Thursday, August 05, 2004
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBCWNR3JXD.html
Pro-Bush Ads Predictably Worsen: The latest smear is of the type you’d expect. Right-wing media are pushing it, especially Limbaugh. The claim: Veterans who claim to have “served with” Kerry (but didn’t), a doctor who claimed to have treated Kerry’s wounds (but didn’t) announce,
KERRY KILLED A LONE, FLEEING, TEENAGE FOE; LIED TO SUPERIORS TO GAIN MEDAL; Slaughters Animals, Burns Down Tiny Village.
Really.
Their book, intended to be a best seller (guaranteed by purchasing by countless right-wing book clubs), Unfit for Command will be out in time for the final weeks. John McCain, hopefully feeling guilty for campaigning with Bush, condemned the group and ad, called on the White House to do the same. One of those web sites: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1185197/posts
Meanwhile, from Republican consultant Mark McKinnon on the Springsteen et al tours: "We think it's unfortunate these particular fine musicians have decided to affiliate with a hate-filled fringe group like MoveOn.”
Democrats Learning: They too have a “Truth Squad” that’s contesting some of the more egregious lies spun by the Bush campaign.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Plenty of fighting, death country-wide.
Insurgents loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr battled fiercely with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday and fighting quickly spread to other Shiite areas, threatening a shaky two-month-old truce. A U.S. military helicopter was shot down, injuring the crew. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5455104/
Fighting flared Wednesday between the Iraqi police and insurgents in Mosul, killing at least 12 people, wounding dozens more and prompting city authorities to impose a curfew to restore order, city officials said.
Meanwhile, six foreign hostages were freed elsewhere in Iraq, several of them rescued in a raid by local leaders in Falluja.
About noon, dozens of masked insurgents got out of a minivan on the south side of Mosul and sprayed gunfire along two main roads, witnesses said. Iraqi police officers returned fire and the battle continued for more than three hours, they said. Insurgents attacked at least two other neighborhoods, the authorities said.
The fighting in Mosul, in northern Iraq, was the fiercest there since the American occupation began and raised the specter that the insurgency - already strong in large areas of the Sunni heartland - had taken a menacing turn farther north. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/international/middleeast/05iraq.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Robert Fisk’s (predictably) harsh assessment:
Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told.
”The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's "trial". Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked "disorientated" - …..
”Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "Prime Minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now. …” http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=546763
Troop Shortage / Backdoor Draft: Ongoing problem, that’s why the world-wide shifting about and the extended tours. Now the AP reports that the percentage of troops in Iraq that are National Guard or Reservists has gone from 25% (4/03) to 39% (now) to 43% in 2005. http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_reserves_072304,00.html
Bush: Still Holding to "Knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq," http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush3aug03,1,7312796.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Yet, the line about “we”- the Congress, the UN, the American public AND the Administration- were all misled by the CIA ignores that the Bushies always knew the info. was questionable, if not bogus. The doubts re WMD, the al-Qaeda tie, Iraq’s nuclear capacity were well known. Yet they went ahead with war, having long planned to do so. A new article by David Sirota and Christy Harvey definitively (again) makes the case. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/they_knew_0802/
Kerry courting business support; WSJ (Jackie Calmes) Many business folk are alarmed by Bush, and not frightened by Kerry.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has persuaded scores of corporate executives to go public with endorsements to prove his moderate appeal and suggest cracks in President Bush's base of business support.
Joined by several business leaders at an economic summit today in Davenport, Iowa, Mr. Kerry is releasing a list of about 200 other corporate supporters. Among the Kerry converts is David Bonderman, founder and managing partner of the Fort Worth, Texas, investment firm Texas Pacific Group, who supported Mr. Bush for president in 2000 and earlier for Texas governor. http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109158634174482476,00.html
October Surprise (again)
Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times circulates the latest concern that leading al-Qaeda figures are being held, to be announced at a politically convenient moment. Asia Times is a reliable source; it’s only possible flaw is that it is occasionally a tad dramatic.
The author taps a familiar vein in that he posits that Pakistan’s leaders play to the U.S. while seeking to co-opt/prevent a possible fundamentalist uprising at home, and that they fear that an actual victory over “terrorism” would lead to the U.S. abandoning their no longer useful ally. Then again, this “ally” spread nuclear technology, is a warm host to the Taliban, its intelligence service alternately trains and helps capture al-Qaeda, etc.
When US Central Command commander General John Abizaid visited Islamabad last week, his first priority was not Pakistan sending troops to Iraq, but the arrest of high-value al-Qaeda targets.
....Already, though, under intense pressure from the US, Pakistan has handed over as many as 350 suspected al-Qaeda operators into US custody. Most have been low-ranking, but some important names are, according to Asia Times Online contacts, being held in Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) safe houses to be presented at the right moment.
The contacts say that Pakistan's strategic circles see the high-value al-Qaeda operators as "bargaining chips" to ensure continued US support for President General Pervez Musharraf's de facto military rule in Pakistan. Had Pakistan handed over top targets such as Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Aiman al-Zawahir, Tahir Yuldash (leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others — assuming it was in a position to do so — the military rulers would have lost their usefulness to the US in its "war on terror". The contacts say that Pakistan's strategic circles see the high-value al-Qaeda operators as "bargaining chips" to ensure continued US support for President General Pervez Musharraf's de facto military rule in Pakistan. Had Pakistan handed over top targets such as Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Aiman al-Zawahir, Tahir Yuldash (leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others - assuming it was in a position to do so - the military rulers would have lost their usefulness to the US in its "war on terror". http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FH04Df03.html
Jimmy Breslin for a perspective on US War dead
A rocket-propelled grenade came out of the hot afternoon in Iraq on July 7 and made Pfc. Samuel Bowen of Cleveland the 1,000th member of the U.S. military to die in battle since the World Trade Center attack.The number of dead is carefully compiled by the Army Times newspaper, which carries the most news about the war. The others who know he is the 1,000th are those who fought where he died.Bowen died at 38 in the afternoon of July 7 when his Ohio National Guard engineer convoy stopped because one of the trucks broke down. Bowen and a dozen Guardsmen protected the convoy while a mechanic tried to repair the truck. Iraqis fired a rocket-propelled grenade that killed Bowen and wounded two others.With a number of dead this high, an easily remembered figure that stands in the sky and accuses the nation, it was not surprising to have the government throw a little added tension into the steam and announce that huge New York financial buildings have been targeted by al-Qaida. There was an orange alert and cops and troops were all over.Tom Ridge of Homeland Security made the announcement. Whenever I see Ridge, I feel he is another on the Republican campaign staff. It seems that whenever George Bush is in a little trouble, Ridge tells the public that we are going to be attacked. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/nyc-breslinspks0803,0,3269214.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists
That Rant: Kerry the Most Liberal, Edwards the #4 Liberal
Jon Stewart destroyed the nonsense on his Daily Show, but the Right continues to disseminate this nonsense. (Witness the local Herald screaming ‘He’s left of Ted!’)
One grievous, but predictable example:
Newt Gingrich said on Fox News Sunday, “ I think what decides this race in the end is, do you think America can go forward better with President Bush continuing to lead, or do you really want the most liberal member of the Senate and the fourth most liberal member of the Senate, people to the left of Teddy Kennedy, people to the left of Hillary Clinton? And I think that choice is going to be so wide and so clear by mid-September.
Chris Wallace responded, “I've got to say, Speaker Gingrich, that's the biggest bumper sticker I ever heard, but it was a good answer.”
That’s Fox “journalism”.
What’s Happening, North Korea: Starving people, bulging military
Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that Kim Jong-Il may have the know-how to hit California with sea-launched missiles, that he has 12 submarines formerly in the possession of the Soviet Union. But, of course, they’re much less of a threat than Saddam’s de-fanged, non-nuclear, demoralized Iraqi army.
North Korea is deploying new land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and may have sufficient range to hit the United States, according to the authoritative Jane's Defense Weekly.
In an article due to appear Wednesday, Jane's said the two new systems appeared to be based on a decommissioned Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile, the R-27.
It said communist North Korea had acquired the know-how during the 1990s from Russian missile specialists and by buying 12 former Soviet submarines which had been sold for scrap metal but retained key elements of their missile launch systems.
Jane's, which did not specify its sources, said the sea-based missile was potentially the more threatening of the two new weapons systems.
http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5860277
What’s Happening, Guantanamo: The Mail and Guardian (South Africa):
Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of United States interrogators and guards in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said on Wednesday. The prisoners said they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody. http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=13&o=134187
SEC Condemns Halliburton. In case you missed it.
The Halliburton Company secretly changed its accounting practices when Vice President Dick Cheney was its chief executive, the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday as it fined the company $7.5 million and brought actions against two former financial officials.
The commission said the accounting change enabled Halliburton, one of the nation's largest energy services companies, to report annual earnings in 1998 that were 46 percent higher than they would have been had the change not been made. It also allowed the company to report a substantially higher profit in 1999, the commission said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/business/04halliburton.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091716949-ZYr74coUAHbRyPkIhCFAWQ
U.S. Health Care System: Medical Errors Killing How Many Per Year?
Old claims had the figure approaching 100,000. Newer study by HealthGrades, a private company that rates hospitals for insurers and health plans, thinks it’s 575,000 for a three year period, or almost 200,000 per year. As one internist told me, ‘My best medical advice is, stay out of the hospitals!’
I link to the WBUR program of Wednesday as well as to the helpful article from Sunday that noted the study and other news that occurred while the Democratic convention was on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/opinion/01falk.html?ex=1249099200&en=e1d3ac9071d3a3e1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2004/08/20040804_a_main.asp
Polls Most important is that Kerry has edged ahead in Florida and solidified his lead in Pennsylvania; Bush moved a bit further in front in Ohio, according to Zogby. While Kerry leads in the electoral battle, the Republican convention has yet to occur, so, it is STILL too early. Next notable time to assess will be mid-September, after the convention and 9/11 anniversary. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-battleground04-an0802.html?mod=home_interactive_features
And,
Ohio: Bush 49%, Kerry 45% (Strategic Vision)
Minnesota: Kerry 49%, Bush 45% (Strategic Vision)
Iowa: Kerry 49%, Bush 46% (Strategic Vision)
-R
Pro-Bush Ads Predictably Worsen: The latest smear is of the type you’d expect. Right-wing media are pushing it, especially Limbaugh. The claim: Veterans who claim to have “served with” Kerry (but didn’t), a doctor who claimed to have treated Kerry’s wounds (but didn’t) announce,
KERRY KILLED A LONE, FLEEING, TEENAGE FOE; LIED TO SUPERIORS TO GAIN MEDAL; Slaughters Animals, Burns Down Tiny Village.
Really.
Their book, intended to be a best seller (guaranteed by purchasing by countless right-wing book clubs), Unfit for Command will be out in time for the final weeks. John McCain, hopefully feeling guilty for campaigning with Bush, condemned the group and ad, called on the White House to do the same. One of those web sites: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1185197/posts
Meanwhile, from Republican consultant Mark McKinnon on the Springsteen et al tours: "We think it's unfortunate these particular fine musicians have decided to affiliate with a hate-filled fringe group like MoveOn.”
Democrats Learning: They too have a “Truth Squad” that’s contesting some of the more egregious lies spun by the Bush campaign.
What’s Happening, Iraq: Plenty of fighting, death country-wide.
Insurgents loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr battled fiercely with U.S. and Iraqi forces in the holy city of Najaf on Thursday and fighting quickly spread to other Shiite areas, threatening a shaky two-month-old truce. A U.S. military helicopter was shot down, injuring the crew. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5455104/
Fighting flared Wednesday between the Iraqi police and insurgents in Mosul, killing at least 12 people, wounding dozens more and prompting city authorities to impose a curfew to restore order, city officials said.
Meanwhile, six foreign hostages were freed elsewhere in Iraq, several of them rescued in a raid by local leaders in Falluja.
About noon, dozens of masked insurgents got out of a minivan on the south side of Mosul and sprayed gunfire along two main roads, witnesses said. Iraqi police officers returned fire and the battle continued for more than three hours, they said. Insurgents attacked at least two other neighborhoods, the authorities said.
The fighting in Mosul, in northern Iraq, was the fiercest there since the American occupation began and raised the specter that the insurgency - already strong in large areas of the Sunni heartland - had taken a menacing turn farther north. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/international/middleeast/05iraq.html?pagewanted=print&position=
Robert Fisk’s (predictably) harsh assessment:
Much of Iraq has fallen outside the control of America's puppet government in Baghdad but we are not told. Hundreds of attacks are made against US troops every month. But unless an American dies, we are not told. This month's death toll of Iraqis in Baghdad alone has now reached 700 - the worst month since the invasion ended. But we are not told.
”The stage management of this catastrophe in Iraq was all too evident at Saddam Hussein's "trial". Not only did the US military censor the tapes of the event. Not only did they effectively delete all sound of the 11 other defendants. But the Americans led Saddam Hussein to believe - until he reached the courtroom - that he was on his way to his execution. Indeed, when he entered the room he believed that the judge was there to condemn him to death. This, after all, was the way Saddam ran his own state security courts. No wonder he initially looked "disorientated" - …..
”Indeed, watching any Western television station in Baghdad these days is like tuning in to Planet Mars. Doesn't Blair realize that Iraq is about to implode? Doesn't Bush realise this? The American-appointed "government" controls only parts of Baghdad - and even there its ministers and civil servants are car-bombed and assassinated. Baquba, Samara, Kut, Mahmoudiya, Hilla, Fallujah, Ramadi, all are outside government authority. Iyad Allawi, the "Prime Minister", is little more than mayor of Baghdad. "Some journalists," Blair announces, "almost want there to be a disaster in Iraq." He doesn't get it. The disaster exists now. …” http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=546763
Troop Shortage / Backdoor Draft: Ongoing problem, that’s why the world-wide shifting about and the extended tours. Now the AP reports that the percentage of troops in Iraq that are National Guard or Reservists has gone from 25% (4/03) to 39% (now) to 43% in 2005. http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_reserves_072304,00.html
Bush: Still Holding to "Knowing what I know today, we still would have gone on into Iraq," http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bush3aug03,1,7312796.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Yet, the line about “we”- the Congress, the UN, the American public AND the Administration- were all misled by the CIA ignores that the Bushies always knew the info. was questionable, if not bogus. The doubts re WMD, the al-Qaeda tie, Iraq’s nuclear capacity were well known. Yet they went ahead with war, having long planned to do so. A new article by David Sirota and Christy Harvey definitively (again) makes the case. http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/they_knew_0802/
Kerry courting business support; WSJ (Jackie Calmes) Many business folk are alarmed by Bush, and not frightened by Kerry.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry has persuaded scores of corporate executives to go public with endorsements to prove his moderate appeal and suggest cracks in President Bush's base of business support.
Joined by several business leaders at an economic summit today in Davenport, Iowa, Mr. Kerry is releasing a list of about 200 other corporate supporters. Among the Kerry converts is David Bonderman, founder and managing partner of the Fort Worth, Texas, investment firm Texas Pacific Group, who supported Mr. Bush for president in 2000 and earlier for Texas governor. http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109158634174482476,00.html
October Surprise (again)
Syed Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times circulates the latest concern that leading al-Qaeda figures are being held, to be announced at a politically convenient moment. Asia Times is a reliable source; it’s only possible flaw is that it is occasionally a tad dramatic.
The author taps a familiar vein in that he posits that Pakistan’s leaders play to the U.S. while seeking to co-opt/prevent a possible fundamentalist uprising at home, and that they fear that an actual victory over “terrorism” would lead to the U.S. abandoning their no longer useful ally. Then again, this “ally” spread nuclear technology, is a warm host to the Taliban, its intelligence service alternately trains and helps capture al-Qaeda, etc.
When US Central Command commander General John Abizaid visited Islamabad last week, his first priority was not Pakistan sending troops to Iraq, but the arrest of high-value al-Qaeda targets.
....Already, though, under intense pressure from the US, Pakistan has handed over as many as 350 suspected al-Qaeda operators into US custody. Most have been low-ranking, but some important names are, according to Asia Times Online contacts, being held in Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) safe houses to be presented at the right moment.
The contacts say that Pakistan's strategic circles see the high-value al-Qaeda operators as "bargaining chips" to ensure continued US support for President General Pervez Musharraf's de facto military rule in Pakistan. Had Pakistan handed over top targets such as Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Aiman al-Zawahir, Tahir Yuldash (leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others — assuming it was in a position to do so — the military rulers would have lost their usefulness to the US in its "war on terror". The contacts say that Pakistan's strategic circles see the high-value al-Qaeda operators as "bargaining chips" to ensure continued US support for President General Pervez Musharraf's de facto military rule in Pakistan. Had Pakistan handed over top targets such as Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Aiman al-Zawahir, Tahir Yuldash (leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) and others - assuming it was in a position to do so - the military rulers would have lost their usefulness to the US in its "war on terror". http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FH04Df03.html
Jimmy Breslin for a perspective on US War dead
A rocket-propelled grenade came out of the hot afternoon in Iraq on July 7 and made Pfc. Samuel Bowen of Cleveland the 1,000th member of the U.S. military to die in battle since the World Trade Center attack.The number of dead is carefully compiled by the Army Times newspaper, which carries the most news about the war. The others who know he is the 1,000th are those who fought where he died.Bowen died at 38 in the afternoon of July 7 when his Ohio National Guard engineer convoy stopped because one of the trucks broke down. Bowen and a dozen Guardsmen protected the convoy while a mechanic tried to repair the truck. Iraqis fired a rocket-propelled grenade that killed Bowen and wounded two others.With a number of dead this high, an easily remembered figure that stands in the sky and accuses the nation, it was not surprising to have the government throw a little added tension into the steam and announce that huge New York financial buildings have been targeted by al-Qaida. There was an orange alert and cops and troops were all over.Tom Ridge of Homeland Security made the announcement. Whenever I see Ridge, I feel he is another on the Republican campaign staff. It seems that whenever George Bush is in a little trouble, Ridge tells the public that we are going to be attacked. http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/columnists/nyc-breslinspks0803,0,3269214.column?coll=ny-ny-columnists
That Rant: Kerry the Most Liberal, Edwards the #4 Liberal
Jon Stewart destroyed the nonsense on his Daily Show, but the Right continues to disseminate this nonsense. (Witness the local Herald screaming ‘He’s left of Ted!’)
One grievous, but predictable example:
Newt Gingrich said on Fox News Sunday, “ I think what decides this race in the end is, do you think America can go forward better with President Bush continuing to lead, or do you really want the most liberal member of the Senate and the fourth most liberal member of the Senate, people to the left of Teddy Kennedy, people to the left of Hillary Clinton? And I think that choice is going to be so wide and so clear by mid-September.
Chris Wallace responded, “I've got to say, Speaker Gingrich, that's the biggest bumper sticker I ever heard, but it was a good answer.”
That’s Fox “journalism”.
What’s Happening, North Korea: Starving people, bulging military
Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that Kim Jong-Il may have the know-how to hit California with sea-launched missiles, that he has 12 submarines formerly in the possession of the Soviet Union. But, of course, they’re much less of a threat than Saddam’s de-fanged, non-nuclear, demoralized Iraqi army.
North Korea is deploying new land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and may have sufficient range to hit the United States, according to the authoritative Jane's Defense Weekly.
In an article due to appear Wednesday, Jane's said the two new systems appeared to be based on a decommissioned Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile, the R-27.
It said communist North Korea had acquired the know-how during the 1990s from Russian missile specialists and by buying 12 former Soviet submarines which had been sold for scrap metal but retained key elements of their missile launch systems.
Jane's, which did not specify its sources, said the sea-based missile was potentially the more threatening of the two new weapons systems.
http://www.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5860277
What’s Happening, Guantanamo: The Mail and Guardian (South Africa):
Repeated abuses allegedly suffered by three British prisoners at the hands of United States interrogators and guards in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba could amount to war crimes, the Red Cross said on Wednesday. The prisoners said they had been beaten, shackled, photographed naked and in one incident questioned at gunpoint while in US custody. http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=13&o=134187
SEC Condemns Halliburton. In case you missed it.
The Halliburton Company secretly changed its accounting practices when Vice President Dick Cheney was its chief executive, the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday as it fined the company $7.5 million and brought actions against two former financial officials.
The commission said the accounting change enabled Halliburton, one of the nation's largest energy services companies, to report annual earnings in 1998 that were 46 percent higher than they would have been had the change not been made. It also allowed the company to report a substantially higher profit in 1999, the commission said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/business/04halliburton.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091716949-ZYr74coUAHbRyPkIhCFAWQ
U.S. Health Care System: Medical Errors Killing How Many Per Year?
Old claims had the figure approaching 100,000. Newer study by HealthGrades, a private company that rates hospitals for insurers and health plans, thinks it’s 575,000 for a three year period, or almost 200,000 per year. As one internist told me, ‘My best medical advice is, stay out of the hospitals!’
I link to the WBUR program of Wednesday as well as to the helpful article from Sunday that noted the study and other news that occurred while the Democratic convention was on.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/opinion/01falk.html?ex=1249099200&en=e1d3ac9071d3a3e1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2004/08/20040804_a_main.asp
Polls Most important is that Kerry has edged ahead in Florida and solidified his lead in Pennsylvania; Bush moved a bit further in front in Ohio, according to Zogby. While Kerry leads in the electoral battle, the Republican convention has yet to occur, so, it is STILL too early. Next notable time to assess will be mid-September, after the convention and 9/11 anniversary. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-battleground04-an0802.html?mod=home_interactive_features
And,
Ohio: Bush 49%, Kerry 45% (Strategic Vision)
Minnesota: Kerry 49%, Bush 45% (Strategic Vision)
Iowa: Kerry 49%, Bush 46% (Strategic Vision)
-R
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Latest Terror Alert: More of the same?
Well, this one IS based on actual information. However, much of the info. antedates 9/11/01. NY police commissioner Ray Kelly says that the ‘casing out’ of these buildings was a “vulnerability analysis” that does not suggest any evidence of an imminent threat. So, we know that al-Qaeda cased out buildings during 2000-2001. That’s reason for an alert? Hmmmm.
Then again, if we wanted to pretend that it was a non-partisan effort, Tom Ridge again reminded us: "But we must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror.”
Thus it’s not surprising that some would wonder:
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."- http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35466-2004Aug2?language=printer
The Bushies have been Osama’s ‘dream come true.’ They have made even conservatives cynical about these alerts, they invaded an Arab country and tortured prisoners, let the Taliban re-emerge, let Osama escape at Tora Bora and first resisted ‘homeland security’ and then demonstrated incompetence in not providing even basic security for ports, chemical and nuclear plants, ETC. And this is the one category where Bush continues to outpoll Kerry.
Fiscal Policy: Why did Kerry and all the Democrats ignore the Bush deficit? Daniel Gross for slate.com:
The first is that the Democrats have swallowed the Republican line that the deterioration of the nation's balance sheet was more a matter of happenstance than human agency. The recession and stock bust sapped revenues and necessitated tax cuts while the war on terror required higher spending, thus rendering all those forecasts of surplus inoperative. But that's not how it went down. As Daniel Altman convincingly argues in his new book, Neoconomy, the administration's efforts to remake American fiscal policy have been just as radical and just as calculated as its efforts to remake foreign policy. The Neoconomists, led by the dour supply-sider Lawrence Lindsey and the more cheerful (and shameless) Glenn Hubbard, possessed of "a revolutionary mindset," used the forecasts of a surplus as an excuse to restructure the tax code. Their goal was to eliminate or sharply reduce taxes on savings and investing and instead finance government activities by taxing wages. So marginal tax rates were cut on the wealthy, the estate tax was slated for elimination, and taxes on dividends and capital gains were slashed. The result: hundreds of billions of dollars of the Social Security surplus spent, hundreds of billions in extra debt, subpar job growth, and structural deficits as far as the eye can see.
And they're not done yet. If the Neoconomists have their way, Altman concludes, "All your income from working would be taxed" while "none of your income from other forms of saving would be taxed." That's a huge relative advantage for those with enough assets to invest and live off of savings and a huge relative disadvantage for people who haven't yet made it. Two Americas, anyone? http://www.slate.com/id/2104561/
Voting Machine Concerns: Ronnie Dugger, Texas populist, founder of the Alliance for Democracy, in the August 14th Nation:
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
On November 2 millions of Americans will cast their votes for President in computerized voting systems that can be rigged by corporate or local-election insiders. Some 98 million citizens, five out of every six of the roughly 115 million who will go to the polls, will consign their votes into computers that unidentified computer programmers, working in the main for four private corporations and the officials of 10,500 election jurisdictions, could program to invisibly falsify the outcomes.
The result could be the failure of an American presidential election and its collapse into suspicions, accusations and a civic fury that will make Florida 2000 seem like a family spat in the kitchen. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary, has written, "Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses." Senator John Kerry told Florida Democrats last March, "I don't think we ought to have any vote cast in America that cannot be traced and properly recounted." Pointing out in a recent speech at the NAACP convention that "a million African-Americans were disenfranchised in the last election," Kerry says his campaign is readying 2,000 lawyers to "challenge any place in America where you cannot trace the vote and count the votes" [see Greg Palast, "Vanishing Votes," May 17].
The potential for fraud and error is daunting. About 61 million of the votes in November, more than half the total, will be counted in the computers of one company, the privately held Election Systems and Software (ES&S) of Omaha, Nebraska. Altogether, nearly 100 million votes will be counted in computers provided and programmed by ES&S and three other private corporations: British-owned Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, California, whose touch-screen voting equipment was rejected as insecure against fraud by New York City in the 1990s; the Republican-identified company Diebold Election Systems of McKinney, Texas, whose machines malfunctioned this year in a California election; and Hart InterCivic of Austin, one of whose principal investors is Tom Hicks, who helped make George W. Bush a millionaire. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger
FBI Whistle-blower blows her whistle:
This blog’s most startling news is from Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who’s been basically gagged by the FBI. She sent a letter to Tom Kean the 9/11 Commission co-chair which is quite a read. I provide a healthy excerpt.
Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations. Considering what is at stake, our national security, we are entitled to demand answers to unanswered questions, and to ask for clarification of issues that were ignored and/or omitted from the report. I, Sibel Edmonds, a concerned American Citizen, a former FBI translator, a whistleblower, a witness for a United States Congressional investigation, a witness and a plaintiff for the Department of Justice Inspector General investigation, and a witness for your own 9/11 Commission investigation, request your answers to, and your public acknowledgement of, the following questions and issues:
After the terrorist attacks of September 11 we, the translators at the FBI’s largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of ‘extensive backlog of untranslated documents’, and justify its request for budget and staff increases. While FBI agents from various field offices were desperately seeking leads and suspects, and completely depending on FBI HQ and its language units to provide them with needed translated information, hundreds of translators were being told by their administrative supervisors not to translate and to let the work pile up ( please refer to the CBS-60 Minutes transcript dated October 2002, and provided to your investigators in January-February 2004).
After almost three years the American people still do not know that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken policy of ‘ protecting certain foreign business relations.’ The victims family members still do not realize that information and answers they have sought relentlessly for over two years has been blocked due to the unspoken decisions made and disguised under ‘ safeguarding certain diplomatic relations.’ Your report did not even attempt to address these unspoken practices, although, unlike me, you were not placed under any gag. Your hearings did not include questions regarding these unspoken and unwritten policies and practices. Despite your full awareness and understanding of certain criminal conduct that connects to certain terrorist related activities, committed by certain U.S. officials and high-level government employees, you have not proposed criminal investigations into this conduct, although under the laws of this country you are required to do so. How can budget increases address and resolve these problems, when some of them are caused by unspoken practices and unwritten policies? How can a new bureaucratic layer, “ Intelligence Czar”, in its cocoon removed from the action lines, override these unwritten policies and unspoken practices incompatible with our national security?
--------------
I am writing this letter in light of my direct experience within the FBI’s translation unit during the most crucial times after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in light of my first hand knowledge of certain problems and cases within the Bureau’s language units, and in light of what has already been established as facts. As you are fully aware, the facts, incidents, and problems cited in this letter are by NO means based upon personal opinion or un-verified allegations. As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. As you know, according to officials with direct knowledge of the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on my allegations, ‘ none of my allegations were disproved.’ As you are fully aware, even FBI officials ‘ confirmed all my allegations and denied none’ during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff over two years ago. However, neither your commission’s hearings, nor your commission’s five hundred sixty seven-page report, nor your recommendations include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems. Your report’s coverage of FBI translation problems consists of a brief microscopic footnote (Footnote #25). Yet, your commission is geared to start aggressively pressuring our government to hastily implement your measures and recommendations based upon your incomplete and deficient report. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0408/S00012.htm
Trade: WTO Progress or usual messing over the disempowered?
Elizabeth Becker, NY Times:
By agreeing to the eventual elimination of billions of dollars of farm subsides early Sunday morning, the World Trade Organization began to make good on its insistence that wealthy nations end the dumping of subsidized food on the global market.
The framework agreement they reached, representing a midway point in talks to change world trade rules, also served as a reminder that multinational organizations can at times be effective. The accord came nearly a year after the spectacular failure of the previous effort in Cancún, Mexico, at a low point in international relations splintered by the Iraq war. Officials are hoping for a successful conclusion in 2006.
While there were no Champagne toasts here - exhausted delegates rushed to their cars, intent on a good night's sleep - there was a sense of a job well done. Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director general of the World Trade Organization, said this was a "truly historic" achievement.
But in this year of American elections and lingering trans-Atlantic friction, that message was muted by competing interpretations of what this framework agreement would mean for farmers in wealthier as well as poor countries.
For developing countries that had succeeded in transforming the seemingly dull issue of farm subsidies into an international cause célèbre complete with rock-star patronage, it was a moment of triumph. The global campaign - amplified by the World Bank, the United Nations and the charity Oxfam International - helped push representatives of the advanced economies to give in to pleas to cut back some of their $300 billion in annual subsidies and supports that have pushed down commodity prices, impoverished farmers in the developing world and prevented them from competing on the world market.
The European Union agreed unequivocally to eliminate its export subsidies, easily the most detested of all agricultural subsidies. The United States agreed to cut back its export credits, some of its cotton subsidies and to make a 20 percent reduction in some of its $19 billion in subsidies of corn, wheat, rice and soybeans the first year the rules go into effect.
"This is the beginning of the end of all subsidies," said Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, who became a star of the negotiations. "Export subsidies are now gone, and trade-distorting domestic subsidies are on their way out." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02trade.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091527423-JXQQ7zVRncgybNwgdW2a1Q&pagewanted=print&position=
Dissenting Voices: Focus on the Global South and the Indian delegation asserting that small farmers will die, de-industrialization will occur in the developing countries, etc.
The trade liberalization framework presented to the WTO General Council today is a betrayal of the world’s poor, according to the Asian trade policy research NGO, Focus on the Global South.
Speaking in Geneva today, their senior trade analyst Aileen Kwa said that the current negotiations are being used by the rich industrialized countries – especially the US and the EU – to force open developing country markets and to hide their own massive agricultural subsidies.
"If the proposed framework is implemented, the inevitable result will be deindustrialization of the developing world and the end of small-scale farming," said Kwa. "Millions of workers will lose their jobs and millions of farmers will lose their livelihoods." http://www.focusweb.org/main/html/PrintArticle389.html
But the powerful National Farmers' Coalition (NFC) which represents 75 percent of India's farmers and has on board political leaders like the Communist Party of India (CPI)'s Atul Kumar Anjaan, thinks otherwise. ''India and other developing countries should understand that they have been had by the complex technical language which now actually allows the United States and the European Union to increase their domestic support (of agricultural products),'' said Devinder Sharma, a spokesman for the NFC. ''The exports of these countries can actually be dumped on others,'' said Devinder Sharma, spokesman for the NFC. http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24900
Plame Investigation: 13 weeks till election day and still no grand jury announcement. Only that, according to Robin Wright in the Washington Post, Powell testified in July. So much (such as the 9/11 Report piece on the Administration) has been postponed. Why not this as well? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32773-2004Aug1.html
Bush Administration’s Nuclear Folly (cont.) They’re so accomplished at making the world more dangerous. I will not reference Bush, fundamentalism, Armageddon.
In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials.
For several years the United States and other nations have pursued the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At an arms-control meeting this week in Geneva, the Bush administration told other nations it still supported a treaty, but not verification.
Administration officials, who have showed skepticism in the past about the effectiveness of international weapons inspections, said they made the decision after concluding that such a system would cost too much, would require overly intrusive inspections and would not guarantee compliance with the treaty. They declined, however, to explain in detail how they believed U.S. security would be harmed by creating a plan to monitor the treaty.
Arms-control specialists reacted negatively, saying the change in U.S. position will dramatically weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. The announcement, they said, also virtually kills a 10-year international effort to lure countries such as Pakistan, India and Israel into accepting some oversight of their nuclear production programs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28806-2004Jul30?language=printer
More re Abu Ghraib- from Rolling Stone magazine (Osha Gray Davidson)
It has been months since the now-infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib revealed that American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners -- yet the Bush administration has failed to get to the bottom of the abuses."There are some serious unanswered questions," says Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon is stalling on several investigations, and congressional inquiries have ground to a halt. The foot-dragging is astonishing, given that Congress has access to classified documents detailing the abuses outlined by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in his report on Abu Ghraib. Rolling Stone obtained those files in June and offers this report on their contents. -The Editors
The new classified military documents offer a chilling picture of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- including detailed reports that U.S. troops and translators sodomized and raped Iraqi prisoners. The secret files -- 106 "annexes" that the Defense Department withheld from the Taguba report last spring -- include nearly 6,000 pages of internal Army memos and e-mails, reports on prison riots and escapes, and sworn statements by soldiers, officers, private contractors and detainees. The files depict a prison in complete chaos. Prisoners were fed bug-infested food and forced to live in squalid conditions; detainees and U.S. soldiers alike were killed and wounded in nightly mortar attacks; and loyalists of Saddam Hussein served as guards in the facility, apparently smuggling weapons to prisoners inside. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6388256&pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1091216021626&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.780
Nixon: Not just Watergate, not just Cambodia. Plotting Assassin!
Credit NPR with an unusual interview that discussed the retirement of columnist Jack Anderson. Richard Nixon had come to loathe Anderson and considered ways to neutralize him. This from Brian Naylor’s interview of author Mark Feldstein who is currently writing a book on Anderson.
Mr. FELDSTEIN: We don't know. Here's what we do know--and it's been really interesting. I've been going through the National Archives documents on this and the White House tapes. We do know that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, two names that would become famous a few weeks later during the Watergate break-in when they were arrested as part of that, secretly met at The Hay-Adams Hotel in March of 1972, a block from the White House, and they discussed rubbing out Jack Anderson, and they discussed various ways they were going to kill him. First, they talked about putting LSD in his drink. The trouble was as Mormon and a teetotaler, he didn't drink alcohol. So that was out. So then they talked about making him crash in an automobile accident, but they would have to go to the CIA and use a special car for that. So finally G. Gordon Liddy volunteered to kill Anderson himself personally by knifing him, slitting his throat, and staging it as a mugging that would look like a Washington street crime. At the last minute, this assassination plot was aborted, and a few weeks later, the men were arrested in the Watergate break-in and never had a chance to put their plan into operation. http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3807442
-R
Well, this one IS based on actual information. However, much of the info. antedates 9/11/01. NY police commissioner Ray Kelly says that the ‘casing out’ of these buildings was a “vulnerability analysis” that does not suggest any evidence of an imminent threat. So, we know that al-Qaeda cased out buildings during 2000-2001. That’s reason for an alert? Hmmmm.
Then again, if we wanted to pretend that it was a non-partisan effort, Tom Ridge again reminded us: "But we must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the President's leadership in the war against terror.”
Thus it’s not surprising that some would wonder:
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."- http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35466-2004Aug2?language=printer
The Bushies have been Osama’s ‘dream come true.’ They have made even conservatives cynical about these alerts, they invaded an Arab country and tortured prisoners, let the Taliban re-emerge, let Osama escape at Tora Bora and first resisted ‘homeland security’ and then demonstrated incompetence in not providing even basic security for ports, chemical and nuclear plants, ETC. And this is the one category where Bush continues to outpoll Kerry.
Fiscal Policy: Why did Kerry and all the Democrats ignore the Bush deficit? Daniel Gross for slate.com:
The first is that the Democrats have swallowed the Republican line that the deterioration of the nation's balance sheet was more a matter of happenstance than human agency. The recession and stock bust sapped revenues and necessitated tax cuts while the war on terror required higher spending, thus rendering all those forecasts of surplus inoperative. But that's not how it went down. As Daniel Altman convincingly argues in his new book, Neoconomy, the administration's efforts to remake American fiscal policy have been just as radical and just as calculated as its efforts to remake foreign policy. The Neoconomists, led by the dour supply-sider Lawrence Lindsey and the more cheerful (and shameless) Glenn Hubbard, possessed of "a revolutionary mindset," used the forecasts of a surplus as an excuse to restructure the tax code. Their goal was to eliminate or sharply reduce taxes on savings and investing and instead finance government activities by taxing wages. So marginal tax rates were cut on the wealthy, the estate tax was slated for elimination, and taxes on dividends and capital gains were slashed. The result: hundreds of billions of dollars of the Social Security surplus spent, hundreds of billions in extra debt, subpar job growth, and structural deficits as far as the eye can see.
And they're not done yet. If the Neoconomists have their way, Altman concludes, "All your income from working would be taxed" while "none of your income from other forms of saving would be taxed." That's a huge relative advantage for those with enough assets to invest and live off of savings and a huge relative disadvantage for people who haven't yet made it. Two Americas, anyone? http://www.slate.com/id/2104561/
Voting Machine Concerns: Ronnie Dugger, Texas populist, founder of the Alliance for Democracy, in the August 14th Nation:
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
On November 2 millions of Americans will cast their votes for President in computerized voting systems that can be rigged by corporate or local-election insiders. Some 98 million citizens, five out of every six of the roughly 115 million who will go to the polls, will consign their votes into computers that unidentified computer programmers, working in the main for four private corporations and the officials of 10,500 election jurisdictions, could program to invisibly falsify the outcomes.
The result could be the failure of an American presidential election and its collapse into suspicions, accusations and a civic fury that will make Florida 2000 seem like a family spat in the kitchen. Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary, has written, "Automated voting machines will be easily rigged, with no paper trails to document abuses." Senator John Kerry told Florida Democrats last March, "I don't think we ought to have any vote cast in America that cannot be traced and properly recounted." Pointing out in a recent speech at the NAACP convention that "a million African-Americans were disenfranchised in the last election," Kerry says his campaign is readying 2,000 lawyers to "challenge any place in America where you cannot trace the vote and count the votes" [see Greg Palast, "Vanishing Votes," May 17].
The potential for fraud and error is daunting. About 61 million of the votes in November, more than half the total, will be counted in the computers of one company, the privately held Election Systems and Software (ES&S) of Omaha, Nebraska. Altogether, nearly 100 million votes will be counted in computers provided and programmed by ES&S and three other private corporations: British-owned Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, California, whose touch-screen voting equipment was rejected as insecure against fraud by New York City in the 1990s; the Republican-identified company Diebold Election Systems of McKinney, Texas, whose machines malfunctioned this year in a California election; and Hart InterCivic of Austin, one of whose principal investors is Tom Hicks, who helped make George W. Bush a millionaire. http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040816&s=dugger
FBI Whistle-blower blows her whistle:
This blog’s most startling news is from Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who’s been basically gagged by the FBI. She sent a letter to Tom Kean the 9/11 Commission co-chair which is quite a read. I provide a healthy excerpt.
Unfortunately, I find your report seriously flawed in its failure to address serious intelligence issues that I am aware of, which have been confirmed, and which as a witness to the commission, I made you aware of. Thus, I must assume that other serious issues that I am not aware of were in the same manner omitted from your report. These omissions cast doubt on the validity of your report and therefore on its conclusions and recommendations. Considering what is at stake, our national security, we are entitled to demand answers to unanswered questions, and to ask for clarification of issues that were ignored and/or omitted from the report. I, Sibel Edmonds, a concerned American Citizen, a former FBI translator, a whistleblower, a witness for a United States Congressional investigation, a witness and a plaintiff for the Department of Justice Inspector General investigation, and a witness for your own 9/11 Commission investigation, request your answers to, and your public acknowledgement of, the following questions and issues:
After the terrorist attacks of September 11 we, the translators at the FBI’s largest and most important translation unit, were told to slow down, even stop, translation of critical information related to terrorist activities so that the FBI could present the United States Congress with a record of ‘extensive backlog of untranslated documents’, and justify its request for budget and staff increases. While FBI agents from various field offices were desperately seeking leads and suspects, and completely depending on FBI HQ and its language units to provide them with needed translated information, hundreds of translators were being told by their administrative supervisors not to translate and to let the work pile up ( please refer to the CBS-60 Minutes transcript dated October 2002, and provided to your investigators in January-February 2004).
After almost three years the American people still do not know that thousands of lives can be jeopardized under the unspoken policy of ‘ protecting certain foreign business relations.’ The victims family members still do not realize that information and answers they have sought relentlessly for over two years has been blocked due to the unspoken decisions made and disguised under ‘ safeguarding certain diplomatic relations.’ Your report did not even attempt to address these unspoken practices, although, unlike me, you were not placed under any gag. Your hearings did not include questions regarding these unspoken and unwritten policies and practices. Despite your full awareness and understanding of certain criminal conduct that connects to certain terrorist related activities, committed by certain U.S. officials and high-level government employees, you have not proposed criminal investigations into this conduct, although under the laws of this country you are required to do so. How can budget increases address and resolve these problems, when some of them are caused by unspoken practices and unwritten policies? How can a new bureaucratic layer, “ Intelligence Czar”, in its cocoon removed from the action lines, override these unwritten policies and unspoken practices incompatible with our national security?
--------------
I am writing this letter in light of my direct experience within the FBI’s translation unit during the most crucial times after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in light of my first hand knowledge of certain problems and cases within the Bureau’s language units, and in light of what has already been established as facts. As you are fully aware, the facts, incidents, and problems cited in this letter are by NO means based upon personal opinion or un-verified allegations. As you are fully aware, these issues and incidents were found confirmed by a Senior Republican Senator, Charles Grassley, and a Senior Democrat Senator, Patrick Leahy. As you know, according to officials with direct knowledge of the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on my allegations, ‘ none of my allegations were disproved.’ As you are fully aware, even FBI officials ‘ confirmed all my allegations and denied none’ during their unclassified meetings with the Senate Judiciary staff over two years ago. However, neither your commission’s hearings, nor your commission’s five hundred sixty seven-page report, nor your recommendations include these serious issues, major incidents, and systemic problems. Your report’s coverage of FBI translation problems consists of a brief microscopic footnote (Footnote #25). Yet, your commission is geared to start aggressively pressuring our government to hastily implement your measures and recommendations based upon your incomplete and deficient report. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0408/S00012.htm
Trade: WTO Progress or usual messing over the disempowered?
Elizabeth Becker, NY Times:
By agreeing to the eventual elimination of billions of dollars of farm subsides early Sunday morning, the World Trade Organization began to make good on its insistence that wealthy nations end the dumping of subsidized food on the global market.
The framework agreement they reached, representing a midway point in talks to change world trade rules, also served as a reminder that multinational organizations can at times be effective. The accord came nearly a year after the spectacular failure of the previous effort in Cancún, Mexico, at a low point in international relations splintered by the Iraq war. Officials are hoping for a successful conclusion in 2006.
While there were no Champagne toasts here - exhausted delegates rushed to their cars, intent on a good night's sleep - there was a sense of a job well done. Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director general of the World Trade Organization, said this was a "truly historic" achievement.
But in this year of American elections and lingering trans-Atlantic friction, that message was muted by competing interpretations of what this framework agreement would mean for farmers in wealthier as well as poor countries.
For developing countries that had succeeded in transforming the seemingly dull issue of farm subsidies into an international cause célèbre complete with rock-star patronage, it was a moment of triumph. The global campaign - amplified by the World Bank, the United Nations and the charity Oxfam International - helped push representatives of the advanced economies to give in to pleas to cut back some of their $300 billion in annual subsidies and supports that have pushed down commodity prices, impoverished farmers in the developing world and prevented them from competing on the world market.
The European Union agreed unequivocally to eliminate its export subsidies, easily the most detested of all agricultural subsidies. The United States agreed to cut back its export credits, some of its cotton subsidies and to make a 20 percent reduction in some of its $19 billion in subsidies of corn, wheat, rice and soybeans the first year the rules go into effect.
"This is the beginning of the end of all subsidies," said Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, who became a star of the negotiations. "Export subsidies are now gone, and trade-distorting domestic subsidies are on their way out." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02trade.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091527423-JXQQ7zVRncgybNwgdW2a1Q&pagewanted=print&position=
Dissenting Voices: Focus on the Global South and the Indian delegation asserting that small farmers will die, de-industrialization will occur in the developing countries, etc.
The trade liberalization framework presented to the WTO General Council today is a betrayal of the world’s poor, according to the Asian trade policy research NGO, Focus on the Global South.
Speaking in Geneva today, their senior trade analyst Aileen Kwa said that the current negotiations are being used by the rich industrialized countries – especially the US and the EU – to force open developing country markets and to hide their own massive agricultural subsidies.
"If the proposed framework is implemented, the inevitable result will be deindustrialization of the developing world and the end of small-scale farming," said Kwa. "Millions of workers will lose their jobs and millions of farmers will lose their livelihoods." http://www.focusweb.org/main/html/PrintArticle389.html
But the powerful National Farmers' Coalition (NFC) which represents 75 percent of India's farmers and has on board political leaders like the Communist Party of India (CPI)'s Atul Kumar Anjaan, thinks otherwise. ''India and other developing countries should understand that they have been had by the complex technical language which now actually allows the United States and the European Union to increase their domestic support (of agricultural products),'' said Devinder Sharma, a spokesman for the NFC. ''The exports of these countries can actually be dumped on others,'' said Devinder Sharma, spokesman for the NFC. http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=24900
Plame Investigation: 13 weeks till election day and still no grand jury announcement. Only that, according to Robin Wright in the Washington Post, Powell testified in July. So much (such as the 9/11 Report piece on the Administration) has been postponed. Why not this as well? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32773-2004Aug1.html
Bush Administration’s Nuclear Folly (cont.) They’re so accomplished at making the world more dangerous. I will not reference Bush, fundamentalism, Armageddon.
In a significant shift in U.S. policy, the Bush administration announced this week that it will oppose provisions for inspections and verification as part of an international treaty that would ban production of nuclear weapons materials.
For several years the United States and other nations have pursued the treaty, which would ban new production by any state of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for weapons. At an arms-control meeting this week in Geneva, the Bush administration told other nations it still supported a treaty, but not verification.
Administration officials, who have showed skepticism in the past about the effectiveness of international weapons inspections, said they made the decision after concluding that such a system would cost too much, would require overly intrusive inspections and would not guarantee compliance with the treaty. They declined, however, to explain in detail how they believed U.S. security would be harmed by creating a plan to monitor the treaty.
Arms-control specialists reacted negatively, saying the change in U.S. position will dramatically weaken any treaty and make it harder to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of terrorists. The announcement, they said, also virtually kills a 10-year international effort to lure countries such as Pakistan, India and Israel into accepting some oversight of their nuclear production programs. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28806-2004Jul30?language=printer
More re Abu Ghraib- from Rolling Stone magazine (Osha Gray Davidson)
It has been months since the now-infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib revealed that American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners -- yet the Bush administration has failed to get to the bottom of the abuses."There are some serious unanswered questions," says Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee. The Pentagon is stalling on several investigations, and congressional inquiries have ground to a halt. The foot-dragging is astonishing, given that Congress has access to classified documents detailing the abuses outlined by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in his report on Abu Ghraib. Rolling Stone obtained those files in June and offers this report on their contents. -The Editors
The new classified military documents offer a chilling picture of what happened at Abu Ghraib -- including detailed reports that U.S. troops and translators sodomized and raped Iraqi prisoners. The secret files -- 106 "annexes" that the Defense Department withheld from the Taguba report last spring -- include nearly 6,000 pages of internal Army memos and e-mails, reports on prison riots and escapes, and sworn statements by soldiers, officers, private contractors and detainees. The files depict a prison in complete chaos. Prisoners were fed bug-infested food and forced to live in squalid conditions; detainees and U.S. soldiers alike were killed and wounded in nightly mortar attacks; and loyalists of Saddam Hussein served as guards in the facility, apparently smuggling weapons to prisoners inside. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story?id=6388256&pageid=rs.Home&pageregion=single7&rnd=1091216021626&has-player=true&version=6.0.11.780
Nixon: Not just Watergate, not just Cambodia. Plotting Assassin!
Credit NPR with an unusual interview that discussed the retirement of columnist Jack Anderson. Richard Nixon had come to loathe Anderson and considered ways to neutralize him. This from Brian Naylor’s interview of author Mark Feldstein who is currently writing a book on Anderson.
Mr. FELDSTEIN: We don't know. Here's what we do know--and it's been really interesting. I've been going through the National Archives documents on this and the White House tapes. We do know that E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, two names that would become famous a few weeks later during the Watergate break-in when they were arrested as part of that, secretly met at The Hay-Adams Hotel in March of 1972, a block from the White House, and they discussed rubbing out Jack Anderson, and they discussed various ways they were going to kill him. First, they talked about putting LSD in his drink. The trouble was as Mormon and a teetotaler, he didn't drink alcohol. So that was out. So then they talked about making him crash in an automobile accident, but they would have to go to the CIA and use a special car for that. So finally G. Gordon Liddy volunteered to kill Anderson himself personally by knifing him, slitting his throat, and staging it as a mugging that would look like a Washington street crime. At the last minute, this assassination plot was aborted, and a few weeks later, the men were arrested in the Watergate break-in and never had a chance to put their plan into operation. http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3807442
-R
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Post Convention
Most editorial pages were positive. Not the Washington Post:
In the end, Mr. Kerry will be judged not in a vacuum but against the record compiled by Mr. Bush. But he will be judged in part on how he chose to present himself last night, and on that score, while he may have been politically effective, he fell short of demonstrating the kind of leadership the nation needs. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=4b1f6ba8cd82e926a90c1ec54a0eae3e&lat=1091192737&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW6RH0459C244AEBA439543F84CD8D0
CNN Convention Banter: The Fox Effect. An example of their ‘impartiality’
Wolf Blitzer: One of the biggest problems that John Kerry has had is this Republican criticism that he flip-flops, that he votes one way, the next day, he votes another way. That is a serious criticism.
[Judy] Woodruff: Another argument the Republicans make, the Bush Bush/Cheney campaign John Kerry has voted to cut defense. They have produced reams of documents to back up votes that he made in the United States Senate that they say show compare to practically not only the Republicans, but compared to many other Democrats. He has not voted to support the kind of military spending that would create a strong America.
[Jeff] Greenfield: How hard do you think it will be to talk to the men and women now in the military about John Kerry's record, given the fact that he even acknowledges when he came back from Vietnam and participated in the anti-war movement, he used language that he called over the top. He talked about war crimes. He described in graphic details events that he now says might not have happened. Does this not create at least a barrier to winning support for men and women in the military?
----
[Aaron] Brown: More now with how the convention is being covered and how it's being seen. We're joined from the Fleet Center in Boston tonight by Jonah Goldberg, who's the editor at large or an editor at large for National Review online, which is a terrific read and a contributing editor of National Review.
Note that Brown never identifies Goldberg as a conservative
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000781.asp
Ron Reagan: Our Reagan, in Esquire:
The comparison underscored something important. And the guy on the stool, Lynndie, and her grinning cohorts, they brought the word: The Bush administration can't be trusted. The parade of Bush officials before various commissions and committees—Paul Wolfowitz, who couldn't quite remember how many young Americans had been sacrificed on the altar of his ideology; John Ashcroft, lip quivering as, for a delicious, fleeting moment, it looked as if Senator Joe Biden might just come over the table at him—these were a continuing reminder. The Enron creeps, too—a reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That's so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar.
Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken "normal" mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on. http://www.esquire.com/cgi-bin/printtool/print.cgi?pages=5&filename=%2Ffeatures%2Farticles%2F2004%2F040729_mfe_reagan.html&x=50&y=14
Obama as seen by Asia Times’ Pepe Escobar
He started very low key, unfolding his extraordinary family story - father from Kenya, mother from Kansas, the meeting of immigrant and Middle America - to include it in the master theme of union and hope, in a delicate but relentless crescendo. He evoked "the audacity of hope". The tone and the deliverance were resolute and at the same time extremely uplifting - almost like a pop-song version of a psalm. No wonder the end of the speech swiftly connected to a pop version of a psalm, the ultra-cool "Keep on Pushing" by the legendary Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions ("Maybe someday/ I'll reach that higher goal/ I know I can make it/ with just a little bit of soul"). One AmericaObama's mix of Clintonian third way, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King all rolled into an all-inclusive package cannot but be radioactive material. In Obama, the Democratic Party may finally have found its own bridge to a multi-ethnic, socially just 21st-century America. The Kerry campaign would just need to release Obama on the campaign trail to have both the black votes and the white suburban votes pouring in. Republicans relentlessly play the race card to scare white Southern men in the US - who keep voting Republican against their best economic interests.
Obama shattered this racist fallacy. And once again reflecting how race - as well as class - is indeed a taboo theme in US society, even instant converts to Obamania seemed to be relieved that he does not speak with the intonation, the rhythm and the phrasing of black American preachers. This implies that as his race is not obvious from the perspective of his speech pattern, there's no limit for his achievements as a politician. Barring the hate bullet that stopped John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King, Barack ("Blessed") Obama will live maybe one day to confront his blessed destiny: to become America's first black president. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG30Aa03.html
For the text of Obama's speech: http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG30Aa01.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: That Islamic Force
I briefly noted this U.S. idea of speeding our troop withdrawal by developing a Muslim force to help police Iraq.
Two takes: The Washington Post piece (Robin Wright) highlights the difficulties; the Scotsman posits that there may be an ‘October Surprise’ where Bush announces troop withdrawals and a ‘date certain’ that we’d be out, bolstering his chances… or that it boomerangs on him. Time will tell…if it happens…
A Saudi initiative to send an Islamic force to help stabilize Iraq and reduce the need for the U.S.-led military force would probably take three months or longer to deploy and might not get off the ground at all, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The proposal is already mired in complex military issues and political sensitivities. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30967-2004Jul31.html?nav=headlines
He has survived two recent assassination attempts and been roundly condemned within his own country for the American-led war on Iraq. Pakistan’s strong-man president, Pervez Musharraf, could be forgiven for at least once wanting to lie low on the international stage. But the heat is on Musharraf again this weekend to play a crucial role in political events way outside Pakistan’s borders. Musharraf is the key figure in dragging together an international Muslim force to move into Iraq and take the burden off the beleaguered US armed services. If Pakistan commits, other Muslim nations, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia and Egypt, will be more likely to fall into line. If the move succeeds, President George W Bush will be able to go into the US presidential elections in just 100 days’ time promising that American troops will soon be on their way home. Failure to bring the Muslim force together will mean that Bush’s chances of beating off his Democrat rival for the White House, Senator John Kerry, will take another hammering. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=881302004
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: Still another report of increased fighting and more U.S. statements of ‘This proves we’re winning.’
Fighting has intensified, particularly in the east along the rugged, 1,500-mile border with Pakistan and in the south near Kandahar. Twenty-three American troops have died from ambushes, land mines and other hostile fire this year, compared with 12 combat deaths in all of 2003, according to military statistics. An increasingly popular weapon may have been inspired by insurgents in Iraq: remote-controlled bombs.
The Taliban have stepped up recruiting in the south and intensified strikes against newly trained Afghan soldiers and police officers, as well as foreign-aid workers. This week, the international aid agency Doctors Without Borders said it was withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24 years, in part because of the deteriorating security there. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/international/asia/01AFGH.html
Humor: Offspring Recommendations: They have good taste.
My son recommends Bill Maher’s show: It features Michael Moore and host pleading with Ralph Nader not to run, and Rep. David Drier (R-Ca) humiliating himself in a discussion re Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s on HBO Monday at 8PM and Wednesday 12AM and 11:30PM. http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/
My daughter recommends Will Farrell doing Bush at www.whitehousewest.com (sound required)
American Military Re-deploys: A trickle of stories over the last weeks as our troops are pulled from Korea and elsewhere and find their way to new strategic outposts, most of which are in oil country. This is the latest, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Michael Mainville)
As he supervised a crew of mechanics working on a C-130 Hercules supply plane, U.S. Air Force Capt. Dale Linafelter marveled at finding himself at a dusty, long-abandoned bomber base in what was once the Soviet Union.
"I'd never even heard of Kyrgyzstan," Linafelter said.
The captain has got a lot company.
Manas Air Field near the capital of Kyrgyzstan now hosts more than 1,150 U.S. servicemen, the largest American military presence in Central Asia outside Afghanistan.
Yet "some of them still don't know where they are," joked Lt. Col. Stan Giles, the base chaplain. "You know, there's an old saying: 'War is God's way of teaching geography to Americans.' "
More geography lessons are on the way.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon is planning the greatest shake-up in America's overseas military deployments since the end of the second World War.
Gone are the days of massive bases in places like Germany, Japan and South Korea that look like small U.S. towns. Replacing them will be a global network of what Pentagon planners call "lily pads" -- small forward bases in remote, dangerous corners of the world that can act as jumping-off points when crises arise.
Bases like the one at Manas Air Field, Kyrgyzstan.
"This marks a new epoch in American force posturing," said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a Washington clearinghouse for strategic intelligence. "It's one of only a half-dozen similar reposturings since the American Revolution. It's a very significant change."
On July 13, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, Andy Hoehn, said in Washington that defense officials will present their redeployment proposals to President Bush within several weeks. Hoehn said he expects the changes to start taking effect in late 2005 or early 2006. http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040726-us-bases.htm
“The real reasons Bush went to war” John Chapman of the Guardian notes that worry about oil and the dollar’s future, not wmd drove the invasion/occupation.
There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government has kept silent on these factors, instead treating us to the intriguing distractions of the Hutton and Butler reports.
Butler's overall finding of a "group think" failure was pure charity. Absurdities like the 45-minute claim were adopted by high-level officials and ministers because those concerned recognised the substantial reason for war - oil. WMD provided only the bureaucratic argument: the real reason was that Iraq was swimming in oil.
Some may still believe the eve-of-war contention by Donald Rumsfeld that "We won't take forces and go around the world and try to take other people's oil ... That's not how democracies operate." Maybe others will go along with Blair's post-war contention: "There is no way whatsoever, if oil were the issue, that it would not have been infinitely easier to cut a deal with Saddam."
But senior civil servants are not so naive. On the eve of the Butler report, I attended the 40th anniversary of the Mandarins cricket club. I was taken aside by a knighted civil servant to discuss my contention in a Guardian article earlier this year that Sir Humphrey was no longer independent. I had then attacked the deceits in the WMD report, and this impressive official and I discussed the geopolitical issues of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and US unwillingness to build nuclear power stations and curb petrol consumption, rather than go to war. ..
By invading Iraq, Bush has taken over the Iraqi oil fields, and persuaded the UN to lift production limits imposed after the Kuwait war. Production may rise to 3m barrels a day by year end, about double 2002 levels. More oil should bring down Opec-led prices, and if Iraqi oil production rose to 6m barrels a day, Bush could even attack the Opec oil-pricing cartel.
Control over Iraqi oil should improve security of supplies to the US, and possibly the UK, with the development and exploration contracts between Saddam and China, France, India, Indonesia and Russia being set aside in favour of US and possibly British companies. And a US military presence in Iraq is an insurance policy against any extremists in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Overseeing Iraqi oil supplies, and maybe soon supplies from other Gulf countries, would enable the US to use oil as power. In 1990, the then oil man, Dick Cheney, wrote that: "Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well…"
Bush had many reasons to invade Iraq, but why did Blair join him? He might have squared his conscience by looking at UK oil prospects…
Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?
If the latter, we should follow that up by adopting the pious aims of UN oversight of world oil exploitation within a world energy plan, and the replacement of the dollar with a new reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4980254-103677,00.html
The American Economy, as viewed from G.B.: The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott frets that Kerry or Bush will have a tough road ahead, suggesting “it would be better for Kerry if he lost.”
The candidate has been anointed and he has accepted the challenge. America is now supposed to have an idea of what makes John Kerry tick and, in November, we shall see whether he has what it takes to do what Bill Clinton did and defeat an incumbent Bush.
If defining Kerry has dominated events in Boston this week, a more interesting question is whether this is an election worth winning. For those who believe any price is worth paying to get rid of Bush, the answer, of course, is a resounding yes. Yet one look at the state of the world's biggest economy suggests that this may be a good election for the Democrats to lose. The next four years could be tough for the US - very tough indeed - and it would be fitting if Bush were left to clear up the almighty mess he has created.
A trade deficit of 5% of GDP is evidence that the US has been living beyond its means. A similar budget deficit shows that the govern ment, too, has been failing to match what it spends with its tax revenues. In any country south the Rio Grande, such a combination would mean that the IMF would be on the scene before you could say "structural adjustment".
The dollar's role as a global reserve currency means that Washington can paper over the cracks for a while by selling government bonds to its creditors. But if the laws of economics can be bent, they cannot be broken. The only long-term solution to the twin deficits is a dose of the medicine swallowed by Britain after Black Wednesday. Cutting the trade gap means exports go up and and imports come down. A cheaper dollar would help exports, but it would make imports dearer and threaten higher inflation. Higher taxes or lower spending are needed to curb consumer spending and close the budget deficit.
This combination worked in the UK, but was mightily unpopular. Unless Bush or Kerry have a brilliant plan for a perpetual bubble economy, one of them is going to have to face reality. At the moment, the Democrats have only one thought: winning. But if they lose they will at least have the consolation of seeing Bush cleaning up his own vomit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4982251-112564,00.html
Sandy Berger’s pilfering: No Big Deal, but no Media Exculpation: Seems that Berger’s not in such trouble. Part of the story from the Wall Street Journal’s Scot Paltrow. Where is the rest of the media?
Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Several prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, have voiced suspicion that when Mr. Berger was preparing materials for the 9/11 Commission on the Clinton administration's antiterror actions, he may have removed documents that were potentially damaging to the former president's record. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109114313710778456,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Bush Campaigns:
Ridiculous lines from Junior; you would think the Democrats would have no trouble with, "But intentions don't always translate into results. After 19 years in the United States Senate, my opponent has had thousands of votes but very few signature achievements."
Really. How about if Kerry compares his achievements for the last 19 or 29 or 35 years with our Head Frat Boy?
Yet it’s still close.
Polls: Expectations as key. Clearly, if so few of the public haven’t made up their mind, there will be much less “bounce” from each convention. So, Fox News says that anything less than a double digit bounce for Kerry means it was a “failed” convention. Newsweek and a few others showed a 2 to 4 point increase for Kerry. Outliers were one Newsweek poll that showed Kerry up 54-41%, while Gallup/USA/CNN showed no gain, even a slight loss of support, “the first time in the Gallup Poll since the 1972 Democratic convention that a candidate seemed to lose ground at this convention.”(sic)
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040731/nysa010a_1.html http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-08-01-poll-kerry_x.htm
9/11, Fear, and the Election: We know and fear that a terror attack close to the election will shift significant support to Bush. A study pushes the issue:
President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
"There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat," said Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the study.
"We are saying this is psychologically useful," said Solomon…
"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering."
When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.
"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/30/vote.psych.reut/index.html
Postscript(?): If the elections were cancelled:
Previously, we didn’t go into details, but if the desperate Bushies tried it, it would likely amount to a coup d’etat. That silly color code would be at the highest level- “code red” which sets up a panoply of emergency measures. The following is from of the web site “From the Wilderness.”
In other words, the possibility of an impending attack on America by this "outside enemy" has been accepted by the American public; this tacit acceptance has set the stage for the adoption of "the highest threat level": code red alert.
What the US public is not aware of, is that a code red alert suspends civilian government; it triggers a whole series of emergency procedures; it is tantamount to a coup d'etat -- although in many regards the coup d'etat has already taken place under the post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation and the rigging of the 2000 elections which brought George W. Bush into the White House.
Preparing for Code RedHomeland Security (DHS) has in fact been contemplating a code red alert "scenario" -- using Al Qaeda as a pretext -- for more than a year. In May 2003, the DHS conducted a major "anti-terrorist exercise" entitled TOPOFF 2. The latter was described as "the largest and most comprehensive terrorism response and homeland security exercise ever conducted in the United States." The exercise was based on code red assumptions involving a simulated terrorist attack.See: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402A.html. A code red alert, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), would create conditions for the ("temporary" we are told) suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, implying the cancellation or postponement of federal and State elections.
According to FEMA, code red would:
Increase or redirect personnel to address critical emergency needs; Assign emergency response personnel and pre-position and mobilize specially trained teams or resources; monitor, redirect, or constrain transportation systems; and close public and government facilities not critical for continuity of essential operations, especially public safety.(FEMA, http://www.fema.gov/pdf/areyouready/security.pdf )
Northern Command would take over. Several functions of civilian administration would be suspended; others could be transferred to the jurisdiction of the military. More generally, the procedure would disrupt government offices, businesses, schools, public services, transportation, etc.
A secret "Shadow Government" under the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" was installed on September 11, 2001.(See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A205842002Feb28?language=printer ). Known internally as "Continuity of Government" or COG, the secret shadow government would become functional in the case of a code red alert, redeploying key staff to secret locations.
Code red alert would, according to FEMA, also preclude and repress any form of public gathering or citizens' protest which questions the legitimacy of the emergency procedures and the installation of a police state. The emergency authorities would also exert tight censorship over the media and would no doubt paralyze the alternative news media on the internet. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/072904_coup_detat_america.shtml
Whoosh.
-R
Most editorial pages were positive. Not the Washington Post:
In the end, Mr. Kerry will be judged not in a vacuum but against the record compiled by Mr. Bush. But he will be judged in part on how he chose to present himself last night, and on that score, while he may have been politically effective, he fell short of demonstrating the kind of leadership the nation needs. http://65.54.186.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=4b1f6ba8cd82e926a90c1ec54a0eae3e&lat=1091192737&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fletters%2ewashingtonpost%2ecom%2fW6RH0459C244AEBA439543F84CD8D0
CNN Convention Banter: The Fox Effect. An example of their ‘impartiality’
Wolf Blitzer: One of the biggest problems that John Kerry has had is this Republican criticism that he flip-flops, that he votes one way, the next day, he votes another way. That is a serious criticism.
[Judy] Woodruff: Another argument the Republicans make, the Bush Bush/Cheney campaign John Kerry has voted to cut defense. They have produced reams of documents to back up votes that he made in the United States Senate that they say show compare to practically not only the Republicans, but compared to many other Democrats. He has not voted to support the kind of military spending that would create a strong America.
[Jeff] Greenfield: How hard do you think it will be to talk to the men and women now in the military about John Kerry's record, given the fact that he even acknowledges when he came back from Vietnam and participated in the anti-war movement, he used language that he called over the top. He talked about war crimes. He described in graphic details events that he now says might not have happened. Does this not create at least a barrier to winning support for men and women in the military?
----
[Aaron] Brown: More now with how the convention is being covered and how it's being seen. We're joined from the Fleet Center in Boston tonight by Jonah Goldberg, who's the editor at large or an editor at large for National Review online, which is a terrific read and a contributing editor of National Review.
Note that Brown never identifies Goldberg as a conservative
http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/000781.asp
Ron Reagan: Our Reagan, in Esquire:
The comparison underscored something important. And the guy on the stool, Lynndie, and her grinning cohorts, they brought the word: The Bush administration can't be trusted. The parade of Bush officials before various commissions and committees—Paul Wolfowitz, who couldn't quite remember how many young Americans had been sacrificed on the altar of his ideology; John Ashcroft, lip quivering as, for a delicious, fleeting moment, it looked as if Senator Joe Biden might just come over the table at him—these were a continuing reminder. The Enron creeps, too—a reminder of how certain environments and particular habits of mind can erode common decency. People noticed. A tipping point had been reached. The issue of credibility was back on the table. The L-word was in circulation. Not the tired old bromide liberal. That's so 1988. No, this time something much more potent: liar.
Politicians will stretch the truth. They'll exaggerate their accomplishments, paper over their gaffes. Spin has long been the lingua franca of the political realm. But George W. Bush and his administration have taken "normal" mendacity to a startling new level far beyond lies of convenience. On top of the usual massaging of public perception, they traffic in big lies, indulge in any number of symptomatic small lies, and, ultimately, have come to embody dishonesty itself. They are a lie. And people, finally, have started catching on. http://www.esquire.com/cgi-bin/printtool/print.cgi?pages=5&filename=%2Ffeatures%2Farticles%2F2004%2F040729_mfe_reagan.html&x=50&y=14
Obama as seen by Asia Times’ Pepe Escobar
He started very low key, unfolding his extraordinary family story - father from Kenya, mother from Kansas, the meeting of immigrant and Middle America - to include it in the master theme of union and hope, in a delicate but relentless crescendo. He evoked "the audacity of hope". The tone and the deliverance were resolute and at the same time extremely uplifting - almost like a pop-song version of a psalm. No wonder the end of the speech swiftly connected to a pop version of a psalm, the ultra-cool "Keep on Pushing" by the legendary Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions ("Maybe someday/ I'll reach that higher goal/ I know I can make it/ with just a little bit of soul"). One AmericaObama's mix of Clintonian third way, Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King all rolled into an all-inclusive package cannot but be radioactive material. In Obama, the Democratic Party may finally have found its own bridge to a multi-ethnic, socially just 21st-century America. The Kerry campaign would just need to release Obama on the campaign trail to have both the black votes and the white suburban votes pouring in. Republicans relentlessly play the race card to scare white Southern men in the US - who keep voting Republican against their best economic interests.
Obama shattered this racist fallacy. And once again reflecting how race - as well as class - is indeed a taboo theme in US society, even instant converts to Obamania seemed to be relieved that he does not speak with the intonation, the rhythm and the phrasing of black American preachers. This implies that as his race is not obvious from the perspective of his speech pattern, there's no limit for his achievements as a politician. Barring the hate bullet that stopped John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King, Barack ("Blessed") Obama will live maybe one day to confront his blessed destiny: to become America's first black president. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG30Aa03.html
For the text of Obama's speech: http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG30Aa01.html
What’s Happening, Iraq: That Islamic Force
I briefly noted this U.S. idea of speeding our troop withdrawal by developing a Muslim force to help police Iraq.
Two takes: The Washington Post piece (Robin Wright) highlights the difficulties; the Scotsman posits that there may be an ‘October Surprise’ where Bush announces troop withdrawals and a ‘date certain’ that we’d be out, bolstering his chances… or that it boomerangs on him. Time will tell…if it happens…
A Saudi initiative to send an Islamic force to help stabilize Iraq and reduce the need for the U.S.-led military force would probably take three months or longer to deploy and might not get off the ground at all, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The proposal is already mired in complex military issues and political sensitivities. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30967-2004Jul31.html?nav=headlines
He has survived two recent assassination attempts and been roundly condemned within his own country for the American-led war on Iraq. Pakistan’s strong-man president, Pervez Musharraf, could be forgiven for at least once wanting to lie low on the international stage. But the heat is on Musharraf again this weekend to play a crucial role in political events way outside Pakistan’s borders. Musharraf is the key figure in dragging together an international Muslim force to move into Iraq and take the burden off the beleaguered US armed services. If Pakistan commits, other Muslim nations, such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia and Egypt, will be more likely to fall into line. If the move succeeds, President George W Bush will be able to go into the US presidential elections in just 100 days’ time promising that American troops will soon be on their way home. Failure to bring the Muslim force together will mean that Bush’s chances of beating off his Democrat rival for the White House, Senator John Kerry, will take another hammering. http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=881302004
What’s Happening, Afghanistan: Still another report of increased fighting and more U.S. statements of ‘This proves we’re winning.’
Fighting has intensified, particularly in the east along the rugged, 1,500-mile border with Pakistan and in the south near Kandahar. Twenty-three American troops have died from ambushes, land mines and other hostile fire this year, compared with 12 combat deaths in all of 2003, according to military statistics. An increasingly popular weapon may have been inspired by insurgents in Iraq: remote-controlled bombs.
The Taliban have stepped up recruiting in the south and intensified strikes against newly trained Afghan soldiers and police officers, as well as foreign-aid workers. This week, the international aid agency Doctors Without Borders said it was withdrawing from Afghanistan after 24 years, in part because of the deteriorating security there. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/international/asia/01AFGH.html
Humor: Offspring Recommendations: They have good taste.
My son recommends Bill Maher’s show: It features Michael Moore and host pleading with Ralph Nader not to run, and Rep. David Drier (R-Ca) humiliating himself in a discussion re Fahrenheit 9/11. It’s on HBO Monday at 8PM and Wednesday 12AM and 11:30PM. http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/
My daughter recommends Will Farrell doing Bush at www.whitehousewest.com (sound required)
American Military Re-deploys: A trickle of stories over the last weeks as our troops are pulled from Korea and elsewhere and find their way to new strategic outposts, most of which are in oil country. This is the latest, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Michael Mainville)
As he supervised a crew of mechanics working on a C-130 Hercules supply plane, U.S. Air Force Capt. Dale Linafelter marveled at finding himself at a dusty, long-abandoned bomber base in what was once the Soviet Union.
"I'd never even heard of Kyrgyzstan," Linafelter said.
The captain has got a lot company.
Manas Air Field near the capital of Kyrgyzstan now hosts more than 1,150 U.S. servicemen, the largest American military presence in Central Asia outside Afghanistan.
Yet "some of them still don't know where they are," joked Lt. Col. Stan Giles, the base chaplain. "You know, there's an old saying: 'War is God's way of teaching geography to Americans.' "
More geography lessons are on the way.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon is planning the greatest shake-up in America's overseas military deployments since the end of the second World War.
Gone are the days of massive bases in places like Germany, Japan and South Korea that look like small U.S. towns. Replacing them will be a global network of what Pentagon planners call "lily pads" -- small forward bases in remote, dangerous corners of the world that can act as jumping-off points when crises arise.
Bases like the one at Manas Air Field, Kyrgyzstan.
"This marks a new epoch in American force posturing," said John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a Washington clearinghouse for strategic intelligence. "It's one of only a half-dozen similar reposturings since the American Revolution. It's a very significant change."
On July 13, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, Andy Hoehn, said in Washington that defense officials will present their redeployment proposals to President Bush within several weeks. Hoehn said he expects the changes to start taking effect in late 2005 or early 2006. http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2004/040726-us-bases.htm
“The real reasons Bush went to war” John Chapman of the Guardian notes that worry about oil and the dollar’s future, not wmd drove the invasion/occupation.
There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government has kept silent on these factors, instead treating us to the intriguing distractions of the Hutton and Butler reports.
Butler's overall finding of a "group think" failure was pure charity. Absurdities like the 45-minute claim were adopted by high-level officials and ministers because those concerned recognised the substantial reason for war - oil. WMD provided only the bureaucratic argument: the real reason was that Iraq was swimming in oil.
Some may still believe the eve-of-war contention by Donald Rumsfeld that "We won't take forces and go around the world and try to take other people's oil ... That's not how democracies operate." Maybe others will go along with Blair's post-war contention: "There is no way whatsoever, if oil were the issue, that it would not have been infinitely easier to cut a deal with Saddam."
But senior civil servants are not so naive. On the eve of the Butler report, I attended the 40th anniversary of the Mandarins cricket club. I was taken aside by a knighted civil servant to discuss my contention in a Guardian article earlier this year that Sir Humphrey was no longer independent. I had then attacked the deceits in the WMD report, and this impressive official and I discussed the geopolitical issues of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and US unwillingness to build nuclear power stations and curb petrol consumption, rather than go to war. ..
By invading Iraq, Bush has taken over the Iraqi oil fields, and persuaded the UN to lift production limits imposed after the Kuwait war. Production may rise to 3m barrels a day by year end, about double 2002 levels. More oil should bring down Opec-led prices, and if Iraqi oil production rose to 6m barrels a day, Bush could even attack the Opec oil-pricing cartel.
Control over Iraqi oil should improve security of supplies to the US, and possibly the UK, with the development and exploration contracts between Saddam and China, France, India, Indonesia and Russia being set aside in favour of US and possibly British companies. And a US military presence in Iraq is an insurance policy against any extremists in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Overseeing Iraqi oil supplies, and maybe soon supplies from other Gulf countries, would enable the US to use oil as power. In 1990, the then oil man, Dick Cheney, wrote that: "Whoever controls the flow of Persian Gulf oil has a stranglehold not only on our economy but also on the other countries of the world as well…"
Bush had many reasons to invade Iraq, but why did Blair join him? He might have squared his conscience by looking at UK oil prospects…
Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?
If the latter, we should follow that up by adopting the pious aims of UN oversight of world oil exploitation within a world energy plan, and the replacement of the dollar with a new reserve currency based on a basket of national currencies. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4980254-103677,00.html
The American Economy, as viewed from G.B.: The Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott frets that Kerry or Bush will have a tough road ahead, suggesting “it would be better for Kerry if he lost.”
The candidate has been anointed and he has accepted the challenge. America is now supposed to have an idea of what makes John Kerry tick and, in November, we shall see whether he has what it takes to do what Bill Clinton did and defeat an incumbent Bush.
If defining Kerry has dominated events in Boston this week, a more interesting question is whether this is an election worth winning. For those who believe any price is worth paying to get rid of Bush, the answer, of course, is a resounding yes. Yet one look at the state of the world's biggest economy suggests that this may be a good election for the Democrats to lose. The next four years could be tough for the US - very tough indeed - and it would be fitting if Bush were left to clear up the almighty mess he has created.
A trade deficit of 5% of GDP is evidence that the US has been living beyond its means. A similar budget deficit shows that the govern ment, too, has been failing to match what it spends with its tax revenues. In any country south the Rio Grande, such a combination would mean that the IMF would be on the scene before you could say "structural adjustment".
The dollar's role as a global reserve currency means that Washington can paper over the cracks for a while by selling government bonds to its creditors. But if the laws of economics can be bent, they cannot be broken. The only long-term solution to the twin deficits is a dose of the medicine swallowed by Britain after Black Wednesday. Cutting the trade gap means exports go up and and imports come down. A cheaper dollar would help exports, but it would make imports dearer and threaten higher inflation. Higher taxes or lower spending are needed to curb consumer spending and close the budget deficit.
This combination worked in the UK, but was mightily unpopular. Unless Bush or Kerry have a brilliant plan for a perpetual bubble economy, one of them is going to have to face reality. At the moment, the Democrats have only one thought: winning. But if they lose they will at least have the consolation of seeing Bush cleaning up his own vomit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4982251-112564,00.html
Sandy Berger’s pilfering: No Big Deal, but no Media Exculpation: Seems that Berger’s not in such trouble. Part of the story from the Wall Street Journal’s Scot Paltrow. Where is the rest of the media?
Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Several prominent Republicans, including House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, have voiced suspicion that when Mr. Berger was preparing materials for the 9/11 Commission on the Clinton administration's antiterror actions, he may have removed documents that were potentially damaging to the former president's record. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109114313710778456,00.html?mod=politics%5Fprimary%5Fhs
Bush Campaigns:
Ridiculous lines from Junior; you would think the Democrats would have no trouble with, "But intentions don't always translate into results. After 19 years in the United States Senate, my opponent has had thousands of votes but very few signature achievements."
Really. How about if Kerry compares his achievements for the last 19 or 29 or 35 years with our Head Frat Boy?
Yet it’s still close.
Polls: Expectations as key. Clearly, if so few of the public haven’t made up their mind, there will be much less “bounce” from each convention. So, Fox News says that anything less than a double digit bounce for Kerry means it was a “failed” convention. Newsweek and a few others showed a 2 to 4 point increase for Kerry. Outliers were one Newsweek poll that showed Kerry up 54-41%, while Gallup/USA/CNN showed no gain, even a slight loss of support, “the first time in the Gallup Poll since the 1972 Democratic convention that a candidate seemed to lose ground at this convention.”(sic)
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040731/nysa010a_1.html http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/president/2004-08-01-poll-kerry_x.htm
9/11, Fear, and the Election: We know and fear that a terror attack close to the election will shift significant support to Bush. A study pushes the issue:
President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
"There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat," said Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the study.
"We are saying this is psychologically useful," said Solomon…
"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering."
When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.
"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/30/vote.psych.reut/index.html
Postscript(?): If the elections were cancelled:
Previously, we didn’t go into details, but if the desperate Bushies tried it, it would likely amount to a coup d’etat. That silly color code would be at the highest level- “code red” which sets up a panoply of emergency measures. The following is from of the web site “From the Wilderness.”
In other words, the possibility of an impending attack on America by this "outside enemy" has been accepted by the American public; this tacit acceptance has set the stage for the adoption of "the highest threat level": code red alert.
What the US public is not aware of, is that a code red alert suspends civilian government; it triggers a whole series of emergency procedures; it is tantamount to a coup d'etat -- although in many regards the coup d'etat has already taken place under the post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation and the rigging of the 2000 elections which brought George W. Bush into the White House.
Preparing for Code RedHomeland Security (DHS) has in fact been contemplating a code red alert "scenario" -- using Al Qaeda as a pretext -- for more than a year. In May 2003, the DHS conducted a major "anti-terrorist exercise" entitled TOPOFF 2. The latter was described as "the largest and most comprehensive terrorism response and homeland security exercise ever conducted in the United States." The exercise was based on code red assumptions involving a simulated terrorist attack.See: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402A.html. A code red alert, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), would create conditions for the ("temporary" we are told) suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, implying the cancellation or postponement of federal and State elections.
According to FEMA, code red would:
Increase or redirect personnel to address critical emergency needs; Assign emergency response personnel and pre-position and mobilize specially trained teams or resources; monitor, redirect, or constrain transportation systems; and close public and government facilities not critical for continuity of essential operations, especially public safety.(FEMA, http://www.fema.gov/pdf/areyouready/security.pdf )
Northern Command would take over. Several functions of civilian administration would be suspended; others could be transferred to the jurisdiction of the military. More generally, the procedure would disrupt government offices, businesses, schools, public services, transportation, etc.
A secret "Shadow Government" under the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" was installed on September 11, 2001.(See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A205842002Feb28?language=printer ). Known internally as "Continuity of Government" or COG, the secret shadow government would become functional in the case of a code red alert, redeploying key staff to secret locations.
Code red alert would, according to FEMA, also preclude and repress any form of public gathering or citizens' protest which questions the legitimacy of the emergency procedures and the installation of a police state. The emergency authorities would also exert tight censorship over the media and would no doubt paralyze the alternative news media on the internet. http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/072904_coup_detat_america.shtml
Whoosh.
-R
