Conservative Revolutionary American Party II

TOTALLY FRUSTRATED

2005-11-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

Well, I've become totally frustarted with this whole process. The only thing that I have been able to figure out is something isn't working right............
GO FIGURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway, I'm going to try take 3................. You are about to witness the birth of CRAP III !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am going to abandon my backlog of unposted information and start in real time. Maybe that will bypass the problems that I'm having.

Thank you for your patience...............PEACE..............Scott

t r u t h o u t | 09.11

2005-10-16T10:40:00.000-07:00

t r u t h o u t | 09.11

William Rivers Pitt | September 11 Revisited
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105A.shtml
William Rivers Pitt: Perhaps now that we have Iraq under our belt, perhaps now
that we have Katrina under our belt, perhaps now that we have had a few
unspeakably costly lessons on just how wretched, stupid, useless, blind,
willfully ignorant, dangerous, petulant, frightening, narrow-minded, foolish and
ultimately deranged this administration is, perhaps now we can look at September
11 for what it really was: just another Bush administration failure that came
with another massive body count.

Joe Conason | 9/11: The Bitter Lessons of Four Years
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105B.shtml
Standing among the wreckage of two national disasters, Joe Conason asserts that
it is no longer possible to deny the plain truth: Bush and his administration
are unfit to wield power.

Firms with Bush-Cheney Ties Clinching Katrina Deals
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105C.shtml
Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are
clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction
contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

President's Approval Rating Dips Below 40
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105F.shtml
President Bush's job approval has dipped below 40 percent for the first time in
the AP-Ipsos poll, reflecting widespread doubts about his handling of gasoline
prices and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Journalists Under Attack in New Orleans
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105G.shtml
Journalists covering New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina report
that militarization in and around the city has hindered their work and
threatened their physical safety.

Bill Moyers | 9/11 and the Sport of God
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105X.shtml
This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union Theological
Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary's
highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in
America.

Where Is Osama bin Laden? Day 1,461 and Counting
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105Y.shtml
It's the fourth anniversary of September 11 - and Osama bin Laden is still at
large.

Norman Solomon | 9/11 and Manipulation of the USA
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105Z.shtml
Norman Solomon: To observe the political manipulation of 9/11 after the towers
collapsed was to witness a multidimensional power grab exercised largely via
mass media.

Will FEBAR Bring Down the House?

2005-10-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

By Stirling Newberry
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Saturday 10 September 2005

With Friday's news that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Michael Brown had been relieved of managing the storm clean-up, a bit of reality settled in to Washington. Brown, you probably know, is a man who couldn't manage a horse breeder's association, and yet who was waved through hearings by an eager Joe Lieberman. It was an admission that New Orleans had been Federal Emergencied Beyond All Recognition. But this action does not stop the growing scandal. According to Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post, five of the top FEMA officials "came to their posts with virtually no experience handling disasters," and the "ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the September 11, 2001, attacks."

The Katrina catastrophe and the failure of response - FEBAR - have primed the pump of a deep well, that of liberal and Democratic anger. It isn't just that traffic on liberal blogs has spiked. It isn't just that the images have been so shocking, the reality of a nation unprepared for disaster so outrageous. It is that it cuts in sharp relief how out of power the Democrats are, and what that really means.

The final outrage may have been the formation of a "bipartisan committee" without telling the Democratic leadership of either house, without assuring equal representation, and without giving bipartisan subpoenas power. Publicly and privately, Democratic office holders exploded. When Scott McClellan went through an entire press conference saying that "we shouldn't play the blame game" and the press did not challenge him, it was a sharp, stiff shock to the systems of more than a few representatives who at long last realized what, exactly, Rove's Republic meant to them.

The reality that the public has to understand is that there are three poles of politics in America.There are two philosophies of national government - a liberal one and a reactionary one - and then there is a localist Americanism. For a very long time, this third pole felt that it was allied with the reactionary theory to restrain the liberal one. Even if nominally a member of the Democratic Party, the laissez-faire, small government, free market, low taxes vision of America could have been ripped from the Democratic Party's platform of 1928, or even 1932, before FDR had transfigured the party.

It created a national economy that taxed money where it piled up in cities, and pumped it out to the country side. This "pork-u-pump" kept rural areas afloat, slowed the bleeding of people into the cities, and gave them buying power to purchase manufactured goods, which allowed cities and a vast industrial machine to slowly bloom, and then, after the end of World War II, to boom. A representative's job, as much as he had one, was to work this pump: cut taxes on his constituents, and "bring home the bacon."

This means that many Democratic Congressmen, while they weren't happy not having the perks of the majority, were safe in their jobs as long as they could, from time to time, score a few laws and snarf down some pork now and again. Many of them were as devoted to the idea of "cut taxes, raise defense spending and pretend to balance the budget" as their counterparts across the aisle were. Many, coming up from state political machines, were happy to have the Federal government stay out of investigating local corruption and local ways of doing business. No applause please, just throw money.

However, they also expected that, eventually, the Republicans would trip up, and they would swing back into power. Some were aggressive about planning for this day, running a bitter civil war under the radar inside the Democratic Party, but this was only a fraction of the "go along to get along" consensus in the Democratic Party's upper echelons. Over and over again it was assumed that someday the economy would be bad enough, the scandals rank enough, and the electorate restive enough to have a change in power. Just focus on winning a few seats, and one day it would work out. This strategy was roughly like trying to draw an inside straight on every hand of poker.

What has exacerbated this sector of the Democratic officeholder class, and the people who work for them, is not that the country is marching in a reactionary direction. As the filibuster deal showed, they were quite happy, make that eager, to confirm a judge who called the New Deal unconstitutional. It has not sunk into their minds that this means the end of their existence and the end of their usefulness. They don't connect, in their own minds, the pork-u-pump to the New Deal. It has existed, it exists in every developed nation, why not in this one? And they were positively antipathetic to the idea of the Federal government's imposing standards and checking results in any effective manner. The result is that when catastrophe came, no one was there to bar the door.

Because most Democratic office holders lacked any larger vision than bringing home the bacon, being out of power was galling, but not worth taking large risks to change. Most were not angry about the direction of policy. Instead, what angers them now is their growing perception that the great game of politics, the ability to investigate the other party and raise a fuss - the ability to engage in "oversight," which is the bread and butter of moving an ambitious career upwards or making a mere politician into an untouchable institution - has been taken away.

The public, however, does not have the luxury or the time while the powers that be in Washington tussle politely, and sometimes less than politely, behind closed doors in the capitol building. With every passing day, billions bleed out from the treasury, and more young Americans bleed to death in the hardened streets of Baghdad and by the side of desolate highways in the desert. And the signs of a growing sense of urgency are visible as tremors in the polls. Normally a disaster allows a President to look presidential and providential. There is a sense of putting party aside and getting the job done, and with it comes a bounce in the polls. Bush's was so soft and small that people barely felt it.

However, no reading of the polls shows any direction; the Democratic leadership is as unpopular as the Republican leadership, individual incumbents of both parties are facing low approval numbers, and as yet no candidate has emerged for the Presidency who offers a vision that has "caught fire" with the public.

For those who read history, this is not an uncommon pattern: before America is willing to adopt a wholesale change, it often simply screams in frustration, sending a group of people to Washington who will "do something" about the problems. The problems that need to be investigated are piling up. While it is doubtful Americans are yet ready to hear the truth about 9/11, namely that the same people who couldn't read a weather report could not read an intelligence report, they are ready to hear the truth about how the reconstruction and occupation of Iraq is a carnival of corruption, and they are certainly willing to hear the truth about how George W. Bush managed to lose New Orleans, the site of the last invasion of the continental United Sates.

If you want a measure of whether the public is willing to seek dramatic change, then cast your eyes on Ohio, where a previously unknown Paul Hackett is being urged to run for the Senate seat held by Mike DeWine, a senator who last crossed the national radar for having a "Washingtonienne" in his employ, and who belongs to a state party that only wishes its scandals were limited to sex. Hackett and a band of young political operatives made an astounding run at a heavily Republican congressional district in an August special election. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is urging him to seek statewide office, and there is already a scramble of opposition research on the part of the Republicans.

DeWine represents a kind of seat that the Republicans must hold to maintain power: the northern and midwestern moderate. States that are voting against cities, without realizing what, exactly, they are voting in favor of. The Republicans have seven senators from such states, two from Maine, two from Ohio, one each from Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Minnesota. While the two from Maine seem safe, three of the other five are up for re-election this year. Chaffee of Rhode Island is 2006's second most embattled incumbent, right behind Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

The Hackett race in Ohio gives Democrats another reason to hope: his race represented a 10 point shift from the last competitive race in the district. A swing of 10 points was not enough to give the Democrats the district, but a shift of 10 points nationally would represent a landslide shift in the House, with Republican outposts outside the south snapping like twigs.

Just after the election, one Republican strategist was quietly gloating to me of a "filibuster-proof majority." He believed that Nelson of Florida would fall, and that, with Dayton of Minnesota retiring, that left only three seats between George Bush and replacing the aging Justice Stevens with someone in the mold of Priscilla Owens. The House seemed ripe for an increased majority. "The budget is a governing document, and people are going to want to be inside, not outside, the building when it is written."

Which is why Newt Gingrich has openly fretted about the government's having "the ability to deliver" as being more important than "values." FEBAR strikes at the heart of the Republican Party's air of being composed of tough, business-like, can-do "Vulcans," sagely making decisions based on reason, rationality and cost-benefit analysis. Instead, Michael Brown's failures and the revelations that his resume was far too thin for the job reveal a Republican Party that simply cannot get the job done, the way it still does not have power fully restored to Baghdad, or a clear plan for rebuilding the World Trade Center. If the record of urban renewal is any indication, years from now we will still hear about how "the levee system has been a harder task to rebuild than we expected."

Americans were patient when inflation was low, housing values were up, and everyone expected that there would be a big rebound in the jobs market. These features are coming to an end: gasoline spiked to over $3 a gallon after Katrina, housing values are beginning to wobble in key markets, and a "great month" for hiring under Bush is what Clinton averaged per month in his eight years of being President. The appearance of incompetence and impropriety becomes a sign that those in power don't have matters in hand.

So that is why people in both parties are starting to ask, "Will FEBAR bring down the house?"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stirling Newberry is an internet business and strategy consultant, with experience in international telecom, consumer marketing, e-commerce and forensic database analysis. He has acted as an advisor to Democratic political campaigns and organizations and is the co-founder, along with Christopher Lydon, Jay Rosen and Matt Stoller, of BopNews, as well as the military affairs editor of The Agonist.

News and Views you don't have to lose:

2005-10-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

FEMA's hurricane plan for New Orleans didn't get ordered

Sep. 02, 2005 -- Government disaster officials had an action plan if a major hurricane hit New Orleans. They simply didn't execute it when Hurricane Katrina struck.

Thirteen months before Katrina hit New Orleans, local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill that Ronald Castleman, then the regional director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, called "a very good exercise." More than a million residents were "evacuated" in the tabletop scenario as 120-mile-an-hour winds and 20 inches of rain caused widespread flooding that supposedly trapped 300,000 people in the city.

FEMA wasn't able to secure buses sooner for the mass evacuation of New Orleans, a step anticipated by the hurricane disaster simulation conducted by federal, state and local emergency officials last year.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said, "There was a time when FEMA understood that the correct approach to a crisis was to deploy to the affected area as many resources as possible as fast as possible," "Unfortunately, that no longer seems to be their approach."
John Copenhaver, a former FEMA regional director during the Clinton administration who led the response to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, said he was bewildered by the slow FEMA response. "I'm a little confused as to why it took so long to get the military presence running convoys into downtown New Orleans," Copenhaver said.

Pleasant Mann, former head of the union for FEMA employees, who has been with the agency since 1988, said a change made by agency higher-ups last year added a bureaucratic layer that likely delayed FEMA's response to Katrina.

Before the change, a FEMA employee on site at a disaster could request that an experienced employee he knew had the right skills be dispatched to help him. But now that requested worker is first made to travel to a location hundreds of miles from the disaster site to be "processed," placed in a pool from which he is dispatched, sometimes to a place different from where he thought he was headed.

Pleasant said he knew of a case where a worker from Washington State was made to first travel to Orlando before he could go to Louisiana, losing at least a day. What's more, that worker was told he might be sent to Alabama, not Louisiana, after all.

source via Eliada Israel

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/12549282.htm

Paramedics: Police Prevent People from Leaving New Orleans

Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, paramedics from California who were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans, detail their own experiences during and after Katrina. Their reports show that official relief efforts were callous, inept, and racist.

A group of 200 New Orleans citizens organized ourselves, they marched the 2-3 miles to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge. It now began to pour down rain.

As they approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before they were close enough to speak, the sheriffs began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of people inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation.

They questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

Source: Larry Bradshaw and Lorrie Beth Slonsky, paramedics from California who were attending the EMS conference in New Orleans

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805A.shtml

Comment: I think the "Gretna sheriffs" are actually members of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. I think the reference to "West Bank" refers to the city on the other side of the Mississippi River or Jefferson Parish which is actually south of the Superdome.

Jefferson Parish map http://www.jpso.com/jp-map2.htm

March 7, 2002 - Corps of Engineers' Civilian Chief Ousted
Parker Resigns After Openly Questioning Bush's Proposed Spending Cuts

Michael Parker, the recently appointed leader of the Army Corps of Engineers, was abruptly forced to resign yesterday for failing to defend President Bush's proposed budget cuts.

Parker, a former House member from Mississippi who was confirmed as assistant Army secretary for civil works five months ago, was the first major administration official ousted since Bush took office. He had made no secret of his disdain for the Office of Management and Budget's efforts to rein in the Corps, and recently told a sympathetic House committee that he had requested $2 billion more than the OMB proposed in the president's budget. At a Senate hearing, he questioned the administration's decision to fund no new Corps projects, adding that he did not have a "warm and fuzzy feeling" for OMB officials.

http://www.washingtonpostcom/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A51566-2002Mar6¬Found=true

Aug. 31, 2005 -- A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in U.S. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut the Corps of Engineers' request for holding back the waters of New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the Corps to impose a hiring freeze.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/08/31/disaster_preparation/index_np.html

Promoting the common good is the central role of government

A summary of the Commentary by George Lakoff

September 6, 2005 -- Katrina...(snip) was when the usually invisible people suddenly appeared in all the anguish of their lives -- the impoverished, the old, the infirm, the kids and the
low-wage workers with no cars, TVs, or credit cards. They showed up on
America's doorsteps, entered the living rooms and stayed. Katrina will not go
away soon, and she has the power to change America.

The Bush administration is busy framing it in its own way: bad
things just happen, it's no one's fault; the federal government did the best
it could -- the problem was at the state and local level; we'll rebuild and
everything will be okay; the people being shipped out will have better lives
elsewhere, and jobs in Wal-Mart!

http://www.alternet.org/story/25099

Philanthropic foundations and the CIA

In her book THE CULTURAL COLD WAR, Frances Stoner Saunders recalled how the Ford Foundation collaborated with the CIA in the past--on behalf of the Ultra-Rich families of the U.S. Establishment's power elite.

"The use of philanthropic foundations was the most convenient way to pass large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source. By the mid-1950s, the CIA's intrusion into the foundation field was massive. Although figures are not available for this period, the general counsel of a 1952 Congress committee appointed to investigate US foundations concluded that `An unparalleled amount of power is concentrated increasingly in the hands of an interlocking and self-perpetuating group. Unlike the power of corporate management, it is unchecked by stockholders; unlike the power of government, it is unchecked by the people; unlike the power of the churches, it is unchecked by any firmly established canons of value.' In 1976, a Select Committee appointed to investigate US intelligence activities reported on the CIA's penetration of the foundation field by the mid-1960s: during 1963-6, of the 700 grants over $10,000 given by 164 foundations, at least 108 involved partial or complete CIA funding. More importantly, CIA funding was involved in nearly half the grants made by these 164 foundations in the field of international activities during the same period.

"`Bona fide' foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie were considered `the best and most plausible kind of funding cover.' A CIA study of 1966 argued that this technique was `particularly effective for democratically run membership organizations, which need to assure their own unwitting members and collaborators, as well as their hostile critics, that they have genuine, respectable, private sources of income.' Certainly, it allowed the CIA to fund`a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing houses, and other private institutions from the early 1950s."

Shortly after Allen Dulles was to become Director of Central Intelligence, John McCloy became the new president of the Ford Foundation McCloy created an administrative unit within the Ford Foundation specifically to deal with the CIA. Headed by McCloy and two foundation officers, this three-man committee had to be consulted every time the CIA wanted to use the foundation, either as a pass-through, or as cover. With this arrangement in place, the Ford Foundation became officially engaged as one of those organizations the CIA was able to mobilize for political warfare.

After John F. Kennedy's assassination, McCloy was appointed to the Warren Commission.

McGeorge Bundy, became president of the Ford Foundation in 1966 (coming straight from his job as Special Assistant to the President in Charge of National Security.

In her 1982 book ROOTED IN SECRECY: THE CLANDESTINE ELEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN POLITICS by Joan Coxsedge noted that "the Ford Foundation" also "took over the funding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom after its CIA cover was blown in 1966."

The percentage of public broadcasting revenue coming from foundations has doubled in the past two decades. And in the world of nonprofit media, a few million a year goes a long way...

http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman07.html

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes. MY NEWSLETTER has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is MY NEWSLETTER endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose

truthout / 9-9-05

2005-10-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

Embattled FEMA Chief Removed from Hurricane Relief Efforts
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905R.shtml
Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
was removed today from a direct role in running the relief and recovery efforts
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Michael Chertoff, secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security, announced.

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905S.shtml
Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their
posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency
whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The New York Times | A Light in the Forests
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090905EA.shtml
The New York Times: The Bush administration has largely succeeded in its
systematic effort to roll back environmental protections for America's national
forests ... Now, however, a rebellion is brewing where the White House least
expected it. Western governors are challenging the most controversial rollback
of all ...

The Entire Community Is Now a Toxic Waste Dump
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090905HA.shtml
In Katrina's aftermath, oil spills dominate the landscape, some miles long and
up to 200 yards wide. Refineries and industrial plants are leaking a stew of
chemicals, creating one giant superfund site.

Bush Lifts Wage Rules for Katrina
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090905LA.shtml
President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors
rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing
wage. "The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut
the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their
communities," said Representative George Miller.

Labor Department Says 10,000 Katrina-Related Jobless Claims Filed Last Week
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090905LB.shtml
An estimated 10,000 workers who lost their jobs because of Hurricane Katrina
filed for unemployment benefits last week, the first wave of what is expected to
be hundreds of thousands of displaced workers seeking benefits.

Violence Against Women Act Passes Senate Judiciary Committee with Amendment
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090905WA.shtml
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a mark-up of the Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA) reauthorization today. The bill, which expires on September 30, passed
out of committee, but an amendment was added that could prevent or delay its
passage by the full Senate.

T H E H U F F I N G T O N P O S T

2005-10-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

Discussion of the Katrina tragedy continued to dominate the Huffington Post this week. Here are four posts I did on the way the media, the administration, the Democrats and the American people have all responded to the crisis. For the latest headlines and blogs, keep logging on to huffingtonpost.com .

George Bush, David Caruso, and Katrina: Why Now Is Precisely the Time for Finger-Pointing
Posted September 6, 2005 at 8:59 p.m. EDT

Here's one for the Hypocrisy Hall of Fame: At the same time the administration is putting Karl Rove's "pin-the-blame-on-the-locals" plan into effect, President Bush told reporters gathered at a cabinet meeting today, "I think that one of the things that people want us to do here is play a blame game. We've got to solve problems. We're problem solvers. There will be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong. What I'm interested in is helping save lives."

How noble. A week and thousands of lives too late... but noble. He makes it sound as if anyone interested in trying to figure out what went so horribly wrong in the aftermath of Katrina is somehow impeding the recovery. As if we can't help the victims and analyze the debacle at the same time. As if any time spent by reporters ferreting out the truth -- and by Congress overseeing -- would otherwise be spent tossing sandbags on the levee, disinfecting the Superdome, or driving evacuees to Houston.

As if those seeking answers will have blood on their hands.

That's certainly the ominous rhetorical tack being taken by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. He's all about moving forward, and not looking back (which isn't surprising given how many corpses he'd see in his personal rear-view mirror). "What would be a horrible tragedy," he said, "would be to distract ourselves from avoiding further problems because we're spending time talking about problems that have already occurred." Gee, Mr. Secretary, I thought that was called 'learning from your mistakes.'

So the White House is for time management and against "finger-pointing" -- a two-talking-points-for-the-price-of-one Chertoff scored when he asked, "What do you want to have us spend our time on now? Do we want to make sure we are feeding, sheltering, housing, and educating those who are distressed, or do we want to begin the process of finger-pointing?" Well, when you put it that way...

Also receiving the time management/finger-pointing memo were White House spokesman Scott McClellan, WH communications director Dan Bartlett, and former FEMA director Joe Allbaugh:

"This is not a time for finger-pointing or playing politics," said Scotty.

"I know a lot of people right now want to point fingers and criticize, but people should keep their powder dry," said Allbaugh.

"If we focused more of our attention on decisions that have already been made, rather than those before us, there's potential for making far greater mistakes... We really don't have time to play the political game right now," echoed Bartlett.

With that kind of message discipline, how long before the media start parroting the party line? With a few brave exceptions like Jack Cafferty, the correct answer would be... right about now. "Not a great time for finger pointing is it?" asked Miles O'Brien on CNN's American Morning. "When you hear it's not the right time to point the finger, doesn't that seem reasonable?" asked anchor Carol Costello a few hours later on CNN's Daybreak .

Now, it's bad enough when the media start carrying the administration's water (especially when it's as fetid as the toxic muck still covering New Orleans), but it's much, much worse when the opposition's leaders grab a bucket and join in. "Our government failed those people in the beginning," said Bill Clinton. "And I personally believe there should be a serious analysis of it...but I don't think we should do it now. I think that in a few weeks, we should have some sort of Katrina commission. It should be bipartisan, non-partisan, whatever..." Exactly: "Whatever." As in: Who gives a crap, because it will have about the same impact as all these too-long-after-the-fact commissions have -- next to none. Who knows, maybe this time President Bush will be willing to actually testify under oath -- and without Dick Cheney. Or maybe Mike Brown will pull a Condi and let it slip about a "historical" PDB entitled "FEMA Determined to Strike Out in NO."

President Clinton's helpful assertion was quickly picked up by the President's father who used it as a cudgel against anyone trying to (if you'll pardon the expression) "point the finger" at his son: "People want to blame someone... I thought President Clinton put it pretty well today when he said, 'Let's get on with it and then there'll be plenty of time to assign blame.'"

Look, if we've learned anything from watching shows like CSI, Law & Order , and their endless progeny, it's that you can't let a crime scene grow cold. You've got to start collecting and analyzing the evidence while the DNA is still fresh and let David Caruso or Vincent D'Onofrio start sweating the perps while the passions are still running high.

And make no mistake, what we saw go down -- and not go down -- in New Orleans was definitely a crime... a crime that is in many ways still in progress. Sixty percent of the city remains underwater; up to 160,000 homes in the state of Louisiana have been submerged or destroyed; 60 to 90 million tons of solid waste need to be cleaned up; experts warn that it make take "years" to fully restore clean drinking water; and an outbreak of vibrio vulnificus -- a cholera-like bacterial disease -- has been reported among some Katrina evacuees.

This is clearly going to be a very long recovery process. And the sooner we've identified those responsible for the Katrina tragedy, the sooner we can make sure they're not around to screw up the recovery.

So, yes, now is precisely the time for assessing blame. Let a thousand pointed fingers bloom!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Memo to the Media: Stop Enabling the White House Blame Game
Posted September 5, 2005 at 6:19 p.m. EDT
When it comes to managing political crises (as opposed to national ones), the Bush White House has earned a reputation as masters of damage control. And rightly so -- let's see you get reelected after Abu Ghraib, the "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" memo, no WMD, no bin Laden (dead or alive), and "Mission (Most Definitely Not) Accomplished."

Well, according to the New York Times , Rove, Bartlett and the damage control boys are at it again, rolling out a plan to hang the post-Katrina debacle around the necks of Louisiana state and local officials... and, in the process, erase the image of a crassly incompetent administration too busy vacationing to worry about the dying in New Orleans.

Hence, Monday's Presidential Visit, Take Two. Can't you just see Rove yelling "Cut!", hopping out of his director's chair, pulling Bush aside, and whispering in his ear: "Okay, Mr. President, this isn't Armageddon meets The Wedding Crashers . So this time 86 the stories about how you used to party in New Orleans, and, for heaven's sake, do not focus on the suffering of Trent Lott. And no more hugging only freshly-showered black people who look like Halle Berry -- this time you gotta get a little closer to the living-in-their-own-feces crowd. Alright.... action!"

Look, as much as I despise the way they go about it, I get it: trying to save face by deflecting blame and sliming your enemies may be ugly but it's straight out of the Rove playbook and has proven highly effective.

What I don't understand is why the media continue to be star players on the Bush damage control team.

Take the way that both the Washington Post and Newsweek obediently, and ineptly, passed on -- and thus gave credence to -- the Bush party line that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's hesitancy to declare a state of emergency had prevented the feds from responding to the crisis more rapidly.

The Post , citing an anonymous "senior Bush official," reported on Sunday that, as of Saturday, Sept. 3, Blanco "still had not declared a state of emergency"... when, in fact, the declaration had been made on Friday, August 26 -- over 2 days BEFORE Katrina made landfall in Louisiana. This claim was so demonstrably false that the paper was forced to issue a correction just hours after the original story appeared.

So here are a couple of questions: 1) Had everyone in the WaPo fact-checking department gone out of town for the Labor Day weekend? I mean, c'mon, the announcement of a state of emergency isn't exactly the kind of thing government officials tend to keep a secret. 2) Why were the Post reporters so willing to blindly accept the words of an administration official who obviously had a partisan agenda -- and to grant this official anonymity?

Weren't they familiar with the Post 's policy on using anonymous sources, which states: "Sources often insist that we agree not to name them in the newspaper before they agree to talk with us. We must be reluctant to grant their wish. When we use an unnamed source, we are asking our readers to take an extra step to trust the credibility of the information we are providing. We must be certain in our own minds that the benefit to readers is worth the cost in credibility. ...Nevertheless, granting anonymity to a source should not be done casually or automatically." Here it was clearly done both casually and automatically.

The Post 's policy continues: "We prefer at least two sources for factual information in Post stories that depends on confidential informants, and those sources should be independent of each other." Oops. They could have saved themselves a lot of grief if the second source they never got for this story had been a staffer for Gov. Blanco... or, if the price of a phone call was too much, the state of Louisiana website where the truth about the state of emergency declaration was a click away.

Especially since the Post instructs its reporters: "When sources have axes to grind, we should let our readers know what their interest is" and "We do not promise sources that we will refrain from additional reporting or efforts to verify the information they may give us." You mean like checking to see if the line of bull they are feeding you is, y'know, a line of bull?

If anything, Newsweek's effort to assist the Bush damage control effort was even more egregious. While claiming that "Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Barbineaux Blanco seemed uncertain and sluggish, hesitant to declare martial law or a state of emergency, which would have opened the door to more Pentagon help" the magazine didn't even bother to cite a "senior Bush official," choosing instead to report Blanco's alleged failings as fact. Wonder where they got that "fact"? You think it might have been from the same "senior Bush official" that snookered the Post ?

The unquestioning regurgitation of administration spin through the use of anonymous sources is the fault line of modern American journalism. You'd think that after all we've seen -- from the horrific reporting on WMD to Judy Miller and Plamegate (to say nothing of all the endless navel-gazing media panel discussions analyzing the issue) -- these guys would finally get a clue and stop making the Journalism 101 mistake of granting anonymity to administration sources using them to smear their opponents.

The Washington Post corrected its article. Now it should take the next step and reveal who the source of that provably false chunk of slime was. And Newsweek should do the same.

It's time for the media to get back to doing their job and stop being the principal weapon in Team Bush's damage control arsenal.

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Will the Dems Ever Learn? "It's The National Security, Stupid"
Posted September 7, 2005 at 10:05 p.m. EDT

After an interminable week of silence on the administration's shockingly inept handling of the Katrina tragedy, Democratic leaders finally spoke out, with Harry Reid questioning whether the president's vacation hindered relief efforts and Nancy Pelosi labeling him "oblivious, in denial, dangerous."

But missing was a direct critique of Bush's greatest vulnerability -- the tens of thousands of men and women and the hundreds of billions of dollars that he is squandering in Iraq instead of using them to really protect the homeland, including from Katrina and its aftermath.

In a stinging Wall Street Journal analysis of the administration's lethally slow response, the first two reasons given for "why the U.S. didn't adequately protect and rescue its citizens" were 1) "the absorption of FEMA into the gargantuan -- and terrorism-focused -- Department of Homeland Security" and 2) "a military stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which made commanders reluctant to commit active-duty units nearby."

That's the major, big picture point Reid and Pelosi should be making, instead of picking nits over whether Bush would have made better decisions in D.C. instead of Crawford. Pelosi called him "dangerous," but didn't tell us why he's really dangerous. He's dangerous not just because he's in denial about the job Brownie is doing but because his policies are making this country less secure with each passing day.

Did the Dems learn nothing from 2004? Bush won because he had a double-digit lead on the question of who was going to keep us safer.

Well, Katrina shoots that idea straight to hell, doesn't it? And Democrats should make clear once and for all just how illusory the president's purported strength, leadership, and steely-eyed resolve really are.

The debacle in New Orleans contains all the elements necessary to show how Bush's misguided priorities -- especially his obsession with Iraq -- have left us far more vulnerable, unsafe, and insecure. It's the perfect opportunity to redefine national security in a way that would ironically -- by putting America first -- most appeal to the red states.

So how come the Democrats are not making the "We will protect you better" case?

When will they finally understand that they will not be a majority party again until they clearly define for the country where they stand on national security -- and why their way will keep us safer than what the other guys are doing?

You don't rise from the political ashes by standing around hoping the other guy blows it. You do it by offering the American public a big, bold vision of a country that protects its own first -- which includes both securing our ports and railways from terrorists, and protecting the least among us from natural disasters (and not leaving them dying on rooftops or cowering in their bodily waste at hellish way stations like the Superdome).

Instead, true to losing form, the same brilliant minds that convinced John Kerry to focus on health care instead of Iraq and Abu Ghraib and no WMD in the last election, have decided that the Democrats should respond to Katrina by mounting an all-hands-on-deck assault on... (wait for it)... the GOP's plans to repeal the estate tax. Everyone from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Howard Dean have been reading from the same talking points, while Kerry sent out an umbrage-laden "Don't You Dare" petition about tax cuts.

Now, it goes without saying that giving mega-millionaires a tax break should be the last thing on Congress' mind right now -- and that Democrats should do everything they can to fight it. But pivoting from the massive suffering and devastation caused by Katrina (and what it reveals about the consequences of the war in Iraq and the GOP's warped definition of national security) to the estate tax is, once again, missing the point.

Derailing the privatization of Social Security didn't change the Democrats' fundamental problem -- their perceived weakness Posted on national security. Neither will keeping the estate tax in place.

The American people are mad, disgusted, and frightened. They want to know, who will keep us safe?

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Katrina Relief: Building on the Instinct for Giving
Posted September 9, 2005 at 8:20 p.m. EDT

The private charitable response to Katrina has been extraordinary. Americans have already donated over $500 million -- more than double the $239 million donated in the 10 days after 9/11 and more than triple the $164 million contributed in the immediate aftermath of December's tsunami.

And the money is just the tip of the giving. All across the country, ordinary people are donating food, water, clothing, diapers, baby formula, toiletries, flashlights, toys, dog food -- you name it -- as well as offers of housing, transportation, and entertainment.

"People all over," said Amanda Janes, a San Francisco coffee shop owner who organized a local Labor Day collection of goods, "are looking for a way to do a little bit more than giving money, because writing a check doesn't feel human enough."

This wellspring of altruism is one of the great untapped resources of our country -- squandered by a president who talks a lot about the fulfillment that comes from serving "something greater than ourselves" but has repeatedly blown the opportunity to call on the American people to commit themselves to a large, collective purpose.

After 9/11 he called on us all to go to Disney World. What will he ask of us in the wake of Katrina -- to stock up on "Girls Gone Wild -- Mardi Gras" DVDs?

But whatever the president does or doesn't do, let's hope the rest of us build on this outpouring of generosity.

I say this both selflessly and selfishly. Selflessly because it is so desperately needed: as surely as Katrina has left thousands in Mississippi and Louisiana in urgent need of assistance, it has also shone a spotlight on the gaping chasm between the Two Americas and the crushing poverty that exists largely out of view throughout America. Selfishly because the under-reported benefit of service is what it does for those who are doing the giving -- especially our children.

That's why I've always loved the idea of families volunteering together -- not as some feel-good act of noblesse oblige, but as an effective answer to the pervasive narcissism of our consumption-crazy culture.

America today is plagued with disconnections -- rich from poor, black from white, red state from blue, and parents from children. One of the greatest ways to bridge these divides is teaching children from an early age the importance of making service an integral part of their lives. It helps them see beyond the importance of being popular to the importance of being useful. Children brought up to feel that their lives have a larger purpose beyond themselves are more likely to keep their own troubles in perspective.

Ten years ago, I wrote a book I called The Fourth Instinct where I argued that we are all born with an instinct for altruism and giving as surely as we are born with instincts for survival, sex, and power. But like muscles that need to be exercised, our kids' generosity and compassion can only be developed through regular use.

Danielle Crittenden and Rebecca Pigeon are two mothers who wrote on HuffPost this week about the impact doing something for the victims of Katrina had on their children. And I've watched my own daughters absorb lessons through putting giving into practice they could easily have rejected if I just preached them.

I imagine that parents all across the country whose children have taken part in raising money with lemonade and cookie stands or by donating their toys to Katrina's victims know exactly what I'm talking about. So we shouldn't let this moment pass. When families gather around to decide what they're going to do over the weekend -- go to the mall? see a movie? hit the beach? -- donating their time and talents should be among the regular options.

Through volunteering, we can not only help those in need but also help raise more fully rounded human beings.

As Rev. Henry Delaney, who had been transforming boarded-up crack houses in Savannah, Ga. once told me: "I want to get people involved in what we're doing. It's like putting a poker in the fire. After a while, the fire gets in the poker too." It certainly does.

Of course, in no way does this let our government and our political leaders off the hook. Private charity can play a vital role in helping mend broken lives, especially those shattered by a sudden crisis like Katrina. But the task of caring for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the storm (to say nothing of the even bigger challenge of overcoming poverty in America), is far too vast to be achieved without massive governmental resources. Sure, ordinary Americans have donated half-a-billion dollars -- but the relief effort has already burned through the $10.5 billion Congress approved just last week, and estimates put the overall rescue and rebuilding price tag somewhere in the range of $150 billion to $200 billion.

At the same time, government dollars will never be enough to turn lives around without citizen engagement. We desperately need both.

And a president willing to ask us to do more than go shopping.

© 2005 TheHuffingtonPost.com, LLC

San Diego Carpenters Get a Sneak Preview

2005-10-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

San Diego Carpenters Get a Sneak Preview of the...
Mobility of Labor in the New Global Economy
by Alan Wasdahl

San Diego - Most of the construction industry nationwide is in a slump, but the local economy in San Diego has somehow resisted this downturn.
Because of the strength of our local economy, numerous Canadian building contractors have been coming to San Diego and bidding and getting construction contracts.
Foreign owned companies contracting work in the U.S. and using local workers is not a new thing. But what is new and newsworthy is that these contractors are now bringing much of their workforce with them, down from Canada. As yet, no news of this, or its implications, has made it to the mainstream media.
Canadian companies - along with their Canadian workforce - are currently performing work here in the U.S. This is done as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a three-way trade agreement involving the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Most noteworthy, is that the provisions in NAFTA that entitle Canada to do this must, logically, also entitle Mexico to do the same thing.
In free-trade language, the term that applies to these new migrant workers in the global economy is "Mobility of Labor."
While there are no indications, thus far, of construction companies from Mexico performing work in the U.S. with Mexican workers -- the plan for this has been in the works for quite some time.
While President Bush actively pushes for free trade, it is not likely he will ever acknowledge to the American People their hidden plan of open borders for labor.
Not nearly as closed-mouthed about his intentions as is our own government in this matter, President Fox of Mexico has been vigorously pushing to have an open borders policy with the U.S. (However for obvious reasons, Fox is not nearly as enthusiastic when it comes to opening Mexico's border to the south.)
If need be, President Fox can force the issue of allowing Mexican companies and their workers access to the United States by making an appeal to the world trade court of the World Trade Organization (WTO). (Afterall, if "free-trade" applies equally to everyone, certainly Mexico is entitled to the same treatment as Canada.)
FROM A
CARPENTER'S VIEWPOINT
While it could be argued that Canadian wages are much on an even par with U.S. wages (and, therefore, not much of a threat) -- certainly this is not the case with Mexico.
The logical question that should follow is, what provisions exist in the NAFTA agreement to control what contractors from Mexico would have to pay their workers while performing work in the U.S.? Would they be required to pay in dollars and observe the U.S. minimum wage laws -- or would they be exempt? Could they even be paid in pesos? In the future this may become a moot point, as many free-traders have bandied about the idea of a new currency for all of the Americas- from the Yukon to the Yucatan, right down to the tip of South America. In time, this currency will likely replace the currency of individual nations as is currently being done in Europe with the Euro.
The bottom line is that NAFTA was not designed to strengthen our own national and local economies, or the fiber of our local communities. In fact, it explicitly does otherwise. Trade agreements such as these expressly forbids the making of any local labor standards, environment, human rights, or issues of social justice, as binding conditions for its trade policies.
Despite the already dismal record of failed free trade policies and the wide spread exportation of U.S. jobs and entire U.S. industries, NAFTA has just been expanded with the recent approval by Congress of CAFTA. Their plan, ultimately, to include some thirty-five countries throughout Central and South America.
The Administration in Washington intends to deliver us headlong into the New Global Economy of open borders, where the contractors of those countries whose workers are the most economically disadvantaged will be most likely to underbid our local contractors and displace the local workforce. The end result will be to pit one group of workers against another, on a worldwide basis -- with little or no possible benefit of tax dollars returning to benefit local communities.
WHAT NOW?
I believe that most people of the Americas - whether they are from Canada, the U.S., Mexico or even further South - are not quite prepared to embrace an open borders society for the entire hemisphere — one whose design is motivated, solely, by global corporate greed and the interests of the World Trade Organization.
Instead, all of these diverse people from many lands and cultures are beginning to realize that their people and their countries are best served by further strengthening the self-sufficiency and independence of their own economies. Many individuals and groups throughout the world are uniting in opposition to the "New World Order" and its trade policies. Can we as Carpenters afford to do any less?
Can we afford to ignore the threat that these trade policies make to our contracts and jobs?
What can the Carpenters --its leadership and membership-- do to meet this challenge?

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan

2005-10-04T07:36:00.000-07:00

August 21, 2005

The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan
By FRANK RICH

CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning made no mention of Iraq. Once again Mr. Bush was in his bubble, ensuring that he wouldn't see Ms. Sheehan coming. So it goes with a president who hasn't foreseen any of the setbacks in the war he fabricated against an enemy who did not attack inside the United States in 2001.

When these setbacks happen in Iraq itself, the administration punts. But when they happen at home, there's a game plan. Once Ms. Sheehan could no longer be ignored, the Swift Boating began. Character assassination is the Karl Rove tactic of choice, eagerly mimicked by his media surrogates, whenever the White House is confronted by a critic who challenges it on matters of war. The Swift Boating is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.

The most prominent smear victims have been Bush political opponents with heroic Vietnam résumés: John McCain, Max Cleland, John Kerry. But the list of past targets stretches from the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke to Specialist Thomas Wilson, the grunt who publicly challenged Donald Rumsfeld about inadequately armored vehicles last December. The assault on the whistle-blower Joseph Wilson - the diplomat described by the first President Bush as "courageous" and "a true American hero" for confronting Saddam to save American hostages in 1991 - was so toxic it may yet send its perpetrators to jail.

True to form, the attack on Cindy Sheehan surfaced early on Fox News, where she was immediately labeled a "crackpot" by Fred Barnes. The right-wing blogosphere quickly spread tales of her divorce, her angry Republican in-laws, her supposed political flip-flops, her incendiary sloganeering and her association with known ticket-stub-carrying attendees of "Fahrenheit 9/11." Rush Limbaugh went so far as to declare that Ms. Sheehan's "story is nothing more than forged documents - there's nothing about it that's real."

But this time the Swift Boating failed, utterly, and that failure is yet another revealing historical marker in this summer's collapse of political support for the Iraq war.

When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.

The hope this time was that we'd change the subject to Cindy Sheehan's "wacko" rhetoric and the opportunistic left-wing groups that have attached themselves to her like barnacles. That way we would forget about her dead son. But if much of the 24/7 media has taken the bait, much of the public has not.

The backdrops against which Ms. Sheehan stands - both that of Mr. Bush's what-me-worry vacation and that of Iraq itself - are perfectly synergistic with her message of unequal sacrifice and fruitless carnage. Her point would endure even if the messenger were shot by a gun-waving Crawford hothead or she never returned to Texas from her ailing mother's bedside or the president folded the media circus by actually meeting with her.

The public knows that what matters this time is Casey Sheehan's story, not the mother who symbolizes it. Cindy Sheehan's bashers, you'll notice, almost never tell her son's story. They are afraid to go there because this young man's life and death encapsulate not just the noble intentions of those who went to fight this war but also the hubris, incompetence and recklessness of those who gave the marching orders.

Specialist Sheehan was both literally and figuratively an Eagle Scout: a church group leader and honor student whose desire to serve his country drove him to enlist before 9/11, in 2000. He died with six other soldiers on a rescue mission in Sadr City on April 4, 2004, at the age of 24, the week after four American security workers had been mutilated in Falluja and two weeks after he arrived in Iraq. This was almost a year after the president had declared the end of "major combat operations" from the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln.

According to the account of the battle by John F. Burns in The Times, the insurgents who slaughtered Specialist Sheehan and his cohort were militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. The Americans probably didn't stand a chance. As Mr. Burns reported, members of "the new Iraqi-trained police and civil defense force" abandoned their posts at checkpoints and police stations "almost as soon as the militiamen appeared with their weapons, leaving the militiamen in unchallenged control."

Yet in the month before Casey Sheehan's death, Mr. Rumsfeld typically went out of his way to inflate the size and prowess of these Iraqi security forces, claiming in successive interviews that there were "over 200,000 Iraqis that have been trained and equipped" and that they were "out on the front line taking the brunt of the violence." We'll have to wait for historians to tell us whether this and all the other Rumsfeld propaganda came about because he was lied to by subordinates or lying to himself or lying to us or some combination thereof.

As The Times reported last month, even now, more than a year later, a declassified Pentagon assessment puts the total count of Iraqi troops and police officers at 171,500, with only "a small number" able to fight insurgents without American assistance. As for Moktada al-Sadr, he remains as much a player as ever in the new "democratic" Iraq. He controls one of the larger blocs in the National Assembly. His loyalists may have been responsible for last month's apparently vengeful murder of Steven Vincent, the American freelance journalist who wrote in The Times that Mr. Sadr's followers had infiltrated Basra's politics and police force.

Casey Sheehan's death in Iraq could not be more representative of the war's mismanagement and failure, but it is hardly singular. Another mother who has journeyed to Crawford, Celeste Zappala, wrote last Sunday in New York's Daily News of how her son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, was also killed in April 2004 - in Baghdad, where he was providing security for the Iraq Survey Group, which was charged with looking for W.M.D.'s "well beyond the admission by David Kay that they didn't exist."

As Ms. Zappala noted with rage, her son's death came only a few weeks after Mr. Bush regaled the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association banquet in Washington with a scripted comedy routine featuring photos of him pretending to look for W.M.D.'s in the Oval Office. "We'd like to know if he still finds humor in the fabrications that justified the war that killed my son," Ms. Zappala wrote. (Perhaps so: surely it was a joke that one of the emissaries Mr. Bush sent to Cindy Sheehan in Crawford was Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser who took responsibility for allowing the 16 errant words about doomsday uranium into the president's prewar State of the Union speech.)

Mr. Bush's stand-up shtick for the Beltway press corps wasn't some aberration; it was part of the White House's political plan for keeping the home front cool. America was to yuk it up, party on and spend its tax cuts heedlessly while the sacrifice of an inadequately manned all-volunteer army in Iraq was kept out of most Americans' sight and minds. This is why the Pentagon issued a directive at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom forbidding news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing from" air bases. It's why Mr. Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, has not attended funeral services for the military dead. It's why January's presidential inauguration, though nominally dedicated to the troops, was a gilded $40 million jamboree at which the word Iraq was banished from the Inaugural Address.

THIS summer in Crawford, the White House went to this playbook once too often. When Mr. Bush's motorcade left a grieving mother in the dust to speed on to a fund-raiser, that was one fat-cat party too far. The strategy of fighting a war without shared national sacrifice has at last backfired, just as the strategy of Swift Boating the war's critics has reached its Waterloo before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury in Washington. The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.

Nicholas D. Kristof and David Brooks are on vacation.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Happy Labor Day

2005-10-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

By Molly Ivins
Working for Change

Tuesday 06 September 2005

Time for labor - that means you - to unite.

Austin, Texas - Happy Labor Day, comrades. Hail to all who have yet to be outsourced, downsized, zero-budgeted, streamlined, cut back, laid off, globalized or otherwise pre-shrunk. Those of us who are lucky winners in the employment lottery can still enjoy our stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and collapsing pension plans. What, us worry?

Not that I want to start off one of my favorite national holidays on a bummer note, but it's enough to make Joe Hill rise from the dead yet again. One of the handicaps Americans have when it comes to discussing labor is that about 90 percent of us think we're middle class. Upper-class people are quite as likely to self-identify as middle class as are working-class folks. And middle-class folks do not think of themselves as "labor."

How could you be part of labor when you don't wear a hardhat or carry a lunch bucket? When you live in a suburb and own a bass boat, as well as an SUV? When you wear a suit and tie or high heels to work? When you're management, for pity's sake? Because that's what American labor looks like now - just like you.

And American labor has some serious problems. Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary John Snow observed, "The fruits of strong economic growth are not spreading equally." Yo. Phillip Swagel of the conservative American Enterprise Institute explains: "The gains from the recovery haven't really filtered down. The gains have gone to owners of capital and not to workers." I'd say so myself.

For starters, we have a growing economic underclass. In 2004, 37 million Americans - 12.7 percent of us - lived in poverty, the fourth year in a row the numbers increased. Between one-fourth and one-fifth of American children are being raised in poverty.

Next up, more Americans lack health insurance - 45.8 million. That's the fourth straight year that figure has gone up, too. Six million more people lacked health insurance in 2004 than in 2000. The proportion of Americans with employer-sponsored coverage keeps shrinking, and public insurance programs cannot make up the difference.

Meantime, the median income failed to increase for the fifth straight year, the first time that's happened since the feds started keeping records in 1967. Since the economy is "in recovery," where's all the money going?

Corporate CEOs moved up again, now making 431 times as much as the average worker. Our friends at the Center for American Progress calculate that if the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay had remained the same as it was in 1990, 301-to-one, the lowest-paid workers in the United States would be making $23.03 an hour.

There is no great argument over why these things are happening. None of this is the result of any immutable economic law - it is the result of deliberate government policies. Allan Lichtman, professor of history at American University, wrote last month in Newsday: "Like a master pickpocket, George W. Bush distracts the American people with one hand, while reaching into their pockets with the other. The distraction comes through the flash and bombast of explosive social issues like abortion, gay rights, public displays of religion, end-of-life decisions and creationism. ... The pilfering comes through initiatives that take from working- and middle-class Americans and give to Bush's corporate backers, to whom he has delivered the goods big-time."

Lichtman cites the media's preoccupation over whether Bush's pick for the Supreme Court will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, while Congress passed an energy bill with $14.5 billion in tax breaks, most of which go to companies like Exxon, which last year alone made $25 billion and is swimming in cash on hand. He added:

Just before Congress left for the summer recess, the administration won passage of a free-trade agreement with Central America that makes it easier for companies to outsource jobs and investments, and that bypasses protections for workers and the environment.

Last spring, while the public focused on the Terri Schiavo case, Republicans leaders passed a new bankruptcy bill written by lobbyists for the credit-card industry. The credit-card companies stand to profit from the new law by several billion dollars.

Ditto the new prescription drug benefit "for seniors," actually written by and for big drug companies.
"What all of this really amounts to is a political revolution in the United States, creating a form of conservative big government that promotes not the general interests of ordinary Americans, but the special interests of big corporations," Lichtman wrote. "This creates a sharply upward redistribution of wealth and power that threatens long-term prosperity... . The revolution also is making government costlier and less fair, stifling individual freedom and democratic decision-making, and opening fissures between the wealthy and other Americans."

Personally, I think we should wait until after Labor Day, when we take that last lazy lick off the ice cream cone of summer. And let's get the mess on the Gulf Coast cleaned up, keeping in mind that a fraction of the tax cuts Bush gave to the very rich could have paid for new levees for New Orleans. And then, fellow workers, let's unite and raise hell.

Money Flowed to Questionable Projects

2005-10-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

By Michael Grunwald
The Washington Post

Thursday 08 September 2005

State leads in Army Corps spending, but millions had nothing to do with floods.
Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state's congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana's representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.

For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River - now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather - for barge traffic that is less than forecast.

The Industrial Canal lock is one of the agency's most controversial projects, sued by residents of a New Orleans low-income black neighborhood and cited by an alliance of environmentalists and taxpayer advocates as the fifth-worst current Corps boondoggle. In 1998, the Corps justified its plan to build a new lock - rather than fix the old lock for a tiny fraction of the cost - by predicting huge increases in use by barges traveling between the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River.

In fact, barge traffic on the canal had been plummeting since 1994, but the Corps left that data out of its study. And barges have continued to avoid the canal since the study was finished, even though they are visiting the port in increased numbers.

Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago - right where the levee broke Aug. 30. Now she's holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. "Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork," Dashiell said.

Yesterday, congressional defenders of the Corps said they hoped the fallout from Hurricane Katrina would pave the way for billions of dollars of additional spending on water projects. Steve Ellis, a Corps critic with Taxpayers for Common Sense, called their push "the legislative equivalent of looting."

Louisiana's politicians have requested much more money for New Orleans hurricane protection than the Bush administration has proposed or Congress has provided. In the last budget bill, Louisiana's delegation requested $27.1 million for shoring up levees around Lake Pontchartrain, the full amount the Corps had declared as its "project capability." Bush suggested $3.9 million, and Congress agreed to spend $5.7 million.

Administration officials also dramatically scaled back a long-term project to restore Louisiana's disappearing coastal marshes, which once provided a measure of natural hurricane protection for New Orleans. They ordered the Corps to stop work on a $14 billion plan, and devise a $2 billion plan instead.

But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.

"The project manager for the Great Pyramids probably put in a request for 100 million shekels and only got 50 million," said John Paul Woodley Jr., the Bush administration official overseeing the Corps. "Flood protection is always a work in progress; on any given day, if you ask whether any community has all the protection it needs, the answer is almost always: Maybe, but maybe not."

The Corps had been studying the possibility of upgrading the New Orleans levees for a higher level of protection before Katrina hit, but Woodley said that study would not have been finished for years. Still, liberal bloggers, Democratic politicians and some GOP defenders of the Corps have linked the catastrophe to the underfunding of the agency.

"We've been hollering about funding for years, but everyone would say: There goes Louisiana again, asking for more money," said former Democratic senator John Breaux. "We've had some powerful people in powerful places, but we never got what we needed."

That may be true. But those powerful people - including former senators Breaux, Johnston and Russell Long, as well as former House committee chairmen Robert Livingston and W.J. "Billy" Tauzin - did get quite a bit of what they wanted. And the current delegation - led by Landrieu and GOP Sen. David Vitter - has continued that tradition.

The Senate's latest budget bill for the Corps included 107 Louisiana projects worth $596 million, including $15 million for the Industrial Canal lock, for which the Bush administration had proposed no funding. Landrieu said the bill would "accelerate our flood control, navigation and coastal protection programs." Vitter said he was "grateful that my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee were persuaded of the importance of these projects."

Louisiana not only leads the nation in overall Corps funding, it places second in new construction - just behind Florida, home of an $8 billion project to restore the Everglades. Several controversial projects were improvements for the Port of New Orleans, an economic linchpin at the mouth of the Mississippi. There were also several efforts to deepen channel for oil and gas tankers, a priority for petroleum companies that drill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We thought all the projects were important - not just levees," Breaux said. "Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but navigation projects were critical to our economic survival."

Overall, Army Corps funding has remained relatively constant for decades, despite the "Program Growth Initiative" launched by agency generals in 1999 without telling their civilian bosses in the Clinton administration. The Bush administration has proposed cuts in the Corps budget, and has tried to shift the agency's emphasis from new construction to overdue maintenance. But most of those proposals have died quietly on Capitol Hill, and the administration has not fought too hard to revive them.

In fact, more than any other federal agency, the Corps is controlled by Congress; its $4.7 billion civil works budget consists almost entirely of "earmarks" inserted by individual legislators. The Corps must determine that the economic benefits of its projects exceed the costs, but marginal projects such as the Port of Iberia deepening - which squeaked by with a 1.03 benefit-cost ratio - are as eligible for funding as the New Orleans levees.

"It has been explicit national policy not to set priorities, but instead to build any flood control or barge project if the Corps decides the benefits exceed the costs by 1 cent," said Tim Searchinger, a senior attorney at Environmental Defense. "Saving New Orleans gets no more emphasis than draining wetlands to grow corn and soybeans."

Censored!

2005-10-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

Censored! By Camille T. Taiara
The San Francisco Bay Guardian

7-13 September 2005 Issue

Project Censored presents the 10 biggest stories the mainstream media ignored over the past year.
Just four days before the 2004 presidential election, a prestigious British medical journal published the results of a rigorous study by Dr. Les Roberts, a widely respected researcher. Roberts concluded that close to 100,000 people had died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Most were noncombatant civilians. Many were children.

But that news didn't make the front pages of the major newspapers. It wasn't on the network news. So most voters knew little or nothing about the brutal civilian impact of President George W. Bush's war when they went to the polls.

That's just one of the big stories the mainstream news media ignored, blacked out, or underreported over the past year, according to Project Censored, a media watchdog group based at California's Sonoma State University.

Every year project researchers scour the media looking for news that never really made the news, publishing the results in a book, this year titled Censored 2006. Of course, as Project Censored staffers painstakingly explain every year, their "censored" stories aren't literally censored, per se. Most can be found on the Internet, if you know where to look. And some have even received some ink in the mainstream press. "Censorship," explains project director Peter Phillips, "is any interference with the free flow of information in society." The stories highlighted by Project Censored simply haven't received the kind of attention they warrant, and therefore haven't made it into the greater public consciousness.

"If there were a real democratic press, these are the kind of stories they would do," says Sut Jhally, professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts and executive director of the Media Education Foundation.

The stories the researchers identify involve corporate misdeeds and governmental abuses that have been underreported if not altogether ignored, says Jhally, who helped judge Project Censored's top picks. For the most part, he adds, "stories that affect the powerful don't get reported by the corporate media."

Can a story really be "censored" in the Internet age, when information from millions of sources whips around the world in a matter of seconds? When a single obscure journal article can be distributed and discussed on hundreds of blogs and Web sites? When partisans from all sides dissect the mainstream media on the Web every day? Absolutely, Jhally says.

"The Internet is a great place to go if you already know that the mainstream media is heavily biased" and you actively search out sites on the outer limits of the Web, he notes. "Otherwise, it's just another place where they try to sell you stuff. The challenge for a democratic society is how to get vital information not only at the margins but at the center of our culture."

Not every article or source Project Censored has cited over the years is completely credible; at least one this year is pretty shaky.

But most of the stories that made the project's top 10 were published by more reliable sources and included only verifiable information. And Project Censored's overall findings provide valuable insights into the kinds of issues the mainstream media should be paying closer attention to.

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#1 Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government

Source: Common Dreams, September 14, 2004. Press release.

Title: "New Report Details Bush Administration Secrecy"

Author: Karen Lightfoot

http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0914-05.htm

http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp?ID=692&Issue=Open+Government

Faculty Evaluator: Yvonne Clarke, MA

Student Researcher: Jessica Froiland

Throughout the 1980s, Project Censored highlighted a number of alarming reductions to government access and accountability (see Censored 1982 #6, 1984 #8, 1985 #3 and 1986 #2). It tracked the small but systematic changes made to existing laws and the executive orders introduced. It now appears that these actions may have been little more than a prelude to the virtual lock box against access that is being constructed around the current administration.

"The Bush Administration has an obsession with secrecy," says Representative Henry Waxman, the Democrat from California who, in September 2004, commissioned a congressional report on secrecy in the Bush Administration. "It has repeatedly rewritten laws and changed practices to reduce public and congressional scrutiny of its activities. The cumulative effect is an unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open and accountable."

Changes to Laws that Provide Public Access to Federal Records

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) gives citizens the ability to file a request for specific information from a government agency and provides recourse in federal court if that agency fails to comply with FOIA requirements. Over the last two decades, beginning with Reagan, this law has become increasingly diluted and circumvented by each succeeding administration.

Under the Bush Administration, agencies make extensive and arbitrary use of FOIA exemptions (such as those for classified information, privileged attorney-client documents and certain information compiled for law enforcement purposes) often inappropriately or with inadequate justification. Recent evidence shows agencies making frivolous (and sometimes ludicrous) exemption claims, abusing the deliberative process privilege, abusing the law enforcement exemption, and withholding data on telephone service outages.

Quite commonly, the Bush Administration simply fails to respond to FOIA requests at all. Whether this is simply an inordinate delay or an unstated final refusal to respond to the request, the requesting party is never told. But the effect is the same: the public is denied access to the information.

The Bush Administration also engages in an aggressive policy of questioning, challenging and denying FOIA requesters' eligibility for fee waivers, using a variety of tactics. Measures include narrowing the definition of "representative of news media," claiming information would not contribute to public understanding.

Ten years ago, federal agencies were required to release documents through FOIA - even if technical grounds for refusal existed - unless "foreseeable harm" would result from doing so. But, according to the Waxman report, an October 2001 memo by Attorney General John Ashcroft instructs and encourages agencies to withhold information if there are any technical grounds for withholding it under FOIA.

In 2003, the Bush Administration won a new legislative exemption from FOIA for all National Security Agency "operational files." The Administration's main rationale for this new exemption is that conducting FOIA searches diverts resources from the agency's mission. Of course, this rationale could apply to every agency. As NSA has operated subject to FOIA for decades, it is not clear why the agency now needs this exemption.

The Presidential Records Act ensures that after a president leaves office, the public will have full access to White House documents used to develop public policy. Under the law and an executive order by Ronald Reagan, the presumption has been that most documents would be released. However, President Bush issued an executive order that establishes a process that generally blocks the release of presidential papers.

Changes to Laws that Restrict Public Access to Federal Records

The Bush Administration has dramatically increased the volume of government information concealed from public view. In a March 2003 executive order, President Bush expanded the use of the national security classification. The order eliminated the presumption of disclosure, postponed or avoided automatic declassification, protected foreign government information, reclassified some information, weakened the panel that decides to exempt documents from declassification and adjudicates classification challenges, and exempted vice presidential records from mandatory declassification review.

The Bush Administration has also obtained unprecedented authority to conduct government operations in secret, with little or no judicial oversight. Under expanded law enforcement authority in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department can more easily use secret orders to obtain library and other private records, obtain "sneak-and-peek" warrants to conduct secret searches, and conduct secret wiretaps. In addition, the Bush Administration has used novel legal interpretations to expand its authority to detain, try, and deport individuals in secret. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush Administration has asserted unprecedented authority to detain anyone whom the executive branch labels an "enemy combatant" indefinitely and secretly. It has authorized military trials that can be closed not only to the public but also to the defendants and their own attorneys. And the Administration has authorized procedures for the secret detention and deportation of aliens residing in the United States.

Congressional Access to Information

Compared to previous administrations, the Bush Administration has operated with remarkably little congressional oversight. This is partially attributable to the alignment of the parties. The Republican majorities in the House and the Senate have refrained from investigating allegations of misconduct by the White House. Another major factor has been the Administration's resistance to oversight. The Bush Administration has consistently refused to provide to members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office, and congressional commissions the information necessary for meaningful investigation and review of the Administration's activities.

For example, the Administration has contested in court the power of the Government Accountability Office to conduct independent investigations and has refused to comply with the rule that allows members of the House Government Reform Committee to obtain information from the executive branch, forcing the members to go to court to enforce their rights under the law. It has also ignored and rebuffed numerous requests for information made by members of Congress attempting to exercise their oversight responsibilities with respect to executive branch activities, and repeatedly withheld information from the investigative commission established by Congress to investigate the September 11 attacks.

Update: Rep. Waxman's companion bill, HR 5073 IH, the Restore Open Government Act of 2004, was not heard by Congress before the Winter Recess in December, and the bill was not reintroduced in the Opening Session in January 2005. However, on February 16, after the commencement of the 109th Congress, John Cornyn (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill entitled the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2005, S. 394 (the Cornyn-Leahy bill), which according to their joint statement "is designed to strengthen laws governing access to government information, particularly the Freedom of Information Act." On the same day, an identical bill, H.R. 867, was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX).

For more information on Rep. Waxman's legislation and work on open government, please visit www.democrats.reform.house.gov.

Note:

1. St. Petersburg Times (Florida), February 18, 2005, "Improving Access to Information."

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#2 Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll

Part 1: Fallujah - War Crimes Go Unreported

Sources: Peacework, December 2004-January 2005

Title: "The Invasion of Fallujah: A Study in the Subversion of Truth"

Authors: Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell

World Socialist Web Site, November 17, 2004

Title: "US Media Applauds Destruction of Fallujah"

Author: David Walsh

The NewStandard, December 3, 2004

Title: "Fallujah Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone"

Author: Dahr Jamail

Faculty Evaluators: Bill Crowley, Ph.D., Sherril Jaffe, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Brian K. Lanphear

Over the past two years, the United States has conducted two major sieges against Fallujah, a city in Iraq. The first attempted siege of Fallujah (a city of 300,000 people) resulted in a defeat for Coalition forces. As a result, the United States gave the citizens of Fallujah two choices prior to the second siege: leave the city or risk dying as enemy insurgents. Faced with this ultimatum, approximately 250,000 citizens, or 83 percent of the population of Fallujah, fled the city. The people had nowhere to flee and ended up as refugees. Many families were forced to survive in fields, vacant lots, and abandoned buildings without access to shelter, water, electricity, food or medical care. The 50,000 citizens who either chose to remain in the city or who were unable to leave were trapped by Coalition forces and were cut off from food, water and medical supplies. The United States military claimed that there were a few thousand enemy insurgents remaining among those who stayed in the city and conducted the invasion as if all the people remaining were enemy combatants.

Burhan Fasa'a, an Iraqi journalist, said Americans grew easily frustrated with Iraqis who could not speak English. "Americans did not have interpreters with them, so they entered houses and killed people because they didn't speak English. They entered the house where I was with 26 people, and shot people because [the people] didn't obey [the soldiers'] orders, even just because the people couldn't understand a word of English." Abu Hammad, a resident of Fallujah, told the Inter Press Service that he saw people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. "The Americans shot them with rifles from the shore. Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their head to show they are not fighters, they were all shot." Furthermore, "even the wound[ed] people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed." Former residents of Fallujah recall other tragic methods of killing the wounded. "I watched them [US Forces] roll over wounded people in the street with tanks ... This happened so many times."

Preliminary estimates as of December of 2004 revealed that at least 6,000 Iraqi citizens in Fallujah had been killed, and one-third of the city had been destroyed.

Journalists Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell assert that the continuous slaughter in Fallujah is greatly contributing to escalating violence in other regions of the country such as Mosul, Baquba, Hilla, and Baghdad. The violence prompted by the US invasion has resulted in the assassinations of at least 338 Iraqi's who were associated with Iraq's "new" government.

The US invasion of Iraq, and more specifically Fallujah, is causing an incredible humanitarian disaster among those who have no specific involvement with the war. The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23, 2004 that three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth badly damaged. Civilians are running short on food and are unable to receive help from those who are willing to make a positive difference. Aid organizations have been repeatedly denied access to the city, hospitals, and refugee populations in the surrounding areas.

Abdel Hamid Salim, spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad, told Inter Press Service that none of their relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah three weeks after the invasion. Salim declared that "there is still heavy fighting in Fallujah. And the Americans won't let us in so we can help people."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour voiced a deep concern for the civilians caught up in the fighting. Louise Arbour emphasized that all those guilty of violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws must be brought to justice. Arbour claimed that all violations of these laws should be investigated, including "the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons and the use of human shields."

Marjorie Cohn, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists, has noted that the US invasion of Fallujah is a violation of international law that the US had specifically ratified: "They [US Forces] stormed and occupied the Fallujah General Hospital, and have not agreed to allow doctors and ambulances to go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions."

According to David Walsh, the American media also seems to contribute to the subversion of truth in Fallujah. Although, in many cases, journalists are prevented from entering the city and are denied access to the wounded, corporate media showed little concern regarding their denied access. There has been little or no mention of the immorality or legality of the attacks the United States has waged against Iraq. With few independent journalists reporting on the carnage, the international humanitarian community in exile, and the Red Cross and Red Crescent prevented from entering the besieged city, the world is forced to rely on reporting from journalists embedded with US forces. In the US press, we see casualties reported for Fallujah as follows: number of US soldiers dead, number of Iraqi soldiers dead, number of "guerillas" or "insurgents" dead. Nowhere were the civilian casualties reported in the first weeks of the invasion. An accurate count of civilian casualties to date has yet to be published in the mainstream media.

Part 2: Civilian Death Toll Is Ignored

Sources: The Lancet, October 29, 2004

Title: "Mortality Before and After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq"

Authors: Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi and Gilbert Burnham

The Lancet, October 29, 2004

Title: "The War in Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities"

Author: Richard Horton

The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 4, 2005

Title: "Lost Count"

Author: Lila Guterman

FAIR, April 15, 2004

Title: "CNN to al-Jazeera: Why Report Civilian Deaths?"

Author: Julie Hollar

Faculty Evaluator: Sherril Jaffe, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Melissa Waybright

In late October, 2004, a peer reviewed study was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal, concluding that at least 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq since it was invaded by a United States-led coalition in March 2003. Previously, the number of Iraqis that had died, due to conflict or sanctions since the 1991 Gulf War, had been uncertain. Claims ranging from denial of increased mortality to millions of excess deaths have been made. In the absence of any surveys, however, they relied on Ministry of Health records. Morgue-based surveillance data indicate the post-invasion homicide rate is many times higher than the pre-invasion rate.

In the present setting of insecurity and limited availability of health information, researchers, headed by Dr. Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins University, undertook a national survey to estimate mortality during the 14.6 months before the invasion (Jan 1, 2002, to March 18, 2003) and to compare it with the period from March 19, 2003, to the date of the interview, between Sept 8 and 20, 2004. Iraqi households were informed about the purpose of the survey, assured that their name would not be recorded, and told that there would be no benefits or penalties for refusing or agreeing to participate.

The survey indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is in reality about 100,000 people, and may be much higher. The major public health problem in Iraq has been identified as violence. However, despite widespread Iraqi casualties, household interview data do not show evidence of widespread wrongdoing on the part of individual soldiers on the ground. Ninety-five percent of reported killings (all attributed to US forces by interviewees) were caused by helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry.

The study was released on the eve of a contentious presidential election - fought in part over US policy on Iraq. Many American newspapers and television news programs ignored the study or buried reports about it far from the top headlines. "What went wrong this time? Perhaps the rush by researchers and The Lancet to put the study in front of American voters before the election accomplished precisely the opposite result, drowning out a valuable study in the clamor of the presidential campaign." (Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education.)

The study's results promptly flooded though the worldwide media - everywhere except the United States, where there was barely a whisper about the study, followed by stark silence. "The Lancet released the paper on October 29, the Friday before the election, when many reporters were busy with political stories. That day the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune each dedicated only about 400 words to the study and placed the stories inside their front section, on pages A4 and A11, respectively. (The news media in Europe gave the study much more play; many newspapers put articles about it on their front pages.)

In a short article about the study on page A8, the New York Times noted that the Iraqi Body Count, a project to tally civilian deaths reported in the news media, had put the maximum death count at around 17,000. The new study, the article said, "is certain to generate intense controversy." But the Times has not published any further news articles about the paper. The Washington Post, perhaps most damagingly to the study's reputation, quoted Marc E. Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, as saying, "These numbers seem to be inflated." Mr. Garlasco says now that he hadn't read the paper at the time and calls his quote in the Post "really unfortunate." (Lila Guterman, Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Even so, nobody else in American corporate media bothered to pick up the story and inform our citizens how many Iraqi citizens are being killed at the hands of a coalition led by our government. The study was never mentioned on television news, and the truth remains unheard by those who may need to hear it most. The US government had no comment at the time and remains silent about Iraqi civilian deaths. "The only thing we keep track of is casualties for US troops and civilians," a Defense Department spokesman told The Chronicle.

When CNN anchor Daryn Kagan did have the opportunity to interview the Al Jazeera network editor-in-chief Ahmed al-Sheik - a rare opportunity to get independent information about events in Fallujah - she used the occasion to badger al-Sheik about whether the civilian deaths were really "the story" in Fallujah. CNN's argument was that a bigger story than civilian deaths is "what the Iraqi insurgents are doing" to provoke a US "response" is startling. "When reports from the ground are describing hundreds of civilians being killed by US forces, CNN should be looking to Al Jazeera's footage to see if it corroborates those accounts - not badgering Al Jazeera's editor about why he doesn't suppress that footage." (MediaWatch, Asheville Global Report.)

Study researchers concluded that several limitations exist with this study, predominantly because the quality of data received is dependent on the accuracy of the interviews. However, interviewers believed that certain essential charcteristics of Iraqi culture make it unlikely that respondents would have fabricated their reports of the deaths. The Geneva Conventions have clear guidance about the responsibilities of occupying armies to the civilian population they control. "With the admitted benefit of hindsight and from a purely public health perspective, it is clear that whatever planning did take place was grievously in error. The invasion of Iraq, the displacement of a cruel dictator, and an attempt to impose a liberal democracy by force have, by themselves, been insufficient to bring peace and security to the civilian population.

The illegal, heavy handed tactics practiced by the US military in Iraq evident in these news stories have become what appears to be their standard operating procedure in occupied Iraq. Countless violations of international law and crimes against humanity occurred in Fallujah during the November massacre.

Evidenced by the mass slaughtering of Iraqis and the use of illegal weapons such as cluster bombs, napalm, uranium munitions and chemical weapons during the November siege of Fallujah when the entire city was declared a "free fire zone" by military leaders, the brutality of the US military has only increased throughout Iraq as the occupation drags on.

According to Iraqis inside the city, at least 60 percent of Fallujah went on to be totally destroyed in the siege, and eight months after the siege entire districts of the city remained without electricity or water. Israeli style checkpoints were set up in the city, prohibiting anyone from entering who did not live inside the city. Of course non-embedded media were not allowed in the city.

Update: Since these stories were published, countless other incidents of illegal weapons and tactics being used by the US military in Iraq have occurred.

During "Operation Spear" on June 17th, 2005, US-led forces attacked the small cities of al-Qa'im and Karabla near the Syrian border. US warplanes dropped 2,000 pound bombs in residential areas and claimed to have killed scores of "militants" while locals and doctors claimed that only civilians were killed.

As in Fallujah, residents were denied access to the city in order to obtain medical aid, while those left inside the city claimed Iraqi civilians were being regularly targeted by US snipers.

According to an IRIN news report, Firdos al-Abadi from the Iraqi Red Crescent Society stated that 7,000 people from Karabla were camped in the desert outside the city, suffering from lack of food and medical aid while 150 homes were totally destroyed by the US military.

An Iraqi doctor reported on the same day that he witnessed, "crimes in the west area of the country ... the American troops destroyed one of our hospitals, they burned the whole store of medication, they killed the patient in the ward ... they prevented us from helping the people in Qa'im."

Also like Fallujah, a doctor at the General Hospital of al-Qa'im stated that entire families remained buried under the rubble of their homes, yet medical personnel were unable to reach them due to American snipers.

Iraqi civilians in Haditha had similar experiences during "Operation Open Market" when they claimed US snipers shot anyone in the streets for days on end, and US and Iraqi forces raided homes detaining any man inside.

Corporate media reported on the "liberation" of Fallujah, as well as quoting military sources on the number of "militants" killed. Any mention of civilian casualties, heavy-handed tactics or illegal munitions was either brief or non-existent, and continues to be as of June 2005.

For Additional Information: For those interested in following these stories, it is possible to obtain information by visiting the English al-Jazeera website at http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage, my website at www.dahrjamailiraq.com, The World Tribunal on Iraq at www.worldtribunal.org, Peacework Magazine at www.afsc.org/pwork/0412/041204.htm and other alternative/independent news websites.

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#3 Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage

Source: In These Times, 02/15/05

Title: "A Corrupted Election"

Authors: Steve Freeman and Josh Mitteldorf

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 26, 2005

Title: "Jim Crow Returns to the Voting Booth"

Authors: Greg Palast, Rev. Jesse Jackson

www.freepress.org, Nov. 23, 2004

Title: "How a Republican Election Supervisor Manipulated the 2004 Central Ohio Vote"

Authors: Bob Fitrakis, Harvey Wasserman

Faculty Evaluator: Ann Neel, MA

Student Researcher: Mike Osipoff

Political analysts have long counted on exit polls to be a reliable predictor of actual vote counts. The unusual discrepancy between exit poll data and the actual vote count in the 2004 election challenges that reliability. However, despite evidence of technological vulnerabilities in the voting system and a higher incidence of irregularities in swing states, this discrepancy was not scrutinized in the mainstream media. They simply parroted the partisan declarations of "sour grapes" and "let's move on" instead of providing any meaningful analysis of a highly controversial election.

The official vote count for the 2004 election showed that George W. Bush won by three million votes. But exit polls projected a victory margin of five million votes for John Kerry. This eight-million-vote discrepancy is much greater than the error margin. The overall margin of error should statistically have been under one percent. But the official result deviated from the poll projections by more than five percent - a statistical impossibility.

Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, the two companies hired to do the polling for the Nation Election Pool (a consortium of the nation's five major broadcasters and the Associated Press), did not immediately provide an explanation for how this could have occurred. They waited until January 19, the eve of the inauguration.

Edison and Mitofsky's "inaugural" report, "Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004," stated that the discrepancy was "most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." The media widely reported that this report proved the accuracy of the official count and a Bush victory. The body of the report, however, offers no data to substantiate this position. In fact, the report shows that Bush voters were more likely to complete the survey than Kerry voters. The report also states that the difference between exit polls and official tallies was far too great to be explained by sampling error, and that a systematic bias is implicated.

The Edison and Mitofsky report dismisses the possibility that the official vote count was wrong, stating that precincts with electronic voting systems had the same error rates as precincts with punch-card systems. This is true. However, it merely points to the unreliability of punch-card and electronic systems, both of which are slated for termination under the Helping America Vote Act of 2002. According to the report, only in precincts that used old-fashioned, hand-counted paper ballots did the official count and the exit poll data fall within the normal margin of error.

Also, the report shows, the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official count was considerably greater in the critical swing states. And while this fact is consistent with allegations of fraud, Mitofsky and Edison suggest, without providing any data or theory to back up their claim, that this discrepancy is somehow related to media coverage.

In precincts that were at least 80 percent for Bush, the average within-precinct error (WPE) was a whopping 10.0 percent - the numerical difference between the exit poll predictions and the official count. Also, in Bush strongholds, Kerry received only about two-thirds of the votes predicted by exit polls. In Kerry strongholds, exit polls matched the official count almost exactly (an average WPE of 0.3).

This exit poll data is a strong indicator of a corrupted election. But the case grows stronger if these exit poll discrepancies are interpreted in the context of more than 100,000 officially logged reports of irregularities and possible fraud during Election Day 2004.

Bush campaign officials compiled a 1,886-name "caging list," which included the names and addresses of predominantly black voters in the traditionally Democratic Jacksonville, Florida. While Bush campaign spokespersons stated that the list was a returned mail log, they did not deny that such a list could be used to challenge voters on Election Day. In fact, the county elections supervisor says that he could see no other purpose for compiling such a list.

In Franklin County Ohio, Columbus voters faced one of the longest ballot lines in history. In many inner city precincts, voters sometimes had three-hour waits to get to the poll before being required to cast ballots within five minutes, as demanded by the Republican-run Board of Elections. Seventy-seven out of the county's 2,866 voting machines malfunctioned on Election Day. One machine registered 4,258 votes for Bush in a precinct where only 638 people voted. At least 125 machines were held back at the opening of the polls, and another 68 were never deployed. While voters were rushed through the process, 29 percent of the precincts had fewer voting machines than in the 2000 election despite a 25 percent increase in turnout.

Taken together, these problems point to an election that requires scrutiny. Even if the discrepancy between exit polls and actual vote counts is simply a fluke, other flaws and questionable practices in the voting process make one wonder whether or not the people's voice was actually heard and if we are truly a working democracy.

Update by Josh Mitteldorf: Some news is too important to report. People might get upset, and the smooth functioning of our democracy would be jeopardized. Thus the media has collectively done the responsible thing, and refrained - at great cost to themselves, be assured - from publicizing doubts about the legitimacy of the 2004 election, in order to help assure the "orderly succession of power."

Unfortunately, some internet sites such as Commondreams.org and Freepress.org do not realize their obligations to the commonwealth, and have thus been less responsible in maintaining silence. And there's an upbeat radio voice from Vermont, Thom Hartmann, who would be fun to listen to if only he didn't insist on relating so many discomfiting truths.

But so long as you stay away from these isolated derelicts, you will be gratified to receive a reassuringly consistent story line: George Bush won the 2004 election fair and square. It's time to stop asking pointless questions. Get with the program!

Update by Greg Palast and Reverend Jessie Jackson: There are conspiracy nuts out there on the Internet who think that John Kerry defeated George Bush in Ohio and other states. I know, because I wrote "Kerry Won" for TomPaine.com two days after the election.

"Kerry Won" was the latest in a series coming out of a five-year investigation, begun in November 2000, for BBC Television Newsnight and Britain's Guardian papers, dissecting that greasy sausage called American electoral democracy.

On November 11, a week after TomPaine.com put the report out on the 'Net, I received an email from the New York Times Washington Bureau. Hot on the investigation of the veracity of the vote, the Times reporter asked me pointed questions:

Question #1: Are you a "sore loser?"

Question #2: Are you a "conspiracy nut?"

There was no third question. Investigation of the vote was, apparently, complete. The next day, their thorough analysis of the evidence yielded a front-page story, "VOTE FRAUD THEORIES, SPREAD BY BLOGS, ARE QUICKLY BURIED."

Here's a bit of what the Paper of Record failed to record.

In June 2004, well before the election, my co-author of "Jim Crow" Rev. Jesse Jackson brought me to Chicago. We had breakfast with Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. The Reverend asked the Senator to read my report of the "spoilage" of Black votes - one million African Americans who cast ballots in 2000 but did not have their votes register on the machines.

Edwards said he'd read it over after he'd had his bagel. Jackson snatched away his bagel. No read, no bagel. A hungry Senator was genuinely concerned - these were, after all, Democrats whose votes did not tally, and he shot the information to John Kerry. A couple of weeks later, Kerry told the NAACP convention that one million African-American votes were not counted in 2000, but in 2004 he would not let it happen again.

But he did let it happen again. More than a million votes in 2004 were cast and not counted.

As a reporter, it's not my job to help the Democratic Party learn to tie its shoes. And, as a nonpartisan journalist, I'm not out to expose the Republican Party's new elaborate campaign to prevent voters from voting - but I must report it. However, editors and news producers in my home country, the USA, seem less than interested. Indeed, they are downright hostile to reporting this story of the shoplifting of our democracy.

America has an apartheid voting system, denying African-Americans, Hispanics and American Natives the assurance their ballots will count. Worse, America has an apartheid media which denies racial disenfranchisement a seat at the front of the news bus.

It was in November 2000 I first ran into the US news lord's benign neglect of the "new Jim Crow" methods of denying citizens of color their vote. While working with the British Guardian papers just days before the 2000 presidential election, I discovered that Governor Jeb Bush and his Secretary of State, Katharine Harris, had wrongly purged tens of thousands of Black citizens from voter rolls as "felons" - when in fact their only crime had been V.W.B.: Voting While Black.

Nothing appeared in the US press. However, I admit that the Florida purge story was picked up by the New York Times ... fofur years later.

Just before the November 2004 election, BBC television Newsnight discovered new, confidential "caging lists" which we got our hands on from inside the Republican National Committee headquarters. These were rosters of thousands of minority voters targeted to prevent them from voting on election day: a violation of federal law. It was big news in Europe and South America. In the USA, there was nothing except an attack on BBC's report by ABC's web site. ABC's only listed source for their attack on the BBC was the Republican Party.

The story of the purge of Black voters, the million missing Black ballots cast but not counted, the caging lists, and other games used to deny the vote to the dark-skinned and the poor, would have been buried long ago if not for BBC Television, Harper's Magazine (may it last a thousand years), Britain's Guardian and Observer, The Nation, the op-ed editors at the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer and, provocatively, Hustler Magazine. Even if ignored or actively 'dissed by US "mainstream" media, the story will be continue to be reported, due to the passionate insistence of Reverend Jackson, from a thousand pulpits.

Thanks to GeorgeBush.com for capturing the 'caging lists.' And bless the blogs, for they shall set the truth free: TomPaine.com, Buzzflash, Working-for-Change and other Internet sites carried the story over the electronic Berlin Wall.

Finally, my gratitude to our indefatigable investigative team, particularly Oliver Shykles and Matt Pascarella for their work on this story - on which they continue today - and to Meirion Jones, producer nonpareil at BBC television's Newsnight.

For additional documentation of voter fraud 2004 see Chapters 2 and 3.

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#4 Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In

Sources: Information Management Journal, Mar/Apr 2004

Title: "PATRIOT Act's Reach Expanded Despite Part Being Struck Down"

Author: Nikki Swartz

LiP Magazine, Winter 2004

Title: "Grave New World"

Author: Anna Samson Miranda

Capitol Hill Blue, June 7, 2004

Title: "Where Big Brother Snoops on Americans 24/7"

Authors: Teresa Hampton and Doug Thompson

Faculty Evaluator: John Steiner, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Sandy Brown, Michelle Jesolva

"While the evening news rolled footage of Saddam being checked for head lice, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 was quietly signed into law."

On December 13, 2003, President George W. Bush, with little fanfare and no mainstream media coverage, signed into law the controversial Intelligence Authorization Act while most of America toasted the victory of US forces in Iraq and Saddam's capture. None of the corporate press covered the signing of this legislation, which increases the funding for intelligence agencies, dramatically expands the definition of surveillable financial institutions, and authorizes the FBI to acquire private records of those individuals suspected of criminal activity without a judicial review. American civil liberties are once again under attack.

History has provided precedent for such actions. Throughout the 1990s, erosions of these protections were taking place. As part of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism bill adopted in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, the Justice Department was required to publish statistics going back to 1990 on threats or actual crimes against federal, state and local employees and their immediate families when the wrongdoing related to the workers' official duties. The numbers were then to be kept up to date with an annual report. Members of congress, concerned with the threat this type of legislation posed to American civil liberties, were able to strike down much of what the bill proposed, including modified requirements regarding wiretap regulations.

The "atmosphere of fear" generated by recent terrorist attacks, both foreign and domestic, provides administrations the support necessary to adopt stringent new legislation. In response to the September 11 attacks, new agencies, programs and bureaucracies have been created. The Total Information Office is a branch of the United States Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It has a mission to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness." Another intelligence gathering governmental agency, The Information Awareness Office, has a mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone in a centralized location for easy perusal by the United States government. Information mining has become the business of government.

In November 2002, the New York Times reported that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was developing a tracking system called "Total Information Awareness" (TIA), which was intended to detect terrorists through analyzing troves of information. The system, developed under the direction of John Poindexter, then-director of DARPA's Information Awareness Office, was envisioned to give law enforcement access to private data without suspicion of wrongdoing or a warrant. The "Total Information Awareness" program's name was changed to "Terrorist Information Awareness" on May 20, 2003 ostensibly to clarify the program's intent to gather information on presumed terrorists rather than compile dossiers on US citizens.

Despite this name change, a Senate Defense Appropriations bill passed unanimously on July 18, 2003, expressly denying any funding to Terrorist Information Awareness research. In response, the Pentagon proposed The Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange, or MATRIX, a program devised by longtime Bush family friend Hank Asher as a pilot effort to increase and enhance the exchange of sensitive terrorism and other criminal activity information between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. The MATRIX, as devised by the Pentagon, is a State run information generating tool, thereby circumventing congress' concern regarding the appropriation of federal funds for the development of this controversial database. Although most states have refused to adopt these Orwellian strategies, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Florida have all jumped on the TIA band wagon.

Yet, somehow, after the apparent successful dismantling of TIA, expressed concern by Representatives Mark Udall of Colorado, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, Ron Paul of Texas and Dennis Moore of Kansas, and heightened public awareness of the MATRIX, the Intelligence Authorization Act was signed into law December 13, 2003.

On Thursday, November 20, 2003 Minnesota Representative Betty McCollum stated that, "The Republican Leadership inserted a controversial provision in the FY04 Intelligence Authorization Report that will expand the already far-reaching USA Patriot Act, threatening to further erode our cherished civil liberties. This provision gives the FBI power to demand financial and other records, without a judge's approval, from post offices, real estate agents, car dealers, travel agents, pawnbrokers and many other businesses. This provision was included with little or no public debate, including no consideration by the House Judiciary Committee, which is the committee of jurisdiction. It came as a surprise to most Members of this body."

According to LiP Magazine, "Governmental and law-enforcement agencies and MATRIX contractors across the nation will gain extensive and unprecedented access to financial records, medical records, court records, voter registration, travel history, group and religious affiliations, names and addresses of family members, purchases made and books read."

Peter Jennings, in an ABC original report, explored the commercial applications of this accumulated information. Journalist and author Peter O'Harrow, who collaborated with ABC News on the broadcast "Peter Jennings Reporting: No Place to Hide," states " ... marketers - and now, perhaps government investigators - can study what people are likely to do, what kind of attitudes they have, what they buy at the grocery store." Although this program aired on prime-time mainstream television, there was no mention of the potential for misuse of this personal information network or of the controversy surrounding the issues of privacy and civil liberties violations concerning citizens and civil servants alike. Again, the sharing of this kind of personal information is not without precedent.

On November 12, 1999, Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which permits financial institutions to share personal customer information with affiliates within the holding company. The Intelligence Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2004 expands the definition of a surveillable financial institution to include real estate agencies, insurance companies, travel agencies, Internet service providers, post offices, casinos and other businesses as well. Due to massive corporate mergers and the acquisition of reams of newly acquired information, personal consumer data has been made readily available to any agency interested in obtaining it, both commercial and governmental.

With the application of emerging new technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification chips or RFIDs, small individualized computer chips capable of communicating with a receiving computer, consumer behavior can literally be tracked from the point of purchase to the kitchen cupboard, and can be monitored by all interested parties.

Update by Anna Miranda: The United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society. The tremendous explosion in surveillance-enabling technologies, combined with the ongoing weakening in legal restraints that protect our privacy mean that we are drifting toward a surveillance society. The good news is that it can be stopped. Unfortunately, right now the big picture is grim. - ACLU.

The PATRIOT Act

Fifteen 'sunset' provisions in the PATRIOT Act are set to expire at the end of 2005. One amendment, the "library provision" went before Congress in June. Despite President Bush's threat to veto, lawmakers, including 38 Republicans, voted 238 to 187 to overturn the provision, which previously allowed law enforcement officials to request and obtain information from libraries without obtaining a search warrant. Although inspectors still have the "right" to search library records, they must get a judge's approval first.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales informed Congress in April that this provision has never been used to acquire information, although the American Library Association recently reported that over 200 requests for information were submitted since the PATRIOT Act was signed into law in October 2001.

The overturning of the library provision has been seen as a small victory in the fight to reclaim privacy rights. Rep. Saunders, who was responsible for almost successfully having the provision repealed last year, commented that "conservative groups have been joining progressive organizations to call for changes."

The MATRIX

The fight to the right for privacy continues to wage on with more successes, as the MATRIX program was officially shut down on April 15, 2005. The program, which consisted of 13 states - and only had four states remaining prior to its closure, received $12 million in funding from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. By utilizing a system called FACTS (Factual Analysis Criminal Threat Solution), law enforcement officials from participating states were able to share information with one another and utilized this program as an investigative tool to help solve and prevent crimes. According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, "Between July 2003 and April 2005, there have been 1,866,202 queries to the FACTS application." However, of these queries, only 2.6 percent involved terrorism or national security.

Although the MATRIX has been shut down, Florida law enforcement officials are pursuing continuing the program and rebuilding it. Officials have sent out a call for information from vendors beginning a competitive bidding process.

RFID Technology and the REAL ID Act

On May 10, 2005, President Bush secretly signed into law the REAL ID Act, requiring states within the next three years to issue federally approved electronic identification cards. Attached as an amendment to an emergency spending bill funding troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, the REAL ID Act passed without the scrutiny and debate of Congress.

One of the main concerns of the electronic identification card is identity theft. The Act mandates the cards to have anti-counterfeiting measures, such as an electronically readable magnetic strip or RFID chip. Privacy advocates argue that RFID chips can be read from "unauthorized" scanners allowing third parties or the general public to gather and/or steal private information about an individual. Amidst growing concerns about identity theft, the REAL ID Act has given no consideration to this drawback.

Other privacy concerns regarding the electronic identification card is the use of information by third parties once they've scanned the cards and accessed the information. At this time, the Act does not specify what can be done with the information. A company or organization scanning your identification card could potentially sell your personal information if strict guidelines on what to do with the information are not mandated.

Inability to conform over the next three years will leave citizens and residents of the United States paralyzed. Identification cards that do not meet the federally mandated standards will not be accepted as identification for travel, opening a bank account, receiving social security checks, or participating in government benefits, among other things.

Notes:

1. LiP Magazine. http://www.lipmagazine.org/.

2. The Washington Post December 01, 1997, Final Edition.

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Information_Awareness.

4. Electronic Privacy Information Center http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/. Information Awareness Office, see HR 2417.

5. Ibid.

6. Congressional Record: November 22,2003 pg.E2399 http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h112203.html.

7. LiP Magazine. http://www.lipmagazine.org/.

8. ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Primetime/story.

9. http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/PrivacyMain.cfm.

10. http://bernie.house.gov/documents/articles/20050406114413.asp.

11. http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/press_releases/20050415_matrix_project.html.

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#5 US Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia

Sources: Jane's Foreign Report (Jane's Defence), February 15, 2005

Title: "US Turns Tsunami into Military Strategy"

The Irish Times, February 8, 2005

Title: "US Has Used Tsunami to Boost Aims in Stricken Area"

Author: Rahul Bedi

Inter Press Service, January, 18 2005

Title: "Bush Uses Tsunami Aid to Regain Foothold in Indonesia"

Author: Jim Lobe

Faculty Evaluator: Tony White, Ph.D., Craig Winston, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Ned Patterson

The tragic and devastating power of 2004's post holiday tsunami was plastered across the cover of practically every newspaper around the world for the better part of a month. As the death toll rose by the thousands every day, countries struggled to keep pace with the rapidly increasing need for aid across the Indian Ocean Basin.

At the same time that US aid was widely publicized domestically, our coinciding military motives were virtually ignored by the press. While supplying our aid (which when compared proportionately to that of other, less wealthy countries, was an insulting pittance), we simultaneously bolstered military alliances with regional powers in, and began expanding our bases throughout, the Indian Ocean region.

Long viewed as a highly strategic location for US interests, our desire to curtail China's burgeoning economic and military might is contingent upon our control of this area. In the months following the tsunami, writes Rahul Bedi in The Irish Times, the US revived the Utapao military base in Thailand it had used during the Vietnam War. Task force 536 is to be moved there to establish a forward positioning site for the US Air Force.

During subsequent tsunami relief operations, the US reactivated its military co-operation agreements with Thailand and the Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines. US Navy also vessels utilized facilities in Singapore, keeping with previous treaties. Further, the US marines and the navy arrived in Sri Lanka to bolster relief measures despite the tsunami-hit island's initial reluctance to permit their entry.

The US also stepped up their survey of the Malacca Straits, over which China exercises considerable influence, and through which 90 percent of Japan's oil supplies pass. The United States has had trouble expanding its military influence in the region largely due to suspicions by Indonesia and Malaysia that the US is disguising imperial aims under the goal of waging war against terror. The two countries have opposed an American plan to tighten security in the vital Malacca Straits shipping lanes, which might have involved US troops stationed nearby.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that US relief to the tsunami-affected region would assist the war against terror and introduce "American values to the region." The Bush Administration is also reviving its hopes of normalizing military ties with Indonesia, writes Jim Lobe for InterPress Service. The world's most populous Muslim nation, its strategically located archipelago, critical sea lanes, and historic distrust of China have made it an ideal partner for containing Beijing.

During a January 2005 visit to Jakarta, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told reporters, "I think if we're interested in military reform here, and certainly this Indonesian government is and our government is, I think we need to possibly reconsider a bit where we are at this point in history moving forward."

According to an article in the Asheville Global Report, the following month the US State Department made a decision to renew the International Education and Military Training (IMET) program for Indonesia, despite considerable human rights issues.

According to Bedi, Washington has long wanted a navel presence in Trincomalee, eastern Sri Lanka, or alternatively in Galle, further south, to shorten the supply chain from its major regional military base in distant Diego Garcia, which the British Ocean Territory leased to the US in 1966 for the length of fifty years. The use of these bases would ring China, giving the US added control over that country's activities.

Diego Garcia's geostrategic location in the Indian Ocean and its full range of naval, military and communications facilities gives it a critical role supporting the US Navy's forward presence in the North Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean Region. However, because of the bases' remoteness and the fact that its lease from Britain expires in 2016, the US seeks an alternative location in the region. "Clearly these new bases will strengthen Washington's military logistical support in the region," says Professor Anuradha Chenoy at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. She went on to emphasize that an alternative to the Diego Garcia base must be found soon, as the lease from Britain will soon expire.

Long before the tsunami struck, an article dated April 21, 2003, by Josy Joseph on Rediff.com explained that a classified report commissioned by the United States Department of Defense expresses a desire for access to Indian bases and military infrastructures. The United States Air Force specifically wants to establish bases in India. The report, entitled "Indo-US Military Relations: Expectations and Perceptions," was distributed amongst high-ranking US officials and a handful of senior members within the Indian government. It continues on about the Defense Department's desire to have "access closer to areas of instability."

The report says, "American military officers are candid in their plans to eventually seek access to Indian bases and military infrastructure. India's strategic location in the centre of Asia, astride the frequently traveled Sea Lanes Of Communication (SLOC) linking the Middle East and East Asia, makes India particularly attractive to the US military."

The report also quotes US Lieutenant Generals as saying that the access to Indian bases would enable the US military "to be able to touch the rest of the world" and to "respond rapidly to regional crisis." A South Asia Area Officer of the US State Department has been quoted as saying, "India's strategic importance increases if existing US relationships with Asia fail."

Post-tsunami US actions in the Indian Ocean illustrate its intention to move this agenda forward sooner rather than later.

Note:

1. Joseph, Josy; "Target Next: Indian Military Bases"; rediff.com, April 21, 2003; and Lobe, Jim; "Skepticism over Renewed Military Ties with Indonesia"; Asheville Global Report, March 10-16, 2005.

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#6 The Real Oil for Food Scam

Sources: Harper's Magazine, December 2004

Title: "The UN is Us: Exposing Saddam Hussein's silent partner"

Author: Joy Gordon

http://www.harpers.org/TheUNisUS.html

Independent/UK, December 12, 2004

Title: "The oil for Food 'Scandal' is a Cynical Smokescreen"

Author: Scott Ritter

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1212-23.htm

Faculty Evaluator: Robert McNamara, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Deanna Murrell

The US has accused UN officials of corruption in Iraq's oil for food program. According to Joy Gordon and Scott Ritter the charge was actually an attempt to disguise and cover up long term US government complicity in this corruption. Ritter says, "this posturing is nothing more than a hypocritical charade, designed to shift attention away from the debacle of George Bush's self-made quagmire in Iraq, and legitimize the invasion of Iraq by using Iraqi corruption and not the now-missing weapons of mass destruction, as the excuse." Gordon arrives at the conclusion that, "perhaps it is unsurprising that today the only role its seems the United States expects the UN to play in the continuing drama of Iraq is that of scapegoat."

According to Gordon the charges laid by the US accounting office are bogus. There is plenty of evidence of corruption in the "oil-for-food" program, but the trail of evidence leads not to the UN but to the US "The fifteen members of the Security Council - of which the United States was by far the most influential - determined how income from oil proceeds would be handled, and what the funds could be used for." Contrary to popular understanding, the Security Council is not the same thing as the UN. It is part of it, but operates largely independently of the larger body. The UN's personnel "simply executed the program that was designed by the members of the Security Council."

The claim in the corporate media was that the UN allowed Saddam Hussein to steal billions of dollars from oil sales. If we look, as Gordon does, at who actually had control over the oil and who's hands held the money, a very different picture emerges. "If Hussain did indeed smuggle $6 billion worth of oil in the 'the richest rip off in world history,' he didn't do it with the complicity of the UN. He did it on the watch of the US Navy." explains Gordon.

Every monetary transaction was approved by the US through its dominant role on the Security Council. Ritter explains, "the Americans were able to authorize a $1 billion exemption concerning the export of Iraqi oil for Jordan, as well as legitimize the billion-dollar illegal oil smuggling trade over the Turkish border." In another instance, a Russian oil company "bought oil from Iraq under 'oil for food' at a heavy discount, and then sold it at full market value to primarily US companies, splitting the difference evenly between [the Russian company] and the Iraqis. This US sponsored deal resulted in profits of hundreds of millions of dollars for both the Russians and the Iraqis, outside the control of 'oil for food.' It has been estimated that 80 percent of the oil illegally smuggled out of Iraq under 'oil for food' ended up in the United States."

Not only were criminals enriched in this nefarious scheme, it also ended up sabotaging the original purpose of "oil for food." Gordon explains, "How Iraq sold its oil was also under scrutiny, and the United States did act on what it perceived to be skimming by Hussain in these deals. The solution that it enacted, however, succeeded in almost bankrupting the entire Oil for Food Program within months."

Harebrained Security Council policy not only succeeded in enriching the dishonest, it also virtually destroyed the program. According to Gordon, the US and UK attempted to prevent kickbacks resulting from artificially low prices: "Instead of approving prices at the beginning of each sales period (usually a month), in accordance with normal commercial practices, the two allies would simply withhold their approval [of the price] until after the oil was sold - creating a bizarre scenario in which buyers had to sign contracts without knowing what the price would be." The result was "oil sales collapsed by forty percent, and along with them the funds for critical humanitarian imports."

What we have here, according to Gordon and Ritter, is a bare-faced attempt by criminals to shift blame to the innocent. Gordon concludes, "Little of the blame can credibly be laid at the feet of 'the UN bureaucracy.' Far more of the fault lies with policies and decisions of the Security Council in which the United States played a central role."

Update by Joy Gordon: The accusations against the Oil for Food Program have served as a springboard for general attacks on the credibility of the United Nations as a whole, as well as personal attacks on Kofi Annan. For the most part the mainstream media has seized on the accusations and repeated them, without doing any of the research that would give the discussion more integrity. For example, "the United Nations" is criticized for "its" failures, and the Secretary General is then blamed because these events "happened on his watch." What was not mentioned at all for the first year of media coverage is that "the UN" is made up of several different parts, and that the part that designed and oversaw the Oil for Food Program was the Security Council, whose decisions cannot be overridden or modified in any way by the Secretary General. Not only that, while the most vitriolic accusations against the UN have come from the United States, the US is in fact the most dominant member of the Security Council. The US agreed to all the decisions and procedures of the Oil for Food Program that are now being so harshly criticized as "failures of the United Nations."

The mainstream press, for the most part, has repeated that the Oil for Food Program lacked accountability, oversight, or transparency. What is most striking about this is that the elaborate structure of oversight that was in fact in place - and is never mentioned at all - is so easily available. It is on the program's web site in complete detail along with huge amounts of information, making the program in fact highly transparent. Yet the mainstream press coverage reflects none of this.

Last fall we saw the beginnings of some acknowledgement of the US responsibility for Iraq's ongoing smuggling, as some Democrats introduced evidence in hearings that all three US administrations knew of and supported Iraq's illicit trade with Jordan and Turkey, two key US allies. The press picked that up, but little else.

Since my article came out, there has been a good deal of press coverage from public radio stations and from foreign press. In addition, I have testified twice before Congressional committees, where the members of Congress were incredulous to hear that in fact the program operated very differently than they had been told - even though the information I provided them was obvious, basic, publicly available, and easily accessible.

For Additional Information:

Organizations actively addressing these issues include the UN Association and the UN Foundation.

Information about the accusations against the program can be found at the following sites: http://www.oilforfoodfacts.org/.

UN web site on Oil for Food program: http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/.

The Volcker Committee investigating the accusations: http://www.iic-offp.org/.

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#7 Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood

Sources: www.truthout.org, Feb. 28, 2005

Title: "Dead Messengers: How the US Military Threatens Journalists"

Author: Steve Weissman

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/022405A.shtml

Title: "Media Repression in 'Liberated' Land"

InterPress Service, November 18, 2004

Author: Dahr Jamail

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=26333

Faculty Evaluator: Elizabeth Burch, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Michelle Jesolva

According to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), 2004 was the deadliest year for reporters since 1980, when records began to be kept. Over a 12-month span, 129 media workers were killed and 49 of those deaths occurred in the Iraqi conflict. According to independent journalist Dahr Jamail, journalists are increasingly being detained and threatened by the US-installed interim government in Iraq. When the only safety for a reporter is being embedded with the US military, the reported stories tend to have a positive spin. Non-embedded reporters suffer the great risk of being identified as enemy targets by the military.

The most blatant attack on journalists occurred the morning of April 8, 2004, when the Third Infantry fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad killing cameramen Jose Couso and Taras Protsyuk and injuring three others. The hotel served as headquarters for some 100 reporters and other media workers. The Pentagon officials knew that the Palestine Hotel was full of journalists and had assured the Associated Press that the US would not target the building. According to Truthout, the Army had refused to release the records of its investigation. The Committee to Protect Journalists, created in 1981 in order to protect colleagues abroad from governments and others who have no use for free and independent media, filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act to force the Army to release its results. The sanitized copy of the releasable results showed nothing more than a Commander inquiry.

Unsatisfied with the US military's investigation, Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that works to improve the legal and physical safety of journalists worldwide, conducted their own investigation. They gathered evidence from journalists in the Palestine Hotel at the time of the attacks. These were eye witness accounts that the military neglected to include in their report. The Reporters Without Borders report also provided information disclosed by others embedded within the US Army, including the US military soldiers and officers directly involved in the attack. The report stated that the US officials first lied about what had happened during the Palestine Hotel attack and then, in an official statement four months later, exonerated the US Army from any mistake of error in judgment. The investigation found that the soldiers in the field did not know that the hotel was full of journalists. Olga Rodriguez, a journalist present at the Palestine Hotel during the attack, stated on KPFA's Democracy Now! that the soldiers and tanks were present at the hotel 36 hours before the firing and that they had even communicated with the soldiers.

There have been several other unusual journalist attacks, including:

March 22, 2003: Terry Lloyd, a reporter for British TV station ITN, was killed when his convoy crossed into Iraq from Kuwait. French cameraman Frederic Nerac and Lebanese interpreter Hussein Osman, both in the convoy, disappeared at the same time.

June, 2003: According to Dahr Jamail, within days of the 'handover' of power to an interim Iraqi government in 2003, al-Jazeera had been accused of inaccurate reporting and was banned for one month from reporting out of Iraq. The ban was later extended to "indefinitely" and the interim government announced that any al-Jazeera journalist found reporting in Iraq would be detained. Corentin Fleury, a French freelance photographer, and his interpreter Bahktiyar Abdulla Hadad, were detained by the US military when they were leaving Fallujah before the siege of the city began. They were both held in a military detention facility outside of the city and were questioned about the photos that were taken of bomb-stricken Fallujah. Fleury was released after five days but his interpreter, Bahktiyar Abdulla Hadad, remained.

April 8, 2004: The same day of the attack on the Palestine Hotel, Truthout writes, the US bombed the Baghdad offices of Abu Dhabi TV and al-Jazeera while they were preparing to broadcast, killing al-Jazeera correspondent Tariq Ayyoub. August 17, 2004: Mazen Dana was killed while filming (with permission) a prison, guarded by the US military in a Baghdad suburb. According to Truthout's Steve Weissman, the Pentagon issued a statement one month later claiming that the troops had acted within the rules of engagement.

March 4, 2005: Nicola Calipari, one of Italy's highest ranking intelligence officials, was shot dead by US troops. He was driving with Italian journalist Guiliana Sgrena, who had just been released from captivity and was on her way to Baghdad's airport. Sgrena survived the attack. She stated in an interview with Amy Goodman on KPFA's Democracy Now! that the troops "shot at us without any advertising, any intention, any attempt to stop us before" and they appeared to have shot the back of the car.
In all cases, little investigation has been conducted, no findings have been released and all soldiers involved have been exonerated.

At the World Economic Forum, on a panel titled: "Will Democracy Survive the Media?," Eason Jordan, a CNN news chief, commented that the US commanders encourage hostility toward the media and fail to protect journalists, especially those who choose not to embed themselves under military control. According to Truthout, during a discussion about the number of journalists killed during the Iraq war, Jordan stated that he knew of 12 journalists who had not only been killed by US troops, but had been targeted. Jordan also insisted that US soldiers had deliberately shot at journalists. After the forum, Jordan recanted the statements and was forced to resign his job of 23 years at CNN.

As a matter of military doctrine, the US military dominates, at all costs, every element of battle, including our perception of what they do. The need for control leads the Pentagon to urge journalists to embed themselves within the military, where they can go where they are told and film and tell stories only from a pro-American point of view. The Pentagon offers embedded journalists a great deal of protection. As the Pentagon sees it, non-embedded eyes and ears do not have any military significance, and unless Congress and the American people stop them, the military will continue to target independent journalists. Admirals and generals see the world one way, reporters another; the clash leads to the deaths of too many journalists.

Update by Steve Weissman: When Truthout boss Marc Ash asked me earlier this year to look into the Pentagon's killing of journalists, many reporters believed that the military was purposely targeting them. But, as I quickly found, the crime was more systemic and in many ways worse. As far as anyone has yet proved, no commanding officer ever ordered a subordinate to fire on journalists as such. Not at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel in April 2003. Not at the Baghdad checkpoint where soldiers wounded Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and killed her Secret Service protector in March 2005. Andnot anywhere else in Iraq or Afghanistan.

How, then, did the US military end up killing journalists?

It started with a simple decision - the Pentagon's absolute refusal to take any responsibility for the lives of journalists who chose to work independently rather than embed themselves in a British or American military unit. Despite repeated requests from Reuters and other major news organizations, Pentagon officials still refuse to take the steps needed to reduce the threat to independent journalists:

The military must be forced to respect the work that independent journalists do, protect them where possible, and train soldiers to recognize the obvious differences between rocket launchers and TV cameras.

Commanders need to pass on information about the whereabouts of journalists with a direct order not to shoot at them.

When soldiers do kill journalists, the Pentagon needs to hold them responsible, something that no military investigation has yet done.

When the military tries to forcibly exclude journalists and otherwise prevent "hostile information" about its operations, such as its destruction of Falujah, Congress and the media need to step in and force the Pentagon to back off.
One other problem needs urgent attention. Military intelligence regularly monitors the uplink equipment that reporters use to transmit their stories and communicate by satellite phone. But, as the BBC's Nik Gowing discovered, the electronic intelligence mavens make no effort to distinguish between journalistic communications and those of enemy forces. All the sensing devices do is look for electronic traffic between the monitored uplinks and known enemies.

In Gowing's view, this led the Americans to order a rocket attack on the Kabul office of the Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera, whose journalists kept regular contact with the Taliban as part of their journalistic coverage.

To date, neither Congress nor the military have done what they need to do to protect unembedded journalists and the information they provide. More shamefully, the mass media continues to underplay the story.

But, for those who want it, reliable information is easily available, either from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters without Borders, or the International Federation of Journalists.

Notes:

1. www.ifj.org.

2. "Missing ITN Crew May Have Come Under 'Friendly Fire,'" www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/ Story/0,2763,919832,00.html, March 23, 2003.

3. Democracy Now! March 23, 2005, "Wounded Spanish Journalist Olga Rodriguez Describes the US Attack on the Palestine Hotel that Killed Two of Her Colleagues."

4. Democracy Now! April 27, 2005, "Giuliana Sgrena Blasts US Cover Up, Calls for US and Italy to Leave Iraq."

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#8 Iraqi Farmers Threatened by Bremer's Mandates

Sources: Grain, October 2004

Title: "Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War against Farmers"

Authors: Focus on the Global South and GRAIN

TomPaine.com, October 26, 2004

Title: "Adventure Capitalism"

Author: Greg Palast

The Ecologist, February 4, 2005

Title: "US Seeking to Totally Re-Engineer Iraqi Traditional Farming System into a US-Style Corporate Agribusiness"

Author: Jeremy Smith

Faculty Evaluator: John Wingard, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Cary Barker

In his article "Adventure Capitalism," Greg Palast exposes the contents of a secret plan for "imposing a new regime of low taxes on big business, and quick sales of Iraq's banks and bridges - in fact, 'ALL state enterprises' - to foreign operators." This economy makeover plan, he claims, "goes boldly where no invasion plan has gone before."

This highly detailed program, which began years before the tanks rolled, outlines the small print of doing business under occupation. One of the goals is to impose intellectual property laws favorable to multinationals. Palast calls this "history's first military assault plan appended to a program for toughening the target nation's copyright laws."

It also turns out that those of us who may have thought it was all about the oil were mostly right. "The plan makes it clear that - even if we didn't go in for the oil - we certainly won't leave without it."

In an interview with Palast, Grover Norquist, the " capo di capi of the lobbyist army of the right," makes the plans even more clear when he responds, "The right to trade, property rights, these things are not to be determined by some democratic election." No, these things were to be determined by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the interim government lead by the US.

Before he left his position, CPA administrator Paul Bremer, "the leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority issued exactly 100 orders that remade Iraq in the image of the Economy Plan." These orders effectively changed Iraqi law.

A good example of this business invasion involves agriculture. The details of this part of the "market make-over" are laid out in the Grain website article called "Iraq's new Patent Law: a declaration of war against farmers."

"Order 81" of the 100 is entitled "Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety." According to Grain staff writers, this order "made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law." Plant Variety Protection (PVP)is the tool used for defining which seeds are re-useable and which are not. PVP "is an intellectual property right or a kind of patent for plant varieties which gives an exclusive monopoly right on planting material to a plant breeder who claims to have discovered or developed a new variety. So the "protection" in PVP has nothing to do with conservation, but refers to safeguarding of the commercial interests of private breeders (usually large corporations) claiming to have created the new plants."

Dovetailing with this order is a plan to "re-educate farmers" in order to increase their production. As part of a $107 million "project" facilitated by Texas A&M, farmers will be given equipment and new high-yielding PVP protected seeds. Jeremy Smith from the Ecologist points out that, "After one year, farmers will see soaring production levels. Many will be only too willing to abandon their old ways in favor of the new technologies. Out will go traditional methods. In will come imported American seeds." Then, based on the new patent laws, "any 'client' (or 'farmer' as they were once known) wishing to grow one of their seeds, 'pays a licensing fee for each variety'."

Smith explains that "Under the guise of helping Iraq back on its feet, the US setting out to re-engineer the country's traditional farming system into a US-style corporate agribusiness." In that traditional system, "97 percent of Iraqi farmers used their own saved seed or bought seed from local markets." He continues, "Unfortunately, this vital heritage and knowledge base is now believed lost, the victim of the current campaign and the many years of conflict that preceded it."

Of course, this project will also introduce "new chemicals - pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, all sold to the Iraqis by corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill and Dow."

As Grain staff writers point out, "over the past decade, many countries of the South have been compelled to adopt seed patent laws through bilateral treaties" with the US The Iraqi situation, however, is different in that "the adoption of the patent law was not part of negotiations between sovereign countries. Nor did a sovereign law-making body enact it as reflecting the will of the Iraqi people." Essentially, the US has reneged on its promise of freedom for the Iraqi people. The actions of the US clearly show that the will of the Iraqi people is not relevant. Paul Bremer's 100 orders make sure it will stay that way. Grain argues "Iraq's freedom and sovereignty will remain questionable for as long as Iraqis do not have control over what they sow, grow, reap and eat." Palast says poignantly, "The free market paradise in Iraq is not free."

Update by Greg Palast: In February 2003, White House spokesman Ari Fleisher announced the preparations for "Operation Iraqi Liberation" - O.I.L.

I can't make these things up.

I'm not one of the those people who believes George Bush led us into Iraq for the oil but, from the documents I've obtained, it's clear that we sure as hell aren't leaving without it.

At BBC Television Newsnight, which has granted me journalistic asylum from the commercially-crazed madhouse of the American news market, we ran Fleisher's announcement of operation O.I.L. (later corrected to Operation Iraqi Freedom - OIF!). More importantly, we ran a series of stories - which I also developed for Harper's Magazine in the USA - on the pre-invasion plans to slice up and sell off Iraq's assets, "especially the oil," in the terms of one State Department secret document.

After we got our hands on the confidential document to "Move Iraq's Economy Forward" - i.e. sell off its oil - we at BBC put General Jay Garner on the air. Garner, whom the president appointed as viceroy over the newly-conquered Iraq, confirmed the plan to sell off Iraq's oil - and his refusal to carry out the deed. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fired him and smeared him for his dissent. This was big, big news in Europe where I reported it - but in the US the story was buried.

We later discovered that the plan to sell off Iraq's oil was replaced by another confidential plan. This one, 323 pages long and literally written by oil industry consultants, was obtained by BBC and Harper's after a protracted legal war with the State Department. We discovered, interestingly, that this industry plan to create a state oil company favorable to OPEC was first conceived in February 2001. In other words, invasion was in the works, including stratagems for controlling Iraq's oil, within week's of George Bush's first inauguration and well before the September 11 attack.

The discovery of this plan for Iraq's oil, received exactly zero coverage by the US "mainstream" press. Only Harper's Magazine gave it full play along with those wonderful internet sites (Buzzflash, Guerrilla News, WorkingForChange, CommonDreams, Alternet and more ) that cussedly insist on printing news from abroad not approved by the Powers That Be.

Bless them. They, Project Censored, and Harper's, have my deepest thanks for bringing my words back home.

Want to see the television you're not supposed to see? The British Broadcasting Corporation has graciously kept my reports available as Internet video archives. Go to www.GregPalast.com and click on the "Watch BBC" buttons for the stories effectively censored by the US news lords and the Bush Administration's chorus of journalist castrati.

Finally, I must give special thanks to our team's special investigator on Iraq, Leni von Eckardt, to brilliant BBC producer Meirion Jones, to the stalwart editors of Harper's Magazine who withstood legal threats to publish the story, and to TomPaine.com, which has always provided a refuge for the best investigative reporting American newspapers won't print.

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#9 Iran's New Oil Trade System Challenges US Currency

Source: GlobalResearch.ca, October 27

Title: "Iran Next US Target"

Author: William Clark

Faculty Evaluator: Phil Beard, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Brian Miller

The US media tells us that Iran may be the next target of US aggression. The anticipated excuse is Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. William Clark tells us that economic reasons may have more to do with US concerns over Iran than any weapons of mass destruction.

In mid-2003 Iran broke from traditional and began accepting eurodollars as payment for it oil exports from its E.U. and Asian customers. Saddam Hussein attempted a similar bold step back in 2000 and was met with a devastating reaction from the US Iraq now has no choice about using US dollars for oil sales (Censored 2004 #19). However, Iran's plan to open an international oil exchange marker for trading oil in the euro currency is a much larger threat to US dollar supremacy than Iraq's switch to euros.

While the dollar is still the standard currency for trading international oil sales, in 2006 Iran intends to set up an oil exchange (or bourse) that would facilitate global trading of oil between industrialized and developing countries by pricing sales in the euro, or "petroeuro." To this end, they are creating a euro-denominated Internet-based oil exchange system for global oil sales. This is a direct challenge to US dollar supremacy in the global oil market. It is widely speculated that the US dollar has been inflated for some time now because the monopoly position of "petrodollars" in oil trades. With the level of national debt, the value of dollar has been held artificially high compared to other currencies.

The vast majority of the world's oil is traded on the New York NYMEX (Mercantile Exchange) and the London IPE (International Petroleum Exchange), and, as mentioned by Clark, both exchanges are owned by US corporations. Both of these oil exchanges transact oil trades in US currency. Iran's plan to create a new oil exchange would facilitate trading oil on the world market in euros. The euro has become a somewhat stronger and more stable trading medium than the US dollar in recent years. Perhaps this is why Russia, Venezuela, and some members of OPEC have expressed interest in moving towards a petroeuro system for oil transactions. Without a doubt, a successful Iranian oil bourse may create momentum for other industrialized countries to stop exchanging their own currencies for petrodollars in order to buy oil. A shift away from US dollars to euros in the oil market would cause the demand for petrodollars to drop, perhaps causing the value of the dollar to plummet. A precipitous drop in the value of the US dollar would undermine the US position as a world economic leader.

China is a major exporter to the United States, and its trade surplus with the US means that China has become the world's second largest holder of US currency reserves (Japan is the largest holder with $800 billion, and China holds over $600 billion in T-bills). China would lose enormously if they were still holding vast amounts of US currency when the dollar collapsed and assumed a more realistic value. Maintaining the US as a market for their goods is a pre-eminent goal of Chinese financial policy, but they are increasingly dependent on Iran for their vital oil and gas imports. The Chinese government is careful to maintain the value of the yuan linked with the US dollar (8.28 yuan to 1 dollar). This artificial linking makes them, effectively, one currency. But the Chinese government has indicated interest in de-linking the dollar-yuan arrangement, which could result in an immediate fall in the dollar. More worrisome is the potentiality of China to abandon its ongoing prolific purchase of US Treasuries/debt - should they become displeased with US policies towards Iran.

Unstable situations cannot be expected to remain static. It is reasonable to expect that the Chinese are hedging their bets. It is unreasonable to expect that they plan to be left holding devalued dollars after a sudden decline in their value. It is possible that the artificial situation could continue for some time, but this will be due largely because the Chinese want it that way. Regardless, China seems to be in the process of unloading some of its US dollar reserves in the world market to purchase oil reserves, and most recently attempted to buy Unocal, a California-based oil company.

The irony is that apparent US plans to invade Iran put pressure on the Chinese to abandon their support of the dollar. Clark warns that "a unilateral US military strike on Iran would further isolate the US government, and it is conceivable that such an overt action could provoke other industrialized nations to abandon the dollar en masse." Perhaps the US planners think that they can corner the market in oil militarily. But from Clarks point of view, "a US intervention in Iran is likely to prove disastrous for the United States, making matters much worse regarding international terrorism, not to mention potential adverse effects on the US economy." The more likely outcome of an Iran invasion would be that, just as in Iraq, Iranian oil exports would dry up, regardless of what currency they are denominated in, and China would be compelled to abandon the dollar and buy oil from Russia - likely in euros. The conclusion is that US leaders seem to have no idea what they are doing. Clark points out that, "World oil production is now flat out, and a major interruption would escalate oil prices to a level that would set off a global depression."

Update by William Clark: Following the completion of my essay in October 2004, three important stories appeared that dramatically raised the geopolitical stakes for the Bush Administration. First, on October 28, 2004, Iran and China signed a huge oil and gas trade agreement (valued between $70 and $100 billion dollars.) It should also be noted that China currently receives 13 percent of its oil imports from Iran. The Chinese government effectively drew a "line in the sand" around Iran when it signed this huge oil and gas deal. Despite desires by US elites to enforce petrodollar hegemony by force, the geopolitical risks of a US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would surely create a serious crisis between Washington and Beijing.

An article that addressed some of the strategic risks appeared in the December 2004 edition of the Atlantic Monthly. This story by James Fallows outlined the military war games against Iran that were conducted during the summer and autumn of 2004. These war-gaming sessions were led by Colonel Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who for more than two decades ran war games at the National War College and other military institutions. Each scenario led to a dangerous escalation in both Iran and Iraq. Indeed, Col. Gardiner summarized the war games with the following conclusion, "After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers: You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work."

The third and final news item that revealed the Bush Administration's intent to attack Iran was provided by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. The January 2005 issue of The New Yorker ("The Coming Wars") included interviews with high-level US intelligence sources who repeatedly told Hersh that Iran was indeed the next strategic target. However, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China will likely veto any US resolution calling for military action against Iran. A unilateral military strike on Iran would isolate the US government in the eyes of the world community, and it is conceivable that such an overt action could provoke other industrialized nations to abandon the dollar in droves. I refer to this in my book as the "rogue nation hypothesis."

While central bankers throughout the world community would be extremely reluctant to "dump the dollar," the reasons for any such drastic reaction are likely straightforward from their perspective - the global community is dependent on the oil and gas energy supplies found in the Persian Gulf. Numerous oil geologists are warning that global oil production is now running "flat out." Hence, any such efforts by the international community that resulted in a dollar currency crisis would be undertaken - not to cripple the US dollar and economy as punishment towards the American people per se - but rather to thwart further unilateral warfare and its potentially destructive effects on the critical oil production and shipping infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. Barring a US attack, it appears imminent that Iran's euro-denominated oil bourse will open in March, 2006. Logically, the most appropriate US strategy is compromise with the E.U. and OPEC towards a dual-currency system for international oil trades.

For Additional Information: Readers interested in learning more about the dollar/euro oil currency conflict and the upcoming geological phenomenon referred to as Peak Oil can read William Clark's new book, Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar. Available from New Society Publishers: www.newsociety.com, www.amazon.com or from your local book store.

Notes:

1. "China, Iran Sign Biggest Oil & Gas Deal," China Daily, October 31, 2004. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/31/content_387140.htm.

2. James Fallows, "Will Iran be Next?," Atlantic Monthly, December 2004, pgs. 97-110.

3. James Fallows, ibid.

4. Seymour Hersh, "The Coming Wars," The New Yorker, January 24th-31st issue, 2005, pgs. 40-47. Posted online January 17, 2005. Online: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050124fa_fact.

5. "Oil Bourse Closer to Reality," IranMania.com, December 28, 2004. Online: http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?ArchiveNews=Yes&NewsCode=28176&NewsKind=BusinessEconomy.

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#10 Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy

Source: Earthfirst! Nov-Dec 2004

Title: "See You in the Mountains: Katuah Earth First! Confronts Mountaintop Removal"

Author: John Conner

Faculty Evaluator: Ervand Peterson, Ph.D.

Student Researcher: Angela Sciortino

Mountaintop removal is a new form of coal mining in which companies dynamite the tops of mountains to collect the coal underneath. Multiple peaks are blown off and dumped onto highland watersheds, destroying entire mountain ranges. More than 1,000 miles of streams have been destroyed by this practice in West Virginia alone. Mountain top removal endangers and destroys entire communities with massive sediment dams and non-stop explosions.

According to Fred Mooney, an active member of the Mountain Faction of Katuah Earth First!, "MTR is an ecocidal mining practice in which greedy coal companies use millions of pounds of dynamite a day (three million pounds a day in the southwest Virginia alone) to blow up entire mountain ranges in order to extract a small amount of coal." He goes on to say that "Then as if that wasn't bad enough, they dump the waste into valleys and riverbeds. The combination of these elements effectively kills everything in the ecosystems."

Most states are responsible for permitting and regulating mining operations under the Surface Mining Control Act. Now MTR is trying to break into Tennessee, specifically Zeb Mountain in the northeast. Because Tennessee did such a poor job in the '70s, the state renounced control, and all mining is now regulated under the federal Office of Surface Mining. This makes Tennessee unique because activists have recourse in the federal courts to stop mountaintop removal.

The coal industry has coined many less menacing names for mountaintop removal, such as cross range mining, surface mining and others. But regardless of the euphemism, MTR remains among the most pernicious forms of mining ever conceived. Blasting mountain tops with dynamite is cheaper than hiring miners who belong to a union. More than 40,000 have been lost to MTR in West Virginia alone.

Ninety-three new coal plants are being planned for construction throughout the US Demand for coal will increase as these new facilities are completed. Oil is starting to run out and there are no concrete plans for a transition to renewable resources such as wind and solar energy. Coal companies therefore will be well-positioned to capitalize on their growing market. Katuah Earth First! (KEF!) is one of several groups resisting MTR.

The coal taken from Zeb Mountain is being burned by the Tennessee Valley Authority, and continues to cause environmental damage. KEF! wants to raise awareness and direct attention to the perpetrators - TVA and the Office of Surface Mining (OSM). KEF! emphasized that "the issue of mountain top removal is not just a local one. It is intertwined with many global issues such as corporate domination of communities, the homogenization of local cultures and the over consumption of our wasteful society."

Four federal agencies that review applications for coal mines have entered an agreement that would give state governments an option that could speed up the process. The Army Corps of Engineers, Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service and Office of Surface Mining said that the agreement was intended to streamline the procedures companies go through when applying for permits to start surface coal mines, including those that remove entire mountaintops to unearth coal.

Environmental groups are beginning to challenge these policies in federal district court. The current program allows the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a general permit for a category of activities under the Clean Water Act if they "will cause only minimal adverse environmental effects" according to federal regulation. Coal companies then also must seek individual "authorizations" from the Corps for the projects for which they have received a general permit.

According to the Bush Administration, the federal judge who blocked the streamline permitting of new mountaintop removal coal mines has overstepped his authority. Lawyers for the Army Corps of Engineers asked a federal appeals court to overturn the July 2004 ruling by US District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin. Industry lawyers criticized Goodwin's decision as the "latest unwarranted and impermissible dismantling" of mountaintop removal regulations by federal judges in Southern West Virginia.

Update by John Conner: The destructions of highland watersheds are a crime against the very future. The Appalachian Mountains are some of the most diverse in the world. Areas incredibly rich in biodiversity are being turned into the biological equivalent of parking lots. It is the final solution for 200 million-year-old mountains. Since dynamite is cheaper than people, MTR has broken the back of the mining unions in West Virginia, massive sediment dams threaten to bury entire communities, water tables are destroyed, and wells dry up. It is a form of cultural genocide driving a mountain people from their hills - then destroying the hills themselves.

There has been a direct impact on Marsh Fork Elementary, where a massive sediment dam looms above the elementary school. Over 18 people have been arrested for non-violent civil disobedience trying to protect the children of that school. Additionally, Mountain Justice Summer has begun a campaign modeled on Redwood and Mississippi Summers, where folks from all over North America have come to our region to help us defend our mountains.

When the Martin County coal impoundment burst, it released more than 20 times the waste volume into a community than the Exxon Valdez spill - yet the coal industry successfully suppressed the story. The coal industry is incredibly powerful, and there exists a glass ceiling on how far our stories go. The story of the folks committing civil disobedience for the first time in history in West Virginia to resist Mountain Top Removal was placed on the AP - but virtually no outlets outside of West Virginia picked it up.

People can get more information on this issue at mountainjusticesummer.org.

This site has everything - links, pictures, and state-by-state activities. From there you can sign yourself up for our electronic newsletter and find out what is going on in all the states under attack by Mountain Top Removal.

Notes:

1. Inside Energy with Federal lands, February 7, 2005,"Environmentalists Sue to Block Process for KY Mountaintop Mining Operations."

2. Associated Press, February 11, 2005, "Federal Agencies Will Work Together to Speed Up Mining Permits."

3. Charleston Gazette (West Virginia), March 22, 2005, Tuesday, "Bush, Industry Seek Reversal of Mining Ruling."

Rescuing America: A 9-Step Plan

2005-10-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

By Van Jones, AlterNet. Posted September 9, 2005.

The tragedy of Katrina offers progressives the rare opportunity to step in with vision, courage and leadership.

President George W. Bush's disastrous mishandling of Hurricane Katrina exposes what is so desperately wrong with the right-wing ideology that now controls the U.S. government. We now have a rare opportunity to make a bold case for progressive approaches to the country's problems.

Everyone can see now that we need a well-funded, functional government within U.S. borders -- not an emaciated, revenue-starved one. It is more clear than ever that over-funding the military and cutting services actually makes us less safe, not more.

It also redeems those who have been concerned about racism, poverty, climate destabilization, toxic petrochemicals and the perils of over-reliance on oil. We can see that these are not just petty obsessions of the "politically correct" crowd. They are life-and-death issues for real people.

Everyday Americans are already seeing this and saying it. Finally, after a long romance with those riverboat gamblers on the right, the country is ready to hear something sensible from our side. If we articulate a bold program of action, we can win support on a scale that we have not known for decades. By stepping forward immediately, we can fill the huge, stunning leadership gap left by Team Bush.

The following nine steps are critical:

1. Tell America that we want to fully fund FEMA -- by rolling back the Bush tax cuts to at least Clinton-era levels. The rich must help secure the country against the next disaster. Reckless revenue cuts that leave us vulnerable must be repealed.

2. Declare that Katrina's floodwaters washed the GOP's proposal to repeal the estate tax off the table. There will be no tax breaks for the mega-rich while the nation is recovering from this historic blow and preparing itself for the next one. Any revenue cuts would both impair the rebuilding effort and risk lives down the road. Let's declare the repeal of the so-called "death tax" to be DOA (Dead On Arrival).

3. Publicly demand that George W. Bush apologize to the people of the Gulf Coast for failing them, or else resign. It is time stop fearing Bush Almighty, assuming that he and Karl Rove can keep trashing the country and never pay a price. The man just impaled himself on his own arrogance and contempt for life. Even conservative reporters were outraged by his team's indifference and dishonesty. Under Bush, America abandoned our poor, sick and disabled in a crisis -- and the whole world saw it on live TV.

4. Resolve not to lose a single moment, pacing back and forth, wringing our hands and trying not to appear too "partisan" or "blaming." Of course, the Republicans are going to howl that we are "finger-pointing" or "exploiting the tragedy." What else can they say for themselves at this point? That Bush did a good job? Let them call us names. Let us stay focused on ensuring that the thousands who perished did not die in vain.

5. Insist that New Orleans be rebuilt -- under the direction of those who have lived there for generations, not at the behest of big developers or carpetbagging profiteers like Halliburton. To that end, let's passionately support grassroots organizations in the region like Community Labor United, Southern Empowerment Project and Project South. And let's help any evacuees who relocate to our areas get politically organized, so they can stay involved in the process.

6. Help rebuild the Gulf Coast on a visionary, environmentally sustainable basis. (On worldchanging.com, Alan AtKisson makes a beautiful, well-reasoned and comprehensive case for rebuilding New Orleans as a model "green city.") All of our environmental sustainability, environmental justice and eco-business networks can unite to make this happen.

7. Launch a national network of individuals to help secure from all levels of government properly funded reconstruction and evacuee support. (We are gathering signatures for such an effort at ellabakercenter.org.) Let's push our mayors and city councils to pass Sister City ordinances in solidarity with New Orleans and other hurricane-ravaged towns; to make evacuee support a yearly budget item, through the entire decade of rebuilding, if need be; to appoint a paid ombudsman to support local evacuees and to coordinate information flow with Louisiana and Mississippi officials.

8. Call for National Guard troops to be returned from Iraq, especially those from Louisiana and Mississippi. The Katrina aftermath shows how much we need our disaster relief forces to be home, in the United States. Let's tie, with a thousand strings, progressives working in the recovery effort to the anti-war movement. (The United for Peace & Justice statement, The Gulf Wars, makes a convincing case for common ground.)

9. Wage a war against forgetting. We must not let Big Media or the Right orchestrate amnesia by pushing this tragedy to the back pages. We deserve levels of ongoing media attention that match and exceed 9/11. Every writer, filmmaker and artist must share this shameful story: a hurricane came, and America left its poor, black and disabled people behind to die. We must sear that fact into the country's memory. This catastrophe and its lessons must become part of the national legend. Only then can we be assured that the mindset that permitted it will never again lead this country.

We could not save those who died needlessly on Mississippi rooftops and in Louisiana attics. But we still have time to rescue America. Taking these steps -- and dozens more like them -- are the best ways to honor the dead. Through bold action, we just may find the gift in this hideous, grievous wound.

Van Jones is the national executive director of the Ella Baker Center For Human Rights. He also serves on the boards of the Apollo Alliance, Bioneers, Rainforest Action Network, Circle of Life and the Vasconcellos Legacy Project.

AlterNet's Ongoing Katrina Coverage:

2005-10-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

EIGHT BIG LIES ABOUT KATRINA
Jeremy Schulman, Raphael Schweber-Koren, Media Matters for America
Big Media has given ample space for administration officials
and conservatives to spread falsehoods about relief efforts.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25227/

SWIMMING TO NEW ORLEANS
Nick Glassman, Pacific News Service
A native New Orleanean goes home -- and finds a war zone of
floating bodies, angry survivors and threatening policemen.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25220/

RESCUING AMERICA: A 9-STEP PLAN
Van Jones, AlterNet
The tragedy of Katrina offers progressives the rare
opportunity to step in with vision, courage and leadership.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25184/

IT'S ACCOUNTABILITY TIME
Scott Ritter, AlterNet
Hurricane Katrina has blown away the layers of lies peddled
by the Republican government over the last four years.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25221/

POST-KATRINA TALKING POINTS
Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
Democrats must make crystal-clear how illusory the
president's purported strength and leadership really are.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25219/

10 GREAT WAYS YOU CAN HELP
Don Hazen, AlterNet
Americans: Let's not let our clumsy, uncaring government
undermine our capacity to help those in need. Here are 10
outstanding endeavors that deserve your support.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25177/

THE PROGRESS REPORT / 9-9-05

2005-10-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, and Christy Harvey

September 9, 2005

KATRINA
Brown, More Unqualified Than You Thought

KATRINA
Bush's Poor Managerial Record

UNDER THE RADAR
Go Beyond The Headlines

For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org.
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KATRINA
Brown, More Unqualified Than You Thought

Astoundingly, FEMA Director Michael Brown is even more unqualified for his job than previously believed. The reason: he's been lying on his resume. A 2001 White House press release states that "from 1975 to 1978, Brown worked for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma, overseeing the emergency services divisions." Brown's official government biography says he served "as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." Time Magazine contacted Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond and got the real story. Deakins revealed that Brown "was an 'assistant to the city manager' from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. 'The assistant is more like an intern,' she told TIME. 'Department heads did not report to him.'" It's just one of several fabrications Brown has made about his professional experience.

BROWN FALSELY CLAIMS HE WAS NAMED "OUTSTANDING PROFESSOR": In a profile on Findlaw.com, Brown claims he was named "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University." Charles Johnson, a member of the university's public relations office, said Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here." (Johnson added, "'He may have been an adjunct instructor' ... but that title is very different from that of 'professor.'") Johnson said the chair of the Political Science Department at CSU was not aware of the "Outstanding Political Science Professor" award.

BROWN FALSELY CLAIMS HE'S A DIRECTOR AT A NURSING HOME: On his Findlaw.com profile, Brown "states that from 1983 to the present he has been director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond." An administrator at the home told Time that Brown is "not a person that anyone here is familiar with." The nursing home doesn't have a board of directors anymore and when it did, no one remembers Brown being on it. According to a veteran employee Brown "was never director here, was never on the board of directors, was never executive director. He was never here in any capacity. I never heard his name mentioned here."

BROWN'S CONDUCT MAY JEOPARDIZE HIS LAW LICENSE: Brown is a member of the Oklahoma State Bar. According to the "Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct," conduct involving "dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation" is a violation constituting "professional misconduct." Oklahoma state law specifies that "any lawyer violating these Rules of Professional Conduct shall be subject to discipline." Discipline includes "disbarment, suspension of a respondent from the practice of law for a definite term ... public censure or private reprimand." Note to other members of the Oklahoma State Bar: According to Rule 8.3 of the Oklahoma Rules of Professional Conduct, "A lawyer having knowledge that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer's honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority."

INCOMPETENCE AT FEMA RUNS DEEP: The Washington Post reports that "[f]ive of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters." The top three officials -- Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- "arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation." Because of high turnover in recent years, "nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity." The result: "[E]xperts inside and out of government said a 'brain drain' of experienced disaster hands throughout the agency, hastened in part by the appointment of leaders without backgrounds in emergency management, has weakened the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters."

KATRINA
Bush's Poor Managerial Record

The fallout of Hurricane Katrina has served as yet another example of the poor leadership and faulty management Americans have witnessed from the Bush administration over the past five and a half years. According to a CBS News poll, 58 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Katrina; only 38 percent approve. A Pew Research Center poll showed Bush's approval ratings slipping to the lowest levels of his presidency, with only 40 percent giving Bush a favorable evaluation. "The CBS survey found that almost half the country has little or no confidence in Bush's ability to handle a crisis." The Financial Times writes that a majority of Americans are questioning Bush's leadership skills, and with good reason. After years of witnessing repeated high-profile, mismanaged failures from the administration, the American public is seeing the Katrina catastrophe as just the latest example.

9/11 FAILURES SIMILAR TO THOSE IN KATRINA: The former chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Gov. Thomas Kean, said, "The same mistakes made on 9/11 were made over again, in some cases worse.... Those are system-wide failures that can be fixed and should have been fixed right away." Despite Bush's pledge that he would not "forget the lessons of 9/11, September 2001," Kean and former co-chairman, Rep. Lee Hamilton, cited parallels between Katrina and 9/11, such as emergency communications problems and a failure to target resources at communities facing the greatest risk. As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches this weekend, Kean warned that changes in leadership need to be made. "There was nobody in charge.... There have got to be clear lines of authority because if there isn't somebody in charge, it costs lives."

RECONSTRUCTION OF IRAQ HAS BEEN POORLY MANAGED: Yesterday, the top U.S. official in charge of auditing Iraq reconstruction funds said extra funding will be needed to finish key Iraqi reconstruction projects because the U.S. has spent more money than expected on security. Shortly after the invasion of Iraq occurred, U.S. Agency for International Development Director Andrew Natsios said only $1.7 billion would be needed to reconstruct Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz claimed that Iraqi oil money would be able to pay for the country's own reconstruction. The Bush administration then doled out high-dollar reconstruction contracts to close allies and lobbyists until the deteriorating security situation drove away many of the contractors. The Bush administration continued to bungle the reconstruction effort by not spending the appropriated funds at a time when the security situation was becoming more and more untenable. The latest announcement that more money will be needed is the fallout of a poorly managed effort by the administration to reconstruct Iraq.

PRESCRIPTION DRUG BILL ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF BUSH'S POOR MANAGEMENT: After initially ensuring the nation that its prescription drug bill would cost $400 billion, the administration's 2006 budget revealed that the cost will actually be $913 billion. With no guarantee that seniors will be afforded competitive drug prices, the plan may end up benefiting drug companies more than those who need it most. U.S. News reported, "White House officials are nervous that the elderly will be disappointed when they focus on the new Medicare prescription drug plan that the president is promoting."

BUSH REMAINS OUT-OF-TOUCH WITH THE PRIORITIES OF MOST AMERICANS: While Bush has dedicated most of his second-term agenda to privatizing Social Security, that plan now appears to be "off the radar." And despite the negative impact that Katrina recovery efforts will have on the nation's deficit, the White House and its right-wing allies have demonstrated a steadfast commitment to keeping tax cuts on the table. The recently passed energy bill, in the wake of Katrina, is demonstrating that it is of little help to Americans who are seeking relief at the gas pump. Most Americans believed the economy was heading in the wrong direction prior to Katrina -- now the need for better economic leadership is more pressing than ever.

Under the Radar

CORRUPTION -- TOM DELAY'S POLITICAL COMMITTEE INDICTED: A Texas grand jury has indicted Texans for a Republican Majority (TRM), the PAC formed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), on charges of taking illegal corporate money as DeLay helped Republicans win control of the Texas Legislature and Congress in 2002. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has also charged the Texas Business Association with four indictments for working with TRMPAC "in a complicated scheme to circumvent the election code by funneling massive amounts of secret corporate wealth into elections." While no charges have been leveled against the majority leader and his spokesman claims that he played only a "limited" role on the advisory board and at fundraising events, it may be just a matter of time and jurisdictional reshuffling before DeLay can delay no longer. TRMPAC documents show DeLay was indeed heavily associated with the organization, as the founder, adviser, and prominent fundraiser, staffing it with close allies (who are now being charged). TRMPAC has also awarded work contracts to DeLay's daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro.

PUBLIC OPINION -- AMERICANS ANGRY OVER WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO KATRINA: Thank goodness President Bush doesn't look at polls. An AP-Ipsos poll released today shows that almost two-thirds of Americans, 65 percent, "say the country is headed in the wrong direction — up from 59 percent last month." Only 39 percent approved of President Bush's job performance, the lowest rating since AP-Ipsos began measuring public approval of Bush in December 2003. President Bush also scored all-time low approval ratings (41 percent) in a Zogby poll released yesterday. The historic lows may a response to the public's frustration with the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina. Only 36 percent of respondents to the Zogby poll gave the president passing marks on his handling of the crisis. Additionally, according to a CBS News poll, Americans disapproved of his handling of the crisis 58-38 percent; more than two-thirds of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey said President Bush could have done more to assist the relief efforts.

POVERTY -- THIRD WORLD IN OUR OWN BACK YARD: "Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World," according the United Nations Human Development Report released yesterday. The study "reveals that the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years -- and is now the same as Malaysia," the UK Independent reports. "America's black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday." In "unusually outspoken language," the United Nations accuses the Bush administration of having "an overdeveloped military strategy and an under-developed strategy for human security," creating an "urgent need to develop a collective security framework that goes beyond military responses to terrorism." American Progress has produced such a strategy -- Integrated Power -- check it out here.

LABOR -- WHITE HOUSE USING KATRINA TO CUT WAGES: The Bush administration still has not learned one of the central lessons of Hurricane Katrina: Poverty and substandard wages hurt our nation. The 1931 Davis-Bacon Act requires federal contractors to pay at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is being conducted. Bush has issued an executive order to suspend Davis-Bacon and allow federal contractors rebuilding after the hurricane to profit at the expense of their workers. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, notes that Bush is "using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities."

GENOCIDE -- ONE YEAR LATER: One year ago today, the Bush administration declared that the horrors unfolding in Darfur -- the mass slaughters, forced displacement, and coordinated rape campaigns -- amounted to genocide. To mark the anniversary, faith and advocacy groups spoke out about the administration's attempts to help resolve the crisis: "It is time to move the Darfur genocide from a talking point to an action item. President Bush must put this issue on the top of his inbox," said Richard Cizik, vice president of government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. Experts believe the violence in Darfur has abated somewhat in recent months, though recent reports "have also indicated an increase in sexual assaults on women and girls in many of the camps where most of the African population in Darfur have been displaced."

CULTURALLY INSENSITIVE RIGHT-WING QUOTE OF THE DAY: Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) of Baton Rouge overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

Massive Failure in Gulf Demands Massive Response

2005-10-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

Your work helped force Sen. Frist to retreat from his effort to repeal the estate tax, but the Republican-led Congress still intends to pursue tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires!

Contact Congress NOW and Tell Your Elected Officials :

Demand that Congress get to work to fund the health care, housing, employment and education needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina and abandon all plans to extend and give additional tax breaks to the wealthy and abandon their budget plans to cut health care and nutrition programs for low-income families.

Click here to send them a message
www.PFAW.org/go/priorities

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has opened a window onto a debate that has been raging for years over the role of the federal government in meeting the needs of its people. The massive outcry for a more effective government response to this natural disaster is a resounding repudiation of those who have sought to cripple the government by cutting off its resources.

Four years ago, Grover Norquist, a leader of a cadre of activists who have waged a sustained campaign to weaken the federal government, declared, "My goal is to cut government… down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." The woefully inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina shows the danger of the philosophy of Norquist and his allies in the Bush administration and on Capitol Hill.

Under the Bush administration's priorities, Americans are increasingly vulnerable to calamity and the government is increasingly unable to protect them. Americans are now demanding a federal government that can respond to the major challenges it will always be called upon to answer. With your help, People For the American Way will compel Congress to deliver.

We are determined to force the Bush administration and Congress to end the right-wing crusade to strip away government protections from those least able to defend themselves in order to turn over ever larger portions of this nations riches to the wealthy. We are contributing to and supporting a comprehensive effort to repair the damage done to our government's ability to respond to Americans' needs.

Now, however, we must make the Congressional leadership understand that they cannot carry on as if nothing has happened. You helped win a victory on Tuesday, forcing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to retreat from his effort to repeal the estate tax. But the Republican-led Congress still intends to pursue this and other tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and to cut programs that help meet the health care and nutrition needs of low-income families. Write your senators and representative and demand that Congress address our national priorities. Tell them to:

1. get to work to fund the health care, housing, employment and education needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina;

2. abandon all plans to extend or give additional tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations that drain our ability to meet important national priorities; and

3. abandon their budget plan (called budget reconciliation) to cut health care and nutrition programs for low-income families.

--Your Allies at People For the American Way

Click here to send a message:
www.PFAW.org/go/priorities

Hurricane Dubya

2005-10-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

Geov Parrish
WorkingForChange.com
09.09.05
Hurricane Dubya

Katrina: an epic disaster plus the epic cluelessness of the Bush administration

There's a lesson in all this.

Lots of lessons, actually, but one of the most basic things we've learned from the flooding of New Orleans is that a generation of politicians ideologically hostile to government's very existence cannot do the basic jobs we rely on governments for.

There is no telling how many people died unnecessarily because of the delay, of several days, in the arrival of critical supplies of food and water, medical help, and the establishment of some minimal level of security. It may well run into the thousands -- people killed not by the hurricane, but by the ineptness of government's response to it. Bush Administration cronies are trying to shift the blame to local and state (Democratic) leaders, but it is the federal government that has the lead responsibility for triaging natural disasters. And as all the world could see, the Bush team failed. Miserably.

They failed because for years they've been treating FEMA as a political football, appointing unqualified Bush pals to leadership positions and whittling away at the budget. Resources were diverted to terrorism prevention and the war in Iraq; the result was, among other things, that 35% of Louisiana's National Guard was in Iraq, including all its high water vehicles. High water? In Iraq?

Stories are now emerging: moving, blood-curdling stories from the survivors of not just the hurricane but the official response to it, of the callousness and hostility officials displayed once they did get on site. There is no way around it: the quality of the relief effort, and the attitude of officials toward victims, would have been very different if the victims had not been mostly poor and black. Survivors who looked to the official "shelter" sites at the Superdome and convention center for relief were subjected to conditions not fit for animals, spending days in squalor, desperately waiting for perpetually promised food and water.

This was on full view for the rest of America, and the world, to see. And for once, mainstream media has not been shy about criticizing this administration. They could scarcely avoid it, because the shortfallings of the official response were so obvious. It remains hard to believe that citizens of the wealthiest country in the history of the world could be reduced so quickly, by the hundreds of thousands, to a desperate struggle for survival.

For years, critics who have responded to the ideological extremism and cronyism of the Bush administration have failed no highlight an equally disturbing trait, its often staggering incompetence. Now, we all know. Efforts to spin this as a local failure notwithstanding, it's hard to see how George Bush will ever live down his response to Katrina, his epic cluelessness -- "Nobody ever anticipated a breach of the levees!" -- combined with a lethal delay in understanding and responding to the scale of the disaster. Credible estimates are now putting the death toll as high as 10,000 – that's three times the number of lives lost in 9/11. I don't think George Bush ever wrapped his mind around the idea that there could be so many people who were too poor to have the means to evacuate the city as a level 5 hurricane approached. Bush let those people down, and a lot of them died, unnecessarily, as a result.

Now comes the hard work of managing the dispersal of over a million people from greater New Orleans, people who are landing in a strange city, whether housed by relatives, friends, strangers, or official shelters, people without jobs, money, or the lives they once had. After the universal outcry over the failed initial response, keep a careful eye on how the Bush administration manages this diaspora. If its previous record is any indication, look for a lot of promises, a good deal of profiteering by corporations friendly to the administration, and very little help that actually reaches the people who need it.

For years, conservatives have tried to argue that social functions of government can in fact be managed by volunteerism and the non-profit sector. The outpouring of generosity from ordinary Americans in the wake of Katrina has been staggering but only the government has the resources to deal with the displacement of so many people, and with the virtual rebuilding of what was once a major American city. In its other major social disaster, the war in Iraq, the Bush administration has managed to reduce most ordinary Iraqis to a quality of life far worse than they endured under Saddam Hussein. The often poor and black survivors of New Orleans must not be left to a similar fate.

Bush's failings in response to Katrina will continue to haunt him because they are consistent with how he has governed throughout his five years of power. The wealthy will be enriched by government; everyone else will be left to fend for themselves. In New Orleans, we saw what happened when that governing philosophy met reality head-on. Remember how many lives were lost or ruined, and remember who could have made a difference, but didn't.

Geov Parrish is a Seattle-based columnist and reporter for Seattle Weekly, In These Times and Eat the State! He writes the daily Straight Shot for WorkingForChange. He can be reached by email at geovlp@earthlink.net -- please indicate whether your comments may be used on WorkingForChange in an upcoming "letters" column.

There is no telling how many people died unnecessarily because of government delays.
(c) Working Assets Online. All rights reserved.

CARPENTER'S KATRINA RELIEF

2005-10-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

This is a dialougue between a good friend and union brother of mine and another brother from the Gulf Coast Region. There are pictures to go along with the dialogue. I want to thank all the brothers and sisters and people in general who have bypassed the stagnation of FEMA and actually helped those who needed it. During the flooding of Western Washington in 1996 I had a taste of FEMA and was not impressed. We ended up rejecting what little they had to offer as there were too many strings attached. FEMA has been a joke and has gotten to the point of hysteria under BushCo. If we haven't realized before now, the fiasco in New Orleans and the continuing debacle in Iraq should make us painfully aware, that if you aren't in the top 1-2% of the economic pie you are ON YOUR OWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Brothers and Sisters we only have each other and we must take care of ourselves...........PEACE.............Scott

Thu, 8 Sep 2005 17:57:52 -0700

Steve,
It was good to hear from you, thanks. As I think I mentioned
over the phone, the trustees at LU 131 have been charged with finding a
charitable outlet "that serves everyone". After speaking with you I
feel you are serving everyone. We're under a lot of pressure to either
follow the letter of the motion or support you. Is it possible to
designate our donation to "helping the general public"? If we could do
that it would help us fulfill the mandate of our membership- and
support you as well during this Waking Nightmare. Everybody needs help and
there are billions going to the good of the population, but we want our
Brothers and Sisters to know the Family is with them. I can't imagine
what you guys are going through. Thanks from all of us.

I didn't get your e-mail today but my brothers did and gave me your
address. Could you "reply to all" so that the other trustees, Linda
Romanovitch and Elmer Headly are informed?

I'm still chuckling at your jokes from that 3 day...

Gary Fasso

Trustee, Local Union 131

From: STEVEN SHELTON [mailto:ubc283@msn.com]
Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 8:05 AM
To: Gary Fasso

Gary,
I'm not sure that I understand the philosophy of preferring that
members' money NOT be given to members in need. Could you imagine being a
20-year member who just lost his job, his home, his truck, his clothes, his
dignity, and everything else he owned in a hurricane and being told that the
donations from other members are not meant for you because we have to
help everyone else instead? Even worse if the guy you end up giving the
money to uses the donated money to buy a set of tools and becomes a nonunion
carpenter, competing with you at a lower wage to rebuild your city.

Having said that, let me just say that no one involved in the releif
efforts on behalf of the carpenters union has refused to help anyone. Baton
Rouge, Louisiana was set up as an evacuation point before the hurricane and as
a result, many shelters were set up by Red Cross, FEMA, and Salvation
Army, so there was not a huge need for shelter space. The council's training was
set up as a shelter for members who were evacuated to Texas or other parts
of the country but wanted to come back to be closer to their homes when it
was safe to go gather what's left of their belongings. Once open, the
training center welcomed anyone who needed shelter. In addition to the people
staying at the center, the council was also providing food and supplies to
EVERYONE who came by.

In Moss Point, Mississippi, the council set up a distribution point from
day one. The only people staying at the center are the council employees,
who are loading and unloading food and supplies and serving meals.
Thousands of people per day come to get supplies and food. Starting the distribution point without a relief fund, council employees had to spend thousands of dollars of their own money to buy supplies, food, gas, and water to GIVE
to the general public. When word got out about the center, the community
flooded the center looking for help. As expected, the carpenters union
rose to meet the needs of the community and haven't slowed down, yet.

I have attached some pictures and news articles that show that the Moss
Point center is widely seen as a community distribution point. You'll
notice the line of cars pulling up for supplies. To my knowledge, there
isn't a member among them.

Usually, I recommend that donors split their donations because I believe
that both councils are performing valuable services for both our members
and their surrounding communities. In this case, I recommend that you give
your entire donation to the South Central Carpenters Relief Fund to ensure
that your money goes to "helping the general public". This fund would help
you follow the letter of the motion and ensure that your money goes to an
organization that's not taking 10-20% of your donation to cover the
salaries of the people running the fund. All of your donation will go to buy
supplies for any and all needy families in Mississippi.

Thanks for your local's support.

I look forward to seeing you again.

Steve

Steve,

THANK-YOU. Exactly how I feel! I couldn't have said it better,
and Lord knows I've been searching for the words. I'm going to do
everything I can to get you the help you need.

Proud to be your Brother,
Gary

9/11 And The Sport of God

2005-10-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

Bill Moyers
September 09, 2005

This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received the seminary’s highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions to faith and reason in America. Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program NOW With Bill Moyers. Moyers also serves as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, which gives financial support to TomPaine.com.

At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I still do.

My spiritual forebears did not take kindly to living under theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it to others. “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils,” thundered the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for denying Puritan authority over his conscience. Baptists there were a “pitiful negligible minority” but they were agitators for freedom and therefore denounced as “incendiaries of the commonwealth” for holding to their belief in that great democracy of faith—the priesthood of all believers. For refusing to pay tribute to the state religion they were fined, flogged, and exiled. In l651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Mass. His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he refused. They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. Again he refused. It is the love of liberty, he said, “that must free the soul.”

Such revolutionary ideas made the new nation with its Constitution and Bill of Rights “a haven for the cause of conscience.” No longer could magistrates order citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds that they did not believe. No longer would “the loathsome combination of church and state”—as Thomas Jefferson described it—be the settled order. Unlike the Old World that had been wracked with religious wars and persecution, the government of America would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and politics would make inevitable. The First Amendment neither inculcates religion nor inoculates against it. Americans could be loyal to the Constitution without being hostile to God, or they could pay no heed to God without fear of being mugged by an official God Squad. It has been a remarkable arrangement that guaranteed “soul freedom.”

It is at risk now, and the fourth observance of the terrorist attacks of 9/ll is an appropriate time to think about it.

Four years ago this week, the poet’s prophetic metaphor became real again and “the great dark birds of history” plunged into our lives.

They came in the name of God. They came bent on murder and martyrdom. It was as if they rode to earth on the fierce breath of Allah himself, for the sacred scriptures that had nurtured these murderous young men are steeped in images of a violent and vengeful God who wills life for the faithful and horrific torment for unbelievers.

Yes, the Koran speaks of mercy and compassion and calls for ethical living. But such passages are no match for the ferocity of instruction found there for waging war for God’s sake. The scholar Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer carefully traces this trail of holy violence in his important book, Is Religion Killing Us? [Trinity Press International, 2003]. He highlights many of the verses in the Koran that the Islamic terrorists could have had in their hearts and on their lips four years ago as they moved toward their gruesome rendezvous. As I read some of them, close your eyes and recall the scenes of that bright September morning which began in the bright sun under a blue sky:

Those who believe Fight in the cause of Allah, and Those who reject Faith Fight in the cause of Evil. (4:76)

So We sent against them A furious Wind through days of disaster, that
We might Give them a taste of a Penalty of humiliation In this Life; but
The Penalty of the Hereafter will be More Humiliating still: And they
Will find No help. (41:16)

Then watch thou For the Day That the sky will Bring forth a kind Of smoke (or mist) Plainly visible, Enveloping the people: This will be a Penalty
Grievous. (44:10-11)

Did the people of the towns Feel Secure against the coming Of Our
Wrath by night While they were asleep? Or else did they feel
Secure against its coming in Broad daylight while they Played
About (carefree)? Did they then feel secure Against the Plan of
Allah?—But no one can feel Secure from the Plan of Allah,
except those (Doomed) to ruin. (7:97-99)

So the holy warriors came—an airborne death cult, their sights on God’s enemies: regular folks, starting the day’s routine. One minute they’re pulling off their jackets, shaking Sweet n’ Low into their coffee, adjusting the height of their chair or a picture of a child or sweetheart or spouse in a frame on their desk, booting up their computer—and in the next, they are engulfed by a horrendous cataclysm. God’s will. Poof!

But it is never only the number of dead by which terrorists measure their work. It is also the number of the living— the survivors—taken hostage to fear. Their mission was to invade our psyche; get inside our heads—deprive us of trust, faith, and peace of mind: keep us from ever again believing in a safe, just, and peaceful world, and from working to bring that world to pass. The writer Terry Tempest Williams has said “the human heart is the first home of democracy.” Fill that heart with fear and people will give up the risks of democracy for the assurances of security; fill that heart with fear and you can shake the house to its foundations.

In the days leading up to 9/ll our daughter and husband adopted their first baby. On the morning of September 11th our son-in-law passed through the shadow of the World Trade Center toward his office a few blocks up the street. He arrived as the horrors erupted. He saw the flames, the falling bodies, the devastation. His building was evacuated and for long awful moments he couldn’t reach his wife, our daughter, to say he was okay. Even after they connected it wasn’t until the next morning that he was able to make it home. Throughout that fearful night our daughter was alone with their new baby. Later she told us that for weeks thereafter she would lie awake at night, wondering where and when it might happen again, going to the computer at three in the morning to check out what she could about bioterrorism, germ warfare, anthrax and the vulnerability of children. The terrorists had violated a mother’s deepest space.

Who was not vulnerable? That morning Judith and I made it to our office at Channel Thirteen on West 33rd Street just after the second plane struck. Our building was evacuated although the two of us remained with other colleagues to do what we could to keep the station on the air. The next day it was evacuated again because of a bomb scare at the Empire State Building nearby. We had just ended a live broadcast for PBS when security officers swept through and ordered everyone out. This time we left. As we were making our way down the stairs I took Judith’s arm and was struck by the thought: Is this the last time I’ll touch her? Could what we had begun together a half century ago end here on this dim, bare staircase? I forced the thought from my mind, willed it away, but in the early hours of morning, as I sat at the window of our apartment looking out at the sky, the sinister intruder crept back.

Terrorists plant time bombs in our heads, hoping to turn each and every imagination into a private hell governed by our fear of them.

They win only if we let them, only if we become like them: vengeful, imperious, intolerant, paranoid. Having lost faith in all else, zealots have nothing left but a holy cause to please a warrior God. They win if we become holy warriors, too; if we kill the innocent as they do; strike first at those who had not struck us; allow our leaders to use the fear of terrorism to make us afraid of the truth; cease to think and reason together, allowing others to tell what’s in God’s mind. Yes, we are vulnerable to terrorists, but only a shaken faith in ourselves can do us in.

So over the past four years I have kept reminding myself of not only the horror but the humanity that was revealed that day four years ago, when through the smoke and fire we glimpsed the heroism, compassion, and sacrifice of people who did the best of things in the worst of times. I keep telling myself that this beauty in us is real, that it makes life worthwhile and democracy work and that no terrorist can take it from us.

But I am not so sure. As a Christian realist I honor my inner skeptic. And as a journalist I always know the other side of the story. The historian Edward Gibbon once wrote of historians what could be said of journalists. He wrote: “The theologians may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian [read: journalist] He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.”

The other side of the story:

Muslims have no monopoly on holy violence. As Jack Nelson-Pallmayer points out, God’s violence in the sacred texts of both faiths reflect a deep and troubling pathology “so pervasive, vindictive, and destructive” that it contradicts and subverts the collective weight of other passages that exhort ethical behavior or testify to a loving God.

For days now we have watched those heart-breaking scenes on the Gulf Coast: the steaming, stinking, sweltering wreckage of cities and suburbs; the fleeing refugees; the floating corpses, hungry babies, and old people huddled together in death, the dogs gnawing at their feet; stranded children standing in water reeking of feces and garbage; families scattered; a mother holding her small child and an empty water jug, pleading for someone to fill it; a wife, pushing the body of her dead husband on a wooden plank down a flooded street; desperate people struggling desperately to survive.

Now transport those current scenes from our newspapers and television back to the first Book of the Bible—the Book of Genesis. They bring to life what we rarely imagine so graphically when we read of the great flood that devastated the known world. If you read the Bible as literally true, as fundamentalists do, this flood was ordered by God. “And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh… behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” (6:5-l3). “I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath of life from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall die.” (6:l7-l9) Noah and his family are the only humans spared—they were, after all, God’s chosen. But for everyone else: “… the waters prevailed so mightily… that all the high mountains….were covered….And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts…and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died….” (7:17-23).

The flood is merely Act One. Read on: This God first “hardens the heart of Pharaoh” to make sure the Egyptian ruler will not be moved by the plea of Moses to let his people go. Then because Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, God turns the Nile into blood so people cannot drink its water and will suffer from thirst. Not satisfied with the results, God sends swarms of locusts and flies to torture them; rains hail and fire and thunder on them destroys the trees and plants of the field until nothing green remains; orders every first-born child to be slaughtered, from the first-born of Pharaoh right on down to “the first-born of the maidservant behind the mill.” An equal-murderous God, you might say. The massacre continues until “there is not a house where one was not dead.” While the Egyptian families mourn their dead, God orders Moses to loot from their houses all their gold and silver and clothing. Finally, God’s thirst for blood is satisfied, God pauses to rest—and boasts: “I have made sport of the Egyptians.”

Violence: the sport of God. God, the progenitor of shock and awe.

And that’s just Act II. As the story unfolds women and children are hacked to death on God’s order; unborn infants are ripped from their mother’s wombs; cities are leveled—their women killed if they have had sex, the virgins taken at God’s command for the pleasure of his holy warriors. When his holy warriors spare the lives of 50,000 captives God is furious and sends Moses back to rebuke them and tell them to finish the job. One tribe after another falls to God-ordered genocide: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites—names so ancient they have disappeared into the mists as fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren, infants in arms, shepherds, threshers, carpenters, merchants, housewives—living human beings, flesh and blood: “And when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them; then you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them…(and) your eyes shall not pity them.”

So it is written—in the Holy Bible.

Yes, I know: the early church fathers, trying to cover up the blood-soaked trail of God’s sport, decreed that anything that disagrees with Christian dogma about the perfection of God is to be interpreted spiritually. Yes, I know: Edward Gibbon himself acknowledged that the literal Biblical sense of God “is repugnant to every principle of faith as well as reason” and that we must therefore read the scriptures through a veil of allegory. Yes, I know: we can go through the Bible and construct a God more pleasing to the better angels of our nature (as I have done.) Yes, I know: Christians claim the Old Testament God of wrath was supplanted by the Gospel’s God of love [See The God of Evil , Allan Hawkins, Exlibris.]

I know these things; all of us know these things. But we also know that the “violence-of-God” tradition remains embedded deep in the DNA of monotheistic faith. We also know that fundamentalists the world over and at home consider the “sacred texts” to be literally God’s word on all matters. Inside that logic you cannot read part of the Bible allegorically and the rest of it literally; if you believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection, and the depiction of the Great Judgment at the end times you must also believe that God is sadistic, brutal, vengeful, callow, cruel and savage—that God slaughters.

Millions believe it.

Let’s go back to 9/11 four years ago. The ruins were still smoldering when the reverends Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell went on television to proclaim that the terrorist attacks were God’s punishment of a corrupted America. They said the government had adopted the agenda “of the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians” not to mention the ACLU and People for the American Way (The God of the Bible apparently holds liberals in the same low esteem as Hittites and Gergushites and Jebusites and all the other pagans of holy writ.) Just as God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out a corrupted world, now—disgusted with a decadent America—“God almighty is lifting his protection from us.” Critics said such comments were deranged. But millions of Christian fundamentalists and conservatives didn’t think so. They thought Robertson and Falwell were being perfectly consistent with the logic of the Bible as they read it: God withdraws favor from sinful nations—the terrorists were meant to be God’s wake-up call: better get right with God. Not many people at the time seemed to notice that Osama bin Laden had also been reading his sacred book closely and literally, and had called on Muslims to resist what he described as a “fierce Judeo-Christian campaign” against Islam, praying to Allah for guidance “to exalt the people who obey Him and humiliate those who disobey Him.”

Suddenly we were immersed in the pathology of a “holy war” as defined by fundamentalists on both sides. You could see this pathology play out in General William Boykin. A professional soldier, General Boykin had taken up with a small group called the Faith Force Multiplier whose members apply military principles to evangelism with a manifesto summoning warriors “to the spiritual warfare for souls.” After Boykin had led Americans in a battle against a Somalian warlord he announced: “I know my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his God was an idol.” Now Boykin was going about evangelical revivals preaching that America was in a holy war as “a Christian nation” battling Satan and that America’s Muslim adversaries will be defeated “only if we come against them in the name of Jesus.” For such an hour, America surely needed a godly leader. So General Boykin explained how it was that the candidate who had lost the election in 2000 nonetheless wound up in the White House. President Bush, he said, “was not elected by a majority of the voters—he was appointed by God.” Not surprising, instead of being reprimanded for evangelizing while in uniform, General Boykin is now the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. (Just as it isn’t surprising that despite his public call for the assassination of a foreign head of state, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing was one of the first groups to receive taxpayer funds from the President’s Faith-Based Initiative for “relief work” on the Gulf Coast.)

We can’t wiggle out of this, people. Alvin Hawkins states it frankly: “This is a problem we can’t walk away from.” We’re talking about a powerful religious constituency that claims the right to tell us what’s on God’s mind and to decide the laws of the land according to their interpretation of biblical revelation and to enforce those laws on the nation as a whole. For the Bible is not just the foundational text of their faith; it has become the foundational text for a political movement.

True, people of faith have always tried to bring their interpretation of the Bible to bear on American laws and morals—this very seminary is part of that tradition; it’s the American way, encouraged and protected by the First Amendment. But what is unique today is that the radical Religious Right has succeeded in taking over one of America’s great political parties—the country is not yet a theocracy but the Republican Party is—and they are driving American politics, using God as a a battering ram on almost every issue: crime and punishment, foreign policy, health care, taxation, energy, regulation, social services and so on.

What’s also unique is the intensity, organization, and anger they have brought to the public square. Listen to their preachers, evangelists, and homegrown ayatollahs: Their viral intolerance—their loathing of other people’s beliefs, of America’s secular and liberal values, of an independent press, of the courts, of reason, science and the search for objective knowledge—has become an unprecedented sectarian crusade for state power. They use the language of faith to demonize political opponents, mislead and misinform voters, censor writers and artists, ostracize dissenters, and marginalize the poor. These are the foot soldiers in a political holy war financed by wealthy economic interests and guided by savvy partisan operatives who know that couching political ambition in religious rhetoric can ignite the passion of followers as ferociously as when Constantine painted the Sign of Christ (the “Christograph”) on the shields of his soldiers and on the banners of his legions and routed his rivals in Rome. Never mind that the Emperor himself was never baptized into the faith; it served him well enough to make the God worshipped by Christians his most important ally and turn the Sign of Christ into the one imperial symbol most widely recognized and feared from east to west.

Let’s take a brief detour to Ohio and I’ll show you what I am talking about. In recent weeks a movement called the Ohio Restoration Project has been launched to identify and train thousands of “Patriot Pastors” to get out the conservative religious vote next year. According to press reports, the leader of the movement— the senior pastor of a large church in suburban Columbus—casts the 2006 elections as an apocalyptic clash between “the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell.” The fear and loathing in his message is palpable: He denounces public schools that won’t teach creationism, require teachers to read the Bible in class, or allow children to pray. He rails against the “secular jihadists” who have “hijacked” America and prevent school kids from learning that Hitler was “an avid evolutionist.” He links abortion to children who murder their parents. He blasts the “pagan left” for trying to redefine marriage. He declares that “homosexual rights” will bring “a flood of demonic oppression.” On his church website you read that “Reclaiming the teaching of our Christian heritage among America’s youth is paramount to a sense of national destiny that God has invested into this nation.”

One of the prominent allies of the Ohio Restoration Project is a popular televangelist in Columbus who heads a $40 million-a-year ministry that is accessible worldwide via l, 400 TV stations and cable affiliates. Although he describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a “Christocrat”—a gladiator for God marching against “the very hordes of hell in our society”—he nonetheless has been spotted with so many Republican politicians in Washington and elsewhere that he has been publicly described as a“spiritual advisor” to the party. The journalist Marley Greiner has been following his ministry for the organization, FreePress. She writes that because he considers the separation of church and state to be “a lie perpetrated on Americans—especially believers in Jesus Christ”—he identifies himself as a “wall builder” and “wall buster.” As a wall builder he will “restore Godly presence in government and culture; as a wall buster he will tear down the church-state wall.” He sees the Christian church as a sleeping giant that has the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. The giant is stirring. At a rally in July he proclaimed to a packed house: “Let the Revolution begin!” And the congregation roared back: “Let the Revolution begin!”

(The Revolution’s first goal, by the way, is to elect as governor next year the current Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election process in 2004 year when a surge in Christian voters narrowly carried George Bush to victory. As General Boykin suggested of President Bush’s anointment, this fellow has acknowledged that “God wanted him as secretary of state during 2004” because it was such a critical election. Now he is criss-crossing Ohio meeting with Patriot Pastors and their congregations proclaiming that “America is at its best when God is at its center.”) [For the complete stories from which this information has been extracted, see: “An evening with Rod Parsley, by Marley Greiner, FreePress, July 20, 2005; Patriot Pastors,” Marilyn Warfield, Cleveland Jewish News, July 29, 2005; “Ohio televangelist has plenty of influence, but he wants more”, Ted Wendling, Religion News Service, Chicago Tribune, July 1, 2005; “Shaping Politics from the pulpits,” Susan Page, USA Today , Aug. 3, 2005; “Religion and Politics Should Be Mixed Says Ohio Secretary of State,” WTOL-TV Toledo, October 29, 2004].

The Ohio Restoration Project is spreading. In one month alone last year in the president’s home state of Texas, a single Baptist preacher added 2000 “Patriot Pastors” to the rolls. On his website he now encourages pastors to “speak out on the great moral issues of our day…to restore and reclaim America for Christ.”

Alas, these “great moral issues” do not include building a moral economy. The Christian Right trumpets charity (as in Faith Based Initiatives) but is silent on social and economic justice. Inequality in America has reached scandalous proportions: a few weeks ago the government acknowledged that while incomes are growing smartly for the first time in years, the primary winners are the top earners—people who receive stocks, bonuses, and other income in addition to wages. The nearly 80 percent of Americans who rely mostly on hourly wages barely maintained their purchasing power. Even as Hurricane Katrina was hitting the Gulf Coast, giving us a stark reminder of how poverty can shove poor people into the abyss, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that last year one million people were added to 36 million already living in poverty. And since l999 the income of the poorest one fifth of Americans has dropped almost nine percent.

None of these harsh realities of ordinary life seem to bother the radical religious right. To the contrary, in the pursuit of political power they have cut a deal with America’s richest class and their partisan allies in a law-of-the-jungle strategy to “starve” the government of resources needed for vital social services that benefit everyone while championing more and more spending rich corporations and larger tax cuts for the rich.

How else to explain the vacuum in their “great moral issues” of the plight of millions of Americans without adequate health care? Of the gross corruption of politics by campaign contributions that skew government policies toward the wealthy at the expense of ordinary taxpayers? (On the very day that oil and gas prices reached a record high the president signed off on huge taxpayer subsidies for energy conglomerates already bloated with windfall profits plucked from the pockets of average Americans filling up at gas tanks across the country; yet the next Sunday you could pass a hundred church signboards with no mention of a sermon on crony capitalism.)

This silence on economic and political morality is deafening but revealing. The radicals on the Christian Right are now the dominant force in America’s governing party. Without them the government would not be in the hands of people who don’t believe in government. They are culpable in upholding a system of class and race in which, as we saw last week, the rich escape and the poor are left behind. And they are crusading for a government not “of, by, and for the people” but in favor of one based on Biblical authority.

This is the crux of the matter: To these fundamentalist radicals there is only one legitimate religion and only one particular brand of that religion that is right; all others who call on God are immoral or wrong. They believe the Bible to be literally true and that they alone know what it means. Behind their malicious attacks on the courts (“vermin in black robes,” as one of their talk show allies recently put it,) is a fierce longing to hold judges accountable for interpreting the Constitution according to standards of biblical revelation as fundamentalists define it. To get those judges they needed a party beholden to them. So the Grand Old Party—the GOP—has become God’s Own Party, its ranks made up of God’s Own People “marching as to war.”

Go now to the website of an organization called America 2l (http://www.america21.us/Home.cfm ). There, on a red, white, and blue home page, you find praise for President Bush’s agenda—including his effort to phase out Social Security and protect corporations from lawsuits by aggrieved citizens. On the same home page is a reminder that “There are 7,177 hours until our next National Election….ENLIST NOW.” Now click again and you will read a summons calling Christian pastors “to lead God’s people in the turning that can save America from our enemies.” Under the headline “Remember—Repent—Return” there is language reminiscent of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell reminding you that:

...one of the unmistakable lessons [of 9/11] is that America has lost the full measure of God’s hedge of protection. When we ask ourselves why, the scriptures remind us that ancient Israel was invaded by its foreign enemy, Babylon, in 586 B.C. ….(and) Jerusalem was destroyed by another invading foreign power in 70 A.D. …. Psalm l06:37 says that these judgments of God …were because of Israel’s idolatry. Israel, the apple of God’s eye, was destroyed … because the people failed… to repent.'

If America is to avoid a similar fate, the warning continues, we must “remember the legacy of our heritage under God and our covenant with Him and, in the words of II Chronicles 7:14: ‘Turn from our wicked ways.’ "

Just what does this have to do with the president’s political agenda praised on the home page? Well, squint and look at the fine print at the bottom of the site. It reads: America 2l is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to educate, engage and mobilize Christians to influence national policy at every level. Founded in l989 by a multi-denominational group of pastors and businessmen, it is dedicated to being a catalyst for revival and reform of the culture and the government .” (emphasis added)

The corporate, political and Religious Right converge here, led by a president who, in his own disdain for science, reason and knowledge, is the most powerful fundamentalist in American history.

What are the stakes? In his last book, the late Marvin Harris, a prominent anthropologist of the time, wrote that “the attack against reason and objectivity is fast reaching the proportions of a crusade.” To save the American Dream, “we desperately need to reaffirm the principle that it is possible to carry out an analysis of social life which rational human beings will recognize as being true, regardless of whether they happen to be women or men, whites or black, straights or gays, employers or employees, Jews or born-again Christians. The alternative is to stand by helplessly as special interest groups tear the United States apart in the name of their “separate realities’ or to wait until one of them grows strong enough to force its irrational and subjective brand of reality on all the rest.”

That was written 25 years ago, just as the radical Christian Right was setting out on their long march to political supremacy. The forces he warned against have gained strength ever since and now control much of the United States government and are on the verge of having it all.

It has to be said that their success has come in no small part because of our acquiescence and timidity. Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious. Republican moderates tried appeasement and survive today only in gulags set aside for them by the Karl Roves, Bill Frists and Tom DeLays. Democrats are divided and paralyzed, afraid that if they take on the organized radical Right they will lose what little power they have. Trying to learn to talk about God as Republicans do, they’re talking gobbledygook, compromising the strongest thing going for them—the case for a moral economy and the moral argument for the secular checks and balances that have made America “a safe haven for the cause of conscience.”

As I look back on the conflicts and clamor of our boisterous past, one lesson about democracy stands above all others: Bullies—political bullies, economic bullies and religious bullies—cannot be appeased; they have to be opposed with a stubbornness to match their own. This is never easy; these guys don’t fight fair; “Robert’s Rules of Order” is not one of their holy texts. But freedom on any front—and especially freedom of conscience—never comes to those who rock and wait, hoping someone else will do the heavy lifting. Christian realism requires us to see the world as it is, without illusions, and then take it on. Christian realism also requires love. But not a sentimental, dreamy love. Reinhold Niebuhr, who taught at Union Theological Seminary and wrestled constantly with applying Christian ethics to political life, put it this way: “When we talk about love we have to become mature or we will become sentimental. Basically love means…being responsible, responsibility to our family, toward our civilization, and now by the pressures of history, toward the universe of humankind.”

Christian realists aren’t afraid to love. But just as the Irishman who came upon a brawl in the street and asked, “Is this a private fight or can anyone get in it?” we have to take that love where the action is. Or the world will remain a theatre of war between fundamentalists.

Rebuild The Gulf Coast -- And America

2005-10-03T07:09:00.000-07:00

Roger Hickey
September 09, 2005

Roger Hickey is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future.

Now is the time for Americans take action to help all those affected by Hurricane Katrina—but also to take back our government to make it an effective instrument for rebuilding America.

The failure of the Bush administration to plan for the predictable destruction of Hurricane Katrina demonstrates how the radical conservative attack on government has utterly failed our country. But our problem didn’t start with Bush. Decades of anti-government ideology, tax cutting, ultra-individualism and slashed public investment have brought us an Administration that is unable to do even the basics: to respond effectively to natural disasters and protect the general welfare. And that failure has reminded all Americans of the ongoing disaster of poverty in America.

Therefore, we ask you to join with millions of fellow Americans to demand decisive action to address the immediate problems of rebuilding the devastated region. But we need to do more. In place of the failed right-wing vision of government that has ignored growing poverty and neglected America’s public needs with such tragic results, we pledge ourselves to work together to advance a larger progressive agenda to address our country’s real problems.

Please, take the public pledge to support a bold plan to Rebuild the Gulf Coast and Rebuild America .

http://ourfuture.org/Rebuild_America.cfm

Starting today, we pledge to work together to build support for an ambitious plan we call Rebuild the Gulf Coast and Rebuild America.

1. We want Congress and the Bush Administration to take immediate steps, as proposed by Senate Minority Leader Reid, to meet the urgent health care, housing, education and economic needs of the millions of Americans affected by Katrina.

2. We call for a long-term effort to rebuild the Gulf Coast region—to reestablish commerce, construct energy-efficient housing, and reduce the impact of future natural disasters by rebuilding in a way that works with, not against, natural wetlands and river systems. This reconstruction effort should include jobs and training for unemployed residents of the Gulf—similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps—as proposed by NAACP Chair Julian Bond. This would put money in the pockets of the 400,000 newly unemployed people—in places where few jobs are available, especially for the unskilled.

3. We call for strengthening, not weakening, the social safety net—for those affected by the hurricane and for all Americans. We call on Congress not to proceed with the Bush administration’s planned budget cuts in Medicaid, housing, food stamps and education.

Congress should repeal the recently-passed bankruptcy bill to help families struggling with disasters and soaring gas prices.

Congress should stop Bush’s Social Security privatization plan because we need guaranteed family security.

We pledge to work for economic change to build an America where no one is stuck in poverty, and where all our people have jobs, health care, education, and healthy communities.

4. We call on President Bush and Republicans in Congress to renounce all efforts to repeal the estate tax—not just postpone a vote as Senator Frist has now done. And they should also give up their continuing campaign to make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Instead of rewarding the rich with favors, we need to restore tax fairness while raising the revenues for the investment we need to rebuild America.

5. We demand a plan to start bringing our troops home from Iraq and rebuild the stretched National Guard to deal with future emergencies.

6. We pledge to work to pass the Apollo Alliance plan for energy independence—starting with immediate efforts to reduce U.S. demand for foreign oil. America should declare a goal of reducing our dependence on foreign energy and of dramatically cutting pollution that alters the earth’s climate. This will require retooling our homes, communities and transportation systems and challenging vested energy interests to change. And we urge Congress to move quickly on Sen. Byron Dorgan’s plan for an excess profits tax on energy companies, with revenue devoted to reconstruction and investment in energy independence.

We need your help to move forward this bold agenda to Rebuild the Gulf Coast and Rebuild America. Please, take a public pledge to work toward this agenda by sending this message to your elected officials—and to let them know you won’t stop until we have transformed our government from one that tells us: "You are on your own," to a democratic instrument that helps us declare, "We can solve any problem together."

The Titanic Of Our Era

2005-10-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

Bill Fletcher, Jr.
September 09, 2005

Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the President of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, DC-based non-profit organizing and education center formed to raise awareness in the USA regarding issues facing the nations and peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. He can be reached at bfletcher@transafricaforum.org.

The complete failure of the Bush administration—and to a lesser extent state and local authorities on the Gulf Coast— to respond to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina has raised questions about the motives at play. The fact that the lives of hundreds of thousands of poor and black people were thrown up for grabs and that the Bush administration could not mobilize any significant response for five days has led many people to assume that this was an act of planned genocide. How else, one may wonder, could such a thing have been allowed to happen?

There is another way to think about the disaster: the steerage on the Titanic. To refresh your memory, that was the section of the ship that provided the cheapest accommodations and where the poorest were housed. It was also the lowest part of the ship, the least safe and the site of overwhelming death. One may remember, as portrayed in the film Titanic , that the passengers in steerage were literally locked in, trapped like rats such that they could not escape the rising water.

Does this somehow sound familiar?

Did the builders of the Titanic design it in such a way that they aimed to kill the occupants of steerage? Not at all. They did, however, design it so that if anyone was going to die, it would be those in steerage. Their deaths were acceptable for the builders of the Titanic. After all, those in steerage were considered a less-relevant population than the rich on the upper decks.

The capitalism of the contemporary era shares many of the same values informing the builders of the Titanic; the poor are not the responsibility of society at large. The construction of the Titanic was not simply a technological matter. There was a decision that the poor could be sacrificed in order that the rich survive. That is the essence of capitalism in general, but particularly neo-liberal capitalism—the capitalism of this era. There need not have been an intent to wipe out thousands of poor and black people in the Gulf. The assumptions about how money would be spent, what was necessary, etc., meant that in the face of disaster, the poor and the black would be sacrificed, and the rich would have their SUVs [read: life boats]

For decades, this nation’s economic policies have created a widening gap in personal wealth, making it impossible for many Americans to achieve economic security no matter how hard they work. The (largely unionized) jobs that provided opportunities for workers to climb out of poverty have been disappearing. In their place are low-wage service jobs, part-time employment or nothing at all. This is what makes comments such as those offered recently by conservative critic Linda Chavez , so outrageous and insulting. Instead of finding the sources of Gulf Coast poverty in an economic system that casts off hundreds of thousands of people, Chavez and her allies place the blame on so-called family values. Chavez never grapples with the question of how to keep families together when their worlds collide with the shockwaves of the modern economy.

Through directing tax cuts to serve the rich and powerful; through the allocation of billions of dollars to pursue an illegal war and occupation of Iraq; through urban relocation programs that destroy entire communities, the steerage compartments of the good ship ‘Gulf Coast’ were created. All that was needed to create total devastation was a collision with an iceberg.

The infrastructure of New Orleans had been collapsing for years. Various scenarios within the last five years indicated the catastrophe that could unfold if a Category 5 storm hit New Orleans. There was recognition, now openly being admitted, that tens of thousands of the poor of that city might be left stranded in the face of a major hurricane while the rich could climb into their SUVs and escape.

There simply were not enough lifeboats, because those in steerage where just not that relevant.

After years of attacking the public sector and the rationale for essential government programs and taxes, the conservative right has reaped the results. They calculated that they could get by without investing the necessary resources into repairing the growing inequality in America. They calculated that they could ignore the plight of the Gulf Coast’s poor. Each hurricane that missed the Gulf Coast was another source of relief and a confirmation that it was better to put resources into wars and tax cuts than into saving the lives of those at the bottom.

So, it did not have to be a conspiracy, because, in fact, the game of U.S. capitalism has been rigged from the beginning. We just happened to see the results in bloated bodies, crying and ill children, the devastation of a beautiful coastline, and the possibly permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

Bush's Story Isn't History

2005-10-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

John Brown
September 09, 2005

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer who resigned over the war in Iraq, compiles a daily "Public Diplomacy Press Review" posted on the internet here and available free by request at johnhbrown30@hotmail.com.

As we commemorate the fourth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Americans are keenly aware of just how disastrously the Bush administration mismanaged the aftermath of that first September catastrophe. The documented failures are many, such as the failure to provide meaningful homeland security, the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, and the deceptive linkage made between 9/11 and Iraq.

And now we are witness to the start of another. Bush's August 30th speech reframing the historical meaning of 9/11—claiming that his war on terror is comparable to World War II—is not reasoned explanation or convincing persuasion, but rather base propaganda that does violence to history. Result: We're as confused as ever about what the "Global War on Terror" is all about.

True, Bush seems somewhat familiar with history. At Yale, he majored in the subject. This summer his reading list reportedly included Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky and The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry. Professional historians may despise Bush ("His presidency has been remarkably successful," one historian stated, "in its pursuit of disastrous policies") but he has publicly claimed to be concerned about their discipline, at one point even condemning historical "revisionism."

Bush's familiarity with history hasn't translated into his understanding of it. His latest ruminations in his speech commemorating V-J day link his Global War on Terror (GWOT) and World War II. Not surprisingly, they show our Chief Executive simply doesn't grasp the complexity and ambiguity of history. For him, the past is just a version of the present—the present as he (or as he's told) to see it.

In those remarks, addressed to WWII veterans and thousands of sailors against the backdrop of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, Bush the commander-in-chief did all he could to claim that his misbegotten GWOT was analogous to Franklin D. Roosevelt's victorious leadership in the Second World War.

Once again, war came to our shores with a surprise attack that killed thousands in cold blood. Once again, we face determined enemies who follow a ruthless ideology that despises everything America stands for. Once again, America and our allies are waging a global campaign with forces deployed on virtually every continent. And once again, we will not rest until victory is America's and our freedom is secure.

As numerous commentators (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ) have observed, Bush's analogy doesn't pass history 101. The enemies in these two vastly different conflicts were not at all the same: Germany and Japan were industrialized nation-states with powerful military machines, while Al Qaeda is a terrorist group and Afghanistan and Iraq third-world countries with armies that could hardly match ours.

Japan first attacked us; we first attacked Iraq. Germany declared war on the United States; not so the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. During World War II, America had strong allies; in Iraq, there is a loose, depleted "coalition" as part of the U.S. effort. American troops in Europe were liberators; in Iraq, many argue, we are increasingly despised occupiers. The American-funded reconstruction of Europe after 1945, carried out in a peaceful local environment, was, most specialists in the period would say, a success; in 2005, the U.S. is increasingly unable to assist in building the so-called "New Iraq," in large part because of the precarious security situation there. The U.S. occupation of Iraq continues to cause tragic American deaths; in Germany and Japan "the total number of post-conflict American combat casualties...was zero."

The U.S. national spirit today was nothing like what it was during World War II. In WWII, the country was mobilized and ready to sacrifice, having been persuaded by FDR what we were fighting for: to defeat inhumane regimes in Germany and Japan. Today, Americans increasingly don't know why we are in Iraq, and many don't see a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein. There was a draft then: now we have a professional army with problems getting recruits. Four of Roosevelt's sons served in the war; the Bush twins don't intend, for all we know, to die for daddy in Iraq.

In WWII, there were no anti-war activists outside FDR's "Little White House," in Warm Springs, Georgia. Yet a major event in the summer of 2005 was the dissenting presence of Cindy Sheehan and her supporters near the current president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. As World War II progressed, most historians would agree, Americans sensed that they were on our way to victory; in 2005, more than a year after Bush's claim that our "mission" was "accomplished" in Iraq, we increasingly fear that we have gotten ourselves into a Vietnam-like quagmire with no clear exit strategy.

Finally, our actions in World War II helped the credibility, image and prestige of the United States (among our friends and allies, and among some in enemy nations, even before the end of the war), opening up the world to American ideas and products. But, since Bush's declaration of "The Global War on Terror" and preemptive attack on Iraq, we are witnessing the birth of an anti-American century, with the United States a pariah country whose commercial goods are loosing their "American" appeal, much to the long-term detriment of our national interests—and resulting in the loss of jobs for ordinary Americans.

Meanwhile, Bush, clearly unable to draw lessons from his major in college, continues to use history not as a source of enlightenment, either for himself or the nation, but as raw material for his favorite activity: "to kind of catapult," as he puts it with his usual verbal virtuosity, "the propaganda."

Helo Pilots 'Counseled' for Rescuing New Orleanians without Permission

2005-10-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

Helo Pilots 'Counseled' for Rescuing New Orleanians without Permission
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905E.shtml
Two Navy helicopter pilots were reminded of the importance of supply missions
after delivering their cargo and then rescuing 110 hurricane victims in New
Orleans instead of immediately returning to base, the military said Wednesday.
"They were not reprimanded," Nichols, a civilian public affairs officer, said.
"They were counseled."

Study: "War on Terror" Saves Few Lives
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905F.shtml
The US "war on terror" is saving fewer lives than just spending the money on
disease prevention and research, and has probably caused deaths by taking money
away from basic services, an expert said on Thursday.

Patrick Sabatier | The Anti-9/11
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905H.shtml
It was inevitable that the ravages provoked by Katrina on New Orleans should
evoke the horrors Bin Laden inflicted on New York. American vulnerability in the
face of natural forces has been compared to its vulnerability to the terrorists.

Hiding Bodies Won't Hide the Truth
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905K.shtml
Cadavers have a way of raising questions. When people see them, they wonder, how
did they get dead? When a lot of people see a lot of dead bodies, politicians
begin thinking of damage control.

The Baltimore Sun | After Katrina Fiasco, Time for Bush to Go
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905M.shtml
It is time to hold them accountable, claims the Baltimore Sun editorial - this
ugly, troglodyte crowd of Capital Beltway insiders, rich lawyers, ideologues,
incompetents and their strap-hangers should be tarred, feathered and ridden
gracefully and mindfully out of Washington and returned to their caves, clubs in
hand.

Tight Constraints on Pentagon's Freedom Walk
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090905N.shtml
Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 Memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking
extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with
the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who
does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

Point Those Fingers

2005-10-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 09 September 2005

To understand the history of the Bush administration's response to disaster, just follow the catchphrases.

First, look at 2001 Congressional testimony by Joseph Allbaugh, President Bush's first pick to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, he said, would emphasize "Responsibility and Accountability" (capital letters and boldface in the original statement). He repeated the phrase several times.

What Mr. Allbaugh seems to have meant was that state and local government officials shouldn't count on FEMA to bail them out if they didn't prepare adequately for disasters. They should accept responsibility for protecting their constituents, and be held accountable if they don't.

But those were rules for the little people. Now that the Bush administration has botched its own response to disaster, we're not supposed to play the "blame game." Scott McClellan used that phrase 15 times over the course of just two White House press briefings.

It might make sense to hold off on the criticism if this were the first big disaster on Mr. Bush's watch, or if the chain of mistakes in handling Hurricane Katrina were out of character. But even with the most generous possible assessment, this is the administration's second big policy disaster, after Iraq. And the chain of mistakes was perfectly in character - there are striking parallels between the errors the administration made in Iraq and the errors it made last week.

In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.

The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.

In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.

The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a "turkey farm," a source of patronage jobs.

As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's "upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management." By now everyone knows FEMA's current head went from overseeing horse shows to overseeing the nation's response to disaster, with no obvious qualifications other than the fact that he was Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate.

All that's missing from the Katrina story is an expensive reconstruction effort, with lucrative deals for politically connected companies, that fails to deliver essential services. But give it time - they're working on that, too.

Why did the administration make the same mistakes twice? Because it paid no political price the first time.

Can the administration escape accountability again? Some of the tactics it has used to obscure its failure in Iraq won't be available this time. The reality of the catastrophe was right there on our TV's, although FEMA is now trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of the dead. And people who ask hard questions can't be accused of undermining the troops.

But the other factors that allowed the administration to evade responsibility for the mess in Iraq are still in place. The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts. The effort to shift blame to state and local officials is under way. Smear campaigns against critics will start soon, if they haven't already. And raw political power will be used to block any independent investigation.

Will this be enough to let the administration get away with another failure? Let's hope not: if the administration isn't held accountable for what just happened, it will keep repeating its mistakes. Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff will receive presidential medals, and the next disaster will be even worse.

The Outer Limits of Empire: An Interview with Howard Zinn

2005-10-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

TomDispatch.com

Thursday 08 September 2005

He's tall and thin, with a shock of white hair. A bombardier in the great war against fascism and an antiwar veteran of America's wars ever since, he's best known as the author of the path-breaking A People's History of the United States, and as an expert on the unexpected voices of resistance that have so regularly made themselves heard throughout our history. At 83 (though he looks a decade younger), he is also a veteran of a rugged century and yet there's nothing backward looking about him. His voice is quiet and he clearly takes himself with a grain of salt, chuckling wryly on occasion at his own comments. From time to time, when a thought pleases him and his well-used face lights up or breaks out in a bona fide grin, he looks positively boyish.

We sit down on the back porch of the small coffee shop, alone, on a vacation morning. He has a croissant and coffee in front of him. I suggest that perhaps we should start after breakfast, but he assures me that there's no particular contradiction between eating and talking and so, as a novice interviewer, I awkwardly turn on my two tape recorders - one of which, on pause, will still miss several minutes of our conversation (our equivalent, we joke, of Nixon's infamous 18-minute gap). In preparation, he pushes aside his half-eaten breakfast, never to touch it again, and we begin.

Tomdispatch: You and Anthony Arnove just came out with a new book, Voices of a People's History of the United States, featuring American voices of resistance from our earliest moments to late last night. Now, we have a striking new voice of resistance, Cindy Sheehan. I was wondering what you made of her?

Howard Zinn: Often a protest movement that's already underway - and the present antiwar movement was underway even before the Iraq War began - gets a special impetus, a special spark, from one person's act of defiance. I think of Rosa Parks and that one act of hers and what it meant.

TD: Can you think of other Cindy Sheehan-like figures in the past who made movements coalesce?

Zinn: In the antiwar movement of the Vietnam years, there wasn't one person, but when I think back to the abolitionist movement, Frederick Douglass was a special figure in that way. When he came north, out of slavery, and spoke for the first time to a group of antislavery people, the beginnings of a movement existed. [William Lloyd] Garrison had already started [his antislavery newspaper] the Liberator, but Frederick Douglass was able to represent slavery itself in a way that Garrison and the other abolitionists could not. His dramatic appearance, his eloquence, provided a special spark for the abolitionist movement.

TD: I guess Cindy Sheehan also represents something that can't be represented by anyone else, almost, in fact, can't be represented - the American dead in the war and, of course, her own dead son.

Zinn: It's interesting. There have been mothers other than Cindy Sheehan who have spoken out, but she decided on an act that had a special resonance, which was simply to find where Bush was going [he chuckles to himself at the thought] and have a confrontation between the two poles of this war, between its maker and the opposition. She just parked herself near Bush and become the center of national attention, of gravity, around which people gathered, hundreds and hundreds of people.

TD: The Bush administration has had such a long-term strategy of never venturing anywhere that the President might be challenged, but now, unless he's literally on a military base, I suspect he's no longer safe from that, and even then...

Zinn: Did you read about the Mayor of Salt Lake City speaking out before 2,000 people to protest a presidential speech there? This is just what began to happen in the Vietnam War. After a while, [President Lyndon] Johnson and [Vice President Hubert] Humphrey couldn't go anywhere except military bases. And the thing about Cindy Sheehan is that she's not a moderate voice either. I mean, she's saying we must withdraw from Iraq so boldly and clearly that even an antiwar person like [New York Times columnist] Frank Rich refers to her position as "apocalyptic" and kind of outside the pale. And that's terrible, because on the issue of withdrawal she represents, I think, the unspoken desires of a huge number of people and is willing to say what the politicians and the journalists have not yet dared to say. There are very few newspapers in the country - maybe the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and one other - that have simply called for withdrawal without talking about timetables and conditions.

The Logic of Withdrawal in Two Wars

TD: As the person who, in 1967, wrote Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal, how do you compare the logic of withdrawal discussions in this moment with that one?

Zinn: There was a point early in the Vietnam War when no major figure and no critic of the war was simply calling for immediate withdrawal. Everybody was hedging in some way. We must negotiate. We must compromise. We must stop the bombing north of this or that parallel. I think we're at a comparable point now, two years after the beginning of the Iraq War. When my book came out in the Spring of '67, it was just two years after the escalation in early '65 when Johnson sent in the first major infusions of American troops. What's comparable, I think, are the arguments then and now. Even the language is similar. We mustn't cut and run. We mustn't give them a victory. We mustn't lose prestige in the world.

TD: ...credibility was the word then.

Zinn: Yes, exactly, credibility. There will be chaos and civil war if we leave...

TD: ...and a bloodbath.

Zinn: Yes, and a bloodbath - because the one way you can justify an ongoing catastrophe is to posit a greater catastrophe if you don't continue with the present one. We've seen that psychology operating again and again. We saw it, for instance, with Hiroshima. I mean, we have to kill hundreds of thousands of people to avert a greater catastrophe, the death of a million people in the invasion of Japan.

It's interesting that when we finally did leave Vietnam, none of those dire warnings really came true. It's not that things were good after we left. The Chinese were expelled, and there were the boat people and the reeducation camps, but none of that compared to the ongoing slaughter taking place when the American troops were there. So while no one can predict what will happen - I think this is important to say - when the United States withdraws its troops from Iraq, the point is that we're choosing between the certainty of an ongoing disaster, the chaos and violence that are taking place in Iraq today, and an eventuality we can't predict which may be bad. But what may be bad is uncertain; what's bad with our occupation right now is certain. It seems to me that, choosing between the two, you have to take a chance on what might happen if you end the occupation. At the same time, of course, you do whatever you can to mitigate the worst possibilities of your leaving.

Resistance in the Military

TD: I want to return for a moment to Cindy Sheehan. By the last years of the Vietnam War, the American military was almost incapable of fighting and, though there were military families against the war, the main resistance to the war was by then coming from draft-age soldiers themselves. Now we have an all-volunteer army; we know that morale is sinking and that there are specific cases of resistance - refusals to return to Iraq, for instance - within the military, but most of the resistance this time seems to be coming from the families of the soldiers. I wonder whether there's any historical precedent for that?

Zinn: I don't know of any previous war where something like this happened... in the United States anyway. The closest you might get would be in the Confederacy in the Civil War, when the wives of soldiers rioted because their husbands were dying and the plantation owners were profiting from the sale of cotton, refusing to grow grains for civilians to eat. David Williams in Valdosta, Georgia, is coming out this fall with A People's History of the Civil War in which he describes that phenomenon.

In the case of the Soviet Union, though, there may be a closer parallel. Russian mothers protested the continuing war in Afghanistan, their Vietnam. I don't know how strong a part that played in the Soviet decision to withdraw, but certainly there was something dramatic about that.

We had gold star mothers against the war in the Vietnam era, but nothing like this and I think you've pointed to the reason. The GIs in Iraq are not in the same position the draftees were in - although I have to temper that by noting that a lot of the resistance in the Vietnam War came from people who had enlisted in the Army. And, in a certain sense, there are also draftees in this war, people who didn't sign up to fight, or National Guards and Reserves who didn't expect to go to war. You might say that they had been drafted.

Still, because it's a largely all-volunteer army, the protesting has been left to the parents in an unprecedented way. Their children just aren't in a position to protest as easily, and yet I think there's going to be more and more GI protest as the war goes on. That's inevitable. I imagine - there's no way of proving this - that there's already a lot more subterranean protest and disaffection in the military than has been reported, maybe much more than can be reported because it's probably not visible.

When I try to think what would really compel the Bush administration to get out of Iraq, the one thing is a rebellion in the military. David Cortright [author of Soldiers In Revolt: GI Resistance During The Vietnam War] believes that what happened to the military in Vietnam was the crucial factor in finally bringing the United States out of Vietnam.

TD: And what about military resistance at the top rather than the bottom? As far back as Korea, there was a feeling among officers of being in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time and that was replicated in Vietnam. It's clear that the top people in the field in Iraq have known for a long time that they're involved in a catastrophe. They were the ones recently who began talking about draw-downs and withdrawals without permission from the Bush administration.

Zinn: It's a very important development, because when cracks occur in what had previously seemed to be the solidity of the top, it becomes that much more difficult to carry on. One example I think of - it's not a war situation - is McCarthyism. When [red-baiting Senator Joseph] McCarthy began to go after important figures in the Eisenhower administration, when he went after General [George] Marshall and his forays came closer and closer to the top, more and more people moved away from him, and that was critical to his demise. Disaffection in the top ranks of the military has been evident for some time now. [Retired Centcom commander] General [Anthony] Zinni, for instance, has been speaking out from the beginning. For a while I was worried about the similarity between our names [he laughs], but I feel better about it now that he's come out speaking the way he has.

TD: And retired generals like him are always speaking for others inside the military.

Zinn: That's right. They're in a position to say what others can't say. I mean there's been military resistance in many of our wars, but until Vietnam it never reached the point where it actually changed policy. There were mutinies against Washington in the revolutionary army. In the Mexican War, even huge numbers of desertions didn't stop the war. I can't think of any military resistance in World War I. Of course, the United States was only in for a brief time, a year and a half really. Certainly, World War II was a different situation. That's what makes Vietnam such a historical phenomenon. It was the first time you had a movement in the military that was an important factor in changing government policy. And it's interesting that we've had short wars ever since, except for this one, and those wars were deliberately designed to be short so that there wouldn't be time for an antiwar movement to develop. In this case, they miscalculated. Now, I don't think it's a question of if, just when. When and how. I don't think there's any question that the United States is going to have to get out of Iraq. The only questions are: How long will it take? How many more people will die? And how will it be done?

The Outer Limits of Empire

TD: Let me turn to another issue you certainly wrote about in the 60s, war crimes. But "war crimes" was the last charge to arrive in the mainstream in those years and the first to depart. We've certainly experienced many crimes in the last few years, from Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to Afghanistan. I wonder why, as a concept, it sticks so poorly with Americans?

Zinn: It does seem like a hard concept - war crimes, war criminals - to catch on here. There's a willingness to say the leadership is wrong, but it's a great jump from there to saying that the leadership is vicious. Unfortunately, in American culture, there's still a kind of monarchical idea that the President, the people up there, are very special people and while they may make mistakes, they couldn't be criminals. Even after the public had turned against the Vietnam War, there was no widespread talk about Johnson, [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara, and the rest of them being war criminals. And I think it has to do with an American culture of deference to the President and his men - beyond which people refuse to think.

TD: How does an American culture of exceptionalism play into this?

Zinn: I would guess that a very large number of Americans against the war in Vietnam still believed in the essential goodness of this country. They thought of Vietnam as an aberration. Only a minority in the antiwar movement saw it as part of a continuous policy of imperialism and expansion. I think that's true today as well. It's very hard for Americans to let go of the idea that we're an especially good nation. It's comforting to know that, even though we do wrong things from time to time, these are just individual aberrations. I think it takes a great deal of political consciousness to extend the criticism of a particular policy or a particular war to a general negative appraisal of the country and its history. It strikes too close to something Americans seem to need to hold onto.

Of course, there's an element that's right in this as well - in that there are principles for which the United States presumably stands that are good. It's just that people confuse the principles with the policies - and so long as they can keep those principles in their heads (justice for all, equality, and so on), they are very reluctant to accept the fact that they have been crassly, consistently violated. This is the only way I can account for the stopping short when it comes to looking at the President and the people around him as war criminals.

TD: Stepping back from the catastrophe in Iraq, what do you make of the Bush administration's version of the American imperial project?

Zinn: I like to think that the American empire has reached its outer limits with the Middle East. I don't believe it has a future in Latin America. I think it's worn out whatever power it had there and we're seeing the rise of governments that will not play ball with the United States. This may be one of the reasons why the war in Iraq is so important to this administration. Beyond Iraq there's no place to go. So, let's put it this way, I see withdrawal from Iraq whenever it takes place - and think of this as partly wish and partly belief [he chuckles at himself] - as the first step in the retrenchment of the American empire. After all we aren't the first country in history to be forced to do this.

I'd like to say that this will be because of American domestic opposition, but I suspect mostly it will be because the rest of the world won't accept further American forays into places where we don't belong. In the future, I believe 9/11 may be seen as representing the beginning of the dissolution of the American empire; that is, the very event that immediately crystallized popular support for war, in the long run - and I don't know how long that will be - may be seen as the beginning of the weakening and crumbling of the American empire.

TD: There would be an irony in that.

Zinn: Yes, certainly.

War's End

TD: I wanted to turn to the issue of war. You've written about the possible end of war not being a purely utopian project. Do you really believe war could end or is it in our genes?

Zinn: Although lots of things are unclear to me, one thing is very clear. It's not in our genes. Whenever I read accounts, even by people who have been in war, that suggest there's something in the masculine psyche that requires this kind of violence and militarism I don't believe it. I say this on the basis of historical experience; that is, if you compare the instances in which people, mostly men, have committed violent acts and gone to war to those in which people have not gone to war, have rejected war, it seems people don't naturally want war.

They may want a lot of things associated with war - the comradeship, the thrill that comes from holding a weapon. I think this is what confuses people. Thrills, comradeship, all of that can come in many different ways; it comes from war, though, only when people are manipulated into it. To me the strongest argument against an inherent drive to war is the extent to which governments have to resort to get people to go to war, the huge amounts of propaganda and deception of which we had an example very recently. And don't forget coercion. So I discard that idea of a natural inclination to war.

TD: You went to war yourself...

Zinn: I was 20 years old. I was a bombardier in the 8th Air Force on a B-17 crew that flew some of the last missions of the war out of England. I went in as a young, radical, antifascist, believing in this war and believing in the idea of a just war against fascism. At war's end I was beginning to have doubts about whether the mayhem we had engaged in was justified: the bombing of cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombings I had engaged in. And then I was beginning to suspect the motives of the Allied leaders. Did they really care that much about fascism? Did they care about the Jews? Was it a war for empire? In the Air Force I encountered a young Trotskyite on another air crew who said to me, "You know, this is an imperialist war." I was sort of shocked. I said, "Well, you're flying missions! Why are you here?" He replied, "I'm here to talk to people like you." [He laughs.] I mean, he didn't convert me, but he shook me up a little.

After the war, as the years went by, I couldn't help contemplating the promises that had been made about what the war would accomplish. You know, General Marshall sent me - and 16 million others - a letter congratulating us for winning the war and telling us how the world would now be a different place. Fifty million people were dead and the world was not really that different. I mean, Hitler and Mussolini were gone, as was the Japanese military machine, but fascism and militarism, and racism were still all over the world, and wars were still continuing. So I came to the conclusion that war, whatever quick fix it might give you - Oh, we've defeated this phenomenon, fascism; we've gotten rid of Hitler (like we've gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, you see) - whatever spurt of enthusiasm, the after-effects were like those of a drug; first a high and then you settle back into something horrible. So I began to think that any wars, even wars against evil, simply don't accomplish much of anything. In the long run, they simply don't solve the problem. In the interim, an enormous number of people die.

I also came to the conclusion that, given the technology of modern warfare, war is inevitably a war against children, against civilians. When you look at the ratio of civilian to military dead, it changes from 50-50 in World War II to 80-20 in Vietnam, maybe as high as 90-10 today. Do you know this Italian war surgeon, Gino Strada? He wrote Green Parrots: A War Surgeon's Diary. He was doing war surgery in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places. Ninety percent of the people he operated on were civilians. When you face that fact, war is now always a war against civilians, and so against children. No political goal can justify it, and so the great challenge before the human race in our time is to solve the problems of tyranny and aggression, and do it without war. [He laughs quietly.] A very complex and difficult job, but something that has to be faced - and that's what accounts for my becoming involved in antiwar movements ever since the end of World War II.

Drowning Government

2005-10-03T06:21:00.000-07:00

By Thom Hartmann
Information Clearing House

Monday 05 September 2005

In a May 25, 2001 interview, Grover Norquist told National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

Norquist got his wish. Democracy - and at least several thousand people, most of them Democrats, black, and poor - drowned last week in the basin of New Orleans. Our nation failed in its response, because for most of the past 25 years conservatives who don't believe in governance have run our government.

As incompetent as George W. Bush has been in his response to the disaster in New Orleans, he wasn't the one who began the process that inevitably led to that disaster spiraling out of control.

That would be Ronald Reagan.

It was Reagan who began the deliberate and intentional destruction of the United States of America when he famously cracked (and then incessantly repeated): "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

Reagan, like George W. Bush after him, failed to understand that when people come together into community, and then into nationhood, that they organize themselves to protect themselves from predators, both human and corporate, both domestic and foreign. This form of organization is called government.

But the Reagan/Bush ideologues don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, they agree, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - perhaps most important - corporations.

Let the corporations handle your old-age pension. Let the corporations decide how much protection we and our environment need from their toxics. Let the corporations decide what we're paid. Let the corporations decide what doctor we can see, when, and for what purpose.

This is the exact opposite of the vision for which the Founders of this nation fought and died. When Thomas Jefferson changed John Locke's "Life, liberty, and private property" to "Live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it was the first time in the history of the world that a newly founded nation had written the word "happiness" into its founding document. The phrase "promote the general welfare" - another revolutionary concept - first appeared in the preamble to our Constitution in 1787.

Talk show cons and TV talking head cons and political cons - both Republican and DLC Democratic - repeat the mantra of "smaller government," and Americans nod their heads in agreement, not realizing the hidden agenda at work.

Reagan was the first American president to actually preach that his own job was a bad thing. He once said, "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." One can only assume he was speaking of himself and his fellow Republicans, and certainly the current Congress's devotion to the interests of inherited wealth and large corporations displays how badly his philosophy has corrupted a role so noble it drew idealists like Jefferson, Lincoln, and the two Roosevelt's.

But cons can't imagine anybody wanting to devote their lives to the service of their nation. The highest calling in their minds is to make profit.

As Reagan said: "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."

This mind-set - that the only purpose for service in government is to set up the interests of business - may account for why not a single military-eligible member of the Bush or Cheney families has enlisted in their parents' "Noble Cause," whereas all four sons of Franklin Roosevelt joined and each was decorated - on merit - for bravery in the deadly conflict of World War II.

There are, after all, no reasons in the conservative worldview for government service other than self-enrichment. As Ronald Reagan said: "Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."

What they don't say is that the reason they want to remove government in its protective capacity is because they can then make an enormous amount of money, and have a lot of control over people's lives, when they privatize former governmental functions. They want a power vacuum, so corporations and the rich can step in. And with no limits on the inheritability of riches after the "death tax" is ended, wealth vast enough to take over the government can emerge.

Given this conservative world-view, it shouldn't surprise us that in 2001 George W. Bush appointed his 2000 presidential campaign manager (Joseph Albaugh) as head of FEMA, or that two years later Albaugh would have left FEMA to start a consulting firm to marry corporations with Iraq "reconstruction" federal dollars, and put in charge of FEMA his assistant (and old college roommate), an equally unqualified former failed executive with the International Arabian Horse Association.

It also shouldn't surprise us that although Dick Cheney has stayed on vacation in Wyoming through all of this, his company, Halliburton, has already obtained a multi-million-dollar contract to profit from Hurricane Katrina's cleanup.

It's not that these conservatives are incompetent or stupid. When their interests are at stake, they can be very efficient. Consider when Hurricane Charley hit Jeb Bush's state - a year earlier than Katrina - on the second weekend of August, 2004, just months before the elections. The White House website notes:

As of noon Monday [the day after the hurricane left], in response to Hurricane Frances, FEMA and other Federal response agencies have taken the following actions:

About one hundred trucks of water and 280 trucks of ice are present or will arrive in the Jacksonville staging area today. 900,000 Meals-Ready-to-Eat are on site in Jacksonville, ready to be distributed.
Over 7,000 cases of food (e.g., vegetables, fruits, cheese, ham, and turkey) are scheduled to arrive in Winter Haven today. Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) are on the ground and setting up comfort stations. FEMA community relations personnel will coordinate with DMATs to assist victims. - Urban Search and Rescue Teams are completing reconnaissance missions in coordination with state officials.
FEMA is coordinating with the Department of Energy and the state to ensure that necessary fuel supplies can be distributed throughout the state, with a special focus on hospitals and other emergency facilities that are running on generators.
The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin its efforts to provide tarps to tens of thousands of owners of homes and buildings that have seen damage to their roofs.
The National Guard has called up 4,100 troops in Florida, as well as thousands in other nearby states to assist in the distribution of supplies and in preparation for any flooding.
The Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense together have organized 300 medical personnel to be on standby. Medical personnel will begin deployment to Florida tomorrow.
FEMA is coordinating public information messages with Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina so that evacuees from Florida can be informed when it is safe to return. - In addition to federal personnel already in place to respond to Hurricane Charley, 1,000 additional community relations personnel are being deployed to Atlanta for training and further assignment in Florida.
All of this aid was vitally important to Bush family political fortunes in the upcoming election of 2004. Disaster relief checks were in the mail within a week. In just the first thirteen days after Hurricane Charley hit Florida, the White House web site notes that the Bush administration had succeeded in:

Registering approximately 136,000 assistance applicants
Approving over 13,500 applications for more than $59 million in housing assistance
Establishing 12 disaster recovery centers, which have assisted nearly 19,000 disaster victims
Deploying medical teams that have seen nearly 3,000 patients
Disbursing 1.2 million liters of water, 8.1 million pounds of ice, and 2 million meals and snacks
Delivering over 20,000 rolls of plastic sheeting and nearly 170 generators
Treating more than 2,900 individuals through FEMA Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, supporting damaged hospitals
That, of course, was for a Republican State, with a Republican governor, the crony brother of the President. Republicans needed to act like they cared about governing, because they wanted people to vote for them three months later.

But now, with no election looming and with death stalking a Democratic State with a Democratic Governor unrelated to the President, we once again see the Reagan philosophy held ascendant. Bush's call to action? "Send cash to the Red Cross." One of those "thousand points of light" non-governmental organizations his father told us about.

As Brian Gurney, a listener from California, noted: "You can't govern if you don't believe in government."

But you sure can make a buck, and take care of your brother, your campaign manager, and your vice president's company.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, host of a daily progressive talk radio show syndicated nationally by Air America Radio, and host of a morning progressive talk show on KPOJ in Portland, Oregon. His most recent books are The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Unequal Protection, We The People, The Edison Gene,

Powell Calls His UN Speech a Lasting Blot on His Record

2005-10-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

By Steven R. Weisman
The New York Times

Friday 09 September 2005

Washington - The former secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, says in a television interview to be broadcast Friday that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, in which he gave a detailed description of Iraqi weapons programs that turned out not to exist, was "painful" for him personally and would be a permanent "blot" on his record.

"I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world," Mr. Powell told Barbara Walters of ABC News, adding that the presentation "will always be a part of my record."

Asked by Ms. Walters how painful this was for him, Mr. Powell replied: "It was painful. It's painful now." Asked further how he felt upon learning that he had been misled about the accuracy of intelligence on which he relied, Mr. Powell said, "Terrible." He added that it was "devastating" to learn later that some intelligence agents knew the information he had was unreliable but did not speak up.

Mr. Powell also implied in the interview that the United States did not go to war in Iraq with sufficient troops to secure the country and failed to keep sufficient Iraqi forces to help stabilize the country.

"What we didn't do in the immediate aftermath of the war was to impose our will on the whole country with enough troops of our own, with enough troops from coalition forces or by re-creating the Iraqi forces, armed forces, more quickly than we are doing now," he said.

But with Iraq still violent and plagued by sectarian conflict, the United States has "little choice but to keep investing in the Iraqi armed forces and to do everything we can to increase their size and their capability and their strength."

Since leaving office in January, Mr. Powell has declined interview requests. But his expressions of regret about the weapons intelligence and the lack of troops were consistent with many of his statements in office, especially after it became clear that Iraq had none of the weapons that Mr. Powell had said it was stockpiling.

He acknowledged several times that intelligence failures lay behind his presentation on the eve of the Iraq war two years ago, but he has never expressed any regret about the war itself. Asked by Ms. Walters, "When the president made the decision to go to war, you were for it?" Mr. Powell said, "Yes."

Asked about editorials asserting that he had put loyalty "ahead of leadership," Mr. Powell parried the question. "Well, loyalty is a trait that I value, and yes, I am loyal," he replied. "And there are some who say, 'Well, you shouldn't have supported it, you should have resigned.' But I'm glad that Saddam Hussein is gone."

Mr. Powell said he did not blame George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, for the failures and did not believe that Mr. Tenet tried to mislead him.

"No, George Tenet did not sit there for five days with me, misleading me," he said, referring to the week he spent at the Central Intelligence Agency reviewing the evidence on Iraq before making his presentation to the United Nations. "There were some people in the intelligence community who knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up. That devastated me."

Week In Review

2005-10-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

September 9, 2005

NOW IS A TIME FOR LEADERSHIP NOT PARTISANSHIP
This is one failure we will not allow the Republican attack machine to spin away with their usual barrage of photo-ops, finger pointing and press conferences Americans demand accountability and a clear accounting for the failures that compounded the effects of the disaster so that this utterly inadequate response never happens again. It is appalling to see how quickly President Bush and Karl Rove mobilized a political strategy to shift blame, but failed to mobilize a swift response to either keep the people in the Gulf Coast region safe or aid the victims after the storm.

The Republicans even planned to push through an estate tax break totaling over $750 billion to the wealthiest Americans last week while millions were still reeling from this disaster. How could Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist even think of extending the estate tax when those funds can be used to rebuild America. The GOP has finally heeded the call of Democrats to drop the current effort to repeal the estate tax at such an inappropriate moment.

THE HARSH TRUTH: FEDERAL EMERGENCY NOT MANAGED WELL
The current political "blame game" - fueled largely by a White House spin machine pointing fingers at dedicated local officials - cannot hide the utter failure of FEMA to respond in a timely and adequate manner. President Bush's decision to slash critical funding, demote agency officials and bury them in layers of bureaucracy has had catastrophic consequences for residents of the Gulf Coast and left relief workers, public safety officials and even generous foreign governments frustrated.

DNC research prepared a chronicle of FEMA's actions in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush Administration's repeated refusal to give the agency the resources it needs.

BUSH'S FEMA TURNS NATURAL DISASTER INTO BUREAUCRATIC DISASTER

FEMA Urged First Responders Not To Respond To Hurricane Areas. While the situation in New Orleans became increasingly worse, FEMA issued a press release urging all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities. [FEMA Press Release, 8/29/05, http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470]

FEMA Refuses to Ship Trailers to Mississippi To Help With Relief Efforts. "Senator Trent Lott called on President Bush to authorize the immediate release of 20,000 trailers sitting idle in Atlanta. Lott said FEMA has refused to ship the trailers because of red tape and paperwork." [CNN, 9/6/05]

FEMA Would Not Let Red Cross Deliver Food to New Orleans. As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center, American Red Cross officials said that FEMA authorities would not allow them to do the same. "The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross. [Pittsburg Post-Gazette, 9/4/05]

FEMA Refused Amtrak's Offer Of Trains To Evacuate Victims. "Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of 'dragging its feet' when Amtrak offered trains to evacuate victims. 'Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency,' she said." [Financial Times, 9/5/05]

BUSH BURIED FEMA "BENEATH A MASSIVE BUREAUCRACY"

Bureaucratic Reconfigurations Have Stripped FEMA Of Its Focus. When FEMA was folded into the Department of Homeland Security, it became part of the new department's prime focus on terrorism, not winds or floods. The result has been shakeups and reconfigurations that have left the old agency stripped of many of its funding programs and some of its money, prompting cries of protest from emergency managers across the country. [Editorial, Wall Street Journal, 8/16/04]

Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt: Extra Bureaucracy Hindered FEMA's Success. Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt shared his concerns with the House Government Reform Committee in 2004: "We are greatly concerned that the successful partnership that was built between local/state/federal partners and their ability to communicate, coordinate, train, prepare, and respond has been sharply eroded. Second, FEMA... is being buried beneath a massive bureaucracy whose main and seemingly only focus is fighting terrorism while an all hazards mission is getting lost in the shuffle. I firmly believe that FEMA should be extracted from the DHS bureaucracy and re-establish it as an independent agency reporting directly to the President... Third, the FEMA Director has lost Cabinet status and along with it the close relationship to the President and Cabinet Affairs." [House Government Reform Committee, 3/24/04]

BUSH CUT FEMA'S DISASTER RELIEF FUNDS

Disaster Mitigation Programs Slashed Since 2001. Since 2001, key federal disaster mitigation programs, developed over many years, have been slashed and tossed aside. FEMA's Project Impact, a model mitigation program created by the Clinton Administration, has been canceled outright. Federal funding of post-disaster mitigation efforts designed to protect people and property from the next disaster has been cut in half, and now communities across the country must compete for pre-disaster mitigation dollars. [Baltimore City Paper, 9/29/04]

Bush Continuing To Propose Cuts To Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers will be cut in 2006. Bush's 2005 budget proposal called for a 13 percent reduction in the Army Corps of Engineers budget, down to $4 billion from $4.6 billion in fiscal 2004. [Associated Press, 2/6/05; Congressional Quarterly Online, 2/3/04]

WHILE AMERICANS RUSHED TO AID NEIGHBORS, THE GOP...
Much has been said about President Bush partying with John McCain, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on a shoe shopping trip and Vice President Cheney on vacation - all while Americans on the Gulf Shore needed their leadership.

But wait, there's more. Washington Republicans haven't taken a break from actions that make regular American's scratch their head and wonder...

After continual delays and a promise to US Senators that a decision would be forthcoming by Sept. 1, the FDA once again denied women increased access to Plan B emergency contraception (EC) also known as the "morning-after pill." Despite multiple medical and scientific evidence and support of the safety and effectiveness of Plan B, the FDA has put a ruling on hold indefinitely. In protest, Susan Wood who served as assistant FDA commissioner of the Office of Women's Heath resigned after 5 years of service. Woods told the Washington Post she could no longer serve as staff when "scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled."
Recent data from the US Census Bureau tells us the average earnings by women declined by about $330 in real dollars during the past year, from $31,550 to $31,223. [U.S. Census Bureau, 8/30/05; Table A-2]. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi noted since President Bush took office, 5.4 million more Americans are living in poverty, 6 million more are without health insurance, and families are stretched too thin as household incomes have declined by almost $1,700 in the last four years.
The US Navy has awarded Halliburton, a company previously run by Vice President Dick Cheney, to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. According to the Houston Chronicle, the work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract. Coincidentally, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during the first two years of the Bush administration, which is tasked with responding to hurricane disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR.
And speaking of Halliburton updates, the Bush administration demoted the Army's top procurement official last month, after she was critical of a no-bid multibillion-dollar contract award to Halliburton for repair of Iraqi oil fields. Bunnatine Greenhouse had publicly questioned the decision saying the abuse of the contracts was 'the most blatant an improper abuse I have witnessed." [Washington Post, 8/29/05]

But there is some justice to be announced: This week a grand jury handed down five felony indictments to a political action committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and a Texas business group in connection with 2002 legislative campaign contributions.

SUPREME COURT NOMINATION: FIT TO BE CHIEF JUSTICE?
This week Americans mourn the passing of Supreme Court Justice William Renquist. The President has now said he will nominate Judge Roberts as Chief Justice instead of the nomination to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Conner, the stakes are higher and the Senate's Advice and Consent responsibility is even more important.

It is the Chief Justice who sets the tone among the justices, presiding over their private conferences and case discussions as well as assigning responsibility for drafting the decisions. On a Supreme Court that accepts fewer and fewer cases each year, the Chief Justice sets the initial agenda for discussions of which cases are worthy of its consideration, and determines whether the audio of Supreme Court arguments are made publicly available.

It is the Chief Justice who chooses which federal judges serve on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the court that reviews secret electronic surveillance and searches by the federal government.
The Chief Justice assigns judges to assist over-stressed courts.
It is the Chief Justice who heads the entire Judicial Conference, an organization of the nation's federal judges that makes policy of matters affecting the judiciary including its internal ethics, disclosure guidelines and rules of procedure.
The Chief Justice is the most important judge in the country, with even more responsibility for the protection of the rights and freedoms of all Americans. Only 16 Americans have held this position since the birth of our country. Thus, John Roberts bears a heavier burden when he comes before the Senate. At a time when this country, the Congress and even the Supreme Court seems so split, having a Chief Justice who can create consensus may be needed more than ever.

John Roberts's record has raised serious concerns about his role in the early 1980s in seeking to weaken voting rights, roll back women's rights, and impede our progress toward a more equal nation. Before the Senate acts on John Roberts's new nomination, we should know even more about his record, and we should know whom the President intends to nominate as a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor.

DEMOCRATS TAKING THE LEAD
DEMOCRATS CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION TO HELP VICTIMS

Senate Democrats are calling for immediate access to Medicaid, emergency housing vouchers, and food stamps for victims and the expansion of the Disaster Unemployment Insurance Program.

Democrats want to alleviate the burden on school districts with funding for additional teachers, teachers' aides, and counselors and are proposing the establishment of an "800" number for a national victims database and information.

Democrats want to give private employers incentives to hire displaced victims by temporarily qualifying them for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and ensure that Guard units serving in the Gulf Coast qualify for federal benefits.

Democrats are also calling for the President to submit regular reports to Congress on the status of recovery efforts.

DEMOCRATIC LEADERS RESPOND TO VICTIMS WITH OPEN ARMS AND OPEN HEARTS

Below are excerpts from a message to victims staying in Texas from Susan Criss, a Democratic State District Judge in Galveston, Texas. Galveston was struck 105 years ago by a similarly devastating hurricane. After devastation and martial law over a century ago, the whole city of Galveston was raised and rebuilt.

The first thing that I want you to know is that you are very welcome here. We are so glad that you are safe. Many, many people here want to do what ever is necessary to help you.

The second thing that I want you to know is that we understand what is to suffer through and survive hurricanes here. Although many of us have survived dangerous and destructive storms, none of us have suffered through a storm as horrific as Katrina. But this island that is our home has. Up until Katrina this nation's worst natural disaster was the Storm of 1900.

Over 8000 lives were lost. There had not been any evacuation as the storm was not expected. People climbed up to their attics. Many ended up spending the night clinging to tree limbs. When daylight came and the storm had passed they found corpses all over the streets and yards. Water was contaminated. There was concern over sanitation, disease, disposing of the dead and looting. Galveston was under martial law for a week.

Some questioned whether it made sense to rebuild. But most stayed and began the challenging work of rebuilding. Before the storm Galveston was 9 feet below sea level. After the cleanup, city officials decided to "raise the grade". The entire city was raised by 17 feet. The lifting of the city began in 1903 and cost about 3 and a half million dollars.

In the year 2000 we celebrated the 100 year anniversary of Galveston's surviving the Storm of 1900. We thanked God that our ancestors had the courage and foresight to rebuild this beautiful home of ours. We realized that many bonds had formed between families who rode out the storm together. Those bonds have survived several generations and exist today.

We know that your cities can be rebuilt. If it was possible in 1900, it is possible now. Our ancestors could not have rebuilt this city without hope despite overwhelming desperation and fear. Please remember that hope is there for you also.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."-- Barbara Bush, in Houston [Associated Press, 9/6/05]

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Tell Bush: "Don't blame Hurricane victims, help them!"

2005-10-02T11:47:00.000-07:00

President Bush and Republican leaders are trying to shift blame for the poor rescue and relief effort to the victims of Hurricane Katrina including state and local officials. Don't let them get away with that.

Sign a petition today demanding the president stop the blame-shifting and get to work helping Hurricane victims. Petition delivery will start tomorrow in Washington, D.C.

Dear MoveOn member,
It has been a week since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, leveled New Orleans and left hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless. We saw the best of America during that time—millions of people stepped forward to offer help. Meanwhile, the Bush administration failed at their most important job: keeping America safe. The federal effort was too little, too late and it is now becoming obvious that hundreds or even thousands of people died as a result.

Then, starting Friday, in a Karl Rove-led campaign, the White House started to blame state and local officials and even the victims who were stranded without transportation when the Hurricane arrived. Sign our petition demanding that the Bush administration stop blaming victims, including state and local officials, and focus on helping them.

http://political.moveon.org/helpvictims/?id=5967-2890451-iaRFq1MAyj0XP5EB9DkHJw&t=3

We'll begin to deliver the earliest signatures to the White House tomorrow, Thursday, when a delegation of MoveOn members from New Orleans, who are now homeless and will come to Washington and join other MoveOn members outside the White House at a petition delivery and protest. The petition is one important way to demonstrate that the public wants more action to help hurricane victims and is getting angry about this blame-shifting game the Bush administration is playing.

It is important that the Bush administration not get away with shifting their responsibility to local officials. Here is what actually happened.

Timeline

Friday, Aug. 26: Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares a state of emergency in Louisiana and requests troop assistance.

Saturday, Aug. 27: Gov. Blanco asks for federal state of emergency. A federal emergency is declared giving federal officials the authority to get involved.

Sunday, Aug. 28: Mayor Ray Nagin orders mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. President Bush warned of Levee failure by National Hurricane Center. National Weather Service predicts area will be "uninhabitable" after Hurricane arrives. First reports of water toppling over the levee appear in local paper.

Monday, Aug. 29: Levee breaches and New Orleans begins to fill with water, Bush travels to Arizona and California to discuss Medicare. FEMA chief finally responds to federal emergency, dispatching employees but giving them two days to arrive on site.

Tuesday, Aug. 30: Mass looting reported, security shortage cited in New Orleans. Pentagon says that local authorities have adequate National Guard units to handle hurricane needs despite governor's earlier request. Bush returns to Crawford for final day of vacation. TV coverage is around-the-clock Hurricane news.

Wednesday, Aug. 31: Tens of thousands trapped in New Orleans including at Convention Center and Superdome in "medieval" conditions. President Bush finally returns to Washington to establish a task force to coordinate federal response. Local authorities run out of food and water supplies.

Thursday, Sept. 1: New Orleans descends into anarchy. New Orleans Mayor issues a "Desperate SOS" to federal government. Bush claims nobody predicted the breach of the levees despite multiple warnings and his earlier briefing.

Friday, Sept. 2: Karl Rove begins Bush administration campaign to blame state and local officials—despite their repeated requests for help. Bush stages a photo-op—diverting Coast Guard helicopters and crew to act as backdrop for cameras. Levee repair work orchestrated for president's visit and White House press corps.

Saturday, Sept. 3: Bush blames state and local officials. Senior administration official (possibly Rove) caught in a lie claiming Gov. Blanco had not declared a state of emergency or asked for help.

Monday, Sept. 5: New Orleans officials begin to collect their dead.

(Adapted from: Katrina Timeline, http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/ )

Those are the facts. State and local officials BEGGED for help as people in their city suffered. The Bush administration didn't get the job done and when their failure became an embarrassment they attacked those asking for help.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Karl Rove and White House communications director Dan Bartlett "rolled out a plan...to contain the political damage from the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina." The core of the strategy is "to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana."

This is the same pattern of smearing that the Bush political machine has used for a decade. John McCain and John Kerry had their war records smeared. The CIA cover of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife was blown after he criticized the Bush Iraq policy. Now, Hurricane victims are attacked when the Bush administration failed to do their duty to help them.

It isn't just the Bush administration. Republican Senator Rick Santorum blamed victims in a TV interview and House Speaker Dennis Hastert suggested New Orleans should not be rebuilt.

We can't let them get away with this. Please sign our petition today and do your part.

http://political.moveon.org/helpvictims/?id=5967-2890451-iaRFq1MAyj0XP5EB9DkHJw&t=4

This is just the first step. We need to continue to help those in need directly and make sure our government does their job. There will be a time to figure out who specifically to blame and what to change. In the meantime, the Bush administration needs to get to work helping those in need.

Thanks for all you do,

–Tom, Tanya, Joan, Jennifer and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Wednesday, September 7th, 2005

P.S. Check out these links for more on the Hurricane relief efforts.

Katrina Timeline, ThinkProgress.org
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

Editorial: No time for turf wars. The Times-Picayune, September 7, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=869

Editorial blasts federal response. CNN, September 4, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=870

The big disconnect on New Orleans. CNN, September 2, 2005.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=871

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

t r u t h o u t | 09.07

2005-10-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

Sugg and Edelstein | Are We Prepared? Are We Protected?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090705R.shtml
John Sugg writes from Atlanta: Much as 9/11 shifted the nation's discourse
rightward - pushing values like privacy and open discourse aside for national
security - Katrina may revive an appreciation for dealing with the natural world
in a way that doesn't invite so many problems. Perhaps this trauma will begin to
cleanse our lenses a bit and allow us to view things as they really are, rather
than as part of some vast fantasyland to be lobbied and spun for political
expediency.

Paramilitaries Trade Guns for Politics
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090705S.shtml
Some former members of Columbian paramilitary groups have demobilized and formed
a political-social organization known as the Democratic Corporation to enter the
political process, using their base to run for political office. Critics say
that the move could legitimize former bandits and alleged narco-traffickers.

Katrina Environmental Issues 'Almost Unimaginable'
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090705EA.shtml
In the state's first major assessment of the environmental havoc in southern
Louisiana, Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Mike McDaniel said
large quantities of hazardous materials in damaged industrial plants, the danger
of explosions and fires and water pollution were his main concerns eight days
after the storm struck. "It's almost unimaginable, the things we are going to
have to deal with," he said.

Senate Must Look at Tougher Mileage Rules
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090705EB.shtml
Republican Sen. Pete Domenici said lawmakers need to take another look at CAFE
(Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. Domenici was the chief author of a
new $14.5 billion energy policy signed into law barely one month ago that did
not address CAFE standards. In June, the Senate rejected, by 67 to 28, a
Democratic amendment to the energy bill to require better mileage for new
vehicles.

Population Numbers May Doom Salmon
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090705EC.shtml
Too many people using too much energy and natural resources make it inevitable
that wild Pacific salmon will become extinct over the next century without a
major overhaul in the way people live their lives, a group of 30 scientists,
policy analysts and advocates concluded.

Chemicals Bigger Concern Than Cholera
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090705HA.shtml
Despite reporting five deaths from a bacteria-caused illness, public health
officials said they are more concerned about the possibility of toxic chemicals
in the water covering New Orleans than they are about a cholera outbreak. But
more than a week after Hurricane Katrina hit the region, health officials still
don't know what kind of toxic chemicals are in the water.

Greg LeRoy | Thanking Labor
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090705LA.shtml
Greg LeRoy urges us to thank organized labor for supporting corporate
accountability on jobs and taxes. Unions have always advocated for the good of
all working families, he says, and if you like Social Security, Medicare, free
public education and your weekends, thank your local unions and join their
coalitions for more reforms.

Why Do Women Have Abortions?
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/090705WB.shtml
A new survey by the Alan Guttmacher institute shows that women's reasons for
ending a pregnancy have been consistent over time and often focus on their
responsibilities to the children they already have and considerations for the
children they plan to have in the future.

DEMOCRATS.COMThe Patriotic Progressives______________

2005-10-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

DEMOCRATS.COM____The Patriotic Progressives__________________

Welcome to this week's Democrats.com Newsletter! The links below each headline
will take you directly to the related blog entry or discussion thread. Once
there, you can add your own comments and start new discussion threads - just
register and join in the discussion! While this is a weekly newsletter, you can
always get the latest news by visiting http://democrats.com

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A New Book on Bush

A Letter to America: Is President Bush Leading Us in the Right Direction?
by Errington Thompson, M.D

This concise and crispy written book examines NCLB, tax cuts, Afghanistan, Iraq,
North Korea, Clear Skies and the War on Terror. This hard hitting account
logically reveals miscues, misstatements and the missteps of the Bush
Administration. This book serves as a wake up call for all progessives!

http://www.whereistheoutrage.net

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Poke fun with chrome car emblems: Darwin Fish, Jeebus, Hooked Fish, Dead Fish,
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___.COMPOSITION______In This Issue_______________________________

Fix America Now

Bob Fertik writes: "Amidst all its destruction and misery, Hurricane Katrina has
made one thing abundantly clear: America has problems at home that we need to
deal with now. I propose the following plan, which I call 'Fix America First.' "
http://www.democrats.com/fixamericanow

Pelosi on Bush: "Oblivious, in denial, dangerous"

AP: "Congress' top two Democrats furiously criticized the administration's
response to Hurricane Katrina on Wednesday, with Sen. Harry Reid demanding to
know whether President Bush's Texas vacation impeded relief efforts and Rep.
Nancy Pelosi assailing the chief executive as 'oblivious, in denial' about the
difficulties."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6009

LA Gov. Blanco Asked Bush for Assistance on 8/28

A Buzzflash News Alert: "The elected Governor of Louisiana requested immediate
assistance from the unelected dictator of the United States before Hurricane
Katrina hit. Now the GOP storm troopers and their minions in the corporate press
want to blame the locals for a catastrophe beyond the ability of both the
Louisiana State Government and the New Orleans City Government to handle
promptly or completely."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6016

FEMA Chief Sent Help Only After Storm Hit

"The top U.S. disaster official waited hours after Hurricane Katrina struck the
Gulf Coast before he proposed to his boss sending at least 1,000 Homeland
Security workers into the region to support rescuers, internal documents show."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6017

"GOP to announce fake rubber-stamp commission to investigate Katrina - no
Democrats involved"

John at AmericaBlog writes: "Gee, big surprise there. Sources on the Hill are
hearing that the Republicans are going to announce a 'bipartisan' bicameral
Katrina commission, except, while they are saying its bipartisan and bicameral,
they've not told the Senate Democratic Leadership anything about it, the
Democratic Leadership will not be invited to the announcement of the
commission."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6008

First They Blocked Photos of Fallen Soldiers, Now Bush Regime Blocks Photos of
New Orleans Dead

"(Reuters) - The U.S. government agency leading the rescue efforts after
Hurricane Katrina said on Tuesday it does not want the news media to take
photographs of the dead as they are recovered from the flooded New Orleans
area."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6004

Barbara Bush: They "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working out well for
them"

Dear ol' Bar -- don't you just love her? Such a kind, grandmotherly
figure...always so welcoming with a warm smile and a kind word...and such a
"beautiful mind," too...
http://www.democrats.com/node/6001

Billionaire Tax Cuts After Katrina?

Chuck Collins writes: "Just when you couldn't be shocked any further, news item:
This coming week, the U.S. Senate intends to vote to permanently abolish the
federal estate tax, the country's only tax on large inheritances of wealth."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6010

FEMA packed with W's pals

"The three top jobs at the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President
Bush went to political cronies with no apparent experience coping with
catastrophes, the Daily News has learned."
http://www.democrats.com/node/5997

John Roberts is a "Katrina Conservative"

Bush stole the White House in 2000 in part by calling himself a "compassionate
conservative." But actions speak louder than words, and Bush's response to
Hurricane Katrina revealed how compassionless he really is when it comes to the
poor. So it's time to give the Busheviks the label they have earned at the cost
of 10,000 lives: "Katrina Conservatives."
http://www.democrats.com/node/5989

"Roberts Unfit to be Chief Justice of the United States"

PFAW President Ralph Neas writes: "The events of the past week have only
underscored that we need Supreme Court justices who value the role of the courts
in protecting individualsâ€™ rights and freedoms, who understand the nature of
discrimination and its continuing impact on our country, and who will uphold the
role of the federal government in preserving those rights and acting to protect
the common good. John Robertsâ€™ record makes it emphatically clear that he does
not meet this standard."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6018

Rehnquist's Legacy: A Partisan Court

Robert Parry writes: "As the late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William
Rehnquist is warmly remembered for his conservatism and his defense of judicial
prerogatives, a troubling part of his legacy is being ignored â€“ his
unprecedented politicization of the American courts, at times making them little
more than an enforcement arm for the Republican Party."
http://www.democrats.com/node/6019

Bush's Potemkin Village Photo-Ops Divert Recovery Resources While People Are
Still Dying

Cactus Pat writes: "Every time I turn on news or watch a video clip of local New
Orleans officials, like Mayor Nagin or Parish President Broussard, they're
pleading for more help and demanding no more press conferences. Now I get why
they don't want PR stunts. It's costing more lives by diverting manpower and
material to dress up Smirk's staged photo-ops."
http://www.democrats.com/node/5976

Katrina Aftermath Produces More Demands to Impeach Bush

The more Americans learn about Hurricane Katrina - before, during and after -
the more they are demanding Bush's impeachment.
http://www.democrats.com/node/5966

How the Iraq war severely limited Bush's response to Katrina

The following is collection of links that show how incompetent our Government
has proven to be in the face of Hurricane Katrina.
http://www.democrats.com/node/5938

Joe 'Funeralgate' Allbaugh Destroyed FEMA

After Bush stole the White House in 2000, he put his close crony Joe Allbaugh in
charge of FEMA.
http://www.democrats.com/node/5960

Apres George Le Deluge

Paul Jay is creating Independent World Television as a viewer-funded network to
challenge the corporate media and broadcast the truth.
http://www.democrats.com/node/5970

How a REAL President Responds to Disaster

In Sept. 1999, while duly elected President Bill Clinton was on a working trip
to New Zealand to meet with the Chinese president, Cat3 Hurricane Floyd started
menacing the Carolina coast. What did he do? Did he strum a guitar? Did he eat
cake? Did he lie to the troops about Serbia being just like WII?
http://www.democrats.com/node/5958

Poverty Rate Rises to 12.7 Percent, Are You Better Off Than You Were 4 1/2 Yrs.
Ago?

Life under the Bush Junta means lower wages, no healthcare, and higher poverty
for millions of Americans. Are you better off?
http://www.democrats.com/node/5941

Plame Update: Hearing Postponed

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) writes: "Late yesterday afternoon, I received word that
the House Armed Services Committee had postponed consideration of my Resolution
of Inquiry into the Plame leak. That announcement came just about the same time
that the Republican leadership announced that an additional emergency
supplemental appropriation for Hurricane Katrina relief had been scheduled. I
will keep TPMCafe.com readers updated on the Congressional response to the Plame
investigation as new developments unfold."
http://www.tpmcafe.com/author/rushholt

Ongoing Coverage of Katrina:

2005-10-02T11:36:00.000-07:00

10 GREAT WAYS YOU CAN HELP
Don Hazen, AlterNet
Americans: Let's not let our clumsy, uncaring government
undermine our capacity to help those in need. Here are 10
outstanding endeavors that deserve your support.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25177/

SOUL OF THE LOST CITY
Moira Crone, Beliefnet
A week ago, if someone had told me what would be true in one
week, I would have thought them mad: In seven days, you will
have no home you can return to, and potentially, no
possessions.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25170/

THE LONG EMERGENCY AHEAD
James Howard Kunstler, AlterNet
Will New Orleans and the devastated region around it be
rebuilt on the hollow premise of Cheap Oil?
http://www.alternet.org/story/25175/

HURRICANE REALITY VS. RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGY
Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Conservative ideology takes a hit as Hurricane Katrina
proves that the disaster's biggest problem was not too much
government, but too little, too late.
http://www.alternet.org/story/25149/
________________________________________

REACHING THE TIPPING POINT
Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com
With the last shreds of Bush's credibility blown away by
Katrina, expect momentum against the president to grow with
each further U.S. casualty in Iraq.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/25163/

THE PROGRESS REPORT / 9-8-05

2005-10-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, and Christy Harvey

September 8, 2005

KATRINA
If Louisiana Was Florida

KATRINA
The Politics of $52 Billion

UNDER THE RADAR
Go Beyond The Headlines

For news and updates throughout the day, check out our blog at ThinkProgress.org.
Sign up | Contact us | Permalinks/Archive | Mobile | RSS | Print

KATRINA TIMELINE: In the blitz of media coverage surrounding Hurricane Katrina, it’s hard to wrap your head around exactly what happened. ThinkProgress has created a Katrina timeline that catalogues the most important events. Check out the timeline here.

KATRINA
If Louisiana Was Florida

Between August and September of 2004, four hurricanes -- Jeanne, Charley, Frances, and Ivan -- belted the Florida coast. At the time, President Bush was engaged in a close campaign, with Florida shaping up to be a key battleground state that would swing the election. The Bush administration's response to the four hurricanes was quick and generous; it requested over $12 billion in emergency aid for the state (the outpouring of aid was so generous that the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security later found millions of dollars in unjustified disbursements, including $8 million given out to people for temporary housing even though they hadn't asked for it). By comparison, prior to yesterday's supplemental request for additional hurricane relief due to Katrina, Bush initially asked for $10.5 billion for the most damaging hurricane in history, four days after Katrina made landfall. Across the board, the comparisons between the administration's actions in the aftermath of the 2004 Florida hurricanes and the recent Katrina catastrophe indicate an uneven response.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION RESPONDED WITH FINANCIAL AID QUICKLY AFTER FLORIDA HURRICANES: Almost immediately after the four Florida hurricanes made landfall, the Bush administration was quick to call on Congress to provide massive resources to the state. The total amount of aid, the New York Times noted, was "more than three times as much as the administration [was] channeling into an urgent effort to provide more security and create more public works jobs in Iraq before the elections scheduled for January there." White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tried to tamp down allegations that political motivations may have been at play in the quick disbursement of financial aid by citing the enormity of the disaster. "Florida is the first state in 120 years to be hit by four hurricanes," McClellan said. "The people of Florida have been hit hard by these hurricanes, and it's important that the federal government do everything it can to assist and recover in those efforts." Four days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, the White House, according to McClellan, was still "making an assessment of what additional funding may be needed," and he could not even offer a ballpark estimate for its initial request.

ADMINISTRATION PREPARED FOR DISASTER IN FLORIDA: While the administration demonstrated through Katrina how not to prepare for a hurricane, Florida offered the opposite lesson. The St. Petersburg Times noted in August 2004 that Bush approved federal assistance for Hurricane Charley "about an hour after the hurricane made landfall." Rescue teams and National Guard troops were on the move to the hardest-hit counties; 11 truckloads of water and 14 truckloads of ice were immediately available. Federal and state officials applauded their increased coordination in responding. One former Florida director of emergency services remarked, "It amazed me how they got over 4,000 National Guard troops in there that quick." As Hurricane Frances followed, FEMA sent out a press release noting that it had pre-positioned disaster response personnel, equipment and supplies "to help those who are displaced or suffer losses." And FEMA made the same preparations for Hurricane Ivan after that. The response to Katrina, however, has left the American public, the media, and members of Congress questioning why those same actions weren't taken in the Gulf Coast as quickly as they should have been.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PATTED ITSELF ON THE BACK FOR A JOB WELL DONE IN FLORIDA: The White House sought to take credit for the federal response to the Florida hurricanes. McClellan said at the time, "[T]he President has a responsibility to make sure that the federal government is assisting in every way possible. And that's what he's here to do." Bush made five storm-related visits to the state. The White House put out a fact sheet extolling presidential action in response to the Florida hurricanes. In response to Katrina, White House officials have tried to shift blame to state and local officials. Now-embattled FEMA Director Mike Brown gave a commencement address at the Florida Institute of Technology in December, in which he dedicated a large opening section to applauding the work of FEMA in meeting the needs of Floridians. By contrast, Brown "waited a mind-boggling five hours" after Katrina hit to contact Secretary Chertoff, despite identifying the storm as a "near-catastrophic event."

POLITICS PLAYED A PART IN FLORIDA RESPONSE: The Chicago Tribune noted yesterday that top-level FEMA officials have "little or no experience in disaster management," but they do have "strong political connections" to Bush. That experience seemed to help Florida out in 2004, and it may explain why Louisiana was not treated similarly over the past few weeks. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel revealed official records in March that suggested Bush's re-election concerns played a part in FEMA aid. FEMA consultant Glenn Garcelon wrote a three-page memo on Hurricane Frances, against the backdrop of the president's reelection, that said the administration should "develop a communication strategy" to minimize any political liability Bush would face."Two weeks later, a Florida official summarizing the hurricane response wrote that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was handing out housing assistance 'to everyone who needs it without asking for much information of any kind.'"

KATRINA
The Politics of $52 Billion

Today, Congress will consider a $52 billion supplemental spending bill for the victims of Hurricane Katrina -- money that is desperately needed to help rebuild cities and lives. That hasn't stopped some from playing politics with the money. The Boston Globe reports that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) and Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) are angling to "give Mississippi first dibs in the post-Hurricane Katrina grab for federal disaster funds." They may be successful because the three form a political triumvirate that "packs more political muscle than the storm-ravaged states of Louisiana and Alabama." Now is the time to put politics aside and get the money where it's needed most.

NO TRANSPARENCY, NO DEBATE: The House of Representatives, at the urging of the conservative leadership, voted "to limit floor consideration of the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina to just forty minutes." The rule governing consideration of the bill will "prevent any amendments from being offered." According to Rep. Louis Slaughter (D-NY), prior to precluding the possibility of amendments, "no one had yet to even see a copy of the legislation.." Slaughter said, "It is this very lack of accountability in government which ensured that our disaster response would be a bigger disaster than the hurricane itself. Yet here they go again, completely unfazed in their determination to eliminate debate, consideration and accountability from the Congress and the Federal government."

THE SWIFT BOATING OF GOV. BLANCO: Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) wrote a letter urging Speaker Dennis Hastert to "refrain from directly appropriating any funds from the public treasury to either the state of Louisiana or the city of New Orleans." Tancredo said the money should be withheld as punishment for the "mind-boggling incompetence" of Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in the "response to this disaster." Tancredo did not mention that on August 27, President Bush directed "the Department of Homeland Security [and] Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency."

MCCAIN AND COBURN URGE COLLEAGUES TO SACRIFICE POLITICS: Yesterday, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) urged their colleagues to "refrain from directing tax dollars to special projects in their states that might help their political campaigns but not necessarily the country as a whole." The senators noted, "In the past year Congress has found a way to fund thousands of projects of questionable merit. Perhaps a few of those dollars could have been better spent on activities that might have limited the impact of this tragedy." The New York Times suggests taking it a step farther: "Imagine what would happen if each member of Congress announced that he or she would give up a prize slab of bacon so the government would be able to use the money to shelter hurricane victims and rebuild New Orleans. The public would -- for once -- have proof that politicians are capable of setting priorities and showing respect for the concept of a budget."

Under the Radar

RELIEF -- PERRY FUNNELS RELIEF FUNDS TO HIS OWN GROUP'S COFFERS: "Gov. Rick Perry, in hurricane relief tours around the state, in news releases and on his official state Web site, has urged Texans to contribute to three groups: the Red Cross, Salvation Army and the OneStar Foundation," the Dallas Morning News reports. Sounds admirable, except for one detail: the OneStar Foundation isn't doing any relief work in the Gulf states. In fact, it's a volunteer organization set up by Perry himself -- "birthed from the heart and vision of Governor Rick Perry," according to the group's website -- and run by Susan Weddington, a close political ally of Perry who left her political position to run the organization. Perry's promotion of the group has "prompted some to question whether the governor is trying to benefit politically from the outpouring of sympathy and good works in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina," the Morning Star reports.

ENERGY -- IN GAS PRICE WOES, DELAY SEES CHANCE FOR NEW ENERGY BILL: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) said yesterday that conservative leaders plan to use the post-Katrina gas price woes to push through "a sweeping new energy bill." The legislation will likely include provisions for millions more in subsidies to profit-flushed energy firms that "were jettisoned from earlier energy legislation passed before Congress left for the August recess." DeLay claimed the hurricane showed the need to increase domestic production, and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) "recommended drilling in Alaska and in coastal states where offshore drilling currently is banned." But yesterday, a watchdog group released internal oil company memos showing "how the industry intentionally reduced domestic refining capacity to drive up profits," in spite of the fact that "the oil industry blames environmental regulation for limiting [the] number of U.S. refineries."

MEDIA -- FEMA CARRYING OUT INFORMATION LOCKDOWN: FEMA officials yesterday asked the news media not to take pictures of those killed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, prompting free speech advocates to charge "they were censoring a key part of the disaster story," akin to the Bush administration's ban on photographs of military caskets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. But FEMA's request about casualties was only the beginning. On MSNBC.com, anchor Brian Williams writes that FEMA officials seem to be engaged in a coordinated effort to bar reporters from substantial portions of New Orleans. As Josh Marshall notes, "Perhaps there could be guidelines about photographs which in any way clearly identified the deceased. No one wants to get first confirmation of the death of a loved one by seeing their body on the nightly news. But a blanket ban serves only to prevent the public from knowing what really happened last week. And the right of FEMA or any branch of the federal government for that matter to issue such a ban on American soil seems highly dubious to me."

IRAQ -- ADMINISTRATION LET NUKE MATERIALS SLIP OUT: More fallout from the Bush administration's massive pre-war planning failures: "The US Defense Department failed to secure sources of radiological material in Iraq for six months after the US invasion in 2003, during which period some were looted or scattered," according to a Government Accountability Office report released yesterday. Officials are scrambling to learn the fate of the nuclear materials "because of the threat to civilians of radiation exposure and their possible use by terrorist to make 'dirty bombs.'" Now, "according to DoD (Department of Defense) and State officials, however, the total number of unsecured radiological sources in Iraq remains unknown."

IRAQ – BILLIONS MORE NEEDED FOR RECONSTRUCTION: As America faces critical reconstruction needs on the Gulf Coast, Reuters reports, "Extra funding will be needed to finish key Iraqi reconstruction projects, given high unexpected outlays for security." Over $18 billion has been spent so far. Stuart Bowen, U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, refused to specify how much more was needed, saying "it was not the right time to discuss more money to finance Iraqi reconstruction, given the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Gulf region, but it was clear that eventually more funding would be needed." Bowen did say he would eventually need "another supplemental [spending bill]" to finish oil and electricity projects in Iraq.

Bush's Second Gulf Disaster

2005-10-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

Terry Lynn Karl
September 08, 2005

Terry Lynn Karl is professor of political science at Stanford University.

President Bush has asked that Americans not “play politics” at this moment of terrible national disaster. But asking hard questions of our nation’s leaders is exactly what democracy demands when the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina is widely viewed as “a national disgrace.”

Katrina came with at least two days’ warning, but authorities waited to issue an evacuation order. There was no transportation for people without cars or money; facilities to house and care for refugees were insufficient; there were no forces in place to deliver desperately needed supplies or to secure order; and there was nowhere near the number of boats, helicopters and other craft necessary to rescue the stranded.

Hampered by a National Guard with 40 percent of its people in Iraq, the pace of getting military personnel to the hardest hit areas was inordinately slow. For four days, there was simply no clear center of command and control. As a result, countless people suffered and died.

Much of this failure is the result of the Bush administration’s policies, which effectively eroded the capacities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the government agency primarily responsible for dealing with disasters. Obsessed with the war on terror as well as an ideology of privatizing the functions of government, the administration systematically sapped FEMA’s long-term ability to prevent disaster or at least cushion the blows when prevention is not possible.

FEMA was downsized and downgraded from a cabinet position, then placed under the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission of disaster planning and preparation was dropped entirely, and its focus was altered to fight terrorists. Its leadership had no experience in disaster management. The past director was one of Bush’s Texas political cronies, and the current director’s qualifications include a stint as commissioner for judges and stewards with the International Arabian Horse Association, where he was asked to resign for “supervision failures.”

Since 2001, billions of dollars were shifted from disaster relief to homeland security and the war in Iraq. Key disaster mitigation programs were slashed, and federal funding for post-disaster relief was cut in half. The Army Corps of Engineers’ budget for levee construction in New Orleans was gutted, including funds specifically aimed at the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Preventive measures to protect people and property were not carried out despite FEMA’s own conclusion in 2001 that a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was one of the three “likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country.”

Believing FEMA to be an “oversized entitlement program” and that the “business of government is not to provide services,” Bush’s first FEMA director instituted new outsourcing requirements as part of a major privatization effort. This provoked a brain drain as experienced FEMA personnel moved into the private sector.

Privatization also left poorer states and poorer communities especially vulnerable. As money dried up and federal programs were contracted out to private firms at higher rates, only the richest and politically most important states and communities could compete successfully for the scarce federal grants necessary to pay for services.

For example, Florida (with 16 more electoral votes than Louisiana and where the president’s brother governs) received its requested funding to protect its wetlands. By contrast, a more needy Louisiana (with its staggering 24 percent poverty rate) was denied its request for flood-mitigation funds in 2004. With Louisiana’s ability to protect itself weakened and the center of disaster relief badly undermined, an inadequate government response and unnecessary destruction were almost inevitable—with the poor paying the price.

But the failure of this administration runs deeper than its chronic and intentional diversion of resources away from the types of policies that keep people safe from disaster. Despite scientific evidence demonstrating that the increased intensity and frequency of hurricanes is related to climate change, the Bush administration systematically rejects participation in international climate-protection regimes. Rather than continue a ban on wetlands development instituted by previous administrations, the Bush administration overturned it. Because development-provoked erosion has brought the Gulf of Mexico 20 miles closer to land than it was in 1965, hurricanes are able to retain more strength, and their winds and waves pack more speed and destructive power.

Similarly, loss of wetlands threatened New Orleans’ levees, which were built on the assumption that they would have 40 to 50 miles of protective swamp as buffer between the city and the Gulf of Mexico. Despite every major study showing that a massive coastal restoration program and higher levees were needed to protect New Orleans, the administration permitted federal agencies to stop protecting 20 million acres of wetlands, allowed developers to drain thousands of acres and in 2004 cut funding for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent.

New Orleans is America’s canary in the mineshaft. Ideologies of privatization that incapacitate effective government—permitting the privileged to save themselves while leaving the poor clinging to roofs—must now be challenged. This disaster is a chilling reminder of what happens when government fails to protect its citizens, and it is imperative that Americans demand accountability. Officials who did not do their jobs must be dismissed, and elected officials whose policies aggravated the devastation wrought by Katrina must be removed from office. We owe this to the dead and to the survivors.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2005 .

UNDERNEWS / 9-8-05

2005-10-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

UNDERNEWS
SEP 8, 2005
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
EDITED BY SAM SMITH
Since 1964, Washington's most unofficial source

E-MAIL: mailto:news@prorev.com

1312 18th St. NW #502 Washington DC 20036
202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779

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WORD
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The Internet interprets the US Congress as system damage and routes
around it - Jeanne DeVoto

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire
hydrant. - Mitchell Kapor

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While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting
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There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys
typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the
complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this
isn't true. - Ian Hart

It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important.
It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you
know, the dark dungeons of the Internet. - George W. Bush

The largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had. - Eric Schmidt
quotes

Hooked on Internet? Help Is a Just a Click Away - Unknown

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THE REVIEW'S TENTH YEAR IN CYBERSPACE
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Sam Smith

This fall marks the Review's tenth year on the web - and our 11th year
of sending out email updates. In the last quarter of 1995 we got all of
388 page views, and in 1996, we got 27,000. This year we are approaching
three million.

Since we began, nearly 60 times as many people have started using the
Internet as were online in 1995. The number of websites has increased
from about 60,000 worldwide in late 1995 to around 72 million today.

How early was 1995? Well, the number of Americans using the Internet was
still less than the number who were watching TV in the mid 1950s. And
the Washington Post hadn't yet found a way to stay on line and be happy
with the results. Some other papers, however, had gotten into the act.
Fredric A. Emmert writes that, "In 1992, the Chicago Sun-Times began
offering articles via modem over the America On Line computer network,
and in 1993, the San Jose Mercury News began distributing most of its
complete daily text, minus photos and illustrations, to subscribers of
America On Line. The first multi-media news service in the U.S., News in
Motion, made its debut in the summer of 1993 with a weekly edition
specializing in international coverage, with color photos, graphics and
sound. In 1994, the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service began
distributing news to its newspaper customers via computer before their
morning editions arrived, and The Washington Post has created a Digital
Ink subsidiary, providing an electronic newspaper research service for
clients, who can buy custom-made reports on subjects of their choice."
The Post dropped the fee-based Digital Ink in favor of its current site
in 1996.

Although shorter items from our first year remain online, only one
feature story does: America's Extremist Center. From 1996, only the
still popular Mission Creep: The Militarizing Of America remains online.

Our earliest email update included with this September 1994 story:

"Strip away the hyperbole and you're left with yet another American
occupation of a small Latin American country for time and purpose
uncertain. This occupation, however, can be presumed to have as much to
do with restoring democracy in Haiti as the Panama invasion had to do
with eliminating the drug trade there -- that is to say, practically
nothing. Everyone from the 82nd Airborne to CNN went on full alert, but
bear in mind that the Haitian military is about the size of the DC
Metropolitan Police plus the Executive Protective Service and the
National Zoo Police."

Your editor's interest in the internet was not all that surprising,
since he had long ago discovered that keeping up with advances in
technology helped compensate for his own deterioration. The Review began
as a hot type magazine, The Idler, in 1964 and over the years used such
novel technology as Press Type, IBM Selectrics, Radio Shack's TRS-80 (or
Trash 80 as it was fondly known), the Model 100 - an amazing battery
operated laptop with a six line screen, and Exxon's Qyx, among many
others.

Before all that, however, were other influences, starting with Alice
Darnell, my high school math teacher who went to Harvard in the summer
of 1954 to learn about this new thing, the computer. She returned
reporting that she had almost been locked up in a computer overnight, as
it needed an entire building to do the work of a present day Mac, and
she introduced us to the basics of Boolean algebra.

It would be twenty years, however, before I actually touched a computer:
an 8K Atari purchased for my sons. As I fleeted up to 16 and then 32 K
it occurred to me that these things might have some journalistic use. In
fact, if you wasted a whole Saturday you could already program them to
do little things like write messages and keep addresses.

It was a time when an earnest father such as I sent his son to computer
camp where he learned to write programs that in just a year or so he
could buy at the local computer store. It was a time when a computer
expert came to speak at that same son's school and, at the end, the
headmaster arose and said, "This is all very well and good, but I'm not
running a goddamned secretarial school." Within a year he had purchased
an impressive array of computers.

It was also a time short on computer expertise. The Review was blessed
with two high school students who came by to empty our floor's office
trash who were also seminal cyber whizzes. They shall remain nameless to
preserve the security clearance of the one who now works for a major
defense contractor, but the latter still provides occasional assistance
such as his suggestion that I repair a computer suffering from too much
atmospheric moisture by putting it in an oven at 150 degrees for an
hour. That was a year ago. It worked and the computer still helps
produce the Progressive Review.

Some years back I went to a Shaker village in Maine. While on the tour
of this vanishing sect I noted a TV antenna atop the dorm. I mentioned
this jarring departure from my image of Shakers to our guide, who
explained that the Shakers saw no conflict between technology and their
faith. After all, she said, their furniture was technologically advanced
for the time.

It was not unlike the Quakers who do not shun change but merely apply
their faith to it. About a year and a half after launching our website I
tried to give a sense of this approach in a book I was writing, The
Great American Political Repair Manual:

"The first rule of media survival is use it; don't let it use you. We
must ignore the role the media has prescribed for us -- audience,
consumer, addict -- and treat it much as the trout treats a stream, a
medium in which to swim and not to drown. The trick is to stop the media
from happening to you and to treat it literally as a medium -- an
environment, a carrier. Then you can cease being a consumer or a victim
and become a hunter and a gatherer, foraging for signs that are good and
messages that are important and data you can use. Then the zapper and
the mouse become tools and weapons and not addictions. Then you turn the
TV off not because it is evil but because you have gotten whatever it
has to offer and now must look somewhere else."

GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL REPAIR MANUAL
http://prorev.com/order3.htm#repair

THE EXTREMIST CENTER
http://prorev.com/center.htm

MISSION CREEP
http://prorev.com/mil.htm

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WEB WATCH COLUMN, APRIL 17, 1995 - An "ecology of information" is how we
need to view the Internet, according to Apple fellow Alan Kay. In his
keynote address at the Third International World Wide Web Conference, he
said that the old "clockwork" model of systems thinking was obsolete.
The complexity of systems today is so great that we can no longer
manufacture them. Rather, we need to grow them organically. . .

Alan Kay said that it is the author, not the technologist, which
innovates in the new medium. For example, it took 65 years after the
invention of the printing press for an author to think of numbering the
pages in a book, so that he could cross reference the pages.

Public access to the web will increase dramatically. Microsoft
demonstrated their Internet Explorer product, which will be integrated
into their forthcoming Windows 95 desktop. Users will be able to access
web pages very simply, and drag or drop them onto the desktop,
documents, or folders. . .

A new language called Java was introduced. Java safely allows programs,
not just data to be exchanged. These small applications, or "applets"
allow a new generation of client/server sophistication. One simply
clicks on something of interest. The network would install any necessary
software automatically, as well as the billing chores.

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A REPORT FOUND THAT BETWEEN 1995 and 1996 there was a dramatic shift:
"The biggest and perhaps most significant change since 1995 is the
increased use of the World Wide Web. Nearly three out of four (73%)
report having used the Web, compared to only 21% then. Web use also
appears to be more frequent: 51% said they used the Web either yesterday
or sometime in the past week, compared to 12% last year. . .

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1995 ALSO saw the introduction of search engines.

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JON KATZ, WIRED, 1995 - So far, at least, online papers don't work
commercially or conceptually. With few exceptions, they seem to be just
what they are, expensive hedges against on rushing technology with
little rationale of their own. They take away what's best about reading
a paper and don't offer what's best about being online. That's the point
of a newspaper. . .to filter the worthwhile information, then print it.
. . . The newspaper needs to reinvent itself. . . . The object is not to
replace, or put into a different format, but to gain a toehold in
cyberspace and even absorb some of its values.

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KATRINA
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LETTER TO THE REVIEW

The blame doesn't belong with the people who couldn't leave,
it belongs with the people who wouldn't care. - Ohio Guy

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FUNDS UNFAIRLY DISTRIBUTED IN WAKE OF FRANCES

PROJECT ON GOVERNMENT OVERSIGHT - As the federal government gears up to
pour billions of dollars (some estimate up to $200 billion) into New
Orleans, Mississippi and other areas decimated by Hurricane Katrina, it
would be an understatement to say that the potential for waste, fraud
and abuse is great. In the wake of last year's Hurricane Frances, which
hit South Florida 100 miles north of Miami-Dade county, the Fort
Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel found that the Federal Emergency Management
Agency was handing tens of millions of dollars to residents and
businesses in Miami-Dade. The problem is that Miami-Dade county only
felt the equivalent of "a bad thunderstorm." TVs, new cars and a
funeral (although no deaths were caused by Frances) are examples of
items purchased with FEMA funds. . .

Meanwhile, counties that were much closer to the eye of Frances--such as
Indian River, St. Lucie and Broward counties--and were harder hit, but,
relative to Miami-Dade and the damage caused, received much less
assistance. Clearly, as the Sun-Sentinel notes, "Miami-Dade has
received a disproportionate share of the aid for Hurricane Frances
relief."

Disproportionate allocation of disaster relief may be in the works now,
thanks to the political power of Mississippi's Congressional delegation,
according to an AP article. . .

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SO IT WASN'T THE GAY'S FAULT AFTER ALL

HAARETZ, ISRAEL - Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi and the
spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, said that
Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for U.S. President George W.
Bush's support for Israel's Gaza pullout. "It was God's retribution. God
does not shortchange anyone," Yosef said during his weekly sermon. His
comments were broadcast on Channel 10 TV on Wednesday. Yosef also said
recent natural disasters were the result of a lack of Torah study and
that Katrina's victims suffered "because they have no God," singling out
black people.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/622278.html

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LOCAL RESPONSE IS WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

JESSE WALKER, REASON, - "In the more modern, developed countries,
looting is not a problem after disasters," says the sociologist E. L.
Quarantelli, a co-founder of the Disaster Research Center at the
University of Delaware and one of the pioneers of disaster research.
There are "some exceptions," he adds, but they're "very rare." More than
a half-century of investigation has established a fairly firm pattern:
After the cataclysm, social bonds will strengthen, volunteerism will
explode, violence will be rare, looting will appear only under
exceptional circumstances, and the vast majority of the rescues will be
accomplished by the real first responders -- the victims themselves.

- When an earthquake hit Tanghsan, China, in 1976, it was "probably the
worst peacetime disaster of the century," Dr. Erik Auf der Heide, a
medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control, writes in his
contribution to the 2004 book The First 72 Hours: A Community Approach
to Disaster Preparedness. About 250,000 people were killed, and almost
every building in the city was destroyed -- but "200,000 to 300,000
victims rescued themselves and then carried out 80% of the rescue of
others." Such proportions were neither an aberration nor peculiar to
earthquakes: Auf der Heide cites similar patterns following flash
floods, tornadoes, and a deadly gas explosion.

- The Kobe quake of 1995, which killed 6,279 people, produced a reaction
that was -- to quote "Emergency Response: Lessons Learned from the Kobe
Earthquake," a 1997 paper by Kathleen Tierney and James D. Goltz --
"without precedent in Japanese society." Although volunteerism isn't
nearly as widespread in Japan as it is in the United States, "most
search and rescue was undertaken by community residents;
officially-designated rescue agencies such as fire departments and the
Self Defense Forces were responsible for recovering at most one quarter
of those trapped in collapsed structures. Spontaneous volunteering and
emergent group activity were very widespread throughout the emergency
period; community residents provided a wide range of goods and services
to their fellow earthquake victims, and large numbers of people traveled
from other parts of the country to offer aid." Quarantelli says there
wasn't a single authenticated case of looting.

- After the San Francisco quake of 1989, Stewart Brand wrote in Whole
Earth Review that "Volunteer rescuers in San Francisco's Marina
District...outnumbered professionals three-to-one during the critical
first few hours." (Although, he added, "it still wasn't enough.")
According to Auf der Heide, most of the tremor's fatalities followed the
collapse of the Cypress Expressway -- and the rescue operation that
followed was led by self-organizing volunteers. "These volunteers,
coming from residences and businesses in the neighborhood or passing by
on the street and freeway, performed some of the first rescues of
trapped motorists," the Oakland Fire Department acknowledged in its
earthquake report. "Using makeshift ladders, ropes, and even the trees
planted beside the freeway, these volunteers scrambled up onto the
broken structure to render first aid and help the injured and dazed to
safety."

When looting does occur, most of it is done covertly by individuals or
small groups snatching something when they think no one's looking, not
by mobs acting openly.

http://www.reason.com/links/links090705.shtml

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BUSH USES KATRINA AS EXCUSE TO ATTACK SOCIAL SECURITY

KEITH KOFFLER, NATIONAL JOURNAL - Top Republicans Monday indicated that
a key rationale for continuing to press for items such as overhauling
Social Security and making tax cuts passed during Bush's first
administration permanent is that these initiatives are good for the
economy, and that what is good for the national economy is also good for
New Orleans. "A large part of the response to the hurricane's impact is
to jump-start the region's economy, which requires a vibrant national
economy," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy. Duffy
asserted that the vast spending that would be required to address the
hurricane's impact adds to the need to change Social Security, which
threatens to strain the budget in coming years.

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BURNING MAN VS. FLOODING NEW ORLEANS

MARK MORFORD, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Some readers wrote me e-mails
when I was out scorching my nether parts in the remote Nevada desert at
Burning Man 2005, half naked and beglittered and intensely hung over and
posting daily blog entries that read more like postcards from my moaning
id than rational, semi-coherent slivers of Burning Man reality.

And these e-mails, with more than a little bitter condescension or
holier-than-thou snicker, asked me this: How the hell could you be out
there dancing and reveling and drinking badly mixed margaritas and
eating camp-stove-cooked gourmet food and imbibing all those unholy joys
when the worst natural disaster in recent U.S. history just hammered
Louisiana the way a Republican hammers welfare?

This is what they argued. Doesn't it make Burning Man seem completely
trite and superfluous and overindulgent? Don't you feel more than a
little, you know, silly, trying to write about your childish little
otherworldly sexed-up art-rave survivalist-camping thing with even the
slightest hint of seriousness in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy
and loss of life and the fact that we have a grossly inept president who
sits around the ranch smoking stogies with his oil cronies and chuckling
while the corpses of thousands of poor, black Americans bobble around
Louisiana?

And of course my reply is, well, hell yes, of course Burning Man is
utterly gratuitous, and excessive, and more than a little ridiculous,
especially in the wake of Katrina -- just as, say, NFL football has
become suddenly pointless, and also the auto industry, and celebrity,
and organic dog food and ornithology and Destiny's Child or the fact
that the ultraviolent cheese of "Transporter 2" took in $20 mil over
this past tragedy-thick weekend, enough to repair at least a few schools
and roadways in Biloxi. You have a point?

These are, after all, the weird swipes of the universe, the jarring
simultaneous juxtapositions we cannot control, a wild sybaritic
celebration contrasted with an epic heartbreaking disaster and you
cannot, as a participant, escape the painful and weirdly fascinating
irony of it all. We all feel small and heartbroken.

But here's the thing: While the circumstances and the remoteness of the
event meant that most Burning Man participants had little or no idea of
the extent of Katrina's wrath, as soon as news did begin to trickle in,
the call went out and Burners immediately rallied and funds were
immediately raised across the camp, and word has it that the money
gathered reached into the tens of thousands within two or three days,
with zero PR or advertising or formal pleas from Angelina Jolie or the
Red Cross and sans any blank-eyed stares from our useless president. . .

There's another angle, too. Let us argue the obvious but necessary
flip-side notion that, in the wake of any national disaster or mounting
death toll, it is exactly those things that celebrate life that we turn
to offer salve and balm and resurrection of spirit.

In other words, in the aftermath of hurricanes and national tragedies
and in the face of the most ham-fisted and heartless and
freedom-stabbing administration in recent American history, we need this
sort of "trifling" Burning Man fluff more than ever, to act as spark, as
beacon, as counterbalance. I know, it's not a perfect idea. It solves no
ecological woes. It saves no lives from the floodwaters. But it's all
we've got.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/07/DDG24EHPCV1.DTL

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RON FOURNIER, AP - No strangers to bureaucratic bungling and turf wars,
the nation's governors watched in horror as government agencies handled
Hurricane Katrina with glaring incompetence - and now worry that the
next disaster could deal their states the same ugly fate.

The fear is bipartisan. Republican and Democratic governors agree that
the response to Katrina was deplorable, and many ordered reviews of
their own state emergency strategies to root out problems they're
witnessing in the Gulf Coast.

Their top priority: Avoid the bureaucratic red tape that tripped up
state, local and federal authorities at every step of the Gulf Coast
crisis. Thousands of lives may be at stake after the next natural
disaster or terrorist strike.

http://www.sj-r.com/sections/news/stories/65663.asp

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PROGRESS REPORT - Before joining FEMA, Brown "spent 11 years as the
commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse
Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado."
(Brown was forced out "after a spate of lawsuits over alleged
supervision failures.") Brown's top deputies, however, make him look
qualified. The number two at FEMA, Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode, was an
event planner ("advance man") for Bush's presidential campaign. He had
absolutely no emergency management experience before joining FEMA. The
number three at FEMA, Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Morris, was a press
flak at the Bush campaign. He previously worked for Maverick Media, the
firm that produced TV spots for Bush's campaigns. Morris also has no
emergency management experience. In contrast, the top deputies of
Clinton-era FEMA Director James Lee Witt ran regional FEMA offices for
at least three years before assuming senior positions in Washington."

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ROGER MORRIS, GLOBE & MAIL, CA - The calamity was enormous, the toll in
lives and ruin like nothing the country knew. Yet the ultimate disaster
was in the staggering negligence of the government and its oblivious
leader. Despite years of warnings and then the stark sight of suffering,
help was disgracefully slow, too late for so many. "People must realize
now," one witness wrote in her diary, "how rotten the structure has
become." Long afterward, historians would think it a breaking point in
trust, the moment when the future began.

No, not the great New Orleans flood of 2005. The great Russian drought
and famine of 1891. Not George W. Bush. But a similarly fey Nicholas II.
Not a breaking point in America perhaps, though there are intriguing
parallels.

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HOLLY MARTINS' HAT TRICK

[Three straight today from Holly Martin at Wonkette]

HOLLY MARTIN, WONKETTE - One enduring lesson of the devastation that was
Katrina: When you want to take stock of a soul-testing national crisis,
New York media is pretty much the last place you want to turn. Here is
the New York Sun's Pia Catton, on the eve of the Big Apple's Fashion
Week, mulling the pesky fashion dilemmas posed by thousands upon
thousands of homeless and dead poor people:

"After the chaos on the Gulf Coast, it's time for order in the world:
modesty, linear shapes, and direct, womanly style. Up until last week,
this fall could have been dominated by any number of the looks featured
in the fall fashion magazines. But something has to guide your hand when
you put together outfits or shop for new pieces. Something in the
zeitgeist leads us to certain styles and away from others. After a
second look through the magazines this weekend, I found that what seems
right for the moment are the black suits, classic silhouettes, and
buttoned-up style. If not for the news, this look might have seemed too
severe or too much of a contrast from summer's flowing skirts and bright
colors. But now, out of all the various looks that designers produced
and editors selected, sobriety feels right.". . .

HOLLY MARTIN, WONKETTE - Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff
announced today a singificant influx of disaster relief for FEMA head
Michael Brown. Chertoff has designated Vice Admiral Thad W. Allen, the
U.S. Coast Guard's chief of staff, as Chertoff's special deputy for
Katrina relief, writes the WaPo's Josh White; Allen will "take over
operational control of the search-and-rescue and recovery efforts along
the Gulf Coast. The unprecedented task of coordinating the massive
effort was handed off to a leader and expert who was described by
colleagues as unflappable, engaging and intensely organized."

So it appears that Allen will be Brown's "deputy" in the same sense that
same sense that, say, the surrogate who Ted Kennedy hired to take his
Harvard Spanish final for him was "Ted Kennedy": i.e., someone to do the
hard work, while the privileged, well-connected sinecure-holder tries to
steer clear of his next Bertie-Wooster style scrape. Except, you know,
that no one died when Kennedy blew off Spanish class.

HOLLY MARTIN, WONKETTE - You know, it's become so fashionable to beat up
on the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the lack of
accountability therein. In reality, the agency has acted swiftly on some
occasions to quell bad actors in its ranks. Why, just look at how
promptly it addressed the conduct of Nicole Rank, a Corpus Christi-based
FEMA administrator who was dispatched to the Charleston, West Virginia
site of a flood last year. It so happened the president turned up in
town at the same time, for a Fourth of July speech, and Rank turned up
at the event with her husband Jeff. Both were wearing a T-shirt that
read "Love America, Hate Bush" and "Regime Change Starts at Home"; the
Charleston police told them to "cover [the shirts] up, take them off, or
leave completely." When the Ranks refused they were forcibly removed
from the premises and briefly imprisoned, so that the president could
proceed with his speech declaring the Fourth an occasion to celebrate
"the freedom for people to speak their minds, the freedom for people to
worship as they so choose. Free thought and free expression, that's what
we believe"

And within two days, FEMA informed Ms. Rank that because of the
incident, she was being released from the Charleston assignment. That's
some rapid action to protect the security of the homeland. A heck of
job, you might even say.

http://wonkette.com/

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WHAT TWO PARAMEDICS SAW

[Bradshaw and Slonsky are paramedics frorm California that were
attending the EMS conference in New Orleans]

LARRY BRADSAHW AND LORRIE BETH SLONSKY, EMS NETWORK NEWS - We suspect
the media will have been inundated with "hero" images of the National
Guard, the troops and the police struggling to help the "victims" of the
Hurricane. What you will not see, but what we witnessed, were the real
heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of
New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the
sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the
generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension
cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in
order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over
for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing
air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen
who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into
boat yards, "stealing" boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their
roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could
be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers
who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for
hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from
members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only
infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the
French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees
like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and
shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and
friends outside of
New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources
including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the
City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because
none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up
with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those
who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by
those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses,
spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water,
food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the
sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the
"imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later
learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were
commandeered by the military. . .

The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to
settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came
across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we
should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New
Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the
City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and
explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation
and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for
us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear
to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with
great excitement and hope. . . It now began to pour down rain, but it
did not dampen our enthusiasm. . . As we approached the bridge, armed
Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we
were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our
heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd
scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to
engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our
conversation with the police commander and of the commander's
assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The
commander had lied to us to get us to move.

http://www.emsnetwork.org

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THE REVOLVING ROOF COLLAPSE AT FEMA

THOMAS B. EDSALL WASHINGTON POST - During his two years as director of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency during President Bush's first
term, Joe M. Allbaugh traveled to Louisiana for a series of disasters,
from tropical storms Allison and Isidore to Hurricane Lili. Yesterday,
Allbaugh, now head of his own Washington lobbying and consulting firm,
was in Baton Rouge, La., helping his clients get business from perhaps
the worst natural disaster in the nation's history. . .

Allbaugh said he was there "just trying to lend my shoulder to the
wheel, trying to coordinate some private-sector support that the
government always asks for." In the case of one client, UltraStrip
Systems Inc., a Florida company, Allbaugh said he persuaded "them down
here" to present the case for a water filtration system. "I'll tell
them, 'Here are the list of entities [that might buy the system] that
are in town, here is where they are -- go to it.' ". . .

After leaving FEMA in March 2003, Allbaugh, who managed the 2000
Bush-Cheney campaign, founded Allbaugh Co., a lobbying-consulting firm
with many clients in the disaster-relief business.

Among those clients are: the KBR division of Haliburton; TruePosition, a
manufacturer of wireless location products, services and devices; the
Shaw Group, a provider of engineering, design, construction, and
maintenance services to government and the private sector; and
UltraStrip, which is marketing the first water filtration system
approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The firm's Web site quotes Allbaugh: "I carry pictures of close friends
who died in the September 11th terrorist attacks as a constant reminder
of what we lost that day. It's my personal commitment to always honor
their memory by working to protect this nation. I'm dedicated to helping
private industry meet the homeland security challenge."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702385.html

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MUSICIANS WONDER WHETHER THEY'LL SURVIVE
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/arts/music/08jazz.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1126186705-v08tZH/3/rgfnu7hL4+l2g

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THE MEDIACRACY
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ELITE ETHNOGRAPHY: THE CARLYLE GROUP GETS TOGETHER

[Thanks to journalist Suzan Mazur, here is the agenda for the
forthcoming Carlyle Group Investors Program. We won't bore you with
huffs and puffs over insider trading, especially between big media and
the Carlyle crowd, but it would help the credibility of journalism if
people like elite sweetheart Fareed Zakaria revealed just how much they
got paid for their sweetheart appearances]

THE CARLYLE GROUP
2005 WASHINGTON DC INVESTOR CONFERENCE

You are cordially invited to attend the 2005 Washington DC Investor
Conference,
September 11-13, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC This year
we have developed a comprehensive program that will include updates on
Carlyle's current and planned investment activities, panel discussions
on a number of business and economic topics, as well as ample time
during the Conference to meet with Carlyle investment professionals,
CEOs from Carlyle portfolio companies, and guests attending from nearly
50 countries.

Sunday, September 11, 2005 -
Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel
1150 22nd Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
USA

Business Attire

Sunday, September 11, 2005. . .

6:30PM-7:15PM Buses Depart The Ritz-Carlton Hotel to the Smithsonian
National Museum of the American Indian (Buses begin boarding at 6:15pm)
7:00PM-8:30PM Registration National Museum of the American Indian
7:00PM-9:30PM Welcome Reception and Buffet Dinner
7:30PM-8:15PM Optional - Special Performance by Mark Russell, America's
Foremost Political Satirist

Monday, September12, 2005. . .

10:45AM-11:30AM Panel Discussion: World Affairs Overview:
Introduction: David M. Rubenstein

Moderator: Walter Isaacson, President and Chief Executive Officer, Aspen
Institute

Panelists:

Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations
Tom Ridge, First U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security
R. James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA
Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International, Columnist, and Analyst,
ABC News. . .

1:30PM-2:15PM Keynote Address: Current Global Events: Introduction:
Frank C. Carlucci III, Chairman Emeritus, The Carlyle Group, and Former
US Secretary of Defense (1987-1989)

Guest Speaker: General Colin L. Powell, USA (Ret.), Secretary of State
(2001-2004)

9:00PM-9:15:PM Seating for Performance in Concert Hall
9:15PM-10:00PM Special Performance by Marvin Hamlisch and the National
Symphony Pops Orchestra

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

7:45AM-8:45AM Panel Discussion: Washington Political Overview
Introduction: Edward J. Mathias, Managing Director, The Carlyle Group

Moderator: Chris Matthews, Host, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews
and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show

Panelists:

Gloria Borger, National Political Correspondent, CBS News and Political
Columnist, U.S. News and World Report

David Gergen, Editor-at-Large, U.S. News & World Report and Former
Advisor to US Presidents

HOW MUCH WILL CARLYLE PLEDGE TO KATRINA RELIEF?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0509/S00014.htm

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REALITY & FACT CORRESPONDENT TO BE NAMED SOON

WASHINGTON TIMES - CNN gets religion Jon Klein, president of CNN,
announced yesterday that the network has hired its first full-time
"faith and values correspondent." New York-based Delia Gallagher will
report "on a wide range of topics involving faith, religion and values
in the lives of Americans" and "represents a major commitment by CNN to
covering the religious revival in the United States, where tens of
millions of people cite faith as a central part of their lives."

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050907-114203-6323r_page2.htm

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THE HOLY COMMANDMENTS OF ADVERTISING

BBC - John Camm has drawn up a list of seemingly unwritten rules which,
he concludes, might as well be the Advertising Bible.

1. Men are obsessed with sex but will forego sex in order to watch
football or drink beer.

2. Women are locked in a constant battle with their weight/body
shape/hairstyle.

3. Career success is entirely based on your ability to impress your
boss.

4. Mums are often harassed but NEVER depressed/unable to cope.

5. Any act of male stupidity (e.g. walking across a clean floor in muddy
boots, putting the dog in the dishwasher, etc.) will be met with a wry
smile, not genuine annoyance/anger.

6. Married men will flirt with other, younger women but never act upon
it.

7. Anyone with a scientific career will have a bad haircut and dreadful
clothes.

8. If you work for the emergency services, you are a better person than
the general population.

9. Elderly relatives never suffer from senile dementia.

10. Scandinavians are, without exception, blonde and beautiful.

11. Women have jobs they never do in real life, e.g. dockworker (who
looks like a model).

12. Children will not eat fruit or vegetables. Ever.

13. Both men and women find driving deeply pleasurable, never boring or
stressful.

14. Men are inherently lazy/slobbish; women are the reverse.

15. Chocolate, however, will cause women to immediately fall into the
languor of the opium eater. . .

20. All women (except stay-at-home housewives) have interesting and
enjoyable careers.

21. Any over-the-counter medical product will work instantly and 100%
effectively.

22. Children know more than adults. . .

23. Women never merely hop in and out of the shower, instead preferring
to act out some sort of soapy Dance of the Seven Veils.

24. School is a happy experience for all children.

25. Tortilla chips are the most exciting experience any group of young
people can experience.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4204412.stm

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RECOVERED HISTORY
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45th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GLEN ECHO PROTESTS

Sam Smith

THANKS TO energetic National Park Service Ranger, Sam Swersky, the 45th
anniversary of the civil rights protest at Glen Echo Park is being
celebrated on September 10. Glen Echo was once an amusement park near
Washington DC and from its inception in 1911 until 1961 it was
off-limits to African-American citizens.

In the summer of 1960, a local movement formed to end the policy of
segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park. Howard University students,
members of the Bannockburn community, the local NAACP, Cedar Lane
Unitarian Church and the Wheaton-Kensington Democratic Club, all
picketed the park on a daily basis, as well as petitioned the Montgomery
County Council, (because public school buses were bringing white kids to
Glen Echo to swim and taking black Montgomery County kids to the D.C.'s
Francis Pool for swimming lessons.) There was a legal battle as well,
which went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Your editor was a reporter for WWDC and Deadline Washington News Service
at the time. In August 1960 I wrote in a letter:

"Have been covering some of the anti-segregation demonstrations around
the Washington area. The results here have been hopeful. Good police
work has kept violence to a minimum although the presence of neo-Nazi
Lincoln Rockwell and his "troopers" doesn't make the situation any
simpler. Quite a few lunch counters have been desegregated. Glen Echo
Amusement Park is resisting despite a month of picketing and a Bethesda
theater is also refusing to back down."

In February 1960, four black college students had sat down at a
white-only Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. Within two weeks,
there were sit-ins in fifteen cities in five southern states and within
two months they had spread to fifty four cities in nine states. In April
the leaders of these protests had come together, heard a moving sermon
by Martin Luther King Jr. and formed the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee.

The summer I had first worked for WWDC I had covered the passage of the
first civil rights legislation in Congress since 1875. Now it was
getting serious. By the end of June, I was covering the desegregation of
lunch counters in Northern Virginia after sit-ins by groups led a Howard
Divinity School student, Lawrence Harvey. Harvey then took his troops to
Glen Echo.

Although I saved few recordings from that period -- tape was expensive
and usually recycled -- I still have the raw sounds I made that day. On
it a guard and Harvey confront each other:

Are you white or colored?

Am I white or colored?

That's correct. That's what I want to know. Can I ask your race?

My race. I belong to the human race.

All right. This park is segregated.

I don't understand what you mean.

It's strictly for white people

It's strictly for white persons?

Uh-hum. It has been for years. . .

You're telling me that because my skin is black I can not come into your
park?

Not because your skin is black. I asked you what your race was.

I would like to know why I can not come into your park.

Because the park is segregated. It is private property.

Just what class of people do you allow to come in here.

White people

So you're saying you exclude the American Negro.

That's right.

Who is a citizen of the United States.

That's right.

I see.

As a biracial group marched outside with picket signs, Harvey led a
group inside to sit-in at the restaurant and mount the carousel horses.
The case ended up in court and less than a year later, the park opened
for all.

http://www.glenechopark.org/contact.htm

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OTHER NEWS
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SONNY ROLLINS AT 75

DAVID MARCHESE, POP MATTERS - "I'm always in danger of sounding too
different than I did on my last record, but it's what I have to do. I
don't have any choice about it. I'm not gonna copy my past
performances." Over the course of his career, Rollins has seen jazz
music's position in society shift from a place as the hippest of hip to
its current status, where its most popular manifestation comes in the
form of sexy piano players and any claims to "cool" status are framed by
the soft focus of hindsight. The changes that Rollins has witnessed in
the way jazz is viewed have caused him to reassess his attitude toward
the music he's given his life to. . .

"It was a naïve concept I had, a long time ago, that jazz was able to
change the world. I think it's a great music and it can have some
effects, but I think today it's very difficult, unfortunately there's
much less people crossing lines. People are hardened into their
positions and it's difficult for a jazz musician to reach these people,
even if they might like what they hear, it's difficult for them to be in
a position where they would be open to hearing it."

http://www.popmatters.com/music/interviews/rollins-sonny-050826.shtml

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FURTHERMORE. . .
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SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Sixty-one union members and sympathizers
staged a sit-down at the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Union Square in San
Francisco to call attention to a yearlong dispute with 14 hotels over
new labor contracts. They were arrested, charged with misdemeanors for
interfering with a place of business, and released. As police fitted
them with plastic handcuffs, several hundred pickets marched on Stockton
Street, chanting union songs and slogans. Mike Casey, the president of
Local Two of UNITE HERE!, the union representing Bay Area service
employees in the conflict, was one of those arrested.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/09/06/BAG1OEISI71.DTL

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ALMOST HALF OF CANADIANS WANT OIL NATIONALIZED
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050905.wgasss0905/
EmailBNStory/National/

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Legislative Action Message

2005-10-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Katrina: A Compelling Call "To Do Justice, Love Kindness, and to Walk Humbly" (Micah 6:8) - FCNL

As the fourth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are facing a disaster of far greater proportions: Hurricane Katrina. Thousands are feared dead. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. Most of New Orleans remains submerged under toxic, bacteria infested, disease-laden floodwater. The regional economy, upon which the country depends for much of its energy and international trade, has been brought to a standstill. It will take many years of intensive, costly effort for the region to recover. Follow this link to help meet the needs of those affected now.

After painful delays, aid is flowing now into the stricken region.

Yet, beyond the devastation, Katrina has left in its wake many troubling questions about federal budget and policy priorities and about the capacity of the federal government to carry out its primary function – to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. . .” The disaster has laid bare the devastating impact of decades of misplaced priorities that have favored the rich over the poor, marginalized communities of color, failed to address a growing energy crisis, and wasted hundreds of billions on war and preparations for war.

Warnings ignored: For years now, why has the federal government ignored warnings that New Orleans was at high risk of being devastated by a major hurricane and ignored local and state appeals for assistance to restore wetlands, strengthen levees, and take other measures to reduce the threat? Has it been too distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And by the demands to spend more and more on “military security?”

No eyes to see: As the hurricane approached, why was so little done to assure the health and safety of the poor, the institutionalized, the infirm and those without access to private transportation? Why weren’t city buses and school buses mobilized to transport people out of harm’s way? What was done to evacuate those who do not read or watch the news, who do not trust public officials, who have no place to go, or who are elderly or disabled shut-ins? Did our national officials not have eyes to see the most vulnerable people?

Billions for security or for profit?: After the hurricane hit, why was the federal response so slow and ineffective in the crucial first days? After spending tens of billions on homeland security, why couldn’t the federal government do better than this? Where has the money gone? Evidently not to rapid responses to aid people in harms way.

Human security too late: Why does it take a devastating hurricane to get the government to finally provide food, health care, shelter, and public safety to people long-afflicted by poverty, hunger, inadequate health care and housing, and unemployment? Will the government now give greater priority to addressing similar concerns in communities across the country where basic human needs continue to go unmet?

Energy policies put us at risk: Why hasn’t the federal government done more to reduce U.S. dependence on oil (and thus, U.S. vulnerability to economic disruption and environmental degradation) when viable alternatives exist? Will the federal government provide increased emergency energy assistance to the poor and working poor across the country who are burdened the most by sky-rocketing gasoline and heating fuel prices?

Wars that weaken the U.S.: To what degree have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan undermined the capacity of the federal government to respond to national emergencies and meet basic human needs?

We urge Congress and the administration to consider these questions in the months ahead. We urge them to shift federal budget and policy priorities away from a bleak future of perpetual war toward taking away the occasion for war through the peaceful prevention of deadly conflict, meeting basic human needs at home and abroad, advancing human rights, and reducing the U.S. and world’s dangerous, harmful dependence on oil.

But viewing this crisis just days before the fourth anniversary of September 11, we are reminded that in the days following those heinous attacks the president had an historic opportunity to chart a new course in U.S. foreign policy, one dedicated to advancing the rule of law internationally, peacefully preventing deadly conflict, and cooperatively addressing the root causes of violent extremism. It was a rare opportunity to respond to a grievous wrong with restraint, justice, kindness, and humility.

Instead, President Bush, with the support of Congress, chose the rule of force, war, unilateralism, and threats. President Bush and Congress missed that opportunity at a time when the world was ready to unite with the U.S. in common cause and good will. The ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have diverted resources away from addressing vital human security needs at home and abroad.

Today, Hurricane Katrina presents another similar opportunity to transform our nation’s budget and policy priorities to address the needs of the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad; to bring an end to the costly, depleting, and devastating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and to accept the good will and assistance of allies and adversaries alike. We urge the President and Congress to seize this moment “to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly.”

Take Action Now

1. You can help meet the needs of those affected now by contributing to the American Friends Service Committee Katrina Relief fund:https://www.donatefast.com/donate/index.cfm?id=afcrisis

2. Please contact your legislators. This is no time for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans nor for cutting spending for the poorest Americans. Providing sufficient resources for Medicaid, food stamps, or other programs that serve the poorest and most vulnerable people in our communities should have priority over tax cuts. Urge your members of Congress to oppose more tax cuts for the wealthiest and spending cuts for the poorest when they draft and consider the budget reconciliation bills in September.

The people of the Gulf Coast need the federal government’s help now. So do the millions of people elsewhere around the country who live in deepening poverty and without health care coverage. The deep economic disparity and dismal poverty revealed in New Orleans in the wake of the hurricane can be found in cities, rural areas, Indian reservations across this country. The job of Congress is to promote the “general welfare.” It’s time that Congress got started doing it. Let them know that you, as a taxpayer, are willing to contribute your share.

You can contact your members of Congress and find a sample letter on FCNL’s web site, http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=8002046&type=CO

_______________________________________

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________________________________________

Friends Committee on National Legislation
245 Second St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-5795
fcnl@fcnl.org * www.fcnl.org
phone: (202)547-6000 * toll-free: (800)630-1330

We seek a world free of war and the threat of war
We seek a society with equity and justice for all
We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled
We seek an earth restored.