Fahrenheit 9-11: Summer Feel-Good Movie for Lefties
Review of Fahrenheit 9-11
by Rootsie
Well this was in some ways a typical Michael Moore production, somewhat unfocused, throwing out a lot of information without getting to the point, too soft on Democrats…But for once Moore pretty much left himself out of the equation except for a couple of maudlin moments and let the footage speak for itself…
…Representative after Representative from the Black Congressional Caucus standing up to contest the 2000 election results in the joint session, over which Gore presides, to verify the Bush’s ‘election’…Again and again Gore asks: ‘Did a member of the Senate sign the petition?” And each time the Congressperson, getting shouted down, has to say ‘No. Not a single Senator…the Senate is missing in action…”
These were perhaps the most moving and evocative moment of the film. 400 years of history were standing up there, denied yet once more.
…the riots on Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day. The Limo carrying Bush gunning it down the appropriately rainy street…
…Bush’s look of blank confusion that morning in the Florida classroom after an aide whispers in his ear that the 2nd plane has hit the Tower…
…The heartbreakingly beautiful black high school boys from Moore’s own Flint, Michigan…’I looked on TV at some of those bombed neighborhoods in Iraq and they look just like Flint…’
…The aggressive Marine recruiters working the Flint mall parking lot…’You want to play basketball? David Robinson was a Marine…you want to rap? Shaggy was a Marine…’
…The handholding romance between Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and various Saudi diplomats and businessmen, including the Bin Ladens. Complete with bubblegum music.
Dead and wounded babies. Furious grieving mothers asking Allah to smite America. The former Welfare mother from Flint who goes to the White House to ask why her son is dead.
And all of this interspersed with the darkest of black humor, Wolfowitz slicking back his hair with his own spit, Bush stumbling over his words, Rice and Powell being prepped for the cameras: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft crooning a patriotic tune, Ridge, James Baker…the camera lingers on their eyes…dead eyes, living dead…like those scary kind of clowns. Except they are anything but funny to that screaming Iraqi grandmother…
Moore in a commandeered ice-cream truck reading the Patriot Act over the loudspeaker to passing Congressmen.
Collaring Congressmen outside the Capitol to shove military brochures in their hands, asking them to sign their kids up for Iraq…
Hamid Karzai, former Unocal rep, now president of Afghanistan, signing the pipeline deal with Unocal.
The Taliban’s visit to the US months before the attack, being encouraged to do the same…being wined and dined across America…those grumpy-looking guys with their beards and turbans…
Well I laughed, and I cried. Moore covered a lot of territory in 2 hours and a bit. But I’m having my usual sorts of problems with the experience.
First, the student I went with, a bright high school graduate, although she appreciated the film, left confused and feeling that she didn’t have the background knowledge to understand how the whole picture fits together. So Moore has made a film that preaches to the choir, and cuts from this travesty to that, without giving a timeline or any other structures that might educate the uninformed. A film, in other words, for in-the-know, self-satisfied liberals. If you are not informed too bad for you. That’s why we’re better than you.
Four showings of the film sold out while we stood in line, and in line were these same self-satisfied folks who collect the horrors of our government like trading cards... there we all were, as if a single one of us needed to be convinced that Bush is stupid and bad. It is the latest in entertainment for conscience-stricken American lefties, I guess. The film might change some minds if anybody whose mind needs changing shelled out the money to see it. I doubt many will. I did not, after all, go rushing to see Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.
So is Fahrenheit 9-11 the ’04 feel-good summer movie for peaceniks? I fear it is.
Moore has been very clear that his intent with this film is to lose Bush the election. And as I said, his film barely touches on the complicity of Democrats in all this. When those black members of Congress found themselves unable to find a single Senator to contest the ’00 election, the majority of those Senators were Democratic. Moore seems to suggest that if Bush were gone, all those bad Unocal and Halliburton people, and the entire corporate elite, would go away too.
What about the liberal elite, educated professional people who in their own way also benefit from the tragic state of affairs Moore describes? I argue constantly with my peers about whether we constitute an elite. I just say look at the world that suffers for the policies of our government while we rest in comparative comfort and safety, and you tell me.
And precisely because we go to see Fahrenheit 9-11 as a sort of self-flagellating penance, since we certainly learn nothing from it that we didn’t already know, we are a particular brand of hypocrite, and share the blame with Bush and Cheney and the rest.
rootsie on 06.25.04 @ 09:15 PM CST [
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Los Angeles Moves to Ease Tensions After Tape Captures Police Beating of Black Suspect
By NICK MADIGAN
new york times full article LOS ANGELES, June 24 - In the wake of a videotaped police beating of an African-American suspect, officials here scrambled Thursday to plead for peace and offer assurances that the incident, an echo of the Rodney King beating in 1991, would be scrupulously investigated.
All eight Los Angeles police officers on the scene have been removed from active duty with pay since the beating, which occurred early Wednesday during the arrest of Stanley Miller, 36. He was suspected of having stolen a Toyota Camry that he had used to evade police cruisers in a chase that moved from Los Angeles itself through the streets of Compton, south of downtown.
In a tape shown repeatedly on television, Mr. Miller is seen sprinting from the car and then stopping to raise his arms in surrender and crouching on the ground; at that point the officers can be seen leaping on him.
One officer, later identified by the police as John Hatfield, a seven-year veteran of the force, then hit Mr. Miller with a flashlight at least 11 times and also kicked him.
...Percy Perrodin, who retired as a captain in the Compton Police Department in 2002 after 32 years on the force, said: "Use of a flashlight is never justified. You're only supposed to use whatever force is necessary to overcome resistance. Once the resistance has ceased, the force must cease."
rootsie on 06.25.04 @ 05:50 PM CST [
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Iraq's Allawi Vows to Crush Rebels Sowing Violence
new york times/Reuters articleBAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister vowed to crush Baathist die-hards and foreign militants he blamed for killing more than 100 people in a day of suicide bombings and attacks meant to sabotage next week's move toward Iraqi rule.
...Allawi told reporters late on Thursday he believed Ansar al-Islam, a group linked to Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi, was behind the Mosul bombings.
He blamed Baathists loyal to deposed dictator Saddam Hussein for the attacks in Ramadi and Baquba.
A group led by Zarqawi, who Washington says has links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement on an Islamist Web site.
...Zarqawi, whose group has claimed responsibility for the beheadings of an American and a South Korean hostage in Iraq, threatened on Wednesday to assassinate Allawi.
A CIA official in Washington said the voice on the audiotaped message was probably Zarqawi's.
Some of the black-clad gunmen who attacked police and government buildings in Baquba proclaimed loyalty to Zarqawi and wore yellow headbands linking them to his group.
It appeared to be the first time members of Zarqawi's underground network had surfaced in street combat.
...
Fighters in the rebellious town of Falluja issued a taped statement on Friday denying Zarqawi was holed up there.The violence that swept Sunni cities on Thursday did not extend to regions dominated by Iraq's Shi'ite majority.
The Mehdi Army militia of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire on Thursday in a Baghdad slum -- its last holdout against U.S. troops.
``The Mehdi Army wants the security situation to stabilize and does not want those who are bent on causing chaos in the run-up to the power transfer to succeed,'' a statement said.
Sadr, apparently keen to enter mainstream politics, has already withdrawn his forces from the holy Shi'ite cities of Najaf and Kerbala under pressure from moderate Shi'ite leaders.
...The war's original justification was to destroy Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. None has been found.
Since Baathist Party members and Republican Guards comprise the Iraqi government's 'security force' in Fallujah, it's hard to figure just who it is Allawi wants to 'crush.'
I would have to guess that the other Sh'ia convinces al Sadr to get smart and step out of the way so that the nature of this 'rebellion' would be exposed. It seems like a deliberate attempt on the part of MY GOVERNMENT to justify its ultimate aims in Iraq, which have nothing to do with democracy or 'stability.'
And this al Zirqawi, he's like the ubiquitous White Whale, everywhere at once doing every bad thing. But hey the CIA said the voice on said tape was 'probably' his. Fallujah, that 'rebellious town' is being bombed day after day, but the fighters have got word out: 'Zirqawi's not here!' I wonder if he is anywhere.Except in the copy that's written by a well-oiled (pun intended) misinformation mill.Guardian story:Iraq War Will Cost Each US Family $3,415The report predicted the war will ultimately cost each US household $3,415; its annual costs would be enough to provide healthcare for more than half of the 43 million US citizens who lack medical insur ance. Danielle Pletka, an analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, rejected such budget comparisons as intellectually dishonest. "That's not the way budgets work," she said. "I don't think healthcare has been robbed to pay for Iraq."
Paying the Price quotes a University of Texas economist, James Galbraith, as predicting that although the expenditure would initially boost the economy, long-term problems were likely, including an expanded trade deficit and high infla tion, with the spike in oil prices adding to the downward drag on the US economy.
However, Mr Wolfowitz predicted Iraqi oil would begin to flow at faster rates and help offset the cost of the reconstruction of Iraq. "There's been $20bn of Iraqi money that's almost never mentioned. Ten billion of it was leftover [UN] oil-for-food money. Ten billion is brand-new oil revenues. There's another $8bn that's projected, if the killers don't destroy the pipelines, by the end of this year," he said.
rootsie on 06.25.04 @ 05:42 PM CST [
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Thursday, June 24th
U.S. tackling violent crime in 15 cities**Justice Department dispatching 'Impact Teams'
cnn.com full articleWASHINGTON (AP) -- The Justice Department is dispatching teams of federal agents to 15 cities struggling with violent crime problems despite a dropping U.S. crime rate, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday.
Ashcroft told reporters that the effort would be targeted at "the hottest zones of criminal activity" in cities where high murder and violence rates persist despite a violent crime rate that is at a 30-year low nationwide, based on federal victimization statistics.
...Teams of agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Marshals Service; FBI; and Drug Enforcement Administration will be assigned to each of the 15 cities for six months. A Justice Department prosecutor will handle cases of those charged.
...Other cities getting teams are Albuquerque, New Mexico; Baltimore; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tampa, Florida; Miami; Richmond, Virginia; Greensboro, North Carolina; Pittsburgh; Las Vegas; Columbus, Ohio; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Tucson, Arizona; and the Washington, D.C.-Northern Virginia region.
I think this should be called Operation Bust a Bunch of blacks, Mexicans, and Native Americans in time for the Election. Think swing states, kids. Or else some quasi-military drill. Fallujah comes to Omaha.
rootsie on 06.24.04 @ 11:06 PM CST [
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Bush Interviewed in Gov't CIA Leak Probe
By DEB RIECHMANN
ap full articleWASHINGTON (AP) - Federal investigators questioned President Bush for more than an hour Thursday as the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name reached into the Oval Office.
The president was interviewed for 70 minutes by U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the head of the Justice Department investigation, and by members of his team. The only other person in the room was Jim Sharp, a private trial lawyer and former federal prosecutor hired by Bush, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
"The leaking of classified information is a very serious matter," McClellan said, adding that the president repeatedly has said he wants his administration to cooperate with the investigation. "No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the president of the United States," the spokesman said.
Investigators want to know who leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, to syndicated columnist Robert Novak last July. Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime.
rootsie on 06.24.04 @ 10:41 PM CST [
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Moonie leader 'crowned' in Senate
This completely bizarre relationship between the US government and Moon first surfaced in the mid/late 70's when it was announced he a)got the contract to clean all Congressional office buildings and b) bought the WASHINGTON TIMES. Right around this time Gloucester (MA) fishermen were complaining that Moon had bought virtually the entire fishing fleet, which made our little paranoid selves think CIA/Southeast Asian heroin. He owns UPI too. This is all so incomprehensibly weird. 'Moonies' were the group who first brought people's awareness to 'cults.' It was quite a fad in the 70's for American kids to join. They practiced mind-control techniques like sleep-deprivation coupled with sugar overdose, isolation from family, 24-7 propoganda etc. etc...He did a wedding in Madison Square Garden in 1981 with 5000 couples or something...
It is interesting that the rabid right wing, which wishes to bring us 'family values' and good ole' Bible thumpin' Christianity would lie down with this guy, but hey...the true story is yet to be told.Republicans and Democrats attend cult blessing ceremony
Julian Borger in Washington
the guardian full articleThursday June 24, 2004
The Guardian
The US Senate was used for a bizarre ritual in which the Rev Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification church, was "crowned" and declared himself the messiah in the presence of more than a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress, it was reported yesterday.
"Emperors, kings and presidents ... have declared to all heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's saviour, messiah, returning Lord and true parent," the 85-year-old Korean "Moonie" cult leader told several hundred guests at the meeting in one of the Senate's office buildings on March 23, according to the Washington Post.
He also claimed endorsement from Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, who had all been reformed and reborn through his church's teachings - an idiosyncratic version of Christianity which rejects the use of the cross as a symbol and denounces homosexuals as "dirty dung-eating dogs".
An account of the ceremony was first published by a Washington investigative journalist, John Gorenfeld.
According to a transcript of the event, Mr Moon declared: "I am God's ambassador, sent to Earth with his full authority. I am sent to accomplish his command to save the world's six billion people, restoring them to Heaven with the original goodness in which they were created."
The glittering event in the Senate's Dirksen building reflected Mr Moon's extraordinary influence in US politics. He owns the conservative newspaper the Washington Times and the US news agency United Press International.
His fiercely conservative attitudes towards homosexuality and pre-marital sex have won him the endorsement of leading Republicans, including the president's father, George Bush, and John Ashcroft, the attorney general, who participated in one of Mr Moon's "prayer luncheons" days before the president's inauguration in January 2001. Leading black Democrats also played a prominent role in the March ceremony.
An Illinois congressman, Danny Davis, wore white gloves and carried a purple cushion bearing a medieval-style "international crown of peace", which was placed on Mr Moon's head, at an event at which 100 Americans from 50 states were also given lesser "national" and "state" peace awards. The event was an "innocent ceremony," Mr Davis told the Guardian. "It was a banquet to give out awards. I didn't have any way of knowing Reverend Moon would say he was the messiah, or whatever he said."
Mr Davis acknowledged that "three or four individuals directly related to Rev Moon" took part in a fund-raiser for his primary campaign in Illinois earlier this year, but said small sums of money were involved.
Other members of Congress who attended the event said they had been fooled into going by being told only that people from their constituencies would be honoured at the ceremony.
A spokeswoman for a Democratic senator from Minnesota, Mark Dayton, said: "We fell victim to it. We were duped."
It was unclear who gave permission for the Senate office building to be used.
During the ceremony Mr Moon invoked the blessing of all America's past presidents. He also claimed to have communed with other big names in history.
He told his audience: "The five great saints and other leaders in the spirit world, including communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons."
It is not the first time he has claimed posthumous backing. His followers recently took out a two-page advertisement in the Washington Times to run a testimonial to him, quoting 36 former presidents "from the vantage point of heaven".
rootsie on 06.24.04 @ 01:00 PM CST [
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Violence Sweeps Iraq
In the American press it is harder to recognize the fact that the whole country is going up, since they report all of these 'incidents' seperately.69 dead as violence sweeps Iraq
the guardianThursday June 24, 2004
Insurgents today launched a wave of apparently coordinated car bomb and grenade attacks in several Iraqi cities, killing at least 69 people and injuring 270 more.
It was one of the worst days of violence since the US president, George Bush, declared the end of major combat in May 2003. Attacks targeting Iraqi police and US troops began at dawn in the Sunni-dominated cities of Baquba and Ramad and in the northern city of Mosul, where at least four bombs killed dozens of people.
There was also fierce fighting between US troops and militants in Falluja. Later, a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint in Baghdad, killing four Iraqi national guardsmen.
The US military said most of the fighting had calmed by noon (0900 BST), although fighting continued in Baquba. Three US troops were killed in the violence, the army said.
Security a shambles ahead of handover With one week to go, 30,000 police officers face the sack amid serious shortages of staff and equipment
Rory McCarthy and Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
the guardianThursday June 24, 2004
Up to 30,000 Iraqi police officers are to be sacked for being incompetent and unreliable and given a $60m payoff before the US hands over to an Iraqi government, senior British military sources said yesterday.
Many officers either deserted to the insurgents or simply stayed at home during the recent uprisings in Falluja and across the south.
Fourteen months after the war and just a week before the Iraqis take power on June 30, the sources revealed serious shortfalls of properly trained police and soldiers and vital equipment
rootsie on 06.24.04 @ 12:04 PM CST [
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Latin America Is Growing Impatient With Democracy
Unreal. The United States military coup in Haiti is labelled a 'popular uprising.' And Latin Americans, fools that they are, are apparently not capable of democracy. First, the mistake is made of equating voting with democracy. A popular mistake of course: see they vote! That means they are free. Latin Americans I am sure are not 'impatient' with democracy. Perhaps they are impatient to see some, especially since their new leaders and the US are trumpeting about it all the time. I am sure they are impatient for economic and racial justice, having been despoiled and despotically ruled for so many centuries now. This article assumes a tone of somehow blaming the people of Central and South American for their damned impatience, especially since now things are so wonderfully better. Ridiculous. By JUAN FORERO
new york times articlePublished: June 24, 2004
LAVE, Peru — On a morning in April, people in this normally placid spot in Peru's southeastern highlands burst into a town council meeting, grabbed their mayor, dragged him through the streets and lynched him. The killers, convinced the mayor was on the take and angry that he had neglected promises to pave a highway and build a market for vendors, also badly beat four councilmen.
The beating death of the mayor may seem like an isolated incident in an isolated Peruvian town but it is in fact a specter haunting elected officials across Latin America. A kind of toxic impatience with the democratic process has seeped into the region's political discourse, even a thirst for mob rule that has put leaders on notice.
In the last few years, six elected heads of state have been ousted in the face of violent unrest, something nearly unheard of in the previous decade. A widely noted United Nations survey of 19,000 Latin Americans in 18 countries in April produced a startling result: a majority would choose a dictator over an elected leader if that provided economic benefits.
Analysts say that the main source of the discontent is corruption and the widespread feeling that elected governments have done little or nothing to help the 220 million people in the region who still live in poverty, about 43 percent of the population.
"Latin America is paying the price for centuries of inequality and injustice, and the United States really doesn't have a clue about what is happening in the region," said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University.
"These are very, very fragile regimes," he added. "Increasingly, there's frustration and resentment. The rate of voting is going down. Blank ballots are increasing. The average Latin American would prefer a very strong government that produces a physical security and economic security, and no government has been able to do that."
These at-risk governments stretch thousands of miles from the Caribbean and Central America through the spine of the Andes to the continent's southern cone, and increasingly the problems associated with weak governments are spilling beyond Latin America and affecting United States interests in the region.
"We're confronted with large increase in illegal migration," Mr. Roett said, "more drugs pouring into the American market to meet an insatiable demand, and the potential for regime failure that could spread in the region and bring serious threats to our security position in the hemisphere."
Among the weakest states is Guatemala, which struggles with paramilitary groups, youth gangs and judicial impunity and has become a crossroads for the smuggling of people and drugs to the United States.
Several other governments are fragile at best and susceptible to popular unrest that could further weaken and topple them. These include the interim administration of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue in Haiti, which took power after a popular revolt this year, and President Carlos Mesa in Bolivia, who took power after such a revolt last year.
rootsie on 06.24.04 @ 11:51 AM CST [
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Wednesday, June 23rd
ICC to Probe Congo Crimes in First Investigation
Wed Jun 23, 2004 02:28 PM ET
By Emma Thomasson
Reuters articleAMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court has opened its first investigation, into crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo including rape, torture and the use of child soldiers, it said Wednesday.
"The opening of the first investigation of the ICC is a major step forward for international justice," Luis Moreno-Ocampo, ICC chief prosecutor, said in a statement.
Prosecutors will investigate crimes committed in Congo since July 2002 when the court's statutes came into force, noting that thousands of deaths by mass murder and summary execution had been reported in the country since that date
Well it is either curious or completely appropriate that a situation that inaction by the UN (Rwanda) is what set recent mess in Congo in motion, and that THIS is waht the ICC chooses to go for first. Does Kofi Annan's inaction on Rwanda before he was Sec. General constitute a war crime?
rootsie on 06.23.04 @ 03:17 PM CST [
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Tuesday, June 22nd
Another Fascinating Beheading
So check it out.
At 6amET Reuters says the kidnappers extended the deadline.
At 11:54amET (Reuters) the chief negotiator says the talks are going well and the kidnappers have dropped the demand for S.Korea to promise to withdraw troops.
At 1:20pmET Reuters reports the guy beheaded and American troops have found the body.
WHATever.
africaspeaks weblog
rootsie on 06.22.04 @ 03:27 PM CST [
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Monday, June 21st
The Final Answer Will Be Given by the Tanks
Colombia's new border brigade and the Venezuelan referendum
by Justin Podur; June 19, 2004
znet articleA few months ago, the commander of the Venezuelan Army, Raul Baduel, described something that worried him (1). Colombia had just purchased 46 AMX-30 battle tanks from Spain. The media claimed the tanks were to fight drug trafficking, but that hardly seemed plausible. Baduel suspected that the tanks were going to end up on the Venezuelan border.
This deployment was blandly reported in El Tiempo, Colombia's national newspaper, yesterday (2). The 46 tanks will be part of a new Brigade, especially created, to 'patrol the border'. Four battalions and a Special Forces group form this new Brigade. The tanks are supposed to arrive in (and watch the timing carefully, for we will revisit it) August.
The El Tiempo article refers to the need for the tanks in order to "defend Colombia" from an "eventual incursion from Venezuela". The Brigade is also charged with the defense of the Wayuu indigenous people, who have been victims of massacres by "illegal armed groups". Thus, the indigenous can rest secure under the protection of the very army that is killing them directly or working with the paramilitaries ("illegal armed groups" who happen to work with the army) who are killing them.
As for the tanks themselves, their location is unknown. The deal was signed between the current Colombian government and the Spanish government of Jose Maria Aznar, who made sure he sold the tanks before he lost the elections in March. But, an El Tiempo editorial in the same issue speculates, the Venezuelan government is pressuring Zapatero's new Spanish government to call off the deal. "The final answer will be given by the tanks," writes the Madrid correspondent for El Tiempo, Victor Manuel Vargas. "That is, if they are delivered or not."
That is a very good description of US foreign policy, in fact, in the region and elsewhere: The final answer will be given by the tanks.
It is not coincidental that the tanks for the Venezuelan border are arriving in August. The Venezuelan recall referendum, when Venezuelans will vote on whether or not to recall President Hugo Chavez, will take place on August 15. It will take place, that is, if the Venezuelan opposition thinks they can win. Since the Venezuelan opposition could not likely win a fair vote, it is more likely that the whole referendum exercise, like the coup attempt in April 2002 and the 'National Strike' (3) later that year and into 2003, is just another part of the destabilization campaign against the Chavez government. In March 2003, just after the 'National Strike' collapsed, Colombia's army raided across the Venezuelan border (4). Just in May of 2004, another plot involving Colombian paramilitaries was foiled by Venezuela, though the details have not fully emerged. According to an AFP report Venezuelan police are still finding caches of weapons and individuals linked to the plot. (5)
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 09:01 PM CST [
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Israel's Intelligence Scandal
Irreversible Mental Damage
By URI AVNERY
counterpunch.org articleTwo weeks ago, the international community made a shocking declaration.
Giving in to a demand by George Bush, the “Quartet” accepted the “Revised Disengagement Plan” of Ariel Sharon. This means that the United Nations, the European Union, the Russian Federation and the United States confirmed this document. I wonder if any one of the honorable diplomats has read the document with their own eyes.
In the first paragraph of the “plan”, the following words appear: “Israel has come to the conclusion that at present, there is no Palestinian partner with whom it is possible to make progress on a bilateral peace process.”
That is to say, the international community has confirmed that the Palestinian people has no right to take part in the determination of its own fate. Everything will be decided by the Government of Israel alone, with the backing of the United States, whose position will be automatically accepted by the other partners of the “Quartet”. The European Union with its 25 member-states, the government of the Russian Federation and the organization that represents the entire world have humbly accepted the edict of Bush, the dictator of the world, who is himself a captive of Sharon. Sharon decided long ago that the elected president of the Palestinian people is “irrelevant”, together with the whole Palestinian leadership.
The Palestinian people have been eliminated from the list of decision-makers, thereby also abolishing in practice all the agreements signed with them, from Oslo to the Road Map.
This is a scandalous step, unprecedented in its dimensions, and it passed without comment. Apart from Sharon and his minions, nobody noticed the implications. The big boot of the international community trod on the Palestinian people without even noticing it, as if on an ant.
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 01:42 PM CST [
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WHAT??
Israelis 'using Kurds to build power base'
Gary Younge
guardian articleIsraeli military and intelligence operatives are active in Kurdish areas of Iran, Syria and Iraq, providing training for commando units and running covert operations that could further destabilise the entire region, according to a report in the New Yorker magazine.
The article was written by Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who exposed the abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib. It is sourced primarily to unnamed former and current intelligence officials in Israel, the United States and Turkey.
Israel's aims, according to Hersh, are to build up the Kurdish military strength in order to offset the strength of the Shia militias and to create a base in Iran from which they can spy on Iran's suspected nuclear-making facilities.
"Israel has always supported the Kurds in a Machiavellian way - a balance against Saddam," one former Israeli intelligence officer told the New Yorker. "It's Realpolitik. By aligning with the Kurds Israel gains eyes and ears in Iran, Iraq and Syria. The critical question is 'What will the behaviour of Iran be if there is an independent Kurdistan with close ties to Israel? Iran does not want an Israeli land-based aircraft carrier on its border."
This article is written as if the U.S. and Israel do not share common interests all down the line. Historically, the U.S. has used Israel to do things they don't want to get caught doing, such as selling weapons to S. Africa in the Aparttheid days. I said from the first that the United States has no interest in a stable democratic Iraq. To promote the 'destabilization of the region' in order to justify 'drastic measures' to gain control of the entire region has been the policy for a long time now. Read Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations 1993.
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 11:05 AM CST [
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New Information Shows Bush Indecisive, Paranoid, Delusional
capitol hill blue articleThe carefully-crafted image of George W. Bush as a bold, decisive leader is cracking under the weight of new revelations that the erratic President is indecisive, moody, paranoid and delusional.
“More and more this brings back memories of the Nixon White House,” says retired political science professor George Harleigh, who worked for President Nixon during the second presidential term that ended in resignation under fire. “I haven’t heard any reports of President Bush wondering the halls talking to portraits of dead Presidents but what I have been told is disturbing.”
"George W. Bush is a case study in contradiction," Dr. Frank writes in Bush On The Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. "Bush is an untreated ex-alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies."
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 10:44 AM CST [
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White House Lawyer Questioned in CIA Leak Case
capitol hill blue article The White House's top lawyer was questioned by a federal grand jury Friday in the criminal investigation of who in the Bush administration leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year.
White House counsel Alberto Gonzales underwent questioning at the federal courthouse. He was the latest in a string of administration officials to be asked about the unauthorized disclosure of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news media.
"The president directed the White House to cooperate fully, and Judge Gonzales was just doing his part to cooperate," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who also has gone before the grand jury.
Vice President Dick Cheney was recently questioned...
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 10:37 AM CST [
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Here We Are on the Glorious Road to Democracy in Iraq-Democracy or else dammit!
Iraq Government Considers Using Emergency Rule
By DEXTER FILKINS and SOMINI SENGUPTA
new york times articleBAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — Faced with violent resistance even before it has assumed power, Iraq's newly appointed government is considering imposing a state of emergency that could involve curfews and a ban on public demonstrations, Iraqi officials said Sunday.
In his first news briefing here, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi offered no details of what emergency rule might include, only that a committee of cabinet members had been appointed to consider the issue.
Dr. Allawi, who worked closely with the Central Intelligence Agency in opposing Saddam Hussein's government in the 1990's, said he would consider "human rights principles and international law," but made clear that he intended to act quickly and forcefully against the insurgency, using extraordinary methods if necessary.
"We will do all we can to strike against enemy forces aiming at harming our country, and we will not stand by with our hands tied," Dr. Allawi said. "The Iraqi people are determined to establish a democratic government that provides freedom and equal rights for all its citizens. We are prepared to fight and, if necessary, die for the cause."
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 10:12 AM CST [
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Gotta Love This
S.Korea Party Asks U.S. to Avoid Intelligence Errors
By REUTERS
Reuters articleSEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's ruling party urged President Bush's administration on Monday to share more intelligence on North Korea to ensure there is no repeat of what it said was the flawed information that led to war in Iraq.
The bipartisan commission investigating the September 11 attacks in the United States reported last week there had been contact between Iraqis and al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden but there was no evidence of a collaborative relationship.
``It was wrongful of the Bush Administration to bring on the war against Iraq,'' the Uri Party said in an English-language statement. ``Even worse, the administration is losing the justification of occupation policy in Iraq.''
``We urge that the Bush Administration guarantee that such kind of decision making based on false and distorted information as in the case of Iraq will not occur on the Korean peninsula, by sharing nuclear and military information on North Korea with Seoul,'' the party said.
rootsie on 06.21.04 @ 10:05 AM CST [
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Sunday, June 20th
Here We Go: Preventing Civil War or Promoting It?
Kurds Advancing to Reclaim Land in Northern Iraq
new york timesBy DEXTER FILKINS
Published: June 20
AKHMUR, Iraq, June 17 — Thousands of ethnic Kurds are pushing into lands formerly held by Iraqi Arabs, forcing tens of thousands of them to flee to ramshackle refugee camps and transforming the demographic and political map of northern Iraq.
The Kurds are returning to lands from which they were expelled by the armies of Saddam Hussein and his predecessors in the Baath Party, who ordered thousands of Kurdish villages destroyed and sent waves of Iraqi Arabs north to fill the area with supporters.
The new movement, which began with the fall of Mr. Hussein, appears to have quickened this spring amid confusion about American policy, along with political pressure by Kurdish leaders to resettle the areas formerly held by Arabs. It is happening at a moment when Kurds are threatening to withdraw from the national government if they are not confident of having sufficient autonomy.
rootsie on 06.20.04 @ 07:24 PM CST [
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Here's the Clincher
Okay. In the article I posted below, you have al-Qaida denying involvement in the latest beheading, but now it seems 'the head' of the cell that supposedly killed him left a note! Well I'm glad to see that's all cleared up now. This combined with the appearing and disappearing body (also below) tells me that SOMEBODY is seeing the p.r. value in beheading an American over there every now and then. One concrete result I have seen here in the U.S. is a a sudden rise in murders that feature beheadings...beheaded children, beheaded wives...al-Qaida Head Justifies Targeting Johnson
Sunday June 20, 2004 4:31 PM
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - The head of the al-Qaida cell that killed Paul M. Johnson Jr. justified targeting the American engineer in a message written before he himself was killed in a gun battle with Saudi security forces.
the guardian uk full articlewebsite says Saudi Security Forces aided in kidnapping:aol news
rootsie on 06.20.04 @ 12:33 PM CST [
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Well Which IS It?
Today:Saudis Search for Slain Hostage's Body
By SALAH NASRAWI, Associated Press Writer
yahoo newsRIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi security agents searched homes in the capital and surrounding deserts Saturday for the body of slain American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr., while Saudi officials hailed as a victory their slaying of his executioner, the top al-Qaida figure in the kingdom.
...Saudi officials had reported that Johnson's body was found Friday dumped on the northern outskirts of the capital, hours after his captors killed and decapitated him and posted Web photos of his severed head.
But officials backtracked Saturday. "We haven't found the body yet," said Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah in Washington. "We think we know the area where it is."
Saudi security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they have been searching in desert areas around Riyadh. They said they were also searching houses and apartments that they suspect were used by militants.
yesterday: Al Qaeda militants kill American hostage
Saturday, June 19, 2004 Posted: 3:04 AM EDT (0704 GMT)
cnn.com(CNN) -- Saudi security forces killed a top al Qaeda leader in the kingdom shortly after the decapitated body of American hostage Paul Johnson Jr. was left in a remote area of Riyadh,
security sources said.But a statement attributed to al Qaeda denied al-Muqrin's death, saying "Saudi tyrants" trying to discourage the mujahideen were spreading "false news."
There was no way to immediately confirm the denial.
...His body was found Friday in northern Riyadh soon after an Islamist Web site posted photographs of his decapitated body.
U.S. officials said the remains were "definitely" Johnson's.One photograph showed a severed head sitting on the back of a headless body.
'Saudi officials.' Saudii security officials'. 'Security sources'. 'American officials.' 'Officials.' 'Saudi security forces.' Well whatever the story is, it is clearly neither official nor secure.
rootsie on 06.20.04 @ 11:59 AM CST [
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Friday, June 18th
Guatemala and the Forgotten Anniversary
by Arnold J. Oliver
commondreams.orgDemocracy has been much in the news of late. At the G-8 Summit in Georgia, one of the main items on the agenda was the democratization of the Middle East, and the recent commemoration of the D-Day anniversary and the passing of President Reagan both generated discussion concerning the defense and spread of democracy.
But amidst all the hoopla, the anniversary of a decisive event in the modern history of democracy has somehow escaped notice. Fifty years ago, in June of 1954, the government of the United States overthrew the legitimate and democratically elected government of Guatemala. It was the Central Intelligence Agency's first major covert action in Latin America, and by leading to the rise to a series of military regimes across the region, it changed the course of history.
What was done to Guatemala in 1954 was criminal, and because the U.S. government committed the dreadful deed, American citizens are obliged to remember.
rootsie on 06.18.04 @ 10:42 PM CST [
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Conspiracy and the State of the Union
by Jamey Hecht, PhD
from the wilderness.com full articleThere is some good stuff in this article....Yet the forces of violence, reaction, and American exceptionalism can claim a long series of epochal triumphs, of which I will name only the most egregious: Operation Paperclip, which brought the Nazi Intelligence "community" into the nascent CIA (thereby rescuing the most depraved murderers in history from certain death at the hands of British military tribunals); the National Security Act of 1947, which established the CIA as a secret society of military adventurism and political sabotage under the guise of an intelligence-gathering body; the murders of President Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, which issued in a disastrous Vietnam War that killed up to three million people and pitched the U.S. economy into a permanent free-fall of debt; the Savings and Loan Robbery, which did so much to bankrupt the vanishing middle class; the 1990's three trillion dollar theft under the auspices of the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which motivated America's international creditors to begin withdrawing their confidence from the dollar; and the "velvet coup" of the fraudulent presidential election of 2000, which openly discredited the residual myth of popular sovereignty. But perhaps 11-22-63 and 9-11-01 are the deepest wounds they have inflicted upon the body politic so far. These represent two seizures of state power by the most violent elements of the longstanding elites who make policy in the absence of popular sovereignty and genuine legislative oversight. In the meantime, they have consolidated their power and expanded their domain of operations and propaganda with an inexorable momentum.
Policy is no longer driven by leadership figures, but by consortia of mutually interested elites. Like the forty years since 11-22, the three years since 9-11 have seen exponential growth in defense spending as a portion of the USG's annual budget. Between forty-six and fifty-three cents of every tax dollar we pay goes to military debt payments, salaries, deployments, and weapons stockpiling. This flood of capital into the arms industry drives a domestic policy of despair and a "foreign" policy of violence. Weapons are expended so that they can be replaced; their manufacture enriches Lockheed-Martin, the largest purveyor of lethal weapons in the world, and its competitive partners. In pursuit of new raw materials to seize and new markets to monopolize, corporations and their clients drive policy toward aggressive expansionism. CIA is the spearhead of the war process, so its activity has been cloaked from all genuine Congressional interference. The beauty of the CIA's position is that it apparently always takes its orders from the President, but for the most part it also insures that the President orders roughly what CIA wants. When he doesn't do so, and seeks to replace their programs with his own initiative, he is murdered; when he insists on forming his own intelligence apparatus inside the White House or the Pentagon - as in the Nixon and G. W. Bush administrations, respectively - the CIA is likely to destroy the administration. Whenever the latter occurs, the administration is unseated on the strength of some nonviolent crime like a "third rate burglary" or the disclosure of a CIA operative's identity. Bombing Vietnam and Cambodia or Afghanistan and Iraq at the cost of thousands of lives never ranks as an impeachable offense.
rootsie on 06.18.04 @ 07:31 PM CST [
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The "Long Established" Link...
By Gary Leupp
counterpunch.org full articlePainting al Zarqawi as the cheeky contender vying with Osama for 'biggest baddest terrorist guy' provides a handy pretext for some disastrous military operation in Iran, since Iran is accused of 'sponsoring' him. So far al Zarqawi is the dead man, the one-legged man, the one-legged man with two legs...I remember being convinced through most of the 90's that Osama was a fictional character-to tell the truth I may never be convinced. Bin Laden and now al Zarqawi are just so darned convenient...some excerpts:
"A memo indicating that his [Cheney's] office was directly involved in the decision to award Halliburton (of which he was formerly CEO) no-bid contracts worth seven billion dollars in Iraq reconstruction work prior to the war last year; reports that most likely a member of Cheney’s office vindictively (and criminally) leaked to the press the identity of former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s CIA agent wife; charges that Cheney personally, repeatedly visited CIA headquarters to influence “intelligence” reporting in order to bolster the administration’s case for war with Iraq; and even his role as Bush “transition director” in placing neocons eager for a war with Iraq in key positions in the Defense Department and his own office…all these will likely embarrass him further in the coming months. But maybe, with the arrogance for the masses that typifies neocons, he will plod on disseminating disinformation, in his cool, measured, grandfatherly style, knowing that if challenged on the Iraq al-Qaeda link he will need only say, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.”
If al-Zarqawi did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. The “Jordanian-born” militant (variously described as “Palestinian” or “Bedouin”) is the link posited by the Bush administration between Saddam Hussein, the secularist, and bin Laden, the Islamic fundamentalist. (In his crucial speech to the United Nations before the war, Colin Powell declared that there was a “sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaida terrorist network” and asserted that al-Zarqawi was the key figure in that nexus.) Any other links—such as the 1997 training of al-Qaeda operatives in airline hijacking, which supposedly took place at the Salman Pak training facility outside Baghdad---have been discredited. That leaves us with the al-Zarqawi link. The nice thing about the latter is that al-Zarqawi straddles the pre-invasion and post-invasion periods, and so can be used (by the neocons anyway) to justify not only the invasion but the ongoing occupation. Why’d we invade? Because, Cheney (who can no longer speak of weapons of mass destruction) explains, of those “long established ties with al-Qaeda.” Why are we still there? Because al-Zarqawi (either depicted as “linked to al-Qaeda” or as an al-Qaeda “operative”) is there in Iraq, and if his influence grows, Iraq will become Osama bin-Laden’s base for more attacks on the USA Homeland. His supposed presence, that is, justifies (so long as it may be posited) the presence of U.S. occupying forces. He—another personification of evil, a human face on Terror to add to that of the frustratingly elusive bin Laden---is indeed necessary.
As such, it is best that he remain as vaguely defined as possible. If, for example, you say he had his leg amputated in 2002 in the Baghdad hospital from which (you say) he made a phone call that you intercepted (that call being your key piece of evidence for the “long established” Saddam al-Qaeda ties), and then you, for example, say that the person beheading Nick Berg in Iraq two months ago, who seems to have both legs, is none other than arch-villain al-Zarqawi---then you run into logical problems. Some people (including German intelligence agents) think al-Zarqawi is as much a rival as ally to bin-Laden. The Christian Science Monitor suggests that the two men differ on how to exploit Shiite-Sunni differences in Iraq. (So best not to give to many details about this evil person, other than to make sure all know he is indeed evil, so sneakily so that if logical contradictions appear in media coverage of his activities, he, rather than they, are to blame.) But logical thinking aside, if one can depict al-Zarqawi as the mastermind of ongoing resistance to the occupation of Iraq, then you can divert attention from the general, indigenous, Iraqi rejection of the occupation, while depicting that occupation as an anti-al-Qaeda effort..."
rootsie on 06.18.04 @ 03:19 PM CST [
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Thursday, June 17th
Toward a Single State Solution***Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the People of Palestine
This is an excellent article which gives a history of modern Zionism and the state of Israel, the origins of the 'Palestinian problem,' gives an example of Zionist collaboration with Hitler, discusses the Christian Coalition's relationship with Israel, and engages at length the tabu topic of how any faint criticism of Israel leads to charges of anti-Semitism. The author goes on to propose a 'one-state solution.'by Noel Ignatiev
counterpunch.org full article...Unlike many countries, including the United States, the Israeli state does not belong, even in principle, to those who reside within its borders, but is defined as the state of the Jewish people, wherever they may be. That peculiar definition is one reason why the state has to this day failed to produce a written constitution, define its borders, or even declare the existence of an Israeli nationality. Moreover, in this "outpost of democracy," no party that opposes the existence of the Jewish state is permitted to take part in elections. It is as if the United States were to declare itself a Christian state, define "Christian" not by religious belief but by descent, and then pass a "gag law" prohibiting public discussion of the issue.
If one part of the Zionist project is the expulsion of the indigenous population, the other part is expanding the so-called Jewish population. But here arises the problem, which has tormented Israeli legal officials for fifty years, what is a Jew? (For a century-and-a-half U.S. courts faced similar problems determining who is white.) The Zionists set forth two criteria for determining who is a Jew. The first is race, which is a myth generally and is particularly a myth in the case of the Jews. The "Jewish" population of Israel includes people from fifty countries, of different physical types, speaking different languages and practicing different religions (or no religion at all), defined as a single people based on the fiction that they, and only they, are descended from the Biblical Abraham. It is so patently false that only Zionists and Nazis even pretend to take it seriously. In fact, given Jewish intermingling with others for two thousand years, it is likely that the Palestinians-themselves the result of the mixture of the various peoples of Canaan plus later waves of Greeks and Arabs-are more directly descended from the ancient inhabitants of the Holy Land than the Europeans displacing them. The claim that the Jews have a special right to Palestine has no more validity than would an Irish claim of a divine right to establish a Celtic state all across Germany, France, and Spain on the basis that Celtic tribes once lived there. Nevertheless, on the basis of ascribed descent, the Zionist officials assign those they have selected a privileged place within the state. If that is not racism, then the term has no meaning.
rootsie on 06.17.04 @ 10:01 PM CST [
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Mohammed Atta and the 9-11 Cover Up in Florida
Interview with Daniel Hopsicker
Conducted by Sander Hicks
Broadcast 6/11/04 on INN World Report
full interview...HOPSICKER: What I found in Florida was that the government story about the terrorist conspiracy’s activities before September 11th is not just an error, it s a lie. The time line is wrong. The FBI’s timeline is wrong. Everything they are doing is designed to protect an operation that was under way in southwest Florida that trained, between 1999 and September 2001, literally hundreds of Arabs to fly. In other words, in 1998, there were two or three Arabs learning how to fly, by the end of ‘99 it was flying hundreds of them. So obviously there was a covert operation going on; the flight school where Mohammad Atta went to, Huffman Aviation in Florida is not a business and was not operating like a business. So it was, and is, something else...
This interview connects the goon squad behind any number of squalid episodes, like the Bay of Pigs, Kenneddy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, to 9-11. I wish I was surprised.
rootsie on 06.17.04 @ 08:42 PM CST [
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Israel Launches Gaza Moat Plan
Reuters storyJERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel set in motion a plan Thursday to dig a moat along the Gaza-Egypt border, inviting contractor bids for the project meant to prevent arms reaching Palestinian militants through tunnels.
The Defense Ministry published the bid notice 11 days after the cabinet approved in principle a Gaza withdrawal plan, under which Israel would keep a narrow corridor on the Egyptian frontier pending possible security arrangements with Cairo.
Inviting bids by July 12, the ministry said the southern Gaza Strip ``canal'' would be 50 feet to 80 feet deep and stretch 2.5 miles.
``This is the beginning of turning the Gaza Strip into a big prison,'' Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said, comparing the trench to the barrier Israel is constructing in the West Bank with the declared aim of stopping suicide bombers.
The notice, in Israeli newspapers, did not give the width of the canal -- a figure crucial to determining whether any Palestinian homes along the ``Philadelphi Corridor'' buffer zone adjacent to Rafah refugee camp would need to be demolished.
It was not clear whether the moat would be filled with water, as Israeli military sources had suggested last month, or would be dry...
Well I suggest filling it with crocodiles. It is uncanny how Israel reconstitutes the Jews' own history of persecution in its aggression against Palestine. First the fence, conjuring up the Warsaw Ghetto, and now the Medieval moat, hearkening back to feudal times or even earlier to the Crusades, when whole Jewish populations were wiped out. Now apparently they are the feudal lords.
rootsie on 06.17.04 @ 08:30 PM CST [
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Geez are we supposed to be sorry??
Envoy Puts Latin Post, and Stormy Past, Behind Him
By TIM WEINER
new york timesMEXICO CITY, June 16 - Otto J. Reich, President Bush's special envoy to Latin America, resigned on Wednesday, taking with him a lifetime of experience fighting Fidel Castro and other opponents of American foreign policy.
...In 2001, President Bush nominated Mr. Reich to become assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, the top State Department post for Latin America. Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, the president's brother, and the state's anti-Castro Cubans supported the nomination.
But the Senate would not confirm him; some Democrats called him an ideologue. After a bitter fight, the president appointed him temporarily when Congress recessed. After that yearlong term expired, he took the special envoy post, which did not require Senate approval, in January 2003.
...Mr. Reich, a former ambassador to Venezuela, also led the State Department's office of public diplomacy under President Ronald Reagan. He carried out the president's policy of undermining the left-wing leaders of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas. He tried to generate public support in the United States for anti-Sandinista rebels, known as contras, after Congress cut off funds to them in 1984.
In 1987, the comptroller general of the United States reported that Mr. Reich's office had "engaged in prohibited, covert activities" of domestic propaganda "designed to influence the media and the public to support the administration's Latin American policies.'' Those acts violated restrictions on the use of public funds for propaganda without Congress's consent, the report said.
...In the 1990's, Mr. Reich worked as a lobbyist. He helped persuade Congress to tighten the American embargo on Cuba. His clients included Lockheed Martin, which sought to sell F-16 fighter aircraft to Chile.
In May 2001, shortly after he joined the administration, Chile agreed to buy 10 F-16's for more than $600 million, ending a two-decade United States ban on the sale of high-technology arms to Latin America.
rootsie on 06.17.04 @ 08:15 PM CST [
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Tuesday, June 15th
*Iran takes on west's control of oil trading
With all the rhetoric coming out of the US and UN this week, Iran wisely figures it had better start raising some money...they are after all next on the Axis of Evil hit list...Terry Macalister
Wednesday June 16, 2004
the guardian Iran is to launch an oil trading market for Middle East and Opec producers that could threaten the supremacy of London's International Petroleum Exchange.
A contract to design and establish a new platform for crude, natural gas and petrochemical trades is expected to be signed with an international consortium within days.
Top oil producing countries are determined to seize more control of trading after being advised that existing markets such as the IPE and Nymex in New York are not working in their favour.
full article
rootsie on 06.15.04 @ 09:58 PM CST [
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US Reluctant to Hand Saddam Over to Iraqis
Well you had to figure after the flush of "We GOT Him" that they would eventually be hard-pressed to figure out what to do with him. You don't want him saying anything, after all...this story goes on to say that the Al Qaeda link is Zirqawi, the apocryphal 'one-legged man' of Nick Berg fame, except the US claimed to have killed him in MARCH. O well...the guardianOliver Burkeman in Washington
Wednesday June 16, 2004
The United States and the new Iraqi government were mired in disagreement last night over the fate of Saddam Hussein after George Bush said Iraqi demands for immediate custody of the former dictator could not be met until it was certain the new regime had the ability to keep him in jail.
Mr Bush also jumped to the defence of his vice-president, Dick Cheney, who insisted, despite the deep scepticism of the intelligence community, that Saddam had had close links to al-Qaida.
full article
rootsie on 06.15.04 @ 09:41 PM CST [
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Equitorial Guinea accuses Spain of Coup Plot
the guardianEquatorial Guinea accused Spain yesterday of trying to overthrow its government in the alleged plot by foreign mercenaries to kill the president.
In an interview with the Guardian, President Teodoro Obiang's special adviser, Miguel Mifuno, accused Madrid of sending a warship to the country with 500 marines on board.
He alleged that they were to have been sent in to secure the capital after mercenaries had killed the president and ministers. Mr Mifuno, a former ambassador, is the president's closest colleague.
...Equatorial Guinea is one of the most strategically important African countries to the US, expected to provide it with up to 5% of its oil within a few years. President Obiang, believed to be one of the richest men in Africa, is accused by his critics of profiting handsomely from the oil reserves.
rootsie on 06.15.04 @ 09:24 PM CST [
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Rwanda denies massing troops on DR Congo border
yahoo newsKINSHASA (AFP) - Rwanda denied accusations by Kinshasa that it is massing troops on the border with the vast Democratic Republic of Congo (news - web sites) (DRC), as a sabre-rattling dissident DRC general, allegedly backed by Kigali, threatened to go back to war.
In the statement issued here late Monday, the DRC army accused renegade General Laurent Nkunda of "being a spokesman for the Rwandan army, which this evening (Monday) massed troops on our common border to perpetrate yet another attack on our country."
But Rwanda rejected the claims, and said it had not stepped up its military presence in the border region since in April, after a cross-border attack by Rwandan Hutu rebels based in the eastern DRC.
UN Finds No Mistreatment of Tutsis AP story
rootsie on 06.15.04 @ 09:03 PM CST [
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Torture, Inc.- Oliver North Joins the Party
By JOHN STANTON and WAYNE MADSEN
counterpunch.orgThe U.S. Army has employed as many as 27 contractors to run its interrogation operations, according to media reports. But while CACI and Titan are getting all the mainstream media play, it appears that far more than 27 contract employees were involved in recruiting and placing interrogators in various locations. Some of the firms involved in the Bush administration's "TortureGate" include an odd assortment of telecommunications companies and executive placement firms that have jumped into the lucrative torture business in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and at secret locations throughout Central Asia and North Africa.
Ollie -- He's Baaack!
On January 12, 2004, United Placements ran an advertisement for Army Interrogators. "Job State: IRAQ, Job Number: 8. Interrogators: 30 Positions. Compensation to $120,000. Individuals must be trained Interrogators with at least five years of experience in interrogation. Individuals must be knowledgeable of Army/Joint interrogation procedures, data processing systems such as CHIMs and SIPRNET search engines. Knowledge of the Arabic language and culture a plus...Candidates must have documented in their resumes five years of Humint collection and/or interrogation experience. This is a requirement of the client. Some locations require individuals to work and live in a field environment with minimum medical facilities. Must possess the ability to work extended work hours in difficult surroundings for up to one year."
United Placements' lists none other than Oliver North--a member of Ronald Reagan's NSC and focal point of the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980's--as one of its two "Industry Associates."
full article
rootsie on 06.15.04 @ 08:01 PM CST [
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Sunday, June 13th
Clinton is Reagan's Legacy Too
by Rootsie
It was good to see the righteous indignation with which so many stepped forward last week to challenge the appallingly untruthful picture the mainstream media gave of Reagan and his legacy.
On a network news program this morning (just when I thought it was safe to go back in the water), one commentator said she thought Reagan’s greatest achievement was taking the Soviets to the mat on human rights. Apparently she chose to forget the Soviets’ reply: “Everyone in the Soviet Union has a job and a roof. What say we talk civil liberties in the Soviet Union when you talk homelessness
And unemployment in the U.S.?” There's been a whole lot of forgetting going on.
I am not a professional political pundit. I sat around for a lot of years watching before I wrote a word, and I don’t imagine that I realize what no one has realized before. But what hit me anew this morning is the degree to which the Democratic Party which emerged in response to Reagan is perhaps the most pernicious and destructive aspect of the ‘Reagan legacy.” I know that Nader, one among many, has been saying that for a long time.
Reagan talked ‘welfare queens” while dishing out scads of corporate welfare. Clinton crafted the Welfare reform that declared and still wages war on poor mothers. Reagan dropped a few million people out of the bottom of the economy, beyond statistics. Clinton cemented their status as a permanent underclass with his ‘economic recovery,’ generating disparities in wealth unknown in the history of the world. Really.
Although it is a fiction that Reagan 'ended the Cold War,' his foreign and domestic policies certainly paved the way for a global corporate takeover. Clinton fired the first shot of an all-out corporate attack on the planet with NAFTA and GATT.
Bush invaded and bombed Iraq. Clinton bombed Iraq every single day for 8 years, and enforced sanctions that starved a million children. And bombed Afghanistan. And bombed a hospital in Sudan. Seeing to it that there are a lot more little Osamas running around.
It was Clinton who built the million jail cells to house the casualties, poor and non-white, of Reagan’s ‘Just Say No to Drugs.” Clinton put the 100,000 new cops on the street and began the vogue of ‘community policing,’ which in the words of a lawyer in Los Angeles has turned South L.A. into something a lot like Fallujah, except with no end in sight.
It was Clinton who enacted the anti-terrorist legislation which paved the way for the evisceration of the Constitution.
What is the ‘neo-liberalism’ of the ‘new’ Latin America that emerged in the 90’s but simply the ‘kinder gentler’ face of the age-old despotism? We have apparently decided it's time to take the torturing duties, which we once paid client terror-states for, on ourselves.
I remember very clearly that during his entire campaign Clinton mentioned Iran-Contra NOT ONCE. We found this very curious until we read that there had been Contra-training camps in Arkansas.
The simpering cowardice of the Democratic Party is why in 2004 we have Bush slipping in the polls while Kerry, president of the Ariel Sharon Fan Club, gains no ground at all. When they meet face to face this fall, it will be like the Bush-Gore debates: ‘I agree, I agree, I agree…but I can pronounce all the names!” George Soros gets to look like a great progressive hero for dumping loads of money on ersatz liberals because here is a grand opportunity to paint himself as a critic of capitalism with not a thing to lose. A Cold War capitalist robber-baron as de facto spokesman and Big Daddy for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party??
I can’t imagine what Bush would have to do to lose this election, short of the CIA deposing him for destroying Valerie Plame. In which case Lord knows what new horrors await. Well in any case, only new horrors await. Because somewhere along the line, we have lost our government.
Admittedly, when you realize that the American Revolution was ultimately fought over the issue of which set of rich guys would get to control the slave trade, you could argue that the American people have never been in possession of their government. But the brazen criminality which Reagan ushered in and the rapid rise of corporate hegemony during the Clinton years reads like the resolution of the age-old tension between populism and elitism, and, far from the American Dream, it is unmitigated nightmare for most. An Evil Empire indeed.
Because it has been recognized that the best way of controlling information is flooding people with it, no one is going to come crashing into my house to drag me away, and this freedom of speech is used as an argument to marginalize ones like me. But even if they did, no one would be paying attention. American soldiers crashed into Aristide’s house and removed him from the Presidency of his country, and only a few days of uncomfortable questions faced Rumsfeld and Powell before that event was swept away by the tide.
Reagan’s ultimate legacy is seen in Clinton’s total capitulation, in Bush and Co.’s shameless cruelty and criminality, and an ‘opposition’ as loyal as they come, complicit in every possible way. There may be a few Democrats left who legitimately feel they can stem this tide through electoral politics, who have not been completely compromised, but they will be remembered as naïve. Or dead. Like Paul Wellstone. Even Michael Moore has employed Clinton attack-dogs to promote his new movie. An opposition is necessary for ‘the free exchange of ideas so important to a democracy': Bush has said so again and again when faced with protestors. Moore is something of a pro at NOT getting to the heart of the issues.
This is such a dangerous time because, in this country at least, the iron fist is wearing a velvet glove. Democrats are made to order for that, wittingly or not. As long as they, like Clinton, merely accept the terms of the world as Reagan framed it and roll with the tide, this ship is sunk.
rootsie on 06.13.04 @ 03:23 PM CST [
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Baker Quits West Sahara as U.N. Envoy
UNITED NATIONS, June 12 (AP) - The former secretary of state James A. Baker III resigned as the top United Nations envoy to Western Sahara after years of frustrated efforts to resolve the conflict between Morocco and independence-seeking rebels, a United Nations spokesman said Friday.
Mr. Baker has expressed increasing frustration in his job as Secretary General Kofi Annan's personal envoy, initially over being unable to arrange a referendum on the territory's future and later over Morocco's opposition to his latest peace plan.
That plan would give Western Sahara immediate self-government and would require a referendum within five years to decide if the
mineral-rich desert territory on the Atlantic coast of Africa should be independent or part of Morocco.
new york times.comWell who knew that Mr. Stench of Brimstone (didn't you get that Darth Vader-feeling when he flew down to Florida in 2000 to put the fix in for Bush?) was Annan's envoy To Western Sahara? "Mineral rich' indeed no doubt. After reading about Kofi Annan's extremely dubious role during the Rwandan genocide propping up the US's resolve to DO NOTHING, it is not surprising that as Secretary General he puts his trust in scary spooks like Baker.
rootsie on 06.13.04 @ 12:03 PM CST [
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Saturday, June 12th
Not Really a Puppet Government??
Meet the New Iraqi Leaders
By GARY LEUPP
counterpunch.orgThese are not America's puppets. This is a terrific list and really good government, and we're very pleased with the names that emerged.
Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor
...In 2002, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord received attention when it passed on to the British government a report that Saddam's regime could fire germ warfare missiles as far as Cyprus within 45 minutes of giving the order. Published in a dossier in September 2002, the report helped prepare British public opinion for the Iraq war. In January 2004 a New York spokesman for Allawi acknowledged this was in fact "a crock of shit." Almost sounds like the new Prime Minister is a bald-faced liar. And then there's the story about that supposed top-secret, hand-written memo by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service revealed to the world last December. I have referred to it as "the neocons' dream memo" since it implausibly describes a three-day "work programme" undertaken by none other than Chief 9-11 Hijacker Mohammed Atta at a Baghdad base of Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal in 1991, and refers to a "Niger shipment" of some unspecified material arriving in Iraq via Libya and Syria.
Who confirmed the authenticity of the memo, released through the Iraqi Governing Council? Why, none other than Dr. Allawi! And since each element of the putative al-Tikriti memo had been already debunked by U.S. intelligence, and only kept afloat by the most duplicitous of the neocons, it almost sounds like the Prime Minister is an especially shameless bald-faced liar and abject puppet of his imperialist sponsors. (Interesting, too, that it first appeared in The Daily Telegraph, owned by Conrad Black, and part of the Hollinger Group on whose board of directors sits Richard Perle, Black buddy and leading warmongering neocon.)
article
rootsie on 06.12.04 @ 11:52 AM CST [
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Thursday, June 10th
Dead Reagan in '04
by Rootsie
It is clear from the media frenzy of the past few days that a new political powerhouse has burst upon the scene. What could be more obvious?
Dead Reagan for President in ’04!
Here is the candidate who can trump the opposition (ANY opposition), please all the people all the time, and come up smelling like a rose (or whatever nice thing they make him smell like).
Here is the candidate to bring a lump to the throat and a patriotic tear to the eye.
The American people don’t want a president full of pesky words and ideas. They want a symbol of comfort and optimism. His perpetual repose and chemically-enhanced eye-twinkle will win the masses over.
For style over substance, which Americans so clearly prefer, who better than Reagan, dressed in his blue suit and red tie in one of those Leninesque glass coffins? So presidential. And he can’t open his mouth and mess it up.
Pretty much everyone on the planet would prefer a dead American president over the live ones they’ve had to deal with.
Those who found Reagan vicious and stupid when alive would take constant comfort in seeing that he remains seriously dead.
Those who loved him tend to be the sentimental types who would be thrilled to have him back, no matter his condition.
He would not tell a lie. Would not tell. Would not.
A Dead Reagan would mean pretty much business as usual, a vote for the status quo, which would attract conservatives and liberals alike. Reagan was after all as good as dead throughout most of his presidency. He, like little GW, was a smiling figurehead. A Dead Reagan in ’04 candidacy could, on the down side, produce a backlash. I suppose Americans might wake up and seriously decide whether they like what the Presidency, what their country, has become. Perhaps they would feel inspired to elect someone who'd actually be doing the job, rather than for a corporate shill. But nah. And realistically, there's none of that type around in either party.
As it stands, take a poll and see whether I know what I’m talking about. Pit Dead Reagan against Bush or Kerry. He has the charisma, the name recognition, and Lord knows he has the momentum. Just thinking about him apparently inspires a nostalgic amnesia, a fond look back at the sweeter simpler times of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Grenada, when Saddam was our beloved friend and the Taliban was yet just a twinkle in Papa’s Reagan’s eye, when the torturers were our foreign clients instead of us. When the babbling brook of trickle-down kept people home on a Saturday night by the fire. Burning their furniture to keep warm.
As for violating term limits, it's a small price to pay. The Constitution is scoring very low in the polls these days.
Nothing will liven up this stultifying campaign season like a vibrant Dead Reagan candidacy. Every day will be like the last few, bristling with flags and tearful tributes. Morning in America. Morning after morning after morning.
rootsie on 06.10.04 @ 07:13 PM CST [
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Wednesday, June 9th
Wow. Is Bush About to Get Watergated??
The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the CIA on June 3rd and 4th
Bush, Cheney Indictments in Plame Case Looming
by Michael C. Ruppert
fromthewilderness.comJUNE 8, 2004 1600 PDT (FTW) - Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)?
The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the upcoming presidential election.
Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years, has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening crises threaten a global meltdown.
Based upon recent developments, it appears that long-standing plans and preparations leading to indictments and impeachment of Bush, Cheney and even some senior cabinet members have been accelerated, possibly with the intent of removing or replacing the entire Bush regime prior to the Republican National Convention this August.
FTW has been documenting this Watergate-like coup for more than fifteen months and almost everything we will discuss about recent events was predicted by us in the following pages: Please see our stories "The Perfect Storm - Part I" (March 2003); "Blood in the Water" (July 2003); "Beyond Bush - Part I" (July 2003); "Waxman Ties Evidentiary Noose Around Rice and Cheney" (July 2003); and "Beyond Bush - Part II" (October 2003).
There were two things we didn't get right. One was the timing. We predicted the developments taking place now as likely to happen after the November election, not before. Secondly, we did not foresee the sudden resignations of Tenet and Pavitt. Understanding the resignations is the key to understanding a deteriorating world scene and that America is on the precipice of a presidential and constitutional crisis that will ultimately dwarf the removal of Richard Nixon in 1974.
So why did Tenet and Pavitt resign? We'll explain why and we will provide many clues along the way as we make our case.
full articleRep. Henry Waxman website
rootsie on 06.09.04 @ 09:50 PM CST [
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Who is to Run the World, and How? by Noam Chomsky
zmag.org...There is a curious performance underway right now among Western commentators, who are solemnly debating whether the Bush administration downgraded the "war on terror" in favor of its ambitions in Iraq. The only surprising aspect of the revelations of former Bush administration officials that provoked the debate is that anyone finds them surprising - particularly right now, when it is so clear that by invading Iraq the administration did just that: knowingly increased the threat of terror to achieve their goals in Iraq.
But even without this dramatic demonstration of priorities, the conclusions should be obvious. From the point of view of government planners, the ranking of priorities is entirely rational. Terror might kill 1000s of Americans; that much has been clear since the attempt by US-trained jihadis to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993. But that is not very important in comparison with establishing the first secure military bases in a dependent client state at the heart of the world's major energy reserves - "a stupendous source of strategic power" and an incomparable "material prize," as high officials recognized in the 1940s, if not before.
ful 