Pundits salivating over Rove v Dems battle over Gitmo

wikipedia.org

Oh, oh! The pundits have started spinning again. As to what Rove will do, and how Dems need to fight back. The backdrop is the SC ruling that the current Gitmo trial process is illegal. So, what is Bush planning to do? Take it to Congress to make it legal. Bill "I'll lick any conservative ass to get a vote" Frist has already indicated his willingness.

Here's a pundit's presciption on TPMCafe:

To thwart this tactic, Democrats need to clamor for legislation calling for no bail, confidential reports to Congress on the danger to the country from these prisoners (conducted by the 911 Commission), trials starting no later than in the fall, and harsh penalties.

In other words, show the American public that Dems can be tough on security.

I say this is folly of the first water. Rove (or Rove's media alter-ego) sets the rules of the game, the media hype it up, the Dems are supposed to play by those rules.

Hell, no. My prescription to the Dems: don't back down, stand for your principles. Tell it like it is. The Iraq war was a mistake and created more terrorists. If the terrorists hate our freedoms and want to take it away, why is Bush helping them by taking it away from us?

So, what has the GOP been doing? Creating more terrorists and diluting our freedoms. Is this a party you would trust?

Supreme Court squashes Bush's power-grab

wikinews.org

No doubt you've heard about the U.S. Supreme Court decision today that the administration's plan for tribunals for Gunatanomo prisoners (Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld), was illegal. That Bush had better go to Congress for authorization since they violated the Geneval convention.

And no doubt you were elated. Here's what you probably missed that sounds extremely positive.

Marty Lederman writes about the decision's most important implications:

1. That the President's conduct is subject to the limitations of statute and treaty (see, e.g., footnote 23, and the Kennedy and Breyer excerpts that Orin Kerr quotes).

2. That Congress's enactments are best construed to require compliance with the international laws of armed conflict, absent contrary legislative direction.

3. That Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. (See also the AMK concurrence: 'The provision is part of a treaty the United States has ratified and thus accepted as binding law. By Act of Congress, moreover, violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel. See 18 U. S. C. § 2441.') This ruling has enormous implications for the Administration's detention and interrogation practices, because the Administration's legal conclusion that CA3 does not apply, and that we will not apply it as a matter of practice, was the key linchpin to the entire edifice of legal maneuvers that led to waterboarding, hypothermia, degradation, etc. See my post here. Per today's decision, the Administration appears to have been engaged in war crimes, which are subject to the death penalty. Although I don't think due process would allow prosecution based on conduct previously undertaken on OLC's advice that CA3 did not apply (after all, the Chief Justice concluded, in the D.C. Circuit, that CA3 did not apply), practices going forward are bound to change, and quick. (I'm sure the memos are being drafted and distributed in the CIA and DOD even as we "speak.")

War Crimes! Of course, it doesn't seem like Bush can be prosecuted since the ruling came after his memos legitimizing torture, but surely any subsequent actions violating CA3 of the convention are culpable.

What was also encouraging was Rep Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, taking a strong position on the illegality of the tribunals (hopefully the Dems won't cave in to the "weak-on-defense" line that the Republicans have been beating them up with). Here's what she said:

"Since 9/11, the Bush administration has operated in the 'fog of law' -- expanding executive branch power, ignoring the will of Congress, bypassing courts and disregarding international law," Harman said in a statement.

"Today's Supreme Court decision will help lift that fog. The opinion makes clear that the president's power is not unlimited when it comes to holding people without due process."

Patsy hits out against vigilante

slipgrid.net

The Hill reports that

House Republican leaders are expected to introduce a resolution today condemning The New York Times for publishing a story last week that exposed government monitoring of banking records.

The resolution is expected to condemn the leak and publication of classified documents, said one Republican aide with knowledge of the impending legislation.

Well, if this isn't the bahstard of the month winner...

House Republicans after failing to do their oversight duty of this president's lurch toward an unmitigated power-grab, go after the media for doing its job of informing the public.

Well, someone has to do it, you patsies...sitting on your fat butts, devouring off the public trough, signing yourselves fat raises while refusing to raise the minimum wage, pocketing big Pharma and big Oil's lobbying dollars, passing out public money in the form of tax cuts to the wealthiest, and worst of all, giving this president a total pass while he uses and abuses 9/11 for his own (and his fat handlers') gain.

Then picking on the New York Times for informing the public. Well, hell, we don't want to be protected in secret. Tell us what the president is doing in our names and we'll tell him if it is legal and doesn't violate our rights. That's democracy, you schmucks. Better yet, whenever he does something illegal (like the many programs slowly leaking out), slap him upside down. Ask him why he thinks he can make law, instead of you bozos.

Also: Check out this hilarious post from Joshua Micah Marshall in Talking Points Memo.

Global warming? No..we didn't do it.

truthout.org

Today's bahstard moment, from ABC News:

In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: 'I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore's new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?'

'I have said consistently,' answered Bush, 'that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary … to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil…'

Notice, he only said we should use less foreign oil. Implication: open up the reserves, drill everywhere you can, hell with the environmental regulations, hell with conservation and CAFE standards. What do these bastards think? That their children and grandchildren will be protected in gated communities and big fat bank balances?

And I mean by bastards, the puppet-masters pulling Bush's strings.

Update (June 28): LA Times reports that:

American cars and pickup trucks are responsible for nearly half of the greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles globally, even though the nation's vehicles make up just 30% of the nearly 700 million cars in use, according to a new report by Environmental Defense.

Full report from the Environmental Defense.

Churchill sacrificed at imperialism's altar

Andy Manis - AP

WP reports:

The top official at the University of Colorado's flagship campus called on the school Monday to fire Ward Churchill, the professor who compared some World Trade Center victims to a Nazi and then landed in hot water over allegations of academic misconduct.

Ward Churchill is a professor at University of Colorado. Shortly after 9/11, he wrote an essay characterizing the technocrats working in the World Trade Center as "little Eichmanns." According to Wikipedia, Eichmann who was sentenced to death in Israel for his role in the Holocaust was tasked as

"Transportation Administrator", which put him in charge of all the trains which would carry Jews to the Death Camps in the territory of occupied Poland.

Some including Churchill saw Eichmann as an ordinary man blindly doing his duty even if that involved participating in the Holocaust. For more, see Hannah Arendt's book, Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Right-wingers, foaming at the mouth at what they perceived as an attempt at desecrating innocent, fallen Americans, started an effort to oust Churchill, and after hearings and miscellaneous other charges tagged on, we're at the culmination of that effort.

There are many books out there which portray America as an imperial country which is ruthless in its desire for global resources and hegemonic power. Insiders like John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Men, have even outlined how this is done. While FOIA was instituted to make government more open, the government has in response, outsourced the nasty work of imperialism to close-mouthed companies often working hand-in-hand with agencies like the CIA and NSA.

So, what is an American citizen's responsibility in this? Had we lived under the thumb of a ruthless dictator we could have sloughed off any such accusation. But with much-touted high-minded ideals like freedom and democracy defining our belief in our political system, it is not so easy. The reality is most of us are living in a bubble oblivious of and uncaring about what our government does on our behalf and how we're perceived from the outside. As oblivious as a woman in Afghanistan wearing a burqa, is about women's rights.

If we truly believed our BS about our country (and, really, we don't even have uniform federal voting rights, and "money" is on the same footing as "speech" in elections), we would be hypocrites, no doubt. And indeed, we would be "little Eichmanns" supporting CIA-sponsored assassinations of democratically-elected leaders and resource-based wars like the recent Iraq war which results in the death of many thousands of people.

Personally, I don't believe the BS. Democracy and freedom are both highly compromised. Perhaps this is the best one can hope for in such a powerful nation, and perhaps our freedoms are better in the U.S. than in most nations, but it falls far short of the rhetoric.

So, my point is perhaps we citizens are all little Eichmanns but there is very little we can do about it. Imperialism is a natural outgrowth for nations especially one that is so hegemonic as the U.S. All we can do is keep fighting against that in whatever way we can, and perhaps make a brief difference every once in a while. Depressing? Perhaps, but also relieving.

'Liberal Media' attacked for revealing bank snooping

slate.msn.com

Apparently the New York Times has been targeted exclusively as the primary party responsible for the revelations of the latest government snooping into international bank records.

Rep. Peter King (N.Y.), draping himself with the stars and stripes, has even gone to the extent of asking the Attorney General to investigate and prosecute the Times! One wonders why the Wall Street Journal, which also broke the story at the same time as the Times, was spared.

Consider this measured response from the Exec Editor Bill Keller of the New York Times (I've highlighted a particularly interesting section):

The press and the government generally start out from opposite corners in such cases. The government would like us to publish only the official line, and some of our elected leaders tend to view anything else as harmful to the national interest. For example, some members of the Administration have argued over the past three years that when our reporters describe sectarian violence and insurgency in Iraq, we risk demoralizing the nation and giving comfort to the enemy. Editors start from the premise that citizens can be entrusted with unpleasant and complicated news, and that the more they know the better they will be able to make their views known to their elected officials. Our default position —— our job —— is to publish information if we are convinced it is fair and accurate, and our biggest failures have generally been when we failed to dig deep enough or to report fully enough. After The Times played down its advance knowledge of the Bay of Pigs invasion, President Kennedy reportedly said he wished we had published what we knew and perhaps prevented a fiasco. Some of the reporting in The Times and elsewhere prior to the war in Iraq was criticized for not being skeptical enough of the Administration's claims about the Iraqi threat. The question we start with as journalists is not "why publish?" but "why would we withhold information of significance?" We have sometimes done so, holding stories or editing out details that could serve those hostile to the U.S. But we need a compelling reason to do so.

Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements.

He also makes mention of the failure of the Times in the past failure of the Times in not questioning the government line on Iraqi WMD's aggressively.

Privacy, shivacy...the failure of conservatism

voanews.com

Jonathan Turley, the law professor from GWU has a good column in today's LA Times about the illegal government surveillance programs that have been recently unearthed. He points out how the government's behavior is exactly the opposite of what it should be:

With regard to its own conduct and information, the administration has fought against the notion of transparency — from refusing to disclose meetings with lobbyists, to denying Congress information needed for oversight, to threatening journalists with prosecution for revealing secret programs such as the NSA domestic surveillance program. Yet, when it comes to citizens, the administration demands total transparency to allow it to monitor everyday transactions and conduct.

I'd like to make one more counterpoint to those reporters who wasted by the "balanced reporting" disease, are prone to whiningly question critics with "But, if the government were open about what they're doing, won't Al Qaeda find out!"

Other than Ben Franklin's response to such naivete -- "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" -- the same argument could be made against domestic criminals who take far more lives than Al Qaeda ever has. Why not trust our security to the local police by surrendering all our freedoms? Presumably the police will secretly monitor all its citizens and ensure no crime takes place. My point is laws have a purpose of informing its citizens what is and what isn't illegal, and how the government goes about its business. As citizens of a participatory democracy, we can only make laws when we know what the government is doing on our behalf. This also dovetails into my earlier post on unchecked military powers.

If the government truly needed surveillance powers because that's the only way it can protect us, there is a forum to request these powers -- it is called Congress. It allows citizens to get informed and involved in the process of making law. What this government has done is use September 11 as an excuse to grab extraordinary powers secretly with no public knowledge or consent. There is no excuse for this -- it is just blatantly illegal and must be stopped.

So, my question is to all high-minded conservatives...what is happening to your brethren in the Republican party, and will you simply standy by and allow this republic to be sacrificed?

Thoughtcrime is terrorism now.

nytimes.com

Thoughtcrime, coined by Orwell and enacted in a recent movie "Minority Report", is becoming reality. Alleging an Al Qaeda plot to topple the Sears tower in Chicago, the FBI arrested 7 Florida men on Thrursday night on terrorism charges, an event that sent anchors go rabid on the likes of Fox News. Well, what a difference a day or two makes.

According to the New York Times:

Mr. Gonzales acknowledged that the men, who had neither weapons nor explosives, posed 'no immediate threat.' But he added, 'they did take sufficient steps that we believe does support this prosecution.'

In general, Mr. Gonzales said, homegrown terrorists 'may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda.'

Apparently the 7 Florida men who only had poverty and Haitian origin in common had said something incriminating to an FBI informant which was enough for the AG to jump up and down and make a big brouhaha about. Initially claiming that they were related to Al Qaeda, the FBI backed off that assertion in a hurry when they found out, according to the NYT that the "group wore uniforms bearing a Star of David and met for Bible study."

They were charged under an anti-terrorism clause making "material support" for Al Qaeda punishable by up to 15 years.

This comes on the heels of an unfortunate Lodi youth of Pakistani origin, convicted for allegedly attending a terrorist camp -- a charge which was never proved. The informant (paid a quarter of a million dollars by the FBI) in this case was an older Pakistani man who egged the young man on to say and do things which landed him in trouble. After that young man was convicted, one of the jury members admitted to being pressured:

“I was under so much stress and pressure (from the other jurors) that I agreed to change my vote,” Lopez, of Sacramento, said in her statement. “I never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty.”

A frightened and pliant population, a government eager to assume total control, the warnings of Orwell and the words of Herman Goering spoken at the Nuremberg trials (below), are coming true day by day.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

More on the indifference of nations...

Continuing my previous post, Democracy Now! has an interview with Nadia McCaffrey - the mother of Spc. Patrick McCaffrey - who is accusing the Pentagon of a deliberate cover-up.

After being accidentally killed by Iraqi forces, she was told that National Guardsmen Spc. Patrick McCaffrey and 1st Lt. Andre Tyson were killed in an ambush despite the fact that the military knew the truth. In fact, Nadia was tipped off by friends of McCaffrey who had been with him in Iraq.

This has happened before with Patrick Tillman, the NFL star who had given up his fame and fortune to go fight the good war for the U.S after 9/11. He too died from friendly fire, but the world was told a different story, of stirring heroism, the "he went down fighting for his country" bit. It was especially ironic that the military did not honor his noble sacrifice and commitment by treating his case with integrity. Instead, the true story of how he had died went up all the way up the chain of military brass and was squashed for political gain.

The fight is never a "good fight" when it is undertaken by a nation state especially one that is provided scant supervision by both Congress and a preoccupied public.

The indifference of nations

Reuters

Whenever entities outside of people are bestowed with priviliges normally not given to people, bad things happen. I am talking about nation states and corporations. With corporations, enough has been written about the evil done by this faceless entity.

With nation states like the US and Israel, civilian lives (if it is Palestinian or Iraqi) are treated with scant respect. Even when their citizens would react with horror at discovering the kinds of things done in their names.

After a bout of Israeli attacks on Gaza, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert apologized for the untargeted assassinations, which claimed the lives of about 14 innocent Palestinians in recent days, including five children. But aren't these actions tantamount to terrorism?

HENRY SIEGMAN, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations and a visiting professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London made a very compelling argument in the Los Angeles Times of such an equivalence:

The vast disproportion between Palestinian civilian casualties from Israeli 'mistakes' and Israeli casualties from Palestinian terrorist assaults also brings into question the distinction between the two. It suggests that the killing of Palestinian civilians is, at the very least, more a matter of Israeli indifference than a mistake. Not a single Israeli has been killed by a Kassam rocket since Israel's disengagement from Gaza last year, although during this period Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli artillery and airstrikes virtually on a daily basis. (According to B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, Israeli forces have killed about 3,400 Palestinians since the intifada started, and Palestinians have killed about 1,000 Israelis).

The bottom line is that nation states just cannot be entrusted with the unmonitored use of military power. When the military is to be used, the circumstances must be clearly delineated by the people, the consequence of such military exercise must be measured and the people informed.

The prosecution of the Iraq war was a far cry from such a prescription. With Congress abdicating its responsibilities, with the military subjecting its own citizens to "Psy-Ops", the president having the authority to declare anyone an "enemy combatant" subject to secret imprisonment, and torture, with no quantification of civilian casualties and military coffins arriving in the stealth of night, the people are woefully uninformed. We believe we're trusting George W. Bush to do the right thing, but it is really the unaccountable entity of the U.S. nation state we're trusting. Fools, us!

The Press Derides Dems on Iraq; The Public Praises Dems on Iraq

huffingtonpost.com

Chalk one up for Eric Boehlert:

What's so odd is despite the fact poll after poll shows Americans, completely fed up with the Iraq failure, agree with the Democratic initiative to start bringing the troops home, it's Republicans who are being portrayed by clubby Beltway insiders as having the winning hand.

Suskind says U.S. deliberately bombed Al Jazeera

amazon.com

Perhaps the truth will come out in a decade...Bush certainly -- in leaked memos on conversations with Blair -- expressed intent to even bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters.

Democracy Now! reports:

In “The One Percent Doctrine”, investigative journalist Ron Suskind writes: 'On November 13 [2001], a hectic day when Kabul fell to the Northern Alliance and there were celebrations in the streets of the city, a U.S. missile obliterated Al Jazeera's office. Inside the CIA and White House there was satisfaction that a message had been sent to Al Jazeera.' In an interview with CNN, Suskind said government sources had told him there was “great anger” within the Bush administration over Al Jazeera’s coverage of the invasion of Afghanistan. He added: “I'll tell you emphatically it was a deliberate act by the U.S.”

Pulling a Rove on Rove...

From the LA Times:

"'Our amendment does not establish a timetable for redeployment,' Levin said. 'It does urge that a phased redeployment begin this year, partly as a way of moving away from an open-ended commitment and a way of avoiding Iraqi dependency on a U.S. security blanket.'"

The Dems have finally coalesced around a strategy. Anticipating that Bush will reduce troop numbers before the Nov election (even as he is disavowing that), they've introduced a non-binding resolution to begin drawdown this year.

Putting the idiot-in-chief and his Machiavellian puppet-master Rove in a tight spot. If they draw down the troops, the Dems can say, "See, we told you so." If they don't draw down, the polls will be against the Repugs.

Did the Dems just maybe pull a Rove on Rove?

Dumb pipes should remain dumb

senate.gov

CS Monitor reports:

Meanwhile, the Bells and cable companies are filling inside-the-Beltway newspapers with full-page ads, by coalitions such as Hands Off the Internet, that argue against 'legislating massive new regulations' that they say will stifle Internet growth and innovation.

The very same broadband monopolies that want to stifle innovation and are notorious for their lack of imagination and enterprise are arguing that preserving the Internet as-is with regulation will actually stifle innovation. Please, when did these fat, lazy monoploies ever exhibit the slightest tendency toward innovation. Hell, I'll take Google's, Yahoo's or Apple's words before I take these bastards'.

Nice touch though, by the telcos and cable monopolies, talking in Orwellian terms to the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee.

I was watching this in CSPAN, and one point I heard the appropriately-named Senator Brownback say that he was trying to do away with the non-discriminatory nature of the Internet with regard to the telcos!! The conversation went something like this:

Cohen (Comcast CEO): new regulation, bad.
Chris Patrula (Earthlink rep): it isn't new regulation..it merely preserves the status quo of the Internet w.r.t. non-discrimination.
Cohen: it is only the status quo w.r.t. telcos. Cable companies providing broadband are in new territory.
Brownback: oh, i've been trying to free the telcos of that requirement for a long time.

Killer, isn't it? He's been trying to free the telcos from the requirement of non-discrimination for a long time...

Pie in the sky

spacedaily.com

Reuters reports that:

Amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, the United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

Lord help us -- our half-baked missile defense shield has been activated. The only tests conducted so far have been gamed. Hopefully, we don't have any "friendly fire" incidents like the Patriot missiles when deployed in Israel.

A USA Today report has more to say on this.

Troop withdrawal and red herrings...

bartcop.com

Now, why did we go into Iraq in the first place?

OK, you mean aside from the irrational neo-con "gotta get Saddam" hysteria?

It's the oil stupid! When the black stuff supplies dwindle, we need to have our military in the middle east. In Iraq, and within striking distance of Saudi Arabia.

Check out what the Los Angeles Times says about the U.S. Air Force:

U.S. military officials say that addressing the question of when they will allow the Iraqi air force to acquire combat capabilities is years away. The U.S. Air Force, they say, will retain control of Iraqi airspace for the foreseeable future, regardless of any drawdown of ground troops.

So never mind the troop withdrawal. That will happen and we will say we've withdrawn when we keep say 50,000 troops out there. Like in South Korea. The air force will never relinquish airspace control, and while we have that, it would be hard for, say, the Chinese to get their hands on the dirty black stuff under the desert sands.

While talking about Congress...

mkweb.bcgsc.ca

Congressmen, Rats what's the difference!

A new study co-authored by Dr. William Parker, a Duke University professor of experimental surgery, found that dirty rats have better immune systems than their clean lab-bred brethren.

The studies give more weight to a 17-year-old theory that the sanitized Western world may be partly to blame for soaring rates of human allergy and asthma cases and some autoimmune diseases, such as Type I diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. The theory, called the hygiene hypothesis, figures that people's immune systems aren't being challenged by disease and dirt early in life, so the body's natural defenses overreact to small irritants such as pollen.

I've always wondered why allergies seem so problematic here in the US (even accounting for Big Pharma marketing).

Of course, this study may be as flawed as the red wine-studies of the past. These studies claimed that red wine was better for your heart because more teetotallers had heart problems than imbibers. It failed to account for those imbibers who had to give up drinking because they had to take medications. And this group skewed the results in favor of the imbibers. (Hey, tell people that coffee, alcohol and desserts are good for them, and they're not going to look too closely at the study).

In this rat survey, they may have failed (I don't know that they did) to account for those wild rats whose immune systems were compromised and ended up killing them in the process. THat is, the only available wild rat sample are those with strong immune systems. The same sample could survive in the lab skewing the results, perhaps?

Good going, Lois Capps

wikipedia.org

On a more positive note, this is what (my) Congresswoman Lois Capps said:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the resolution before us. Let us be clear from the outset that those who have opposed the Iraq war stand solidly and proudly in support of our troops and their families. To suggest that calling for the return home of our brave troops somehow denigrates their service and their sacrifice is absurd. We can best support our troops by bringing them home.

Mr. Speaker, the terrible numbers we have bandied about here are not mere statistics. Each one represents the tragic story of a ruined life and a shattered family, 2,500 troops dead, more than 18,000 wounded, many so grievously. The average tour for National Guard members has been 342 days, turning the lives of countless American families upside down.

The material cost of the Iraq war is about $320 billion. But you can never put a price on its toll in human suffering, nor can you realistically argue, Mr. Speaker, that the war in Iraq has made our country safer or advanced our effort to combat global terror.

Those that come to the floor and link Iraq to 9/11 are certainly wrong. They are factually wrong, because there remains no evidence that Saddam was involved in the al Qaeda attacks on our Nation, and they are morally wrong to invoke the memories of the victims of September 11th to justify this indefensible war of choice.

I am pleased that al Zarqawi is dead, but his death does not change the fact that Iraq has become a haven for terrorists and the best recruitment tool we could have handed our enemy. No, Mr. Speaker, those who oppose this war are not soft on security. We believe strongly and passionately that keeping the troops in the middle of this increasingly bloody civil war only weakens our security.

It is a disgrace it has taken so long for Congress to spend a few hours of this day debating the Iraq war, but the American people will not be fooled. They recognize that a debate on a cynical and politically motivated resolution is no substitute for a thoughtful Iraq policy that advances our national interests and listens to the voices. Let us vote ``no'' on this resolution.

The party of Crooks debates the party of Lesser Crooks

It is an election year, and Republican representatives have bought it into Rove's magic routine of once again pointing to a rabbit and declaring it a lion. They're hoping the public will cheer and clap once again.

A resolution got passed. That the war on Iraq was actually a part of the GWOT (or "Global War on Terror"), didn't you know. That people won't figure out it is actually a Global War on Truth.

And who knows, when crooks debate crooks, the public may just throw up their hands, and say "whatever."

The Detroit Free Press reports:

The highly partisan resolution would shun specific timetables for redeploying troops out of Iraq and casts the war as a central front in the war on terrorism.

The pig gets fatter...

home.houston.rr.com

Another pay raise for our Congress. To the tune of $3,300, which brings their annual salary to $168,500.

You see, they've set it up so that they don't even have to vote on it. It is automatic.

The minimum wage of $5.15 was set in 1997 and hasn't gone up a penny since then. Two years later, Congress, as part of an ethics reform package -- yes, really!! -- made annual cost-of-living raises automatatic.

So, they don't have to justify their pay scales in front of a hostile public. And the public is likely to be hostile as long as Congress continues to ignore the common man and line its pockets with corporate money and tar its soul with deceit and injustice.

The Washington Post reports:

Despite record low approval ratings, House lawmakers Tuesday embraced a $3,300 pay raise that will increase their salaries to $168,500.

Science in service to the ego

hiroshima.jp
[Hiroshima tricycle]

On the heels of reports from Guantanomo about medical professionals helping the military torture prisoners, Los Angeles Times reports that scientists are literally salivating at being able to work on the next generation of nuclear bombs.

Science, instead of being used in service of humanity, is now being used by scientists to titillate their bored brains.

Well, what else can you say about how the heads of the two labs, both competing to work on these new nukes, characterize the enthusiasm of their scientists? Mental masturbation backgrounded by the image of millions of charred and vaporized bodies?

To remind these cavalier cerebrals of the cost to humanity, perhaps they should be required to hang a photograph by their desk of the Hiroshima tricycle (pictured above) on which little Shin's body was crisped by a satirically named bomb called Little Boy.

Here's what the lab heads had to say:

'I have had people working nights and weekends,' said Joseph Martz, head of the Los Alamos design team. 'I have to tell them to go home. I can't keep them out of the office. This is a chance to exercise skills that we have not had a chance to use for 20 years.'

A thousand miles away at Livermore, Bruce Goodwin, associate director for nuclear weapons, described a similar picture: The lab is running supercomputer simulations around the clock, and teams of scientific experts working on all phases of the project 'are extremely excited.'

Israel and Iran -- more alike than not.

The arrogance of 2 nations (and their duplicity) was demonstrated in 2 stories: one, Israel's assasination of a top Palestinian government official (at a time when Abbas was trying to work out a peace deal), and two, Iran's resumption of nuclear fuel enrichment (at a time when the rest of the world -- including the US -- was making major concessions to Iran).

Thumbing noses at other countries. Signalling their desire to play only by their rules.

Ironic that these same countries are threatening each other.

Breaking laws western-style

Apparently 14 European countries have been secretly colluding with the CIA to allow it to torture suspects in secret prisons ("black sites") in Poland and Romania, according to an investigation by Swiss senator Dick Marty after a seven-month inquiry.

Should we be surprised?

Aren't laws meant to be flouted? Chains of steel for the poor and mere spider webs for the rich, as someone said. In this case, one set of laws for western countries (the more "pious" ones), and another for the Islamic ones.

The science of torture

In its rewrite of the Army Field manual, the Pentagon not only excised strict adherence to the Geneva Accord standards, it has officially acknowledged the use of psychological torture. Using medical professionals to observe and interview detainees gives the interrogators specific ways of questioning detainees, as reported by the LA Times.

Hurricane Katrina and Hypercars

hypercar.com

Now, you may be wondering what Katrina and Hypercars have in common.

Or even, what a hypercar is. The short explanation is, it is an ultra-light car powered by hydrogen.

To me, how we're looking at the two problems of damaging Cat 4 hurricanes and peak oil bear a dismal similarity of ignored reality.

In today's radio segment, Democracy Now! interviewed environmental journalist and president of Blue Frontier Campaign David Helvarg and quoted from his piece in the LA Times:

“Those who think they can rebuild in harm's way using the same assumptions that worked in the last century or who believe they can manage nature by stockpiling generators and water bottles are living in a dangerous fantasy. Unfortunately, theirs a fantasy we are having to pay for.”

So, obviously, our approach to land management in coastal areas susceptible to hurricanes, is terribly flawed. We build a nice house on the Florida coast, mother Nature destroys it, we collect on insurance and build again. And the government encourages this foolishness. Rather than recognize the effect of global warming, forbid developers from building on hurricane pathways (never mind the view), our government ignores global warming and subsidizes such bad practices.

Global warming, is of course, caused by our frenzied burning of fossil fuels.

And that brings us to the hypercar. Sustainability guru Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute's answer to the problem of transportation energy and global warming is to build a car which burns hydrogen with water vapor as the only effluent. No pollution, no oil, voila! Problem solved.

So, what's the problem with this approach?

Two things: one, our love affair with personal transportation is what led us into this mess in the first place. It is what gave rise to suburbia and its attendant problems. (James Howard Kunstler has much more to say on this). Shouldn't we be looking at a way of waking up people to this problem?

Idealists can say, it isn't the automobile per se, that's the problem, but rather how the automobile manufacturers conspired with oil companies to build highways, destroy public transportation and encourage suburban development. Perhaps we can start clean, have our toys and not be used by them? As I said, I believe only idealists (living in a non-corporate world) would say this.

The second thing wrong with the hypercar is that it will take a lot of energy to build it and its fuel infrastructure. Petro-energy, that is. Energy that is in short supply and should morally be used to ease our transition into an energy-poor future. To prevent possible catastrophes when an energy shortage results in other shortages like that of food with deadly implications for under-developed countries.

In the end I would say, Amory Lovins' vision is a familar one. The U.S. has for long projected an image of entitlement. It has justified its behavior as "preserving the American way of life," which was very obviously for an American to consume much much more than the average global citizen did. The hypercar is an expression of this entitled view. As Americans, we don't have to change our consumer culture to cope with the changing energy situation. Rather, we just go on consuming, just using a different product. Thus, the answer to consumerism is consumerism itself. This is the irony expressed by the vision of an avowed sustainability expert.

Ishaqi follows Haditha pattern

BBC

It is a deadly pattern. First, insurgents hit the U.S. military. Probably from safehouses, or with support from some townspeople. Next, the troops get enraged, lose it, and engage in collective punishment by killing innocents. Then, there is a cover-up. Following that, news organizations questioning locals, discover discrepancies. Then, there is an investigation.

Just as in Haditha's case, this has terrible consequences on everyone involved. And it is fueled both by the insurgency's hatred for the presence of U.S. troops and the desire of this incompetent administration for propaganda. [If only they spent half as much effort and money on figuring out how to do things right instead of this futile propaganda, we'd be so much better off.]

In Ishaqi's case, the military today cleared the troops. But perhaps, it will be reopened at a later date?

BBC reports on this, as also Democracy Now! with its original report from Schofield from KR who interviewed the Iraqi police:

MATTHEW SCHOFIELD: There are two accounts. There’s a U.S. military account, and then there’s an Iraqi police account of what happened.

As you know, the U.S. military account is that after showing up and getting into a shootout to get into this house, the house collapsed during the shootout. People were killed either in the shootout or by the collapsing house. They left. They found four bodies and left. They found this suspect. They arrested him. And that's pretty much that story.

The other story is that the house was standing when the U.S. troops went in. They were herded into one room -- eleven people herded into one room, executed. U.S. troops then blew up the house and left.

We were talking with the police officer who was first on the scene earlier today. He explained the scene of arriving. He said they waited until U.S. troops had left the area and it was safe to go in. When they arrived at the house, it was in rubble. I don't know if you've seen the photos of the remains of the house, but there was very little standing. He said they expected to find bodies under the rubble. Instead, what they found was in one room of the house, in one corner of one room, there was a single man who had been shot in the head. Directly across the room from him against the other wall were ten people, ranging from his 75-year-old mother-in-law to a six-month-old child, also several three-year-olds -- a couple three-year-olds, a couple five-year-olds, and four other -- three other women.

Lined up, they were covered, and they had all been shot. According to the doctor we talked to today, they had all been shot in the head, in the chest. A number of -- you know, generally, some of them were shot several times. The doctor said it's very difficult to determine exactly what kind of caliber gun they were shot with. He said the entry wounds were generally small and round, the exit wounds were generally very large. But they were lined up along one wall. There was a blanket over the top of them, and they were under the rubble, so when the police arrived, and residents came to help them start digging in, they came across the blankets.

They came across the blankets. They picked the blankets up. They say, at that point, that the hands were handcuffed in front of the Iraqis. They had been handcuffed and shot. And the Iraqi assumption is that they were shot in front of the man across the room. They came to be facing each other. There is nothing to corroborate that. The U.S. is now investigating this matter, along with the Haditha matter. That's kind of where we stand right now."

The ultimate weapon in the War on Truth

When mistakes are made, the U.S. government classifies the data and gets any attempted lawsuits thrown out by bringing out the ultimate weapon on truth, State Secrets Privilege.

The NSA wiretapping cases could be dismissed. The cases involving mistaken identities -- Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian and Khaled el-Masri, a German of Kuwaiti descent -- in which innocent men were tortured, have already been dismissed on those very grounds.

Sibel Edmonds, who alleged an FBI coverup pertaining to 9/11, still hasn't been able to tell her story; her lawsuit has likewise been dismissed.

The sad truth, as the New York Times reports, is that this privilege, determined in a 1953 case by the Supreme Court was itself based on a government lie, the same sort of lies we're fed now.

But critics of the use of the privilege point out that officials sometimes exaggerate the sensitivities at risk. In fact, documents from the 1953 case that defined the modern privilege, United States v. Reynolds, have been declassified in recent years and suggest that Air Force officials misled the court.

An accident report on a B-29 bomber crash in 1948 was withheld because the Air Force said it included technical details about sensitive intelligence equipment and missions, but it turned out to contain no such information, said Wilson M. Brown III, a lawyer in Philadelphia who represented survivors of those who died in the crash in recent litigation.

'The facts the Supreme Court was relying on in Reynolds were false,' Mr. Brown said in an interview. 'It shows that if the government is not truthful, plaintiffs will lose and there's very little chance to straighten it out.

Zinsmeistering reality

aei.org

What do you do if you're Karl Zinsmeister, the newly appointed chief domestic advisor to Pres. Bush and a lowly newspaper, local to your city, publishes a profile of you that includes quotes that now embarass you? What kind of quotes you ask? Like,

People In Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings.

Or, how about:

A significant number (of journalists) are whiny and appallingly soft.

Well, your response is you simply change the blasted piece. Repost it to a bigger forum (how about the American Enterprise Institute's magazine) with your quotes nicely burnished.

Why let a little thing like reality get in your way...power and perception go hand in glove in what is the latest Bush rework of the English language...let's call it zinsmeistering. The Washington Post wonders tongue-and-cheek what Zinsmeister could do to all unfavorable reporting.

Of course Helen Thomas has to ask Tony Snow about this. Editor and Publisher carries their exchange.

The Syracuse New Times, which carried the original interview is thinking about possible legal action, according to Editor and Publisher.