Thursday, September 11, 2003
We got through another 9/11. Naturally the emphasis was on pain and remembrance, not the unanswered questions. The Administration hoped to take advantage by pushing for USA Patriot II/Victory Act amidst more conflating of Iraq/terror/al-Qaeda. Newsweek did its part by blurring the distinction with a cover line, “433 Americans Have Died in the War on Terror”.
But, 9/11 found the Administration largely on the defensive, which is not its mode. Despite polls saying that the public is ready to yield its rights, Congress has been ready to allow much of USA Patriot to ‘sunset’, and is hardly disposed to reverse course. The NY Times front-paged its wide-ranging survey that finds that “The world’s sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”
Then, there’s the perpetual line from Bush’s speech that says the Administration is “doing all we can to make America safe”. Perhaps this is the ultimate deception. Their ideology simply does not allow this, instead preferring that the bankrupt states and private companies that seek a profit should provide the added security. So, chemical and nuclear plants, ports, etc are no safer now than two years ago.
ABC helped illustrate this by shipping uranium across U.S. borders for the second time. The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.
Their report noted that homeland security officials did not realize the depleted uranium had successfully gone through its screening devices until the truck driver hired by ABCNews became concerned that customs officials had missed something.
9/11: In Salon, Kristin Breitweiser penned a review of the Bush Showtime fiction which portrayed Bush as heroic on 9/11:
"It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision."
For the complete record of Bush’s movements that morning, see the following: http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
Here’s an excerpt from the large report, from the Center for Cooperative Research- its final two paragraphs: (Alan Wood, Paul Thompson, 5/03)
There are many questions that deserve answers. So many pieces of the puzzle do not fit. Simply by reading the mainstream media reports, we can see that mere incompetence doesn't explain what happened to Bush on that day. For instance, it makes no sense that Bush would listen to a story about a goat long after being told the US was under attack, and even after the Secret Service decided to immediately evacuate him from the school. It defies explanation that Air Force One's fighter escort took two hours to appear. And it is mind-boggling that there are seven different versions of how Bush learned about the first crash.
It's doubtful that the Independent Commission investigation will look critically at what Bush did on 9/11 and why he did it. Despite the contradictory reports, no one in the mainstream media has yet demanded clarification of the many obvious inconsistencies and problems of the official version. Anyone even asking questions has been quickly insulted as anti-American, accused of bashing the president in a time of war, or branded a conspiracy nut. Only a few relatives of the 9/11 attacks have been able to raise these issues publicly. For instance, Kristen Breitweiser told Phil Donahue: "It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service whisk [Bush] out of that school? ... [H]e is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes." [Donahue, 8/13/02] But so far, few have listened to their concerns.
Someone’s got to do it!
The Santa Cruz Independent Media Center published the draft text of a letter to be sent to Congress by the Mayor, following a 6-1 city council vote. It requested a “determination on impeachment. The document asks:
Did President Bush violate congressionally ratified international treaties and thus Article VI, the ‘supremacy clause’, of our own constitution through the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Globalization: Women and Water, II
I wrote about Bill Moyers’ NOW in the previous blog. But after two requests for more, I print a passage of the rich interview with scientist – activist Vandana Shiva, aired this past week during the program on “Rich World, Poor Women”. The transcript is available at http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_shiva_print.html
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Suez, this world's biggest water company, wants to privatize the Ganges. One hundred thousand people were displaced. And the women started to talk about how many women are starting to commit suicide. Because they can't walk the water and the government has cancelled every local water scheme saying, "Now all the money, all the public wealth has gone into these mega-projects." So not only are rural communities denied the water, they are denied the public investment to bring water if their own village has run dry. So we have women jumping into the Ganges because now the Ganges instead of being their mother for life has become a graveyard. So it is, in a way, a system of dispossessing the poor.
Coca-Cola, South India, just been there on Earth Day I celebrated a year of protests with tribal women who are fighting Coca-Cola which is sucking out 1.5 million liters a day of water for the bottling of what is called ...India. And-- the-- Coca-Cola bottled water. Interestingly, two miles radius, every tank, every well is dry. Women have no drinking water. That's how it plays out.
BILL MOYERS: You're saying this is depriving the people at the grass-roots of the water they need just for the sustenance of life? Is that the point?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Absolutely. Women in the hills are being denied water so that every drop of Ganges water can flow down to be sold. So globalization commodifies what - the resources that are necessary for survival.
BILL MOYERS: There is an argument that water is getting increasingly scarce and only the market can determine how it can be effectively distributed. You obviously disagree with that.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I disagree with it because I'm enough of a scientist to know that water is created in nature and not in markets. Markets can only allocate water and take it uphill to where the money is. Usually this means that those who have destroyed water resources by abuse and pollution get new license to destroy it.
It is not an incentive to conserve. It's an incentive to over-exploit. And the Coca-Cola case in Kerala is a very good example. That here is a company that can take the water. It doesn't-- conserve the water. Depletes it and creates scarcity where there was no scarcity.
BILL MOYERS: Is it taking this, is it bottling this water for sale?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: It's bottling the water for sale. So water it takes for free from local communities it then sells at ten rupees a bottle.
BILL MOYERS: Is the world's largest democracy in jeopardy?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I think all the world's democracies are in jeopardy. And my own thesis is that this is connected to the trade liberalization and globalization.
BILL MOYERS: How? Because most people in this country who support trade liberalization say just the opposite. You know, they say this is what brings-- globalization is what brings ideas. It brings wealth. It brings-- technology and innovation to a country. And it should create a commonwealth of prosperity. You're saying just the opposite.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Well, if globalization was founded on democratic decision making from the ground up, it would create more freedom of interaction. It would create more flow of positive ideas, more universal solidarity among communities. But globalization as it's shaped right now under the coercive rules of trade under the World Trade Organization, of the World Bank and IMF structure adjustment, basically doesn't create wealth.
It takes the wealth of the poor and puts them in the hands of global cooperation, leaving insecurity behind. In addition, decisions that we made as national systems, whether it was decisions about how we run our intellectual property rights systems. What do we do with our water?
How do we do our agriculture? What seeds we plant? What price our crops will sell at? All those are decisions taken out of the country, put into a World Trade Organization or put into the hands of global corporations.
Eric Alterman on Bush the commander-in-chief:
Is there a special circle of Hell for those who lie to persuade others to risk their lives while shielding themselves from all danger? If so, I hope they have a special room for the guys who do it dressed up like fighter pilots.
Dick Morris with Advice for Bush: He’s always idiosyncratic… and often listened to…
Why is Bush falling so badly? The superficial reasons are the Iraq casualties, the failure to find WMDs and the continuing inability to round up Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But the real reason is that terror is receding as an issue, largely due to Bush's success.
The solution for Bush is to put terrorism back on the front burner by high profile and aggressive action against Iran and/or North Korea. It's not necessary to wag the dog, but Bush should wag his tongue and raise the profile of these two remaining threats to our security. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/5261.htm
-R
But, 9/11 found the Administration largely on the defensive, which is not its mode. Despite polls saying that the public is ready to yield its rights, Congress has been ready to allow much of USA Patriot to ‘sunset’, and is hardly disposed to reverse course. The NY Times front-paged its wide-ranging survey that finds that “The world’s sympathy and support has given way to a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”
Then, there’s the perpetual line from Bush’s speech that says the Administration is “doing all we can to make America safe”. Perhaps this is the ultimate deception. Their ideology simply does not allow this, instead preferring that the bankrupt states and private companies that seek a profit should provide the added security. So, chemical and nuclear plants, ports, etc are no safer now than two years ago.
ABC helped illustrate this by shipping uranium across U.S. borders for the second time. The ABCNEWS project involved a shipment to Los Angeles of just under 15 pounds of depleted uranium that is legal to import into the United States. The uranium, in a steel pipe with a lead lining, was placed in a suitcase for the shipment.
Their report noted that homeland security officials did not realize the depleted uranium had successfully gone through its screening devices until the truck driver hired by ABCNews became concerned that customs officials had missed something.
9/11: In Salon, Kristin Breitweiser penned a review of the Bush Showtime fiction which portrayed Bush as heroic on 9/11:
"It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision."
For the complete record of Bush’s movements that morning, see the following: http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
Here’s an excerpt from the large report, from the Center for Cooperative Research- its final two paragraphs: (Alan Wood, Paul Thompson, 5/03)
There are many questions that deserve answers. So many pieces of the puzzle do not fit. Simply by reading the mainstream media reports, we can see that mere incompetence doesn't explain what happened to Bush on that day. For instance, it makes no sense that Bush would listen to a story about a goat long after being told the US was under attack, and even after the Secret Service decided to immediately evacuate him from the school. It defies explanation that Air Force One's fighter escort took two hours to appear. And it is mind-boggling that there are seven different versions of how Bush learned about the first crash.
It's doubtful that the Independent Commission investigation will look critically at what Bush did on 9/11 and why he did it. Despite the contradictory reports, no one in the mainstream media has yet demanded clarification of the many obvious inconsistencies and problems of the official version. Anyone even asking questions has been quickly insulted as anti-American, accused of bashing the president in a time of war, or branded a conspiracy nut. Only a few relatives of the 9/11 attacks have been able to raise these issues publicly. For instance, Kristen Breitweiser told Phil Donahue: "It was clear that we were under attack. Why didn't the Secret Service whisk [Bush] out of that school? ... [H]e is the commander-in-chief of the United States of America, our country was clearly under attack, it was after the second building was hit. I want to know why he sat there for 25 minutes." [Donahue, 8/13/02] But so far, few have listened to their concerns.
Someone’s got to do it!
The Santa Cruz Independent Media Center published the draft text of a letter to be sent to Congress by the Mayor, following a 6-1 city council vote. It requested a “determination on impeachment. The document asks:
Did President Bush violate congressionally ratified international treaties and thus Article VI, the ‘supremacy clause’, of our own constitution through the invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Globalization: Women and Water, II
I wrote about Bill Moyers’ NOW in the previous blog. But after two requests for more, I print a passage of the rich interview with scientist – activist Vandana Shiva, aired this past week during the program on “Rich World, Poor Women”. The transcript is available at http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_shiva_print.html
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Suez, this world's biggest water company, wants to privatize the Ganges. One hundred thousand people were displaced. And the women started to talk about how many women are starting to commit suicide. Because they can't walk the water and the government has cancelled every local water scheme saying, "Now all the money, all the public wealth has gone into these mega-projects." So not only are rural communities denied the water, they are denied the public investment to bring water if their own village has run dry. So we have women jumping into the Ganges because now the Ganges instead of being their mother for life has become a graveyard. So it is, in a way, a system of dispossessing the poor.
Coca-Cola, South India, just been there on Earth Day I celebrated a year of protests with tribal women who are fighting Coca-Cola which is sucking out 1.5 million liters a day of water for the bottling of what is called ...India. And-- the-- Coca-Cola bottled water. Interestingly, two miles radius, every tank, every well is dry. Women have no drinking water. That's how it plays out.
BILL MOYERS: You're saying this is depriving the people at the grass-roots of the water they need just for the sustenance of life? Is that the point?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Absolutely. Women in the hills are being denied water so that every drop of Ganges water can flow down to be sold. So globalization commodifies what - the resources that are necessary for survival.
BILL MOYERS: There is an argument that water is getting increasingly scarce and only the market can determine how it can be effectively distributed. You obviously disagree with that.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I disagree with it because I'm enough of a scientist to know that water is created in nature and not in markets. Markets can only allocate water and take it uphill to where the money is. Usually this means that those who have destroyed water resources by abuse and pollution get new license to destroy it.
It is not an incentive to conserve. It's an incentive to over-exploit. And the Coca-Cola case in Kerala is a very good example. That here is a company that can take the water. It doesn't-- conserve the water. Depletes it and creates scarcity where there was no scarcity.
BILL MOYERS: Is it taking this, is it bottling this water for sale?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: It's bottling the water for sale. So water it takes for free from local communities it then sells at ten rupees a bottle.
BILL MOYERS: Is the world's largest democracy in jeopardy?
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: I think all the world's democracies are in jeopardy. And my own thesis is that this is connected to the trade liberalization and globalization.
BILL MOYERS: How? Because most people in this country who support trade liberalization say just the opposite. You know, they say this is what brings-- globalization is what brings ideas. It brings wealth. It brings-- technology and innovation to a country. And it should create a commonwealth of prosperity. You're saying just the opposite.
DR. VANDANA SHIVA: Well, if globalization was founded on democratic decision making from the ground up, it would create more freedom of interaction. It would create more flow of positive ideas, more universal solidarity among communities. But globalization as it's shaped right now under the coercive rules of trade under the World Trade Organization, of the World Bank and IMF structure adjustment, basically doesn't create wealth.
It takes the wealth of the poor and puts them in the hands of global cooperation, leaving insecurity behind. In addition, decisions that we made as national systems, whether it was decisions about how we run our intellectual property rights systems. What do we do with our water?
How do we do our agriculture? What seeds we plant? What price our crops will sell at? All those are decisions taken out of the country, put into a World Trade Organization or put into the hands of global corporations.
Eric Alterman on Bush the commander-in-chief:
Is there a special circle of Hell for those who lie to persuade others to risk their lives while shielding themselves from all danger? If so, I hope they have a special room for the guys who do it dressed up like fighter pilots.
Dick Morris with Advice for Bush: He’s always idiosyncratic… and often listened to…
Why is Bush falling so badly? The superficial reasons are the Iraq casualties, the failure to find WMDs and the continuing inability to round up Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. But the real reason is that terror is receding as an issue, largely due to Bush's success.
The solution for Bush is to put terrorism back on the front burner by high profile and aggressive action against Iran and/or North Korea. It's not necessary to wag the dog, but Bush should wag his tongue and raise the profile of these two remaining threats to our security. http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/5261.htm
-R
