Friday, January 28, 2005
The Right: Ignorant and Aggressive I know that’s not news, but I got a fresh dose of it this week listening to right wing callers to Air America Radio. Virtually all of these callers had woefully little info at their disposal, but used repetition and bullying in an effort to trap the host. It provided a striking contrast-- Progressive-liberal callers to Right wing hosts are much better informed, not so aggressive… and, unfortunately, rare…
I continue to plug Air America, with the possible weekday exception to the mediocre- yet very popular in the Heartland- Ed Schultz. Accessed via AM radio or streaming… Great for morale.
Air America’s lineup: http://www.wkoxam.com/personalities.html
Another “journalist” on the take from the Right There are more…
In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.
"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."
But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.
"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.
Later in the day, Gallagher filed a column in which she said that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36545-2005Jan25?language=printer
Journalism Lives! Lies are labeled…bad math…. Better, still…
Sen. Wayne Allard told a town meeting in Greeley that the Social Security system could face a $28 trillion debt. Congressional reports don't concur.
Advocates of radical reform are making up their own math in their campaign to partly privatize Social Security. There's a storm ahead, but not the iceberg President Bush's advisers claim.
Even Rep. Bill Thomas, Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, called Bush's plan "a dead horse" and said Congress should take a broader look at the issues facing an aging nation.
Given these facts, voters should question comments made recently by Wayne Allard, Colorado's senior U.S. senator. Allard hasn't formally endorsed Bush's plan, but at a Jan. 12 town meeting in Greeley, he was asked about the issue. Allard said that in 2018, Social Security is projected to start paying out more in benefits than it will collect in payroll taxes. According to the Greeley Tribune, Allard said that "there are no reserves in Social Security because what is there is automatically transferred into the general fund, leaving a debt of $28 trillion." He went on to say, "The money is spent. I don't believe we'll be able to raise the funds to pay it back." http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~2671567,00.html
Giving Credit where…
(1) …to those that summoned up the “courage” to vote against that profoundly incompetent, chronic liar who also happens to be Afro-American. Historical context: Though a small number, it’s the highest percentage of nay votes for any Attorney General nomination.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.John Kerry, D-Mass.Carl Levin, D-Mich.James Jeffords, I-Vt.Jack Reed, D-R.I.Mark Dayton, D-Minn.Daniel Akaka, D-HawaiiEvan Bayh, D-Ind.Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.Tom Harkin, D-IowaRichard Durbin, D-Ill.
(2) Kennedy calls for Beginning to Remove Troops from Iraq The first senator to do so...http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=2&u=/nm/20050128/pl_nm/iraq_kennedy_dc
(3) Meanwhile, more talk of pulling troops out post-election- both D.C. chatter and now Bush noting in his Times interview that we’d leave “if asked,” i.e., if we tell them to ask.
But asked if, as a matter of principle, the United States would pull out of Iraq at the request of a new government, he said: "Absolutely. This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/politics/28prexy.html?hp&ex=1106974800&en=3fb476e5ad0cd03a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Jomentum: More from Lieberman
One of the great strengths that Condoleezza Rice will bring to the office of Secretary of State is that the world knows that she has the President’s trust and confidence and I respect the right of any of my colleagues to reach a different decision today and to oppose this nomination. But I hope and believe that the Senate today, across partisan lines, will resoundingly endorse this nomination and send the message to friend and foe alike that while we have our disagreements, ultimately what unites us around this very qualified nominee in this hour of war is much greater than what divides. us.http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=230882
Democrats Coordinating?
Senate Democrats yesterday unveiled plans to push for expanded healthcare and education programs, higher troop levels, and better benefits for veterans, as they use a retooled and coordinated communications strategy to push their priorities and gird for fierce fights against major initiatives on President Bush's agenda.
Democratic leaders said they will focus on bills they believe have the backing of a majority of Americans. Their list of priorities also includes better equipment for troops in combat, allowing lower-priced prescription drugs to enter the United States from Canada, and an end to tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/25/senate_democrats_coordinate_message_attack_on_bush/
Bush Stumped: Detached from his Mike Gerson rhetoric, Bush was unable to comment on a specific case where he could stand up for freedom and liberty.
President Bush was stumped yesterday when he was asked at his news conference about the plight of a Jordanian man who faces a two-year prison term for slander after giving a lecture last month calling for a boycott of American goods and companies. "I'm unaware of the case," he said.
The circumstances are somewhat murky, but in many ways the case signifies the difficult choices and trade-offs inherent in Bush's call in his inaugural address for the right to dissent and protest around the world.
Jordan is a close U.S. ally, ruled by a monarch, whose support has been critical in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the war in Iraq, despite growing resentment among Jordanian citizens over these policies. Ali Hattar, the man charged with slander, is vehemently opposed to Jordan's 1994 establishment of relations with Israel, which he has demanded be reversed. Hattar is not a democracy activist, nor would he be considered an appealing figure by many Americans, but he has been charged under a type of vague law frequently used to suppress dissent across the Middle East. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39783-2005Jan26?language=printer
Love That Privatization: The Chile Example: Oft-cited by Bush et al, it’s been a disaster…
Nearly 25 years ago, Chile embarked on a sweeping experiment that has since been emulated, in one way or another, in a score of other countries. Rather than finance pensions through a system to which workers, employers and the government all contributed, millions of people began to pay 10 percent of their salaries to private investment accounts that they controlled.
Under the Chilean program - which President Bush has cited as a model for his plans to overhaul Social Security - the promise was that such investments, by helping to spur economic growth and generating higher returns, would deliver monthly pension benefits larger than what the traditional system could offer.
But now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system is beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that it is falling far short of what was originally advertised under the authoritarian government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
For all the program's success in economic terms, the government continues to direct billions of dollars to a safety net for those whose contributions were not large enough to ensure even a minimum pension approaching $140 a month. Many others - because they earned much of their income in the underground economy, are self-employed, or work only seasonally - remain outside the system altogether. Combined, those groups constitute roughly half the Chilean labor force. Only half of workers are captured by the system.
Even many middle-class workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts - burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment - are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/business/worldbusiness/27pension.html?position=&ei=5094&en=82af08c4c479186f&hp=&ex=1106888400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=
Bushie PR Expenses Up We knew this…
The Bush administration has more than doubled its spending on outside contracts with public relations firms during the past four years, according to an analysis of federal procurement data by congressional Democrats.
The administration spent at least $88 million in fiscal 2004 on contracts with major public relations firms, the analysis found, compared with $37 million in 2001, Bush's first year in office. In all, the administration spent $250 million on public relations contracts during its first term, compared with $128 million spent for President Clinton (news - web sites) between 1997 and 2000. The analysis did not examine what the Clinton administration spent during its first term.
The top-spending agency during the past four years, at $94 million, was the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The biggest federal public relations contractor in that period was Ketchum, with $97 million. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=710&ncid=703&e=5&u=/usatoday/20050127/pl_usatoday/reportprspendingdoubledunderbush
A Response:
In response to continued revelations of government-funded "journalism" -- ranging from the purported video news releases put out by the drug czar's office and the Department of Health and Human Services to the recently uncovered payments to columnists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher,who flacked administration programs -- Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) will introduce a bill, The Stop Government Propaganda Act, in the Senate next week."It's just not enough to say, 'Please don't do it anymore,'" Alex Formuzis, Lautenberg's spokesman, told E&P. "Legislation sometimes is required and we believe it is in this case."The Stop Government Propaganda Act states, "Funds appropriated to an Executive branch agency may not be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States unless authorized by law.""It's time for Congress to shut down the Administration's propaganda mill," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It has no place in the United States Government." The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.). http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000778976
RESOURCES/TREASURES:
(1) More from Sy Hersh…on the torturers
Words mean nothing -- nothing to George Bush. They are just utterances. They have no meaning. Bush can say again and again, “well, we don't do torture.” We know what happened. We know about Abu Ghraib. We know, we see anecdotally. We all understand in some profound way because so much has come out in the last few weeks, the I.C.R.C. The ACLU put out more papers, this is not an isolated incident what’s happened with the seven kids and the horrible photographs, Lynndie England. That's into the not the issue is. They're fall guys. Of course, they did wrong. But you know, when we send kids to fight, one of the things that we do when we send our children to war is the officers become in loco parentis. That means their job in the military is to protect these kids, not only from getting bullets and being blown up, but also there is nothing as stupid as a 20 or 22-year-old kid with a weapon in a war zone. Protect them from themselves.
The spectacle of these people doing those antics night after night, for three and a half months only stopped when one of their own soldiers turned them in tells you all you need to know, how many officers knew. I can just give you a timeline that will tell you all you need to know. Abu Ghraib was reported in January of 2004 this year. In May, I and CBS earlier also wrote an awful lot about what was going on there. At that point, between January and May, our government did nothing. Although Rumsfeld later acknowledged that he was briefed by the middle of January on it and told the President. In those three-and-a-half months before it became public, was there any systematic effort to do anything other than to prosecute seven “bad seeds”, enlisted kids, reservists from West Virginia and the unit they were in, by the way, Military Police. The answer is, Ha! They were basically a bunch of kids who were taught on traffic control, sent to Iraq, put in charge of a prison. They knew nothing. It doesn't excuse them from doing dumb things. But there is another framework. We're not seeing it. They’ve gotten away with it.
AND, the world is tiring of us
Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit -- our -- we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here." http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/26/1450204
(2) Gore Vidal: on the Inaugural words:
Well, I hardly know where to end, much less begin. There's not a word of truth in anything that he said. Our founding fathers did not set us on a course to liberate all the world from tyranny. Jefferson just said, “all men are created equal, and should be,” etc, but it was not the task of the United States to “go abroad to slay dragons,” as John Quincy Adams so wisely put it; because if the United States does go abroad to slay dragons in the name of freedom, liberty, and so on, she could become “dictatress of the world,” but in the process “she would lose her soul.” That is what we -- the lesson we should be learning now, instead of this declaration of war against the entire globe. He doesn't define what tyranny is. I’d say what we have now in the United States is working up a nice tyrannical persona for itself and for us. As we lose liberties he’s, I guess, handing them out to other countries which have not asked for them, particularly; and what he says -- The reaction in Europe-–and I know we mustn’t mention them because they're immoral and they have all those different kinds of cheese–but, simultaneously, they're much better educated than we are, and they're richer. Get that out there: The Europeans per capita are richer than the Americans, per capita. And by the time this administration is finished, there won't be any money left of any kind, starting with poor social security, which will be privatized, so that is the last gold rush for (as they say) men with an eye for opportunity.
No, I would have to parse this thing line by line and have it in front of me. It goes in one ear and out the other as lies often do, particularly rhetorical lies that have been thought up by second-rate advertising men, which are the authors of this speech. It is the most un-American speech I’ve ever heard a chief executive give to the United States; and thanks at least to television, we were given every inaugural from Franklin Roosevelt on (and it's quite interesting to see who said what), and only one was as gruesome and as off-key as this, and that guy is Harry S. Truman, who’s being made into a hero because he fits into the imperial mode. He starts out his inaugural -- we're on top of the world we’re the richest country, the most powerful militarily, and what does he do? Within three lines Harry Truman is starting the Cold War, which the Russians were not starting. They thought they could live in peace because of their agreement at Yalta with his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, whose unfortunate death gave us Harry Truman and gave us the Cold War, which is now metastasized into a general war against any nation that this president of ours, if he is -- was elected, wants to commit us to, and we -- preemptive wars. That’s just never existed in our history, that a president – “Well, I think I'm going to take on Costa Rica. There may be some terrorists down there one day. Oh, they aren't there yet, but they're planning for it. And they’ve got bicarbonate of soda. Once you have that, you know, you can build all sorts of biochemical weapons.” This is just blather. Blather.
And that an American audience would sit there beside the capitol or reverently in front of their TV screens and watch this and not see the absurdity of what was being said -- absolute proof of a couple of things that I have felt, and most of us who are at all thoughtful feel: We’ve got the worst educational system of any first world country. We are shameful when we go abroad, because we know nothing. Just to watch the destruction of the archaeologists’ work at Babylon. Babylon is a center of our culture. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows what it is, except it's a wicked city that the lord destroyed. Well, it was the center of our civilization, the center of mathematics, of writing, of everything. And apparently our troops were allowed to go in and smash everything to bits. Why did they do it? Was it because they are mean bad boys and girls? No. They're totally uneducated. And their officers are sometimes mean and bad, and allow them to have a romp, as they also had in the prisons, none of which we heard about in the last election. We were too busy with homosexual marriage and abortion, two really riveting subjects. War and peace, of course, are not worth talking about. And civilization, God forbid that we ever commit ourselves to that. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1458238
-R
I continue to plug Air America, with the possible weekday exception to the mediocre- yet very popular in the Heartland- Ed Schultz. Accessed via AM radio or streaming… Great for morale.
Air America’s lineup: http://www.wkoxam.com/personalities.html
Another “journalist” on the take from the Right There are more…
In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.
"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."
But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.
"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.
Later in the day, Gallagher filed a column in which she said that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers." http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36545-2005Jan25?language=printer
Journalism Lives! Lies are labeled…bad math…. Better, still…
Sen. Wayne Allard told a town meeting in Greeley that the Social Security system could face a $28 trillion debt. Congressional reports don't concur.
Advocates of radical reform are making up their own math in their campaign to partly privatize Social Security. There's a storm ahead, but not the iceberg President Bush's advisers claim.
Even Rep. Bill Thomas, Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, called Bush's plan "a dead horse" and said Congress should take a broader look at the issues facing an aging nation.
Given these facts, voters should question comments made recently by Wayne Allard, Colorado's senior U.S. senator. Allard hasn't formally endorsed Bush's plan, but at a Jan. 12 town meeting in Greeley, he was asked about the issue. Allard said that in 2018, Social Security is projected to start paying out more in benefits than it will collect in payroll taxes. According to the Greeley Tribune, Allard said that "there are no reserves in Social Security because what is there is automatically transferred into the general fund, leaving a debt of $28 trillion." He went on to say, "The money is spent. I don't believe we'll be able to raise the funds to pay it back." http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~2671567,00.html
Giving Credit where…
(1) …to those that summoned up the “courage” to vote against that profoundly incompetent, chronic liar who also happens to be Afro-American. Historical context: Though a small number, it’s the highest percentage of nay votes for any Attorney General nomination.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.John Kerry, D-Mass.Carl Levin, D-Mich.James Jeffords, I-Vt.Jack Reed, D-R.I.Mark Dayton, D-Minn.Daniel Akaka, D-HawaiiEvan Bayh, D-Ind.Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J.Tom Harkin, D-IowaRichard Durbin, D-Ill.
(2) Kennedy calls for Beginning to Remove Troops from Iraq The first senator to do so...http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=2&u=/nm/20050128/pl_nm/iraq_kennedy_dc
(3) Meanwhile, more talk of pulling troops out post-election- both D.C. chatter and now Bush noting in his Times interview that we’d leave “if asked,” i.e., if we tell them to ask.
But asked if, as a matter of principle, the United States would pull out of Iraq at the request of a new government, he said: "Absolutely. This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/28/politics/28prexy.html?hp&ex=1106974800&en=3fb476e5ad0cd03a&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Jomentum: More from Lieberman
One of the great strengths that Condoleezza Rice will bring to the office of Secretary of State is that the world knows that she has the President’s trust and confidence and I respect the right of any of my colleagues to reach a different decision today and to oppose this nomination. But I hope and believe that the Senate today, across partisan lines, will resoundingly endorse this nomination and send the message to friend and foe alike that while we have our disagreements, ultimately what unites us around this very qualified nominee in this hour of war is much greater than what divides. us.http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=230882
Democrats Coordinating?
Senate Democrats yesterday unveiled plans to push for expanded healthcare and education programs, higher troop levels, and better benefits for veterans, as they use a retooled and coordinated communications strategy to push their priorities and gird for fierce fights against major initiatives on President Bush's agenda.
Democratic leaders said they will focus on bills they believe have the backing of a majority of Americans. Their list of priorities also includes better equipment for troops in combat, allowing lower-priced prescription drugs to enter the United States from Canada, and an end to tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/25/senate_democrats_coordinate_message_attack_on_bush/
Bush Stumped: Detached from his Mike Gerson rhetoric, Bush was unable to comment on a specific case where he could stand up for freedom and liberty.
President Bush was stumped yesterday when he was asked at his news conference about the plight of a Jordanian man who faces a two-year prison term for slander after giving a lecture last month calling for a boycott of American goods and companies. "I'm unaware of the case," he said.
The circumstances are somewhat murky, but in many ways the case signifies the difficult choices and trade-offs inherent in Bush's call in his inaugural address for the right to dissent and protest around the world.
Jordan is a close U.S. ally, ruled by a monarch, whose support has been critical in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the war in Iraq, despite growing resentment among Jordanian citizens over these policies. Ali Hattar, the man charged with slander, is vehemently opposed to Jordan's 1994 establishment of relations with Israel, which he has demanded be reversed. Hattar is not a democracy activist, nor would he be considered an appealing figure by many Americans, but he has been charged under a type of vague law frequently used to suppress dissent across the Middle East. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39783-2005Jan26?language=printer
Love That Privatization: The Chile Example: Oft-cited by Bush et al, it’s been a disaster…
Nearly 25 years ago, Chile embarked on a sweeping experiment that has since been emulated, in one way or another, in a score of other countries. Rather than finance pensions through a system to which workers, employers and the government all contributed, millions of people began to pay 10 percent of their salaries to private investment accounts that they controlled.
Under the Chilean program - which President Bush has cited as a model for his plans to overhaul Social Security - the promise was that such investments, by helping to spur economic growth and generating higher returns, would deliver monthly pension benefits larger than what the traditional system could offer.
But now that the first generation of workers to depend on the new system is beginning to retire, Chileans are finding that it is falling far short of what was originally advertised under the authoritarian government of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
For all the program's success in economic terms, the government continues to direct billions of dollars to a safety net for those whose contributions were not large enough to ensure even a minimum pension approaching $140 a month. Many others - because they earned much of their income in the underground economy, are self-employed, or work only seasonally - remain outside the system altogether. Combined, those groups constitute roughly half the Chilean labor force. Only half of workers are captured by the system.
Even many middle-class workers who contributed regularly are finding that their private accounts - burdened with hidden fees that may have soaked up as much as a third of their original investment - are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/business/worldbusiness/27pension.html?position=&ei=5094&en=82af08c4c479186f&hp=&ex=1106888400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&position=
Bushie PR Expenses Up We knew this…
The Bush administration has more than doubled its spending on outside contracts with public relations firms during the past four years, according to an analysis of federal procurement data by congressional Democrats.
The administration spent at least $88 million in fiscal 2004 on contracts with major public relations firms, the analysis found, compared with $37 million in 2001, Bush's first year in office. In all, the administration spent $250 million on public relations contracts during its first term, compared with $128 million spent for President Clinton (news - web sites) between 1997 and 2000. The analysis did not examine what the Clinton administration spent during its first term.
The top-spending agency during the past four years, at $94 million, was the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The biggest federal public relations contractor in that period was Ketchum, with $97 million. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=710&ncid=703&e=5&u=/usatoday/20050127/pl_usatoday/reportprspendingdoubledunderbush
A Response:
In response to continued revelations of government-funded "journalism" -- ranging from the purported video news releases put out by the drug czar's office and the Department of Health and Human Services to the recently uncovered payments to columnists Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher,who flacked administration programs -- Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) will introduce a bill, The Stop Government Propaganda Act, in the Senate next week."It's just not enough to say, 'Please don't do it anymore,'" Alex Formuzis, Lautenberg's spokesman, told E&P. "Legislation sometimes is required and we believe it is in this case."The Stop Government Propaganda Act states, "Funds appropriated to an Executive branch agency may not be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States unless authorized by law.""It's time for Congress to shut down the Administration's propaganda mill," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It has no place in the United States Government." The bill is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.). http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000778976
RESOURCES/TREASURES:
(1) More from Sy Hersh…on the torturers
Words mean nothing -- nothing to George Bush. They are just utterances. They have no meaning. Bush can say again and again, “well, we don't do torture.” We know what happened. We know about Abu Ghraib. We know, we see anecdotally. We all understand in some profound way because so much has come out in the last few weeks, the I.C.R.C. The ACLU put out more papers, this is not an isolated incident what’s happened with the seven kids and the horrible photographs, Lynndie England. That's into the not the issue is. They're fall guys. Of course, they did wrong. But you know, when we send kids to fight, one of the things that we do when we send our children to war is the officers become in loco parentis. That means their job in the military is to protect these kids, not only from getting bullets and being blown up, but also there is nothing as stupid as a 20 or 22-year-old kid with a weapon in a war zone. Protect them from themselves.
The spectacle of these people doing those antics night after night, for three and a half months only stopped when one of their own soldiers turned them in tells you all you need to know, how many officers knew. I can just give you a timeline that will tell you all you need to know. Abu Ghraib was reported in January of 2004 this year. In May, I and CBS earlier also wrote an awful lot about what was going on there. At that point, between January and May, our government did nothing. Although Rumsfeld later acknowledged that he was briefed by the middle of January on it and told the President. In those three-and-a-half months before it became public, was there any systematic effort to do anything other than to prosecute seven “bad seeds”, enlisted kids, reservists from West Virginia and the unit they were in, by the way, Military Police. The answer is, Ha! They were basically a bunch of kids who were taught on traffic control, sent to Iraq, put in charge of a prison. They knew nothing. It doesn't excuse them from doing dumb things. But there is another framework. We're not seeing it. They’ve gotten away with it.
AND, the world is tiring of us
Europe is not going to tolerate us much longer. The rage there is enormous. I'm talking about our old-fashioned allies -- it's going to be an awful lot of dancing on our graves as the dollar goes bad and everybody stops buying our bonds, our credit -- our -- we're spending $2 billion a day to float the debt, and one of these days, the Japanese and the Russians, everybody is going to start buying oil in Euros instead of dollars. We're going to see enormous panic here." http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/26/1450204
(2) Gore Vidal: on the Inaugural words:
Well, I hardly know where to end, much less begin. There's not a word of truth in anything that he said. Our founding fathers did not set us on a course to liberate all the world from tyranny. Jefferson just said, “all men are created equal, and should be,” etc, but it was not the task of the United States to “go abroad to slay dragons,” as John Quincy Adams so wisely put it; because if the United States does go abroad to slay dragons in the name of freedom, liberty, and so on, she could become “dictatress of the world,” but in the process “she would lose her soul.” That is what we -- the lesson we should be learning now, instead of this declaration of war against the entire globe. He doesn't define what tyranny is. I’d say what we have now in the United States is working up a nice tyrannical persona for itself and for us. As we lose liberties he’s, I guess, handing them out to other countries which have not asked for them, particularly; and what he says -- The reaction in Europe-–and I know we mustn’t mention them because they're immoral and they have all those different kinds of cheese–but, simultaneously, they're much better educated than we are, and they're richer. Get that out there: The Europeans per capita are richer than the Americans, per capita. And by the time this administration is finished, there won't be any money left of any kind, starting with poor social security, which will be privatized, so that is the last gold rush for (as they say) men with an eye for opportunity.
No, I would have to parse this thing line by line and have it in front of me. It goes in one ear and out the other as lies often do, particularly rhetorical lies that have been thought up by second-rate advertising men, which are the authors of this speech. It is the most un-American speech I’ve ever heard a chief executive give to the United States; and thanks at least to television, we were given every inaugural from Franklin Roosevelt on (and it's quite interesting to see who said what), and only one was as gruesome and as off-key as this, and that guy is Harry S. Truman, who’s being made into a hero because he fits into the imperial mode. He starts out his inaugural -- we're on top of the world we’re the richest country, the most powerful militarily, and what does he do? Within three lines Harry Truman is starting the Cold War, which the Russians were not starting. They thought they could live in peace because of their agreement at Yalta with his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, whose unfortunate death gave us Harry Truman and gave us the Cold War, which is now metastasized into a general war against any nation that this president of ours, if he is -- was elected, wants to commit us to, and we -- preemptive wars. That’s just never existed in our history, that a president – “Well, I think I'm going to take on Costa Rica. There may be some terrorists down there one day. Oh, they aren't there yet, but they're planning for it. And they’ve got bicarbonate of soda. Once you have that, you know, you can build all sorts of biochemical weapons.” This is just blather. Blather.
And that an American audience would sit there beside the capitol or reverently in front of their TV screens and watch this and not see the absurdity of what was being said -- absolute proof of a couple of things that I have felt, and most of us who are at all thoughtful feel: We’ve got the worst educational system of any first world country. We are shameful when we go abroad, because we know nothing. Just to watch the destruction of the archaeologists’ work at Babylon. Babylon is a center of our culture. Nobody knows that. Nobody knows what it is, except it's a wicked city that the lord destroyed. Well, it was the center of our civilization, the center of mathematics, of writing, of everything. And apparently our troops were allowed to go in and smash everything to bits. Why did they do it? Was it because they are mean bad boys and girls? No. They're totally uneducated. And their officers are sometimes mean and bad, and allow them to have a romp, as they also had in the prisons, none of which we heard about in the last election. We were too busy with homosexual marriage and abortion, two really riveting subjects. War and peace, of course, are not worth talking about. And civilization, God forbid that we ever commit ourselves to that. http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1458238
-R
