Monday, October 11, 2004
"I don't see how you can lead this country in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if you change your mind because of politics." -Bush
News item: ‘U.S. attacks to retake “insurgent” territory will be postponed until after the Election’.
_______________________
"Wealth Of Others Helped To Shape Kerry's Life," –NY Times front page headline.
Is this Irony? Absurdity?
____________________
Oh, the low-level of this ‘contest’, the fate that lies ahead if Bush wins or the awful conditions Kerry will inherit seems to be responsible. Upcoming: It is unlikely, but one still hopes that Kerry will be more blunt re the destructiveness of this Administration. His campaign remains too gentlemanly.
Anyway:
The Sinclair “documentary”: The basics on the 90 minute Swift Boat ad: Up to 62 television stations owned or managed by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group - many of them in swing states - will show a documentary highly critical of Senator John Kerry's antiwar activities 30 years ago within the next two weeks, Sinclair officials said yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/politics/campaign/11film.html?pagewanted=all
It is legal; it’s part of the Republicans doing all they can to win. Can’t blame them for that. Instead, there should be Democratic efforts to take back the media, to insist on equal time for Bush’s freebie hour last week on the cable networks and, most importantly, calling this Administration what it is.
Lies:
Just as Kerry won’t lay the “l” word, an ongoing limit of journalistic practice is that you can’t cite public figures for “lying.” Instead, euphemistic words or phrases are employed and we’re supposed to “know” what they mean. Last week’s NY Times article by ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON is an example- In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts
From the beginning of the year, the White House has charted new ground with the sweep of its negative campaigning, starting with an $80 million wave of attack advertisements directed at Senator John Kerry that began the moment he effectively won his party's nomination last spring.
But the scathing indictment that Mr. Bush offered of Mr. Kerry over the past two days - on the eve of the second presidential debate and with polls showing the race tightening - took these attacks to a blistering new level. In the process, several analysts say, Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/campaign/08campaign.html?oref=login&pagewanted=1
Bush II: (Pseudo-) Fascism?
At a high school reunion this weekend, an old friend whispered to me, “I can say this to you, right?…these Bush guys are fascists, they’re fascists!” Fair question, one that invites explication. Here’s a sampling of journalist David Neiwerts’ in-depth thoughts:
This is how pseudo-fascism works: It's not real fascism. A real fascist would speak explicitly of rounding up liberals and sending them off to concentration camps. Pseudo-fascists don't; they offer instead a pale imitation that only hints at such action. And then they claim it's just a joke.The real problem with this is that a lot of other movement conservatives say the same sort of thing -- and no one thinks for a moment they're joking. We've seen a lot of examples of an openly stated desire to do away with liberalism, particularly by accusing liberals of treason and equating them with "the enemy," in the past couple of years. This has been most notable in the field of conservative-movement book titles, ranging from Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism to Sean Hannity's Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism to Michael Savage's The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military. The crass intimidation inherent in these attacks cannot be clearer; and if you go to places like Savage's Web site, "Your Gear for Liberals to Fear" is only a click away. http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_10_10_dneiwert_archive.html#109694976530359103
What’s Happening, Iraq:
We’ve lost Iraqi oil: Youssef Ibrahim, formerly of the Times and the Wall Street Journal
The costs and benefits of America's occupation of Iraq vary, according to proponents and opponents, except when it comes to oil exports. The U.S.-led invasion has resulted in the loss of an average of 2 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil from world markets. That is a significant number with huge consequences for economies around the globe. Instead of rosy promises by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration who pushed for the invasion — partly on the premise that they would turn it into America's private gasoline-pumping station — the contrary has occurred.
The world has lost Iraq's oil.
The impact is slowly taking its toll as the price of everything related to petroleum rises (from the food on the supermarket shelves to the gasoline in your car to the plastic chairs on your lawn).
The consequences have been evident in the past few months. Oil prices stand at 20-year-high records with no relief in sight. Indeed, should the ongoing disruption of Iraqi oil exports be compounded with an interruption of production elsewhere — Russia, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or any member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — we could be looking at prices far above $50 a barrel, perhaps $60 or more. Indeed, the sky is the limit. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=6359%20
U.S. Military on Oil Protection Duty
Michael Klare has a fine piece on how the military is increasingly engaged as a security force dispatched to protect our oil interests well beyond Iraq.
It has been argued that America's oil-protection role is a peculiar feature of the war in Iraq, where petroleum installations are strewn about and the national economy is largely dependent on oil revenues. But Iraq is hardly the only country where US troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Georgia, US personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission. American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the US military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FJ09Dj01.html
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq: The Election and the Rest of Foreign Policy:
There is such a circumscribed discussion of “foreign policy.” For example, although we all know that the “Middle East”- Israel and Palestine- remains a key to a peaceful “Middle East”, it isn’t addressed in these debates; foreign policy discussions seem to have ended with St. Louis. Peter Preston in the Guardian comments on the void:
Republican policy is an empty vessel drifting off Tel Aviv, and the Democratic alternative has just as little stored in its hold. (Indeed, on any historical test, the Democrats are less rather than more likely to stand up to an Israel going its own sweet way.)
Yet Kerry must know that the Arab world (and much of Europe) won't respond to his Iraq distress calls unless there's a decisive return to road-map action. He must know that even Blair and Bush are at loggerheads over Israel. He must realise that a fresh start here is the key to a fresh start in Baghdad. But he didn't mention it.
Nor, alas, did any of those long, fruitful weeks at foreign policy seminars yield the most minimal shift in perception. It is Bush who (quite rightly) seeks to set North Korea in its context, and Kerry who cranks up the threat. It is Bush who, bruised by Iraq, turns more warily and multilaterally towards Tehran, and Kerry who unleashes the rockets of empty rhetoric. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1324489,00.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: Elections and Deals
Karzai, our Ricardo Montalban of Afghanistan, is benefiting from inveterate U.S. policy- buying off people with wads of cash. This time the warlords outside of Karzai’s base of Kabul are on the receiving end. Pepe Escobar of Asia Times reports:
Karzai may not be restricted to Kabul because he is making all sorts of deals with the warlords, with US backing: a UN source in Kabul confirmed to Asia Times Online that oilman Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, has personally "encouraged" several warlords to clear the way for Karzai. Deal-making of the suitcase-full-of-dollars kind is what Washington used to win the Afghan war in 2001 (usually the deals were with the wrong warlords, as in Tora Bora).
Escobar ads an election clarification:
Speaking of Tora Bora ... Democratic US Senator John Kerry has repeatedly charged that the Bush administration's tactic of outsourcing the battle of Tora Bora to locals, in December 2001, is the main reason bin Laden was not captured. Bush did not even try to answer the charge, either during the first presidential debate or in the campaign trail. This correspondent was in Tora Bora ( Taking a spin in Tora Bora , December 7, 2001). The battle was indeed outsourced, for the benefit of warlord Hazrat Ali. The B-52s were bombing the wrong mountains. And bin Laden was long gone, at least by four days, when the bombings intensified. Retired General Tommy Franks, then responsible for the Afghan war, still insists "he didn't know" whether bin Laden was in Tora Bora. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FJ09Ag03.html
Michael Powell shills.
Colin’s son, the FCC chair, performs the companion piece to Bush telling us in 9/01 that we should we patriotic by shopping.
The legendary consumer electronics salesman Crazy Eddie is no longer around. But the job of hawking televisions has been taken over in recent weeks by a new TV personality: Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Some of his critics are arguing that Mr. Powell and the F.C.C. have no place spending tax dollars promoting $2,000 consumer electronics devices.
The commission is taking the lead on a new consumer education campaign called "DTV - Get It!" But the commission is not just going to ask consumers to buy TV's: it has started a Web site, www.dtv.gov, that gives shopping and programming tips along with advice for setting up digital television.
"The F.C.C. wants to be a partner in helping consumers understand what it will actually take once they bring home their beautiful new high-definition sets to really get it online," Mr. Powell said in Washington on Oct. 1.
Three days later, he appeared on "Monday Night Football'' on ABC to promote the virtues of digital television to the technology's core audience: sports fans.
A spokeswoman for the F.C.C. defended Mr. Powell's push for digital television. But a nonprofit group called Commercial Alert sent a letter late last week to 160 members of Congress, urging them to withdraw financing from the campaign. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/technology/11fcc.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Florida: Activism, yes, and a multitude of challenges
But in Gadsden County, Florida's only county with a black majority, the largest percentage of presidential ballots were discarded four years ago. Nearly 2,000 ballots, an estimated 12% of the total, were tossed out. They were among tens of thousands of ballots from African Americans disqualified statewide in that election.Although they have no proof, many black residents believe partisan election officials and Republican Gov. Jeb Bush disqualified those votes to help his older brother win the presidency. And they have little confidence in new Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican gubernatorial appointee.
Yet
In Daytona Beach, activists are wrangling with county election officials over minority polling locations. On Thursday, the NAACP filed a federal voting rights lawsuit against Volusia County, where Daytona Beach is located, alleging that officials there had disenfranchised blacks by having only one early voting site in an area where few minority voters live.In a county the size of Rhode Island, the only voting site is in a predominantly white community, a location inaccessible by public transportation, 30 miles away from black neighborhoods. County elections officials said there wasn't time to open new polls. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blackvoters11oct11,1,4570735,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-R
News item: ‘U.S. attacks to retake “insurgent” territory will be postponed until after the Election’.
_______________________
"Wealth Of Others Helped To Shape Kerry's Life," –NY Times front page headline.
Is this Irony? Absurdity?
____________________
Oh, the low-level of this ‘contest’, the fate that lies ahead if Bush wins or the awful conditions Kerry will inherit seems to be responsible. Upcoming: It is unlikely, but one still hopes that Kerry will be more blunt re the destructiveness of this Administration. His campaign remains too gentlemanly.
Anyway:
The Sinclair “documentary”: The basics on the 90 minute Swift Boat ad: Up to 62 television stations owned or managed by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group - many of them in swing states - will show a documentary highly critical of Senator John Kerry's antiwar activities 30 years ago within the next two weeks, Sinclair officials said yesterday. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/politics/campaign/11film.html?pagewanted=all
It is legal; it’s part of the Republicans doing all they can to win. Can’t blame them for that. Instead, there should be Democratic efforts to take back the media, to insist on equal time for Bush’s freebie hour last week on the cable networks and, most importantly, calling this Administration what it is.
Lies:
Just as Kerry won’t lay the “l” word, an ongoing limit of journalistic practice is that you can’t cite public figures for “lying.” Instead, euphemistic words or phrases are employed and we’re supposed to “know” what they mean. Last week’s NY Times article by ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON is an example- In New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limit on the Facts
From the beginning of the year, the White House has charted new ground with the sweep of its negative campaigning, starting with an $80 million wave of attack advertisements directed at Senator John Kerry that began the moment he effectively won his party's nomination last spring.
But the scathing indictment that Mr. Bush offered of Mr. Kerry over the past two days - on the eve of the second presidential debate and with polls showing the race tightening - took these attacks to a blistering new level. In the process, several analysts say, Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/08/politics/campaign/08campaign.html?oref=login&pagewanted=1
Bush II: (Pseudo-) Fascism?
At a high school reunion this weekend, an old friend whispered to me, “I can say this to you, right?…these Bush guys are fascists, they’re fascists!” Fair question, one that invites explication. Here’s a sampling of journalist David Neiwerts’ in-depth thoughts:
This is how pseudo-fascism works: It's not real fascism. A real fascist would speak explicitly of rounding up liberals and sending them off to concentration camps. Pseudo-fascists don't; they offer instead a pale imitation that only hints at such action. And then they claim it's just a joke.The real problem with this is that a lot of other movement conservatives say the same sort of thing -- and no one thinks for a moment they're joking. We've seen a lot of examples of an openly stated desire to do away with liberalism, particularly by accusing liberals of treason and equating them with "the enemy," in the past couple of years. This has been most notable in the field of conservative-movement book titles, ranging from Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism to Sean Hannity's Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism to Michael Savage's The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military. The crass intimidation inherent in these attacks cannot be clearer; and if you go to places like Savage's Web site, "Your Gear for Liberals to Fear" is only a click away. http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_10_10_dneiwert_archive.html#109694976530359103
What’s Happening, Iraq:
We’ve lost Iraqi oil: Youssef Ibrahim, formerly of the Times and the Wall Street Journal
The costs and benefits of America's occupation of Iraq vary, according to proponents and opponents, except when it comes to oil exports. The U.S.-led invasion has resulted in the loss of an average of 2 million barrels a day of Iraqi oil from world markets. That is a significant number with huge consequences for economies around the globe. Instead of rosy promises by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration who pushed for the invasion — partly on the premise that they would turn it into America's private gasoline-pumping station — the contrary has occurred.
The world has lost Iraq's oil.
The impact is slowly taking its toll as the price of everything related to petroleum rises (from the food on the supermarket shelves to the gasoline in your car to the plastic chairs on your lawn).
The consequences have been evident in the past few months. Oil prices stand at 20-year-high records with no relief in sight. Indeed, should the ongoing disruption of Iraqi oil exports be compounded with an interruption of production elsewhere — Russia, Africa, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela or any member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — we could be looking at prices far above $50 a barrel, perhaps $60 or more. Indeed, the sky is the limit. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=6359%20
U.S. Military on Oil Protection Duty
Michael Klare has a fine piece on how the military is increasingly engaged as a security force dispatched to protect our oil interests well beyond Iraq.
It has been argued that America's oil-protection role is a peculiar feature of the war in Iraq, where petroleum installations are strewn about and the national economy is largely dependent on oil revenues. But Iraq is hardly the only country where US troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Georgia, US personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission. American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the US military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/FJ09Dj01.html
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq: The Election and the Rest of Foreign Policy:
There is such a circumscribed discussion of “foreign policy.” For example, although we all know that the “Middle East”- Israel and Palestine- remains a key to a peaceful “Middle East”, it isn’t addressed in these debates; foreign policy discussions seem to have ended with St. Louis. Peter Preston in the Guardian comments on the void:
Republican policy is an empty vessel drifting off Tel Aviv, and the Democratic alternative has just as little stored in its hold. (Indeed, on any historical test, the Democrats are less rather than more likely to stand up to an Israel going its own sweet way.)
Yet Kerry must know that the Arab world (and much of Europe) won't respond to his Iraq distress calls unless there's a decisive return to road-map action. He must know that even Blair and Bush are at loggerheads over Israel. He must realise that a fresh start here is the key to a fresh start in Baghdad. But he didn't mention it.
Nor, alas, did any of those long, fruitful weeks at foreign policy seminars yield the most minimal shift in perception. It is Bush who (quite rightly) seeks to set North Korea in its context, and Kerry who cranks up the threat. It is Bush who, bruised by Iraq, turns more warily and multilaterally towards Tehran, and Kerry who unleashes the rockets of empty rhetoric. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1324489,00.html
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: Elections and Deals
Karzai, our Ricardo Montalban of Afghanistan, is benefiting from inveterate U.S. policy- buying off people with wads of cash. This time the warlords outside of Karzai’s base of Kabul are on the receiving end. Pepe Escobar of Asia Times reports:
Karzai may not be restricted to Kabul because he is making all sorts of deals with the warlords, with US backing: a UN source in Kabul confirmed to Asia Times Online that oilman Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador, has personally "encouraged" several warlords to clear the way for Karzai. Deal-making of the suitcase-full-of-dollars kind is what Washington used to win the Afghan war in 2001 (usually the deals were with the wrong warlords, as in Tora Bora).
Escobar ads an election clarification:
Speaking of Tora Bora ... Democratic US Senator John Kerry has repeatedly charged that the Bush administration's tactic of outsourcing the battle of Tora Bora to locals, in December 2001, is the main reason bin Laden was not captured. Bush did not even try to answer the charge, either during the first presidential debate or in the campaign trail. This correspondent was in Tora Bora ( Taking a spin in Tora Bora , December 7, 2001). The battle was indeed outsourced, for the benefit of warlord Hazrat Ali. The B-52s were bombing the wrong mountains. And bin Laden was long gone, at least by four days, when the bombings intensified. Retired General Tommy Franks, then responsible for the Afghan war, still insists "he didn't know" whether bin Laden was in Tora Bora. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FJ09Ag03.html
Michael Powell shills.
Colin’s son, the FCC chair, performs the companion piece to Bush telling us in 9/01 that we should we patriotic by shopping.
The legendary consumer electronics salesman Crazy Eddie is no longer around. But the job of hawking televisions has been taken over in recent weeks by a new TV personality: Michael K. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Some of his critics are arguing that Mr. Powell and the F.C.C. have no place spending tax dollars promoting $2,000 consumer electronics devices.
The commission is taking the lead on a new consumer education campaign called "DTV - Get It!" But the commission is not just going to ask consumers to buy TV's: it has started a Web site, www.dtv.gov, that gives shopping and programming tips along with advice for setting up digital television.
"The F.C.C. wants to be a partner in helping consumers understand what it will actually take once they bring home their beautiful new high-definition sets to really get it online," Mr. Powell said in Washington on Oct. 1.
Three days later, he appeared on "Monday Night Football'' on ABC to promote the virtues of digital television to the technology's core audience: sports fans.
A spokeswoman for the F.C.C. defended Mr. Powell's push for digital television. But a nonprofit group called Commercial Alert sent a letter late last week to 160 members of Congress, urging them to withdraw financing from the campaign. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/11/technology/11fcc.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Florida: Activism, yes, and a multitude of challenges
But in Gadsden County, Florida's only county with a black majority, the largest percentage of presidential ballots were discarded four years ago. Nearly 2,000 ballots, an estimated 12% of the total, were tossed out. They were among tens of thousands of ballots from African Americans disqualified statewide in that election.Although they have no proof, many black residents believe partisan election officials and Republican Gov. Jeb Bush disqualified those votes to help his older brother win the presidency. And they have little confidence in new Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Republican gubernatorial appointee.
Yet
In Daytona Beach, activists are wrangling with county election officials over minority polling locations. On Thursday, the NAACP filed a federal voting rights lawsuit against Volusia County, where Daytona Beach is located, alleging that officials there had disenfranchised blacks by having only one early voting site in an area where few minority voters live.In a county the size of Rhode Island, the only voting site is in a predominantly white community, a location inaccessible by public transportation, 30 miles away from black neighborhoods. County elections officials said there wasn't time to open new polls. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-blackvoters11oct11,1,4570735,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines
-R
