperity will sap the strength of the insurgency and are as important as military successes in defeating terrorists. "A free and prosperous Iraq will be a major blow to the terrorists and their desire to establish a safe haven in Iraq where they can plan and plot attacks," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said last week. But there are signs that some of the early momentum is gone, particularly for big infrastructure projects. The Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works initially planned to use U.S. funds for 81 much-needed water and sewage treatment projects across the country, says Humam Misconi, a ministry official. That list has dwindled to 13. Canceled projects include the $50 million project that was supposed to provide potable water to the second-largest city in the Kurdish region, and a $60 million water treatment plant in Babil province, which would have served about 360,000 residents, Misconi says. Some progress has been made. More than 2,800 projects have begun since the transfer of sovereignty last summer, and 1,700 of those have been completed, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. They include refurbished schools, new police stations, hospitals, bridges and new roads. It is the larger, more expensive projects such as water treatment plants, sewage networks and power grids that are being cut back. Congress appropriated $18.4 billion for Iraq reconstruction in November 2003, but last year nearly $5 billion of it was diverted to help train and equip Iraq's security forces as the insurgency grew in strength. And the security costs keep increasing. Originally estimated at 9% of total project costs, security costs have risen to between 20% and 30%, says Brig. Gen. William McCoy Jr., commander of the Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq. Power outages throughout Iraq By 2003, Iraq's infrastructure was run down after years of United Nations-mandated sanctions and neglect. Rebuilding it has proved tougher than first envisioned. Nearly half of all of Iraqi households still don't have access to clean water, and only 8% of the country, excluding the capital, is connected to sewage networks. And despite progress in fixing Iraq's antiquated oil production system, the country's oil wells produce about 1.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, lower than 2003 levels and well under the 3.5 million barrels Iraq was producing before the 1991 Gulf War. Iraqi households still endure about 10 hours a day of power outages. In Baghdad, the power is out about 14 hours a day, according to the Electricity Ministry. Iraqi power plants are now generating nearly 4,800 megawatts, up from 4,400 before the U.S.-led invasion. The increase hasn't been enough to keep up with demand. Since the end of the war, demand for electricity has increased by about 60% as Iraqis have bought new refrigerators, televisions, air conditioners and satellite dishes, says a Corps of Engineers spokesman. The lack of dramatic economic progress has hurt efforts to win over Iraqis, says Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Unemployed young men are more easily drawn into the ranks of the insurgency than those with jobs. And if other Iraqis don't see an improvement in their daily lives, they may sympathize with rebels. "The economy is not helping us win the war," O'Hanlon says. The U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority originally set a goal of employing 50,000 Iraqis on reconstruction projects, but the target wasn't achieved, according to a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In August, unemployment and underemployment were estimated at 50%, the report said. Security is the largest obstacle to rebuilding. As of June 30, 330 contractors, mostly Iraqis, had been killed, according to the U.S. Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. "It's a challenge," says Col. Larry McCallister, commander of Gulf Region South District, the Corps of Engineers unit in southern Iraq. "We can't get to projects as often as we'd like. In the U.S., you go to projects every day. Here, you get to them maybe once a week." Western contractors can't visit projects without elaborate planning and preparation. On a recent morning at Camp Adder, the fortified base near here where the Corps of Engineers is housed, a team of engineers huddled around the armored Ford SUVs of an Erinys International security team for the daily briefing. The Army Corps hires private security firms, such as Erinys, to take them to sites. The civilian and military engineers are briefed before being ferried by the guards in a convoy of three vehicles. A guard sits in the back of the last vehicle, his assault rifle trained on any car that gets too close. Missing $100 million Ahmad Al-Rubaye, AFP/GettyWorkers roll out cable to be laid in ditches in Baghdad. Besides escalating security costs, reconstruction also has been dogged by allegations of fraud and mismanagement. Nearly $100 million in Iraqi funds distributed by the Coalition Provisional Authority for reconstruction was either spent without supporting receipts or vanished, according to an April audit by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq reconstruction. The U.S. Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation, says Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the office. The White House said it hasn't decided whether to request additional funds from Congress. "It is too early to know what may be needed," McClellan said. If President Bush does ask Congress for more money, there will probably be tough questions about oversight and rising security costs. "Reconstruction in Iraq has been slower, more painful, more complex, more fragmented and more inefficient than anyone in Washington or Baghdad could have imagined," said Rep. Jim Kolbe (news, bio, voting record) (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, during a subcommittee meeting last month. . Much of the security cost is buried in "cost-plus" contracts in which companies get reimbursed for all costs plus a percentage of those costs as a fee. All 11 multinational firms working on projects through the Iraqi Project and Contracting Office have "cost-plus" contracts, says Karen Durham-Aguilera, the office's director of programs. One "cost-plus" project is the water treatment plant under construction here, which is managed jointly by London-based AMEC and California-based Fluor Corp. The project was originally estimated to cost $80 million, according to Army Corps of Engineers records. But the original Iraqi subcontractor pulled out after he was threatened. Delays, drive-by shootings and land-acquisition snags followed, driving security and other costs up, according to Corps officials and records. The project's estimated completion cost rose to $200 million, the corps said. AMEC officials declined to comment. Bob Fletcher, Fluor's director of water programs, disputed the corps' figures but would not elaborate on the project's cost. Iraqi contractors, not saddled by steep security costs, say they can do the work for less. The Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works is using Iraqi funds to build two similarly sized treatment plants in Karbala and Kut, says the ministry's Misconi. Combined cost of both projects: $185 million. "We keep saying, 'Give us the money and we could do it better, cheaper,'" Misconi says. "Estimated cost of security on the Nasiriyah project is $54 million. We could build a whole new plant with this amount of money." Salty water As funds run dry, some projects are being handed over to Iraqis. In Najaf, for example, Army Corps officials bought parts to upgrade the city's electrical distribution system, including transformers, lines and wires, then handed them to local construction officials for them to do the work, saving millions on labor, security and administrative costs, McCallister says. In the next few years, Najaf will benefit from 30 projects costing $100 million in U.S. taxpayer money, including new hospitals, clinics and police stations, McCallister says. But bigger projects, such as water treatment plants and electrical grids, are too expensive to launch, he says. "Will (the projects) make a difference? Yes," McCallister says. "Will it make a major, major difference? No. We could continue putting three times that much money into that city." The refurbished hospitals and new clinics in town are nice, says Abdul Hussein Ali, 52, a retired hospital worker living in Najaf with six children. But what would bring real joy, he says, is water that doesn't pour into his sink cloudy and salty and needing chemicals to purify. "The water here is as salty as the desert," he says. "Since the start of the war to today, you cannot say there has been remarkable change," Ali says. "The situation is improving, but very, very slowly." http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051010/ts_usatoday/iraqrebuildingslowsasusmoneyforprojectsdriesup

Translation: God told me to tell you to shut the fuck up.

Stick with your mother's pussy.

Shut up and stop your whining.

You hate democracy too. Move to North Korea.

Translation:

burp

LIMBAUGH: Hey, hey, hey! Did you -- did you see -- we've got a videotape of three New Orleans police officers, beating and punching a 64-year-old man accused of public drunkenness? The third officer grabbing and shoving an AP TV news producer who helped capture the confrontation on tape. The police spokesman in New Orleans, Marlon Defillo, said, "Well, the police are promising a criminal investigation." It's a troubling tape. No doubt about it. The tape -- the tape shows an officer hitting the suspect, Robert Davis, at least four times in the head Saturday night outside a French Quarter bar. Davis appeared to resist, twisting and flailing, as he was dragged to the ground by four officers. Another of the officers then kneed Davis, punched him twice. Davis was face-down on the sidewalk with blood streaming down his arm, and into the gutter. Then a fifth officer ordered the producer of the -- Associated Press Television News producer Rich Matthews and a cameraman to stop recording. When Matthews held up his credentials, the officer grabbed the producer, leaned him backward over a car, jabbed him in his stomach, and unleashed a profanity-laced tirade. "I've been here for six weeks trying to keep alive! Go home!" shouted the officer, who identified himself as S.M. Smith. Now clearly, folks, we have a Rodney King moment here. But we don't have a Rodney King moment at the same time. Why don't we have a Rodney King moment? I mean -- I mean, we've got the video, and it's been a story, but have you seen -- have you seen much news about this? Have you? Have -- well, now, no, no, I mean, we haven't, not every second. We haven't seen anybody getting outraged outside of New Orleans about this. Maybe it's not a Rodney King moment because it's in a Democrat-run town and state. And I think probably people end up saying we should understand the rage of the New Orleans police. We need to understand the rage, folks. That's -- you know, when rage is good, we need to understand it. When rage is bad, it's horrible and rotten, and we need to put the people who rage in jail. I'm not saying it's common city [sic] in Democrat-run towns. I'm just saying it's no big deal. When -- for example, look at the -- look at the Sunday shows this week. They went out there, and they did everything they could to find conservatives to rip on Bush. The only time they notice conservatives is when conservatives -- I was invited. I didn't go, folks. I want you to know. I was invited this weekend, but this -- I said this is not the time for me to do it. They want to talk about the status of the conservative movement, and I said I'll be glad to do it, but this is not the time. I had a weekend from hell, but anyway, this is not -- meaning busy. But still, it's -- but by the same token, you know, when a Democrat -- a bunch of cops in a Democrat town beat up a suspect, well, we've got to understand the rage of the cops. They've been there six weeks. A lot of stress. So forth and so on. http://mediamatters.org/static/audio/limbaugh-200510110007.mp3

Miers Supreme Court Pick: Another Anti-American Neo-Con Yes-Woman Paul Joseph Watson | October 4 2005 In Harriet Miers, Bush has selected another Neo-Con yes-woman who will not, as naive conservatives had hoped, attempt to overturn Roe vs. Wade or any other abomination, but will obediently trash the Constitution and continue to move America towards despotism and big government. How can we be surprised any longer that a self-proclaimed conservative who has overseen the biggest expansion of government ever witnessed has again made a decision (or been told to make one) that pushes the country further away from the ideals expressed by the founders? Should we be concerned that it takes a liberal feminist, Tammy Bruce, to point out how Bush has alienated a conservative base that in many cases still refuses to acknowledge that Bush is simply doing the bidding of a larger agenda? "The reality is that two of the four dissenting members (the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor) on the Kelo decision are now gone. The government is now larger than Franklin Delano Roosevelt ever imagined. President Bush is not an authentic conservative.†It takes a radical feminist to point out that Bush is not a real conservative. No, you haven't entered the twilight zone, this is America in 2005. An America where 'conservative' Bush calls the Minutemen dangerous vigilantes, echoing the sentiments of socialist Lloyd Doggett who compared them to the Klan. Bush is about as conservative and morally sound as a Lynne Cheney lesbian sex novel. Miers is a Bush crime family insider who has covered up for her bosses in the past. As Global News Matrix reported, Newsweek reported on July 9, 2000 that the Bush campaign "launched a secretive research operation designed to scour all records relating to his Vietnam-era service" during preparation for Bush's 1998 re-election campaign. They paid "hard-nosed Dallas lawyer named Harriet Miers" $19,000 to review the records. According to Newsweek, one result of her work was to deflect charges that former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes helped Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard despite low qualifications and a long waiting list. Barnes was later forced to testify under oath that he helped Bush. Just as he picked a FEMA director with no emergency management experience, Bush has selected a Justice who has never been a judge. But what about her record? Surely this stands up to a benchmark of staunch conservatism and moral fortitude? Miers is on record as supporting the establishment of the International Criminal Court, homosexual adoptions, a major local tax increase and women in combat. The issue of women in combat led Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, to speculate that Miers was installed in order to direct a future court ruling making it mandatory for women to register for selective service, paving the way for a sweeping draft. Miers' support of the International Criminal Court, a stepping stone to world government designed to strip legal sovereignty and suffocate American citizens under federal globalism, can hardly be called Reaganesque. Miers' 1999 report to the American Bar Association encouraged, "the enactment of laws and public policy which provide that sexual orientation shall not be a bar to adoption when the adoption is determined to be in the best interest of the child." Children adopted by homosexual parents have been found to be under threat of disproportionate abuse. The icing on the cake is the admission that Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid urged Dick Cheney and Andy Card to pick Miers. So the Neo-Cons are in meetings with leading Democrats about who to choose beforehand and yet the media churns out the incessant spin that Bush wants to move the Court to the right. This is a rigged game. The Democrats and Republicans have joined forces to select the right candidate to serve their combined interests, creating a federalized jack-booted police state while sinking America into a deeper abyss of cultural and ethical decadence.

How To End The War By Paul Craig Roberts 10/11/05 "ICH" -- -- George W. Bush is a natural born liar. He lied us into a war, and now he is lying to keep us there. In his October 6 self-congratulatory speech at that neoconservative shrine, the National Endowment for Democracy, the President of the United States said: "Today there are more than 80 Iraqi army battalions fighting the insurgency alongside our forces." Eighty Iraqi battalions makes it sound like the US is just lending Iraq a helping hand. I wonder what Congress and the US commanders in Iraq thought when they heard there were 80 Iraqi battalions that American troops are helping to fight insurgents? Just a few days prior to Bush’s speech, Generals Casey and Abizaid told Congress that, as a matter of fact, there was only one Iraqi battalion able to undertake operations against insurgents. I wonder, also, who noticed the great contradiction in Bush’s speech. On the one hand, he claims steady progress toward freedom and democracy in Iraq. On the other hand, he seeks the American public’s support for open-ended war. In her Princeton speech, Condi Rice made it clear that Iraq is just the beginning: "We have set out to help the people of the Middle East transform their societies. Now is not the time to falter or fade." On October 5 Vice President Cheney let us know how long this commitment was to last: "Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort." Who’s going to pay for these decades of war to which the Bush administration is committing Americans? Already the US is spending $7 billion a month on war in Iraq alone. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says that if the Iraq war goes on another five years, it will cost at least $570 billion by 2010. Bush’s war has already doubled the price of gasoline and home heating. With US forces bogged down in Afghanistan (invaded October 7, 2001) and Iraq (invaded March 20, 2003), Bush is plotting regime change in Syria and conspiring to set up Iran for attack. Is there a single person in the Office of Management and Budget, the US Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office, or the Federal Reserve who thinks the US, already drowning in red ink, has the resources to fight wars for decades? And where will the troops come from? The US cannot replace the losses in Iraq. We know about the 2,000 American troops killed, but we do not hear about the large number of wounded. UPI correspondent Martin Sieff reported on October 7 that US wounded jumped from 16.3 per day at the end of September to 28.5 per day at the beginning of October. Multiply that daily rate by 30 days and you get 855 wounded per month. Approximately half of these are wounded too seriously to return to combat. Has anyone in the administration pointed out to Bush, Cheney and Condi Rice what decades of casualties at these rates mean? Insurgents are killing Iraqi security personnel who are collaborating with the US occupation at the rate of two or three hundred per month. The wounded numbers are much higher. Last month suicide bombers killed 481 Iraqis and wounded 1,074. Has anyone in the administration put these numbers in a decades long context? Apparently not. Once these numbers are put on paper, not even Bush administration speech writers can continue to pen rhetorical justifications for war and more war. The neoconservative Bush administration prides itself on not being "reality based." Facts get in the way of the administration’s illusions and delusions. Bush’s "80 Iraqi battalions" are like Hitler’s secret weapons. They don’t exist. Iraqis cannot afford to collaborate with the hated Americans or with the puppet government that the US has put in place. Out of desperation, some do, but their heart is not in it. Few Iraqis are willing to die fighting for the United States. When the 2nd Iraq Battalion graduated from US training camp on January 6, 2004, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and US commander in Iraq, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, expressed "high expectations" that Iraqi troops, in the general’s words, "would help us bring security and stability back to the country." Three months later when the 2nd Battalion was brought up to support the US invasion of Fallujah, the battalion refused to fight and returned to its post. "We did not sign up to fight Iraqis," said the troops. Readers write in frustration: "Tell us what we can do." On the surface it doesn’t look like Bush can be stopped from trashing our country. The congressional mid-term elections are a year away. Moreover, the Democrats have failed as an opposition party and are compromised by their support for the war. Bush has three more years in which to mire America in wider war. If Bush succeeds in starting wars throughout the Middle East, his successor will be stuck with them. Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike have made it clear that they are going to ignore demonstrations and public opinion. The print and TV media have made it clear that there will be no reporting that will hold the Bush administration accountable for its deceit and delusion. There still is a way to bring reality to the Bush administration. The public has the Internet. Is the antiwar movement well enough organized to collect via the Internet signatures on petitions for impeachment, perhaps one petition for each state? Millions of signatures would embarrass Bush before the world and embarrass our elected Representatives for their failure to act. If no one in Congress acted on the petitions, all the rhetoric about war for democracy would fall flat. It would be obvious that there is no democracy in America. If the cloak of democracy is stripped away, Bush’s "wars for democracy" begin to look like the foreign adventures of a megalomaniac. Remove Bush’s rhetorical cover, and tolerance at home and abroad for Bush’s war would evaporate. If Bush persisted, he would become a pariah. Americans may feel that they cannot undercut a president at war, in which case Americans will become an embattled people consumed by decades of conflict. Americans can boot out Bush or pay dearly in blood and money. October 11, 2005

New Orleans: Leaving the Poor Behind Again! By Bill Quigley. 10/11/05 "ICH" -- -- They are doing it again! My wife and I spent five days and four nights in a hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. We saw people floating dead in the water. We watched people die waiting for evacuation to places with food, water, and electricity. We were rescued by boat and waited for an open pickup truck to take us and dozens of others on a rainy drive to the underpass where thousands of others waited for a bus ride to who knows where. You saw the people left behind. The poor, the sick, the disabled, the prisoners, the low-wage workers of New Orleans, were all left behind in the evacuation. Now that New Orleans is re-opening for some, the same people are being left behind again. When those in power close the public schools, close public housing, fire people from their jobs, refuse to provide access to affordable public healthcare, and close off all avenues for justice, it is not necessary to erect a sign outside of New Orleans saying "Poor People Not Allowed To Return." People cannot come back in these circumstances and that is exactly what is happening. There are 28,000 people still living in shelters in Louisiana. There are 38,000 public housing apartments in New Orleans, many in good physical condition. None have been reopened. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated that 112,000 low-income homes in New Orleans were damaged by the hurricane. Yet, local, state and federal authorities are not committed to re-opening public housing. Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker (R-LA) said, after the hurricane, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." New Orleans public schools enrolled about 60,000 children before the hurricane. The school board president now estimates that no schools on the city's east bank, where the overwhelming majority of people live, will reopen this academic school year. Every one of the 13 public schools on the mostly-dry west bank of New Orleans was changed into charter schools in an afternoon meeting a few days ago. A member of the Louisiana state board of education estimated that at most 10,000 students will attend public schools in New Orleans this academic year. The City of New Orleans laid off 3,000 workers. The public school system laid off thousands of its workers. The Archdiocese of New Orleans laid off 800 workers from its central staff and countless hundreds of others from its parish schools. The Housing Authority has laid off its workers. The St. Bernard Sheriff's Office laid off half of its workers. Renters in New Orleans are returning to find their furniture on the street and strangers living in their apartments at higher rents - despite an order by the Governor that no one can be evicted before October 25. Rent in the dry areas have doubled and tripled. Environmental chemist Wilma Subra cautions that earth and air in the New Orleans area appear to be heavily polluted with heavy metal and organic contaminants from more than 40 oil spills and extensive mold. The people, Subra stated, are subject to "double insult - the chemical insult from the sludge and biological insult from the mold." Homes built on the Agriculture Street landfill - a federal toxic site - stewed for weeks in floodwaters. Yet, the future of Charity Hospital of New Orleans, the primary place for free comprehensive medical care in the state of Louisiana, is under furious debate and discussion and may never re-open again. Right now, free public healthcare is being provided by volunteers at grassroots free clinics like Common Ground - a wonderful and much needed effort but not a substitute for public healthcare. The jails and prisons are full and staying full. Despite orders to release prisoners, state and local corrections officials are not releasing them unless someone can transport them out of town. Lawyers have to file lawsuits to force authorities to release people from prison who have already served all of their sentences! Judges are setting $100,000 bonds for people who steal beer out of a vacant house, while landlords break the law with impunity. People arrested before and after the hurricane have not even been formally charged by the prosecutor. Because the evidence room is under water, part of the police force is discredited, and witnesses are scattered around the country, everyone knows few will ever see a trial, yet timid judges are reluctant to follow the constitution and laws and release them on reasonable bond. People are making serious money in this hurricane but not the working and poor people who built and maintained New Orleans. President Bush lifted the requirement that jobs re-building the Gulf Coast pay a living wage. The Small Business Administration has received 1.6 million disaster loan applications and has approved 9 in Louisiana. A US Senator reported that maintenance workers at the Superdome are being replaced by out of town workers who will work for less money and no benefits. He also reported that seventy-five Louisiana electricians at the Naval Air Station are being replaced by workers from Kellogg Brown and Root - a subsidiary of Halliburton Take it to the courts, you say? The Louisiana Supreme Court has been closed since the hurricane and is not due to re-open until at least October 25, 2005. While Texas and Mississippi have enacted special rules to allow out of state lawyers to come and help people out, the Louisiana Supreme court has not. Nearly every person victimized by the hurricane has a price-gouging story. Yet, the Louisiana Attorney General has filed exactly one suit for price-gouging - against a campground. Likewise, the US attorney has prosecuted 3 people for wrongfully seeking $2000 FEMA checks. No schools. No low-income apartments. No jobs. No healthcare. No justice. A final example? You can fly on a plane into New Orleans, but you cannot take a bus. Greyhound does not service New Orleans at this time. You saw the people who were left behind last time. The same people are being left behind all over again. You raised hell about the people left behind last time. Please do it again. Bill Quigley is a professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans where he directs the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center and the Law Clinic and teaches Law and Poverty. Bill can be reached at duprestars@yahoo.com

The Troops Don’t Support the Constitution By Jacob G. Hornberger 10/11/05 "Lewrockwell.com" -- --Every U.S. soldier takes an express and solemn oath to “support and defend the Constitution.†That oath, however, is a sham because the troops do not support or defend the Constitution. Instead, when it comes to war the troops follow another oath they take – to obey the orders of the president, and they do this without regard to whether such orders violate the Constitution. A textbook example involves President Bush’s war on Iraq. The Constitution prohibits the president from waging war without first securing a declaration of war from Congress. By waging war on Iraq without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, the president violated the Constitution. Some people pooh-pooh the violation, perceiving the Constitution as simply a technical document that can be violated whenever the president feels that “national security†– or even the welfare of foreigners – necessitates it. Some also make the claim that when Congress delegated its power to declare war on Iraq to the president (on the eve of the 2002 congressional elections), that delegation served as an adequate substitute for an actual declaration of war on Iraq. They are wrong. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land that we the people of the United States have imposed on our federal officials. Like it or not, U.S. officials are supposed to comply with its restrictions on power. If U.S. officials don’t like a particular constitutional provision or if they feel that it is outdated, the proper remedy is to seek a constitutional amendment, not ignore the provision. Moreover, the Supreme Court, which is the final arbiter of constitutional interpretation under our system of government, has long held that no branch of the federal government can lawfully delegate its constitutional powers to another branch of government. Only the Congress, not the president, is authorized to declare war, and without that declaration the president cannot lawfully wage war on another nation. We should bear in mind that had the president complied with the declaration-of-war requirement, the Congress might well have discovered in the process that the president’s WMD claims were defective. The Congress might also have concluded that invading a sovereign and independent country for the purpose of “spreading democracy†– a war in which tens of thousands of innocent people would be killed and maimed – could not be justified under moral principles. “But we can’t refuse orders of the president. He’s our commander in chief,†say the troops. “It’s not our job to determine what is constitutional or not. We deployed to Iraq, like it or not, because the president ordered us to do so.†Setting aside the moral implications of that position, doesn’t that mindset reflect that the oath that the troops take to support and defend the Constitution is in fact a sham? The troops know – or should know – that the Constitution prohibits the president from waging war without a congressional declaration of war. They also know that the Congress never declared war on Iraq. Nevertheless, they obeyed the president’s orders to attack Iraq. The president’s war on Iraq reflects why our nation’s Founding Fathers opposed standing armies. Members of a professional army, who have vowed to obey the orders of the president, are unlikely to say no when the president orders them to attack another country. On the other hand, a nation that relies instead on well-trained citizens (i.e., citizen-soldiers) to defend itself from a foreign attack would stand in a different position. Citizen-soldiers, while willing and prepared to rally to the defense of their own country in the event of an invasion, would be much less likely to answer the president’s call to leave their families and give up their jobs to attack a country thousands of miles away from American shores. Isn’t it ironic that, even as the troops waging war in Iraq exhort the American people to support them, the troops, by invading Iraq without the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war, have failed to support the Constitution?

"bush didn't train him" is sarcasm. That I see. Bush had nothing to do with it in logical sense.