Print this articledue to outrage fatigue, Violette's Page may not be updated for some time... maybe 2008.
in the meantime, perhaps you'd like to visit my escape from reality
in the meantime, perhaps you'd like to visit my escape from reality
technorati tags: outrage+fatigue
The Onion
WASHINGTON, DC - In a brief statement faxed to major media outlets at approximately 11:50 p.m. Friday, the White House retracted the entire 5,600-word State of the Union address delivered by President Bush last Tuesday. "This includes all components of the address, and is not limited to the president's congratulations to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi or his plan to give more Americans affordable health care through tax cuts, which has since been deemed infeasible," the statement read in part. "Furthermore, the president's urge for bipartisanship as well as his final statement about the state of the union being 'strong' are hereby stricken from the public record." Like the State of the Union address itself, the White House's retraction has not yet become a significant national news story.
The largest of the demonstrations was in Washington, D.C., where "a raucous and colorful multitude of protesters ... danced, sang, chanted and shouted their opposition" in front of the Capitol (Washington Post, 1/28/07). While most estimates put the crowd in D.C. at 100-150,000, organizers for United for Peace and Justice claimed up to 500,000 attended. There were also smaller demonstrations in dozens of cities and towns across the country, including rallies of several thousand in Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Click here for more photos.
Rep. John Murtha
A year ago, I said this was a failed policy wrapped in an illusion. The President has finally acknowledged this.
Five months ago, we put an additional 10,000 troops in Baghdad. Attacks increased and a record number of Americans and Iraqis were killed. I see no difference between this and the President's plan to "stay the course."
I am particularly disappointed that there are no credible benchmarks and no way to measure the military and economic progress of this operation. There is no incentive for the Iraqis to take over.
All of us want stability in the Middle East, and Iraq is an important element in achieving that stability. But the military and their families deserve an achievable mission. It is unacceptable to me that we are sending troops back to Iraq who have not completed their training cycle and that we are extending troops who are battle-weary from the intensive combat in Iraq.
A year ago, I called for a redeployment of our forces and predicted that this "stay the course" policy would adversely affect our military readiness. The Defense Subcommittee will begin holding extensive hearings on January 17th to determine how we can best restore the readiness and strategic reserve of our military.
A year ago, I said this was a failed policy wrapped in an illusion. The President has finally acknowledged this.
Five months ago, we put an additional 10,000 troops in Baghdad. Attacks increased and a record number of Americans and Iraqis were killed. I see no difference between this and the President's plan to "stay the course."
I am particularly disappointed that there are no credible benchmarks and no way to measure the military and economic progress of this operation. There is no incentive for the Iraqis to take over.
All of us want stability in the Middle East, and Iraq is an important element in achieving that stability. But the military and their families deserve an achievable mission. It is unacceptable to me that we are sending troops back to Iraq who have not completed their training cycle and that we are extending troops who are battle-weary from the intensive combat in Iraq.
A year ago, I called for a redeployment of our forces and predicted that this "stay the course" policy would adversely affect our military readiness. The Defense Subcommittee will begin holding extensive hearings on January 17th to determine how we can best restore the readiness and strategic reserve of our military.
1/10/07
Dear Mr. President,
Thanks for your address to the nation. It's good to know you still want to talk to us after how we behaved in November.
Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain't gonna do the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what it was last year. And we were losing the war last year! We've already had over a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another few thousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of mass destruction! Er, I mean... bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice! Um, scratch that. Try this -- BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST! YES!!!
You've got to show some courage, dude! You've got to win this one! C'mon, you got Saddam! You hung 'im high! I loved watching the video of that -- just like the old wild west! The bad guy wore black! The hangmen were as crazy as the hangee! Lynch mobs rule!!!
Look, I have to admit I feel very sorry for the predicament you're in. As Ricky Bobby said, "If you're not first, you're last." And you being humiliated in front of the whole world does NONE of us Americans any good.
Sir, listen to me. You have to send in MILLIONS of troops to Iraq, not thousands! The only way to lick this thing now is to flood Iraq with millions of us! I know that you're out of combat-ready soldiers -- so you have to look elsewhere! The only way you are going to beat a nation of 27 million -- Iraq -- is to send in at least 28 million! Here's how it would work:
The first 27 million Americans go in and kill one Iraqi each. That will quickly take care of any insurgency. The other one million of us will stay and rebuild the country. Simple.
Now, I know you're saying, where will I find 28 million Americans to go to Iraq? Here are some suggestions:
1. More than 62,000,000 Americans voted for you in the last election (the one that took place a year and half into a war we already knew we were losing). I am confident that at least a third of them would want to put their body where there vote was and sign up to volunteer. I know many of these people and, while we may disagree politically, I know that they don't believe someone else should have to go and fight their fight for them -- while they hide here in America.
2. Start a "Kill an Iraqi" Meet-Up group in cities across the country. I know this idea is so early-21st century, but I once went to a Lou Dobbs Meet-Up and, I swear, some of the best ideas happen after the third mojito. I'm sure you'll get another five million or so enlistees from this effort.
3. Send over all members of the mainstream media. After all, they were your collaborators in bringing us this war -- and many of them are already trained from having been "embedded!" If that doesn't bring the total to 28 million, then draft all viewers of the FOX News channel.
Mr. Bush, do not give up! Now is not the time to pull your punch! Don't be a weenie by sending in a few over-tired troops. Get your people behind you and YOU lead them in like a true commander in chief! Leave no conservative behind! Full speed ahead!
We promise to write. Go get 'em W!
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
Dear Mr. President,
Thanks for your address to the nation. It's good to know you still want to talk to us after how we behaved in November.
Listen, can I be frank? Sending in 20,000 more troops just ain't gonna do the job. That will only bring the troop level back up to what it was last year. And we were losing the war last year! We've already had over a million troops serve some time in Iraq since 2003. Another few thousand is simply not enough to find those weapons of mass destruction! Er, I mean... bringing those responsible for 9/11 to justice! Um, scratch that. Try this -- BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST! YES!!!
You've got to show some courage, dude! You've got to win this one! C'mon, you got Saddam! You hung 'im high! I loved watching the video of that -- just like the old wild west! The bad guy wore black! The hangmen were as crazy as the hangee! Lynch mobs rule!!!
Look, I have to admit I feel very sorry for the predicament you're in. As Ricky Bobby said, "If you're not first, you're last." And you being humiliated in front of the whole world does NONE of us Americans any good.
Sir, listen to me. You have to send in MILLIONS of troops to Iraq, not thousands! The only way to lick this thing now is to flood Iraq with millions of us! I know that you're out of combat-ready soldiers -- so you have to look elsewhere! The only way you are going to beat a nation of 27 million -- Iraq -- is to send in at least 28 million! Here's how it would work:
The first 27 million Americans go in and kill one Iraqi each. That will quickly take care of any insurgency. The other one million of us will stay and rebuild the country. Simple.
Now, I know you're saying, where will I find 28 million Americans to go to Iraq? Here are some suggestions:
1. More than 62,000,000 Americans voted for you in the last election (the one that took place a year and half into a war we already knew we were losing). I am confident that at least a third of them would want to put their body where there vote was and sign up to volunteer. I know many of these people and, while we may disagree politically, I know that they don't believe someone else should have to go and fight their fight for them -- while they hide here in America.
2. Start a "Kill an Iraqi" Meet-Up group in cities across the country. I know this idea is so early-21st century, but I once went to a Lou Dobbs Meet-Up and, I swear, some of the best ideas happen after the third mojito. I'm sure you'll get another five million or so enlistees from this effort.
3. Send over all members of the mainstream media. After all, they were your collaborators in bringing us this war -- and many of them are already trained from having been "embedded!" If that doesn't bring the total to 28 million, then draft all viewers of the FOX News channel.
Mr. Bush, do not give up! Now is not the time to pull your punch! Don't be a weenie by sending in a few over-tired troops. Get your people behind you and YOU lead them in like a true commander in chief! Leave no conservative behind! Full speed ahead!
We promise to write. Go get 'em W!
Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
by Dave LindorffThe Smirking Chimp
How pathetic can it get?
140,000 American troops are stuck in the mess that a lying and endlessly deceitful president has made in Iraq, over half a million innocent Iraqis have been killed since the politically-motivated 2003 US invasion, a group of very Establishment, middle-of-the-road politicians of both parties has declared the war an unmitigated disaster and called for a pullout of troops, the president has nixed their call for withdrawal and regional negotiations, and what is Congress doing about it?
The House just voted by an overwhelming 368-31 (that's only 36 abstentions), not to impeach the president, not to cut off funding for the war, not even to endorse the findings of the Iraq Study Group, but...to condemn the naming of a street in France after Pennsylvania death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal!
This craven rush to line up and be counted in the condemnation of a man who has never had a fair trial to establish his guilt in the 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner was joined in even by most liberal Democrats in the House. It was primarily only black members of Congress who had the courage to vote no on the resolution that was submitted by Michael Fitzpatrick, a lame-duck Republican congressman from the Philadelphia area (Fitzpatrick was defeated by Democrat Patrick Murphy).
Ironically, as this group of political hucksters and moral cowards were casting their votes of allegedly righteous condemnation at the naming of a minor street in France, Abu-Jamal's case was heading for a dramatic hearing in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, where judges with a better understanding of law and constitution had recently agreed to hear three separate arguments by Abu-Jamal on claims that his 1982 trial had been unconstitutionally compromised--among them that the prosecutor told jurors they didn't need to worry about proof of guilt being "beyond a reasonable doubt" because there would be "appeal after appeal," that the same prosecutor deliberately removed 11 qualified black jurors from the jury pool because of their race despite their having confirmed they could vote for a death penalty, and that the trial judge had been overheard, on the first day of the trial, telling his clerk that he would "help them fry the nigger."
So where is the indignation of these leaders when it comes to a president who lied to them repeatedly about alleged grave and looming threats posed by non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, about non-existent "links" between Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and terror leader Osama Bin Laden? About a fraudulent allegation that Saddam was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger?
Where is the righteous indignation over the deliberate exposing by Bush and Cheney of the identity of a key undercover CIA agent whose outing destroyed a U.S. intelligence network monitoring weapons activities in Iran, and almost certainly led to the suffering and deaths of some of her sources in Iran and elsewhere?
Where is the outrage over Bush's flagrant violation of the law in having the National Security Agency spy on Americans without first obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court?
Where is the outrage about the president's assertion of the right to ignore acts (850 and counting) passed by the Congress?
Where is the righteous indignation over this president's authorization of torture of U.S. captives in Iraq, Afghanistan, kidnapped from around the globe, and even picked up here in the U.S.--American citizens included?
Where is the disgust at word that Commander in Chief Bush oversaw the detention in Guantanamo of children from Afghanistan as young as seven and eight years old--some of whom remain in detention there to this day (and one of whom committed suicide last June after spending his teenage years in detention).
Where is the outrage that this president allowed some 2000 Americans to die in stagnant, toxic water in New Orleans while he played around on vacation in Texas?
Maybe more relevant to the current resolution, where is the outrage over military policies under Commander in Chief Bush that have made the killing of Iraqi boys as young as 12 part of the "rules of engagement," that permit the collective punishment of entire towns and cities--most famously the flattened city of Fallujah--and that permit the use of banned weapons like napalm and white phosphorus, and the use of horrific, indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction, such as cluster bombs?
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the incoming speaker of a new Democratic-run House, has called for a new civility and bi-partisanship in Congress, but it seems her idea of civility and bi-partisanship is signing on to rabid, lame-duck, right-wing Republican resolutions, while ducking the heavy responsibility of calling a criminal president to account for his six-year assault on the Constitution, and for dragging the nation into a pointless, bloody and costly war.
Luckily for Abu-Jamal, his long battle for a fair trial will be fought not in the wretched and soiled halls of Congress, where any concern for justice and defense of constitutional rights and freedoms long ago vanished, but in an appellate courtroom, where some vestige of such lofty concerns may yet exist.
Unluckily for the rest of us, who thought we were taking a stand for freedom, the Constitution, and a restoration of national sanity when we voted last month, the struggle to revive the Bill of Rights and the concept of tripartite government, and to impeach a president run amok with mad dreams of imperial power, will have to be fought in those wretched, soiled halls--and in the streets.
Our task is to convince a bunch of political whores that they must act like the founding fathers intended, and as their oaths of office require, or the 110th Congress will be their last.
technorati tags: Mumia+Abu-Jamal
The inhabitants of North and South America were a remarkably healthy race before Columbus. Ironically, their very health proved their undoing, for they had built up no resistance, genetically or through chilhood diseases, to the microbes that Europeans and Africans would bring with them.
In 1617, just before the Pilgrims landed, the process started in southern New England. For decades, British and French fisherman had fished off the Massachusetts coast. After filling their hulls with cod, they would go ashore to lay in firewood and fresh water and perhaps capture a few Native Americans to sell into slavery in Europe. It is likely that these fisherman transmitted some illness to the people they met. The plague that ensued made the Black Death pale by comparison.
Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England. The Native American societies lay devastated. Unable to cope with so many corpses, the survivors abandoned their villages and fled, often to a neighboring tribe. They carried the infestation with them.
During the next fifteen years, additional epidemics struck repeatedly. European Americans also contracted maladies, but they usually recovered.
The impact of the epidemics on the two cultures was profound. The English Separatists found it easy to infer that God was on their side. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "miraculous." In 1634 he wrote to a friend in England:
But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection...
Many Native Americans likewise inferred that their god had abandoned them. After a smallpox epidemic the Cherokee "despaired so much that they lost confidence in their gods and the priests destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe." After all, neither Native Americans nor Pilgrims had access to the germ theory of disease. Like the Europeans three centuries before them, during the black plague, many Native Americans surrendered to alcohol, converted to Christianity, or killed themselves.
The net result of these epidemics was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Native American challenge.
The historian Karen Kupperman speculates:
One can only speculate what the outcome of the rivalry would have been if the impact of European diseases on the American population had not been so devastating. If colonists had not been able to occupy lands already cleared by Indian farmers who had vanished, colonization would have proceeded much more slowly. If Indian culture had not been devastated by the physical and psychological assaults it had suffered, colonization might not have proceeded at all.
All this brings us to Thanksgiving. More than any other celebration, more even than such overtly patriotic holidays as Independence Day and Memorial Day, Thanksgiving celebrates our ethnocentrism. Thanksgiving is the occassion on which we give thanks to God for the blessings that He hath bestowed upon us. We have seen, for example, how King James and the early pilgrim leaders gave thanks for the plague, which proved to them God was on their side. The archetypes of Thanksgiving - God on our side, civilization wrested from the wilderness, order from disorder, through hard work and good Pilgrim character traits - continue to radiate from our history textbooks.
Our image of the first Thanksgiving portrays the Pilgrims in their starched Sunday best next to their almost naked Indian guests. In fact, the Pilgrims did not introduce the tradition; Eastern Indians had celebrated autumnal harvests for centuries. As a holiday greeting card puts it, "I is for the Indians we invited to share our food." The silliness of all this reaches its zenith in the handouts that school-children have carried home for decades, complete with captions such as, "They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast!" When the Native American novelist Michael Dorris's son brought home this "information" from his New Hampshire elementary school, Dorris pointed out that "the Pilgrims had literally never seen 'such a feast,' since all foods mentioned are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided by (or with the aid of) the local tribe."
This notion that "we" advanced peoples provided for the Indians, exactly the converse of the truth, is not benign. It reemerges time and time again in our history to complicate race relations. For example, we are told that white plantation owners furnished food and medical care for their slaves, yet every shred of food, shelter, and clothing on the plantations was raised, built, woven, or paid for by black labor. Today Americans believe as part of our politial understanding of the world that we are the most generous nation on earth in terms of foreign aid, overlooking the fact that the net dollar flow from almost every Third World nation runs toward the United States.
Source: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
In 1617, just before the Pilgrims landed, the process started in southern New England. For decades, British and French fisherman had fished off the Massachusetts coast. After filling their hulls with cod, they would go ashore to lay in firewood and fresh water and perhaps capture a few Native Americans to sell into slavery in Europe. It is likely that these fisherman transmitted some illness to the people they met. The plague that ensued made the Black Death pale by comparison.
Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England. The Native American societies lay devastated. Unable to cope with so many corpses, the survivors abandoned their villages and fled, often to a neighboring tribe. They carried the infestation with them.
During the next fifteen years, additional epidemics struck repeatedly. European Americans also contracted maladies, but they usually recovered.
The impact of the epidemics on the two cultures was profound. The English Separatists found it easy to infer that God was on their side. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "miraculous." In 1634 he wrote to a friend in England:
But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection...
Many Native Americans likewise inferred that their god had abandoned them. After a smallpox epidemic the Cherokee "despaired so much that they lost confidence in their gods and the priests destroyed the sacred objects of the tribe." After all, neither Native Americans nor Pilgrims had access to the germ theory of disease. Like the Europeans three centuries before them, during the black plague, many Native Americans surrendered to alcohol, converted to Christianity, or killed themselves.
The net result of these epidemics was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Native American challenge.
The historian Karen Kupperman speculates:
One can only speculate what the outcome of the rivalry would have been if the impact of European diseases on the American population had not been so devastating. If colonists had not been able to occupy lands already cleared by Indian farmers who had vanished, colonization would have proceeded much more slowly. If Indian culture had not been devastated by the physical and psychological assaults it had suffered, colonization might not have proceeded at all.
All this brings us to Thanksgiving. More than any other celebration, more even than such overtly patriotic holidays as Independence Day and Memorial Day, Thanksgiving celebrates our ethnocentrism. Thanksgiving is the occassion on which we give thanks to God for the blessings that He hath bestowed upon us. We have seen, for example, how King James and the early pilgrim leaders gave thanks for the plague, which proved to them God was on their side. The archetypes of Thanksgiving - God on our side, civilization wrested from the wilderness, order from disorder, through hard work and good Pilgrim character traits - continue to radiate from our history textbooks.
Our image of the first Thanksgiving portrays the Pilgrims in their starched Sunday best next to their almost naked Indian guests. In fact, the Pilgrims did not introduce the tradition; Eastern Indians had celebrated autumnal harvests for centuries. As a holiday greeting card puts it, "I is for the Indians we invited to share our food." The silliness of all this reaches its zenith in the handouts that school-children have carried home for decades, complete with captions such as, "They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast!" When the Native American novelist Michael Dorris's son brought home this "information" from his New Hampshire elementary school, Dorris pointed out that "the Pilgrims had literally never seen 'such a feast,' since all foods mentioned are exclusively indigenous to the Americas and had been provided by (or with the aid of) the local tribe."
This notion that "we" advanced peoples provided for the Indians, exactly the converse of the truth, is not benign. It reemerges time and time again in our history to complicate race relations. For example, we are told that white plantation owners furnished food and medical care for their slaves, yet every shred of food, shelter, and clothing on the plantations was raised, built, woven, or paid for by black labor. Today Americans believe as part of our politial understanding of the world that we are the most generous nation on earth in terms of foreign aid, overlooking the fact that the net dollar flow from almost every Third World nation runs toward the United States.
Source: Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
1. IT'S A NATIONAL REFERENDUM. Although candidates' names will be on the ballot today, this election is NOT about this candidate or that candidate. Make no mistake about it: This election is nothing less than a National Referendum on George W. Bush and his War. Don't waste your time trying to learn about who the schlump is that's running for office. You know they're all pretty much the same, a few are better than others, but... please. They is who they is. THIS election is not about them. It's a simple up or down vote on staying the course.
To vote in favor of the war, vote for the Republican. To vote against the war, vote for the Democrat. As crazy as it sounds, even if the Republican is against the war, or the Democrat is for it, it doesn't matter. All that will matter by midnight tonight is the math on the big tote board. Did America say YES to Bush or NO to Bush? The ONLY way they're going to add it up is by counting the number of votes under the big D and the big R. The only way to take a stand against Bush today is to vote for the Dems on the ballot.
2. IN ORDER TO CATCH THE REPUBLICANS STEALING YOUR VOTE, YOU FIRST HAVE TO VOTE. There are huge and valid concerns about the new electronic voting machines that must be addressed. It is far too easy to use new technology to rig the vote. But if your fear of that leads you to decide that you shouldn't bother voting, well, then, I guess they've succeeded in snuffing out your voice without having to rig the machine. Make them break the law if they want to win. Vote. We'll catch them if they do. I promise.
3. WITH THE DEMOCRATS IN POWER IN THE HOUSE AND/OR SENATE, WE CAN GO AFTER THEM! These spineless Democrats who enabled Bush to start this war and funded it ever since are due for a shellacking from all of us. For nearly 6 years, they've hidden behind the cop-out of, "Hey, we're the minority, we have no power." As of tomorrow, hopefully, they will have no mask to hide behind. And it will be up to us to go after them.
4. I'LL PUT YOU ON MY WEBSITE. That's right. You can appear on my home page and be seen by millions later today. All you need to do is bring a broom when you go to vote. The broom is our mascot today because we're going to sweep the crooks and the warmongers outta office. Take a picture of yourself holding a broom outside your polling place, e-mail it to me, and I'll put as many of you as I can up on the home page of my website. People all around the world will see you! Government files with your name on them will be initiated! What better way to celebrate this historic day?!
And the final reason to vote today...
5. 2,836 + 655,000. Each one of them, American and Iraqi, are no longer with us because of the decision by one man to start a war. Each one of them represented a precious, God-given life that no man had the right to take away. Each one of them had a mother and father, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, friends and loved ones, little boys and little girls. It's mad, my friends, utterly mad, this senseless loss of human life.
So, do it for them. Call up whoever you know and tell them to meet you at the polls. And tell them to bring a broom, real or imaginary, with a big D on it. It's the only true American thing to do.
See ya at the victory party tonight!
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
P.S. Forward this to all your friends. Today is the day.
To vote in favor of the war, vote for the Republican. To vote against the war, vote for the Democrat. As crazy as it sounds, even if the Republican is against the war, or the Democrat is for it, it doesn't matter. All that will matter by midnight tonight is the math on the big tote board. Did America say YES to Bush or NO to Bush? The ONLY way they're going to add it up is by counting the number of votes under the big D and the big R. The only way to take a stand against Bush today is to vote for the Dems on the ballot.
2. IN ORDER TO CATCH THE REPUBLICANS STEALING YOUR VOTE, YOU FIRST HAVE TO VOTE. There are huge and valid concerns about the new electronic voting machines that must be addressed. It is far too easy to use new technology to rig the vote. But if your fear of that leads you to decide that you shouldn't bother voting, well, then, I guess they've succeeded in snuffing out your voice without having to rig the machine. Make them break the law if they want to win. Vote. We'll catch them if they do. I promise.
3. WITH THE DEMOCRATS IN POWER IN THE HOUSE AND/OR SENATE, WE CAN GO AFTER THEM! These spineless Democrats who enabled Bush to start this war and funded it ever since are due for a shellacking from all of us. For nearly 6 years, they've hidden behind the cop-out of, "Hey, we're the minority, we have no power." As of tomorrow, hopefully, they will have no mask to hide behind. And it will be up to us to go after them.
4. I'LL PUT YOU ON MY WEBSITE. That's right. You can appear on my home page and be seen by millions later today. All you need to do is bring a broom when you go to vote. The broom is our mascot today because we're going to sweep the crooks and the warmongers outta office. Take a picture of yourself holding a broom outside your polling place, e-mail it to me, and I'll put as many of you as I can up on the home page of my website. People all around the world will see you! Government files with your name on them will be initiated! What better way to celebrate this historic day?!
And the final reason to vote today...
5. 2,836 + 655,000. Each one of them, American and Iraqi, are no longer with us because of the decision by one man to start a war. Each one of them represented a precious, God-given life that no man had the right to take away. Each one of them had a mother and father, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives, friends and loved ones, little boys and little girls. It's mad, my friends, utterly mad, this senseless loss of human life.
So, do it for them. Call up whoever you know and tell them to meet you at the polls. And tell them to bring a broom, real or imaginary, with a big D on it. It's the only true American thing to do.
See ya at the victory party tonight!
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com
P.S. Forward this to all your friends. Today is the day.
By Dave Lindorff
ThisCantBeHappening.net
When you go into the voting booth tomorrow, here are a few things you need to think about.
First of all, this is not a local election, whatever your candidates for Congress and even for statehouse have been telling you. We have just lived through six years of one-party government, and we've seen the damage that can do. Congress under Republican leadership has ceased to function as an independent branch challenging and investigating the actions of the president, and has instead become an enabler of presidential abuse of power and of the undermining of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That means we have to restore at least some measure of opposition in the Congress for the sake of saving the country from a slide into one-party dictatorship, and that means voting for the Democrats, even Democrats who are worse than their Republican opponent. I'd say different if your district had a third-party candidate with a chance of winning, since that person could be expected to vote against Republican rule too, once in office, but aside from Vermont's Bernie Sanders, I don't know of any such cases, such is the sad condition of third party politics in America.
It's equally important to vote Democratic for state legislative candidates and for governor, because the legislatures, in almost all states, are where congressional district lines get drawn up. We saw last year how the Republicans have used their power in state legislatures, particularly in Texas, to eliminate Democratic districts and replace them with Republican ones. In that state, such gerrymandering gave the Republicans five extra House seats before an election was even held.
Second, think about the big issues: human survival on the earth, mass murder in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the bankrupting and deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the destruction of American constitutional democracy and the reversal of a 230-year history of expanding liberty.
Human Survival: It is increasingly clear that the earth is facing a catastrophe because of rampant use of fossil fuels, and the prime offender is the United States. There is only a narrow window of opportunity to at least moderate this threat to humanity and to life on the planet, yet the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have refused to even acknowledge the threat, and have squandered six years that could have made a huge difference. (Isn't it kind of ludicrous to worry about aborted fetuses and stem cells when government policies are currently threatening the survival of the human race?)
Mass Murder: Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq--a nation that clearly posed no immediate threat to the U.S. or its own neighbors in 2003--was the worst of war crimes, a "Crime against Peace" under the Nuremburg Charter, and a crime under US law because it was based upon lies, fraud and deception. It has led to the unnecessary and criminal deaths of nearly 2900 American troops, the maiming of another 25,000, and the deaths of as many as 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians--largely at the hands of U.S. weapons. Many of those weapons, like the illegal white phosphorus and napalm bombs used in Fallujah and elsewhere, The thousands of tons of depleted uranium shells and bombs, the millions of rounds of anti-personnel bombs and shells, and the helicopter and fixed-wing gunships that spray wide areas indiscriminately with saturation fire, are the very "weapons of mass destruction" which we claimed we were going to war to prevent. The same weapons have been widely used in Afghanistan against the people of one of the most primitive societies in the world. These are massive crimes, and they won't stop until the Congress brings them to a halt--and calls the criminal in the White House who initiated them to account. (Remember, neither one of these wars is doing a thing to challenge or defend against terrorism.)
Economy: In six short years, this president has turned the national budget from a surplus into six years of record deficits, by ramming through the Republican Congress tax breaks that primarily benefit oil companies and the richest 1 percent of Americans. As for trade policy, thanks to Bush and the Republican-led Congress, which has made exporting jobs and boosting imports the centerpiece of its economic policy, the U.S. now owes more than $1 trillion to our rival, China, and is shipping more than that annually to Middle Eastern dictatorships like Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to buy oil for vehicles that get 12 miles per gallon or less. Sure there are plenty of Democrats sucking at the corporate teat who are voting for those same policies, but with Republicans in total control, the issues aren’t even being raised. We need only to look at the unprecedented corruption that has swept over the Republican Congress, and seeped under the doors of the White House, into the Oval office, the Vice President’s office, and the office of Karl Rove, the president’s closest adviser, to see why this is happening, and what needs to be done. (Any token tax break you got from Bush and the Republicans was long ago eaten up by the higher gas prices caused by the Iraq War and by higher interest rates caused by their budget and trade deficits.)
Freedom and Democracy: President Bush has claimed for himself the right to ignore laws passed by Congress, which he erases with the stroke of a pen in what he calls "signing statements" saying that as commander in chief he is above the law and the courts. He has used his rubber-stamp Republican Congress to ram through laws eliminating the right to trial and the right to a lawyer, has given himself the power to declare any American to be a unlawful combatant" and supporter of terrorism, with no rights whatsoever, has approved the use of torture and immunized himself and his gang of conspirators from prosecution for past torture. He has even slipped through a measure making it easy for him to declare martial law anywhere in the nation he deems there to be "public disorder." With these laws and these crimes unchallenged, we no longer live in a democracy--only the hollow husk of a former democracy, which could be crushed in a moment. Only a revived Congress, led by a revitalized opposition party, can challenge this dire threat to our freedoms and traditional tripartite government. (The country you learned about in your junior high civics class barely exists anymore, and won't if you don’t stand up for liberty and democracy now, and stop buying the scare stories about fighting terrorism. Remember Ben Franklin, who warned that "Those who would give up Essential Liberty for a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”)
This election is a turning point.
If we turn out Republicans from the leadership of the Congress, there is at least a chance that, with a strong public campaign of pressure, we can rouse timid and somnolent Democrats to protect liberty, restore Democracy, impeach the president, take back the government, start rescuing the economy, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and start seriously confronting global warming. If we don't, we may not get another chance. Republicans, having brought us this close to fascism and ruin, are not going to let the public get this close to unhorsing them again if they manage to hang on to power.
None of this is to suggest that having Democrats win this election, even by a significant margin, will fix things. Too many Democrats over the last six years, or even the last 14 years, have been fully complicit in too many of the above crimes and atrocities and attacks on freedom and the Constitution. It's going to take constant struggle and constant pressure to make them act like a true party of opposition, and like the party of the people that the Democrats once claimed to be.
But we can't even begin that difficult struggle unless we toss out the Republicans from Congress.
So think about all this when you vote Tuesday.
And make sure you know how to vote on the new computer screen systems that are being foisted on most of us.
Don't let the bastards steal this one!
ThisCantBeHappening.net
When you go into the voting booth tomorrow, here are a few things you need to think about.
First of all, this is not a local election, whatever your candidates for Congress and even for statehouse have been telling you. We have just lived through six years of one-party government, and we've seen the damage that can do. Congress under Republican leadership has ceased to function as an independent branch challenging and investigating the actions of the president, and has instead become an enabler of presidential abuse of power and of the undermining of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That means we have to restore at least some measure of opposition in the Congress for the sake of saving the country from a slide into one-party dictatorship, and that means voting for the Democrats, even Democrats who are worse than their Republican opponent. I'd say different if your district had a third-party candidate with a chance of winning, since that person could be expected to vote against Republican rule too, once in office, but aside from Vermont's Bernie Sanders, I don't know of any such cases, such is the sad condition of third party politics in America.
It's equally important to vote Democratic for state legislative candidates and for governor, because the legislatures, in almost all states, are where congressional district lines get drawn up. We saw last year how the Republicans have used their power in state legislatures, particularly in Texas, to eliminate Democratic districts and replace them with Republican ones. In that state, such gerrymandering gave the Republicans five extra House seats before an election was even held.
Second, think about the big issues: human survival on the earth, mass murder in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, the bankrupting and deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the destruction of American constitutional democracy and the reversal of a 230-year history of expanding liberty.
Human Survival: It is increasingly clear that the earth is facing a catastrophe because of rampant use of fossil fuels, and the prime offender is the United States. There is only a narrow window of opportunity to at least moderate this threat to humanity and to life on the planet, yet the Bush administration and the Republican Congress have refused to even acknowledge the threat, and have squandered six years that could have made a huge difference. (Isn't it kind of ludicrous to worry about aborted fetuses and stem cells when government policies are currently threatening the survival of the human race?)
Mass Murder: Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq--a nation that clearly posed no immediate threat to the U.S. or its own neighbors in 2003--was the worst of war crimes, a "Crime against Peace" under the Nuremburg Charter, and a crime under US law because it was based upon lies, fraud and deception. It has led to the unnecessary and criminal deaths of nearly 2900 American troops, the maiming of another 25,000, and the deaths of as many as 650,000 innocent Iraqi civilians--largely at the hands of U.S. weapons. Many of those weapons, like the illegal white phosphorus and napalm bombs used in Fallujah and elsewhere, The thousands of tons of depleted uranium shells and bombs, the millions of rounds of anti-personnel bombs and shells, and the helicopter and fixed-wing gunships that spray wide areas indiscriminately with saturation fire, are the very "weapons of mass destruction" which we claimed we were going to war to prevent. The same weapons have been widely used in Afghanistan against the people of one of the most primitive societies in the world. These are massive crimes, and they won't stop until the Congress brings them to a halt--and calls the criminal in the White House who initiated them to account. (Remember, neither one of these wars is doing a thing to challenge or defend against terrorism.)
Economy: In six short years, this president has turned the national budget from a surplus into six years of record deficits, by ramming through the Republican Congress tax breaks that primarily benefit oil companies and the richest 1 percent of Americans. As for trade policy, thanks to Bush and the Republican-led Congress, which has made exporting jobs and boosting imports the centerpiece of its economic policy, the U.S. now owes more than $1 trillion to our rival, China, and is shipping more than that annually to Middle Eastern dictatorships like Libya, Saudi Arabia and Iran to buy oil for vehicles that get 12 miles per gallon or less. Sure there are plenty of Democrats sucking at the corporate teat who are voting for those same policies, but with Republicans in total control, the issues aren’t even being raised. We need only to look at the unprecedented corruption that has swept over the Republican Congress, and seeped under the doors of the White House, into the Oval office, the Vice President’s office, and the office of Karl Rove, the president’s closest adviser, to see why this is happening, and what needs to be done. (Any token tax break you got from Bush and the Republicans was long ago eaten up by the higher gas prices caused by the Iraq War and by higher interest rates caused by their budget and trade deficits.)
Freedom and Democracy: President Bush has claimed for himself the right to ignore laws passed by Congress, which he erases with the stroke of a pen in what he calls "signing statements" saying that as commander in chief he is above the law and the courts. He has used his rubber-stamp Republican Congress to ram through laws eliminating the right to trial and the right to a lawyer, has given himself the power to declare any American to be a unlawful combatant" and supporter of terrorism, with no rights whatsoever, has approved the use of torture and immunized himself and his gang of conspirators from prosecution for past torture. He has even slipped through a measure making it easy for him to declare martial law anywhere in the nation he deems there to be "public disorder." With these laws and these crimes unchallenged, we no longer live in a democracy--only the hollow husk of a former democracy, which could be crushed in a moment. Only a revived Congress, led by a revitalized opposition party, can challenge this dire threat to our freedoms and traditional tripartite government. (The country you learned about in your junior high civics class barely exists anymore, and won't if you don’t stand up for liberty and democracy now, and stop buying the scare stories about fighting terrorism. Remember Ben Franklin, who warned that "Those who would give up Essential Liberty for a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”)
This election is a turning point.
If we turn out Republicans from the leadership of the Congress, there is at least a chance that, with a strong public campaign of pressure, we can rouse timid and somnolent Democrats to protect liberty, restore Democracy, impeach the president, take back the government, start rescuing the economy, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and start seriously confronting global warming. If we don't, we may not get another chance. Republicans, having brought us this close to fascism and ruin, are not going to let the public get this close to unhorsing them again if they manage to hang on to power.
None of this is to suggest that having Democrats win this election, even by a significant margin, will fix things. Too many Democrats over the last six years, or even the last 14 years, have been fully complicit in too many of the above crimes and atrocities and attacks on freedom and the Constitution. It's going to take constant struggle and constant pressure to make them act like a true party of opposition, and like the party of the people that the Democrats once claimed to be.
But we can't even begin that difficult struggle unless we toss out the Republicans from Congress.
So think about all this when you vote Tuesday.
And make sure you know how to vote on the new computer screen systems that are being foisted on most of us.
Don't let the bastards steal this one!
technorati tags: Election, Congress, Republican, Democrat, Election+Districts, Legislature,
"500 YEARS AGO ONE MAN CLAIMED TO HAVE DISCOVERED A NEW WORLD
FIVE CENTURIES LATER WE THE PEOPLE ARE FORCED TO CELEBRATE A BLACK HOLOCAUST...
HOW CAN YOU CALL A TAKEOVER A DISCOVERY?"
-Public Enemy
Columbus meets the Native Americans
On October 12, 1492, Columbus and his crew arrived at an an island in the Bahamas inhabited by the Arawak Indians. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, the Arawaks ran to greet them bringing food and gifts. Columbus wrote the following in his log...
They...brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned...They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance...They would make fine servants...With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts.
In return for bringing Spain gold and spices, Columbus was promised 10% of the profits, governorship over new-found lands, and the fame that would go with a new title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea...
God, Slavery, or Gold?
Columbus's purpose from the beginning was not mere exploration or even trade, but conquest and exploitation, for which he used religion as a rationale. Typically, after "discovering" an island and encountering a tribe of Indians new to them, the Spaniards would read aloud (in Spanish) what came to be called "the Requirement." The captured Indians were told that if they would immediately convert to Catholicism, they would be given "many privileges and exemptions." If not, "we shall powerfully enter your country, and shall make war against you... and we shall take you and your wives and make slaves of them... and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can."
Here is one version:
I implore you to recognize the Church as a lady and in the name of the Pope take the King as lord of this land and obey his mandates. If you do not do it, I tell you that with the help of God I will enter powerfully against you all. I will make war everywhere and every way that I can. I will subject you to the yoke and obedience to the Church and to his majesty. I will take your women and children and make them slaves.
...The deaths and injuries that you will receive from here on will be your own fault and not that of his majesty nor of the gentlemen that accompany me. footnote #1
This reading was often a formality because the Indians did not understand Spanish!
Columbus was the first slave trader in the new world. He reported to the Court in Madrid that he had reached Asia and an island off the coast of China. He asked for ships and men for a second expedition and promised to bring "as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask."
But they found no gold fields, so Columbus envisioned an active trade in Indian slaves. In 1495, they rounded up 1500 Arawak men, women, and children and kept them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs. When the Spaniards were ready, they picked the 500 best specimens to load onto the ships. Of those 500, only 300 survived the trip. When they arrived in Spain they were put up for sale. Columbus wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1496, "Although they die now, they will not always die. The Negroes and the Canary Islanders died at first..." (Spain was in the process of exterminating the people of the Canary Islands at the time.)
But many of the slaves were dying. And theologians argued that Columbus had no right to enslave the Indians because they had not been taken in war. With the discovery of gold in the New World, the idea of trafficking Indian slaves to the Old World became moot. As many Indians as possible would be needed to work the gold mines.
Greed and Cruelty
The Spaniards were known to cut off and Indian's ears or nose for minor offenses. They hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Las Casas describes the Spaniards becoming more concieted every day. Ater a while they refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays (they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others fan them with goose wings.)
The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians... and cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." "Two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."
In Cibao on Haiti, Columbus and his men ordered all Indians to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they turned over the gold, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Any Indian found without a token had their hands cut off and bled to death. The Indians' task was next to impossible. So they fled, and many were hunted down and killed.
The Arawaks attempted to put together a resistance army, but they had only sticks and stones for weapons while the Spaniards had armor, muskets, swords, and horses. However, this resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war.
March 24, 1495, Columbus set out to conquer the Arawaks. 200 foot soldiers, 20 cavalry, with crossbows and small cannon, lances, swords, and hunting dogs were used. (The Spanish won.)
When it became obvious to the Spaniards that there was no gold left, they worked the Indians at a ferocious pace on estates. He granted entire Indian villages to individual colonists or groups of colonists for forced labor. This was called the encomienda system.
Mass suicides among the Arawaks began. Many women avoided pregnancy and if they did become pregnant, took something to abort. Others killed their children with their own hands so they would not be subjected to this oppressive slavery.
Information on this page is made up of excerpts from:
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
An Underground Education: The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human Knowledge by Richard Zacks
The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 - Democratic lawmakers, responding to an intelligence report that found that the Iraq war has invigorated Islamic radicalism and worsened the global terrorist threat, said the assessment by American spy agencies demonstrated that the Bush administration needed to devise a new strategy for its handling of the war.
Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that while she could not discuss details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, "Every intelligence analyst I speak to confirms that" the Iraq war had contributed to the increased terrorist threat.
"Even capturing the remaining top Al Qaeda leadership isn't going to prevent copycat cells, and it isn't going to change a failed policy in Iraq," Ms. Harman said on CNN's "Late Edition." "This administration is trying to change the subject. I don't think voters are going to buy that."
In public comments on Sunday, Republican Congressional leaders did not dispute the accuracy of the reports about the intelligence estimate, although they continued to defend the American presence in Iraq.
"I think it's obvious that the difficulties we've experienced in Iraq have certainly emboldened" terrorist groups, Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."
"But I would also argue that these people didn't need any motivation to attack us on Sept. 11," he said.
The intelligence estimate, an assessment by America's 16 intelligence agencies, found that the war in Iraq, rather than stemming the growth of terrorism, had helped fuel its spread across the globe.
The estimate was completed in April, and is the first formal review of global terrorism by the United States since the Iraq war began. More than a dozen government officials and terrorism experts described the estimate to The New York Times, but spoke on condition of anonymity because its contents are classified.
Several of the lawmakers who appeared on Sunday talk shows said they had not seen the classified document, whose disclosure comes weeks before the Nov. 7 elections. Intelligence reports from American spy agencies are not circulated widely on Capitol Hill, and Congressional officials said neither the House nor the Senate intelligence committees had been formally briefed on the report.
In a statement released Sunday, the White House said the characterization of the report in The New York Times "is not representative of the complete document." The White House did not release any specifics about the report, citing the fact that it was classified.
John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, said in a statement on Sunday that conclusions about the Iraq war are only a part of the overall intelligence assessment, and that viewing the report's conclusions "through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create."
"While there is much that remains to be done in the war on terror, we have achieved some notable successes against the global jihadist threat," he said.
The White House also issued three pages of excerpts from recent speeches by President Bush, including remarks about the continuing threats from terrorist groups inspired by Al Qaeda.
The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said in a statement that news reports about the intelligence estimate were "further proof that the war in Iraq is making it harder for America to fight and win the war on terror."
Her Senate Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that "no election-year White House P.R. campaign can hide this truth - it is crystal clear that America's security demands we change course in Iraq."
Tags: Iraq War Terror Bush+administration
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 - Democratic lawmakers, responding to an intelligence report that found that the Iraq war has invigorated Islamic radicalism and worsened the global terrorist threat, said the assessment by American spy agencies demonstrated that the Bush administration needed to devise a new strategy for its handling of the war.
Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that while she could not discuss details of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, "Every intelligence analyst I speak to confirms that" the Iraq war had contributed to the increased terrorist threat.
"Even capturing the remaining top Al Qaeda leadership isn't going to prevent copycat cells, and it isn't going to change a failed policy in Iraq," Ms. Harman said on CNN's "Late Edition." "This administration is trying to change the subject. I don't think voters are going to buy that."
In public comments on Sunday, Republican Congressional leaders did not dispute the accuracy of the reports about the intelligence estimate, although they continued to defend the American presence in Iraq.
"I think it's obvious that the difficulties we've experienced in Iraq have certainly emboldened" terrorist groups, Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, said on the CBS News program "Face the Nation."
"But I would also argue that these people didn't need any motivation to attack us on Sept. 11," he said.
The intelligence estimate, an assessment by America's 16 intelligence agencies, found that the war in Iraq, rather than stemming the growth of terrorism, had helped fuel its spread across the globe.
The estimate was completed in April, and is the first formal review of global terrorism by the United States since the Iraq war began. More than a dozen government officials and terrorism experts described the estimate to The New York Times, but spoke on condition of anonymity because its contents are classified.
Several of the lawmakers who appeared on Sunday talk shows said they had not seen the classified document, whose disclosure comes weeks before the Nov. 7 elections. Intelligence reports from American spy agencies are not circulated widely on Capitol Hill, and Congressional officials said neither the House nor the Senate intelligence committees had been formally briefed on the report.
In a statement released Sunday, the White House said the characterization of the report in The New York Times "is not representative of the complete document." The White House did not release any specifics about the report, citing the fact that it was classified.
John D. Negroponte, director of national intelligence, said in a statement on Sunday that conclusions about the Iraq war are only a part of the overall intelligence assessment, and that viewing the report's conclusions "through the narrow prism of a fraction of judgments distorts the broad framework they create."
"While there is much that remains to be done in the war on terror, we have achieved some notable successes against the global jihadist threat," he said.
The White House also issued three pages of excerpts from recent speeches by President Bush, including remarks about the continuing threats from terrorist groups inspired by Al Qaeda.
The House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi of California, said in a statement that news reports about the intelligence estimate were "further proof that the war in Iraq is making it harder for America to fight and win the war on terror."
Her Senate Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that "no election-year White House P.R. campaign can hide this truth - it is crystal clear that America's security demands we change course in Iraq."
Tags: Iraq War Terror Bush+administration
This is an organization of 5,000 current and former law enforcement officials who recognize the failure and the damage effected by the war on drugs.
OPEN VOTING FOUNDATION
9560 Windrose Lane
Granite Bay, CA 95746
Phone (916) 295-0415
alan@openvoting.org
PRESS RELEASE -- JULY 31, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Subject: WORST EVER SECURITY FLAW FOUND IN DIEBOLD TS VOTING MACHINE
Contact: Alan Dechert
Reference: PICTURES
(Click on thumbnail. Click again on lower half of picture for high resolution)
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- “This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.
“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.
Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.
The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".
A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.
This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.
“These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled”
OPEN VOTING FOUNDATION is a nonprofit non stock California corporation dedicated to demonstrating the need for and benefits of voting technology that can be publicly scrutinized.
Technorati Tags: Elections Election Fraud
9560 Windrose Lane
Granite Bay, CA 95746
Phone (916) 295-0415
alan@openvoting.org
PRESS RELEASE -- JULY 31, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Subject: WORST EVER SECURITY FLAW FOUND IN DIEBOLD TS VOTING MACHINE
Contact: Alan Dechert
Reference: PICTURES
(Click on thumbnail. Click again on lower half of picture for high resolution)
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA -- “This may be the worst security flaw we have seen in touch screen voting machines,” says Open Voting Foundation president, Alan Dechert. Upon examining the inner workings of one of the most popular paperless touch screen voting machines used in public elections in the United States, it has been determined that with the flip of a single switch inside, the machine can behave in a completely different manner compared to the tested and certified version.
“Diebold has made the testing and certification process practically irrelevant,” according to Dechert. “If you have access to these machines and you want to rig an election, anything is possible with the Diebold TS -- and it could be done without leaving a trace. All you need is a screwdriver.” This model does not produce a voter verified paper trail so there is no way to check if the voter’s choices are accurately reflected in the tabulation.
Open Voting Foundation is releasing 22 high-resolution close up pictures of the system. This picture, in particular, shows a “BOOT AREA CONFIGURATION” chart painted on the system board.
The most serious issue is the ability to choose between "EPROM" and "FLASH" boot configurations. Both of these memory sources are present. All of the switches in question (JP2, JP3, JP8, SW2 and SW4) are physically present on the board. It is clear that this system can ship with live boot profiles in two locations, and switching back and forth could change literally everything regarding how the machine works and counts votes. This could be done before or after the so-called "Logic And Accuracy Tests".
A third possible profile could be field-added in minutes and selected in the "external flash" memory location, the interface for which is present on the motherboard.
This is not a minor variation from the previously documented attack point on the newer Diebold TSx. To its credit, the TSx can only contain one boot profile at a time. Diebold has ensured that it is extremely difficult to confirm what code is in a TSx (or TS) at any one time but it is at least theoretically possible to do so. But in the TS, a completely legal and certified set of files can be instantly overridden and illegal uncertified code be made dominant in the system, and then this situation can be reversed leaving the legal code dominant again in a matter of minutes.
“These findings underscore the need for open testing and certification. There is no way such a security vulnerability should be allowed. These systems should be recalled”
OPEN VOTING FOUNDATION is a nonprofit non stock California corporation dedicated to demonstrating the need for and benefits of voting technology that can be publicly scrutinized.
Technorati Tags: Elections Election Fraud
Alternet.org
By Rinku Sen, TomPaine.com. Posted July 24, 2006.
Immigrants aren't animals or terrorists -- and they're not sucking the nation's economy dry.
In the ongoing battle over immigration, conservative rhetoric continues to escalate. It's racist, and it gets results. This year, more than 30 states have passed 57 laws banning the undocumented from receiving social services or pledging National Guard troops to patrol the southern U.S. border. Earlier this week, House Republicans in Washington staged a hearing about "cracking down" on undocumented immigrants. Republicans have been told to move ahead but avoid pissing off Latinos - their lesson from Proposition 187 in California -- but a little decoding of the symbols, soundbites and economic arguments they use exposes their fear of a browner nation.
Here, then, are the six racist myths driving the immigration debate, dispelled.
Immigrants are not animals. Last week, Rep. Steve Katz, R.-Ariz., presented his proposal to Congress for a "super fence" along the border. "We could electrify it," he said, "not enough to kill somebody but enough to make them think twice. We do that with livestock all the time." If the problem eased, he suggested, we could open it up again and "let the livestock run through." Enough said.
Neither are they terrorists. In Colorado, a dramatic series of debates ended with the state legislature passing a law requiring adult applicants for public services to prove citizenship. Republicans complained about being beaten down in a "Friday night massacre" because the law didn't go far enough, according to State Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora. She wanted a ballot measure writing the ban into the state's constitution and also applying to people under 18.
"We're helping to create the next generation of terrorists," she told the Rocky Mountain News . There is no documented connection between immigration and terrorism. When making the flimsy argument that immigration threatens our national security, conservatives like to cite the example of the 9/11 hijackers. Yet, they forget that all 19 hijackers entered the country legally.
Tent cities at the border would be 21st-century concentration camps. Don Goldwater, Arizona's leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, wants to arrest border crossers, imprison them in tents and make them build that coveted super fence. All those National Guard troops sent to the southern border would be kept busy guarding the camps.
There's no invasion. In Idaho, Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, modeling himself after Tom Tancredo, accused his opponents in a Senate race of "collaborating with the unarmed enemy invading America."
His grandparents were Mexican immigrants, but he fears the consequences of letting in more of their kind, calling this a war: "Either we protect and defend Old Glory at every challenge, or we all learn Spanish and get used to the chicken and worm on the Mexican flag." (Vasquez has joined the National Advisory Committee of Protect Arizona Now, whose chair Virginia Abernethy describes herself as a "white separatist.") There's no evidence, however, that the Latino population will surpass whites any time soon. The Census Bureau projects that by the year 2030, whites will be 24.4 percent of the population; Latinos 20.1 percent. Even in 50 years, Latinos won't outnumber the white majority.
They speak English, just not "English only." Mayor Tom Macklin of Avon Park, Florida, pushed for a new law based on a Pennsylvania precedent that makes English the city's official language -- in addition to fining landlords and denying business licenses to those who accommodate the horde. The city will remove Spanish from all documents, signs and automated phone messages. In Bogota, New Jersey, Mayor Steve Lonegan, generally a free-market libertarian, is campaigning to force McDonald's to remove a Spanish-language billboard. Of course, he'll have to change the town's name too.
As an immigrant child, I can testify that all this is unnecessary. Although my parents allowed no English at home, I still get to experience the pleasure of white people complimenting my English. Funding for English as a Second Language classes would be far more helpful--and very likely less expensive - than prohibiting multilingualism.
They do not drain public coffers. Lamenting the strain the undocumented impose on our public services is a favorite straw man erected by nativist politicians. Yet, once again, the facts don't support the argument. Studies in state after state show that immigrants pay their fair share of taxes. Even the undocumented pay into Social Security through false numbers. According to a 2005 study by Physicians for a National Health Program, immigrants, including the undocumented, use fewer health care resources than native-born citizens. Immigrants accounted for 10.4 percent of the U.S. population, but only 7.9 percent of total health spending, and only 8 percent of government health spending. Their per capita expenditure is less than half that of non-immigrants. Thirty percent of immigrants used no healthcare at all in the course of a year.
These stereotypes generate real consequences. They drive the entire policy debate rightward, so that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to decouple immigration and national security. Even the Senate's "good" immigration bill includes an English-only provision that could prevent FEMA and other federal agencies from serving limited English speakers. At the local level, racism, coded or not, drives all immigrants underground and enables bigots. It won't take a genius landlord to decide that simply avoiding brown skin altogether beats paying $1,000 fine per person. A woman in Avon Park, the new English-only city, reported that a bartender refused to serve her sister who had a Puerto Rican drivers' license, saying, "I can't read that."
In another example, the Idaho Community Action Network reports that Robert Vasquez's polarizing language has created so much fear of roundups that immigrants hole up at home and send the kids to do the grocery shopping. Vehicles carrying day laborers there have been forced off the road by others. Refugees have woken up in the middle of the night to someone banging on their doors telling them to get out of the country, and the white supremacist group National Alliance set fires at the local university to "defend" the flag. Their flyers said: "Stop Immigration! Non- Whites are turning America into a Third World slum... They are messy, disruptive, noisy and multiply rapidly. Let's send them home now!" Lest we believe this is only about red states, note that a woman wrote in to The New York Times after seeing the same flyer on a window in the Upper East Side.
Racism is the wedge conservatives use to distract us from real questions that need answers. If they are so upset with people draining the public treasury, they should protest real drains like the $70 billion of corporate tax income lost in offshore tax havens annually.
Politicians and immigration foes are trying to manufacture a new culture war. But the majority of Americans don't want one and must speak up now to drown out the subtle racism dominating this debate.
Rinku Sen is the publisher of ColorLines magazine and communications director of the Applied Research Center (ARC).
Technorati Tags: immigration
By Rinku Sen, TomPaine.com. Posted July 24, 2006.
Immigrants aren't animals or terrorists -- and they're not sucking the nation's economy dry.
In the ongoing battle over immigration, conservative rhetoric continues to escalate. It's racist, and it gets results. This year, more than 30 states have passed 57 laws banning the undocumented from receiving social services or pledging National Guard troops to patrol the southern U.S. border. Earlier this week, House Republicans in Washington staged a hearing about "cracking down" on undocumented immigrants. Republicans have been told to move ahead but avoid pissing off Latinos - their lesson from Proposition 187 in California -- but a little decoding of the symbols, soundbites and economic arguments they use exposes their fear of a browner nation.
Here, then, are the six racist myths driving the immigration debate, dispelled.
Immigrants are not animals. Last week, Rep. Steve Katz, R.-Ariz., presented his proposal to Congress for a "super fence" along the border. "We could electrify it," he said, "not enough to kill somebody but enough to make them think twice. We do that with livestock all the time." If the problem eased, he suggested, we could open it up again and "let the livestock run through." Enough said.
Neither are they terrorists. In Colorado, a dramatic series of debates ended with the state legislature passing a law requiring adult applicants for public services to prove citizenship. Republicans complained about being beaten down in a "Friday night massacre" because the law didn't go far enough, according to State Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora. She wanted a ballot measure writing the ban into the state's constitution and also applying to people under 18.
"We're helping to create the next generation of terrorists," she told the Rocky Mountain News . There is no documented connection between immigration and terrorism. When making the flimsy argument that immigration threatens our national security, conservatives like to cite the example of the 9/11 hijackers. Yet, they forget that all 19 hijackers entered the country legally.
Tent cities at the border would be 21st-century concentration camps. Don Goldwater, Arizona's leading Republican gubernatorial candidate, wants to arrest border crossers, imprison them in tents and make them build that coveted super fence. All those National Guard troops sent to the southern border would be kept busy guarding the camps.
There's no invasion. In Idaho, Canyon County Commissioner Robert Vasquez, modeling himself after Tom Tancredo, accused his opponents in a Senate race of "collaborating with the unarmed enemy invading America."
His grandparents were Mexican immigrants, but he fears the consequences of letting in more of their kind, calling this a war: "Either we protect and defend Old Glory at every challenge, or we all learn Spanish and get used to the chicken and worm on the Mexican flag." (Vasquez has joined the National Advisory Committee of Protect Arizona Now, whose chair Virginia Abernethy describes herself as a "white separatist.") There's no evidence, however, that the Latino population will surpass whites any time soon. The Census Bureau projects that by the year 2030, whites will be 24.4 percent of the population; Latinos 20.1 percent. Even in 50 years, Latinos won't outnumber the white majority.
They speak English, just not "English only." Mayor Tom Macklin of Avon Park, Florida, pushed for a new law based on a Pennsylvania precedent that makes English the city's official language -- in addition to fining landlords and denying business licenses to those who accommodate the horde. The city will remove Spanish from all documents, signs and automated phone messages. In Bogota, New Jersey, Mayor Steve Lonegan, generally a free-market libertarian, is campaigning to force McDonald's to remove a Spanish-language billboard. Of course, he'll have to change the town's name too.
As an immigrant child, I can testify that all this is unnecessary. Although my parents allowed no English at home, I still get to experience the pleasure of white people complimenting my English. Funding for English as a Second Language classes would be far more helpful--and very likely less expensive - than prohibiting multilingualism.
They do not drain public coffers. Lamenting the strain the undocumented impose on our public services is a favorite straw man erected by nativist politicians. Yet, once again, the facts don't support the argument. Studies in state after state show that immigrants pay their fair share of taxes. Even the undocumented pay into Social Security through false numbers. According to a 2005 study by Physicians for a National Health Program, immigrants, including the undocumented, use fewer health care resources than native-born citizens. Immigrants accounted for 10.4 percent of the U.S. population, but only 7.9 percent of total health spending, and only 8 percent of government health spending. Their per capita expenditure is less than half that of non-immigrants. Thirty percent of immigrants used no healthcare at all in the course of a year.
These stereotypes generate real consequences. They drive the entire policy debate rightward, so that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to decouple immigration and national security. Even the Senate's "good" immigration bill includes an English-only provision that could prevent FEMA and other federal agencies from serving limited English speakers. At the local level, racism, coded or not, drives all immigrants underground and enables bigots. It won't take a genius landlord to decide that simply avoiding brown skin altogether beats paying $1,000 fine per person. A woman in Avon Park, the new English-only city, reported that a bartender refused to serve her sister who had a Puerto Rican drivers' license, saying, "I can't read that."
In another example, the Idaho Community Action Network reports that Robert Vasquez's polarizing language has created so much fear of roundups that immigrants hole up at home and send the kids to do the grocery shopping. Vehicles carrying day laborers there have been forced off the road by others. Refugees have woken up in the middle of the night to someone banging on their doors telling them to get out of the country, and the white supremacist group National Alliance set fires at the local university to "defend" the flag. Their flyers said: "Stop Immigration! Non- Whites are turning America into a Third World slum... They are messy, disruptive, noisy and multiply rapidly. Let's send them home now!" Lest we believe this is only about red states, note that a woman wrote in to The New York Times after seeing the same flyer on a window in the Upper East Side.
Racism is the wedge conservatives use to distract us from real questions that need answers. If they are so upset with people draining the public treasury, they should protest real drains like the $70 billion of corporate tax income lost in offshore tax havens annually.
Politicians and immigration foes are trying to manufacture a new culture war. But the majority of Americans don't want one and must speak up now to drown out the subtle racism dominating this debate.
Rinku Sen is the publisher of ColorLines magazine and communications director of the Applied Research Center (ARC).
Technorati Tags: immigration
Frederick Douglass, 5 July 1852Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the "lame man leap as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth"! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate, I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, shall not confess to be right and just....
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not as astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!...
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply....
What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
Frederick+Douglass July+4th Fourth+of+July 4th+of+July abolitionist slavery
The Rude Pundit
Chances are, maybe even by the time you read this, the two American soldiers, captured by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, will be dead, probably in some horrible way, probably with their bodies dumped like all the horribly murdered Iraqis in the blood and gore-strewn landscape that are the markers of Iraqi liberation. The Rude Pundit can't help thinking, though, about the implied "What if" of the capture, on the field of battle, of American soldiers, prisoners of war, if you will.
What if we get pictures of the soldiers, nude, cowering, screaming in a corner, shitting themselves on the filthy floors of a makeshift cell, as their captors hold snarling dogs on leashes just out of bite range of the soldiers?
What if we learn that their captors decide that the soldiers can offer intelligence that can be of use to al-Qaeda and, in order to get that information, the captors put the nude soldiers into rooms that are heated to hellish temperatures, followed by rooms that are impossibly cold with colder water tossed onto them? What if the soldiers are made to stand for days on end? Put into stress positions that fuck up their muscles and limbs? Denied sleep? Had loud music played into their cells? Kept in isolation and fed bread and water for days, weeks on end?
What if they strap one or both of those Americans to a board and hold them underwater until their drowning reflex forces them to panic, thrash, claw desperately for air, only to be brought up to breathe and then placed underwater again? And again? Until the captors get the answers they seek?
What if those captors take the nude, sleep-deprived, shit and piss-covered, nearly drowned and dog-frightened American soldiers and handcuff them to beds with women's panties on their heads, snapping photographs and laughing, talking about publishing the photos so that everyone can see the soldiers with their panty-sniffing heads and terror-shriveled cocks, so that all of al-Qaeda can laugh at what pussies Americans can be made to seem?
What if, and, really, does it need to be said, they are made to stand, hooded, with faux electrodes attached to their nuts and fingers, told that if they don't start answering questions, well, testicles only can take so much electroshock before they just pop like squeezed grapes?
What will our government do? What could it do? Could it condemn the actions as not abiding by the Geneva Conventions? Could it call the actions "torture"? Could it demand accountability? Could it demand that the soldiers be treated as POWs? Could it simply say, "Well, we don't do that shit...anymore"?
And what about the good right-wing punditry? Would Rush Limbaugh look at the photos of the nude, cowering Americans and say it looks like fraternity hazing or some such shit? Would others dismiss it as a media fabrication? Or would they just pathetically overlook everything done in our American names to Iraqis, Afghanis, and others, calling madly for the heads of the captors, not even thinking about the irony of such a statement?
It goes without saying, but, considering the times, perhaps it needs to be said: the Rude Pundit wishes none of this on Privates Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca. He hopes they are found or released safe and sound. But he also wishes none of this on our prisoners, whether in Iraq, at Gitmo, or in secret prisons or countries of rendition where fuck-all can happen with no law, no regulation, no hope to bespeak our putative humanity.
Iraq Rude+Pundit prisoners+of+war torture al-Qaeda
Chances are, maybe even by the time you read this, the two American soldiers, captured by the Mujahideen Shura Council in Iraq, will be dead, probably in some horrible way, probably with their bodies dumped like all the horribly murdered Iraqis in the blood and gore-strewn landscape that are the markers of Iraqi liberation. The Rude Pundit can't help thinking, though, about the implied "What if" of the capture, on the field of battle, of American soldiers, prisoners of war, if you will.
What if we get pictures of the soldiers, nude, cowering, screaming in a corner, shitting themselves on the filthy floors of a makeshift cell, as their captors hold snarling dogs on leashes just out of bite range of the soldiers?
What if we learn that their captors decide that the soldiers can offer intelligence that can be of use to al-Qaeda and, in order to get that information, the captors put the nude soldiers into rooms that are heated to hellish temperatures, followed by rooms that are impossibly cold with colder water tossed onto them? What if the soldiers are made to stand for days on end? Put into stress positions that fuck up their muscles and limbs? Denied sleep? Had loud music played into their cells? Kept in isolation and fed bread and water for days, weeks on end?
What if they strap one or both of those Americans to a board and hold them underwater until their drowning reflex forces them to panic, thrash, claw desperately for air, only to be brought up to breathe and then placed underwater again? And again? Until the captors get the answers they seek?
What if those captors take the nude, sleep-deprived, shit and piss-covered, nearly drowned and dog-frightened American soldiers and handcuff them to beds with women's panties on their heads, snapping photographs and laughing, talking about publishing the photos so that everyone can see the soldiers with their panty-sniffing heads and terror-shriveled cocks, so that all of al-Qaeda can laugh at what pussies Americans can be made to seem?
What if, and, really, does it need to be said, they are made to stand, hooded, with faux electrodes attached to their nuts and fingers, told that if they don't start answering questions, well, testicles only can take so much electroshock before they just pop like squeezed grapes?
What will our government do? What could it do? Could it condemn the actions as not abiding by the Geneva Conventions? Could it call the actions "torture"? Could it demand accountability? Could it demand that the soldiers be treated as POWs? Could it simply say, "Well, we don't do that shit...anymore"?
And what about the good right-wing punditry? Would Rush Limbaugh look at the photos of the nude, cowering Americans and say it looks like fraternity hazing or some such shit? Would others dismiss it as a media fabrication? Or would they just pathetically overlook everything done in our American names to Iraqis, Afghanis, and others, calling madly for the heads of the captors, not even thinking about the irony of such a statement?
It goes without saying, but, considering the times, perhaps it needs to be said: the Rude Pundit wishes none of this on Privates Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca. He hopes they are found or released safe and sound. But he also wishes none of this on our prisoners, whether in Iraq, at Gitmo, or in secret prisons or countries of rendition where fuck-all can happen with no law, no regulation, no hope to bespeak our putative humanity.
Iraq Rude+Pundit prisoners+of+war torture al-Qaeda
From Real Time with Bill Maher, aired 10/24/06
"And finally, 'New Rule,' nobody can use the phrase 'our greatest problem' anymore unless you're talking about global warming [applause]. President Bush has been saying we're in 'a war on terror' and now I get it: He's not saying 'terror,' he's saying 'terra,' as in terra firma, as in the Earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the Earth [laughter and applause]. I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week.
"Now last week on 60 Minutes, James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert on the science of climate, delivered the world's most important message. He said, 'we have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out.' If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet -- although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you could.
"And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were 'speculative.' This from the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article in The Weekly Standard [applause.] This from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese Emperor dude his dad threw up on [laughter].
"Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so it should be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction -- and that's what global warming is -- in order to protect oil company profits, well that fits for me the definition of treason and codified treason [applause]. The guy in the White House who made the edits was Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given this job as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's the office that is supposed to be watching out for us. But that's where Phil busied himself crossing stuff out in scientists' reports because apparently in Phil's mind he hadn't switched jobs. He was just doing his old job -- oil industry lobbyist -- from a different office. You know, in the people's house.
"Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-died dude from Seattle who lives is a solar-powered yurt and eats twigs. It's not. This issue should be driven by something conservatives are much more familiar with: utter selfishness. That's my motivation. I don't want to live my golden years having to put on a haz-mat suit just to go down and get the mail. Those are my Viagra years [laughter] when I'll be thinking about having children. But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in twenty years. 'Dad, tell me about the birds and bees.' 'They're all gone, now eat your soylent green.'
"We are letting dying men kill our planet for cash and they're counting on us being too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop them. So on this day, the 17th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, let us pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils from the fossil fuels we extract. In the next twenty years, almost a billion Chinese people will be trading in their bicycles for the automobile. Folks, we either get our shit together on this quickly, or we're going to have to go to Plan B: Inventing a car that runs on Chinese people!" [laughter]
Bill+Maher Environment Global+Warming George+Bush James+Hansen
"And finally, 'New Rule,' nobody can use the phrase 'our greatest problem' anymore unless you're talking about global warming [applause]. President Bush has been saying we're in 'a war on terror' and now I get it: He's not saying 'terror,' he's saying 'terra,' as in terra firma, as in the Earth. George Bush is an alien sent here to destroy the Earth [laughter and applause]. I know it sounds crazy, but it made perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week.
"Now last week on 60 Minutes, James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert on the science of climate, delivered the world's most important message. He said, 'we have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out.' If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet -- although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who might think you could.
"And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were 'speculative.' This from the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article in The Weekly Standard [applause.] This from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that Japanese Emperor dude his dad threw up on [laughter].
"Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so it should be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction -- and that's what global warming is -- in order to protect oil company profits, well that fits for me the definition of treason and codified treason [applause]. The guy in the White House who made the edits was Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given this job as head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's the office that is supposed to be watching out for us. But that's where Phil busied himself crossing stuff out in scientists' reports because apparently in Phil's mind he hadn't switched jobs. He was just doing his old job -- oil industry lobbyist -- from a different office. You know, in the people's house.
"Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-died dude from Seattle who lives is a solar-powered yurt and eats twigs. It's not. This issue should be driven by something conservatives are much more familiar with: utter selfishness. That's my motivation. I don't want to live my golden years having to put on a haz-mat suit just to go down and get the mail. Those are my Viagra years [laughter] when I'll be thinking about having children. But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in twenty years. 'Dad, tell me about the birds and bees.' 'They're all gone, now eat your soylent green.'
"We are letting dying men kill our planet for cash and they're counting on us being too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop them. So on this day, the 17th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, let us pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils from the fossil fuels we extract. In the next twenty years, almost a billion Chinese people will be trading in their bicycles for the automobile. Folks, we either get our shit together on this quickly, or we're going to have to go to Plan B: Inventing a car that runs on Chinese people!" [laughter]
Bill+Maher Environment Global+Warming George+Bush James+Hansen
BBC News
The US state department has distanced itself from comments by a top official that the three suicides by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were "a good PR move".
Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause", but taking their own lives was unnecessary.
"I would not say that it was a PR stunt," said spokesman Sean McCormack.
Meanwhile, a US lawyer has said that one of three who killed themselves was due to be freed but did not know it.
Mark Denbeaux, who represents some of the foreign detainees at the US camp in Cuba, said the man was among 141 prisoners due for release.
He said the prisoner was not told because US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to.
'Serious concerns'
On Sunday Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Ms Graffy told the BBC's Newshour programme the three men did not value their lives, nor the lives of those around them.
Detainees had access to lawyers, received mail and had the ability to write to families, so had other means of making protests, she said, and it was hard to see why the men had not protested about their situation.
When asked about the comments, the state department spokesman said the US had serious concerns whenever someone took their own life.
Mr McCormack would not comment on whether Ms Graffy had been rebuked for her remarks.
Camp commander Rear Adm Harry Harris has also taken a tough line on the suicides, saying it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".
'Despair'
The Pentagon named the prisoner who had been recommended for transfer as 30-year-old Saudi Arabian Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.
He was a member of a banned Saudi militant group, the defence department said.
The other two men who died on Saturday morning were named as Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 28, from Yemen, and Yassar Talal al-Zahrani, 21, another Saudi Arabian.
Ahmed was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had participated in a long-term hunger strike from late 2005 to May, and was "non-compliant and hostile" to guards, the Pentagon said.
Zahrani, 21, was a "front-line" Taleban fighter who helped procure weapons for use against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the department.
Lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.
The prison camp at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds some 460 prisoners, the vast majority without charge.
There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now.
Criticism of the camp is mounting.
The United Nations rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said European leaders should use a summit with President George W Bush next week to press for the prison's closure.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said procedures at Guantanamo Bay violated the rule of law and undermined the fight against terrorism.
Guantanamo suicide
The US state department has distanced itself from comments by a top official that the three suicides by prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were "a good PR move".
Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause", but taking their own lives was unnecessary.
"I would not say that it was a PR stunt," said spokesman Sean McCormack.
Meanwhile, a US lawyer has said that one of three who killed themselves was due to be freed but did not know it.
Mark Denbeaux, who represents some of the foreign detainees at the US camp in Cuba, said the man was among 141 prisoners due for release.
He said the prisoner was not told because US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to.
'Serious concerns'
On Sunday Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Ms Graffy told the BBC's Newshour programme the three men did not value their lives, nor the lives of those around them.
Detainees had access to lawyers, received mail and had the ability to write to families, so had other means of making protests, she said, and it was hard to see why the men had not protested about their situation.
When asked about the comments, the state department spokesman said the US had serious concerns whenever someone took their own life.
Mr McCormack would not comment on whether Ms Graffy had been rebuked for her remarks.
Camp commander Rear Adm Harry Harris has also taken a tough line on the suicides, saying it was an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".
'Despair'
The Pentagon named the prisoner who had been recommended for transfer as 30-year-old Saudi Arabian Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi.
He was a member of a banned Saudi militant group, the defence department said.
The other two men who died on Saturday morning were named as Ali Abdullah Ahmed, 28, from Yemen, and Yassar Talal al-Zahrani, 21, another Saudi Arabian.
Ahmed was a mid- to high-level al-Qaeda operative who had participated in a long-term hunger strike from late 2005 to May, and was "non-compliant and hostile" to guards, the Pentagon said.
Zahrani, 21, was a "front-line" Taleban fighter who helped procure weapons for use against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan, according to the department.
Lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair.
The prison camp at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, holds some 460 prisoners, the vast majority without charge.
There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now.
Criticism of the camp is mounting.
The United Nations rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, said European leaders should use a summit with President George W Bush next week to press for the prison's closure.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said procedures at Guantanamo Bay violated the rule of law and undermined the fight against terrorism.
Guantanamo suicide
From Real Time with Bill Maher, aired 05/12/06
...And finally, New Rule: George Bush has to stop laughing at himself. When you're incompetence literally costs lives, giggling at it isn't cute or funny. You know, there's a guy who's been running around the country pretending he's the president, and I believe his name is George Bush. And he wants everyone to know that he doesn't take himself too seriously. Which is working out great, because now nobody else in the world does either.
You know, if the Republicans really want to joke around, I've got one for you. Knock, knock.
AUDIENCE: Who's there?
MAHER: Hillary. Now, this is our last show of the season, and I'm rather proud that we've gone all 13 weeks without once making George Bush the subject of our show-ending editorial. Because I didn't want to start sounding like a broken record. Or, to you kids, a degraded MP3 file. Oh, there may have been a stray George Bush punchline here and there. But, come on. I am a comedian and he is a retard.
But, f*** it, this is our, this is our last show. This is our last show for a while and I just want to say that when we come back on August 25th, the week of Bill Clinton's 60th birthday, and a great time for him to do the show. Wouldn't you love to see him do the show, folks? Bill Clinton, everywhere I go. So, your move, Mr. President. But when we come back, I hope we're only months away from the beginning of impeachment proceedings.
But, wait. But not for what you think.
Now, of course there is a laundry list of valid reasons for impeaching this president. But George Bush and his nest of vipers don't deserve to be impeached with dignity for transgressions involving lofty affairs of state. They deserve the far worse state that Clinton got: being impeached for absolutely nothing at all!
And that's why I want to impeach Bush over the fact that he lied about that fish! He said he caught a perch twice as large as any perch that's ever been caught! And that's a lie about a fish! In a time of war! And if he will lie about a fish, then...something, something, something, what do we tell the children? What do we tell Mrs. Paul?! That perch was as American as a McDonald's fish sandwich. Assuming for the sake of argument that a McDonald's fish sandwich contained fish.
So, Mr. President, don't laugh at yourself, because breaking the law is not cute. Having Americans torture people isn't adorable. Leaving poor people to drown wasn't enchanting. And WMD's wasn't a shaggy dog story. So, I'll make a deal with you. We won't impeach you if you just stay on your estate — I mean "ranch" — and fish on your man-made lake. For perch. Maybe you'll beat your own record.
But, for the next three years, just don't touch anything. I was wrong when I criticized you for taking too much vacation time. It couldn't be more the reverse. Take all the "me" days you want. But if you get any big ideas and try to do something, you know, like go to Mars or put the Ten Commandments on the flag, or turn the ports over to the Amish, then we're going to have to put you in the only place we can be sure we can be safe from you. And it looks like this. [photo shown of David Blaine's water-filled Plexiglas globe]
All right, folks. See you back in August. [he picks up flag and kisses it] I love the flag! Any flag. That's our show.
Bill+Maher George+Bush
...And finally, New Rule: George Bush has to stop laughing at himself. When you're incompetence literally costs lives, giggling at it isn't cute or funny. You know, there's a guy who's been running around the country pretending he's the president, and I believe his name is George Bush. And he wants everyone to know that he doesn't take himself too seriously. Which is working out great, because now nobody else in the world does either.
You know, if the Republicans really want to joke around, I've got one for you. Knock, knock.
AUDIENCE: Who's there?
MAHER: Hillary. Now, this is our last show of the season, and I'm rather proud that we've gone all 13 weeks without once making George Bush the subject of our show-ending editorial. Because I didn't want to start sounding like a broken record. Or, to you kids, a degraded MP3 file. Oh, there may have been a stray George Bush punchline here and there. But, come on. I am a comedian and he is a retard.
But, f*** it, this is our, this is our last show. This is our last show for a while and I just want to say that when we come back on August 25th, the week of Bill Clinton's 60th birthday, and a great time for him to do the show. Wouldn't you love to see him do the show, folks? Bill Clinton, everywhere I go. So, your move, Mr. President. But when we come back, I hope we're only months away from the beginning of impeachment proceedings.
But, wait. But not for what you think.
Now, of course there is a laundry list of valid reasons for impeaching this president. But George Bush and his nest of vipers don't deserve to be impeached with dignity for transgressions involving lofty affairs of state. They deserve the far worse state that Clinton got: being impeached for absolutely nothing at all!And that's why I want to impeach Bush over the fact that he lied about that fish! He said he caught a perch twice as large as any perch that's ever been caught! And that's a lie about a fish! In a time of war! And if he will lie about a fish, then...something, something, something, what do we tell the children? What do we tell Mrs. Paul?! That perch was as American as a McDonald's fish sandwich. Assuming for the sake of argument that a McDonald's fish sandwich contained fish.
So, Mr. President, don't laugh at yourself, because breaking the law is not cute. Having Americans torture people isn't adorable. Leaving poor people to drown wasn't enchanting. And WMD's wasn't a shaggy dog story. So, I'll make a deal with you. We won't impeach you if you just stay on your estate — I mean "ranch" — and fish on your man-made lake. For perch. Maybe you'll beat your own record.
But, for the next three years, just don't touch anything. I was wrong when I criticized you for taking too much vacation time. It couldn't be more the reverse. Take all the "me" days you want. But if you get any big ideas and try to do something, you know, like go to Mars or put the Ten Commandments on the flag, or turn the ports over to the Amish, then we're going to have to put you in the only place we can be sure we can be safe from you. And it looks like this. [photo shown of David Blaine's water-filled Plexiglas globe]
All right, folks. See you back in August. [he picks up flag and kisses it] I love the flag! Any flag. That's our show.
Bill+Maher George+Bush
Watch Video HereEditor & Publisher
By E&P Staff
Published: April 29, 2006 11:40 PM ET updated Sunday
WASHINGTON A blistering comedy "tribute" to President Bush by Comedy Central's faux talk-show host Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondent Dinner Saturday night left George and Laura Bush unsmiling at its close.
Earlier, the president had delivered his talk to the 2,700 attendees, including many celebrities and top officials, with the help of a Bush impersonator.
Colbert, who spoke in the guise of his talk-show character, who ostensibly supports the president strongly, urged Bush to ignore his low approval ratings, saying they were based on reality, "and reality has a well-known liberal bias."
He attacked those in the press who claim that the shake-up at the White House was merely re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. "This administration is soaring, not sinking," he said. "If anything, they are re-arranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg."
Colbert told Bush he could end the problem of protests by retired generals by refusing to let them retire. He compared Bush to Rocky Balboa in the "Rocky" movies, always getting punched in the face - "and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world."
Turning to the war, he declared, "I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
He noted former Ambassador Joseph Wilson in the crowd, just three tables away from Karl Rove, and that he had brought " Valerie Plame." Then, worried that he had named her, he corrected himself, as Bush aides might do, "Uh, I mean ... he brought Joseph Wilson's wife." He might have "dodged the bullet," he said, as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wasn't there.
Colbert also made biting cracks about missing WMDs, "photo ops" on aircraft carriers and at hurricane disasters, melting glaciers and Vice President Cheney shooting people in the face. He advised the crowd, "if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail."
Observing that Bush sticks to his principles, he said, "When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday -- no matter what happened Tuesday."
Also lampooning the press, Colbert complained that he was "surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story - the president's side and the vice president's side." In another slap at the news channel, he said: "I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term."
He also reflected on the alleged good old days for the president, when the media was still swallowing the WMD story.
Addressing the reporters, he said, "Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction."
He claimed that the Secret Service name for Bush's new press secretary is "Snow Job."
Colbert closed his routine with a video fantasy where he gets to be White House Press Secretary, complete with a special "Gannon" button on his podium. By the end, he had to run from Helen Thomas and her questions about why the U.S. really invaded Iraq and killed all those people.
As Colbert walked from the podium, when it was over, the president and First Lady gave him quick nods, unsmiling. The president shook his hand and tapped his elbow, and left immediately.
Those seated near Bush told E&P's Joe Strupp, who was elsewhere in the room, that Bush had quickly turned from an amused guest to an obviously offended target as Colbert's comments brought up his low approval ratings and problems in Iraq.
Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps.
"This was anti-Bush," said one attendee. "Usually they go back and forth between us and him." Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy. "You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert," he reported.
After the gathering, Snow, while nursing a Heineken outside the Chicago Tribune reception, declined to comment on Colbert. "I'm not doing entertainment reviews," he said. "I thought the president was great, though."
Strupp, in the crowd during the Colbert routine, had observed that quite a few sitting near him looked a little uncomfortable at times, perhaps feeling the material was a little too biting -- or too much speaking "truthiness" (a word Colbert popularized) to power.
Asked by E&P after it was over if he thought he'd been too harsh, Colbert said, "Not at all." Was he trying to make a point politically or just get laughs? "Just for laughs," he said. He said he did not pull any material for being too strong, just for time reasons. (He later said the president told him "good job" when he walked off.)
Helen Thomas told Strupp her segment with Colbert was "just for fun."
In its report on the affair, USA Today asserted that some in the crowd cracked up over Colbert but others were "bewildered." Wolf Blitzer of CNN said he thought Colbert was funny and "a little on the edge."
Earlier, the president had addressed the crowd with a Bush impersonator alongside, with the faux-Bush speaking precisely and the real Bush deliberately mispronouncing words, such as the inevitable "nuclear." At the close, Bush called the imposter "a fine talent. In fact, he did all my debates with Senator Kerry." The routine went over well with this particular crowd -- better than did Colbert's, in fact, for whatever reason.
Among attendees at the black tie event: Morgan Fairchild, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, Justice Antonin Scalia, George Clooney, and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of the Doobie Brothers -- in a kilt.
[Col. Writ. 4/2/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Now, as polls show growing disenchantment with both political parties, the issue of immigration is raised once again, as politicians seek to stir the pot of social resentment.
Voices are raised, tempers are frayed, proposals are launched, and the destinies of millions are apparently held in limbo.
But, in numbers not seen for generations, mostly Mexican-born (or
related) families pound the pavements in protest, demanding amnesty for the millions who live and work, in the most thankless jobs, here in the U.S.
The immigration "discussion" masks deeper currents in American life, of those who dread the approaching dawn when those who number the nation's majority are brown, instead of white.
As the government and the servile corporate media hawked fear to trap the nation into the Iraq War, so now fear is once again merchandised for political gain. The perpetual fear of the foreign Other, the fear of Spanish-speaking people, who are called 'criminal' for daring to cross the Rio Grande, to inhabit the lands stolen from their ancestors!
The truth of the matter is that it is highly unlikely that over 11
million men, women, and children will be returned to Mexican territory. That's because businesses, especially those engaged in agriculture, would virtually go out of business, if their immigrant-based work-force up and disappeared.
But, like most people, many Latino immigrants are involved in other
businesses and industries in U.S. life. Guess who's doing the lion's share of the work to actually re-build New Orleans? (In case you've not guessed, let me just say it - It ain't FEMA!).
With the exception of Native Americans (as in so-called 'Indians'), and African-Americans, every person in the U.S. today is a descendant of a willing immigrant (OK, strict historians will object that many poor whites, especially in the Southern states, were sent to George and Maryland as indentured servants, as part of a penal sentence).
But, the point is clear. Immigration was consciously used to craft the U.S. as a white nation. For centuries, certain racial groups, like Chinese, for example, were specifically excluded by law from citizenship (like their Mexican counterparts, many Asians were needed in the building of this country as cheap labor).
As law professor Ian F. Haney-Lopez has shown in his book, *White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race* (N.Y.:NYU Press, 1996), American courts and legislatures have consistently defined 'citizens' as 'whites', and over the course of centuries, millions of people were denied entry to the US, or even if allowed in denied citizenship, because they were not 'white.' In 1882, Haney-Lopez explains, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese workers for a decade. In 1884, the Act was expanded to bar all Chinese people, and shortly thereafter an indefinite ban was implemented. State and federal court decisions banned Syrians, Asian-Indians, Palestinians, mixed-race people, and multitudes of others on the basis of insufficient whiteness!
That ugly history may be reborn in this latest 'battle' over Mexican immigration. Political storms have a way of giving way to political hurricanes, that even those who planned them cannot control.
Several years ago, a right-wing politician in California tried to ride the anti-immigrant train to the White House. This man was Pete Wilson, and his playing with fire left him politically burnt. Angry Hispanics in Cali sent him, and some of his colleagues in the Republican Party, into retirement.
But, this era of politicians, trying to create an issue that protects them from the falling numbers of the incumbent Bush Administration, look at Wilson's fate as ancient history.
Perhaps the recent demonstrations, massive in their size, vociferous in their spirit, have given them pause.
Time will tell.
The political entity that truly befriends this growing segment of the US population will have tapped into a powerful social force.
Don't expect it to be either the Republicans or the Democrats.
Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Now, as polls show growing disenchantment with both political parties, the issue of immigration is raised once again, as politicians seek to stir the pot of social resentment.
Voices are raised, tempers are frayed, proposals are launched, and the destinies of millions are apparently held in limbo.
But, in numbers not seen for generations, mostly Mexican-born (or
related) families pound the pavements in protest, demanding amnesty for the millions who live and work, in the most thankless jobs, here in the U.S.
The immigration "discussion" masks deeper currents in American life, of those who dread the approaching dawn when those who number the nation's majority are brown, instead of white.
As the government and the servile corporate media hawked fear to trap the nation into the Iraq War, so now fear is once again merchandised for political gain. The perpetual fear of the foreign Other, the fear of Spanish-speaking people, who are called 'criminal' for daring to cross the Rio Grande, to inhabit the lands stolen from their ancestors!
The truth of the matter is that it is highly unlikely that over 11
million men, women, and children will be returned to Mexican territory. That's because businesses, especially those engaged in agriculture, would virtually go out of business, if their immigrant-based work-force up and disappeared.
But, like most people, many Latino immigrants are involved in other
businesses and industries in U.S. life. Guess who's doing the lion's share of the work to actually re-build New Orleans? (In case you've not guessed, let me just say it - It ain't FEMA!).
With the exception of Native Americans (as in so-called 'Indians'), and African-Americans, every person in the U.S. today is a descendant of a willing immigrant (OK, strict historians will object that many poor whites, especially in the Southern states, were sent to George and Maryland as indentured servants, as part of a penal sentence).
But, the point is clear. Immigration was consciously used to craft the U.S. as a white nation. For centuries, certain racial groups, like Chinese, for example, were specifically excluded by law from citizenship (like their Mexican counterparts, many Asians were needed in the building of this country as cheap labor).
As law professor Ian F. Haney-Lopez has shown in his book, *White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race* (N.Y.:NYU Press, 1996), American courts and legislatures have consistently defined 'citizens' as 'whites', and over the course of centuries, millions of people were denied entry to the US, or even if allowed in denied citizenship, because they were not 'white.' In 1882, Haney-Lopez explains, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese workers for a decade. In 1884, the Act was expanded to bar all Chinese people, and shortly thereafter an indefinite ban was implemented. State and federal court decisions banned Syrians, Asian-Indians, Palestinians, mixed-race people, and multitudes of others on the basis of insufficient whiteness!
That ugly history may be reborn in this latest 'battle' over Mexican immigration. Political storms have a way of giving way to political hurricanes, that even those who planned them cannot control.
Several years ago, a right-wing politician in California tried to ride the anti-immigrant train to the White House. This man was Pete Wilson, and his playing with fire left him politically burnt. Angry Hispanics in Cali sent him, and some of his colleagues in the Republican Party, into retirement.
But, this era of politicians, trying to create an issue that protects them from the falling numbers of the incumbent Bush Administration, look at Wilson's fate as ancient history.
Perhaps the recent demonstrations, massive in their size, vociferous in their spirit, have given them pause.
Time will tell.
The political entity that truly befriends this growing segment of the US population will have tapped into a powerful social force.
Don't expect it to be either the Republicans or the Democrats.
Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal
From Real Time with Bill Maher, aired 4/7/06...New Rule: Don't blame illegal immigrants for driving down wages. Blame Congress. Republicans in Congress have to stop saying that the problem with Mexicans coming over the border is they keep wages down. You know what keeps wages down? The fact that Congress hasn't raised the minimum wage since 1997. 1997, when my dealer still had a beeper! Car dealer, car dealer, what did I say?
Yes, news flash: Congress controls what the minimum wage is. Who did you think it was, the valet parking team at Tony Roma's? And upping the minimum wage would affect wages. It has to. The word "wage" is right in it. Even George Bush could understand that. Maybe not. The point is, the elephant in the room is that no one can live on minimum wage, and that we are making a whole swath of our society - tens of millions of people - live like animals. So that the luckier segment can live with indulgences their parents never dreamed of.
Do you know that most upper-middle-class people nowadays never clean their own toilet or do their own laundry...until they go to rehab.
AFFLECK: Sometimes not even then.
MAHER: Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is actually lower than it was in 1968, the year George Bush graduated from Yale. And that is unforgivable! And the wage thing is bad, too.
People like to tell themselves that these immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do. Not true. Americans will pick fruit in the hot sun. But not at $5.15 an hour. Trust me. If some of these jobs paid real wages, your wife would be having sex with a Jewish gardener.
Americans want the contributions of the poor and the immigrant without having to actually see or be among them. Which is why I suggest, instead of building a wall on the border, we build a Wal-Mart. It would be 1,950 miles long, or the size of a normal Wal-Mart. And there would still be just the one register open. But it would solve this problem.
Because if we built this Wal-Mart exactly on the border, the Americans could come through the front door and shop, and the Mexicans could come through the back door and work. And then go home the same way at night, unless they got locked in. It is Wal-Mart.
In summation, I am not saying that raising the minimum wage is going to solve the illegal immigration problem. That can only be solved by arming Lou Dobbs. But five bucks an hour in an America where the luckier ones spend that on a coffee, is a cruel joke. And if you don't believe me, do what I do. Listen to the voices of those poor souls who are making this paltry sum. Of course, I have to. They're my staff.
Bill+Maher Immigration minimum+wage Wal-mart
BBC NewsUS President George W Bush is under pressure from Democrats to reveal if he was behind the leaking of Iraq secrets.
Court papers cite an ex-official as saying he had been told he had Mr Bush's authorisation to discuss classified material with journalists.
The White House says any information released was done "in the public interest", arguing the president has the power to declassify information.
The ex-official, Lewis Libby, is facing trial in a separate CIA leak case.
He is accused of obstructing an investigation into the leaking of a CIA agent's identity.
Mr Bush - who is not accused of authorising the release of the agent's name - has in the past condemned leaks and has said he would sack anyone involved.
The president's supporters say even if Mr Libby's testimony is accurate, what the president is alleged to have done does not constitute a leak because Mr Bush had the authority to release the information.
But the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says President Bush is once again fighting for his political credibility, with Democrats smelling blood.
'Breathtaking disclosure'
Mr Libby said he was told in July 2003, when he was chief-of-staff to Vice-President Dick Cheney, to give a reporter pre-war intelligence, court papers reveal.
He testified that Mr Cheney had told him to pass information from the classified National Intelligence Estimate to Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter.
Mr Cheney is alleged to have said that the release of classified information had been approved by the president.
Mr Libby said he understood this meant he had legal cover to discuss this material.
Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid called the claim "shocking", and said Mr Bush "must fully disclose his participation in the selective leaking of classified information".
Congresswoman Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House's intelligence committee, said: "If the disclosure is true, it's breathtaking. The president is revealed as the leaker-in-chief."
CIA leak row
The aim of the leak, Mr Libby is reported to have said, was to rebut an article questioning some of the evidence used to justify the case for a US-led invasion of Iraq.
The article was written by former diplomat Joseph Wilson, the husband of the undercover agent Valerie Plame who was subsequently outed.
Court papers quote Mr Libby as saying he did not discuss Ms Plame during his 8 July 2003 meeting with Miller.
Mr Libby is charged with lying to investigators and obstructing the investigation into the leak of Mrs Plame's identity.
He resigned as chief-of-staff to Mr Cheney after he was charged last year and is due to go on trial in January 2007.
No-one has been charged with a crime over the leaking of Mrs Plame's name to reporters.
George+Bush Lewis+Libby Judith+Miller