The Gutting of the Civil Service
by DAN ZEGART
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061120/zegart
[from the November 20, 2006 issue of The Nation]
On September 1, 2004, a patient with type O blood died at a hospital and blood bank in Ponce, Puerto Rico, after being mistakenly given two units of type A blood. Upon investigation, Food and Drug Administration inspectors discovered that before the fatal accident, Hospital Damas had come close to killing two other patients under similar circumstances. Even afterward, Hospital Damas still failed to verify critical medical data or properly train its employees.
Five months later the FDA's San Juan district office recommended that the agency issue a warning letter, which is supposed to be a company's last chance to eliminate a hazard before being sued or having its product seized. But despite abundant evidence that patients at Hospital Damas were in danger, even this relatively minor enforcement action--routine in previous administrations--was never carried out. Instead, the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which oversees blood banks, claimed there was no evidence of systemic problems.
The decision was far from surprising. Over the past five years warning letters have become an endangered species at the FDA. According to a recent report by Representative Henry Waxman, the number of such letters issued under Bush-appointed FDA chief counsel Dan Troy plummeted from 1,154 in 2000 to 535 in 2005. Seizures of mislabeled, defective or dangerous products, another key measure of enforcement activity, dipped 44 percent. Waxman's investigators found a disturbing pattern of laissez-faire managers overuling field agents trying to discipline wrongdoers--even when deaths had resulted.
The changes at the FDA are but one result of an unprecedented attempt by the Bush team to extend direct political control deep into operational areas throughout the executive bureaucracy, especially at agencies where the Administration has strong policy interests such as the FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department and the Interior Department. Troy, who essentially ran the nation's most important consumer protection agency during much of Bush's first term, a time when the office of commissioner was either vacant or in turmoil, is typical of those appointed by the White House to oversee this effort. He had spent his previous career suing the FDA on behalf of extremist think tanks like the Washington Legal Foundation and corporate clients like Brown & Williamson Tobacco, which successfully blocked the FDA's historic attempt to regulate cigarettes.
Thanks to the anti-regulatory course set by Troy and his counterparts at other agencies, many longtime bureaucrats have simply quit. But what is actually happening is more complex and far-reaching than mere brain drain. More accurately, the executive branch is undergoing a brain transplant. An entire culture of civil service professionals loyal to their agency's mission is being systematically replaced with a conservative cadre accountable to the White House. While every President appoints his own "politicals" to run the departments, the Bush team has broken new ground, attempting to realign the executive branch permanently by junking a 100-year-old system of merit-based hiring for career bureaucrats.
While the embedding of politicals in career jobs did not originate with Bush, the scale and coordination with which it is being done under this Administration seem unprecedented, according to more than fifty current and former government officials interviewed during an eight-month-long Nation investigation. "They've put people in charge of many offices who simply don't believe in the mission of the office," said William Yeomans, a twenty-four-year veteran of the Justice Department's civil rights division who quit last year after being inexplicably transferred to the criminal unit. "And they are there to insure that those offices will never return to carrying out the policies or enforcing the law in the way that they used to. And they're going to do that by changing the people who are in the bureaucracy."
Joe Rich, a lawyer who quit as chief of the voting section of the civil rights division of the DOJ in April 2005, concurs. "Obviously during the Reagan years you were going to have a very different philosophy," he said. "But you didn't have that sense that it was kind of raw politics, that everything they were doing was trying to help the party."
At the FDA, the story is much the same. Many longtime staffers, known within the bureaucracy as "careers" to distinguish them from "politicals" like Troy, resisted the agency's anti-consumer tilt but could do little about it. "When career people get in a fight with a political, it's not a fair fight," said William Hubbard, who retired as associate commissioner for policy and planning in spring 2005 after more than twenty-five years at the agency. Former FDA officials estimate that between fifty and a hundred senior managers have quit, retired or been demoted, fired or transferred over the past five years, although no one knows the precise number, and the agency refused to provide any figures or comment for this article. These numbers, though small at an agency with 10,000 employees, have had an outsized impact because they represent the cream of the FDA's upper echelon, a group with much of the agency's accumulated know-how.
The result of the mass departures has been rudderless, demoralized agencies bleeding institutional memory. "What we've seen is an increase in what you might call the misery index," said Paul Light, an expert on the federal bureaucracy at the Brookings Institution. "Senior executives who've worked an entire lifetime in government toward the faithful execution of a given law like Clean Air or Clean Water just get so frustrated with the meddling that they say, 'I'm eligible for retirement, I've had enough of this, I want out.'" In a prepared statement, White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied any attempt to politicize the career workforce: "President Bush has instructed members of his Cabinet to hire men and women of the greatest ability and highest ethical and professional integrity. In his Administration federal employees are selected by their professional abilities, not their personal politics."
Not Invited
Everywhere Dan Troy and his counterparts have gone, three things have happened. First, long-serving careers have been shunted aside, excluded not only from decision-making, but even from providing meaningful input. The EPA's Eric Schaeffer remembered realizing this while arguing for more stringent air-emissions standards for pollution-producing factory farms. "It was the experience of having done a lot of work laying data out and numbers and making an argument about the law, and not having anything come back on the other side. I spent all those years logrolling and compromising, like other bureaucrats, so I was used to that. It's not like that was the process. It was just basically, 'We're not going to do that,'" said Schaeffer, who quit after twelve years at the EPA.
FDA careers say that under Bush, unlike previous administrations, when FDA staff went to a meeting at the White House or to brief "the department"--meaning the higher-ups at Health and Human Services--careers were almost never invited. Former senior associate commissioner Linda Suydam recalled, "The craziest things are happening when you've got somebody like [former Commissioner Lester] Crawford and Troy, who don't know the agency all that well down there presenting positions, and then they bring 'em back and you try to figure out what you're supposed to be doing. And you have no idea what it actually means." Meetings at the FDA would nominally include career staff, but the decisions would be made afterward, at a post-meeting huddle for politicals only. "There was a steady erosion of influence by the career staff beginning in January of '01, and by maybe late '02 the careers were largely excluded and powerless in decision-making," said former associate commissioner Hubbard.
A second method of political control has been simply to redefine civil service jobs as political jobs, or to create new political slots. At the FDA, the post of deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs was created for Dr. Scott Gottlieb in July 2005. Hiring Gottlieb gave a free-market ideologue direct authority over drug review and safety. The choice of Gottlieb, who had served as an FDA staffer, was particularly infuriating to career staffers at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research because Gottlieb, a physician in his mid-30s, had little government experience and none running a large organization. Most recently he had been editor of the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Report, where he advised readers on how to profit from his insider's view of the FDA. Moreover, Gottlieb came on board in the midst of the Vioxx withdrawal scandal despite his well-known view that the FDA's drug review process was too onerous.
Gottlieb has a good deal of company at other agencies. Another report by Representative Waxman found that Bush has added 307 new political appointees to the federal payroll, a 12 percent spike that Paul Light of Brookings calls "stunning." The number of Schedule C political appointees, who don't require Congressional approval, increased 33 percent. Both categories had dropped sharply under Clinton. "The number of layers being created at the top of the federal government has increased dramatically under Bush," said Light.
But what makes this Administration unique, according to scholars and bureaucrats, is the degree of uniformity with which the Bush template has been applied across the executive branch. Out of 1.8 million federal employees, roughly 3,000 are political appointees. Those 3,000 share the upper tier of government with another 6,400 senior career executives. However, according to Light, the extraordinary degree of centralized control exercised over the entire bureaucracy has made those "3,000 feel like 10,000. They operate with a single-minded focus that makes them very present in the day-to-day operation of the agencies, all the way down to the field levels."
The third and most disturbing way the Bush Administration has consolidated its hold over the bureaucracy is the embedding of "hidden politicals" in career slots in the executive branch. Candidates are interviewed and selected supposedly on the basis of merit according to civil service procedures, but the real "play" is to hire a politically reliable person.
One of the last things Hubbard did as a career FDA'er was to hire Randall Lutter from the conservative American Enterprise Institute to replace Lester Breslow, who was retiring as chief economist, a civil service slot in Hubbard's policy and planning shop. "I was in the process of recruiting the person behind Breslow, when [former Commissioner Mark] McClellan called me one day and said, 'I'd like to play on filling that economist's job,'" Hubbard remembered. "So I said, 'Well, how do you want to play it?' He said, 'This guy I know, a guy named Randy Lutter.' I said, 'I know him.' And so we brought him in and talked to him and all. But it was pretty much a done deal."
Not long afterward, Hubbard left and Lutter took over his old job as assistant commissioner so that in effect, Hubbard had hired a political replacement for himself.
Loyalty Above All
Like Hubbard at the FDA, Joe Rich and others at the civil rights division of the Justice Department claim there has been a deliberate effort to replace pro-enforcement careers with Bush loyalists. Rich served for thirty-seven years under regimes as different as those of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton. He left civil rights because of the growing chasm between career lawyers like himself, who believe in the aggressive enforcement that had been the unit's hallmark, and Bush political appointees hostile to that tradition.
By April 2005, when Rich retired, almost all the senior managers in the civil rights division--charged with enforcing laws against employment, voting and housing discrimination--were gone. In fiscal year 2005 alone, 20 percent of the division's litigators quit. Unlike those departing, the new arrivals were not necessarily graduates of elite law schools, and their résumés often failed to demonstrate any interest in attacking civil rights abuses. What they did have in common, said Rich, were dependable hard-right sympathies. And one other thing: Unlike political appointees, these civil servants will remain at DOJ if a Democratic President takes office.
Rich and other senior career lawyers soon became disillusioned with the way cases that almost certainly would have been pursued under previous administrations were being ducked, while others were abandoned or even reversed. "In all the Bush years, there wasn't one case brought on behalf of African-Americans," said Rich of his experience at the voting section. He said the biggest void was in "vote dilution" cases alleging that voting district lines were drawn to minimize the impact of minorities. So-called Section 5 and Section 2 reviews, in which the DOJ screens proposed changes to state voting laws for civil rights violations, suddenly became unabashedly anti-minority and partisan, like the 2003 opinion that the GOP's minority-hostile redistricting of Texas into a Republican stronghold was legal, and another that Arizona could require voters to produce photo IDs. Both opinions ignored contrary opinions from careers in the voting section. Both were written by Sheldon Bradshaw, a high-ranking official in the civil rights division and another ultra-conservative who in April 2005 would succceed Dan Troy as general counsel at the FDA, although he had no relevant experience with food or drug issues.
Rich, Yeomans and others noted other disturbing changes. The honors program, through which a committee of career lawyers helped recruit the finest young legal talent in the country, was replaced with a system in which the politically appointed assistant attorney general controlled hiring. "I would get a phone call that would say, 'We're going to interview X, can you come over this afternoon to join the interview?' And I haven't even seen a résumé. I'd go over for the interview and the person would be hired the next day," Rich remembered.
Like Yeomans's reassignment to the criminal division, some of the most highly regarded career lawyers in the civil rights division were abruptly shifted to other duties without explanation. Robert Libman, a highly successful attorney in the employment litigation section, quit the department not long after being involuntarily transferred to a newly created unit that defended civil rights lawsuits against the government. "You can certainly draw some conclusions about whether that was a punitive move," said Aaron Schuham, another former employment litigator at the DOJ. Disturbed by the division's change of course, Schuham joined three other disenchanted employment litigation attorneys and transferred onto the DOJ's Tobacco Litigation Team, which was prosecuting the multibillion-dollar RICO lawsuit against the cigarette makers. (All but one have since left government.)
Sharon Eubanks, then a DOJ career and director of the tobacco team, gladly hired Schuham and the other attorneys from civil rights. However, the tobacco lawsuit was far from exempt from political pressure. Eubanks worked under Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler, one of the five founders of the Federalist Society, as well as Keisler's superior, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum Jr., a close friend of George W. Bush at Yale and a fellow member of Skull & Bones. Eubanks reported directly to Daniel Meron, a principal deputy assistant attorney general who came from the same law firm as Keisler and had been a conservative TV commentator during the Florida recount in 2000.
Meron, Keisler and McCallum publicly backed the suit. However, by the time the eight-month trial ended in early June 2005, they seemed worried, according to Eubanks, that her underfunded team of thirty-eight lawyers--the industry had some 300 working the case--might actually win and perhaps bankrupt the cigarette makers. The Bush White House had never supported United States of America v. Philip Morris Inc. et al., which was filed under Clinton, and which Bush disparaged in his 2000 campaign. As the trial wore on, Eubanks said, the political interference increased. As closing arguments approached, McCallum tried to persuade her to scale back the government's demand for an industry-funded, twenty-five-year, $130 billion package of smoking cessation and other anti-cigarette programs. Eubanks refused. Late on the night of June 6, 2005, with summations only hours away, McCallum pressured the team to reduce that number drastically, losing his temper and shouting, according to Eubanks, who walked out of the meeting. Twenty minutes later, another trial team member joined her in tears. "He had pieces of paper with calculations on them. And he looked at me and he said, 'Is this OK with you?' The number at that point was $18 billion to $20 billion over seven years," said Eubanks. "And I said, 'I'm not the guy making the decisions. You can see that.'"
The next morning, minutes before Court, McCallum sent an e-mail further shrinking the number to $10 billion over five years, which was the figure that Stephen Brody, Eubanks's second-in-command, presented that afternoon, triggering audible gasps in the courtroom. Six months later, Eubanks took early retirement after twenty-two years at the Justice Department and six years on the tobacco suit. She left behind a perfect trial record. In August federal Judge Gladys Kessler ruled for the government in a scathing decision, which held that the cigarette industry orchestrated a campaign of deception about smoking's hazards but imposed marketing restrictions, not monetary penalties.
"I quit because I really wasn't representing the public interest," said Eubanks, "because when you're at the point where you have to do their bidding, then it's just time to go." After six months of unsuccessfully seeking work at Washington law firms, Eubanks took a pay cut to work for a nonprofit.
Peter Keisler was nominated for the spot on the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit vacated by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. After his nomination stalled, Daniel Meron was given a recess appointment as general counsel at Health and Human Services, succeeding Alex Azar, a Bush loyalist who worked closely with Dan Troy in overhauling the FDA. Robert McCallum was confirmed in July as ambassador to Australia after an internal DOJ investigation cleared him, Keisler and Meron of any political motivation in changing the damage award sought by the government in the tobacco case.
No Friends in High Places
Aside from Henry Waxman, Congressional Democrats have done little to oppose Bush's politicization of the bureaucracy. "It's not sexy," commented one Congressional staffer. But the civil service unions are fighting back fiercely, since the combination of politicization and privatization threatens their very existence.
There is broad agreement that the civil service system--particularly the cumbersome disciplinary process that makes it difficult to force poor performers out of government--needs reform. But the Bush Administration, under the cloak of reform, has worked to gut the entire system. Using the September 11 attacks as a justification, it established new personnel systems that stripped the 180,000 employees of the newly created Homeland Security Department and the 670,000 employees of the Defense Department of union protections afforded federal workers elsewhere, allowing managers broad latitude to hire and fire and to ignore merit in staffing decisions.
In addition, the Office of Personnel Management has expanded to a much larger group its "pay for performance" system, which awards or withholds performance-based pay increases, and which was first instituted among the 6,000 members of the elite senior executive service. Pay-for-performance got poor marks from many long-serving bureaucrats polled in a recent survey by the Senior Executives Association. "I would say that there's a lot of cynicism about the fairness of the system," said William Bransford, SEA general counsel. "And a lot of people feel that there is political pressure."
A combination of new legislation and a new approach by the executive branch has substantially changed the rules for merit system hiring. Before, managers had to give preference to internal candidates, and their power to fire workers was carefully circumscribed. This has been replaced with "direct hiring," which allows much more discretion. When combined with the relaxation of rules for outsourcing and privatization, politicals can readily engage in what is euphemistically called "workforce shaping." "It allows tremendous discretion for isolating particular individuals and neutralizing veterans' preference and seniority and all of those things," said Jacqueline Simon, director of public policy for the American Federation of Government Employees union. "They don't have to give a reason. It's much closer to employment at will."
Back to the Spoils System?
The relentless GOP attack on the bureaucracy amounts to an assault on the very idea of professional government. It would alter a cornerstone belief of American governance, dating to the Pendleton Act of 1883, that it is essential to insulate public servants from partisan influence. The modern civil service was created in reaction to the endemic abuses of the spoils system that ran nineteenth-century American politics. "Political sympathy and partisan activity were...required as a condition of appointment. Fitness for office was given far less consideration and thus, the quality of public service was seriously affected," says the Office of Personnel Management's website, words that could apply to the Bush-era executive branch.
Richard Nixon once said that allowing his Cabinet to select a sub-Cabinet was his "first mistake." Later, the Reaganites "went to school on Nixon and centralized the appointments process," said public policy expert Paul Light. "Then Bush went to school on Reagan, arguing that every appointment should be centralized and carefully vetted for ideology." This innovation may be one of the Bush Administration's most significant legacies.
A study by Light found that compared with the eight Presidents who preceded him, George W. Bush has "one of the smallest domestic agendas in recent history," ranking last in major domestic legislative proposals. It may well be that his most enduring domestic legacy will be a backward-looking reinvention of government.
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Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
*Alex Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair: Rahm Emanuel's Party
Cockburn/St.Clair's review of the gains and losses of pro war Democrats is an opportunity to emphasize that Rahm Emmanuel did his best to eliminate anti-war Democrats from his lineup in order to serve Israel's interests. It's the same reason that Democrats collectively have no real alternative to Bush's Iraq policy. If Democrats were to follow John Murtha's advice and leave promptly that would give Iraq a chance to get back on its feet,and as a nationalist Arab state they would tend to struggle against Israel's hegemonic ambitions and its oppression (and coming expulsion?) of the Palestinians. As a crippled, occupied state the Iraqis can do no such thing.
In other words, Democratic politicians (and who knows how many of their Zionist constituents) are guilty of dual loyalty, i.e., fealty to Israel over and above the interests of the US. By opting to stay in Iraq until the country is "stabilized" (see Howard Dean below) they are supporting Bush's destruction of that country, the Middle East and more and more clearly, on economic, national security and other grounds,their own. I wonder how many rank and file American Zionists are aware of their indirect participation in Bush's war,much less accept any responsibility for all this destruction and woe.
Such thoughts suggest a clue as to why so many prefer not to examine the mountain of evidence indicating that the Bush administration planned and executed 9/11: they are comfortable thinking that the 9/11 massacres were the responsibility of 19 Arabs armed with little knives. Never mind that the ramifications of the bogus war on terror mean the end of our freedom.
PS. See below for Marjorie Cohn on evidence Bush is not planning on leaving Iraq anytime soon: he's spending our billions on massive military bases there.
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
www.counterpunch.org
November 8, 2006
Santorum Gone! Pombo Gone! Burns Gone! Rumsfeld Gone!
Count Your Blessings: NeoCons and NeoLibs Take a Big Hit, as Voters Say No to Bush, War and Free Trade
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Wherever they were given the opportunity, voters across the country went strongly for antiwar candidates. True, the national Democrats, led by Rahm Emanuel of the Democratic Congressional Campaign, had tried pretty successfully to keep such peaceniks off the ballot, but in a few key races the antiwar progressives romped home. The Democrats won, despite Emanuel. If the Clintonites weren't still controlling most of the campaign money, and more openly antiwar populists had been running, the Democrats today would probably be looking at a wider majority in the House and one committed solidly to getting out of Iraq.
Take the sixth district in Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs. This was where the national Democrats threw money at Tammy Duckworth, the prowar double-amputee running in the primary against antiwar Christine Cegalis, who almost took down Republican Henry Hyde in 2004. Flush with Emanuel's campaign cash, Duckworth narrowly beat Cegalis. But yesterday Duckworth's clouded message on the war failed to rouse the voters and she went down to defeat.
In northern California, another of Emanuel's Democrats was Charlie Brown, an Iraq vet. The race looked like a landslide for the Republican but in the last weeks it began to tighten up. Then in a debate, Doolittle, the Republican, tried to bait Brown with supposed ties to Cindy Sheehan. Instead of standing his ground and denouncing the war, Brown quavered that he had no ties to Sheehan and Mrs Brown later told Sheehan to stay away. Confronted with this craven performance voters gave up on Brown and the awful Doolittle cantered home.
In the nearby district around Modesto it was a different story. Here was a ripe target, an implacable foe of nature called Richard Pombo, who had spent his entire career campaigning against the Endangered Species Act, and any enjoyment of nature other than the enrichment of cotton and rice farmers. In the primary season Rahm Emanuel and George Miller put the party's resources behind a Pombo lookalike who was duly trounced by Jerry McNerney, an antiwar foe of corporate agriculture. National Democrats chafed at McNerney's effrontery and predicted victory for Pombo.
But on Tuesday the voters leaped at their opportunity. They booted out Pombo and sent McNerney to Washington. In the upset's aftermath, the Contra Costa Times marveled, "It will go down in California history as a massive upset in a congressional district where the incumbent held a 6 percentage point party registration advantage. No other district in the state has ever flipped parties with such a large registration gap."
In northern Kentucky another progressive Democrat opposed by the Emanuel Machine, John Yarmuth, an alternative newspaper publisher, was nonetheless able to survive the primary. On Tuesday he defeated Anne Northrup, a popular Republican incumbent.
So the Democrats have taken the House, but Emanuel should not be crowing too loudly. The Democrats' victories were clearly driven by antiwar sentiment across the country. Furthermore the contour of success in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, send a very clear message that if the Democrats keep on pushing the old Clinton neoliberal recipe as now purveyed by Emanuel and the others, they will not recapture the White House in 2008, or even bolster their position in the Senate.
If you look at where the Democrats picked up their seats, there's a line running from Pennsylvania, through Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Montana. The common thread is economic populism. In Indiana, the most Republican state, three seats turned over to Democrats. all of whom offered roughly the same political silhouette: fairly conservative on social issue, anti-globalization, tough on illegal immigration, and helped to victory by general hostility to the war on the part of many voters.
What happened to Kansas? It's been crushed by the Clinton-Bush economy and by the war. Two red flags for the Democrats, who are already disdaining the clear message. Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean mumbled in victory's aftermath, "We can't leave Iraq now. We need to stabilize the situation." They never learn.
If there's one single object lesson for progressives to follow, it's Sherrod Brown's successful bid for the US Senate in Ohio, a state Democrats have to win to capture the White House. Brown was vehemently against the war in Iraq and an economic populist who zeroed in on those very counties in Ohio where Kerry feared to tread and where Bush won in 2004, despite the fact that one in three people had been laid off during Bush's first term. These were mostly in coal country along the West Virginia line and up towards lake Erie. Brown stormed through, calling for a jobs plan and railing against the free trade pacts that have desolated the region. He romped to victory, overwhelming two-term Mike DeWine.
Tuesday's polling results have confronted and answered two questions that the national Democrats tried to dodge throughout Campaign 2006. They didn't want to take a clear position on the war and they didn't want to attack the Clinton-Bush free trade consensus. On Tuesday antiwar and anti-free trade candidates prospered. The voters want the US out of the Iraq and they want decent jobs. Who are the Democrats who will speak to these concerns? Not Hillary Clinton. Not Joe Biden. Not Barack Obama. Maybe John Edwards, if he listens to his wife. What triumphed on Tuesday was not the Rahm Emanuel platform but something far closer to what Ralph Nader spoke for in 2000 and 2004.
The furthest the national Democrats have wanted to go on the war has been to attack its management. Not the principled position of Cut and Run as urged by Jack Murtha just over a year ago. Not Howard Dean's "stabilize" message on Wednesday morning. What may well happen now is what we satirically predicted at the statrt of the week: a bipartisan consensus by the national leadership of both parties around the McCain position, calling for fresh troops and better manangement of the war. This is what Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all endorse. What's need now is a de facto alliance between the antiwar Democrats bolstered by Tuesday's results, and the antiwar Republicans led by Chuck Hagel who no longer have to be beholden to the neocons and who have no desire to go the way of Santorum or Burns. Hagel-Edwards in 2008! (We mean Liz Edwards of course.)
November 10, 2006
Don't Leave Town, Don
From
The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn11102006.html
By MARJORIE COHN
Although intending to signal a new direction in Iraq with his nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq. He is building huge permanent U.S. military bases there. Gates at the helm of the Defense Department, Bush said, "can help make the necessary adjustments in our approach." Bush hopes he can bring congressional Democrats on board by convincing them he will simply fight a smarter war.
In other words, Democratic politicians (and who knows how many of their Zionist constituents) are guilty of dual loyalty, i.e., fealty to Israel over and above the interests of the US. By opting to stay in Iraq until the country is "stabilized" (see Howard Dean below) they are supporting Bush's destruction of that country, the Middle East and more and more clearly, on economic, national security and other grounds,their own. I wonder how many rank and file American Zionists are aware of their indirect participation in Bush's war,much less accept any responsibility for all this destruction and woe.
Such thoughts suggest a clue as to why so many prefer not to examine the mountain of evidence indicating that the Bush administration planned and executed 9/11: they are comfortable thinking that the 9/11 massacres were the responsibility of 19 Arabs armed with little knives. Never mind that the ramifications of the bogus war on terror mean the end of our freedom.
PS. See below for Marjorie Cohn on evidence Bush is not planning on leaving Iraq anytime soon: he's spending our billions on massive military bases there.
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
www.counterpunch.org
November 8, 2006
Santorum Gone! Pombo Gone! Burns Gone! Rumsfeld Gone!
Count Your Blessings: NeoCons and NeoLibs Take a Big Hit, as Voters Say No to Bush, War and Free Trade
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Wherever they were given the opportunity, voters across the country went strongly for antiwar candidates. True, the national Democrats, led by Rahm Emanuel of the Democratic Congressional Campaign, had tried pretty successfully to keep such peaceniks off the ballot, but in a few key races the antiwar progressives romped home. The Democrats won, despite Emanuel. If the Clintonites weren't still controlling most of the campaign money, and more openly antiwar populists had been running, the Democrats today would probably be looking at a wider majority in the House and one committed solidly to getting out of Iraq.
Take the sixth district in Illinois, in the Chicago suburbs. This was where the national Democrats threw money at Tammy Duckworth, the prowar double-amputee running in the primary against antiwar Christine Cegalis, who almost took down Republican Henry Hyde in 2004. Flush with Emanuel's campaign cash, Duckworth narrowly beat Cegalis. But yesterday Duckworth's clouded message on the war failed to rouse the voters and she went down to defeat.
In northern California, another of Emanuel's Democrats was Charlie Brown, an Iraq vet. The race looked like a landslide for the Republican but in the last weeks it began to tighten up. Then in a debate, Doolittle, the Republican, tried to bait Brown with supposed ties to Cindy Sheehan. Instead of standing his ground and denouncing the war, Brown quavered that he had no ties to Sheehan and Mrs Brown later told Sheehan to stay away. Confronted with this craven performance voters gave up on Brown and the awful Doolittle cantered home.
In the nearby district around Modesto it was a different story. Here was a ripe target, an implacable foe of nature called Richard Pombo, who had spent his entire career campaigning against the Endangered Species Act, and any enjoyment of nature other than the enrichment of cotton and rice farmers. In the primary season Rahm Emanuel and George Miller put the party's resources behind a Pombo lookalike who was duly trounced by Jerry McNerney, an antiwar foe of corporate agriculture. National Democrats chafed at McNerney's effrontery and predicted victory for Pombo.
But on Tuesday the voters leaped at their opportunity. They booted out Pombo and sent McNerney to Washington. In the upset's aftermath, the Contra Costa Times marveled, "It will go down in California history as a massive upset in a congressional district where the incumbent held a 6 percentage point party registration advantage. No other district in the state has ever flipped parties with such a large registration gap."
In northern Kentucky another progressive Democrat opposed by the Emanuel Machine, John Yarmuth, an alternative newspaper publisher, was nonetheless able to survive the primary. On Tuesday he defeated Anne Northrup, a popular Republican incumbent.
So the Democrats have taken the House, but Emanuel should not be crowing too loudly. The Democrats' victories were clearly driven by antiwar sentiment across the country. Furthermore the contour of success in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, send a very clear message that if the Democrats keep on pushing the old Clinton neoliberal recipe as now purveyed by Emanuel and the others, they will not recapture the White House in 2008, or even bolster their position in the Senate.
If you look at where the Democrats picked up their seats, there's a line running from Pennsylvania, through Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Montana. The common thread is economic populism. In Indiana, the most Republican state, three seats turned over to Democrats. all of whom offered roughly the same political silhouette: fairly conservative on social issue, anti-globalization, tough on illegal immigration, and helped to victory by general hostility to the war on the part of many voters.
What happened to Kansas? It's been crushed by the Clinton-Bush economy and by the war. Two red flags for the Democrats, who are already disdaining the clear message. Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean mumbled in victory's aftermath, "We can't leave Iraq now. We need to stabilize the situation." They never learn.
If there's one single object lesson for progressives to follow, it's Sherrod Brown's successful bid for the US Senate in Ohio, a state Democrats have to win to capture the White House. Brown was vehemently against the war in Iraq and an economic populist who zeroed in on those very counties in Ohio where Kerry feared to tread and where Bush won in 2004, despite the fact that one in three people had been laid off during Bush's first term. These were mostly in coal country along the West Virginia line and up towards lake Erie. Brown stormed through, calling for a jobs plan and railing against the free trade pacts that have desolated the region. He romped to victory, overwhelming two-term Mike DeWine.
Tuesday's polling results have confronted and answered two questions that the national Democrats tried to dodge throughout Campaign 2006. They didn't want to take a clear position on the war and they didn't want to attack the Clinton-Bush free trade consensus. On Tuesday antiwar and anti-free trade candidates prospered. The voters want the US out of the Iraq and they want decent jobs. Who are the Democrats who will speak to these concerns? Not Hillary Clinton. Not Joe Biden. Not Barack Obama. Maybe John Edwards, if he listens to his wife. What triumphed on Tuesday was not the Rahm Emanuel platform but something far closer to what Ralph Nader spoke for in 2000 and 2004.
The furthest the national Democrats have wanted to go on the war has been to attack its management. Not the principled position of Cut and Run as urged by Jack Murtha just over a year ago. Not Howard Dean's "stabilize" message on Wednesday morning. What may well happen now is what we satirically predicted at the statrt of the week: a bipartisan consensus by the national leadership of both parties around the McCain position, calling for fresh troops and better manangement of the war. This is what Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all endorse. What's need now is a de facto alliance between the antiwar Democrats bolstered by Tuesday's results, and the antiwar Republicans led by Chuck Hagel who no longer have to be beholden to the neocons and who have no desire to go the way of Santorum or Burns. Hagel-Edwards in 2008! (We mean Liz Edwards of course.)
November 10, 2006
Don't Leave Town, Don
From
The War Crimes Case Against Rumsfeld
http://www.counterpunch.org/cohn11102006.html
By MARJORIE COHN
Although intending to signal a new direction in Iraq with his nomination of Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush has no intention of leaving Iraq. He is building huge permanent U.S. military bases there. Gates at the helm of the Defense Department, Bush said, "can help make the necessary adjustments in our approach." Bush hopes he can bring congressional Democrats on board by convincing them he will simply fight a smarter war.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Jon Stokes: E-Voting 2007: Another Rigged Election?!
According to a report on NPR's All Things Considered Sunday nite http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6439414
the Republican electorate is starting to wake up and smell the coffee and in a fair election might hold onto both Houses of Congress. (Is it possible the New Yorker was right -- gerrymandering did it?)
Needless to say, this won't be a fair election, probably much less fair than any of the previous elections going back to 2000. Who knows: the GOP may increase their majority!! Depends on how piggish Rove gets, I suppose.
After you read the first three paragraphs below you may or may not want to delve into the details. If so, you've a treat in the extensive discussion provided by Jon Stokes.
I haven't noticed the liberal media watchdog group FAIR tackle this issue. I gather they're behaving like good boys and girls and treating the theme of stolen elections as if it were just another conspiracy theory.
On Democracy Now's (11.6.06) review of the election, there was virtually no mention of fraud. Conducted with a NYT reporter, Amy Goodman focused on problems and glitches with evoting, voter suppression, etc., mirroring major media reporting with no hint of a Rove inspired (and directed?) national program to maintain GOP majorities.
The only thing I can think of doing is contacting your favorite media outlet and let them know you'd like them to cover the issue, despite what Howard Dean and John Kerry are going to say.
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Thanks to FH for passing this along.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html
Primary and early e-voting problems point to gathering storm
11/1/2006 5:42:14 PM, by Jon Stokes
As we move toward the November mid-terms, we're beginning to a more detailed and depressing picture of exactly what we're up against as a nation in less than a week: two major new reports from independent research groups detail the myriad security breaches, and procedural and technical problems in the 2006 Ohio primaries; stories from early voting in Texas indicate that the paperless DREs in at least two counties may have a partisan bias; another major new report from the University of Connecticut details a whole raft of security vulnerabilities in Diebold's optical scan voting machines; finally, BlackBoxVoting.org has released "push this, pull here" instructions for multiple voting on a Sequoia DRE, no hacking skills necessary.
None of this news bodes well for the November mid-terms, which are less than a week away. In fact, what the reports described below indicate is that voters will flock to the polls to vote on fragile, untested alpha systems that, when they break, cannot be fixed by the on-site poll workers; the votes that are recorded cannot be adequately verified by a post-election audit, even if a voter-verified paper "receipt" is printed by each machine and saved by the county; and individual counties may or may not have the technical capacity to actually carry out the task of tabulating all of the electronic results (forget about the paper receipts!) from all of the machines in a coherent and reliable manner.
In sum, people will show up on November 7th at many precincts across America, they will select items on a touch-screen, a lucky few of them will see a paper record of their choices (correctly marked or not) scroll by under a glass, and they will return home having participated in a bit of high-tech political theater that may or may not amount to a bona fide election.
If you think that I overstate things just a bit here, then by all means, read on.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html
the Republican electorate is starting to wake up and smell the coffee and in a fair election might hold onto both Houses of Congress. (Is it possible the New Yorker was right -- gerrymandering did it?)
Needless to say, this won't be a fair election, probably much less fair than any of the previous elections going back to 2000. Who knows: the GOP may increase their majority!! Depends on how piggish Rove gets, I suppose.
After you read the first three paragraphs below you may or may not want to delve into the details. If so, you've a treat in the extensive discussion provided by Jon Stokes.
I haven't noticed the liberal media watchdog group FAIR tackle this issue. I gather they're behaving like good boys and girls and treating the theme of stolen elections as if it were just another conspiracy theory.
On Democracy Now's (11.6.06) review of the election, there was virtually no mention of fraud. Conducted with a NYT reporter, Amy Goodman focused on problems and glitches with evoting, voter suppression, etc., mirroring major media reporting with no hint of a Rove inspired (and directed?) national program to maintain GOP majorities.
The only thing I can think of doing is contacting your favorite media outlet and let them know you'd like them to cover the issue, despite what Howard Dean and John Kerry are going to say.
Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Thanks to FH for passing this along.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html
Primary and early e-voting problems point to gathering storm
11/1/2006 5:42:14 PM, by Jon Stokes
As we move toward the November mid-terms, we're beginning to a more detailed and depressing picture of exactly what we're up against as a nation in less than a week: two major new reports from independent research groups detail the myriad security breaches, and procedural and technical problems in the 2006 Ohio primaries; stories from early voting in Texas indicate that the paperless DREs in at least two counties may have a partisan bias; another major new report from the University of Connecticut details a whole raft of security vulnerabilities in Diebold's optical scan voting machines; finally, BlackBoxVoting.org has released "push this, pull here" instructions for multiple voting on a Sequoia DRE, no hacking skills necessary.
None of this news bodes well for the November mid-terms, which are less than a week away. In fact, what the reports described below indicate is that voters will flock to the polls to vote on fragile, untested alpha systems that, when they break, cannot be fixed by the on-site poll workers; the votes that are recorded cannot be adequately verified by a post-election audit, even if a voter-verified paper "receipt" is printed by each machine and saved by the county; and individual counties may or may not have the technical capacity to actually carry out the task of tabulating all of the electronic results (forget about the paper receipts!) from all of the machines in a coherent and reliable manner.
In sum, people will show up on November 7th at many precincts across America, they will select items on a touch-screen, a lucky few of them will see a paper record of their choices (correctly marked or not) scroll by under a glass, and they will return home having participated in a bit of high-tech political theater that may or may not amount to a bona fide election.
If you think that I overstate things just a bit here, then by all means, read on.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html
Worse to come: Kurt Nimmo & Frank Morales on Martial Law
Once again, Kurt Nimmo puts it all together, here on Bush’s stealth signing of a bill making it easier for him to declare martial law. In connection with a similar situation in the Nixon administration, Nimmo quotes Howard J. Ruff:
“The only thing standing between us and a dictatorship is the good character of the President and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it”
Nimmo points out that we know all too well about Bush’s lack of good character.
I would only emphasize that this pre and soon to be post election period -- the holidays coming up and the new (once again) Republican Congress installed in January -- is likely to be our last quiet time until the 2008 election season -- if elections are on the table then.
One might think that with all the disaffection even from Republican-Neocons (try Googling: Perle regrets Iraq war), more foreign adventures like an attack against Iran might be foreclosed. However, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are men of steely determination not to say vicious monsters (as they will no doubt demonstrate in ways we haven't yet seen), and they will push forward on their endless war agenda if at all possible.
Our only hope and it is fading fast is that the media will wake up to the upcoming stolen elections and raise a hue and cry that will keep the clique on the defensive.
--Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Kurt Nimmo wrote:
Bush’s Martial Law Act of 2007
Saturday October 28th 2006,
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=631
On October 17, with little fanfare, the unitary decider signed H.R.5122, or the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. “The act provides $462.8 billion in budget authority for the department. Senate and House conferees added the $70 billion defense supplemental budget request to the act, so overall, the act authorizes $532.8 billion for fiscal 2007,” explains Jim Garamone of the American Forces Press Service.
According to a press release from the office of Senator Patrick Leahy, however, the bill takes a “sizable step toward weakening states’ authority over their [National] Guard units, according to the congressional leaders who are leading the fight for Guard empowerment.” Leahey and senator Kit Bond, a Montana Republican, “said the conference agreement is expected to include a provision making it easier for the President to declare martial law, stripping state governors of part of their authority over state National Guard units in domestic emergencies. The provision is opposed by the National Governors Association and by key leaders in both the House and Senate.”
Frank Morales, an Episcopal priest and activist in New York City, writes that the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 actually encourages the establishment of martial law “by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.”
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bush demanded Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco yield to him the command over any National Guard troops sent to the area. “Bush wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed him to take control over all armed forces deployed, including Louisiana’s National Guard troops. But under the terms of the act, he had to get the assent of the legislature or the governor of the state. The legislature was not in session and Blanco refused,” writes Deirdre Griswold. As of September 11, 2005, Griswold notes, citing the Los Angeles Times, “Bush has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, but his administration is still discussing how to make it easier for the federal government to override local authorities in the future.”
Leaning on Blanco was considered politically sensitive. “Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” an anonymous senior administration official told the New York Times on September 8, 2005. Blanco “rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general—but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana National Guard,” the New York Times adds.
Bush’s Martial Law Act of 2007 modifies the Insurrection Act and deals yet another blow to the Posse Comitatus Act. “Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, ‘Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies,’” explains Morales. “Section 333, ‘Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law’ states that ‘the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of (’refuse’ or ‘fail’ in) maintaining public order, ‘in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.’”
For the current President, “enforcement of the laws to restore public order” means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against “disorderly” citizenry—protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.
The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called “illegal aliens,” “potential terrorists” and other “undesirables” for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That’s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency” and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.
Back in January, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers at undisclosed locations in the United States. As usual, the New York Times either missed over glossed over the significance of this development, characterizing it instead as a waste of taxpayer money. Peter Dale Scott, however, hit the nail right on the head. “For those who follow covert government operations abroad and at home, the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 ‘readiness exercise’ in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary ‘refugees,’ in the context of ‘uncontrolled population movements’ over the Mexican border into the United States. North’s activities raised civil liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns persist.”
As Scott notes, plans for detention camps are nothing new, and indeed “have a long history, going back to fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis Giuffrida. The order called for ’suspension of the Constitution’ and ‘declaration of martial law.’ The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Giuffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff.”
Brinkerhoff told PBS: “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.”
Giuffrida was the Reagan administration’s first director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 1981 to 1985 and was the head of then-Governor Reagan’s California Specialized Training Institute, a National Guard school. In “1970 he had written a paper for the Army War College in which he called for martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. Among his ideas were ‘assembly centers or relocation camps’ for at least 21 million ‘American Negroes,’” writes Sam Smith. “During 1968 and 1972, Reagan ran a series of war games in California called Cable Splicer, which involved the Guard, state and local police, and the US Sixth Army. Details of this operation were reported in 1975 in a story by Ron Ridenour of the New Times, an Arizona alternative paper, and later exhumed by Dave Lindorff in the Village Voice…. Cable Splicer, it turned out, was a training exercise for martial law. The man in charge was none other than Edwin Meese, then Reagan’s executive secretary. At one point, Meese told the Cable Splicer combatants: This is an operation, this is an exercise, this is an objective which is going forward because in the long run … it is the only way that will be able to prevail [against anti-war protests.]”
In response to Richard Nixon’s October 30, 1969, issuance of Executive Order 11490, “Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions to Federal Departments and Agencies,” which consolidated some 21 operative Executive Orders and two Defense Mobilization Orders issued between 1951 and 1966 on a variety of emergency preparedness matters, Howard J. Ruff noted: “The only thing standing between us and a dictatorship is the good character of the President and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it” (see Diana Reynolds, Civil Security Planning).
Not only is Bush’s lack of “good character” obvious, he also considers himself our unitary decider with the power to ignore over 750 laws. “Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ‘whistle-blower’ protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research,” the Boston Globe reported in April.
“From the inception of the Republic until 2000, Presidents produced signing statements containing fewer than 600 challenges to the bills they signed. According to the most recent update, in his one-and-a-half terms so far, President George W. Bush (Bush II) has produced more than 800,” explains the American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine.
“It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president’s polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes,” concludes Morales. “And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.”
***
Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
by Frank Morales
October 26, 2006
In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.
Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."
President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."
Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws! of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."
For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.
The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.
An article on "recent contract awards" in a recent issue of the slick, insider "Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International" reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total val! ue of $3 85 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." The report points out that "KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton." (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism."
Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of 'law enforcement.' As such, it has been the best protection we've had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.
Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequent! ly, it w ill take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.
Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007's Defense Authorization Act contained a "widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation's governors."
Senator Leahy went on to stress that, "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders."
A few weeks later, on the 29th of September, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report," the language of which, he said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law." This had been "slipped in," Leahy said, "as a rider with little study," while "other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."
In a telling bit of understatement, the Senator from Vermont noted that "the implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormo! us". "Th ere is good reason," he said, "for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."
Senator Leahy's final ruminations: "Since hearing word a couple of weeks ago that this outcome was likely, I have wondered how Congress could have gotten to this point. It seems the changes to the Insurrection Act have survived the Conference because the Pentagon and the White House want it."
The historic and ominous re-writing of the Insurrection Act, accomplished in the dead of night, which gives Bush the legal authority to declare martial law, is now an accomplished fact.
The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, "Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions," authorizes "the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders."
In other words, the law facilitates the "transfer" of the newest in so-called "crowd control" technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier "technology transfer" agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)
It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president's polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the ! Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.
Source:
(1) http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/091906a.html and http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html See also, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "The Use of Federal Troops for Disaster Assistance: Legal Issues," by Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, August 14, 2006
(2) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill+h109-5122
(3) Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, "Recent Contract Awards", Summer 2006, Vol.12, No.2, pg.8; See also, Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," New American Media, January 31, 2006.
(4) "Technology Transfer from defense: Concealed Weapons Detection", National Institute of Justice Journal, No 229, August, 1995, pp.42-43.
“The only thing standing between us and a dictatorship is the good character of the President and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it”
Nimmo points out that we know all too well about Bush’s lack of good character.
I would only emphasize that this pre and soon to be post election period -- the holidays coming up and the new (once again) Republican Congress installed in January -- is likely to be our last quiet time until the 2008 election season -- if elections are on the table then.
One might think that with all the disaffection even from Republican-Neocons (try Googling: Perle regrets Iraq war), more foreign adventures like an attack against Iran might be foreclosed. However, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are men of steely determination not to say vicious monsters (as they will no doubt demonstrate in ways we haven't yet seen), and they will push forward on their endless war agenda if at all possible.
Our only hope and it is fading fast is that the media will wake up to the upcoming stolen elections and raise a hue and cry that will keep the clique on the defensive.
--Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Kurt Nimmo wrote:
Bush’s Martial Law Act of 2007
Saturday October 28th 2006,
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=631
On October 17, with little fanfare, the unitary decider signed H.R.5122, or the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007. “The act provides $462.8 billion in budget authority for the department. Senate and House conferees added the $70 billion defense supplemental budget request to the act, so overall, the act authorizes $532.8 billion for fiscal 2007,” explains Jim Garamone of the American Forces Press Service.
According to a press release from the office of Senator Patrick Leahy, however, the bill takes a “sizable step toward weakening states’ authority over their [National] Guard units, according to the congressional leaders who are leading the fight for Guard empowerment.” Leahey and senator Kit Bond, a Montana Republican, “said the conference agreement is expected to include a provision making it easier for the President to declare martial law, stripping state governors of part of their authority over state National Guard units in domestic emergencies. The provision is opposed by the National Governors Association and by key leaders in both the House and Senate.”
Frank Morales, an Episcopal priest and activist in New York City, writes that the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 actually encourages the establishment of martial law “by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President’s ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.”
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bush demanded Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco yield to him the command over any National Guard troops sent to the area. “Bush wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would have allowed him to take control over all armed forces deployed, including Louisiana’s National Guard troops. But under the terms of the act, he had to get the assent of the legislature or the governor of the state. The legislature was not in session and Blanco refused,” writes Deirdre Griswold. As of September 11, 2005, Griswold notes, citing the Los Angeles Times, “Bush has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, but his administration is still discussing how to make it easier for the federal government to override local authorities in the future.”
Leaning on Blanco was considered politically sensitive. “Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” an anonymous senior administration official told the New York Times on September 8, 2005. Blanco “rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general—but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana National Guard,” the New York Times adds.
Bush’s Martial Law Act of 2007 modifies the Insurrection Act and deals yet another blow to the Posse Comitatus Act. “Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, ‘Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies,’” explains Morales. “Section 333, ‘Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law’ states that ‘the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of (’refuse’ or ‘fail’ in) maintaining public order, ‘in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy.’”
For the current President, “enforcement of the laws to restore public order” means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against “disorderly” citizenry—protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.
The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called “illegal aliens,” “potential terrorists” and other “undesirables” for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That’s right. Under the cover of a trumped-up “immigration emergency” and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.
Back in January, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers at undisclosed locations in the United States. As usual, the New York Times either missed over glossed over the significance of this development, characterizing it instead as a waste of taxpayer money. Peter Dale Scott, however, hit the nail right on the head. “For those who follow covert government operations abroad and at home, the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 ‘readiness exercise’ in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary ‘refugees,’ in the context of ‘uncontrolled population movements’ over the Mexican border into the United States. North’s activities raised civil liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns persist.”
As Scott notes, plans for detention camps are nothing new, and indeed “have a long history, going back to fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis Giuffrida. The order called for ’suspension of the Constitution’ and ‘declaration of martial law.’ The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Giuffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff.”
Brinkerhoff told PBS: “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.”
Giuffrida was the Reagan administration’s first director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from 1981 to 1985 and was the head of then-Governor Reagan’s California Specialized Training Institute, a National Guard school. In “1970 he had written a paper for the Army War College in which he called for martial law in case of a national uprising by black militants. Among his ideas were ‘assembly centers or relocation camps’ for at least 21 million ‘American Negroes,’” writes Sam Smith. “During 1968 and 1972, Reagan ran a series of war games in California called Cable Splicer, which involved the Guard, state and local police, and the US Sixth Army. Details of this operation were reported in 1975 in a story by Ron Ridenour of the New Times, an Arizona alternative paper, and later exhumed by Dave Lindorff in the Village Voice…. Cable Splicer, it turned out, was a training exercise for martial law. The man in charge was none other than Edwin Meese, then Reagan’s executive secretary. At one point, Meese told the Cable Splicer combatants: This is an operation, this is an exercise, this is an objective which is going forward because in the long run … it is the only way that will be able to prevail [against anti-war protests.]”
In response to Richard Nixon’s October 30, 1969, issuance of Executive Order 11490, “Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions to Federal Departments and Agencies,” which consolidated some 21 operative Executive Orders and two Defense Mobilization Orders issued between 1951 and 1966 on a variety of emergency preparedness matters, Howard J. Ruff noted: “The only thing standing between us and a dictatorship is the good character of the President and the lack of a crisis severe enough that the public would stand still for it” (see Diana Reynolds, Civil Security Planning).
Not only is Bush’s lack of “good character” obvious, he also considers himself our unitary decider with the power to ignore over 750 laws. “Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ‘whistle-blower’ protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research,” the Boston Globe reported in April.
“From the inception of the Republic until 2000, Presidents produced signing statements containing fewer than 600 challenges to the bills they signed. According to the most recent update, in his one-and-a-half terms so far, President George W. Bush (Bush II) has produced more than 800,” explains the American Bar Association Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine.
“It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president’s polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes,” concludes Morales. “And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.”
***
Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
by Frank Morales
October 26, 2006
In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1). It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement. With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions.
Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."
President Bush seized this unprecedented power on the very same day that he signed the equally odious Military Commissions Act of 2006. In a sense, the two laws complement one another. One allows for torture and detention abroad, while the other seeks to enforce acquiescence at home, preparing to order the military onto the streets of America. Remember, the term for putting an area under military law enforcement control is precise; the term is "martial law."
Section 1076 of the massive Authorization Act, which grants the Pentagon another $500-plus-billion for its ill-advised adventures, is entitled, "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies." Section 333, "Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law" states that "the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws! of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of ("refuse" or "fail" in) maintaining public order, "in order to suppress, in any State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy."
For the current President, "enforcement of the laws to restore public order" means to commandeer guardsmen from any state, over the objections of local governmental, military and local police entities; ship them off to another state; conscript them in a law enforcement mode; and set them loose against "disorderly" citizenry - protesters, possibly, or those who object to forced vaccinations and quarantines in the event of a bio-terror event.
The law also facilitates militarized police round-ups and detention of protesters, so called "illegal aliens," "potential terrorists" and other "undesirables" for detention in facilities already contracted for and under construction by Halliburton. That's right. Under the cover of a trumped-up "immigration emergency" and the frenzied militarization of the southern border, detention camps are being constructed right under our noses, camps designed for anyone who resists the foreign and domestic agenda of the Bush administration.
An article on "recent contract awards" in a recent issue of the slick, insider "Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International" reported that "global engineering and technical services powerhouse KBR [Kellog, Brown & Root] announced in January 2006 that its Government and Infrastructure division was awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in the event of an emergency." "With a maximum total val! ue of $3 85 million over a five year term," the report notes, "the contract is to be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers," "for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) - in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs." The report points out that "KBR is the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton." (3) So, in addition to authorizing another $532.8 billion for the Pentagon, including a $70-billion "supplemental provision" which covers the cost of the ongoing, mad military maneuvers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places, the new law, signed by the president in a private White House ceremony, further collapses the historic divide between the police and the military: a tell-tale sign of a rapidly consolidating police state in America, all accomplished amidst ongoing U.S. imperial pretensions of global domination, sold to an "emergency managed" and seemingly willfully gullible public as a "global war on terrorism."
Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, "Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both," is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of 'law enforcement.' As such, it has been the best protection we've had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.
Unfortunately, this past week, the president dealt posse comitatus, along with American democracy, a near fatal blow. Consequent! ly, it w ill take an aroused citizenry to undo the damage wrought by this horrendous act, part and parcel, as we have seen, of a long train of abuses and outrages perpetrated by this authoritarian administration.
Despite the unprecedented and shocking nature of this act, there has been no outcry in the American media, and little reaction from our elected officials in Congress. On September 19th, a lone Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) noted that 2007's Defense Authorization Act contained a "widely opposed provision to allow the President more control over the National Guard [adopting] changes to the Insurrection Act, which will make it easier for this or any future President to use the military to restore domestic order WITHOUT the consent of the nation's governors."
Senator Leahy went on to stress that, "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law. Invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military for law enforcement activities goes against some of the central tenets of our democracy. One can easily envision governors and mayors in charge of an emergency having to constantly look over their shoulders while someone who has never visited their communities gives the orders."
A few weeks later, on the 29th of September, Leahy entered into the Congressional Record that he had "grave reservations about certain provisions of the fiscal Year 2007 Defense Authorization Bill Conference Report," the language of which, he said, "subverts solid, longstanding posse comitatus statutes that limit the military's involvement in law enforcement, thereby making it easier for the President to declare martial law." This had been "slipped in," Leahy said, "as a rider with little study," while "other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."
In a telling bit of understatement, the Senator from Vermont noted that "the implications of changing the (Posse Comitatus) Act are enormo! us". "Th ere is good reason," he said, "for the constructive friction in existing law when it comes to martial law declarations. Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy. We fail our Constitution, neglecting the rights of the States, when we make it easier for the President to declare martial law and trample on local and state sovereignty."
Senator Leahy's final ruminations: "Since hearing word a couple of weeks ago that this outcome was likely, I have wondered how Congress could have gotten to this point. It seems the changes to the Insurrection Act have survived the Conference because the Pentagon and the White House want it."
The historic and ominous re-writing of the Insurrection Act, accomplished in the dead of night, which gives Bush the legal authority to declare martial law, is now an accomplished fact.
The Pentagon, as one might expect, plays an even more direct role in martial law operations. Title XIV of the new law, entitled, "Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Legislative Provisions," authorizes "the Secretary of Defense to create a Homeland Defense Technology Transfer Consortium to improve the effectiveness of the Department of Defense (DOD) processes for identifying and deploying relevant DOD technology to federal, State, and local first responders."
In other words, the law facilitates the "transfer" of the newest in so-called "crowd control" technology and other weaponry designed to suppress dissent from the Pentagon to local militarized police units. The new law builds on and further codifies earlier "technology transfer" agreements, specifically the 1995 DOD-Justice Department memorandum of agreement achieved back during the Clinton-Reno regime.(4)
It has become clear in recent months that a critical mass of the American people have seen through the lies of the Bush administration; with the president's polls at an historic low, growing resistance to the war Iraq, and the Democrats likely to take back the ! Congress in mid-term elections, the Bush administration is on the ropes. And so it is particularly worrying that President Bush has seen fit, at this juncture to, in effect, declare himself dictator.
Source:
(1) http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/091906a.html and http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200609/092906b.html See also, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, "The Use of Federal Troops for Disaster Assistance: Legal Issues," by Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative Attorney, August 14, 2006
(2) http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill+h109-5122
(3) Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International, "Recent Contract Awards", Summer 2006, Vol.12, No.2, pg.8; See also, Peter Dale Scott, "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps," New American Media, January 31, 2006.
(4) "Technology Transfer from defense: Concealed Weapons Detection", National Institute of Justice Journal, No 229, August, 1995, pp.42-43.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
*Kurt Nimmo-- Rove: Voters don't matter, results do
Kurt Nimmo here decodes -- not that much needs to be decoded -- Rove's shameless announcement on NPR that votes don't matter, only the people that count the votes matter. Rove indicated that just because GOP fear campaign tactics are more threadbare than usual, that's hardly a reason that this election be any different from the last 3 or 4 they've stolen.
I've omitted Nimmo's rants on the lack of difference between the parties which is a lesser truth beneath the reality that we're currently ruled by a small clique of exceptional irrational radicals who are bent on permanent war and destroying their domestic and international opposition. I've also omitted Nimmo's plan to make a statement by not voting.
My present view as I vote in NYC on my old trusty lever machines (perhaps for the last time since they are destined to be replaced by hackable digital machines) with virtually no local voter suppression that I'm aware of is to join those exhorting the most massive possible turnout. The hope is that people will start to wake up to what's going on and find Ghandian ways to make a statement. (Nimmo ridicules candlelight vigils, but the point is to force the media to report our outrage since cowards or villains like Kerry refuse to lead us.)
For this cycle we're reduced to hoping that some of the CIA apparatchiks at the NYT and people like Rupert Murdoch and Hillary Clinton will begin to pay attention in the wake of more and more obvious stolen elections.
-- Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Kurt Nimmo
Voting: What is it Good for? Absolutely Nothing
Monday October 30th 2006, 3:28 am
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=634
David Swanson provides us with a glimpse of the stolen election, a mere eight days away. Zooming in on an NPR transcript of a conversation between NPR’s Robert Siegel and a boorish Karl Rove, we learn from the interview that Republicans use a “different math” to count polls, as they use “different math” to count election results at odds with exit polls. In other words, Rove was indicating, once again, Republicans will steal the election and thus retain possession of the House and Senate.
“Democratic candidates, consider yourselves warned. Don’t concede a shady election the next day and then complain weeks later that you didn’t realize, you hadn’t been aware, or you didn’t want to put us through a traumatic experience. Our uncertainty as to whether you will fight for your votes is what is traumatizing us,” writes Swanson. “Citizens, consider yourselves warned…. prepare yourselves to make sure the votes are counted. Then join a blue revolution: candlelight vigils outside county election offices the evening of November 7th—Let them know we’re watching.”
I can see Rove and the Republicans rolling on the floor, their sides splitting. Candlelight vigils? Please. Instead, activists should gather at the polling places and demand the removal of all devices—computer, optical, even card punch—and insist paper ballots be used instead. People should refuse to vote until this changes.
Here in New Mexico, we have optical readers. Since an optical reader translates my paper ballot into digitized information, subject to hacking and manipulation, it is not acceptable. I demand a paper ballet counted and recounted by human eyes not connected to the Republican or Democratic party. Short of this, there is no reason to vote. The last time I voted, in 2004, my vote was stolen. Ballots were “spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. Many were given provisional ballots that subsequently were never counted. In these same Democratic areas Bush ‘won’ an astonishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory. One Republican judge in New Mexico discarded hundreds of provisional ballots cast for Kerry, accepting only those that were for Bush,” writes Michael Parenti.
Of course, I didn’t vote for Bush Lite, Kerry, who thumbed his nose at the large antiwar faction of his party, thus revealing once again there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, exemplified by the fact Kerry and Bush are distant cousins and Skull and Bones Yalies, products of the same, for lack of a better word, shadow government, consisting of “high finance, big oil, corporate elitism,” as Jonathan Vankin notes, the members of which “slide smoothly into cabinet-level jobs in Republican and Democratic administrations.”
[snip]
Of course, going to the polling place will not matter, as the going there did not matter during the 2002 midterm election, when “blackbox” voting ruled the day. “It’s a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It’s a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers—and presidential family members—lie down together in the slime. It’s a hacker’s dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny,” writes Jon Traudt. “The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players—Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia—with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies—all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid—were given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide for the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems—many using ‘touch-screen’ technology that leaves no paper trail at all—are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities.”
[snip]
I've omitted Nimmo's rants on the lack of difference between the parties which is a lesser truth beneath the reality that we're currently ruled by a small clique of exceptional irrational radicals who are bent on permanent war and destroying their domestic and international opposition. I've also omitted Nimmo's plan to make a statement by not voting.
My present view as I vote in NYC on my old trusty lever machines (perhaps for the last time since they are destined to be replaced by hackable digital machines) with virtually no local voter suppression that I'm aware of is to join those exhorting the most massive possible turnout. The hope is that people will start to wake up to what's going on and find Ghandian ways to make a statement. (Nimmo ridicules candlelight vigils, but the point is to force the media to report our outrage since cowards or villains like Kerry refuse to lead us.)
For this cycle we're reduced to hoping that some of the CIA apparatchiks at the NYT and people like Rupert Murdoch and Hillary Clinton will begin to pay attention in the wake of more and more obvious stolen elections.
-- Ronald
http://desip.igc.org
***
Kurt Nimmo
Voting: What is it Good for? Absolutely Nothing
Monday October 30th 2006, 3:28 am
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=634
David Swanson provides us with a glimpse of the stolen election, a mere eight days away. Zooming in on an NPR transcript of a conversation between NPR’s Robert Siegel and a boorish Karl Rove, we learn from the interview that Republicans use a “different math” to count polls, as they use “different math” to count election results at odds with exit polls. In other words, Rove was indicating, once again, Republicans will steal the election and thus retain possession of the House and Senate.
“Democratic candidates, consider yourselves warned. Don’t concede a shady election the next day and then complain weeks later that you didn’t realize, you hadn’t been aware, or you didn’t want to put us through a traumatic experience. Our uncertainty as to whether you will fight for your votes is what is traumatizing us,” writes Swanson. “Citizens, consider yourselves warned…. prepare yourselves to make sure the votes are counted. Then join a blue revolution: candlelight vigils outside county election offices the evening of November 7th—Let them know we’re watching.”
I can see Rove and the Republicans rolling on the floor, their sides splitting. Candlelight vigils? Please. Instead, activists should gather at the polling places and demand the removal of all devices—computer, optical, even card punch—and insist paper ballots be used instead. People should refuse to vote until this changes.
Here in New Mexico, we have optical readers. Since an optical reader translates my paper ballot into digitized information, subject to hacking and manipulation, it is not acceptable. I demand a paper ballet counted and recounted by human eyes not connected to the Republican or Democratic party. Short of this, there is no reason to vote. The last time I voted, in 2004, my vote was stolen. Ballots were “spoiled and discarded in districts supervised by Republican election officials. Many were given provisional ballots that subsequently were never counted. In these same Democratic areas Bush ‘won’ an astonishing 68 to 31 percent upset victory. One Republican judge in New Mexico discarded hundreds of provisional ballots cast for Kerry, accepting only those that were for Bush,” writes Michael Parenti.
Of course, I didn’t vote for Bush Lite, Kerry, who thumbed his nose at the large antiwar faction of his party, thus revealing once again there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, exemplified by the fact Kerry and Bush are distant cousins and Skull and Bones Yalies, products of the same, for lack of a better word, shadow government, consisting of “high finance, big oil, corporate elitism,” as Jonathan Vankin notes, the members of which “slide smoothly into cabinet-level jobs in Republican and Democratic administrations.”
[snip]
Of course, going to the polling place will not matter, as the going there did not matter during the 2002 midterm election, when “blackbox” voting ruled the day. “It’s a shell game, with money, companies and corporate brands switching in a blur of buy-outs and bogus fronts. It’s a sinkhole, where mobbed-up operators, paid-off public servants, crazed Christian fascists, CIA shadow-jobbers, war-pimping arms dealers—and presidential family members—lie down together in the slime. It’s a hacker’s dream, with pork-funded, half-finished, secretly-programmed computer systems installed without basic security standards by politically-partisan private firms, and protected by law from public scrutiny,” writes Jon Traudt. “The American vote-count is controlled by three major corporate players—Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia—with a fourth, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), coming on strong. These companies—all of them hardwired into the Bushist Party power grid—were given billions of dollars by the Bush Regime to complete a sweeping computerization of voting machines nationwide for the 2004 election. These glitch-riddled systems—many using ‘touch-screen’ technology that leaves no paper trail at all—are almost laughably open to manipulation, according to corporate whistleblowers and computer scientists at Stanford, John Hopkins and other universities.”
[snip]
*Letter re Frank Rich & Stern + notes
Emboldened by the strong language the NYT allowed in its letters column on October 29th (see my letter and Fritz Stern's letter below) I decided to burn up some energy and time testing whether they were in the mood for another version of reality.
*On another matter, I guess we're seeing Kerry's version of an October surprise. The treachery never ends.
*On Scott Ritter's silly prediction that the attack against Iran would occur BEFORE the election, he might have learned the lesson of the Nixon and the Reagan years: the period just before the election is the quiet time: do whatever is necessary to keep oil prices low and the stock market and housing prices high. If the attack on Iran happens, early 07 is the target time. Look for the rhetoric to heat up when appropriate.
*As far as the election, there's nothing visible to revise the prediction that Bush is so confidently making: the fix is very much in. How many readers doubt that Rove (and Bush) know within 2-3 exactly the margin that they will keep the House and 1 or 2 the Senate. If Ritter were clued into election fraud and stolen elections, he'd know they didn't need an October surprise. They've got a November surprise -- only the 3rd or 4th since 2000.
The only question is how the public will take it: just another bad day in Dodge City? Or is it time to storm the barricades and demand change? Note that Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker is already making excuses for another stolen election: it's gerrymandering and so on. Will the NYT and the Democratic Party go down so easily again? --Ronald
***
The New York Times
Letter to the Editor
letters@nytimes.com
October 29, 2006
To the Editor:
At first sight, letter writer Fritz. Stern (“Conservatism Abandoned,” Oct 29, 2006) seems to be dead on in excoriating President Bush for instituting a “chaotic recklessness…a subversion of the constitution, finally provoking…a universal disillusionment with America’s place in the world.”
On closer examination, however, Mr. Stern faults the president with “ill-planned and maladministered actions in Iraq.” This misses the point as does Frank Rich (“Dying to Save the G.O.P. Congress,” Op-ed, October 29, 2006) when the usually superbly on target columnist wrongly predicts that after the election Bush will allow “adults to step in…and pull the plug” on our Iraq adventure.
Both writers ignore the reality of the billions of dollars that continue to be spent erecting about a dozen permanent military bases in Iraq. But the larger point that few speak about is that the aim of the Iraq war is to destroy Iraq. This is a work in progress that will not be completed by November 7. The White House wants to ensure that Iraq remains a failed state unable to challenge Israel’s hegemonic ambitions. In addition, the neocons in command are bent on maintaining the momentum of a permanent war agenda and a national security state.
Sincerely,
Ronald Bleier
www.bleiersblog.blogspot.com
http://desip.igc.org
***
New York Times
Letters
October 29, 2006
Letter writer, Fritz Stern wrote:
Conservatism Abandoned (1 Letter)
To the Editor:
In “The Era of What’s Next” (column, Oct. 26), David Brooks posits that between 1980 and 2006, a conservative ideology held sway. This characterization of the chronology strikes me as unhistorical.
Does he really not see that instantly upon his inauguration in 2001 President Bush broke with longstanding foreign and domestic policies that had been supported by both parties, substituting a chaotic recklessness in every respect, a subversion of the Constitution, finally provoking with his ill-planned and maladministered actions in Iraq a universal disillusionment with America’s place in the world?
In the last six years, America has been led not by conservatives but by radical right-wingers, empowered by an astounding plutocratic machine, infused by a neoconservative ideology that believes in projecting American power — even in defiance of American interests and capacities.
Since 2001, genuine conservatives have seen the G.O.P. desert its basic principles; actually, the country is now in desperate need of leaders who truly represent the rectitude and realism associated with traditional conservatism.
Fritz Stern
New York, Oct. 27, 2006
The writer is university professor emeritus at Columbia University.
*On another matter, I guess we're seeing Kerry's version of an October surprise. The treachery never ends.
*On Scott Ritter's silly prediction that the attack against Iran would occur BEFORE the election, he might have learned the lesson of the Nixon and the Reagan years: the period just before the election is the quiet time: do whatever is necessary to keep oil prices low and the stock market and housing prices high. If the attack on Iran happens, early 07 is the target time. Look for the rhetoric to heat up when appropriate.
*As far as the election, there's nothing visible to revise the prediction that Bush is so confidently making: the fix is very much in. How many readers doubt that Rove (and Bush) know within 2-3 exactly the margin that they will keep the House and 1 or 2 the Senate. If Ritter were clued into election fraud and stolen elections, he'd know they didn't need an October surprise. They've got a November surprise -- only the 3rd or 4th since 2000.
The only question is how the public will take it: just another bad day in Dodge City? Or is it time to storm the barricades and demand change? Note that Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker is already making excuses for another stolen election: it's gerrymandering and so on. Will the NYT and the Democratic Party go down so easily again? --Ronald
***
The New York Times
Letter to the Editor
letters@nytimes.com
October 29, 2006
To the Editor:
At first sight, letter writer Fritz. Stern (“Conservatism Abandoned,” Oct 29, 2006) seems to be dead on in excoriating President Bush for instituting a “chaotic recklessness…a subversion of the constitution, finally provoking…a universal disillusionment with America’s place in the world.”
On closer examination, however, Mr. Stern faults the president with “ill-planned and maladministered actions in Iraq.” This misses the point as does Frank Rich (“Dying to Save the G.O.P. Congress,” Op-ed, October 29, 2006) when the usually superbly on target columnist wrongly predicts that after the election Bush will allow “adults to step in…and pull the plug” on our Iraq adventure.
Both writers ignore the reality of the billions of dollars that continue to be spent erecting about a dozen permanent military bases in Iraq. But the larger point that few speak about is that the aim of the Iraq war is to destroy Iraq. This is a work in progress that will not be completed by November 7. The White House wants to ensure that Iraq remains a failed state unable to challenge Israel’s hegemonic ambitions. In addition, the neocons in command are bent on maintaining the momentum of a permanent war agenda and a national security state.
Sincerely,
Ronald Bleier
www.bleiersblog.blogspot.com
http://desip.igc.org
***
New York Times
Letters
October 29, 2006
Letter writer, Fritz Stern wrote:
Conservatism Abandoned (1 Letter)
To the Editor:
In “The Era of What’s Next” (column, Oct. 26), David Brooks posits that between 1980 and 2006, a conservative ideology held sway. This characterization of the chronology strikes me as unhistorical.
Does he really not see that instantly upon his inauguration in 2001 President Bush broke with longstanding foreign and domestic policies that had been supported by both parties, substituting a chaotic recklessness in every respect, a subversion of the Constitution, finally provoking with his ill-planned and maladministered actions in Iraq a universal disillusionment with America’s place in the world?
In the last six years, America has been led not by conservatives but by radical right-wingers, empowered by an astounding plutocratic machine, infused by a neoconservative ideology that believes in projecting American power — even in defiance of American interests and capacities.
Since 2001, genuine conservatives have seen the G.O.P. desert its basic principles; actually, the country is now in desperate need of leaders who truly represent the rectitude and realism associated with traditional conservatism.
Fritz Stern
New York, Oct. 27, 2006
The writer is university professor emeritus at Columbia University.
Friday, October 27, 2006
*Patrick Cockburn: The Dissolution of Iraq
Patrick Cockburn has done some of the best Iraq reporting, and he's of course correct to point to the outcome of the war as the dissolution of the Iraqi state (involving an unspeakable tragedy for the Iraqi people, the vast waste of human and financial resources, lasting political instability from which we may never recover, etc. etc.) yet his title: That's the way Bush and Blair wanted it -- promises much more than the article delivers.
Let's say it clearly: the purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to destroy Iraq.
For two reasons:
a. To destroy a potential opponent of Israeli hegemony
b. to sustain the momentum of a permanent war agenda by homegrown irrational American radicals bent on destruction for the sake of destruction: war for the sake of war. If this seems counterintuitive, that's because we're normal people.
Here I have to part company a little from my (political) friends Mearshimer and Walt who argue that the Iraq war was imposed on the Bush administration by the Israeli lobby. No, it was the Israeli lobby who made it possible, who greased the way. Without them the Bush, Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld clique would have had to swim that much further upstream against a public aware of how wildly irrational was the war. It couldn't have been done without the Lobby. But the Iraq war was in the end an essentially American adventure, with US neocons brilliantly and cynically making use of a Likud program for their own endless war agenda.
It should be self evident that this was not a war for oil even to Chomsky, since we're getting less of its oil than when Saddam was in power, (not was it for control of Middle East oil, whatever that means: does controlling it mean burning it in our gas tanks?) nor was this a war for privatization, nor was it a war on behalf of the bankers or the Illuminati, or the Council on Foreign Relations, since the irrational radicals who lead our government don't care about such things. They only care about destruction.
Some weeks ago Frank Rich came pretty close to putting his finger on it when he used the pillage of the Iraqi museum and the destruction of the Iraqi universities as the central motif of his Sunday NYT op ed column. He came so close to saying that this vicious clique INTEND the destruction of as much of Iraqi culture and civil life as they can manage. What did Rumsfeld say? Things happen.
Is there anything in their record over the last five years that suggests that they aren't intent also on destroying the civil and cultural life of the US? Recall that culture, science, education is their enemy. They believe that the power of the government to do anything positive domestically or internationally should be destroyed. They believe the only legitimate purpose of government is to make war if you're stronger than anyone else. Yes, they're bullies.
What did Grover Norquist say -- out loud?! He wants to reduce government (i.e., its power to do good) to the point where he can drown it in the bathtub. We may soon begin to take him seriously. --Ronald Bleier /www.bleiersblog.blogspot.com
October 26, 2006
www.counterpunch.org
The Iraqi Government is Weak, Because That's the Way Bush and Blaired Wanted It
From "Mission Accomplished" to "Mission Impossible" in Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN
"It sounds like a face-saving way of announcing a withdrawal," commented an Iraqi political leader yesterday on hearing that the US military commander in Iraq and the chief American envoy in Baghdad had said that Iraqi police and army should be able to take charge of security in a year or 18 months.
Yet the only real strength of the Iraqi government is the US army. In theory, it has 264,000 soldiers and police under its command. In practice they obey the orders of their communal leaders in so far as they obey anybody.
There is still a hopeless lack of realism in statements from senior American officials. It is as if the taste of defeat is too bitter. "This Mehdi Army militia group has to be brought under control," said the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad at a press conference in Baghdad yesterday. But in the past few months most of the Shia districts in Baghdad --and Shia are the majority in the capital --have come under the control of the Mehdi Army, the militia of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It is all so different from that moment of exuberant imperial hubris in May 2003 when President George Bush announced mission accomplished in Iraq.
Where did the US go wrong? Saddam Hussein's government collapsed almost without a fight. Iraqis would not fight for him. Iraqis may not have welcomed American tanks with sweets and rose petals but they were very glad to see the back of their own disaster-prone leader.
The greatest American mistake was to turn what could have been presented as liberation into an occupation. The US effectively dissolved the Iraqi state. It has since been said by US generals --many of whom now claim to have been opponents of the invasion all along --that given a larger US army and a more competent occupation regime, all might still have been well. This is doubtful. The five million Sunni Arabs were always going to fight the occupation. The only Iraqi community to support it were the five million Kurds. The Shia wanted to use it to gain the power their 60 per cent of the Iraqi population warranted but they never liked it.
One theme has been constant throughout the past three-and-a-half years --the Iraqi government has always been weak. For this, the US and Britain were largely responsible. They wanted an Iraqi government which was strong towards the insurgents but otherwise compliant to what the White House and Downing Street wanted. All Iraqi governments, unelected and elected, have been tainted and de-legitimised by being dependent on the US. This is as true of the government of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today as it was when sovereignty was supposedly handed back to Iraq under the prime minister Iyad Allawi in June 2004. Real authority had remained in the hands of the US. The result was a government whose ministers could not move outside the Green Zone. They showed great enthusiasm for press conferences abroad where they breathed defiance at the insurgents and agreed with everything said by Mr. Bush or Tony Blair.
The government can do nothing because it only came into existence after ministries were divided up between the political parties after prolonged negotiations. Each ministry is a bastion of that party, a source of jobs and money. The government can implement no policy because of these deep divisions. The government cannot turn on the militias because they are too strong.
It is also true that almost all parties that make up the government have their own militias: the Kurds have the Peshmerga; the Shia have the Mehdi Army and the Badr Organisation; the Sunni have the insurgents. In areas of Iraq where civil war is already raging or where it is impending, people look to these militias to defend their homes and not to the police or regular army.
The US has lost more than 500 of its soldiers, dead and wounded, this month. Every month this year the combined figure --more telling than that for dead alone --has been creeping up, as the area of US control is diminishing. The handover of security to Iraqi government forces --the long-trumpeted aim of American and British policy --is, in practice, a handover to the local militias.
The problem for the US and British is that many Iraqi leaders outside the government think the British and Americans are on the run. Wait, they say, and they will become even weaker. The US is talking to senior Baath party military officials in Saudi Arabia and Jordan who control the insurgency if anybody does. But it is unlikely that they would call a ceasefire except on terms wholly unacceptable to other Iraqis.
Can the US extract itself from Iraq? Probably it could but only with great loss of face which the present administration could not endure after its boasts of victory three-and-a-half years ago.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', published by Verso.
Let's say it clearly: the purpose of the invasion of Iraq was to destroy Iraq.
For two reasons:
a. To destroy a potential opponent of Israeli hegemony
b. to sustain the momentum of a permanent war agenda by homegrown irrational American radicals bent on destruction for the sake of destruction: war for the sake of war. If this seems counterintuitive, that's because we're normal people.
Here I have to part company a little from my (political) friends Mearshimer and Walt who argue that the Iraq war was imposed on the Bush administration by the Israeli lobby. No, it was the Israeli lobby who made it possible, who greased the way. Without them the Bush, Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld clique would have had to swim that much further upstream against a public aware of how wildly irrational was the war. It couldn't have been done without the Lobby. But the Iraq war was in the end an essentially American adventure, with US neocons brilliantly and cynically making use of a Likud program for their own endless war agenda.
It should be self evident that this was not a war for oil even to Chomsky, since we're getting less of its oil than when Saddam was in power, (not was it for control of Middle East oil, whatever that means: does controlling it mean burning it in our gas tanks?) nor was this a war for privatization, nor was it a war on behalf of the bankers or the Illuminati, or the Council on Foreign Relations, since the irrational radicals who lead our government don't care about such things. They only care about destruction.
Some weeks ago Frank Rich came pretty close to putting his finger on it when he used the pillage of the Iraqi museum and the destruction of the Iraqi universities as the central motif of his Sunday NYT op ed column. He came so close to saying that this vicious clique INTEND the destruction of as much of Iraqi culture and civil life as they can manage. What did Rumsfeld say? Things happen.
Is there anything in their record over the last five years that suggests that they aren't intent also on destroying the civil and cultural life of the US? Recall that culture, science, education is their enemy. They believe that the power of the government to do anything positive domestically or internationally should be destroyed. They believe the only legitimate purpose of government is to make war if you're stronger than anyone else. Yes, they're bullies.
What did Grover Norquist say -- out loud?! He wants to reduce government (i.e., its power to do good) to the point where he can drown it in the bathtub. We may soon begin to take him seriously. --Ronald Bleier /www.bleiersblog.blogspot.com
October 26, 2006
www.counterpunch.org
The Iraqi Government is Weak, Because That's the Way Bush and Blaired Wanted It
From "Mission Accomplished" to "Mission Impossible" in Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN
"It sounds like a face-saving way of announcing a withdrawal," commented an Iraqi political leader yesterday on hearing that the US military commander in Iraq and the chief American envoy in Baghdad had said that Iraqi police and army should be able to take charge of security in a year or 18 months.
Yet the only real strength of the Iraqi government is the US army. In theory, it has 264,000 soldiers and police under its command. In practice they obey the orders of their communal leaders in so far as they obey anybody.
There is still a hopeless lack of realism in statements from senior American officials. It is as if the taste of defeat is too bitter. "This Mehdi Army militia group has to be brought under control," said the US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad at a press conference in Baghdad yesterday. But in the past few months most of the Shia districts in Baghdad --and Shia are the majority in the capital --have come under the control of the Mehdi Army, the militia of the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. It is all so different from that moment of exuberant imperial hubris in May 2003 when President George Bush announced mission accomplished in Iraq.
Where did the US go wrong? Saddam Hussein's government collapsed almost without a fight. Iraqis would not fight for him. Iraqis may not have welcomed American tanks with sweets and rose petals but they were very glad to see the back of their own disaster-prone leader.
The greatest American mistake was to turn what could have been presented as liberation into an occupation. The US effectively dissolved the Iraqi state. It has since been said by US generals --many of whom now claim to have been opponents of the invasion all along --that given a larger US army and a more competent occupation regime, all might still have been well. This is doubtful. The five million Sunni Arabs were always going to fight the occupation. The only Iraqi community to support it were the five million Kurds. The Shia wanted to use it to gain the power their 60 per cent of the Iraqi population warranted but they never liked it.
One theme has been constant throughout the past three-and-a-half years --the Iraqi government has always been weak. For this, the US and Britain were largely responsible. They wanted an Iraqi government which was strong towards the insurgents but otherwise compliant to what the White House and Downing Street wanted. All Iraqi governments, unelected and elected, have been tainted and de-legitimised by being dependent on the US. This is as true of the government of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today as it was when sovereignty was supposedly handed back to Iraq under the prime minister Iyad Allawi in June 2004. Real authority had remained in the hands of the US. The result was a government whose ministers could not move outside the Green Zone. They showed great enthusiasm for press conferences abroad where they breathed defiance at the insurgents and agreed with everything said by Mr. Bush or Tony Blair.
The government can do nothing because it only came into existence after ministries were divided up between the political parties after prolonged negotiations. Each ministry is a bastion of that party, a source of jobs and money. The government can implement no policy because of these deep divisions. The government cannot turn on the militias because they are too strong.
It is also true that almost all parties that make up the government have their own militias: the Kurds have the Peshmerga; the Shia have the Mehdi Army and the Badr Organisation; the Sunni have the insurgents. In areas of Iraq where civil war is already raging or where it is impending, people look to these militias to defend their homes and not to the police or regular army.
The US has lost more than 500 of its soldiers, dead and wounded, this month. Every month this year the combined figure --more telling than that for dead alone --has been creeping up, as the area of US control is diminishing. The handover of security to Iraqi government forces --the long-trumpeted aim of American and British policy --is, in practice, a handover to the local militias.
The problem for the US and British is that many Iraqi leaders outside the government think the British and Americans are on the run. Wait, they say, and they will become even weaker. The US is talking to senior Baath party military officials in Saudi Arabia and Jordan who control the insurgency if anybody does. But it is unlikely that they would call a ceasefire except on terms wholly unacceptable to other Iraqis.
Can the US extract itself from Iraq? Probably it could but only with great loss of face which the present administration could not endure after its boasts of victory three-and-a-half years ago.
Patrick Cockburn is the author of 'The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', published by Verso.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
FDR, Gruber and me: Zionists stymie WWII rescue plan
by Ronald Bleier
September 2006
From time to time I get into conversations which allow me to tell the story of my family’s immigration to the U.S. when I was an infant during WWII. Late in the war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed to accept about 1000 mostly Jewish refugees into the U.S. for temporary asylum. My parents, my brother and I were among these refugees. We traveled to the U.S. by ship from Italy to New York in August 1944. Upon arrival we were interned at an old army barracks in Oswego, N.Y. for almost two years. (After the war, Congress passed, and President Truman signed legislation that allowed us to remain in the U.S.)
A special hero of this story was a woman called Ruth Gruber, who had been working in the Interior Dept under Harold Ickes. As she relates in her book on the subject, Haven (1983) (later made into an undistinguished TV movie), she bravely volunteered to be our liaison with the government, to join us in Italy and accompany us to the U.S. Wonderfully capable and compassionate, she was loved and revered by all for her untiring and invaluable efforts on our behalf.
It so happens that Ms Gruber, now about 95 years old, is a New Yorker and my family and I met her in the late 1980s in connection with a reunion of the Oswego refugees. We met one evening at her apartment on the West Side of Manhattan and then we went to dinner together. She had written several books, among them a novel called Rebecca, that I happened to browse while at her apartment. I read the first page which described an Arab raid on a terrified Zionist kibbutz in Palestine in the pre-1948 period. It was clear that the story was written from the Jewish settler’s point of view.
Some time after our dinner evening together, I telephoned Ms. Gruber and raised the question of Zionism’s record when it came to the human and national rights of the Palestinians. The tone of our conversation remained friendly, but she was very clear that there was little I could say that would cause her to change her strong pro-Israeli and pro-Zionist views.
In Haven, she tells the story of how she volunteered to join our refugee group in wartime Italy, and she gives some background as to how FDR made the decision to shelter 1,000 refugees. Upon receiving permission to join the mission as our liaison, she did some research in State Department files.
According to Gruber (Haven, Ch.2), President Roosevelt was forced into making some kind of demonstration on behalf of European, especially Jewish, refugees because of the embarrassing publication of war time cables from the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland to Washington relating to what later became known as the Holocaust. According to Gruber, in these documents, the State Department in Washington, D.C. revealed its disinterest if not outright anti-Semitic hostility toward the mostly Jewish victims of Nazi persecution by ordering their colleagues in Switzerland to discontinue sending Washington such news.
In Gruber’s version, the shocking disclosure of these communications empowered members of the Jewish community to apply to a reluctant (and she implies, anti-Semitic) President Roosevelt, with a proposal to save hundreds of thousands of European Jews. In Gruber’s version, FDR finally agreed that the U.S. provide temporary haven for 1,000 refugees.
I believed Gruber’s story and repeated it often to friends. Only later did I learn that the very opposite was the truth. The real FDR was very much aware of and troubled by the plight of the wartime refugees and he proposed a plan to save half a million or more. He envisioned an agreement with such countries as the UK, Canada, Australia, and others with the U.S. and the U.K. leading the way by each taking in 150,000 “displaced persons” as they were then called. FDR’s emissary for this plan managed to get agreement in principle from the British but in the end the plan was vetoed by the Zionists. The Jewish leadership were afraid that providing haven for European Jewish refugees anywhere but Palestine would be at cross purposes with their plan for a Jewish state there.
Noted anti-Zionist author Alfred Lilienthal tells this story in his important and effectively buried book What Price Israel.
Here’s Lilienthal’s version
www.alfredlilienthal.com/what_price_israel_2.htm
President Roosevelt was deeply concerned with the plight of the European refugees and thought that all the free nations of the world ought to accept a certain number of immigrants, irrespective of race, creed, color or political belief. The President hoped that the rescue of 500,000 Displaced Persons could be achieved by such a generous grant of a worldwide political asylum. In line with this humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney and close friend of the President went to London in the middle of the war to see if the British would take in 100,000 or 200,000 uprooted people. The President had reasons to assume that Canada, Australia and the South American countries would gladly open their doors. And if such good examples were set by other nations, Mr. Roosevelt felt that the American Congress could be "educated to go back to our traditional position of asylum." The key was in London. Would Morris Ernst succeed there? Mr. Ernst came home to report, and this is what took place in the White House (as related by Mr. Ernst to a Cincinnati audience in 1950):
Ernst: "We are at home plate. That little island [and it was during the second Blitz that he visited England] on a properly representative program of a World Immigration Budget, will match the United States up to 150,000.
Roosevelt: "150,000 to England—150,000 to match that in the United States—pick up 200,000 or 300,000 elsewhere, and we can start with half a million of these oppressed people."
A week later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again visited the President.
Roosevelt (turning to Mrs. Ernst): "Margaret, can't you get me a Jewish Pope? I cannot stand it any more. I have got to be careful that when Stevie Wise leaves the White House he doesn't see Joe Proskauer on the way in." Then, to Mr. Ernst: "Nothing doing on the program. We can't put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won't stand for it."
"It's impossible! Why?" asked Ernst.
Roosevelt: "They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, 'There is no other place this poor Jew can go.' But if there is a world political asylum for all people irrespective of race, creed or color, they cannot raise their money. Then the people who do not want to give the money will have an excuse to say 'What do you mean, there is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the preferred wards of the world."
Morris Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his leader and friend. He began to lobby among his influential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue, without mentioning the President's or the British reaction. As he himself has put it: "I was thrown out of parlors of friends of mine who very frankly said 'Morris, this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist movement.' " He ran into the same reaction amongst all Jewish groups and their leaders. Everywhere he found "a deep, genuine, often fanatically emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement" in men "who are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own."
This response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roosevelt effort to rescue Europe's Displaced Persons.
September 2006
From time to time I get into conversations which allow me to tell the story of my family’s immigration to the U.S. when I was an infant during WWII. Late in the war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed to accept about 1000 mostly Jewish refugees into the U.S. for temporary asylum. My parents, my brother and I were among these refugees. We traveled to the U.S. by ship from Italy to New York in August 1944. Upon arrival we were interned at an old army barracks in Oswego, N.Y. for almost two years. (After the war, Congress passed, and President Truman signed legislation that allowed us to remain in the U.S.)
A special hero of this story was a woman called Ruth Gruber, who had been working in the Interior Dept under Harold Ickes. As she relates in her book on the subject, Haven (1983) (later made into an undistinguished TV movie), she bravely volunteered to be our liaison with the government, to join us in Italy and accompany us to the U.S. Wonderfully capable and compassionate, she was loved and revered by all for her untiring and invaluable efforts on our behalf.
It so happens that Ms Gruber, now about 95 years old, is a New Yorker and my family and I met her in the late 1980s in connection with a reunion of the Oswego refugees. We met one evening at her apartment on the West Side of Manhattan and then we went to dinner together. She had written several books, among them a novel called Rebecca, that I happened to browse while at her apartment. I read the first page which described an Arab raid on a terrified Zionist kibbutz in Palestine in the pre-1948 period. It was clear that the story was written from the Jewish settler’s point of view.
Some time after our dinner evening together, I telephoned Ms. Gruber and raised the question of Zionism’s record when it came to the human and national rights of the Palestinians. The tone of our conversation remained friendly, but she was very clear that there was little I could say that would cause her to change her strong pro-Israeli and pro-Zionist views.
In Haven, she tells the story of how she volunteered to join our refugee group in wartime Italy, and she gives some background as to how FDR made the decision to shelter 1,000 refugees. Upon receiving permission to join the mission as our liaison, she did some research in State Department files.
According to Gruber (Haven, Ch.2), President Roosevelt was forced into making some kind of demonstration on behalf of European, especially Jewish, refugees because of the embarrassing publication of war time cables from the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland to Washington relating to what later became known as the Holocaust. According to Gruber, in these documents, the State Department in Washington, D.C. revealed its disinterest if not outright anti-Semitic hostility toward the mostly Jewish victims of Nazi persecution by ordering their colleagues in Switzerland to discontinue sending Washington such news.
In Gruber’s version, the shocking disclosure of these communications empowered members of the Jewish community to apply to a reluctant (and she implies, anti-Semitic) President Roosevelt, with a proposal to save hundreds of thousands of European Jews. In Gruber’s version, FDR finally agreed that the U.S. provide temporary haven for 1,000 refugees.
I believed Gruber’s story and repeated it often to friends. Only later did I learn that the very opposite was the truth. The real FDR was very much aware of and troubled by the plight of the wartime refugees and he proposed a plan to save half a million or more. He envisioned an agreement with such countries as the UK, Canada, Australia, and others with the U.S. and the U.K. leading the way by each taking in 150,000 “displaced persons” as they were then called. FDR’s emissary for this plan managed to get agreement in principle from the British but in the end the plan was vetoed by the Zionists. The Jewish leadership were afraid that providing haven for European Jewish refugees anywhere but Palestine would be at cross purposes with their plan for a Jewish state there.
Noted anti-Zionist author Alfred Lilienthal tells this story in his important and effectively buried book What Price Israel.
Here’s Lilienthal’s version
www.alfredlilienthal.com/what_price_israel_2.htm
President Roosevelt was deeply concerned with the plight of the European refugees and thought that all the free nations of the world ought to accept a certain number of immigrants, irrespective of race, creed, color or political belief. The President hoped that the rescue of 500,000 Displaced Persons could be achieved by such a generous grant of a worldwide political asylum. In line with this humanitarian idea, Morris Ernst, New York attorney and close friend of the President went to London in the middle of the war to see if the British would take in 100,000 or 200,000 uprooted people. The President had reasons to assume that Canada, Australia and the South American countries would gladly open their doors. And if such good examples were set by other nations, Mr. Roosevelt felt that the American Congress could be "educated to go back to our traditional position of asylum." The key was in London. Would Morris Ernst succeed there? Mr. Ernst came home to report, and this is what took place in the White House (as related by Mr. Ernst to a Cincinnati audience in 1950):
Ernst: "We are at home plate. That little island [and it was during the second Blitz that he visited England] on a properly representative program of a World Immigration Budget, will match the United States up to 150,000.
Roosevelt: "150,000 to England—150,000 to match that in the United States—pick up 200,000 or 300,000 elsewhere, and we can start with half a million of these oppressed people."
A week later, or so, Mr. Ernst and his wife again visited the President.
Roosevelt (turning to Mrs. Ernst): "Margaret, can't you get me a Jewish Pope? I cannot stand it any more. I have got to be careful that when Stevie Wise leaves the White House he doesn't see Joe Proskauer on the way in." Then, to Mr. Ernst: "Nothing doing on the program. We can't put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish leadership of America won't stand for it."
"It's impossible! Why?" asked Ernst.
Roosevelt: "They are right from their point of view. The Zionist movement knows that Palestine is, and will be for some time, a remittance society. They know that they can raise vast sums for Palestine by saying to donors, 'There is no other place this poor Jew can go.' But if there is a world political asylum for all people irrespective of race, creed or color, they cannot raise their money. Then the people who do not want to give the money will have an excuse to say 'What do you mean, there is no place they can go but Palestine? They are the preferred wards of the world."
Morris Ernst, shocked, first refused to believe his leader and friend. He began to lobby among his influential Jewish friends for this world program of rescue, without mentioning the President's or the British reaction. As he himself has put it: "I was thrown out of parlors of friends of mine who very frankly said 'Morris, this is treason. You are undermining the Zionist movement.' " He ran into the same reaction amongst all Jewish groups and their leaders. Everywhere he found "a deep, genuine, often fanatically emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement" in men "who are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own."
This response of Zionism ended the remarkable Roosevelt effort to rescue Europe's Displaced Persons.
Kurt Nimmo: Not My Son in Video Says Atta Sr.
See below for another Nimmo post on the same subject.
Kurt Nimmo writes:
Not My Son in Video, Declares Atta Senior
Tuesday October 03rd 2006, 6:57 pm
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=587
In fairness, you’d think the corporate media would hear out Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta, father of patsy hijacker Mohammed Atta, who has told the Saudi daily al-Watan the latest intelligence video fabrication, allegedly showing Mohammed and Ziad Jarrah, is a crass fake. “The video-testament of my son is false and I continue to believe he is innocent,” Atta said. “There is a big difference between this photo and the images shown by the Americans—that one is not my boy…. “The Americans tampered with and falsified that video … they want to change the truth in order to achieve their goals in the Middle East.”
A Google News search returns exactly one reference to Atta’s comments, posted on the Adnkronos International web site. But even Adnkronos International accepts as gospel truth the dubitable myth the younger Atta “flew one of the planes that brought down the World Trade Center.” As of yet, nobody has demonstrated Atta was anywhere near an airplane on September 11 and as for bringing down the WTC with planes, this is in the province of flat-worlders and physical science no-nothings, including not only every damn neocon on the planet but no shortage of daft left gatekeepers such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn.
It is interesting to compare the now infamous mugshot of Atta with this supposed earlier likeness. According to at least one nine eleven researcher, the Mohammed in Florida was fond of alcohol and cocaine, and if indeed this is the case imbibing these substances must have taken a heavy toll over the period of 20 months because the Atta portrayed in the passport mugshot is far more haggard and older looking than the earlier, smiling Atta, who looks to be less of a psychopath as well.
But the inconsistencies really shine in compared photos of Ziad Jarrah, as Steve and Paul Watson demonstrate on the Infowars web site.
“These are clearly not the same man, there are up to three different people feature\d here! The passport found in the wreckage does not show the face of the Jarrah in the latest video release who is Jarrah #1,” write the Watson brothers.
As for the recently released video, they conclude: “All indicators suggest that it was filmed by U.S. intelligence and purposefully timed for a politically expedient release to coincide the the passage of the Military Commissions Act. The fact that Atta and Jarrah appear in the same release, even though it was not the same day as the Rally and they may not have been in the same location as Bin Laden makes the whole thing stink to high heaven.”
Indeed, it does stink to high heaven, and then some.
This latest attempt to add fluff to the boxcutter wielding hijackers fable fits nicely in previous attempts, most notably the fat Bin Laden video, the Osama with a nose job video, and the recycling of old, pre-nine eleven CIA videos shot in Afghanistan, attempting to pass them off as newly acquired footage.
Of course, for the corporate media, not allowing Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta to have his say is wholly predictable, as they have a vested interest in promulgating the neocon version of events, considering the multinational corporations that own our media stand to cash-in on the “clash of civilizations” farce. However, you’d think, with the billions of dollars at their disposal, they would do a better job at pulling the wool over our eyes.
See also Nimmo's previous post on the same subject.
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=584
Missing Link Atta “Martyrdom” Video Appears Five Weeks Before Election
Sunday October 01st 2006, 9:31 am
Suddenly, with the midterm election five weeks away, a previously undiscovered video emerges, showing Mohammed Atta “reading his ‘martyrdom’ will inside Afghanistan at Usama bin Laden’s headquarters.”
In another segment, Atta appears with Ziad Jarrah, who, according to the official nine eleven fairy tale, was the pilot of “United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers apparently stormed the flight deck,” according to Fox News.
As an extra added bonus, the tape shows Ramzi Binalshibh, the “senior” al-Qaeda leader and Hamburg cell member, supposedly captured after a gunbattle in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 11, 2002, and handed over to the United States.
Read the full post
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=587
Kurt Nimmo writes:
Not My Son in Video, Declares Atta Senior
Tuesday October 03rd 2006, 6:57 pm
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=587
In fairness, you’d think the corporate media would hear out Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta, father of patsy hijacker Mohammed Atta, who has told the Saudi daily al-Watan the latest intelligence video fabrication, allegedly showing Mohammed and Ziad Jarrah, is a crass fake. “The video-testament of my son is false and I continue to believe he is innocent,” Atta said. “There is a big difference between this photo and the images shown by the Americans—that one is not my boy…. “The Americans tampered with and falsified that video … they want to change the truth in order to achieve their goals in the Middle East.”
A Google News search returns exactly one reference to Atta’s comments, posted on the Adnkronos International web site. But even Adnkronos International accepts as gospel truth the dubitable myth the younger Atta “flew one of the planes that brought down the World Trade Center.” As of yet, nobody has demonstrated Atta was anywhere near an airplane on September 11 and as for bringing down the WTC with planes, this is in the province of flat-worlders and physical science no-nothings, including not only every damn neocon on the planet but no shortage of daft left gatekeepers such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn.
It is interesting to compare the now infamous mugshot of Atta with this supposed earlier likeness. According to at least one nine eleven researcher, the Mohammed in Florida was fond of alcohol and cocaine, and if indeed this is the case imbibing these substances must have taken a heavy toll over the period of 20 months because the Atta portrayed in the passport mugshot is far more haggard and older looking than the earlier, smiling Atta, who looks to be less of a psychopath as well.
But the inconsistencies really shine in compared photos of Ziad Jarrah, as Steve and Paul Watson demonstrate on the Infowars web site.
“These are clearly not the same man, there are up to three different people feature\d here! The passport found in the wreckage does not show the face of the Jarrah in the latest video release who is Jarrah #1,” write the Watson brothers.
As for the recently released video, they conclude: “All indicators suggest that it was filmed by U.S. intelligence and purposefully timed for a politically expedient release to coincide the the passage of the Military Commissions Act. The fact that Atta and Jarrah appear in the same release, even though it was not the same day as the Rally and they may not have been in the same location as Bin Laden makes the whole thing stink to high heaven.”
Indeed, it does stink to high heaven, and then some.
This latest attempt to add fluff to the boxcutter wielding hijackers fable fits nicely in previous attempts, most notably the fat Bin Laden video, the Osama with a nose job video, and the recycling of old, pre-nine eleven CIA videos shot in Afghanistan, attempting to pass them off as newly acquired footage.
Of course, for the corporate media, not allowing Muhammad al-Amir al-Sayd Atta to have his say is wholly predictable, as they have a vested interest in promulgating the neocon version of events, considering the multinational corporations that own our media stand to cash-in on the “clash of civilizations” farce. However, you’d think, with the billions of dollars at their disposal, they would do a better job at pulling the wool over our eyes.
See also Nimmo's previous post on the same subject.
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=584
Missing Link Atta “Martyrdom” Video Appears Five Weeks Before Election
Sunday October 01st 2006, 9:31 am
Suddenly, with the midterm election five weeks away, a previously undiscovered video emerges, showing Mohammed Atta “reading his ‘martyrdom’ will inside Afghanistan at Usama bin Laden’s headquarters.”
In another segment, Atta appears with Ziad Jarrah, who, according to the official nine eleven fairy tale, was the pilot of “United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after the passengers apparently stormed the flight deck,” according to Fox News.
As an extra added bonus, the tape shows Ramzi Binalshibh, the “senior” al-Qaeda leader and Hamburg cell member, supposedly captured after a gunbattle in Karachi, Pakistan, on September 11, 2002, and handed over to the United States.
Read the full post
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=587
Mark Crispin Miller: How They're Gonna Keep Control of Congress -- Part 2
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm
Even while the NYT continues to print Page One upbeat articles about the coming November elections, ("With Guarded Cheer, Democrats Dare to Believe This is Their Time," by Adam Nogourney and Robin Toner, 10.22.06) the issue of the Republican plan to steal the election once again by means of electronic voting manipulation, control of voter rolls, suppression of the Democratic vote and other such means continues to be virtually universally ignored not least by John Kerry and the Democratic Party.
That the plan is currently firmly in place was revealed in a glaring example in a California by-election this summer that Mark Crisipin Miller cites in the second part of his essay on our election process. Note that not even Democracy Now noticed or bothered to report on this outrage and they have been covering the issue far more than others. --RB
Mark Crispin Miller writes:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm
BRAZEN BEHAVIOR—While the [Republican] party has pre-empted innumerable votes below the radar, it has also shown a steely willingness to thwart the voters openly, if they should dare resist the party's will. Take, for example, last summer's special race in San Diego to fill the empty seat of the felonious Randy Cunningham, a former Republican congressman who is now doing time for accepting bribes. Although leading in the pre-election polls, the Democrat, Francine Busby, lost to Brian Bilbray of the GOP; and then it came out that the party's poll workers had been ordered to take the e-voting machinery home with them for several days before the vote.
At the news of this jaw-dropping wrong (it being a very simple task to fiddle with the gadgets' memory cards and thereby fix the final count), San Diegans called for an investigation and a new election. A week after the election—and seventeen days before the vote was even certified—Bilbray flew to Washington, where he was summarily sworn in by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. In late August that amazing move was, still more amazingly, approved by Superior Court Judge Yuri Hofmann, who argued that the state of California had no jurisdiction once the Speaker of the House had made the people's choice.
If Dennis Hastert can choose Brian Bilbray for that seat, irrespective of the will of the electorate, why bother having House elections anywhere? Indeed, why bother with elections? Why not just have Congress's membership decided by the Speaker of the House—or by President Bush himself? Maybe that imperial arrangement would amuse the press as much as it appeals to Bush & Co. Otherwise there might have been some coverage of the scandal by the news media, which has largely disregarded it (while Hastert's role in Foleygate is a huge story).
The other new point that Miller makes is that if by chance the Republicans lose either House of Congress they have a plan to counter the Democratic victory. While it's far from clear that it will work, we should be aware of the danger.
ELEVENTH-HOUR PLAN—Such journalistic silence [about Republican plans to steal the election once again] makes it all the likelier that the Republicans will get away with it again—although it's also possible, of course, that they will somehow fail to steal it on Election Day. Chance, accident, imperial over-reaching and/or popular resistance can thwart the best-laid plans. If that should happen, though, the party has a plan to fix the problem; and the press's eerie silence on the danger of election fraud could help that strategy succeed.
If the GOP should lose the House or Senate, its troops will mount a noisy propaganda drive accusing their opponents of election fraud. This is no mere speculation, according to a well-placed party operative who lately told talk radio host Thom Hartmann, off the record, that the game will be to shriek indignantly that those dark-hearted Democrats have fixed the race. We will hear endlessly of Democratic "voter fraud" through phantom ballots, rigged machines, intimidation tactics, and all the other tricks whereby the Bush regime has come to power. The regime will, in short, deploy the ultimate Swift Boat maneuver to turn around as many races as they need so as to nullify the will of the electorate.
For the full text of Miller's article:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm
Two NYT articles in mid October provided evidence that Bush has signaled to all who are interested: Republican solons, members of the Justice and Homeland Security departments, the entire Fed bureaucracy, the army of Washington and local lobbyists, that they needn’t be concerned about a possible loss of Congressional control of congress.
1.Bush Joins Hastert at Rally, And Lavishes the Praise,” Jim Rutenberg, NYT, 13 Oct 2006
We might expect that if the elections were fair, Bush would distance himself from the tainted Hastert
2.. Jim Rutenberg “President Sees Signs Favoring GOP Victory,” NYT, 12 October 13, 2006
The fix is very much in.
Even while the NYT continues to print Page One upbeat articles about the coming November elections, ("With Guarded Cheer, Democrats Dare to Believe This is Their Time," by Adam Nogourney and Robin Toner, 10.22.06) the issue of the Republican plan to steal the election once again by means of electronic voting manipulation, control of voter rolls, suppression of the Democratic vote and other such means continues to be virtually universally ignored not least by John Kerry and the Democratic Party.
That the plan is currently firmly in place was revealed in a glaring example in a California by-election this summer that Mark Crisipin Miller cites in the second part of his essay on our election process. Note that not even Democracy Now noticed or bothered to report on this outrage and they have been covering the issue far more than others. --RB
Mark Crispin Miller writes:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm
BRAZEN BEHAVIOR—While the [Republican] party has pre-empted innumerable votes below the radar, it has also shown a steely willingness to thwart the voters openly, if they should dare resist the party's will. Take, for example, last summer's special race in San Diego to fill the empty seat of the felonious Randy Cunningham, a former Republican congressman who is now doing time for accepting bribes. Although leading in the pre-election polls, the Democrat, Francine Busby, lost to Brian Bilbray of the GOP; and then it came out that the party's poll workers had been ordered to take the e-voting machinery home with them for several days before the vote.
At the news of this jaw-dropping wrong (it being a very simple task to fiddle with the gadgets' memory cards and thereby fix the final count), San Diegans called for an investigation and a new election. A week after the election—and seventeen days before the vote was even certified—Bilbray flew to Washington, where he was summarily sworn in by House Speaker Dennis Hastert. In late August that amazing move was, still more amazingly, approved by Superior Court Judge Yuri Hofmann, who argued that the state of California had no jurisdiction once the Speaker of the House had made the people's choice.
If Dennis Hastert can choose Brian Bilbray for that seat, irrespective of the will of the electorate, why bother having House elections anywhere? Indeed, why bother with elections? Why not just have Congress's membership decided by the Speaker of the House—or by President Bush himself? Maybe that imperial arrangement would amuse the press as much as it appeals to Bush & Co. Otherwise there might have been some coverage of the scandal by the news media, which has largely disregarded it (while Hastert's role in Foleygate is a huge story).
The other new point that Miller makes is that if by chance the Republicans lose either House of Congress they have a plan to counter the Democratic victory. While it's far from clear that it will work, we should be aware of the danger.
ELEVENTH-HOUR PLAN—Such journalistic silence [about Republican plans to steal the election once again] makes it all the likelier that the Republicans will get away with it again—although it's also possible, of course, that they will somehow fail to steal it on Election Day. Chance, accident, imperial over-reaching and/or popular resistance can thwart the best-laid plans. If that should happen, though, the party has a plan to fix the problem; and the press's eerie silence on the danger of election fraud could help that strategy succeed.
If the GOP should lose the House or Senate, its troops will mount a noisy propaganda drive accusing their opponents of election fraud. This is no mere speculation, according to a well-placed party operative who lately told talk radio host Thom Hartmann, off the record, that the game will be to shriek indignantly that those dark-hearted Democrats have fixed the race. We will hear endlessly of Democratic "voter fraud" through phantom ballots, rigged machines, intimidation tactics, and all the other tricks whereby the Bush regime has come to power. The regime will, in short, deploy the ultimate Swift Boat maneuver to turn around as many races as they need so as to nullify the will of the electorate.
For the full text of Miller's article:
http://www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061015playbook_1.cfm
Two NYT articles in mid October provided evidence that Bush has signaled to all who are interested: Republican solons, members of the Justice and Homeland Security departments, the entire Fed bureaucracy, the army of Washington and local lobbyists, that they needn’t be concerned about a possible loss of Congressional control of congress.
1.Bush Joins Hastert at Rally, And Lavishes the Praise,” Jim Rutenberg, NYT, 13 Oct 2006
We might expect that if the elections were fair, Bush would distance himself from the tainted Hastert
2.. Jim Rutenberg “President Sees Signs Favoring GOP Victory,” NYT, 12 October 13, 2006
The fix is very much in.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Mark Crispin Miller: Stolen Elections Explain Radical Agenda
Synopsis and commentary by Ronald Bleier
In early September 2006 Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of culture and communications at New York University, the author of Fooled Again: How the Right Stole 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (2005), spoke briefly as part of a presentation conducted by the World Can’t Wait organization in connection with their October 5 day of protest.
Miller began by asserting that the government of George W. Bush has never been elected, that they have come to office through stolen elections. He explained that they have to steal elections because their agenda is so extreme that they wouldn’t be in power otherwise. Gerrymandering upheld by the Supreme Court has facilitated their election fraud. They don’t fear electoral defeat.
Miller explained that their electoral strategy as determined by Karl Rove is to have Republicans keep repeating the election year mantra of:
War and Terrorism,
War and Terrorism,
War and Terrorism.
According to Miller, this is not because Rove thinks such repetition will make people vote for them, but is simply to give the media talking points in order to provide the necessary cover story for the day after.
Miller asserted that whatever the Democrats do, it won’t matter. They might have the best electoral strategy in the world, and they will still lose because “these people have no exit strategy.” Despite the current talk of a Democratic victory in November, the Karl Rove team will not allow a Democratic victory.
“Understand this,” Miller continued: they (the Bush administration) “are not incompetent.” Incompetence was not the reason for the kind of response we saw in Katrina. As for Iraq, “the way this war was handled, it’s not about incompetence.”
“At holding power,” Miller continued, “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer, They’re extremely good, they’ve done a great job.”
That’s why the terrorists get along with Bush and Cheney; Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists share with them an apocalyptic world view. Such a view is profoundly un-American, Miller said towards the close of his brief remarks.
***
Commentary
It was heartening to find one public intellectual at last make the obvious and totally ignored connection between the Bush/Rove control of the election process and their radical, unpopular and destructive agenda.
The connection between stolen elections and their radical agenda is regularly ignored both in the mainstream media and in the Left and, progressive media, despite growing public awareness and massive evidence of voter fraud in every election cycle since at least 2000. Typical of mass media coverage is a front page story in the New York Times (9.28.06) headlined: “Democrats Cite New Hope In Bid to Retake Senate,” ignoring the implications of election fraud.
Anecdotally, when I’ve raised this issue with friends, I’ve had several offers to bet that the Democrats will win at least one house of Congress. Unfortunately I’ve sworn off betting. (Much of this was written before the front page efflorescence of the Mark Foley scandal which could change things. Are all bets off? I don't know. Even at this late hour, a month before the election, I can’t imagine Karl Rove letting November 2006 slip away from him without a fight.)
A perfect example of the way the mainstream media ignore the implications of election fraud on foreign and domestic policy is the New York Times’s editorial, “Rushing Off a Cliff” (9.28.06) expressing horror at Senate approval of the Military Commissions Act which gave President Bush everything he wanted. The Times editorial writers could have been channeling Karl Rove as they repeatedly insisted that the purpose of this bill was to intimidate and clobber the Democrats in the upcoming November elections. Once again the Times ignored evidence that the Bush administration act as if they are not worried about the electoral process.
The NYT can fulminate as it did in its “Rushing off a Cliff” editorial about Bush’s “ghastly ideas about terrorism,” but they ignore their own responsibility in joining the silence of the Democratic party about the illegitimacy of the last two presidential elections and many state wide elections going back to at least 1998.
Incompetence or policy goals
On the issue of whether or not the response to Katrina and the Iraq disaster can be put down to incompetence, had Miller been given more time he might have made the case that the administration’s response to Katrina and the continued immiseration and eviction of tens of thousands of its poorest and minority citizens was precisely what the Bush administration intended and successfully fought to ensure.
In the case of Iraq, given more time, Miller might have pointed out the Bush clique intended the current tragedy and dysfunction that Iraq is today. For one thing, the ongoing nightmare makes it impossible for Iraq to play its former role as a leading adversary of Israeli hegemony. The current Iraqi disarray also contributes to the instability and chaos in the area favored by Washington in its pursuit of a permanent war agenda.
In addition, pouring $8 billion a month into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fits nicely into their radical right wing program of “starving the beast,” i.e., the Federal treasury, of funds that might go toward social spending.
One can’t help but wonder about a political culture where only political outsiders like Mark Crispin Miller make the obvious connection between our eviscerated voting process and a radical agenda, intentionally far more destructive than any previous American government. Apparently this is what Miller had in mind when he insisted that the current regime is very good “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer.”
For a video of Miller’s remarks click on the following url:
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2905&Itemid=223
See also Miller’s excellent blog: www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com
For an important follow up see Miller's recent article for the Washington Spectator, “The Elephant in the Polling Booth,” (October 2006)
www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061001elephant_3.cfm
Here Miller asserts:
That Bush/Cheney stole their "re-election" is not a "theory" but a fact that has by now been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The case was made, first, by the House Judiciary Committee—or rather by its Democratic members, who conducted a meticulous inquiry into the debacle in Ohio. (The Republicans boycotted the investigation, and obstructed it.) Its findings were released on January 5, 2005, in the so-called Conyers Report, after Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the committee's ranking Democrat. The Republicans attacked it, and the press and leading Democrats ignored it; yet that report was sound, its major findings wholly accurate.
In early September 2006 Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of culture and communications at New York University, the author of Fooled Again: How the Right Stole 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (2005), spoke briefly as part of a presentation conducted by the World Can’t Wait organization in connection with their October 5 day of protest.
Miller began by asserting that the government of George W. Bush has never been elected, that they have come to office through stolen elections. He explained that they have to steal elections because their agenda is so extreme that they wouldn’t be in power otherwise. Gerrymandering upheld by the Supreme Court has facilitated their election fraud. They don’t fear electoral defeat.
Miller explained that their electoral strategy as determined by Karl Rove is to have Republicans keep repeating the election year mantra of:
War and Terrorism,
War and Terrorism,
War and Terrorism.
According to Miller, this is not because Rove thinks such repetition will make people vote for them, but is simply to give the media talking points in order to provide the necessary cover story for the day after.
Miller asserted that whatever the Democrats do, it won’t matter. They might have the best electoral strategy in the world, and they will still lose because “these people have no exit strategy.” Despite the current talk of a Democratic victory in November, the Karl Rove team will not allow a Democratic victory.
“Understand this,” Miller continued: they (the Bush administration) “are not incompetent.” Incompetence was not the reason for the kind of response we saw in Katrina. As for Iraq, “the way this war was handled, it’s not about incompetence.”
“At holding power,” Miller continued, “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer, They’re extremely good, they’ve done a great job.”
That’s why the terrorists get along with Bush and Cheney; Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists share with them an apocalyptic world view. Such a view is profoundly un-American, Miller said towards the close of his brief remarks.
***
Commentary
It was heartening to find one public intellectual at last make the obvious and totally ignored connection between the Bush/Rove control of the election process and their radical, unpopular and destructive agenda.
The connection between stolen elections and their radical agenda is regularly ignored both in the mainstream media and in the Left and, progressive media, despite growing public awareness and massive evidence of voter fraud in every election cycle since at least 2000. Typical of mass media coverage is a front page story in the New York Times (9.28.06) headlined: “Democrats Cite New Hope In Bid to Retake Senate,” ignoring the implications of election fraud.
Anecdotally, when I’ve raised this issue with friends, I’ve had several offers to bet that the Democrats will win at least one house of Congress. Unfortunately I’ve sworn off betting. (Much of this was written before the front page efflorescence of the Mark Foley scandal which could change things. Are all bets off? I don't know. Even at this late hour, a month before the election, I can’t imagine Karl Rove letting November 2006 slip away from him without a fight.)
A perfect example of the way the mainstream media ignore the implications of election fraud on foreign and domestic policy is the New York Times’s editorial, “Rushing Off a Cliff” (9.28.06) expressing horror at Senate approval of the Military Commissions Act which gave President Bush everything he wanted. The Times editorial writers could have been channeling Karl Rove as they repeatedly insisted that the purpose of this bill was to intimidate and clobber the Democrats in the upcoming November elections. Once again the Times ignored evidence that the Bush administration act as if they are not worried about the electoral process.
The NYT can fulminate as it did in its “Rushing off a Cliff” editorial about Bush’s “ghastly ideas about terrorism,” but they ignore their own responsibility in joining the silence of the Democratic party about the illegitimacy of the last two presidential elections and many state wide elections going back to at least 1998.
Incompetence or policy goals
On the issue of whether or not the response to Katrina and the Iraq disaster can be put down to incompetence, had Miller been given more time he might have made the case that the administration’s response to Katrina and the continued immiseration and eviction of tens of thousands of its poorest and minority citizens was precisely what the Bush administration intended and successfully fought to ensure.
In the case of Iraq, given more time, Miller might have pointed out the Bush clique intended the current tragedy and dysfunction that Iraq is today. For one thing, the ongoing nightmare makes it impossible for Iraq to play its former role as a leading adversary of Israeli hegemony. The current Iraqi disarray also contributes to the instability and chaos in the area favored by Washington in its pursuit of a permanent war agenda.
In addition, pouring $8 billion a month into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fits nicely into their radical right wing program of “starving the beast,” i.e., the Federal treasury, of funds that might go toward social spending.
One can’t help but wonder about a political culture where only political outsiders like Mark Crispin Miller make the obvious connection between our eviscerated voting process and a radical agenda, intentionally far more destructive than any previous American government. Apparently this is what Miller had in mind when he insisted that the current regime is very good “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer.”
For a video of Miller’s remarks click on the following url:
http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2905&Itemid=223
See also Miller’s excellent blog: www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com
For an important follow up see Miller's recent article for the Washington Spectator, “The Elephant in the Polling Booth,” (October 2006)
www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061001elephant_3.cfm
Here Miller asserts:
That Bush/Cheney stole their "re-election" is not a "theory" but a fact that has by now been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The case was made, first, by the House Judiciary Committee—or rather by its Democratic members, who conducted a meticulous inquiry into the debacle in Ohio. (The Republicans boycotted the investigation, and obstructed it.) Its findings were released on January 5, 2005, in the so-called Conyers Report, after Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the committee's ranking Democrat. The Republicans attacked it, and the press and leading Democrats ignored it; yet that report was sound, its major findings wholly accurate.
Monday, September 25, 2006
US to attack Iran in early 2007? -- See Krauthammer and Podhoretz
A recent email (9.15.06) included the following analysis by radical right wing pundit, Charles Krauthammer deconstructing Bush’s remarks on an “inevitable” war with Iran.
Like John Podhoretz before him, Charles Krauthammer in his column today announces that he now understands the President's words to mean that war with Iran is inevitable:
The next day, [President Bush] responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: "It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."
"Before" implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.
When it comes to war, war, war, it’s hard to fault Krauthammer’s and Podhoretz's analyses. If they are right, and if it’s Bush’s intention to attack Iran, or as Phyllis Bennis has been suggesting (WBAI “Wake Up Call,” 9.22.2006) to provoke a war with Iran by blockading its ports, it’s not unlikely that such U.S. attacks or provocations will be postponed until after the November elections and the New Year. Thus the most likely time for hostilities to break out seems to be early 2007, perhaps February or March, as in the March 2003 war against Iraq.
Like John Podhoretz before him, Charles Krauthammer in his column today announces that he now understands the President's words to mean that war with Iran is inevitable:
The next day, [President Bush] responded thus (as reported by Rich Lowry and Kate O'Beirne of National Review) to a question on Iran: "It's very important for the American people to see the president try to solve problems diplomatically before resorting to military force."
"Before" implies that the one follows the other. The signal is unmistakable. An aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities lies just beyond the horizon of diplomacy. With the crisis advancing and the moment of truth approaching, it is important to begin looking now with unflinching honesty at the military option.
When it comes to war, war, war, it’s hard to fault Krauthammer’s and Podhoretz's analyses. If they are right, and if it’s Bush’s intention to attack Iran, or as Phyllis Bennis has been suggesting (WBAI “Wake Up Call,” 9.22.2006) to provoke a war with Iran by blockading its ports, it’s not unlikely that such U.S. attacks or provocations will be postponed until after the November elections and the New Year. Thus the most likely time for hostilities to break out seems to be early 2007, perhaps February or March, as in the March 2003 war against Iraq.
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